#but my experience as a seasoned user IS - and I think should remain - different from his as a fucking n00b

[sonickitty]

@staff i think it's actually beautiful that this website is unique and complex enough to have a learning curve. Driving a car isn't a frictionless experience. Neither is going to college or making friends or learning an instrument or starting a family or reaching a new level in a video game. Rewarding things are not always simple. How are you going to preserve Tumblr's uniqueness and complexity while courting growth?

[millepara]

waccha primagi episode 28 spoilers (yes. yes. yes. yes. ye)

Matsuri’s dad Michihito is magic?! or at least he has a magic stone? omg if he’s magic then Matsuri should be able to use magic at some point, like I’ve been kind of hoping since the beginning, and like it kind of seemed like they might be hinting at in the first couple of eps... wow I hope so

AH cut to him in magic clothes in the magic world!! oh my god ok so he is magic and he’s never around bc he’s in. the magic world. oh wow ok ok

“every time I look at this accessory, ...”

subtitle: “it sparkles with magi” (implying that Matsuri knows and has always known it’s a magical item. despite Myamu being the first to tell her about all that. esp with the “your dad” line from Myamu after this making it sound like she knows her dad is magical..)

actually what she said: “I feel stronger” (as in she remembers her bond with her family and it gives her strength, a totally non-magical phenomenon that we in the real world can experience. not to mention that she’s talking about herself (I) and not the brooch (it))

also on the subject of subs I think it’s very funny that they felt the need to change manamana to treasured partner or w/e and yet they leave magi as magi. wow I am in a mood today aren’t I

:o ! this is much earlier than I thought they would introduce the concept of magic users as idols!! I was thinking that’s season 2 territory but here we are

AHH they unshadowed Ryuume!! she’s so pretty. and her bodice really is just like Myam’s.

there is 0 hint of Myamu being put on stage in this op though. I wonder if maybe they just talk about it and it never actually happens in this season.

Bad End: the My Precious One in the ep title is Touma and Huyiui talking about Matsuri and Myamu respectively and not each other :( pretty sure that is what it is though

just did a spit take at the thought of Matsuri following Hina around the track staring straight at her with that :D!!!! expression the whole time

oh, I thought Michihito’s logo was slightly different from the Omega corp logo, but it’s the same as this fancy one on either side of the screen. guess they have different versions of it. interesting that he’s apparently a member of both the magic world and Omega, or has been at different points possibly

6 elements!! we know three, and two of the remaining ones are the same symbol flipped, which I’m sure would be a good hint if I had any ideas about it. air and.. wind....? ;;; the last heart one is different from the Smile Element symbol, btw, so Smile might be just an arcade-only gimmick or a secret later-season reveal.

ah! so Euphoria is a goddess. maybe the Captain Planet to all of these elements?

wtf the ep isn’t even halfway over

I recognize this flower-and-column stage, it’s the same one Karen Aikatsu used in her solo songs. wow the pieces are all coming together

Hugheyi, if Omega wanted you instead of Myamu, couldn’t they have just said so. you are always over there after all

‘money can be exchanged for goods and services’ - Chimumu

if Matsuri’s next song doesn’t have her doing acrobatics I swear

so this is the first time a magic user’s been on stage, I was wondering.

canon spelling of Hughie (and Toma).... fine I will stop misspelling it now haha

ah, they even get a unit name. Truth. it’s whatever

LIPSTICK! EYESHADOW! HANDHOLDING! this primagi’s got it all

isn’t this just the bit before Kanon and Keke did Tiny Stars

WOW Toma really got a makeover too. red hair huh... not a fan but I like the rest of his look

the moment of truth (hrrgkh pun unintentional kill me)... will this look decent or will we have to relive the spider-limbed dance of WiTH

I am going to be laughing for the next 100 years at Hughie’s wolf howl

LMAO WHAT IS THIS SLOW CROTCH GESTURE. chilling

a cyclone... king of prism reference (<- person who’s only seen kinpri before)

ooh! interesting how Hughie is both performing and acting as the manamana before the illusion, def a hint as to how a magic user might go on stage solo

this illusion is cute. it’s vague enough that I can pretend they’re talking about each other for sure lol

not a bad song! not that I believe primagi could make a bad song anyway. the models weren’t upsetting either and overall it looked good. tbh most of my excitement was used on plot stuff so that I have little left now but even though I’m not screaming I really am delighted and amazed that we got a boy performance 1) this soon and 2) this plot-relevant. also last but definitely not least 3) this gay thank you primagi

the first primagistas to be visibly out of breath in cgi. is it bc it’s supposed to be sexy or w/e

so this is how everyone gets the duo bug! more of that next week + more Miruki misfortune... yes. yes, good. I wonder if she’s going to get a brand dress or a unit dress first--wait, no, her brand dress is in the game currently, it’s gotta be that one. wow, maybe next week even? hope so!

