#and three (most important): helps me learn skills that translate to actually good jobs outside of this place

[klysanderelias]

crossing my fingers that my 'mediocre white man' energy helps me get yet another job I'm entirely unqualified for

[linkspooky]

Yuji, Alone. 

I have been saying in my past few meta that Yuji has a really unhealthy way of viewing both himself, and his relationships with others. Yuji is excellent at reading the feelings of others and empathizing with them, and at the same time terrible at processing his own emotions, a trait he shares with Geto who he is once again paralleling this chapter by choosing to stew in isolation rather than reach out for support. 

Chapter 138 does an excellent job of showing how deep these issues run, which I will explain under the cut. 

1. Yuji and Geto

If I were to explain the unhealthy mindset Yuji has by simplifying it down to one sentenence, simply stated it would be “I want to help others, but I don’t want to accept help from other people.” 

Both Yuji and Geto are so motivated by empathy they feel like they are responsible for solving other people’s problems, and they often use other people rather than themselves as a reason to move. They’re actually selfless to a fault. In that, it’s a problem in their behavior. They do everything they do for other peope, so they have no idea what they themselves want. If Gojo is someone who has a strong self image, a strong set of beliefs, an idea of what he wants to do to the world, Geto and Yuji are people who try not to think about themselves at all. 

Not only does Yuji almost never critically exam his own motivations, but he also doesn’t think of his relationships with other people. 

This is something Yaga pointed out as a danger with Yuji’s way of going about things, all the way at the beginning of his arc. If you’re doing it because your grandpa told you so, then is it really something you want to do? When you die, is it going to be your grandpa’s fault too?

Yuji is someone who seems selfless on the surface, and to an extent he is, but just like Geto that’s not all there is to him. It’s something Gojo called out early on, Geto presented himself as someone selfless, motivated entirely by using his powers to protect others, but he was also doing so self righteously. 

To clarify what I mean by self righteous, Geto believed that he was doing something because it was the objective right thing to do, but actually it was just his own personal feelings. That’s why after Riko’s death forced him to critically examine himself, he realized he didn’t want to follow the rules of Jujutsu Society. 

Both Yuji and Geto pay attention to others, but also have the blinders on in regards to themselves, and that’s the parallel right there. Yuji says he is doing these things for other people, that his number one priority is to save them but that motivation is even deconstructed in the third chapter.

Yuji’s not actually doing this for purely altruistic reasons, but for selfish ones. He wanted to do something that nobody else could do. Yuji’s life was like a vaccuum before this point. He didn’t have any real friends, or anything he wanted to do. Suddenly he had a purpose basically gift wrapped and handed to him on his lap. 

Basically, Yuji and Geto both have this schewed way of seeing other people. They thing other people exist to validate their own existences. 

To put it simply. If Hidden Inventory Geto helps weak people than he’s valid. If Yuji helps people, then he’s valid. 

Not only is the way they view themselves built around how they help other people, but at the same time all of their relationships are built up on this as well. Relationships that are built upon shaky foundations will crumble apart easily when tested. 

Geto’s most important relationship was with Gojo, they had an intense chemistry and interaction with one another like they were made for each other. They were both good at naturally balancing each other out, Geto was the one who stood up to Gojo and acted like a tether, and Gojo ackonwledged Geto as his one and only. 

However, the relationship was also built on the idea that Gojo needed Geto. Geto was only able to view his relationships with other people in that way. Geto, wants to take care of people, wants to help people. However, eventually, he was left behind by Gojo who no longer needed him as a partner in combat. On top of that, Geto awoke to a higher purpose in ridding the world of cursed energy. Geto wants to be needed by somebody in the same sense that Yuji does, so for Geto at least being needed to save the whole world in his eyes, was just more important than maintaining his relationship with Gojo. 

Which is why both Geto and Yuji’s relationships fall apart. They are great at making relationshisps, but not at maintaining them. Attention is drawn to the fact that the trio has great chemistry with each other and get along well, but they’re also terrible at communicating with each other. 

"The seats... in my life... How should I put this? I don't want my heart to be affected by people who don't have a place there. Does that sound cold? Well, I guess there are also guys like you who brings their own chair and takes a seat." Translation by Miho.

Almost literally, I don’t want anyone who’s not a part of my life to try to talk to me or tell me what to do. Also the reference that Yuji is kind of different because Yuji just kind of walked into her life unannounced and invited himself there (this is how Yuji forms relationships with everyone.)

All three of them go behind each other’s backs and keep secrets from one another. All three of them avoid direct confrontation, Nobara even says she doesn’t really want anyone else even trying to tell her how to live her life. The Origin of Obedience arc shows that Nobara, Yuji and Megumi are all good at fighting together as a team, but also questioning if they have a healthy friendship outside of that?

Any relationship takes work, confrontation, arguments and even just plain old talking about things. However, someone who is primarily insecure in their relationships will not be able to do things.  Couples shouldn’t only argue, but couples who never argue is just as unhealthy. If you are so afraid that one argument is going to end a relationship, then your relationship was fragile to begin with. 

Yuji and Geto experience conditional relatinoships. In the sense that, they are only allowed to have friends, if they are helpful to those friends. They themselves are never allowed to ask for help. It’s true that Gojo was kind of blind to Geto’s faults, but also Geto would have never asked for help. Gojo could not see, and Geto deliberately hid things from them. 

Geto always makes his relationships on the condition that he is needed. When Gojo grew more independent, Geto took that as a sign that Gojo didn’t need him anymore and deliberately started to pull away.

Because, Geto isn’t ever allowed to be the one who needs someone else. 

2. Avoidant Attachment

This is just a personal theory of mine, but I think Yuji’s issues might even center around the psychological idea of attachment theory. Especially it’s since deliberately mentioned to Junpei, that Yuji never met his mother. 

Attachment theory is a complex idea, but basically it states that attachment to other people, that is the idea to form healthy relationships with family members, friends, romantic partners is learned instead of naturally present in us. It’s a skill people develop in their formative years. 

Those who show patterns of problematic attachment in childhood will continue the behavior into adulthood unless it’s corrected, because attachment is a skill that’s developed the same as anything else. Of the four categories, Yuji and Geto most resemble this one. 

Avoidant attachment: Children with an avoidant attachment tend to avoid parents or caregivers, showing no preference between a caregiver and a complete stranger. This attachment style might be a result of abusive or neglectful caregivers. Children who are punished for relying on a caregiver will learn to avoid seeking help in the future.

Which goes further to explain how they can be so empathic towards other people, and yet the same time completely unable to maintain close relationships with them. It’s because, they avoid people at the same time. They don’t seek out help when they need it, because, deep down they view themselves as unworthy of the help. 

Geto did not immediately break after the trauma of losing Riko, it was the year of isolation after that where he slowly was consumed by his regrets. Geto got worse and worse over a period of time because he couldn’t handle his trauma in any healthy way, until he just completely snapped. 

During that time he asked himself the same questions over and over again, but Geto wasn’t able to find any kind of healthy answer to his questions because, he didn’t reach out for anybody. It wasn’t just the trauma, it was the behavior after the trauma, the decision to isolate himself for over a year. No one does well in isolation. You need other people to grow or develop. If anything Geto stagnated. Geto’s central flaw was his self-righteousness. Rather than realizing he was wrong and trying to change this flaw of his, he just doubles down and becomes even more self righteous. He goes from believing he’s responsible for protecting all the weak people, to believing he’s a superior being tasked with eliminating all the weak people in the world. So, it’s not really that Geto changed, moreso that he stagnated because he cut off all his relationships with other people. 

And isn’t Yuji doing the exact same thing right now? Yaga even points out this similaritiy between Geto and Yuji, that they try to carry every regret and burden they have on their own. 

It’s not out of selflessness that they do this though, but rather insecurity. Geto didn’t come to Gojo with his problems, because he wanted to be the strongest alongside Gojo he didn’t want to be weak. He was deliberately avoiding Gojo. 

I think it’s important to establish that Yuji wasn’t abandoned by his friends this chapter. Yuji is alone, because he chose to be alone. He’s alone because he’s avoiding both of his friends, because he’s so, so afraid the friendship will end because it’s based entirely on the condition that he be a helpful, good person.

It’s true that Yuji is genuinely worried about his friends getting hurt because of him, but look at his choices. He’s not really tackling the problem in a healthy way. He’s doing everything he can to avoid the problem, isolating himself, and just trying not to think about things. He could try to talk with Megumi and find a solution, but he’s not doing that because he’s insecure in his attachment to others. 

I think his reaction to Choso pretty clearly illustrates this too. Yuji isn’t around his friends because he doesn’t want to be around them. Which is tragic, because Yuji is holding himself responsible for the mass murder which isn’t really his fault. However, Yuji saw his relationship with both Nobara and Megumi as conditional to begin with. He can only be friends with people he can help, and he can never receive help from them. It’s unhealthy to start with because relationships go both ways. Yuji is also, completely unresponsive to Choso.

Yes. Choso suddenly walking to him and delcaring them brothers is really weird.  I don’t expect Yuji to just suddenly start getting along with him right away.

At the same time, Choso explains what the unconditional love between family is between Yuji, and Yuji just doesn’t get it, because he either hasn’t experienced enough of it, or his grandpa the only person that ever unconditionally loved him is gone. Yuji can’t understand Megumi’s love for him is unconditional,. because from the beginning he sees all relationships as conditional. 

Yuji and Choso are facing opposite direcitons because they’re opposites. Choso is willing to hurt complete strangers too, but his love for his family is unconditional and he will do anything for them. Yuji will help complete strangers, but, he doesn’t really understand unconditional love, and even his love with his closest friends has a few conditions. 

Which is why someone who appears on the surface as such a friendly guy who makes friends everywhere he goes, can call himself “a loner” because in Yuji’s mind he is. He doesn’t have friends, he has people who need him. 

Which is just incredibly sad because Yuji doesn’t understand this. Yuji isolates himself thinking he’s doing it for the sake of his friends, but neither Megumi nor Nobara would want him to be alone. 

[softprincesso]

✨HOW TO BECOME A WEALTHY MIDDLE-AGED MAN✨

PT.2: Overview to understanding different saving/retirement methods, investments, and forms of income

2.1 Savings and Retirement

Welcome lovelies to (what I hope will be) a helpful series on gaining wealth and becoming financially literate and independent!

*disclaimer: while this advice can generally apply to many it will not apply to all. Everyone is in a different situation and should do their own research before they take what ANYONE says as fact or law. This is also coming from the perspective of a young, biracial, first generation female business student following a hypergamous lifestyle and who does sw so some advice may be specific to my like-minded ladies, but for the most part I just love money and want to help others find joy in their wallets as well. I am also operating in the US so things regarding accounts, stocks, and certain laws will vary by your country. Also, this is just a fun thing I wanted to do because talking about leveling up and learning and growing and money are my favorite past times. None of these pictures are mine, however I am using some links which may compensate me in some way, but I only used links which were mutually beneficial and would help you gain something as well, they are still just actual sources I use for myself.

✨THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND✨

Financial independence is different than financial confidence.

Financial Independence: “The most common sense of the term is that someone has enough wealth to live as they wish for the rest of their life without having to work.” -Investopedia https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0611/declare-your-own-financial-independence-day.aspx

Financial Confidence: “We define financial confidence as having three aspects,” says Miler. “The first is awareness of how money can be a tool for helping you reach your goals and dreams. The second is financial literacy and understanding economic factors. The third is trust and knowing where to turn for financial advice.” -Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/shelleyzalis/2018/06/16/women-money-8-steps-for-growing-your-financial-confidence/?sh=2175b65e2468

While the ultimate goal is financial independence, financial confidence should be the main focus. I’ll give an example why. Imagine there are two people: Rhonda and Jill. Both of them like nice things, love to shop, and participate in the occasional splurge. Rhonda works a regular 9-5 and has a decent salary. She doesn’t have much financial knowledge (translation: financial confidence), but she has a savings account at her local bank and puts a couple hundred into retirement each year and she thinks that's enough. Suddenly, Rhonda wins the lottery. Overnight she has become a millionaire, so she quits her job, moves to LA, and goes on to live life to the fullest. She would now be considered financially independent. However, Rhonda has no idea how to manage all that money. She puts a small amount into that bank savings account and takes the rest to do what she will. One day she tries her luck at a casino, in less than five hours she has lost all of her money and has to start back at square one with no job, only a few thousand to get her through, and no-good way to explain to employers that she just wasted the last 5 years spending money on handbags she now has to sell at a depreciated value. (BTW you would not last not working with only a million dollars in LA for that long)

Now, let’s look at Jill. Jill is an independent contractor and has a relatively steady income. She knows very little about finances, but she actively learns how to manage what she has and keeps up to date on the latest money news. The day that Rhonda won the lottery was just another Thursday for Jill, the only unique point for her was that she opened a savings accounts with a high APY (we’ll say 1%) and put in $5000.00. A little later she also opened a Roth IRA and puts in the maximum yearly allowance of $6000.00. Along the way she opened a brokerage account of her own and started trading in the stock market along with investing in real estate which has given her some extra income to play with each year. Unfortunately, another housing crash occurs, and all of the money Jill invested into real estate is gone. However, since Jill learned the skills behind her choices early on, she is knowledgeable and understands the ups and downs of the market and how to invest her money in other places in the meantime. And, that High yield savings account accrued around $50 more without her doing anything and she has that to fall back on, or worst case she can take out part of her principal Roth IRA contribution. 10 years from now Jill should start to see a steady increase in her Roth IRA that by retirement will be a little over 1 million and she should be comfortable and invested enough into stocks that she gains around $200-1000 extra each month.

I think you understand why you want to be Jill.

✨HAVING ADEQUATE SAVINGS = BEING YOUR OWN LIFEGUARD✨

As discussed in Pt.1 the first goal you should achieve is securing an emergency fund that could sustain you for a couple of months if things were to ever hit the fan, and starting a retirement fund should be in your top 5 goals to complete. The saying, “the rich get richer” is popular for a reason. Wealthy people know how to make their money work for them instead of them having to work for money. An easy way anyone can do the same is by opening the right accounts for your savings and retirement.

Savings: 

All of your savings should be in a high yield saving account or split between different high yield accounts. This is an account which will reward you some interest every period for having money in your account with them. This is incredibly easy to do. You can either research/ask your bank about their high yield accounts or do some googling to find some other bank. Then transfer your money and there you go! When looking at banks understand that the highest Annual Percent Yields (APY), or the interest they will reward you, are going to be from online banks because they have less operational costs than a brick and mortar, but they will also come with their own disadvantages, like less ATMs to access or the inability to use when outside of your country so make sure to look into that. IMPORTANT: Make sure that whatever bank you choose is FDIC-insured so if the bank were to ever collapse or lose your money you have insurance up to $250,000.This won't generate a lot of extra cash, but an extra $20 every year is better than $0.

Retirement:

These accounts usually go by your current situation and what you see for your future.

401K: Probably the most known (I believe it’s only in the States but there might be something close to it in other countries) and that’s just because this is what employers usually offer if they offer anything. It is a retirement fund that your employer will set up and you can predefine how much of your paycheck you want to automatically go into it every time. Sometimes, the employers will also have a match program, and if they do you better max out the money they will contribute because that is FREE money! Most advice that I have seen has said to really only focus on this fund if your employer has that match program, otherwise I would focus on one of the accounts below. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/retirement/08/401k-info.asp

IRA: An IRA stands for Individual Retirement Account. There are three kinds…

                         Traditional: This IRA lets you put in pre-tax money and lets it grow tax-free until you make a withdrawal. Once you make the withdrawal that money is taxed at the current rate of your income at the time. Your contributions are tax deductible so you can write them off of your taxable income of that year. There are limits to how much you can contribute depending on your income, status, and whether you have another retirement fund as well.

                          Roth: With this IRA your contributions are taxed, but when you withdrawal money later on it is tax free. For those of you in a lower tax bracket than you believe you will be in the future, this IRA makes the most sense as you will pay less taxes now than you will when you are 59 ½ (The official age of retirement in the States). There are limits to how much you can contribute depending on your income, status, and whether you have another retirement fund as well.

                           SEP: Simplified Employee Pension. This is also an employer-based plan and may also work better for my self-employed gals out there. I don’t really know a lot on this one so I’ll just leave a link you can look into if it interests you: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/102714/how-does-simplified-employee-pension-sep-ira-work.asp

You can have both a traditional and Roth IRA as long as you are eligible for both. Anyone with earned income (with a job or can prove a steady income) can contribute to a Traditional IRA, however with a Roth IRA, as a single you can earn up to $139,000 and contribute. Personally, if you are just getting started with all of this just set up one IRA and as you learn more you can take steps to get another or switch accounts.

https://www.investopedia.com/retirement/roth-vs-traditional-ira-which-is-right-for-you/

There are a plethora of other accounts, but they are more specialized and the top four should get you started on the right path to saving for retirement. I’m guessing that the majority of the audience reading these are women between the ages of 20-30. Trust me when I say that I love to spend money as much as the next girl, but I also would like to be completely comfortable should anything happen in my older years that screws up my marriage or job, and no one is going to secure that for you.