[maddiviner]

Could studyblogging jumpstart your personal grimoire?

A witch should be a lifelong learner. To practice effective magic, you must grow in new directions at a constant pace. A witch should approach magic with a sense of devotion to their own growth.

I’ve practiced magic and divination for two decades now. The most solid advice I can give? Start journaling. Start keeping a notebook. Start studying.

Witches who keep a notebook record their research and ideas about the Craft. This helps them build a wide repository of knowledge, right there when they need it.

The format and content of my notebooks changed a lot over the years. But they all helped me become the witch I am today. I devoted the bulk of these notebooks to my journey in magic, techniques to try, and lessons learned.

There are few people who haven’t studied. In school, we pore over geometry and classic literature in hot pursuit of elusive high marks. We spent time learning about our interests. Whether that’s witchcraft, philosophy, or astronomy, notes are helpful.

Everyone learns in a different fashion. Still, studying and learning about the world remains with us from our first breath, to the last. My Craft took leaps forward when this dawned on me. I’d always enjoyed school. I realized that I could apply the same study techniques to witchcraft and the occult. 

What’s studyblogging?!

As a regular user of both Tumblr and Instagram, I soon came across the studyblogging trend. 

Caitlyn Tiffany of The Verge describes the studyblogging phenomenon as “a beautiful, stressful wonderland.” An apt description! But what is a studyblog? 

Studyblogging hashtags like #studyblr and #studygram  are popular (on Tumblr and Instagram, respectively).  

For someone just coming across the phenomenon, though? It can be difficult to penetrate this strange world. Expect calligraphic chaos, a plethora of highlighters, and fine-tuned aesthetics. 

Studyblogging focuses on the quest for knowledge. In practice, studyblogs share tips and handwritten notes on various subjects. Studybloggers encourage each other to be the best learners they can be. 

The photos of notes, assignments, and other tasks make up the bulk of the phenomenon. Studyblogs often feature photos of elaborate calligraphy and heavy illustration in note form.

Expect to see self-made diagrams of mitochondria. Essay outlines on postcolonial theory with nigh-perfect bubble lettering. Vast, illustrated mind-maps of Shakespearean themes. It's a big community, and there's room for a lot. Room for witches? I think so!

Studyblogging for Witches

In witchcraft, our grimoires function much like a non-magical student's study notes. The content, and some of the form, may differ, but the principles are the same.

The quest for an aesthetically-pleasing grimoire stymies many a beginner (and not-so-beginner) witch. The wise remind us that our grimoires needn’t be complex. Functionality is more important than aesthetics in most cases. 

That said, there is something worthwhile about keeping a grimoire that suits you. A  grimoire can speak to your soul, both by way of aesthetic appeal and your own abilities. For some of us, this might mean a lavishly-illustrated tome. Others might find minimalist styles more resonating. It varies.

The truth is that yes, your grimoire needn’t look a certain way or be perfect. Still, a level of aesthetic appeal can help with information retention. It can also boost your magical productivity. Humans respond in an intuitive fashion to that which they consider beautiful.

Aesthetics can help to put you into a liminal state. Liminality can be a powerful tool in self-improvement. This, in turn, is useful not only for normal studying, but also for the Craft itself. 

If you see art as part of your life path, you might find that approaching your grimoire as a work of art helpful. Part of this means realizing that it won’t be perfect, but also always striving to learn and grow.

Studyblogging, as a community, showcases a lot of excellent notebook and journal-keeping techniques. Studybloggers often provide tutorials and guides to effective learning methods. 

This is, of course, all while celebrating the joy of learning itself. Traditional studying methods can apply to magical topics. I have found that the techniques of the studyblogger can help with keeping a useful grimoire.

Ask your intuition if studyblogging is right for you!

Will studyblogging help you? For some students, lurking or keeping a studyblog inspires and motivates them. It also increases accountability. By posting their goals and progress, studybloggers have an impetus to progress. 

In a way, it’s a bit like livestreaming a video game - it makes the experience more challenging, and also more exciting. The difference, of course, is that, in this case, your game is learning!

And the notes? Many find the calligraphy, fancy scripts, and illustration soothing. It can be a way of making otherwise impenetrable subjects more captivating.

Without a doubt, aesthetic presentation improves information retention for some people. Humans have a positive response to beautiful imagery. 

Some folks find the gorgeous landscape of studygram and studyblr overwhelming and anxiety-inducing. Gorgeous calligraphy notes, after all, aren't easy for most people. 

For some, posting about your studies on a blog might only increase worry. We're all different, and studyblog techniques are hardly universal in form.

You should use your intuition to decide whether to dip into this community. Ask yourself whether an audience will help your quest for deeper knowledge. 

Will you feel empowered, or nervous about it? If you struggle with comparing yourself to others, you might find studyblogging discouraging. 

I myself am somewhat of a perfectionist. For me, though, the artistic aspects of note taking and information illustration soothe me. Studyblogging suits me, but will it help you?

You should tailor your learning experience to your own strengths. If that means studyblogging won’t help you, be honest with yourself and don’t chase the anxiety of it all. Find another method of learning. 

Browse some existing studyblogs - I recommend EmmaStudies and StudyQuill. Ask yourself how it makes you feel. Do the images and writing seems inspirational? 

Would you enjoy sharing your work with the world? Studyblogging might become an ally on your magical path!

Taking the Plunge

So, how do you start a studyblog? How do you get involved in the community?

The most popular studyblogging platforms are Instagram and Tumblr. Instagram lends itself to posting tons of pictures and very short-form posts. Tumblr favors longer prose. 

When I started studyblogging, I created both a studyblr and a studygram. I recommend starting a new account on the site of your preference for studyblogging.  

Follow some existing studybloggers as a way of introducing yourself to the community! Also, follow the hashtags #studyblr and #studygram, to start.

What to study?

Studyblogging features students focused on all kinds of topics. I’ve been studyblogging for over a year. In case you’re wondering, it's rare for someone to complain about my witchy take on studyblogging. 

You’ll find the studyblogging community very welcoming in most cases. But what will you study? I always recommend witches focus on only one or two things they’d most like to learn at a time.

Studyblogging lends itself well to in-depth topical research. This can mean learning the signs and language of astrology or the basics of gemstone magic.

Topics like shadow work or personal Tarot readings might be a bit too personal to blog about. Those might be better suited to normal, private journaling rather than a blog. My own studyblogging tends to focus on my writing preparation, astrology, and Tarot. 

Though I’ve been reading for over twenty years, there is always something new to learn about Tarot. Astrology, like Tarot, is a lifelong discipline. Though I’ve only recently made my first steps into it, there is much to learn. My writing, especially the book I’m working on, has its own notebook.

Possible topics include, but are in no way limited to:

Crystals and gemstones

Astrology

Spellcraft

Mythology and legends

Magical history

Energy work techniques

Seasonal and Lunar cycles

Herbology

Tarot, Lenormand, or oracle deck divination!

It is important to choose topics that interest you in a personal way. At the same time, try not to get distracted. Witchcraft includes many paths of study. Try not to jump from topic to topic - finish what you start!

Supplies

If you’re in school, you may already have a lot of the tools necessary for studying. If not, you can get them for an affordable price in most cases.

Paper matters!  You'll want a notebook or loose leaf binder paper. For hardbound notebooks, you can’t go wrong with a Leuchtturm 1917.  That popular notebook boasts dot grid paper, includes page numbers and a place for an index. 

Seeking something more aesthetic? Check out the Paperblanks series from Peter Pauper Press. You might also like the notebooks you can order from Citrus Bookbindery. For me, a binder (I use A5 size) works best, because I can add and remove pages as necessary. 

You can find some great guides out there about organizing grimoires. Much of that advice applies here. Your notebooks will soon fill the role of a grimoire.  They will contain your notes, research, and more.

It is usually best to have one notebook (or binder) for each subject you’re studying. As you move forward, you’ll have a collection of grimoire notebooks on different topics.

You’ll also need pens or pencils. Really, you only need one. If you feel like getting fancy, you can get multicolored fineliners. I prefer Sakura Micron pens. They use waterproof micropigments that don't bleed when you highlight over your writing.

Highlighters are fun! These add color to your notes and help emphasize the important things. If you want nice highlighters, I recommend Mildliners. Any highlighters will do, though - choose colors that appeal to you. I recommend several different colors, because that allows you to color-code your notes.

Plan!

Plan out, at least in a rough fashion, how you’d like to organize your  notes. This can be rather freeform, or complex, depending on your preference. 

When I began my astrology journey, I knew what sections I would include in my stars grimoire. I also created a rough map of the path I’d take in my research. 

I began with the simple Zodiac signs. I then moved forward through the planets, houses, aspects and transits. My organization, loose though it was, benefited from my use of a binder which allowed me to add and remove pages. 

No matter the notebook, it is important to have, somewhere, a rough idea of where you’re going.

You will also find it important to set attainable, realistic, and measurable goals. For me, this was things like memorizing the astrological house system. I set the goal of reading my astrology textbooks completely and summarizing them. This kind of goal leads to personal accountability.

I also created a set of astrological flashcards for my Tarot-related work. It can be motivational to post your goals on your studyblog in some form. Then, you can provide your followers with regular updates on your progress.

Start posting!

Once you feel ready, go ahead and introduce yourself to the studyblogging community! An introductory post, explaining who you are, your goals, and methods, will help others get to know you. 