Also, I’m sorry this is so US-based, but once again it is all I know. I believe IRAs are more widespread than a 401K, but all that takes to find out is a Google search on your part.

Either way, make sure you have a plan going into 2021 for your savings and retirement because this economic whirlwind is far from over and there is always a chance for another recession, depression, or disaster. (Wow O, way to keep the mood light)

This was getting way too long with the investments added so look out for Pt.2.2 on the overview for investments (where the actual fun begins and I can stop being such a stick in the mud)…

VOCAB TO KNOW/RESEARCH:

Financial independence

Financial Confidence

APY

Roth IRA

brokerage account

High yield savings account

principal

401K

Traditional IRA

Once again… if in these posts I ever give bad advice, F- something up, or am just generally ignorant PLEASE call me out! Remember that just like you I am a young woman figuring everything out and while I am confident when talking about money, I am by no means a genius (only in spurts) so any chance to learn I appreciate. I hope you all learned something new today and as always…

With Love,

O

[scripturiends]

law school episode 9 musings

warning: very very long post ahead. i have a lot of thoughts.

hey folks — how we feeling about episode 9?

given that there are so many plotlines in the show, i’m afraid i won’t be able to extend my analysis of the episode as far as i would like, but there are three characters who stood out to me the most last night that i’d like to talk about for now:

kang dan

there’s a lot that we got to uncover about her thanks to professor yang’s trial. if i’m piecing it all together right, the basic summary of what led to her disappearance goes like this:

she was a volunteer for assemblyman ko’s campaign, but upon discovering that he was spreading fake news about his opposition, dan reported him to the authorities (i’m guessing not just the police but also the media) and became a whistleblower. assemblyman ko tried to buy her off with money, but she refused, so he attacked her where she’s most vulnerable instead — by using her family.

i’m not completely sure about this (please feel free to correct me!) but it’s either byeol is (1) the twins’ half-sister, or (2) their stepsister? it’s so hard to tell, especially since korean terms can get lost in translation in the process (i watch on netflix, if that helps). but anyway, sol and dan’s mom married someone who was abusing her, and in exchange for dan’s silence (and her fleeing), the husband signs a contract that he would stop hurting his wife.

so that’s the backbone of dan’s story. however, this still doesn’t answer a lot of things, like where seo byungju or lee manho fits into the equation, the whereabouts of their mom’s ex-husband, or why dan was sent into boston in the first place.

i usually don’t like theorizing, but i do have one: there is an ivy league school located just outside of boston — harvard. (it’s technically in cambridge but you know, i’m taking liberties here.) professor yang said in passing one episode that he thought he saw dan when he went to the school for a seminar or a talk or something. could it be that assemblyman ko offered her an education at a top school in exchange for her silence? it could explain why she gave it up all so easily. what if she took that topnotch education as a chance to prepare, so that when she came back, she had much stronger leverage to take assemblyman ko down, given the knowledge and network of connections she’ll have earned in that school?

the theory’s plausible but i might be overestimating assemblyman ko’s kindness — unless he’s insanely desperate, he might not give a damn about dan’s education. it actually benefits him more if she stayed uninformed, but still. let me know what you think about it.

yoo seungjae

in this episode, we learned a little bit more about how yoo seungjae was able to hack into the professors’ laptops, and they also confirmed some of our previous speculations about him: that his wife yujeong was an ob gyn, and so was he, and that they were trying for a baby. unfortunately, i find it all to be a bit lacking in substance. i was hoping we could get down to the nitty-gritty of why he did what he did.

i say this for one important reason: i don’t know about you guys, but i would never make such a stupid mistake in undergrad, let alone in law school. seungjae has gone to med school, so we know that he knows the repercussions of his actions. why would he go to such lengths? sure, he found an opening, he was tempted, and he took it. but he didn’t just do it once, he did it multiple times, and those offenses add up (hacking, stealing exam papers, and cheating). surely he must know that something like this can ruin careers even before they even start, and not only would he get kicked out of the school, he would also get blacklisted from the industry once he implicates himself. so we understand why he’s so hesitant to testify (especially now that his wife is pregnant).

but why did he do that in the first place? we could say he’s insecure about his skills, but he’s survived med school. how much harder could law school be for him? i just don’t think that the payoff is worth the risk. what must be so important for yoo seungjae to do all of this for? what does he get in return if he successfully pulls it off and gets straight As during his entire time in law school? who is he doing for?

i hope it runs deeper than just wanting a ‘good future’ for him and his wife and their baby or something — because he could just as easily do that as a doctor. there must be another reason he went into law.

still, though, and this is just a personal opinion, even if i did find out his entire backstory, there’s no way i could ever defend him. we see in the show how his guilt builds up (from observing how kang sol A studies so well, to his conversation with jeon yeseul in the hospital), but at this point there is no more excusing what he did. not that i ever condoned it in the first place.

we’re still in the dark about a lot of things regarding yoo seungjae. hopefully by the next episode, we get something. but until then, he is still a shady, shady man to me.

kang sol B

her screen time in this episode was short, but i still wanted to highlight her because she is pretty much a ticking time bomb.

she’s in a tight spot right now because even if she testifies about having seen the sugar packet, the prosecutor will just twist the argument by saying she colluded with a murderer just to cover up her plagiarism.

and now, seo jiho needs her help, probably for something related to his case with prosecutor jin. in exchange, she puts pressure on him to ‘confirm’ that she didn’t plagiarize in middle school, since they were schoolmates and rivals.

there may be more to this plagiarism issue than meets the eye. who knows, we might find out later on that she actually didn’t plagiarize? but given what i know now, i have no reason to believe that she didn’t. i don’t blame her specifically for that, seeing as she has to pay for the consequences for something that her awful mom forced her to do. but now that the mess has been made, i want to see how she cleans it up.

kang sol B is a very elusive character to me. the scary thing about her is that she’s on no one’s side but her own. and that’s why i think she’s a ticking time bomb.

~

bonus: han joonhwi

so that’s all i have for the serious stuff. as a bonus, i’d like to talk about han joonhwi and his four (4) children jeon yeseul, seo jiho, kang byeol, and min bokgi.

one of my friends brought up how it’s so funny how he’s somehow just at the right place at the right time all the time. this happened when he ran into kang sol A when she was looking for yeseul (i still think they were on the phone with each other beforehand but this is just my shipper self talking — truthfully, if the focus was shifted towards that phone call without divulging who it was, i have a feeling it might be more important later on), and when seo jiho confronted prosecutor jin. adding his elevator conversation with kang sol B, i think it just solidified what we already know: han joonhwi is a very compassionate person. but he doesn’t sacrifice his own personality just to appease them — he recognizes that these individuals have agency, and he’s just giving them the little push they need to make them realize what they need to do.

i also felt the need to bring up kang byeol. the show does such a good job of ensuring that all the solhwi scenes that we get, no matter how indulgent and “fanservice-y” they might seem, actually have a deeper purpose. again, i could go on and on about what each solhwi scene has actually contributed to the development of the plot, which is exactly why i love them so much! because all of their scenes are so meaningful. but anyway, it’s nice to see han joonhwi care so much for his, ehem, future sister-in-law.

and for min bokgi — this scene was so short, but i absolutely loved it so much (i tend to pay attention to the throwaway scenes): min bokgi is going off about how yoo seungjae is acting weird, and he says to joonhwi, “hyung, you should call him.” and joonhwi responds with, “sure. eat your food.” it’s such a fatherly thing to do and it’s such a great contrast to bokgi’s dynamic with sol A, with whom he’s so loud and vibrant, moods that both match their personalities, but with joonhwi, who is more subdued, he’s like a little kid in need of rescue from an older brother, or even a dad. ah, i love it so much. min bokgi is such an underrated character. i wish he had more screen time. (if he doesn’t get a central ep, well, you guys know where i’m going with this, right? it means i’ll give it to him myself.)

~

so that’s it for now! i’m sorry i went on rambling again, but if there’s anything noteworthy in this post that you think is worth discussing, please do tell! if there’s anything that you found thought-provoking in the episode that i didn’t get to touch up on, let me know as well!

i personally don’t make any theories about the overarching plot myself, seeing as by the time the new episode comes out, we get fed information that renders the theory useless. still, that doesn’t mean we should stop coming up with our own ideas. sometimes, the theories are more interesting than the canon itself.

[ladyvader23]

Why I Think FanFiction is Important and Should be Normalized

I like to listen to youtube or podcasts while I play video games, usually on informational subjects. The other day I thought, “Maybe there’s some interesting fanfic commentators out there like there are for fiction writers!” 

Oh boy. I was wrong. 

There were a few one off videos. There’s one wonderful channel that I already knew about that talks about it (ColeyDoesThings). But the majority of videos were so negative. They were usually making fun of fics they considered bad or creepy, as if that represents all fanfic.

On top of that, I’ve met a lot of people both online and in real life who are either afraid to admit that they write fanfic, or they think fanfic is weird because of these popular depictions of fanfic in media. 

Before I continue, I think it’s really important to say that it’s totally fine to not want to talk about your writing or reading habits. I had a friend who had to hide writing fanfic because her parents would ground her if she did. I’ve had other friends who just see it as a hobby and they don’t want to draw attention to it, and I’ve had some who hide it because they’re legitimately worried about how people will react. That’s completely valid and I totally support that 100%. Do what makes you happy and safe! 

For me, though, I make it a point to be open about the role fanfiction has in my life. Without fanfiction, I wouldn’t have the job I have, or the friends I’ve made. I wouldn’t feel like me without it. For a long time, fanfiction was the only support I had to pursue who I wanted to be. 

This is my story. 

I have a learning disability. That in itself is a really long story, so to make it short, it made writing really, really difficult. English was consistently my lowest grade throughout my entire childhood and teen years. My English teachers HATED me. I can count...maybe two or three teachers who treated me like my writing had any worth? 

And what was worse is that I didn’t even know what I had to explain it to anyone until halfway through high school. By then, any “help” the school system had ever offered me was tailored to issues I didn’t have, and my mother had to explain every single year to my IEP coordinators what help I actually needed. 

I started writing fanfic probably when I was in seventh grade? It was hand written and was for Final Fantasy 10. I never published it, but I still remember the plot. My first published fanfic was for InuYasha. It was collaborative with my cousin, and it was reaaaaally badly written. I don’t even remember the title, actually, but it was a wild fic. It was my first real opportunity to experience fandom, to hear anything back from readers about what they thought of my writing. And I learned from that experience. I learned even more as I branched out to other fandoms. And because I had readers, it encouraged me to actually practice by writing more. 

While fanfic comments can be negative and unproductive, I’ve had plenty of readers very nicely point out “hey, when someone else starts speaking, that’s a new paragraph.” Literally, I’d NEVER known that before someone said it in a review. I’ve also had people point out good grammar resources that I could use. I had people offer insight on how story structure works and doesn’t work. I learned about giving characters real flaws. I learned about creating conflicts that people actually care about and relate to. Most of these comments weren’t meant to educate, necessarily, but when people reacted a certain way, I wondered, “Why do they feel that way? What did I do right, what did I do wrong? How can I improve?” Then I tried out whatever I learned in a new story or chapter. 

And yeah. Sometimes people just don’t jive with a story, or they’re trolls. But you know what? I learned from that too! I learned how to respond or not respond when people just don’t like what you’ve written and there’s nothing you can really do about it. That’s a skill I’ve translated into other parts of my life outside of writing. 

Through all of this, from my first fanfic to the ones I write now, I’ve learned so much about my writing and about who I am as a person. I’ve had the opportunity to meet so many cool people from all over the world, which in itself has been a seriously positive, life-changing experience! 

But much of my life, I was constantly being told that I couldn’t do it, to not even bother trying. I’d go to school where I had teachers who took one look at my IEP and before they’d even given my writing a chance, treated me like a failure. I once tried to show one of my teachers one of my stories. It was a Twilight fanfic (I was sixteen and it was the height of the craze). I knew my teacher loved Twilight, and I’d seen her make connections with other students over their shared interest. I just wanted to connect with her, too, to show that even though my strength isn’t in what she wanted me to write, I still mattered. I still had a place in her classroom. But I didn’t even finish asking her to read a little before she told me she was “too busy” (and then proceeded to give me an F because I did the entire worksheet, not “just the even number questions.” Like seriously, what?). 

It was really conflicting. On one hand, fanfic was so much fun, I had positive and constructive feedback on my stories, and I felt like I’d improved enough to go toe-to-toe with anyone else naturally gifted in writing. On the other hand, I had every authority figure in my life telling me to not bother. When I went to college, I really wasn’t sure I knew what to do. I had dreams to be a writer, but maybe people online were just being nice and I was better off doing something else. 

But I signed up to major in English anyway, and to my surprise, my college professors were way more supportive. Feedback was actually constructive. I didn’t have any kind of IEP equivalent attached to my name or record, which...brings up a lot of other concerns I have about the American education system because seriously, why are we judging people’s abilities like that??? But for the first time, I felt like I had a real chance. I graduated in English education, and though I left education because I have a lot of issues with how America runs its education system, I still work in a job where I write their entire policy and procedures. I literally write all day, and when I’m done with work, I write either my fanfiction or my own personal WIP. 

If I hadn’t had any of that positive experience with fanfic and the community that surrounds it, I wouldn’t have made the decision to do English as my major in college. I wouldn’t have a job I love. I wouldn’t have the friends I have. I feel like as a whole, I wouldn’t have as much passion as I do for stories...which is a HUGE part of who I am! 

I talk openly and positively about fanfic because there are others out there who might be like me. If all they hear about is how dorky or weird or creepy fanfic is, then that might scare them off. And what if fanfic leads them to supportive, wonderful friends? What if it leads them to a career option that makes them really happy? Or, you know, what if they just want to have a lot of fun and fanfic can do that for them (because you can totally just have fun, you don’t HAVE to learn or get anything else from fanfic)? 

I think we need to normalize fanfiction. Yes, there are negatives, we shouldn’t not address those, but when it’s positive, let’s talk about that! I think this particular site is really good at that, but I mean in real life. Maybe on other platforms too, I don’t know. I just have a lot of feelings about why fanfic is so important, and I just wanted to share my story to at least explain some of that. 

Feel free to add your own experiences, I’d love to hear them from either writers of fanfic or readers! 

[irandrura]

Third and final post: what were my other thoughts?

 Let’s talk about the game’s mechanics first.

I am overall very pleased with the battle gameplay. On the battlefield itself the gameplay is more-or-less unchanged from the past, but the character advancement and customisation system is significantly improved. Moving to a single overall character level and giving every character the ability to change classes at will is a much more fluid and elegant system than in the past, and the ability to choose the specific combat arts and abilities each character takes looks like it adds a lot of depth. It’s probably appropriate for the overall ‘teacher’ theme of the game that you have much more power to mould each character’s skills and talents, but I’d like to see it in other games as well. There’s an important balance to strike: on the one hand, characters should not be infinitely malleable, and should all have their personal strengths and weaknesses. On the other, so much of the fun of the game is in developing characters and watching them grow that it’s really good to be able to specialise them.

Speaking of battle gameplay, divine pulse is great. The Fire Emblem series has always struggled a bit with accessibility, and while casual mode definitely made the series easier, it also felt to me like missing the point. Casual mode is too easy, and by removing any risk of permanent death, it felt like it removed a lot of the game’s tension. Divine pulse is a much better way to make the gameplay a bit easier and less frustrating while still keeping the same feel as classic FE gameplay. It gives you just enough room to survive a lucky enemy crit, or a small misjudgement on your part, without totally removing the need to be careful. I approve. That said, I did feel that by late-game you probably had access to too many pulses and it removed the need to conserve them. With a dozen pulses, there isn’t much risk any more, whereas if it stayed capped around three to five, each individual pulse might have felt more precious.

 (Apparently Mila’s Turnwheel in Shadows of Valentia actually did the mechanic first, and I totally forgot about it. Oh dear…)

Other gameplay innovations were more hit-and-miss, for me. Battalions were fine, but I don’t think I would have missed them if they weren’t there. They helped make the battlefield seem busier and more populated, but they don’t seem to have had a massive impact on the game. Similarly, monsters were mostly fine (Cindered Shadows boss notwithstanding), but again, I don’t think I’d mind very much if they didn’t come back. They rarely actually felt like the most dangerous enemies on the battlefield, and just required a slightly different strategy, and… well, maybe it’s just me, but it feels weird for FE to have boss monsters like that. I suppose arguably it’s been a tension in the series going all the way back to the original game? Marth was supposed to fight monstrous dragons, but his entire game was about enemy soldiers, and dragons didn’t stand out as the terrifying beasts they ought to have been. Still, I’m not sure I’m sold on them here.

When I started playing I complained that exploring the monastery was tedious. You can get into a routine later on, but for the most part, I did think it could have been streamlined more. Having lunch with students or going for special training or browsing the marketplace are all fun things to do, but a bit less sprinting all over the map to talk to everyone and return lost items would have been appreciated. The lost item mechanic in particular feels like busywork. A bit of exploring is nice, but only as long as it doesn’t get tedious. It might have been lovely to explore other locations as well – Enbarr, Fhirdiad, the army camp outside Gronder, etc. – but I can understand that the amount of work required would not be practical.