I recommend tagging your posts with studyblogging hashtags (mentioned above). Also include some witchcraft-related tags! This will help you connect with other witches who might be helpful on your journey.

Don’t be shy when it comes to posting photographs (taken with a phone or other camera) of your notes! You might not feel that your notes are as neat or pretty as other bloggers. Regardless, they’re unique and might resonate with others!

If you’re taking notes about a very personal topic, like shadow work, you might want to forgo the pictures. Some bloggers obfuscate or blur potentially sensitive parts of their notes. You’ll likely find nothing but encouragement for sharing your research topics, though!

Some studybloggers will also photograph their study space. Some of us even use photos of fun things like their breakfast or pets to illustrate their updates. If pictures don’t suit you, post regular bits about your life and your progress towards your goals. 

Get to know other bloggers! This is important, whether they’re witches or from the studyblogging community. Both can be helpful! 

Watch or read some of the tutorials you’ll find in the studyblogging community. These focus on things like calligraphy, organization, and memory techniques. 

While your notes needn’t have fancy headings, calligraphy can be fun to learn. I don’t currently use calligraphy in my notes, but am learning it on the side, so to speak. 

I find it relaxing, and you might enjoy it too. If not, don't feel bad - not everyone uses fancy handwriting, and that's okay!

Moving Forward

If, after a few weeks, you find yourself really vibing with studyblogging, stick with it! Most witches would agree that there’s no real wrong way to be a witch. To me, though, there are wrong (and right) ways for you yourself to learn and grow in your craft. 

You need to find what works for you, what adheres to your soul and keeps you connected. If studyblogging ends up helping you, and I hope it will, keep going! 

After a while you might find yourself ready to move onto another topic. We all end up “graduating” forward onto other subjects. You’ll quickly find that your grimoires will be an invaluable record. 

They will contain not just your gathered information, but also your intuition, insight, and more. Cherish your notebooks - they will come to reflect your essence!

[unpopularly-opinionated]

I don’t play WoW but I used to play Overwatch and Diablo and this touches on just the general issues that are inside of Activision Blizzard right now regarding the major decline of World of Warcraft and how they’re losing to Final Fantasy XIV, how if the latest WoW expansion or Overwatch 2 flop as they’re projected to do then Blizzard’s most definitely going to pivot almost entirely to mobile games, and how the differences in age demographics are actually dividing the company into multiple camps.

It’s important to note two things: 1) this could be fake but also 2) the link came from Grummz, a former team lead on WoW and producer on Diablo II and Starcraft. It still could be fake despite this, but if he’s sharing it then I feel like there’s at least some measure of truth in this.

Transcription below in case this gets deleted and/or you don’t wanna click the link. Warning, it’s fairly long.

“I’m dropping this here after getting chewed out for three hours over shit the chewee did at work so fuck it. Assume larp and let me vent.”

>Shadowlands is a shitshow. Critical response, Player drop off and just about every engagement metric outside of cash shop have been catastrophic. No higher up expected this because of their “we are too big to fail, if we built it they will come” mentality. They refuse to accept their focus on the world being a begrudged mechanic to funnel players to raiding is not appealing to the player base at large because it appeals to them. They have spent the last 4 months trying to course correct but there is no solid direction and the response to 9.1 has only made things worse.

>Sylvanas is planned to replace the Arbiter despite so many people in the company and god knows how many online saying this would be a total replication of Kerrigans storyline in Starcraft 2 that killed none competitive interest in the brand entirely and you can only go “no, no they WILL like it eventually” for so many real world years before its time to change course. Thus far that has not happened.

>The elephant in the room is FFXIV. To the people in charge they are acting like this came out of nowhere and don’t even seem to understand why its drawing players away in their tens of thousands. We have all tried to highlight things it is doing that are clearly appealing to an mmo audience and not, in my opinion, focussing more on mobile game style retention traps to keep MAU users and habit forming personalities logging in. Its not that they don’t care. They just seem so pig headed and digging their heels in with their fingers in their ears thinking all the problems will go away because WoW is “too big to fail”, there will never be real competition and “they will keep coming back”. But they aren’t coming back anymore. Not in the numbers they used to.

>The people making the spending choices know this. The new model for WoW is market the hell out of a expansion pack for a huge quarter then use 6 month lock ins to pad numbers for the quarters after that. Even if corona had not happened 9.1 still would have been dropping after the initial 6 month subs expired to “keep the chain holding”.

>The mood in the company is tense but also very much “its just a rough transition period”. Activision has been pushing hard for Blizzard to release more regular product and to generate more income per user. As far as i know this is going to be a transition over the next 5 years to a much larger mobile/tablet gaming focus. By all accounts not just WoW but Overwatch was intended to be the moneymaker in the interim but once again someone had the bright idea to kill a game casual players loved on the alter of e-sports hoping for another Brood War. From what i hear the “told you so’s” were loud and a lot of people walked beyond Kaplan.

>The sentiment that was shared quietly in private but being spoken more often is simply that the leadership at Blizzard are not bad people, nor incompetent people but people who had to fill seats left when the old guard jumped ship wether they were suited for it or not. Brack is a genuinely good man out of his depth, Ion is a fantastic raid designer put in charge of designing a virtual world he has no interest or real ideas for and so on. They have been taking form the roles they excel at to be put in positions where they get to do far less of that purely because there is nobody left with the experience to do so and the trickle down is a lack of concrete direction, ambition and focus.

>2021 has seen the playerbase, media and gaming at large “turn” on WoW to a degree i don’t think the leads in their “positivity dojo” bubble considered possible. Its gone from people going “This is how Blizz needs to fix WoW!” to “WoW is no longer salvageable, time for greener pastures” and i think on some level this was never considered as a possibility so there have never been any major plans beyond the usual “try and minimise player drop off by arranging releases around competitors launching updates/products”. The official forums being filled with talk of FFXIV and worse “why do we actually pay a sub?” hasn’t helped.

>There have been some testing the waters lately from certain higher ups if we can remove the line “No King Rules Forever”. Read into that what you will.

>There are still arguments going on about the Kael’thas Voice actor shitshow. I don’t know much about it but i know its heated, wouldn’t be the first time a knee jerk reaction only seemed to generate bad press. We lost a noticeable amount of pvp engagement after the Swifty thing.

>The Preach interview was treated as a disaster and there was talk of more strongly vetting interviewers for “bad actors” and only engaging with a list of questions Blizzard provides. Some pointed out that could just be used to create some form of Fireside Chat akin to the FFXIV “Live letters” but that fell on deaf ears.

>The two sentiments right now among the team are either “we really need a win” or “theres a dedicated cabal of internet trolls out to kill WoW”. Right now we are crunching hard to get 9.2 ready to wrap up the jailors storyline so we can get an expansion out early 2022. If that doesn’t happen there are talks of major shakeups coming down from Activision that have been threatened for a few  years now. Its an all hands on deck feeling thats been around to some degree since the “Is this an out of season April Fools Joke” Blizzcon. A make or break deadline is coming closer and things like Diablo 4 were not planned before then. Blizzard needs a significant win not just in initial profit but consumer goodwill. Nobody likes working at what the public now seems to see as “the bad guy” of the mmo industry.

>This has also made new hires decline. Not significantly but the “you WANT Blizzard on your resume” line doesn’t seem to have the appeal it used to. This has lead to more hiring via friend of a friend, to some rumblings about nepotism, and people severely lacking in experience “because they get great twitter optics”.

>On the topic of Twitter we are not being told to “disengage” from it. Multiple employees like Nervig and Holisky publicly attacking paying customers because they got too heated and couldn’t keep quiet is bad press that could have been avoided. A email reminder has gone around more than once lately stating “if you are not customer relations you should not be representing the company to customers, especially if you cannot remain professional”.

>Lastly the biggest elephant in the room is “yo’ boy” Asmongold. The newer hires cannot stand him. They have used terms like “toxic masculinity” and “dogwhistles to dangerous males” while some of the oldest crowd still remaining have called him “based” or “telling it like it is” which has lead to friction to put it mildly. People are told not to talk about him and the recent FFXIV stuff only made it all worse. The idea that an outside element can have such an effect on the product genuinely upsets people. Like Zach is engaging in some malicious act of cyberwarfare. Many of us have point out the now famous quotes by Naoki Yoshida about understanding that players will drift and we need to make something worth coming back to because they want to but some people for lack of a better word see out customers -or “consumers” as they refer to them nowadays- as some kind of antagonistic relationship where the goal is not being an entertainer putting on a show for a crowd but some kind of game hunter trying to trap a large, profitable kill. I wish i could blame Activision but this is a sentiment from more of the younger crowd than the “tech boomers”. Which personal opinion is probably why so many folks like Metzen and Morheim left.

>Before you ask, yes the topic of “wokeness” has shown up in group talks. Its not all some grand sjw conspiracy, people really do want to feel welcome and represented. However the “we need everything veto’ed by people not working on it to see if its inoffensive and bland enough” rubs some of us the wrong way. Like anything in life you can take something too far and lose sight of the core ideals and with everything gone on since Blitzchung it feels like people are forming little factions to pull people in different directions to decide “What Blizzards identity is now” and how to appeal to new players. There has been some drop offs with “go woke go broke” as the only answer in the survey when unsubbing but honestly we are losing subs in unforseen numbers anyway and still making more money than ever through cash shop “heavy users” so it honestly doesn’t make an impact.