Speaking of tedium, though… I really could have done with a few more maps. Maybe this is my fault for constantly choosing battles, but I found myself replaying the same forest, plains, beach, or volcano map too many times for comfort.

I might also have liked for crests to be a bit more mechanically impactful, given their important to the world and the plot. I regularly forgot which of my units have crests, and what any of the crests do, since most of them have so little effect as to not matter. The only one I did usually remember was Felix’s Crest of Fraldarius, and that was mainly because it makes him do more damage and sometimes made him kill people I’d hoped to leave on one or two HP. I don’t think crests should have been overpowering, but a little more power would still have been nice. It should not have been so easy to forget that they exist.

Similarly, by the time I finished the game I realised that I had never used a Hero’s Relic, even once. I would like to say that this was a principled decision on my part, given that they turn people into monsters (and it looks like I was right about them being made from bone?), but it was mostly just the BUT-WHAT-IF-I-NEED-IT-LATER effect. They all have quite low durability, and while I understand that infinite durability, as with relics in previous games, was not an option due to breaking how combat arts work, it was still enough to discourage me from using them. Perhaps on a higher difficulty they would become necessary? I always feel a bit sad when for mechanical reasons I never let characters use their most iconic weapons.

 Moving on from mechanics…

There is technically a shipping mechanic, with an S support for the protagonist, but it really felt like an afterthought to me. I don’t think the game would lose anything significant if you just removed all the S supports. Compared to a game like Awakening or Fates, where the second generation makes it mechanically important and the plot seems like it works best with a bit of romantic drama (f!Robin/Chrom and m!Robin/Lucina looking particularly intended), Three Houses is surprisingly chaste. I suppose picking a character to be your waifu might be part of the culture now, perhaps looking also at the growing influence of waifu gacha games, but for me it felt tacked on. I can imagine potentially rewriting the game to make romance a more important theme – perhaps talking about Jeralt and Sitri a bit more? – but to be honest I think that that would have been worse for the game overall.

In particular, it stands out to me as sitting a touch oddly alongside the teacher concept. One of the things that stands out to me about Byleth as a protagonist is the way that Byleth is in a superior position relative to the other units. You are a professor, in a position of authority, and you have more life experience. Your job is to teach and mentor these younger characters. This contrasts strongly with Robin, who I think was presented as the equal of the other Shepherds (your relationship with Chrom is that of comrade and friend), and with Corrin, who was presented as an inferior or junior (your siblings are older than you, and they start off with higher status). Because of that superior position, then, I found the game suggesting a feeling of responsibility towards them, and a feeling of pride in their accomplishments.

This might be a bizarre comparison, but in some ways a game that Three Houses reminded me of while playing was Princess Maker 2, a weird little DOS game from 1993 about raising a girl. The core loop of choosing activities to raise the stats of a character in your care, punctuated with occasional outings to fight monsters and get loot, felt quite similar. Similarly, the emotions that seemed to be evoked, to me, were emotions of care and pride: perhaps not paternal as such, since Byleth isn’t that old, but certainly the satisfaction that comes from nurturing a younger and less experienced person.

For the most part that actually worked, and I certainly applaud it for feeling less icky than Fates. If I compare tea parties to that weird Fates mechanic where you could invite characters to your room and touch their face, it is vastly less creepy. So I’m glad that the romance has been toned down.

And speaking of things that I’m glad aren’t prominent…

I’m deliberately burying this part in the middle of a long post. Tumblr is famously ruthless on issues like this, but fortunately I have a very low follower count and you’re all nice people. Basically, one of my worries going into the game was that Three Houses might be the ‘woke’ Fire Emblem game. I am glad to find that concern averted, at least so far. A person could perhaps make some pretty cringeworthy interpretations of Duscur to do with racial politics, but the game itself does not push you in that direction. Tumblr and AO3 love slash shipping, but as far as I can tell that remains as canonically unsupported as ever. Interestingly, while Three Houses has a small handful of same-sex romantic S supports and endings, as far as I can tell they’re all for Byleth and they’re all simply copy-pastes of the opposite-sex versions. It’s enough for me to genuinely wonder whether they’re in the original Japanese at all, or if they were added. I know translations of FE games have played around with character sexualities before, so it’s possible. At any rate, part of me was concerned that this might be the Dragon Age: Inquisition of Fire Emblem, and fortunately it isn’t. (I mean, I did actually enjoy Dragon Age: Inquisition, but at times it did get to be a bit much.) I’ll take this as a valuable lesson when it comes to not believing posts I see on Tumblr. You’d think I would have learned from previous games: popular fan interpretations of a character are often completely wrong. Three Houses seems for the most part to be a very traditional Fire Emblem game.

In terms of the overall series trajectory, I take Three Houses to be an overall positive sign. Awakening and Fates seemed to be taking the series in a direction that I didn’t care for as much, with heavy use of player avatar characters, much more fan service, and more trope-driven plots. Three Houses seems like a return to deeper worldbuilding and characterisation. The cast of characters overall has definitely been a high point: in Fates I sometimes struggled to build a team of characters that I felt truly fond of, but in Three Houses there were usually more characters I wanted to use than I had space for, and there were no recruitable characters that I truly disliked.

Really, the biggest disconnect between me and Three Houses, in the end, is the fact that Three Houses is built for replayability, and I don’t like replaying games very much. However, I don’t think I can in good faith call that a flaw or poor design: obviously there are a lot of people who love replayability, and considering that I got a good eighty hours of gameplay out of my first playthrough (DLC included) and enjoyed it, I’m not really in a position to complain.

So in the end, then, I think that while Three Houses is not my favourite Fire Emblem and does have some places where it could be improved, for the most part I think it’s quite a good outing and a significant improvement on the last few. It is not designed entirely to my tastes, but what is here is mostly good. Three Houses leaves me feeling much more optimistic for the future of the franchise than Fates did.

[let-me-make-you-proud]

Tangled: The Series Q&A with Kait.

This is a recapitulation from today’s (September 14, 2019) Questions and Answers session with Kait on the Tangled Discord Server.

Q: Which Disney princesses outside of Tangled the series can you see Varian being friends with? Nonfranchise ones included.

A: I think Belle is the first one who comes to mind!! She’s super studious and goes against the grain…not to mention her father is an inventor who’s a little off-base! 🙂 I think he’d be super comfortable experimenting with Belle and her dad and reading awesome stories! (Maybe even sharing the Tales of Flynn Rider with her! …Assuming she hasn’t read it! Haha. ) He could also eat ham sandwiches with Anna. Sorry. Second thought. Lol!!

Q: So Kait, as a storyboard artist on the show what kind of little details, quirks or creative touches did you or any other artists put into Varian scenes you or others storyboarded?

A: Ha!! Any acting scene with Varian I had…I pretty much based off of Anna Lencioni (my best friend/ another board artist on the show.) Anna makes these very specific expressions and she gestures to herself a lot and closes her eyes and creases her brows and says things like “A-huh! Actually…” or “Um!!” Before making a point and it’s always reminded me of him.

She kept a “flynnolium” prop from Halloween with green goo in a vial in her cubicle at work so long it grew mold. She said she was studying it. She found scrap metal in her boot one day. She has a basement lab for her experiments and crafts. She befriended two raccoons at her last apartment. She is the most accident-prone person with freckles I’ve ever met…she’s pretty much him.

Jeremy Jordan’s reads give you so much to work with…and I love that character so much I feel a natural sort of understanding of how he might say something or do something…but Anna would always do these specifically Anna things that I had to use for Varian.

Q: Do you have any specific advice for aspiring storyboard artists or people who aspire to work in animation?

A: Gestural drawings help you learn to draw fast…which is a very important part of storyboarding. I would say storyboarding‘ s biggest requirements are clarity and speed. Lots of productions have different requirements in terms of what they look for from story artists. Tangled‘s leadership cared a lot about drawing skill, animation, layout, etc. because it more strongly informed the animation studio to have those things. The show I’m working on now (Monsters at Work) is a 3D show…so for our production, the emphasis is more on story and speed. We pitch ideas more than we pitch drawings…so clarity is important and acting is too, but we’re far less precious about tying down drawings and animating since we shift into the 3D production pipeline after story. The boards are still very important…but the more technical aspects are a *little* less so. The focus is just more on story and character and what the board artists can bring to their scenes.

So I’d say just practice drawing…maybe try and give someone a prompt or ask a friend for one. Choose a theme! Maybe vampires? What’s the worst thing that could happen to a vampire? What’s the best thing? What’s the funniest thing? What if they were also an alien? Or fused with a werewolf? Or chained to one? What would happen? Giving yourself a starting point for an idea will inspire you to explore all the possibilities for humor, drama, etc. in that idea. If you’re struggling to give yourself a prompt, try looking online…or maybe choosing a song you like or a passage from a book for inspiration.

There’s also this really fun thing you can do to study cinematography and shot composition called a “three tone” exercise. Basically…put on your favorite (live action) film, grab a sketchbook, grab a black and grey marker, and use the white of the page for your third tone. What you wanna do is (as you’re watching or while pausing) sketch a small thumbnail using only three grey tones of what you see on the screen. Draw the shot- where the characters are, try and duplicate the lighting…it teaches you a lot! 🙂 (Phew!)

Q: Do you have any fun non-spoiler head canons about Varian?

A: I think his favorite dessert is apple pie and I think he bakes recreationally very often! He’s probably a good cook. (Though he may have one or two minor accidents……a burnt thing here and there. Minor oil splatters….haha!!)

Q: What’ve been your favorite episodes, both to storyboard and in general? Of course, no specifics if it’s S3

A: Haha! Well…What The Hair and Queen for A Day have special places in my heart because they were such big moments for my favorite character…(Varian, haha.) But I’d say the episodes I had the most fun boarding are all in season 3!!! Which is exciting! I have to start compiling some work to post! 🙂 I think the episode I had the most fun with is one you guys will really enjoy.

Q: Will we get some interesting surprises (In Season 3)?

A: Without any spoilers- absolutely!! The show is always full of those.

Q: So We’ve heard many fans express why they love Varian as a charcter before, I’d love to know what drew you and Anna to Varian as well and why you guys personally found him to be a great character.

A: When Shane Prigmore originally pitched the character to me, he was much younger. He was like 11 or so, I think? Maybe 12? He’s still pretty young…but what Shane said was that he wanted him to go from this wide-eyed kid to this dark, angry person whose bangs fell over those wide, bright eyes…just full of rage. That idea was super interesting to me…it just hit on something in character development that I felt like I’d never exactly seen before? He was so young and it was such an interesting idea to me to make a child the villain and to give that child a strong reason to be angry? It felt like it was taking this child very seriously, which I appreciate. It felt very real and very dark.

The thing that threw me through a loop but also evolved my fascination with the character was Jeremy Jordan’s casting. I listened to a lot of the auditions they had for various actors and I had seen a ton of Shane’s concept art of the character…a lot of them were VERY different than what we have now. One version Ricky Roxburgh (writer) contributed to had Varian cast as an adult in the story. But when I heard Jeremy I felt like I totally understood who Varian really was.

He was a well-intentioned disaster with unchecked emotions. That. Is me! Haha!! I see myself in his imperfections, his emotionality in spite of his creative and often intellectual thinking. He wants to ascend to these levels he may not be ready to ascend to…he feels this need to prove himself and seek validation. I don’t know, I guess I relate to that! And I’m just a sucker for good guys gone bad. The other half of this, of course, is that he’s very charming and cute and super reminds me of my best friend, Anna Lencioni.

Q: Which character do you most like seeing interacting with Varian?

A: It’s a little spoilery for me to reveal that……..but I think you guys are gonna know when it happens! Haha!

I can’t wait to post THOSE boards

That’s actually right out of the episode I think I liked boarding the most, haha.

Q: If there was one prop (furniture, object, the like) from the Tangled series that could be made real and you could keep, what would it be..?

A: I think it’d have to be those little alchemy orbs that Varian throws? They just suddenly clean the whole castle hallway somehow and like…could use me some of that. He also has the one that removes stains from tablecloths, so. I’m sloppy. That’d be a big help. Haha!

Also his staff is pretty cool 😉, I boarded/created that staff…David Lee (prop designer) did its final design…haha

Q: I have a question about a scene in season 1. When Varian got back the first part of the scroll he mentioned that it took him a while to translate it. Has he really been able to read it or has it been a bluff?

A: Varian can indeed translate what’s on the scroll. 😉

Q: Do you have any networking advice for those trying to get into the animation industry?

A: Post your work!! Make it easily accessible, tag it well, just show what you’ve got online! Upload boards, animatics, drawings, etc. Creating an online presence can really help put your name out there. Apply for internships, jobs. I know it’s hard to network because a lot of industry professionals don’t have time to answer specific questions or give portfolio reviews…so it’s sort of important to take some initiative on that and be self-motivated.

For me, I studied the portfolios of Disney feature story artists, CalArts students, etc. and tried to structure the presentation of my work based on that. Also, it helped me get a sense of what pieces of work would best showcase where I was trying to go and what I was trying to do. I’d ask yourself those questions as you develop a portfolio and artistic voice online! 🙂

My first feature job after a trainee program in New York at Blue Sky happened because Doug Sweetland (Pixar animator, feature director, awesome dude) found my work online and liked it. He just reached out based on that!

Shane Prigmore actually reached out to me for Tangled similarly.

Q: Besides Varian, do you have a favorite character that you’ve boarded?

A: I always love Eugene. He’s the second character I think I’m most like. His acting was really fun to play with and I felt like I could push his expressions a lot because he’s so funny. I loved boarding Lance too (I boarded a lot of Lance in S3!!) but MAN was he hard to draw, haha! His face shape is just really hard to draw at certain angles.

Q: With Varian cosplay that is going on, what Disney character would you like to see Varian dress up as next?

A: Jack Skellington! Halloween is afoot. Jack is another well-intentioned disaster. Guess I have a type!

Q: What’s Varian’s opinion on raccoons, are they his favourite animal?

A: I imagine it’s because Ruddiger is always finding interesting things in the trash and giving them to Varian to use in his experiments. Also, they’re fat and cute.

Q: There’s a bit of an argument going on over how many freckles Varian has. Can you confirm how many he has?

A: Ha!!! Yes…one second… 14!!

Q: How big do you think Corona is? Like Vatican City small or Arendelle big?

A: You know, with the wall and all, it actually feels a little on the smaller side to me? I’m sure there’s a little bit of discrepancy between the movie’s version of Corona and our version…but based on where we went within Corona on the show, I’d say it feels on the smaller side.

Q: Are there any non-spoiler Varian scenes or moments that didn’t make the cut that you can share?

A: MAN. Yes. There is one scene that changed after I rolled off the episode and I’m very sad about it. I’ll post it after the episode airs! There was also a line of Varian’s that I boarded to a specific read from Jeremy Jordan and that read was not chosen in editorial later so…I’ll post that one too, haha!

Q: What is your favourite song from the first two seasons so far?

A: All my favorite songs are in season threeeeee…hahahaha!! I think Let Me Make You Proud or the Buddy Song are my favorites. Buddy Song still gets stuck in my head now and then.

Q: What do you think Varian would order at a drive-thru? Specifically at chipotle 😂

A: Chipotle isn’t a drive thru!! Hahaha He’d get the kid’s quesadilla from chipotle. I think Varian is a fries/chips kind of person…something to snack on while he works! He probably also likes milkshakes.

Q: (Continuation from the question above) Chocolate or vanilla?

A: He’d revolutionize by combining them both. FOR SCIENCE!

Q: What is, in your opinion, the most challenging part of varian’s design to draw?

A: His goggles, hahaha. Or just his…hair in general.

Well it’s funny too because when you board these guys, you get used to doing a shorthand for them and then when you go to draw them FOR REAL you realize how complicated that actually is and how wrong your shorthand actually was? Hahahaha

Q: is Varian ticklish at all?

A: I feel like Varian, Eugene, and Lance are all equally ticklish. To the point of absurdity. Cass would fight it as long as she could…but when it finally got to her, she’d laugh uncontrollably. Rapunzel, she’s the TICKLER.

Q: What do you think Varian opinion and belief on magic is now that he’s seen it with his own eyes?

A: I imagine that he certainly believes in it now and no longer underestimates its powers…but I imagine he’s ultimately more comfortable staying in his own lane and working with worldly properties!

Q: If Varian would have been able to meet Demanitus…how would their conversation had looked like?

A: I feel like Varian would have had a TON of questions about his legendary device and whether or not he truly traveled dimensions.

Q: Did Varian have any other friends in old Corona before he met rapunzel?

A: Probably not many…he’s a bit of a hermit. I think Ruddiger is his best friend……. It’s sad but I also think that’s kind of why it hurt so bad when Rapunzel wasn’t able to help him. Also why he was SO excited to have Rapunzel, Cass, and Eugene come visit.

I think the village looked at Varian as a little unstable or worrisome. I’m sure everyone knew he was very nice…but they were likely very unnerved by his inventions.

Q: Do you think Varian ever tried to synthesise gold or the elixir of life like a real alchemist?

A: I’ve wondered that myself!! I think his alchemy has proven to be more about other people…helping others, making people proud. Maybe if someone he cared about was in need.

Q: If you were to meet Varian in real life, what would you say to him?

A: What elixir did you make to get THAT kind of volume? His hair’s so POOFY! Honestly, I’d probably just give him a hug.

Q: How much does Varian know or remember about his mom?

A: I’d say about as much as the photo of her on the wall.

Q: Is there spoiler about his hair streak? Or is it just by design?

A: It’s totally by design. I think it’s safe to assume it’s probably the result of some lab accident!

Q: In what ways is Jeremy Jordan like Varian?

A: I don’t know Jeremy Jordan personally, haha! But I think a lot of these inflections he adds to Varian sort of off the cuff probably come very naturally to him. I know he often wants to do his own pass at the musical arrangement Alan Menken writes…like he’ll want to do something a little different, in his own way, and it will change the song completely!! In an awesome way. That’s a little Varian-esque. In the “Let Me Make You Proud” reprise…Alan Menken had sung that “they are going to pay…they…will…pay” all in a low, downward tone. Jeremy wanted to scream it and make it powerful and angry and loud when he said “PAY” and you could just hear the spite in his voice for the “they will pay.” Genius!

Q: What was the most shocking moment/revelation of the series to you (minus anything season 3)?

A: It’s hard to say because I knew most of what was going to happen long, long ago. I think one of the things that made me go “oh dang!” was something Tom Canfield boarded. It’s that part in Destinies Collide where Lance slices the entire statue down the middle with a sword. What a BAMF!

Q: What were your thoughts on the early concept of Varian having an apple orchard and being a farm kid instead of a young alchemist?

A: He still kinda has those things! Quirin is a farmer as well as the village leader and there are apples on their little farm estate! 🙂 I think that makes Varian very unassuming as a mad little scientist. I’m sure that’s how (Ruddiger and Varian) met! Remember, he used his purple tacky goo stuff to catch raccoons so they wouldn’t eat the crops! And Ruddiger’s favorite snack is apples. 😉

Q: What is his official height and weight?

A: Smol.

Q: How did you guys come up with Varian’s name? And was there any other name suggestions for him before the name ‘Varian’ was chosen?

A: I’m not sure who came up with that name, actually! I’m sure it has something to do with the meaning of the word “variant” which means something that varies, changes in form.

Q: What’s his last name?

A: His last name!! I have NO idea and it bothers me!!! A Disney magazine referred to Varian, Ruddiger, and Quirin as “The Ruddiger Family” and I still haven’t stopped laughing about that.

Q: What sad Disney movie moments would make him cry?

A: Oof. Lion King.

Q: What musicals do think Varian would enjoy?

A: Little Shop of Horrors! I think he’d see himself in Seymour! Or Wicked…you know, that villain arc.

Q: How did Arianna and Fred meet?

A: I actually don’t know off the top of my head!

Q: Would Varian enjoy rollercoasters?

A: I think he’d enjoy how they’re MADE and then scream his head off while riding one, throw up his cotton candy and corndog, and go play carnival games instead. Then get mad that they’re rigged.

Q: So what comes next for you now that the series is almost over? Any big plans?

A: Well the series wrapped for production a while ago! I’ve been on another show for almost a year now! 🙂 I’m working on the new Disney+ show Monsters at Work as a director! It’s an awesome, awesome show…totally next-level…I’m shocked that I’m getting to be apart of something like this. It’s a direct sequel to the movie that serves as an office comedy (a la The Office, Parks and Rec) and has so many characters that fit immediately into the Monsters Inc world. Monsters Inc is my favorite Pixar movie…so I literally come to work and leave work on the same high! It’s an awesome, awesome show with a great crew! 🙂 It’s also just really exciting to be apart of the first original animated property for D+!

Q: How would you compare working as a director to working as a storyboard artist?

A: It’s hard work, just as hard, but in a different way! For me personally, I’m a little easily fatigued by drawing? I get a little creatively frustrated because my thoughts move quicker than my hand. Or because I don’t always feel like I can execute in a drawing what I’m thinking in the way that I want? Part of that is just being an artist…and it’s not ALL the time that I feel that way…but I think I have a certain stamina for drawing that I found challenging to increase.

Directing is just different! It has a lot more to do with managing a team, communication, coordinating, listening, speaking up, problem-solving, being very aware of story as it applies to ALL parts of a production. I don’t draw as often anymore. You have to consider a lot more…more people, more constraints, more difficulties, more opinions, more solutions…it’s just MORE. And you also still have to draw! 🙂 It’s very busy work, but it’s AMAZING and I love it. I feel like I’m contributing to animated storytelling a lot more in this role, actually. I love working with people, I love workshopping, and I love helping! I’m also just spoiled to be working with some great people right now. It’s a blast.

Q: Are any Tangled: The Series crew joining you on that show?

A: Yes!! Tom Caufield and Wendy Sullivan were on it for a minute, but they’ve both moved on to Dreamworks recently! James Suhr (board artist), Isabelle Gedigk (season 3 board artist), Naomi Hicks and Casey Coffey (revisionists), David Lee (props), Ricky Roxburgh (writer), and I are all working together again! It’s awesome.

Q: Does Varian, deep down, blame himself for the amber?

A: I believe he does.

Q: How do you deal with artist’s block?

A: I try to think about the intention behind what I’m doing. Why is the scene I’m working on very important to the story? If it feels unimportant or boring, how can I make it interesting? What can I do on my end to make it more inspiring or fun without going too far off the rails and still serving the scene’s purpose?

If it’s not work-related, I try and start with some fan art or something familiar for me to draw. I have a lot of scribbly Varians in the margins of a lot of my sketch documents. I use him as a warm-up a lot. It helps build my confidence to draw something familiar/ that I think I can draw pretty well.

Q: What’s the hardest scene you’ve ever had to board?

A: Oh God. ANYTHING with action. I’m not an action gal. Lots of stuff in S3. I was board partners with Wendy Sullivan and ended up getting a lot of action to board even though she’s WAY better at it than me!! It was an interesting challenge…but it was very, very challenging. Ben (Co-EP) was a great mentor to me in the scene I did for the mid season. He was very patient with me, despite my shortcomings as an action board artist, haha. I enjoy boarding for comedy much more.

Kait: Anyways, I should probably head off now! Thank you guys so much for all the questions!!!! You’re awesome! I hope you’re all super excited for S3! It’s a great one.

[etudier-avec-bella]

Studying a Language with your Degree?

Life is all about balance, and as someone who is passionate about learning, I like to try and dabble in many different areas of interest as I can. My extracurricular activities are just as valuable to me as my academic studies, because I believe it’s important to have things in your life that are productive without feeling like hard work. Things we enjoy engaging in that help us to enrich our lives outside of our main education pathway.

Whilst I don’t think I’ve ever formally stated it on my blog, I actually study French alongside my Chemistry degree with my university’s languages scheme. You might be thinking ‘Bella, what are you doing? Isn’t studying Chemistry enough for you? You want to cause yourself extra stress by picking up a voluntary language module as well?’, and the short answer is… Yeah, I guess so.

But, I’m actually here to show why studying a language is a wonderful thing to do whilst you’re at university, and to show you how I keep up with French alongside my degree. On y a va!

Why study a language course alongside your university degree?

I could go on for a long time about the benefits of learning a language- so to save you the pain of my waffle-ish ramblings, here are the three main reasons I think it’s something worth considering:

It’ll be a highly valuable skill when applying for a job. Communication is a vital ability underpinning most, if not all, careers- especially moving up towards top positions within your chosen field. Speaking one language fluently is fine, but being able to speak multiple languages instantly makes you stand out from the crowd and offers you a much broader range of potential career pathways and opportunities.

Your brain will never take it in as well as it will now. Let’s face it, we’ll never have the same neurological elasticity we did as babies. But as young adults who spend most of our time occupied with reading, writing, and studying for our degree courses, our brains are much more likely to absorb and retain information than they will in five, ten, or fifty years’ time. The perfect opportunity to learn something new!

Because languages are beautiful. It’s about so much more than what you can see on the paper. You’re now privy to the origins of the things we say, and why we say them. The emotions that your mother tongue alone cannot capture. Being able to feel the meaning of a word, rather than just knowing it… Why wouldn’t you want to study something so wonderful?

How do I keep up with French alongside my Chemistry Degree?

So far, I haven’t found it too difficult trying to keep up with my language course by making good use of my independent study time. This term has been quite light in terms of lecture content and contact hours (~17-20 per week), so I took it as my chance to organise things and create a schedule for myself in order to ensure I stay on track with French for the rest of the year. It’s pretty easy to slip up and just ignore it if you aren’t strict with the extra work you do outside of class to solidify what you’re learning, so I’m thankful I came up with my system so early on.

Again, I’ll make this easy and state the main methods I like to use to study for French- these tips can apply to anyone studying any level of language qualification!

Quizlet: An absolute essential when it comes to committing vocabulary to memory! Quizlet recognises the language you’re learning and can read out the words you have typed onto the flashcards, allowing you to practise your ability to recall, spell, and write the word.

Doing your grammar: Yes, most people find it boring, but it’s a necessity if you want to speak fluently and with confidence. I would recommend buying/borrowing a grammar textbook for your level of study and doing extra exercises outside of your classes to help you better understand the concepts you’re learning.

Reading Comprehension: By exposing yourself to more written works in the language you’re studying, you’ll not only improve your ability to retain information, but also pick up lots of new vocabulary. So, read anything and everything you can. Books, blog posts, news articles,

Writing Practise: I like to consolidate the topics we cover over one term by writing a piece that includes as much of the vocabulary that we’ve covered. It’s an excellent chance to practise your spelling, recall your tenses, and make sure your grammar is as polished as it can be. It doesn’t have to be from your own perspective- I actually find writing articles/stories a lot better, as you get to practise more he/she/they/them conjugation, and it means you can talk about things you don’t have personal experiences with. Plus, it can be hard to talk about a topic that you feel pretty indifferent about…

Talk to yourself. Like a crazy person: It feels weird and uncomfortable at first, but it seriously does help improve your fluency and pronunciation. Whether if you just read a comprehension exercise out loud, or have a full-blown argument with yourself in the shower, it’s all good practise.

Yes, you have to put in hard work to see improvement, but there are actually some really fun, effective ways to improve your language abilities, too! Here are the ones that I find the most useful:

Podcasts/Music: It can be really tricky to find useful listening resources outside of the ones your teacher has access to, so a great way to get some practise in is by finding some music or a podcast in your language! For French specifically, I like Intermediate French Podcast by innerFrench. The guy who records them doesn’t translate what he says, but rather explains it in French so that anybody listening can understand regardless of their native language. Smart!

Put your chosen language’s subtitles on for your favourite TV shows: I can't tell you how much vocab I’ve learned from bingeing Glee with French subtitles. It’s a good way to quickly pick up new words, and a lot more enjoyable than just memorising them from your textbook. If you’re feeling brave, you could even change the spoken language of the show to the one you’re learning (if it’s available) and put on your native language subtitles for extra listening practise!

Find a penpal: Whether it’s writing a physical letter, or just sending a text to an online friend, speaking to someone in your new language will do absolute wonders for your writing and spelling abilities. Plus, making new friends is always fun, and proof that learning a new language brings people closer together!

Name the things in your immediate surroundings: This is a good one to do on the go, or when you’re stuck somewhere for a long time with nothing better to do. I find it’s an excellent way of procrastinating my other work, just sitting at mon bureau and noticing all of les stylos in ma trousse… Yeah, be careful with this one

I hope this has helped anyone considering learning a language in university, and maybe it even convinced some of you who weren’t thinking about it before to give it a go!

I’d like to add that you don’t have to sign up for a course if that isn’t an option (my department covers the cost for me because my degree includes a year abroad), and that you can do it just as successfully with any number of free resources available to you online.

Thank you for reading!

[chibivesicle]

Golden Kamuy chapters 231 & 232.

Hey all, here is my belated and likely as little bit shorter than normal summary.  I’m taking the weekend off from dealing with work related stuff but I’m still off dealing with the constantly changing situation here. We start off with Inkarmat about to give birth with the assistance of Osoma’s mother and huci.  I wondered why Osoma’s mom doesn’t have a name but if I recall all of the Ainu names in the manga have to not belong to a living person (I think from an interview with Noda) to be respectful, so I’m guessing it is trickier than normal to keep coming up with appropriate and proper names for the Ainu characters.  This might be a good work around for the time being for Noda. 

And the title page for the chapere tells us that is is birth and that Huci is the most seasoned midwife possible and that she was also Asirpa’s midwife.  The title page also has the quote that “Purpose is handed down from heaven.” sticking with the central theme of the manga included in each volume of the manga.

The title page also makes it almost look like Huci is blessing someone perhaps linked to Asirpa.  Tanigaki then being the dude that he is decides to leave Inkarmat in their hands as he uses this as an excuse to slip away and find Tsukishima.

In a way this is both in and out of character for him.  It is in character for him to run away from emotional moments and duties but it is out of character for him to steal Sugimoto’s tagline that he’s immortal.

Inkarmat is clearly the smarter of the couple, he first off tells him to NOT fight or attempt to fight Tsukishima and then she flat out calls his bluff telling him that he’s not immortal and that he should run away by himself.  She likely observed Tsukishima enough during her time at the hospital that she knew he wouldn’t give up and that if they want to be safe Tanigaki should draw him away. 

It really doesn’t matter as soon as he leaves the house, he gets his ass handed to him by Tsukishima.  He’s pushed back into the house and Tsukishima approaches everyone.  Tanigaki again repeats similar actions in regards to what happened to him with Ogata as he sees it to be his job to protect who ever is there e.g. Huci and Osoma, now Huci, Osoma’s mom, Inkarmat. . . .

Tanigaki perplexes me - he’s one of the cast members who is more than willing to throw himself in the line of fire to protect women and children, but he’s also the most likely to run from his responsibilities.  Why is he a hypocrite?  There must be something more to this . . . I’m just still not sure what it is.

Tsukishima simply and in a deadpan fashion tells him that he’s been making the “wrong” choice for a long time now. 

He distances himself from Huci and Inkarmat by referring to them as “this woman” and “that old lady” and that it is because of their influence over him he did not come back to the 27th.  This makes a lot of sense from Tsukishima to be so weird about things.  He has no fiancee to return home to and to family.  He sees that he has no choice but to return to the 27th as it is all that he has.

Just as things are about to escalate Koito rushes in on horseback.  He’s still wearing his yukuta from the hospital but threw on his boots and officer’s coat.  Tsukishima doesn’t even look at Koito as he asks if Koito followed him to see if they would escape.  And Koito firmly tells him that he can’t see what good would come from killing Tanigaki and Inkarmat.  He points out that Tanigaki isn’t their only way to find Asirpa and that they should let them run away.

And here Koito is being incredibly logical and reasonable!  They don’t need to reply on Tanigaki.  Yes, Tsurumi sent him to find Asirpa but Koito is seeing the bigger picture, one that Tsukishima currently can’t see.  Koito tries to reason with him that making a threat that you can’t follow through on is meaningless. Tsukishima then finally turns and threatens Koito with his pistol while keeping the rifle focused on Tanigaki and Inkarmat.  He makes it clear that his threat to Koito from Karafuto is real.  The zoom in on Tsukishima with his veins bulging out, the extreme stress lines under his eyes the chaotic screentone.  He creepily asks which side the 2 lt. is on and follows it up with the fact that he learned he was used by Tsurumi that he now has joined the traitors.

The final panel shows an equally stressed out Koito where we can see a very distinct frown and stress lines as well as a rather messy screentone behind him.  I really see that Koito is concerned but he seems more in control that I’ve seen from him.  There is something about how he’s drawn here - I can’t quite put my finger on it but he seems more mature and determined.  And I know that Koito can be a pretty determined guy but - but he’s different.

The next page then seals the deal for me.  A full page Koito giving Sergent Tsukishima an order!  Koito tells him to lower his weapon as it is an order!  Koito has finally decided to take charge as he should as a second lieutenant.   Time and time before we’ve seem him defer to Tsukishima and now he finally takes command.

He follows up with the fact that he’s going to watch both Tsukishima and Tsurumi to the very end [of this hunt for the gold].

Bam!  Oh man, I have been waiting so long for Koito to take the initiative and use the potential leadership skills that he’s been keeping dormant.  This is just such a satisfying page and turn of events.

The shock on Tsukishima’s face really brings it home.  The little second lieutenant has finally grown up and he’s actually thought things through.  I love the half light dark shading on Tsukishima’s face as he turns to look to Koito.

Furthermore, Koito uses Tsukishima’s own words to support his argument and where he stands in regards to Tsurumi.  What has changed is that Koito will now be using his own judgement to analyze what Tsurumi is doing and not following orders blindly.  I know this is a translation into english, but using the concept of justice gives Koito’s thought process more backing.  He’s showing that he is a just and fair man, not someone who blindly follows orders and he is worried about how if he does something unjust he’ll have feelings of guilt and regret.

Therefore, Koito is letting us know how he intends to lead men, something he was sent to Karafuto to learn and I think he learned part of his beliefs during the Karafuto trip.