>All in all things are rough right now. Blizzard doesn’t have the love of the customers anymore, is no longer treated as an industry giant and while D4,D2R and Immortal aren’t going to kill Diablo even if they fail the sentiment for World of Warcraft and Overwatch 2 are a lot more tense and stressful. The phrase “it might be good to brush up on your mobile development portfolio if we get another underperformer” has been doing the rounds a lot. If Shadowlands continues its stark decline and Overwatch 2 is looking to underperform like its current projections suggest i think the Blizzard of a few years from now will be imitating King a lot more than trying to learn any lessons from Square Enix’s mmo division.

[carinyms]

We're three days from the Loki finale and I’m back to spout more meta and theories about episodes 5 & 6! It’s a long one (again.)

I really enjoyed episode five. People have complained that they felt it didn't do much to move the show forward, but one of the things I've loved most about this show is the time it takes to sit with the characters and learn about their backstory, their feelings. (I'm always a little bugged when critics say that an episode hasn't done enough to move the plot forward, because without adequate character development, why should I care about the plot?) I thought the pacing of it was really well balanced.

….and I have never been so nervous for a finale in my entire life. There’s a lot of reasons.

The first is just the fact that I’ve been waiting for this show for a whole year, and the anticipation and excitement of it literally helped get me through the pandemic--so when those final end credits roll I’m going to be a whole mess no matter what happens. (I really hope the rumors floating around about season two are accurate) I also just feel like it’s somewhat inevitable that this is our final farewell to Tom’s Loki, and like—I’ll never be ready, but especially right now, amidst all the rampant controversy around this show, I’m just not ready to deal with that. I have a *small* modicum of hope that this won't be the case, but it feels unlikely. Anyway, guess I’ll die.

I really want this show to stick the landing, so to say. I loved the last episode, but a lot of the response has been that it felt like a lull in the plot. I want this show to end in a satisfying bang so it can get the credit it deserves.

Also I’m a whole hypocrite eating my words from last week—I’m fully on-board with Loki/Sylvie now (not that I was ever really against it)--I’m not sure why I’m surprised. They’re so adorable and wholesome, and I’m in love with seeing Loki in love. It’s so precious. (Just as a PSA, if you’re not into them that’s chill, and you’re allowed to dislike a ship without trying to justify your opinion by labeling shippers as morally problematic. Selfcest isn’t a real thing, therefore there isn’t a moral high ground to stand on here. Okay? Okay.) Wherever it ultimately leads, their relationship is still a really sweet exploration of them both growing and learning how to love themselves and trust others. Also, them cuddling under a tablecloth is the cutest shit I’ve ever seen with my two eyes.

MY THEORIES:

I love Sylvie so much, SO MUCH — and she is 100% going to stab Loki in the back by the end of the next episode. I don’t think the betrayal is going to stick, and by the end they’ll both be on the same page again, but the conversations on trust have been way too one-sided for my comfort. If nothing else she's going to seriously consider it. Here’s one way I can see that going. Spoiler alert: it hurts.

Sylvie betrays Loki at one point—and we see Loki’s growth and arc come full circle as, even after being betrayed by the person he hinged his entire development around, he still believes in doing the right thing, in saving her regardless. It ends in a heart-wrenching self-sacrifice of some kind, and his actions serve as the catalyst for her full development as well. We keep seeing different versions of Loki die for their ‘glorious purpose’, just like how Classic Loki shouts the phrase as he was consumed by Aloith (RIP King, I love you).

Loki has already called Sylvie his glorious purpose (or inferred it). There’s been backlash around him saying that, but the way I see it, it’s less “I’m obsessed with this girl she’s my purpose now” and more “I believe that she’s the best version of us and I’m going to make it my purpose to help her succeed and be what the rest of us aren’t”. That’s why seeing all the other variant Loki’s at their worst in the Loki clubhouse (? what do I call this lol) only fuels him more to find her. I think about what Mobius told him: “You exist to cause pain and suffering and death, all so others can achieve the best versions of themselves”. I don’t think Loki truly believes he can be the best version of Loki — I think he saw Sylvie and thought, "it's her". He’s decided he’s going to help her achieve the best version of herself, but he'll do it giving her love and trust and devotion, rather than through betrayal, pain and suffering. He’s re-writing his pre-determined role, in his own small way. I’m so proud of him.

So who’s behind it all and what’s truly going on here? (This isn’t really one theory, more like a string of possibilities and I don’t really know how they’d fit together.)