The next page is quite sad, Tsukishima admits that he has nothing to live for, so all he can do is his job - his job for Tsurumi that makes him unredeemable.  He’s seen and caused so much death that Tsukishima doesn’t care anymore - he’s the empty shell of the man he once was and Koito tells him, his mentor that it isn’t true.  Koito’s figured out that Tsukishima must have thrown away something so massive that becoming the inflexible right hand man of Tsurumi was all that he could do.  Tsukishima is so many different emotions as Koito hits the nail on the head.  His lips are puckered implying he’s biting them or holding something in as we can barely see his eyes.

Tsukishima finally shows us the face of his fiancee, smiling at him as her hair blows in the wind.  He’s finally facing what he misses the most and his largest regret.  He appears to tremble as he says Inkarmat’s name.

A completely broken and defeated [by himself] Tsukishima begins to ask her if “that girl is she. . .” and Inkarmat starts to move to give him an answer.

However, her fortune telling is interrupted by a contraction.

Tsukishima has given up - his barriers have been broken and he’s just a man who hurts and is in pain.

Osoma’s mom then is able to interrupt their conversation of sorts and orders all the boys to do her bidding to assist with the birth.  The chapter then returns to Ainu culture 101, as elements of birthing are covered as they collect items that are used in childbirth.  Koito, Tanigaki and Tsukishima are pretty much whipped into shape as they assist in all sorts of things, collecting straw, babysitting, collecting mugwort etc etc.

I personally saw this as a few pages of the tough men all being put in their place and dealing with the bigger picture - the fact that Inkarmat needs their help to give birth and that it is more important than any of their own self-imposed problems.  I think the three of them standing outside of the house really get the point across.  Tanigaki can’t look at either Koito and Tsukishima.

It really doesn’t matter since Tsukishima just had his own break down as he sits lost in his own thoughts while Koito stands firm with the lighting and viper’s child.

Inkarmat then safely delivers the child and the chapter ends.  I think it really caps things off that the “miracle” of birth supersedes all of the shit these guys have been dealing with.

Chapter 232 continues where we left off with Inkarmat and Tanigaki.  Of course now that Inkarmat has safely delivered their child, it is time for the - you guessed it - penis jokes!

Tanigaki gets all teary as he tells Inkarmat that she was great.  His eyes are teary and sparkly as he thinks that the stump of the umbilical cord is a large penis - Tanigaki dick joke number 4,368 (ok, I jest).  This then allows him to realize that he’s got a daughter as he becomes a complete teary mess.

His blushing and tears confuse me - I can’t tell if he is proud or disappointed of the fact that she’s well a girl.  Sometimes, I just can’t get a handle on Noda’s sense of humor - but I think he’s disappointed . . . since the vast majority of east Asian men would want a son.  But then Tanigaki isn’t 100% normal.  I’m totally over contemplating this and I lack the cultural context to really get it.

Koito and Tsukishima confront the man from the 27th who was supposed to be watching out for Asirpa.  Catching him re-handed and clearly hungover Koito is able to scare him into shape telling him to get his “shit together” and to report things are normal pretending like he’s doing the man a favor (and the dumb nobody interprets as such). 

Osoma sees Tanigaki, seems surprised but then quickly returns to playing with another kid.  She has moved on from her “crush” on him and Tanigaki seems a bit hurt as she moves along.  Tanigaki needs to realize he doesn’t need a relationship with a child like Osoma, he’s got his own daughter now and Inkarmat to be with!  Yeah dude, I get it, but time to be a real dad, not a fun uncle type.

At the same time Tsukishima asks Koito about his behaviour on Karafuto before they met up with Tsurumi again.  Tsukishima asks him if he was “faking it” which Koito pretty much confirms with his statement that Tsukishima is “free to interpret it . . . -  pausing - whichever way you like”.  

As Koito says this we see another new facial expression from him, one of calm and again more maturity.  Koito likely wasn’t comfortable or proud of what he did, but he was smart enough to know what to do - to con Tsukishima so to speak.  Being a bit deceptive likely goes against Koito’s own feelings - I think it gets him closer to say someone like Ogata, a man who he always thought was running a long game con, but may feel a bit differently about him since Ogata told him the truth.

Koito then becomes more serious as he tells Tsukishima what he’s thinking.  He doesn’t think that Tsurumi’s personal goals would be to sacrifice his men for his own wealth or power.  He hints at the fact that Tsurumi would be motivated by a goal that is not so simple so to speak.  He then asks Tsukishima it he has any idea - at first Tsukishima wonders if he lacks a “true goal” but then he realizes something.

As he has been Tsurumi’s right hand man, there is a flashback where he noticed that Tsurumi had someone’s finger bones when he’s been alone in his office.

He asks Koito if he’s seen the finger bones and Koito asks whose bones?  Tsukishima then determines that maybe it is something else and he drops the idea.

As the topic drops off, Koito instead tries to cheer up Tsukishima and inspire him to follow him as a commanding officer.  And that they should follow the more typical military mindset.  Again the chapter returns to awkward Koito humor where he tries to modifiy his picture of Tsukishima with a half Koito face with Tsurumi to inspire Tsukishima.

With these post-birth events, I’ll now turn to this chapters title page here.  This is a transition/summary title page.  All the different groups are shown with their overall intentions.  Tsukishima and Koito are looking for Asirpa for Tsurumi.  Tanigaki and Inkarmat don’t have a direction implying they are leaving the immediate action.  Sugimoto, Shiraishi and Asirpa are after the pirate, while even though Vasily in their group, he’s out for Ogata.  Hijikata’s group is both looking for Asirpa and the Jack the ripper convict and Kikuta and Usami are also looking for him.

It is all one giant ball of confusion [cue love and rockets] but highlights so clearly that Vasily is not a part of team Sugimoto.  I think Noda really wants to make it clear that Sugimoto’s game plan of the enemy of my enemy is my friend is likely going to backfire.  Really he should just put out and ad “Russian snow leopard seeks Japanese lynx for kitty sniper games.”

The more I look at this page the more mis-matched teams I see, Kikuta and Usami has a fragile feel - likely more than just general dislike but true distrust.  Ogata is back on team Hijikata but only out of convenience and the rest of his group is also a mess with Ariko caught between him and Tsurumi. Such a major theme of the groups in this manga is how so many aren’t actually good - they just serve a purpose for the short term but ultimately are playing different long games.

Now back to the chapter - 1 week later Tanigaki and Inkarmat leave the kotan with their daughter.  Koito orders them to head south and to avoid running into any men from the 27th.  Tanigaki is back to wearing Ainu garb to likely blend in and not draw as much attention back to traveling with Inkarmat. 

As they are about to leave, Inkarmat offers to answer Tsukishima’s question about his fiancee, but now thinking more clearly he tells her that there is no need.  All this tells us, the reader is that he’s come to some sort of peace and understanding with his actions.  This is good, but we still don’t know what he has found his calm with in regards to his questions about her fate. 

As they ride off after waving goodbye to Huci, Tanigaki very shakily says how he feels about Huci and his connection with her.  That he was saved by her again and that he’s always receiving her help, but his statement implies that he thinks he has never helped her back.

Inkarmat looks up at him softly, she’s blushing a little and there is a sparkle in her eye as she seems to think about what he’s said.  Does Inkarmat think that Tanigaki saved her?  That he doesn’t see his actions when he does help others?  That he’s too hung up on owing Huci?  I think here we see that Inkarmat is the more mature one again and that she will likely support him despite the fact that he really likes to make a mess of things even though he thinks his intentions are the best.  I wonder since Tanigaki is just such a manly man that Noda wants him to be juxtaposed with strong women?  Just throwing that out there.

The action then shifts to Sapporo with Kikuta and Usami on the search for our Jack the ripper convict.  It is clear there is tension between these two men as Kikuta tells Usami to not do anything rash and that it is their job to just scout out the killer.  As he’s demonstrated that he’s a clever one, he immediately wants them to change clothes to blend in with the civilians as they suspect that Hijikata’s entire group will be there and it would not be a fight that they could win.  The more I hear from Kikuta the more of a similar vibe he gives off like Ogata.  He thinks things through and is not impulsive or emotional when it comes to performing his duty.

As Kikuta and Usami walk right by Kirawus and Kadokura, the unlucky former prison guard officer finds a small coin on the ground blocking him from Usami’s line of sight.  Usami then wonders if he did hear Kadokura . . . . but immediately writes it off as Usami is certain that Kadokura died in Abashiri.

Kirawus then comments that it must be a lucky day for Kadokura which is actually the truth.  We all know that if Usami actually spotted him he’d immediately go after him and try to kill him again.

This missed connection ups the tension that their small scouting party will indeed cross paths with Hijikata’s and the convict.

Not only that but it is clear that Ogata is thinking in a very similar fashion to that of Kikuta.  Ogata knows that the killer will go to the red light district and the police will also be looking into the case.  Add onto that the fact that soldiers from his former division would be also there for “fun” likely means Tsurumi isn’t far behind.

Ogata then asks Hijikata if “you guys” dress up as peddlers again.  This is interesting since when Hijikata did dress like that, it was when Shiraishi was captured by the 27th and and when Kiro was in the group while he was with Sugimoto, Asirpa and Ushiyama.  I get the feeling that Ogata is making it very clear that he is not a part of Hijikata’s group while also teasing him a bit. 

I’m personally dying for more Ogata action in these recent chapters, but I have to just accept this page.  At least it is a good bang for your buck page as Ogata says a lot in those 3 speech bubbles.

What will be interesting is the fact that Kikuta and Ogata are thinking the same thing - as we know that they were both “Russian” kidnappers for Tsurumi in 1902 and realize they need to look for the convict discreetly. 

But what I really think is the most important is that Ogata is making it abundantly clear that he’s only doing what serves his goal currently and that he is doing his own thing and that he’s confident enough to flat out tell Hijikata.  He’s not one of his underlings, he’s not afraid of him, that he’s got his own thing to do.  He’s also likely even more suspicious of Ariko knowing him and how Tsurumi operates.

The action then jumps to Asirpa, Sugimoto and Shiraishi in the Sorachi river valley.

They are doing some recon trying to find any people looking for gold dust and with unusual tattoos.  Shiraishi is looking at the viewer - or maybe Vasily?  I do find it interesting that Vasily is not in the picture.  Or interesting is not the right word - I think is is important that again he’s not a part of their group unless Shiraishi is relying information to him?

The random Ainu man confirms that such a man has been seen and Sugimoto has his immediate murder eyes/scarf combo.  Meanwhile Asirpa looks on at him rather coldly.

Sugimoto is more than ready to skin Boutarou and I just get the feeling that she’s ready to accept it as part and parcel of working with Sugimoto.  . . .

The next page is a full page of Boutarou riding a horse holding a revolver looking dashing and sexy.  it is clear he’s going to be both a charming and formidable convict.

Yet, this information is not the man who is being discussed.  Instead, we are back to the idea of a peddler - that sells candy in a town.  The last two pages have a very bizarre looking peddler who says that he’s selling candy.  He looks like he’s giving candy to a kid but instead give him coal.  The man is wearing a toque, has braided hair and a cloth over his face has he is laughing at the disappointed boy.

He then leads the disappointed boy off into the woods away from the mining town telling him he knows things much better than candy.  And the chapter ends with the creepy man in a toque leading the boy out of town.  Yay!  Now we have another creepy man who isn’t our Jack the ripper nor our sexy Boutarou the pirate!  Where is this going?

Overall, the second half of this chapter is a catch up/set up chapter.  We know were everyone is and where they are going and who is going to encounter who in a matter of time.

Here are the most important parts of these two chapters.

1.) Tanigaki and Inkamat are out of the game for the time being.  Yes, they are running off into hiding and for the time being they are out of the hunt.  I suspect they will get involved again but not in the immediate future.  I still have a gut feeling that Ogata will have to save Tanigaki - likely from Tsurumi.

2.) Showdown in Sapporo.  Usami’s eagerness will likely clash with some of Hijikata’s group.   Ogata and Kikuta are calling the same shots - will they meet and talk vs just shoot at each other?  I have a feeling that these two groups will shift in the quest for the serial killer.

3.) Pirate hunting and a crazy peddler.  Sugimoto and Asirpa are closing in on Boutarou.  Is he independent of the crazy peddler or are they related?  We know that he has men working for him that are somewhere.  I’d guess he would start to build his faction to get involved in the group.  I suspect that Vasily will cause some sort of issues, he’s no closer to finding Ogata who is in Sapporo.

4.) Tsurumi’s true motivations are revealed.  The finger bones pretty much are the dead giveaway for Tsurumi’s motivations.  They are linked to the death of Fina and Olga when he was a spy in Russia.  As soon as everyone saw the finger bones, pretty much everyone I know went back to chapter 179.  After Tsurumi held Olga he wrapped and laid her on Fina, who is missing a right pinky finger.   And he then burnt down the photo studio as he leads town.

What is more interesting is how Tsurumi feels about this.  I see several different possibilities.

i.) Tsurumi is guilty that it is his fault, he sent them away but they came back worried about him.

ii.) Tsurumi blames Wilk, Kiro and Sofia for what happened even though he assisted them.

iii.) Tsurumi blames the much larger system - the imperial Japanese government and a likely person who sold out his cover (someone in the 1st?) and Tsarist Russia making the partisans due to their poor treatment of the ethnic minorities in the far east.

Or is it all of these?  I think we will need to see a bit more of his actions to get a good idea of what is driving him at heart.

5.) Koito finally grows up as a leader.  Koito handles the Tanigaki-Tsukishima situation excellently.  I really liked this part, he’s showing that he is not just some blind follower of Tsurumi and as it has been implied is an intelligent guy who has his own moral compass.  He’s taking the time to think critically of things.  Really hoping for him to talk to Ogata again.

That’s all I have for now. 

[jessesteele]

Taiwan's Prejudice of Foreigners Taught Me Black Systemic Racism Is Real

[中文]

College was my first exposure to American Black culture. I’m a far better man for it. Moody was less than a block from Cabrini Green. I taught Pierre how to swim and he taught me how to forgive. My room mate, Ronnie, was president of African Awareness Fellowship. Three years, he tried to tell me that the problem was with “the system”. “It’s the system, Jesse. It’s hidden in the system. I know you don’t see it. But, I see it every day.” I listened, but I still couldn’t see.

Ten years in Taiwan opened my eyes. Ronnie, I’ve seen it. I haven’t just heard about it, I’ve finally seen it with my own eyes. Others don’t see it, especially if they’re part of it. I’ve seen that too.

If a man thinks his unjust actions are acceptable, there is no way to tell him that he is unjust in a way he will find acceptable. I know how Rosa Parks felt, in a way. I wholly agree with Dr. King in his Letter from the Birmingham Jail.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea.

We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I… am here because I was invited here. But more basically, I am [here] because injustice is here.

The Taiwanese need Westerners. They welcome Westerners at their airports and in their marketing. They need Western-trained, Western-thinking engineers to build their own defense weapons against a large aggressor in the region. They need English teachers—and more importantly English speakers to interact with in the every day world. But, from fear of the large aggressor in the region, and from hurt over foreign occupation in the past, Taiwanese made laws that restrict all foreigners, including Westerners. So because of the past, Taiwan turned away the friends they needed for the future. Haven’t we all done the same?

Bear with me the boring details. In America, a work visa gives residence. After five years, the foreigner becomes a citizen. America makes it simple. In Taiwan, they place strange restrictions—not one day between jobs, not one speeding ticket, and all work permits which the government never delivers. Even then, you can’t become a citizen unless you renounce all citizenship elsewhere.

My story began twelve years ago when my boss wouldn’t give me my work permit, which he is legally required to and never forced to. I folded it up and sneaked it out in my tie, then went home and cried. The next boss never gave me my work permit. I called Immigration and told the officer; the officer shouted, “They must!” then slammed down the phone. There was no follow-up.

Soon, the local Labor inspector found me at the wrong school—I worked for a chain. I had no Idea where I was supposed to work. The address was written in Mandarin on the work permit, which I never received. I got a summons from Labor; the boss was worried and told me to lie to the government. We even had a special meeting to coordinate our lies. The bigger boss gave me a strange handshake; I thought my life was being threatened. The company would pull strings “high up” in government to get out of the ordeal. While I sat with my boss, lying to the Labor inspector—a very good person with extremely limited power, mind you—the bigger boss walked into the Labor chief’s office, feigning benign chit-chat. The Chief looked scared. I rolled my fingerprint to certify the lies told with a knife to my back and we left without so much as a hiccup.

Weeks later, I learned that the strange handshake was a request for sex. I had been sexually harassed—they would only call their gangster buddies to get me out of their lying to the government if I lied to the government and had homosexual sex with the big boss. No. Maybe that’s why they tried to fire me a couple months later. No. Firing requires compensation, which the company refused.

Then came an in-class evaluation two weeks before the contract ended, with a promise not to renew the contract regardless of the evaluation. The boss insisted based on me having voluntarily reported I was one page behind in the schedule. Most teachers were three pages off schedule on any given day.