I still think it’s another version of Loki. And if it is, I can’t help but appreciate the connections between his position dictating the end of time in the show in relation to Loki’s role in the Norse myths, where he’s the catalyst for the destruction of all things. It feels relevant, considering the whole idea that ‘the end of time hasn’t been written yet’ has come up twice now. That would be a fascinating tie-in to the mythology. (Also—Alioth looks like a giant dog. And Fenrir’s role in Ragnarok was devouring the world—I realize this is a reach but am I the only person seeing this connection?) The thing I really can’t predict is the motivation. What would cause a Loki to want to prevent Loki’s from changing? Was there something that happened in the sacred timeline this Loki is trying to preserve? (I also like the idea of us maybe seeing another version of Sylvie behind it all, but I’m just going to leave that rabbit hole alone. )

But here’s the theory I can’t stop thinking about. There’s a theory floating around tik tok (by user twelvepercentcredit) saying the ‘castle’ we see beyond Alioth looks like a place called the House of Ideas, something that appeared in a (discontinued?) Loki comic. Here’s the wiki page on it. Just looking at the imagery of this compared to the location we’re seeing in the trailers, it’s too similar to be a coincidence. The huge bookshelves, the towering ceilings.

Here’s a description from the wiki:

“The House of Ideas is also home to a library which archives the exploits of every hero who has ever existed in the form of books, written unconsciously by the collective minds of their believers. This collection is curated by Now and Then, two of the children of Eternity. Now and Then routinely seek out heroes to bring into the House of Ideas to bargain with them and give their collections more pages, therefore more time for adventures and exploits. “

And later on the page on how Loki ties in:

“Heeding the desire in Loki's heart to do more with his life, Now and Then approached Loki and brought him to the House of Ideas,[5] where they struck up with him the deal to give more pages to his collection of exploits, rewriting the Books of Loki with a hero's stories in exchange for an eventual hero's death.”

Are they gonna play with the exact happenings of this? I don't know, but it sounds pretty cool!

It would be gutsy to go this route with the show given how meta it is, but I love the idea of it. Would they put characters that embody the abstract ideas of “Eternity” “Now & Then” into the show in the last episode? I’m not sure. Something I could see as a possibility though is an alternate version of Loki having overthrown whoever was previously guarding the timeline, and Loki and Sylvie will have to take them down in turn, thus ‘releasing’ the multiverse to its default, chaotic state.

What if our Loki’s ultimate destiny, ultimate Glorious Purpose, is to release the timelines--restoring all the variants back to their original timelines--and remain in this place for eternity, guarding the timeline and ensuring the multiverse is allowed to exist in its natural state? It seems a pretty fitting role for the God of Chaos. It would also explain why whoever’s behind the TVA would be so desperate to eliminate all variant Loki, if that was his ultimate destiny.

It would be an effective way to remove Hiddleston’s Loki from the movie-verse without killing him, AND place both Sylvie and any other Loki variants back in the the main timeline for use in future films—which we know has to happen somehow, because Young Avengers is definitely happening, and Kid Loki has got to get out of the void somehow.

And yea, this outcome would hurt like a bitch. Because even though that would truly be a lovely glorious purpose for our Loki, he’d be alone. And the whole point of this show is that he doesn’t have to be alone! It would be a very poetic sacrifice for him to take on the burden of watching over the timelines alone for all eternity so that his other variants could be the best versions of themselves, but I really just want him to be happy. I will be crying my eyes out if this happens. I’ll be proud but I won’t be okay.

And this all is probably speculative nonsense and could go off in an entirely different direction. Who knows. All in all, I just really want to see Loki fully believe in himself and his ability, to truly absorb what he said about being stronger than he realizes, and to take control of his destiny.

WHAT I WANT (NEED) FROM EPISODE 6:

Let Hunter B-15 and Mobius team up to burn the place to the ground. She was nerfed in the time-keeper fight, I want to see B-15 kick some ass.

I kind of want Ravonna to escape and be a character that carries over into the films for her tie-ins with Kang? I want to see more of her.

Give Loki a new badass costume. I’m begging. If he’s gonna go down, he deserves to go down in something other than khakis.

And then I want to see him and Sylvie fighting side by side in matching outfits.

I want a Mobius-level hug between them. Or a kiss. Or both. But I want the hug more. And you know what? I want her to initiate the hug or kiss or whatever it is because I want Loki to experience receiving love and affection from others as much as giving it. He deserves it ok??

I expect Mobius on a jet ski in the post credits and if I don’t get it I riot

@marvel these are my demands.

As always, if you've made it this far I'd love to hear your thoughts!

[purlturtle]

Fan Meet at Gunpoint

Hey everyone! I've gotten 19 replies to my organization survey; here are the results so far:

the vast majority of respondents (15 out of 19) prefer Saturday as the day of the week for the meet

as for time of day/weekday, I'm seeing a relatively large number of "evenings on a weekday" (10/19), "anytime on Saturday" and "anytime on Saturday and Sunday (8/19 each).

more than half of the respondents are in the US (5x EST, 4x CST, 2xPST), but we also have respondents from Europe and Asia/Australia, which makes things a bit of a challenge!