The boss is legally required to accept my resignation with a stamped letter. The boss refused. I went to the police station twice, the police never forced the boss to send the letter. Then, the boss reported me as MIA, which is illegal for a foreign employee. But, being wise, I had already notified Labor of my desire to resign. I’d sent certified mail, with return proof of delivery confirmation, a full confession of perjury to the Labor inspector—a very good person with extremely limited power, mind you. I included a CD with the recording of the boss saying, “I hate foreigners.” The inspector scheduled a mediation meeting and called my phone, urging me to bring a Taiwanese friend to translate.

The meeting lasted three hours and the boss accepted my resignation. That was a first. I mean, this was a breakthrough. Tainan had never seen a successful agreement in a dispute between an employer and foreign employee. They always last forty minutes, then go to court or deportation. I was the first to reach peace.

I asked my Taiwanese friend, the one who accompanied me to the mediation, why my boss had lied about the address on my first work permit. There was no reason. Why lie first when the truth wouldn’t hurt? “Because of the Cultural Revolution in China,” he explained. “People about forty years and older are still influenced by Chairman Mao’s thinking, including that lying is okay.” He also told me that the big boss controlled a kind of local “ESL mafia” in the city.

Later, I was told by a coworker from that chain that the inspector, seeing how that boss treated me, continued inspection; three locations of that ESL chain were closed. The school suddenly started treating him with respect, which was good for him. They had tried to fire him also. I’m glad it worked out for him.

My immediate supervisor quit her job over how they treated me. She went to work in a factory for more pay and less stress. I’m glad it worked out for her.

My next employer told me that they had to let me go because they were getting harassment from that previous boss. I couldn’t work. Looking back, I don’t know how I financially survived. I guess God wanted me here, so I stayed while He made a way.

Officers at Immigration, city government workers, and aides of two different legislators asked me why I stayed in Tainan. “Why don’t you just move to Taipei where there are more jobs and your boss can’t chase you?”

See, there’s the plight of the Taiwanese! Every time there is a bully, they just bend over. They were beaten down by Chiang Kai-Shek, like Israel in the desert after Egypt, afraid to enter the Promised Land. “No way!” I’d say kindly, strongly, and reassuringly. “There is no law saying an American can’t teach English in Tainan. So, the government can protect an American willing to stand with the Tainan people! Their English is bad and they need the practice more than Taipei. I suffer because I love Tainan, and Taiwan’s government still won’t help me.”

The only meaningful help I received was from a person who understood the trouble, but never spoke to me: the Labor inspector—a very good person with extremely limited power.

The people who ask why I never moved to Taipei ask with childlike innocence, not knowing that they imply discrimination against not just myself, but also against the people of Tainan. Many Westerners live in Taipei in the populated north, but Tainan has many delights in the south. Taiwanese anecdotally believe Westerners prefer Taipei because it is the “big city”. Actually, it is because the Ministry of Labor places hefty financial burdens on the small ESL schools of the south—the same requirements the rich ESL schools in the north can afford. Most Tainan ESL schools aren’t rich enough to hire an American legally. So, they need help from a black market, which my former boss was rumored all too happy to oblige. Albeit, the laws are written in Taipei, in the north, where there couldn’t possibly be connection to black market interests in the south. But, I saw something more important: Westerners avoided Tainan because its ESL community was gripped by an invisible black market. And, it didn’t just hurt me; it hurt the Taiwanese, who remained oblivious.

That was when I started to see how a system can oppress one people, without the people across the street even noticing. In fact, Taiwanese didn’t even know how their Labor laws crippled English learning in Tainan. Taiwanese were victims of systemic prejudice as much as I was. All this rigmarole hurt their highly-coveted English skill. None of this would be a problem if Taiwan simply extended the same rights and protections to Americans as America extends to Taiwanese. That way, many Americans would be Taiwanese dual citizens who could work anywhere, including the poorer ESL schools in the southern, delightful city of Tainan.

But, Taiwan’s government won’t allow it, even after eleven years of petition. And, yet Taiwan cries for global help when countries break diplomatic ties. The Taiwanese people don’t even know what trouble Immigration and Labor laws create for them on the global stage.

The juicy part of this story is that my former ESL chain receives public funding from America’s government. I called their American office to report the incident. They hung up the phone on me without a word. I won’t reveal the name because all evidence of human rights violation is illegal within the jurisdiction it is collected. I prefer to stay with the Taiwanese people, helping them survive dishonest business practices toward which the Taiwan government turns many a blind eye and deaf law. And, I still hope for a peaceful answer from Taiwan, even after twelve years.

For the last seven years, I’ve written editorials every Monday, looking at Taiwan objectively, respecting the status quo Taiwan has as a de facto sovereign country. I’ve been objective and constructively critical, but at times, I admit, favorable. I hailed Taiwan’s police for not bloodying students who entered the Legislature in 2014—a stark contrast to police in Washington DC. Students who entered the Executive branch weren’t so fortunate.  I know; I was here in Taiwan. When Taiwan President Tsai said, “Taiwan is a vibrant democracy; it has many problems, but it is worth saving,” with permission, she was borrowing my words from one of many supportive letters to US Congress.

In the last twelve years, I never went public with the name of my accusers nor did I publish related articles where I am syndicated. Peace was my goal. Taiwan needed time to change, but I have seen no change. Work permits still pass through the hands of a gate-keeping boss. Rights of dual citizenship remain non-existent.

I’ve applied for permanent residence twice. The first time, the committee voted “no” on matters unrelated to my application; the meeting was out of order, which I can prove because Taiwan’s unabashed government sent me the minutes of the committee meeting to show me I was wrong. The second time, I applied based on my favorable coverage of Taiwan in the press, given their unredressed grievances and my patience and, most importantly, my silence. The application response deadline is 90 days; Immigration hasn’t given an official response of their committee’s vote in over 200 days.

What may I conclude, but love? I can’t hate Taiwan for being systemically prejudice. Black Americans don’t hate me for my systemic racism. I didn’t know what I did to Black Americans—I still don’t because I don’t see systemic prejudice when it favors me. We can’t make excuses for ourselves, but the Black Man isn’t complaining about any “big nothing” as some purport. I was raised a White Republican. I must learn to listen to Black Americans just as I know Taiwanese can only understand by listening to me.

This was a message I eagerly wanted to tell Americans: invisible injustice in our systems cause poverty! But, I couldn’t tell that story without hurting the Taiwanese people. Now, after 200 days of waiting for a 90 day deadline, it’s safe to say that Taiwan’s Immigration Agency won’t mind.

Of course, I have many Taiwanese friends whom I don’t deserve, many of the skateboarders. Why would I choose Tainan, a city with the most restrictive skatepark and skateboard laws on the island? Tainan has talented skateboarders as eager and gifted as anywhere else. Injustice in any system affects every sector. I don’t run from problems no matter how small, no matter how scary. It’s hard to leave friends, especially when their patience has changed my life. Taiwan opened my eyes over the last twelve years to understand the plight of the Black Man. I understand my first country better because I kept reaching out to the hand that slapped me back. And, I kept taking the many hands in Taiwan that reached out to me.

I can’t reject the Taiwanese. They’ve taught me too much.

Taiwan’s Prejudice of Foreigners Taught Me Black Systemic Racism Is Real from Jesse Steele

[health-and-fitness-in-life]

15 Health and Fitness Benefits of CrossFit

1. You'll get stronger.

Spoiler alert: Lifting weights, Olympic weightlifting, and resistance training all make you stronger (among these other benefits of strength training). And CrossFit uses all of these fitness modalities in its programming. There are actually 10 skills at the foundation of everything you do in CrossFit, according to Rich Froning ("The Fittest Man In History"): cardiovascular/respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, coordination, accuracy, agility, and balance.

"Most of the movements you do in CrossFit are compound movements, meaning they recruit muscles from all over your body," says physical therapist and certified strength coach Grayson Wickham, D.P.T., C.S.C.S. For instance, when you're doing a lift like the snatch, squat, or deadlift, you're activating and therefore strengthening all of your muscles from head to toe. (Related: 9 Reasons More Women Should Be Olympic Weightlifting)

In fact, one 2017 study found that compound movements (also called multi-joint exercises) are more effective for improving strength and general fitness compared to single-joint exercises like the biceps curl, calf raise, or leg curl.

2. You'll torch serious calories during the workout.

When researchers from the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse looked at women who do CrossFit, they found that they burned 12 or more calories per minute. Their conclusion: "CrossFit works... Based on the high intensity of the workouts tested, [we] conclude that CrossFit does a really good job of helping exercisers improve their aerobic fitness while burning a fair number of calories in the process."

The reason why comes back to the fact that CrossFit uses compound exercises, says Tony Carvajal, certified CrossFit trainer with RSP Nutrition. "The more muscles being used, the more calories you're going to burn," he says. FYI, you don't necessarily have to pick up weights to score the benefits of compound moves; bodyweight CrossFit staples like burpees, muscle-ups, and handstands will light up your whole body too.

3. That calorie burn will continue post-WOD.

Most CrossFit workouts (aka workout of the day or WOD) will include some weightlifting, and lifting weights doesn't just torch calories mid-workout, but after it too. That's because your muscle mass is one of the main determining factors of your metabolic rate-how many calories you burn just by living, explains Wickham.

"In CrossFit, you're going to gain muscle. More muscle mass means a faster metabolism," he says. "Faster metabolism means burning more calories all day long." (Here's everything you need to know about metabolism, muscle, and fat.)

There's also the "afterburn effect" (also known as excess post-exercise oxygen consumption or EPOC) which says that the more intense the exercise is, the more oxygen your body consumes afterward, and therefore the more calories you burn even after you've left the gym. (You only need to watch two-time champion of the CrossFit Games Annie Thorisdottir work out to know that CrossFit is intense). That post-workout calorie burn is usually 6 to 15 percent of the total calories you burned while exercising. Not too shabby, CrossFit.

4. You could lose weight.

Losing weight isn't everyone's goal going into CrossFit, but if it's yours, "CrossFit is one of the most effective workouts for weight loss," says Carvajal. That's because all of the health and fitness benefits of CrossFit listed thus far-especially the increased lean muscle mass and the revved-up metabolism-contribute to reducing body fat and burning more calories overall.

In fact, one study found CrossFit participants had significant improvements in body composition (and aerobic capacity) after 10 weeks regardless of their fitness level at the start of the program.

There's a psychological component of CrossFit that makes it effective as a weight-loss program too, says physical therapist D.R. Ebner, P.T., C.S.C.S., at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. "The community will keep you coming back. It'll keep you on track and make you 10 times more likely to show up," he says. (More on that here: Why Consistency Is the Single Most Important Thing for Reaching Your Health and Weight-Loss Goals)

5. It's good for your heart.

Most CrossFit workouts don't look like traditional cardio training methods. Rather, some CrossFit WODs are only three minutes long. (Ashley Graham is also not about that traditional cardio life either. Evidence: Watch Ashley Graham Prove That Cardio Doesn't Have to Suck)

However, it's totally possible to get a cardiovascularly challenging workout in a short amount of time-even just three to five minutes, says CrossFit Games commentator and CrossFit Level 2 certified trainer Tanya Wagner of CrossFit Apex in Bucks County, PA. In fact, a study published in PLoS ONE found that just three minutes of all-out exercise per week significantly improved cardiometabolic health markers (including VO2 max and blood pressure) in overweight/obese adults.

6. You'll improve your mobility.

CrossFit may not look like traditional mobility-building practices like yoga and Pilates but, "CrossFit is actually one of the best exercise programs for enhancing mobility," according to Wickham, who is also the founder of Movement Vault, an online mobility program.

Quick refresher: Mobility is your ability to move a muscle or muscle group through a range of motion (ROM) in the joint socket with strength and control. (Here are more mobility basics you need to know.) Many movements in CrossFit simultaneously enhance ROM and strength. For example, try improving your mobility the CrossFit-approved way with this squat therapy drill.

7. It's safer than you probably think.

CrossFit gets a bad rap for being unsafe, but a 2018 review concluded that, while the sport has been scrutinized because of the supposed high incidence of injuries, none of these claims were supported by empirical evidence.

Another study found that people who work with hands-on coaches who help them through the movements have fewer injuries-and that's exactly what most CrossFit boxes offer. As for rhabdo, it's not any more common in CrossFit than in any other type of high-intensity exercise. (Related: 12 CrossFit Myths, Debunked)

8. It might even help reduce injury risk.

The best exercises to perform inside the gym are ones that mimic the movements you do outside the gym, says Wickham. (Think: Lifting an Amazon Prime package, sitting down and getting up from your desk, or schlepping a heavy duffle bag.) These are called functional movements-and they're the foundation of many CrossFit WODs.

"The whole point of doing functional movements as exercise is to keep your body in physical readiness for the demands of everyday life," explains Wagner. If people learn to properly move their bodies as an entire unit or machine, they'll be much more successful and safe during more demanding everyday tasks like shoveling snow or moving furniture, she says.

9. You'll become a better runner.

CrossFit improves your strength from head to toe, and that means improved performance whether you're an endurance athlete or sprinter. Research shows that running efficiency is improved when runners add two or three days of strength training to their workout routine every week.

Not to mention "CrossFit helps you strengthen your core," says Ebner. "A strong core helps transfer strength and utilize the strength throughout the rest of your body-including your arms and legs." Translation: more power per stride. Plus, a stronger core could improve your running form-which means a reduced risk of injury. (Boom: Why Runners Should Do CrossFit)

10. You could sleep better.

"There are a lot of lifestyle factors that come into play with how well you sleep," says Kevin Turcio, a CrossFit Level 2 certified trainer and owner of CrossFit Affinity in Stamford, CT. "In personal experience, CrossFit has helped me fall asleep." This could be simply due to the intensity involved in this kind of training, as upping the intensity of exercise has been shown to aid deep sleep.

Carvajal suggests that this effect is especially noticeable in folks who weren't regular exercisers previously. "Any type of exercise is likely to improve sleep quality; however, high-intensity training like CrossFit seems to be the most effective." (Related: How Sleep and Exercise Are Connected)

11. There are mental gains.

CrossFit doesn't only train your muscles-it trains your brain too. "CrossFit creates mental toughness," says Wagner. That's because CrossFit workouts give you the opportunity to use positive self-talk and push yourself through challenging moments.

"It allows you to self-evaluate and reflect once you've made it through whatever barrier you accomplished," says Wagner. "We see incredible changes in self-talk and mental positivity levels specifically in women and adolescent girls." (See: 25 Things All Women Who Lift Will Understand)

12. It's time-efficient.

Most classes are only one hour long and the WODs themselves are usually only three to 20 minutes long. Seriously! (The rest of the class includes a warm-up, a cool-down, and sometimes an additional weightlifting portion.) "People are always surprised how wiped they are after such a short workout," says Turcio. (Try one of these 12 CrossFit WODs that coaches love to see what she means.)

Plus, a review of 13 studies published in Obesity Reviews found that both continuous moderate-intensity training and HIIT training resulted in similar reductions in waist circumference and fat loss-but HIIT required about 40 percent less training time to do so. Another study even found that short bouts of HIIT is superior to moderate-intensity "slow and go" training for improving cardiovascular fitness.

13. You'll look jacked.

Toned. Lean. Jacked. Built. Defined. Muscular. Whatever word you use to indicate "looks fit AF," CrossFit will get you there. (BTW, here's why lifting heavy won't make you bulk up.)

Combine those muscle-building, fat-burning benefits with sound nutritional choices, stress management, and proper sleep, and you'll earn a defined look, says Wickham. (Need more proof? Follow some of these badass professional CrossFit athletes on Instagram.)

14. You get a built-in cheer squad.

Friendly PSA: If you're in the ~no new friends~ club, CrossFit isn't for you. That's because throwing around weights and learning new gymnastics skills together has the amazing ability to create lasting friendships and a sound support system. There's even science to prove it! A recent research review concluded that CrossFit is associated with a sense of community, satisfaction, and motivation. (And it's not exactly breaking news that having a #fitfam helps people reach their fitness goals: Why having a fitness buddy is literally the best thing ever.)

"The community will support you and encourage you and keep you accountable to your goals," says Carvajal. "Being in an environment like this can only lead to bettering yourself in and out of the gym."

15. You'll have fun.

Yes. F-U-N. Research shows that, for many people, hard workouts are actually more fun. So, sure, CrossFit may be hard, but you'll be reaping a whole lot of benefits-like the 14 above-and having a good time doing it.

[aaskamydoll-blog]

Help Your Child Develop Important Soft Skills Outside of School 

While your child may be learning their ABCs and numbers at their preschool or kindergarten, one thing that schools have a difficult time teaching are soft skills, especially communication and emotional intelligence.

A classroom environment can help your child learn basic communication skills, such as how to raise their hand, say “please” and thank you, and listen to instructions.However, many important communication skills and other soft skills cannot be taught at schools.

The sad fact is, because of larger classroom sizes and lack of personal connection with each student, it’s impossible for most teachers to devote the one-on-one, personalized time it takes to demonstrate these soft skills to everyone in their classroom. Kindergarten is a great first step, but it alone won’t teach your child how to voice their emotions, practice active listening, or fully develop their language skills.

Why Soft Skills Are Important

These and other soft communication skills are vital to success later in life. In fact, there have been numerous studies released that indicate this. Communication skills, empathy, emotional intelligence, understanding social cues, and more are all soft skills that employers look for in their next hires.

If your child possesses these soft skills, they are much more likely to be hired, find a job they love, and be successful in their career.

Soft skills are vital to your child’s personal and emotional lives too! Communication, empathy, emotional awareness, and self-esteem bring clarity and understanding to family, friend, and romantic relationships and tend to make us more satisfied with our lives in general.

The Bad News: You Can’t Teach Soft Skills

All that might sound pretty great, but there’s one major catch. The common consensus is that you can’t actually teach soft skills, at least not like you would teach your child their alphabet or their basic math.

As one emotional intelligence site points out, soft skills aren’t teachable because they’re not really “skills”, as we commonly define them. Soft skills may be better explained simply as personal benefits that come from possessing a strong awareness of ourselves and others.

While hard skills are trainable things, like how to use a computer or how to memorize a call script, soft skills are defined as “personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people.” In other words, it’s difficult to teach soft skills because they are personal traits, not skills.

On top of all that, soft skills are very difficult to measure, whether in school or education environments or in the career field. This makes it very difficult for educators and school board members to tell whether their efforts are making a difference.

But don’t lose hope! There are many things you can do to encourage your child to develop or learn these soft skills on their own. It just takes some creativity!

Things You Can Do As a Parent

As a parent, you’re in a great position to help your child develop these all-important soft skills of communication, emotional intelligence, and more!

The best thing you can do is be an example to your child and take every opportunity to help them discover what good communication is! Your child is always watching, learning, and mimicking behavior and words around them, whether that’s from you, their peers, or the TV they watch. You can take advantage of that to demonstrate soft skills that will be valuable to them later in life.

Here are three simple ways you can help your child develop these soft skills:

Step 1: Spend Time Without Screens

Help your child unplug! Instead of letting them have unlimited time to watch TV or play games on a tablet or phone, regularly allow your children some exposure to life beyond the screen!

Letting your child spend time interacting with others will allow them to become familiar with social cues and good forms of communication. Letting them spend some “quiet time” playing by themselves will also help them to develop better emotional self-awareness.

Step 2: Play Make Believe

Most children love creative, imaginative play. Pretending to be a doctor, the president, or even a princess, are not only sources of fun and joy, but also great ways to learn important life skills!

Whether you’re playing with them yourself or taking them to a friend’s house or a play group so they can interact and play with peers, giving your child the gift of imaginative play will help them develop better soft skills.

Step 3: Listen to Your Child

Listening to your child is one of the most important things you can do to contribute to their personal development. There are several ways that you can create a safe and fun environment that will help your child learn to communicate their emotions and ideas.

Really listening to your child as they tell a story, talk about their ideas, or try to express a feeling will help them develop great soft skills through practice and affirmative action. And it all starts by simply listening to them and encouraging them to express themselves through open-ended questions.

How Educational Toys and Games Can Help Your Child Develop Soft Skills

A great way to supplement make-believe games and real-life peer and parent interaction is to use toys and educational games.

Playing with dolls, stuffed animals, or learning toys can help your child learn language skills. This play will then translate to improved communication with others.

With the right toys and games, you can create a fun, no-pressure context in which to talk and bring up real-life conversational situations. By simply playing with toys, you can introduce children to important life concepts that will translate into soft skills.

One such toy I’ve found to help encourage soft skill development is the new Ask Amy Doll. It’s an educational toy that can help your child build communication skills, emotional intelligence, and self-confidence! By responding to vocal statements and questions, such as, “Do you like school?”, “Tell me a story”, or “Am I pretty”, this interactive doll’s answers will encourage soft skills like communication, positivity, self-esteem, and love of learning!

<amazon capsule link:

https://www.amazon.com/Talking-Interactive-Singing-Storytelling-Educational/dp/B016MYFSW2?ref_=bl_dp_s_web_15747657011

>

[cooperjones2020]

Second City, chp. 4

Summary: Sometimes she worries she’s settling — for a smaller job, a smaller city, a smaller life than she’d promised herself — but that was before she found out Jughead Jones lives in Chicago. That was before she found out the final secret of Jason Blossom’s murder.

A/N: In my brain, they have three drinks over a period of 4-5 hours, so Jughead is fine to ride the mile or so from the bar to his house. I even calculated it and his peak BAC without food is .046.

A/N 2: This chapter is just a continuation of the previous scene because it got too long, so I reprinted the end of it if you don’t remember :)

ao3–>http://archiveofourown.org/works/11409360/chapters/25805820

Second City one / two / three

Nobodies Nobody Knows one / two (ao3)

In which Jughead Jones turns the tables

(Previously on Second City:

“Did your routine change? Anything in the physical process of how you wrote?”

“Definitely. Being an established author has conveyed a huge privilege on me. The Final Fissure was written in spare time at school or late nights at the diner. I’m still a nighttime writer. I still can’t write at home, I need people around me to observe. But writing gets to be the focus of my day now. I’ve also gotten better at letting other people see my writing. As a teenager, I was obsessive about making it perfect first.”

“Oh I remember.” They’re both facing ahead, so the recorder has a better angle, but she can see him smiling at her out of the corners of her eyes.

“But now, sometimes it’s just get it on the page and send it off, especially if I’m under a deadline. Still, though, I like some feedback if only to reaffirm my own conviction that I’m headed in the right direction. Actually, Archie looked at a few chapters of Sweetwater Subtext pretty early on.”

“Really? I can’t see him as a particularly dedicated editor.”

Jughead’s laugh is big, his head is thrown back and his shoulders shake. “No, definitely not. But it was more feedback on the content I was looking for, than the style. Whether I was crossing a line with anything.”

“Well, color me intrigued.”

“Good.”

She takes a risk. “I’m surprised Archie didn’t tell you I was moving here.”

“Yeah, well, we don’t exactly talk about you.” It hurts. She knows it shouldn’t. She knows it makes sense. But it does. Because it sounds like ‘I don’t think about you.’

“Right, obviously. That was stupid of me.” Way to ruin it, Betty. “On a related note, what do you owe to the real people upon whom you base your characters?”

“That’s a question I’ve been wrestling with. The best answer I’ve been able to come up with, insufficient as it is, is honesty.”)

She manages to recover, even somewhat gracefully. They speed through the rest of her questions. She barely has to look at her notes, except as an excuse to break eye contact when the butterflies get too intense. She realizes, wounded pride aside, that she’s actually having fun.

“Okay, let’s get back to Sweetwater Subtext for a second. As we’ve said, The Final Fissure had an obvious ending point with the reveal of the murderer. I know you can’t give me any spoilers, but what’s next for these characters? Will there be a third entry in this series?”

“Unclear.” She lifts her eyes to his and they seem to burn into her, like he’s trying to tell her something she’s afraid to translate.

“Oh. Um, okay. Any idea what does come next then?”

“Well, The Final Fissure is gonna be a TV show. We’re still working out if I’m going to be involved, though right now I’m leaning no.”

She pulls the hair tie off her wrist and moves to put her hair up, then lets it slide out of her hands when it’s shorter than she expects. She knows she has enough material, knows this is going to be good, but she doesn’t want to stop. She feels drunk off Jughead’s words, like she’s a teenager sneaking champagne at a cousin’s wedding.

He interrupts her while she’s still formulating her next question. “Would you mind if we took a break? I could use some food.”

“Oh of course, I’m sorry.”

“No need to apologize, I was just on a roll earlier and skipped dinner.”

“Jughead Jones voluntarily skipped a meal?”

“I wouldn’t call it voluntary. Sometimes the muse is actually a slave driver.”

It’s now closing in on 11, which means the dinner menu has been replaced by the late night menu, so they order baskets of a variety of fried things.

“I didn’t mean it like that earlier. It’s just, I don’t know, I think it would be kind of weird if me and Archie talked about you. That whole same-ex-girlfriend thing.”

Betty lets out a soft sigh. “Sometimes I even forget we dated. It was such a weird, hazy time in my life. I fought so hard for so long to be my own person, not Polly’s sister or Alice’s daughter. By the time senior year came around, I was tired of fighting everyone’s expectations. Veronica was back in New York, you were on the south side. We were the only two left, of the core four, and it just made sense, you know? So we went to the back to school dance together, and then homecoming, and then winter formal. And before you know it was prom and we’d been dating for eight months.”

“I always thought you two would get married and have the 2.5 kids and white picket fence thing. You know, even when we were dating, I think I thought that in the back of my mind.”

She rolls her eyes. “I know. It wasn’t in the back of your mind. I seem to recall a certain speech in a certain red-headed person’s garage at a certain other person’s birthday party.”

“God, I’m never going to live that one down. Once I managed to go an entire eleven months without thinking about it, and then the memory just crept back in. Here, Jughead, you think you’re making progress on your social skills, well remember this?”

Betty laughs. “Well that was never in the cards for me and Archie, and I didn’t want it to be. Dating him was just…comforting you know? Comfortable. And I could really use that then.”

“Do me a favor and promise me that you will never tell Archie that. You guys may be best friends and he may be ass over elbows for Veronica now, but no guy wants to know that sex with him was just comfortable.”

She holds up a pinkie and waits for Jughead to take it. “I promise.”

“I was surprised, when I walked into Mary’s and found you.”

“I had gathered that. Though you were probably no more surprised than I was.”

“What made you decide to move?”

Betty exhales, nervous about answering truthfully but wanting to nonetheless. “I was just so sick of New York, sick of my job. I was running on a cycle of adrenaline—benzodiazepines—caffeine—melatonin that was unsustainable. I got home from a stakeout one morning at 5 am and I realized I was doing important things for other people, breaking big stories, but as a result I missed out on doing important things for myself. I was making decisions I otherwise wouldn’t have made.

“Then I got a call from Cynthia—my editor—offering me the job here. It was a deus ex machina, just what I needed at just the right time dropped out of the sky. It felt like a good time to pull the rug out from under myself. To look for a new dream.”

She’d worked so hard to get to a place where could break those big stories, doing the investigative journalism she’d always wanted. But it wasn’t what she’d imagined it would be.

“And that’s okay, you know? I feel like the hardest part is telling other people, people who knew me then. Like I’m afraid they’re going to think I’ve compromised, but I’m happy. Dreams change. Well, at least for most of us,” she ends by nudging him with her elbow.

Jughead looks at her like he believes her, like he doesn’t pity her.

“I think you probably filled your quota of breaking big stories before you even left high school. I’m glad you realized you weren’t happy and did something about it.” He pauses and takes a big breath. “And I’m glad you’re here. Glad we could do this.”

She smiles at him, the corners of her lips curving down. “Me too.”

Time for a change of topic. “Polly said Jellybean works at Pop’s now.”

“Yeah, for about a year.”

“Does that mean you get free burgers?”

“No. Only half-price. But yeah, she mentioned last week that Polly and your mom come in sometimes with the twins.”

Betty can’t help the goofy grin that breaks out at the mention of her niece and nephew. “Yeah. Her and my mom have gotten a lot closer the past couple years. Since my dad died.”

“Oh, Betts, I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright. He’d been sick for a while. We…made our peace with it. With each other. But you know what’s sick? My mom’s been happier since. Like thirty fucking years and I’m pretty sure they were both miserable almost the whole time. How do you get to the point where it’s not even worth trying to go after happiness?”

“Sometimes you fall into a pattern that isn’t worth the effort it would take to break. Not everyone is as brave as you. I’m certainly not. And they had other things they were living for. Polly. You. I think that’s something I’ve learned since FP got out. My mom died, too, before— well, before. I think that’s that one thing that really fucked my dad up. That he didn’t get a chance to make it right with her. I’m sure it’s why he’s been a model citizen ever since.”

“No, Juggie. He was always so proud of you. I’m sure it’s for you. For what you’ve done for him, and for Jellybean.”

“Did Archie ever tell you about Thanksgiving our sophomore year of college?”

“No. That’s the first one he spent here, right?”

“Right. Mary and Mike had just moved in together, in the house they’re in now. I don’t think he was quite ready to see Mommy share a room with someone other than Daddy. Over the course of the morning, his face got redder and redder until it matched his hair. Then, when we were about to sit down for dinner, he flipped out and somehow wound up spraying mashed potatoes all over the table.”

“What! Oh no!” Years later and Betty feels the burgeoning heat of secondary embarrassment for her best friend.

“Yeah, it was great. Mary locked him outside.”

“I would have too.”

“And while all that was going down, I was upstairs, face timing with Jelly, who was still in Ohio then. I came down to Archie outside, Mary crying, and food everywhere.”

“So what happened?”

“Well, after we cleaned up the worst of it, Mike and I ate like nothing was wrong. Archie and Mary made up after a few hours. I never did get any mashed potatoes though.”

“Obviously the worst part. Oh god, the twins had been in their terrible threes that year. I spent the whole day going back and forth referring their screaming and then my parents’.”

“Mine’s worse.”

“It is. Which means I will get us the next round of drinks.”

“That is an offer you will never hear me turn down.” Her heart stops when he smiles at her, one dark curl dropping in front of his face.

She lifts her empty water glass up and twists it back and forth in her fingers, swishing the melting ice cubes around. He looks at her upturned palm for a beat too long, and she realizes he’s looking for her half-moon scars.

“I don’t do that anymore. I…haven’t since college.”

“Can I ask what made you stop?”

“I had to de-escalate. It didn’t work at first. I just switched to picking at my skin—my nails or acne or scabs. I still have pretty bad scars on my shoulders. But when I got to college, I was able to see a therapist who my mom couldn’t interrogate so that helped. She told me to hold an ice cube when I have the urge to do something destructive.” She doesn’t know why she’s telling him all of this, but for the simple fact that he seems to genuinely want to know.

“An ice cube?”

“Yeah, to cup it in the palm of my hand. Anyway, I’m a work in progress.” She’s been looking at her hand, but she switches to his face. “Wait. How did this turn into you interviewing me?”

“Well technically we’re still on our dinner break.”

“Okay, whatever.” She turns the recorder back on and asks him a few more perfunctory questions about release dates and promotional schedules. His answers are just as perfunctory, so his must be too.

“I should probably go home soon.” He just stares at her. When she begins to pack up the recorder and her notes, he snaps out of it and signals to the bartender to bring their check.

When it comes, he moves to take it but she swipes it before he can. “Nope.” She pops the p. “My interview, my expense report.”

Outside, he tries to convince her to let him take her home again, but she refuses. “I can expense the uber too and my house is way out of your way this time.”

He tries to argue with her, but she stands her ground. She believes him when he says he’s fine to ride but that doesn’t mean she wants him on the road any longer than he has to be.

He takes her phone out of her hand and minimizes the uber app. “Fine, then text me so I know you got home safe?”

She agrees and lets him hand her into the car when it comes. Then, as she turns to look at him out of the rear window, she realizes he’s given her his phone number.

When she gets home, she texts him: “home and locked in where the bad guys can’t get me.”

He responds with: “don’t forget to check under the bed. sleep tight, betts.”

She locks the deadbolt, then turns to lean against the door, her phone pressed to chest. Fuck. This isn’t good. She should feel awkward. She should feel the weight of delayed embarrassment at her reckless oversharing of her life. But she doesn’t.

Instead, she listens to the tape while she washes her face, flosses her teeth. She only gets through the first half an hour to forty-five minutes before she’s too tired to pay attention anymore, but she can already tell it’s good. It’ll be the best thing she’s ever written. The last thing she thinks before she falls asleep is that he’s always brought out the best in her.

[ruffsficstuffplace]

The Keeper of the Grove (Part 30)

“Are you sure you want to do this, Weiss?” Penny asked as she and Weiss stood in a public bathroom. “Your body's stress hormone levels still haven't returned to normal.”

“Yes,” Weiss said before she splashed more water on her face. “I'm a Schnee, and as my grandfather Nicholas famously said: 'Where other people see desolation, failure, and the writing on the wall, I see motivation to keep on going until we turn this shit around,'" she continued as she dried her face with a paper towel.

Penny nodded. “Calling the Watcher's Roost...” she said as she held up her arm, the “tablet” section flipped out.

Weiss threw the towel away, checked her reflection in the mirror: her eyes were red and puffy from crying, she had the ominous beginnings of eye bags thanks to all the stress and less than ideal sleep she'd been getting recently, and just an aura of unpleasantness had settled on her from having been screwed over far too often and frequently.

She would have killed for make-up, some concealer at the very least, but she supposed she'd just have to work with it. Who knew: maybe looking like someone you wouldn't want to mess with would be a plus in the Watchers.

They left the bathroom and headed to the nearest Tube station, and off they went to the Watcher's Roost.

The Roost was situated on the side of one of the highest mountains of the Valley, overlooking all of the Bastion and a great deal outside the walls, too. Like the city itself, it was a series of trees and platforms connected by bridges and rope, along with a number of extra Tube stations, elevators, and zip lines for getting around quickly.

As Weiss arrived at the main entrance, she looked up and noticed giant birds perched in the higher branches, racks with saddles, bags, and harnesses with folded mechanical wings nearby. “If the Valley had an air force, this would be it,” she thought to herself as Penny arrived.

The two of them walked up to the doors, where there were already two Watchers waiting for her. One was an orange squirrel with all the chipper demeanor and hyperactivity that entailed, the other gave Weiss pause as she stared at him.

Most of the Fae she'd seen in the Bastion were based off mammals, and she'd only seen a handful of bird-like Fae such as Qrow. The one before her looked like a snake or a reptile of some sort, slit pupils in his pink eyes, pink-green scales creeping in on the sides of his face, his neck, and his hands, and what looked to be horns poking out from his forehead.

“Oh hi, you must be Weiss!” the squirrel said as she ran up to her. “Oh who am I kidding? EVERYONE in the Valley knows who you are! You're practically famous! Or is that supposed to be infamous? Anyway, I'm Nora, and that's Ren, and we're going to be helping you in your run through the Grinder!

“Hope you don't come out the other side as meat paste~!”

Weiss blinked, confused and more than a little concerned.

“'The Grinder's' what we Watchers call our entrance exam,” Ren said. “It can get pretty brutal.”

“Super brutal, you mean!” Nora cried. “There's a reason the Guild stopped offering 'Watcher' as part of the Job Gauntlet! Well, aside from the fact that we kept getting so much Moss and people who just didn't want to join up clogging up the ranks, but there's that, too!”

Weiss nodded slowly. “I… see...”

“So, are we going to stand here all day? Or are we going to see if you are Watcher Material?!” Nora said, grinning and leaning ever closer to Weiss' face with each word.

Ren calmly coaxed his friend back to a more polite, less uncomfortably close distance. “Sorry about that; Nora's been dying to meet you since Ruby told us that you were staying here permanently, and Penny's call got her excited all over again.”

“Why wouldn't I be?!” Nora cried. “We're going to be just like the Void Claw Clan and Lang-Lang from 'The Last Bear Ender!' An outsider, scared, confused, thrust into a new, dangerous world they are completely unprepared for, seeking guidance and protection wherever she can find it, fighting the wilds, her enemies, and her inner demons to rise up as their new CHAMPION!”

As Nora was busy with her monologue and dramatic posing, Weiss discretely asked Ren, “HV addict?”

Ren nodded. “It's how we both learned Nivian.”

“Figured...” Weiss muttered.

Nora turned back to her, put her fists on her hips and attempted a serious, dramatic look. “So, outsider, do you wish to grow strong with the darkness, or continue to cower in the light?”

Weiss wondered if it was too late to back out, and go see just what being a paid guinea pig would entail.

“There's a sign-on bonus of 1,000 Shinies if you pass, plus a regular monthly salary even if you'll probably be spending the next year or so training and shadowing senior Watchers in the less populated districts here in the Bastion.”

And at the promise of 22 Triple Chocolate Cake Shakes with change to spare, plus a year's worth of compensated on-the-job training, Weiss' mind was made up.

“Let's do this,” she said, smiling.

Nora cheered, while Ren smiled back. “Alright,” he said. “Let's head inside, and get you started.”

The interior of the Roost was a bizarre mix of a military base, a police station, and a hunter's lodge.

There was a giant board with announcements and notices about dangerous and criminal individuals, and suspicious activity in general. An army of operators manned terminals, screening and updating the others on important tips from citizens and their sources of information. A holographic “Heat Map” of the entire Valley was projected from the ceiling, lighting up in different colours depending on how dangerous an area was, sometimes with images of particularly deadly animals, always with a name in Actaeon or Nivian and a corresponding bounty for taking them down.

There were also the stuffed heads and carcasses of famous kills throughout the ages, portraits and pictures of proud Watchers and their trophies, and sometimes statues and reliefs of their more legendary figures, frequently portrayed in combat with their most infamous opponents.

Weiss passed by a giant statue of what looked like the bastard child of an alligator, a shark, and a tank that had also been heavily irradiated with magic, then injected with several gallons worth of steroids, because apparently whoever had designed it thought it wasn't terrifying enough.

There was a plaque underneath it: “Death Claw, the First Soul Eater,” Penny translated.

It was definitely just a statue, but the detail in its six eyes, the rows of serrated fangs within the three flaps that made its “mouth,” and the giant, twisted horns atop its head gave Weiss the chills. “That's a Soul Eater...?” she whispered.

“Yeeep!” Nora said as they passed it by. “Big reason why we Watchers are paid and funded so well—and also why we recruit year round, too!”

“We keep it largely as a reminder to never get complacent,” Ren continued.

Weiss gazed it at one more time, before she resolved never to turn her head in its general direction again, and hurried on after the others.

They went deeper into the Roost, into a series of underground caverns. She could hear the echoes of training and fighting, shouts and war cries from both Fae and animals. And from even deeper in…

“… Is that music?” Weiss asked.

Ren nodded. “We share our facilities with the Pits for extra funding and convenience.”

“Plus, a lot of Watchers tend to be Pit Fighters when they're off-duty, or vice-versa! You're going in there later as part of the Grinder, by the way.”

Weiss' eyes widened in alarm.

“Don't worry, we have safety measures and really good equipment,” Ren explained. “Your opponent's also skilled at roughing folks up without actually causing lasting harm.” He paused. “Physical harm, at any rate.”

“But for now, we're going to do Part 1 of the Grinder: The Reflex Test!” Nora said as she opened a door that led to a training room. It was very basic with a safety mat in the center, some machines for exercises and drills, and a rack of training dummies.

“It's very simple,” Ren explained as they headed to a table. “For 30 seconds, I'm going to try to touch you on your nose, you try and stop me or dodge. To pass, you only need to do either once. Ready?”

Weiss nodded and stood in front of him. “Ready,” she said as she held up her hands.

Nora put her hand over to a giant timer and turned on a camera. “On three: 1… 2… 3!”

Boop.

Ren lightly tapped Weiss on the nose, just enough for her to feel it.

Weiss blinked. “Wait, wha--”

Boop.

Weiss scowled. “Hey--!”

Boop.

Weiss raised her arms in front of her face.

Ren effortlessly weaved his hands around her defense.

Boop.

Weiss growled.

Boop.

Ren was unfazed.

Boop.

Weiss started flailing her arms in the air.

Boop.

Weiss grabbed both of Ren's wrists.

Boop. Boop. Boop. Boop. Boop. Boop.

“Gah!” Weiss let go, unable to stand against the assault. She spun around.

Ren sidestepped.

Boop.

She hid her face in her hands.

Ren gently pried her hands from her face.

Weiss looked him straight in his pink, slit-pupil eyes.

Boop.

Ding!

“Time's up!” Nora yelled. “Reviewing the footage now and…. yeeep… looks like you dodged a grand a total of zero Boops!”

“Don't worry,” Ren said, “you need only get a score of 2 out of 4 to pass, and the Combat Test counts for 2.”

Weiss grumbled as she rubbed her repeatedly booped nose.

“To the Endurance Test!” Nora said, walking off to the side and wheeling in a device that was composed of a tank with a valve, a hose, and a nozzle pointed well away from the operator's side.

“What is that?” Weiss asked.

“A Soul Fire Thrower!” Nora replied cheerfully.

“… What's Soul Fire?”

“A magical substance used for non-lethally taking down powerful targets that shrug off more instantaneous methods, or to weaken strong enemies to level the playing field,” Penny explained.

Weiss worriedly eyed the nozzle. “… Is this going to hurt?”

“Yep!” Nora replied, nodding her head. “Gonna hurt LOTS!”

Weiss stared at her. “Wait--”

“On 'Burninate!' 3, 2, 1: BURNINATE!”

FWOOSH!

Weiss screamed and ran around as she was suddenly engulfed in green flames. She patted herself, stopped, dropped, and rolled and rolled on the floor, but the fire wouldn't let up and kept on burning, and burning, and burning.

Then, as quickly as it started, it ended, leaving Weiss sprawled out on her back, eyes wide and breathing heavily, her body, hair, and clothes unburned, though tendrils of leftover magic rose up from her like smoke.

Ren stopped the timer. “5.27 seconds,” he said, before he walked over to Weiss, uncapped a bottle from his belt, and poured its contents over Weiss.

“WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT ALL ABOUT?!” she screamed as she scrambled up, rejuvenated.

“Testing how long you might last out in the wilds,” Ren replied. “The time you can stay alight is a very accurate predictor.”

Weiss groaned. “Please tell me I passed...”

“Nope!” Nora chirped. “Gotta burn for 15 seconds at the least, 30 seconds ideally, and at least 72.08 seconds to break the record!”

“There's still the Combat test, don't worry,” Ren said. “I'd recommend at least a repeater, a melee weapon of some sort, and the lightest armour we have for speed and agility.”

“Do you have rapiers?” Weiss asked.

Ren nodded. “We do.”

“Good.”

Weiss stood in one of the smaller arenas in the Pits, armed and equipped exactly to Ren's advice.

Tall rocks and waist high barriers were strewn about, alongside a miniature mountain range behind her back and a deep ditch on her opponent's side, but hiding behind them wouldn't count for much with how small the arena was, how easy it would be to get flanked.

She looked at her repeater—a wrist-bound machine-pistol of sorts—then at the rapier of carved bone in her other hand. She'd been given time to practice with both, and a vigorous warm-up before the fight beside, but no one would tell her who or what her opponent was going to be, exactly.

“Are these darts live?” she asked earlier as Ren taught her how to reload her repeater with a fresh canister.

“As real as your sword,” he said calmly.

Weiss frowned. “Aren't you worried I'm going to hurt someone?”

Ren smiled. “Weiss, believe me, your opponent's going to turn out fine, and you will, too.”

She complained and cajoled anyone to give her a hint, but everyone kept their mouths shut, wanted her to find out for herself as she had with the Tubes. And as the lights dimmed, the crowds in the stands howled and cheered, and her opponent's gigantic cage was lowered into the ring, Weiss could take comfort in the fact that the mystery was finally going to be over.

She got into the stance Ren had taught her—sword for defense and deflection, repeater to actually do the actual hurting.

Nora got on the mic. <And now, Weiss Schnee's opponent for her Combat Test: ZWEI!>

The crowd cheered and howled as the lid opened and crashed to the ground with a massive thud. Zwei casually trotted out, both heads panting happily.

Weiss smiled.

<And for the purposes of this test: ZWEI on FIRE!>

A bird dropped a flaming pot of soul fire on Zwei's back. The flames engulfed his entire body in an instant, but he was completely unharmed. Heavy metal music began to play as he raised his heads up and howled, twin jets of green flames shooting out from his mouths.

Weiss eyes widened as several hundred pounds of burning, giant, mutant two-headed Corgi came bounding towards her, jaws open and tongues flapping in the wind.

[marshhayden93]

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[csrgood]

She's a Scientist With One of the World's Most Important Jobs: Creating a Potential COVID-19 Vaccine

Originally published by jnj.com

She has spent her career investigating some of the world's most pervasive infectious diseases—HIV and Ebola, just to name a couple—and now Hanneke Schuitemaker, Ph.D., is fighting a virus that could very well define her career.

As the Global Head of Viral Vaccine Discovery and Translational Medicine and the Disease Area Stronghold Leader for Viral Vaccines at Janssen Vaccines & Prevention, a Janssen Pharmaceutical Company of Johnson & Johnson, Schuitemaker and her team are tasked with researching, testing and producing a potential vaccine for Covid-19, a novel coronavirus that has infected millions worldwide since it was first identified in December 2019.

We sat down with Schuitemaker, who is based in Leiden the Netherlands, to talk about the crucial research work her team is doing, what stands out for her about the behavior of this novel coronavirus (hint: it likes to proofread) and what we can all learn about this historic pandemic that goes beyond the boundaries of science.

As Schuitemaker says, "I really hope we will learn lessons from this period, not only from a virological point of view, but also in terms of how we choose to live our lives."

Hanneke Schuitemaker, Ph.D.: Nothing could have prepared me for what we’re going through now. I've spoken about the threat of pandemics for some time—everything that could happen as a result of global warming, mosquitoes finding new habitats closer to human populations, the impact of the increased mobility of people—but I seriously had not thought through what it would actually be like to experience what we're experiencing now. The last pandemic of the same magnitude happened over 100 years ago—the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic—and most people who lived through it aren't with us today to share what it was really like.

But when I look at it purely from a scientific point of view and how to respond to Covid-19, I think we are doing the right thing with trying to limit its spread through social-distancing measures. We have some terrific learnings about this approach from the recent Ebola outbreak and how people in West Africa dealt with it, which is truly admirable. They were asked to quarantine, to adhere to frequent hand washing, to change their funeral habits, to change many of their daily rituals—and they did it. That helped to not only get the outbreak under control, but we also saw that other infectious diseases were strongly reduced during that time.

So I think we should really take these people as examples for us—that if we change our behavior, it can have an impact on slowing down the outbreak. Rather than see these measures as a nuisance, we should think of them as a necessity for humanity.

With a New Challenge Comes New Learnings

Of course, a global pandemic is different from an outbreak that's isolated to one region of the world. The current pandemic reminds me of what it was like to be a scientist when the first cases of AIDS were surfacing in the early 1980s. People were so scared of getting it, and that worry is reminiscent for me of what is happening with this novel coronavirus. And similar to the early days of the HIV crisis, there are still unknowns with this virus, which also makes it scary for people.​

But, as a scientist, I can say that we are learning things every day, and we are using that knowledge to help guide us in finding potential treatments and in fine-tuning vaccine development. For example, while certain other outbreaks may have been too small or localized to really start noticing trends, with Covid-19, we are seeing that age, gender (it seems to be impacting men at higher rates) and body mass index appear to be common risk factors for severe illness.

We could soon learn other things too. I recently had genetic testing done on my personal genome and learned that I have a somewhat increased susceptibility to SARS, which is another type of coronavirus. So the fact that we already have this kind of information about potential risk factors is a good thing, because it means we may be able to someday screen people who are predisposed to more severe Covid-19, which can then help with some of the scary unknowns—like why some young people without key risk factors are getting sick with Covid-19.

As a mother of three, I can't help but think about this. My youngest son was on a video chat with some friends the other day and they came up with a term for babies born during this time. He said to me, "These will always be the 'coronials.'" It’s true. There’s the pre- and post-coronavirus crisis—and the rules will never be the same.

A Virus with Special Editing Skills—and How a Vaccine Could Work to Thwart It

It's why my contributions as a viral vaccine scientist are even more important today. Beyond the science, the work that researchers are doing is about a greater purpose.

I recently met with the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, where I live, and I repeated to him something that I've said lately: "Treatments save lives, but vaccines save populations." When you get a vaccine, it's not just for yourself—it helps ensure that the transmission chain stops with you, and that helps keep your loved ones safe and healthy.

I've worked with a lot of viruses throughout my career and what's interesting about this novel coronavirus, known as SARS-CoV-2, is its ability to "proofread." Essentially, what this means is that if it makes a mistake in its replication of genetic material, there is a small thing running behind it that corrects the mistake. In other words, the virus is mutating at a slower rate, which helps scientists who are working on a potential vaccine.

With HIV, for instance, we say it’s a “sloppy virus,” but it’s smart sloppiness—it is constantly mutating and not proofreading. The fact that it makes so many mistakes is actually a big advantage for the virus, because it enables it to escape immune responses and also antiviral monotherapy. With Covid-19, if the virus is not changing, then the immune response elicited by a vaccine will fit with the virus that's circulating.

This has influenced our approach to a potential vaccine, which is built from an inactivated common cold virus that's not replicating. We are taking this approach in the development of our HIV, RSV, Zika and Ebola vaccines—and now our Covid-19 vaccine. So the outside of our vaccine always looks the same—the common cold virus Adeno 26—but inside, we have different transgenes coding for proteins of the virus against which we are making a vaccine. This helps create a vaccine with a known safety profile.

In nature, nothing is for nothing, which is why I am so interested in looking at this novel coronavirus also from an evolutionary point of view. Why is it proofreading? In theory, that would make it more vulnerable to a host's immunity, so maybe we will see years from now that it could become more like a common cold virus, which is what makes my work so intriguing.

A Pandemic and the Change It Brings

I really hope we will learn lessons from this period, not only from a virological point of view, but also in terms of how we choose to live our lives.

The director of the airport here in the Netherlands was making a statement recently about going back to normal, and he said we should also see this as an opportunity for change. It may seem obvious, but I for one, think it's an opportunity to care more for each other.

My middle son had just bought a house and was going to move out when this happened, and he was so worried about the situation. I wanted him to be able to go to his new house, but I also saw how tough it was on him. As a mother, you want to protect and sit on your eggs, even when your kids are grownups.

But this will pass, and the good that you can do for your kids in the meantime is to be there for them, to take away their sorrows, to take away their anxiety, to try and make some good memories now too—and that is priceless. We have large Zoom meetings—up to 50 people at a time—and I just love seeing people with kids on their laps, waving at the camera, while we are working on this vaccine.

I am also seeing things from a new perspective for myself. During the lockdown, I have been working from my home office, which has enabled me to notice the small things now that I so much appreciate—taking my dog out for morning walks, going out together again for long evening strolls, hearing the birds singing. I love it. Knowing that we are working on a vaccine, that we could be part of a solution, also feels good.

source: https://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/45149-She-s-a-Scientist-With-One-of-the-World-s-Most-Important-Jobs-Creating-a-Potential-COVID-19-Vaccine?tracking_source=rss