So, bearing all of these aspects in mind plus the fact that April 23 is Bering and Wells Day (anniversary of their first meeting in London), I was thinking we could have the meet-up on Saturday April 24th? If we start at 2pm PST, that would be 11pm for us central Europeans, and 7am for Japan and 9am for Tasmania/South Australia, which were the two furthest time zones. Would this work for you? Is there another Bering and Wells thing going on on that weekend that I'd be infringing on (which I do NOT want!)? Please let me know!

If you still want to take part in the survey (yes, you absolutely still can!), find it here: https://forms.gle/M6VVP6hYRTtfZq7UA

Further aspects of organizing and content under the break:

Organizing:

while it will be a Zoom meet-up or similar (most respondent either outright prefer Zoom or have no preference of video over text), using your camera will absolutely be voluntary! Toggle it off or on, whichever makes you feel most comfortable. Having your camera active will NOT be mandatory. I will come up with some way to make sure that everyone entering the meet is not a zoom-bomber, but that can happen without camera mandate.

a few people have stated their preference of a text or chat-based format; it won't be possible to have captions in Zoom, but we can have a breakout room for chat users if you prefer that - would that work for you? Also, there was a note about distracting audio (like echos, buzzing or similar) - I think that's easiest to avoid if everyone uses headsets, but I can't mandate that. If something like this occurs, we will handle it day of.

I stand ready to function as a mod, so if anyone should misbehave or communicate inappropriately (rules for which will be worked out in advance), I can step in. I want this to be a place where everyone feels safe and welcome, and where we can talk about our favorite ship without fear of harassment - however, agreeing to disagree (for example on canon interpretations or personal headcanons) is also going to be necessary! There's plenty to criticize in how the show handled B&W, but we might disagree on individual aspects of it, and this will be a place to constructively do so!

Content

most people want this to be a meeting place where we can squee about Bering and Wells together (16/19)/shit-talk Season 5 (14/19), meet/get to know each other (15/19), and exchange head canons (11/19). That's absolutely doable! I'm thinking of a somewhat moderated talking round where people can introduce themselves and say a few words about what the fandom means to them or favorite B&W experiences, that kind of thing, with a moderator around to ask questions to keep the conversation flowing, and later the option to come together in smaller, themed breakout rooms to talk about specific things. How does that sound?

next big thing is fic recs (14/19), an art gallery (12/19), and an actresses appreciation corner. I'm thinking about a different format for this; Zoom doesn't really lend itself to that. Something like Mural or Miro, a virtual whiteboard where we can put these things up - the good thing about that is that it will remain after the Zoom meeting is over, so people can come back to it and enjoy it or contribute to it later, even!

we have a few people who'd be interested in watching panels (12/19) or in meeting creators (11/19); that's something that can happen in Zoom if we find people who'd be willing to be panelists. A few respondents have said that they are; I'll make a separate post for organizing this! Topics range from exploring Bering and Wells both as a relationship and individually and the tropes that abound in this ship, to fan content (meeting creators, how-to's for creating)

last but not least we have 12/19 people being interested in a trivia quiz! Now, I have no idea how to go about one of these, but maybe we can make it happen! If you know how to do one of these, let me know!

I want to state again that all of this is still in the planning stages and by no means fixed. If you have ideas about any of these things, especially if something just jumps out at you as wrong or not okay, please please please let me know. I want this to be as accessible, inclusive and enjoyable as possible!

[neil-jortson]

It’s only a matter of time

This is a hc about what I think would happen to the foxes in quarantine. I made this as a part of the gift exchange from @aftgexchange for the Tumblr user @wishbonetea . It was an awesome experience to do this exchange and I hope to do it again! 

Summary: a collection of ideas about how the foxes lives would have to adapt during quarantine 

word count: 2k 

The foxes in quarantine: a bullet point fic 

The year is 2020. Matt, Kevin, Andrew, and Neil are all professional exy players. Neil and Andrew fought hard and finally got put on the same team that past season.

Dan is an assistant coach for a college team in the same city that Matt plays in. Nicky lives in Germany with Erik and Aaron is just finishing up his residency in medical school. Allison is a major fashion designer who donates more money than she keeps. Renee works with the peace corp and is currently out of the country. Everything is good. 

Dan and Matt are expecting their first child in less than two months and are trying to clean up the spare room to begin making a nursery for the baby. 

On the tv in another room plays a news reporter talking about a virus on the horizon in China. They don’t think much of it and continue about their days.

Andrew and Neil lived a fairly domestic life, one they never thought they would live, with two cats and a nice set of kitchen knives. (They were a house warming present from Aaron: “it’s ironic” he would say when asked why he purchased the set.) 

When Andrew and Neil heard about the novel virus, they simply changed their in-depth arguments about a zombie outbreak to arguments on what to do in the event the virus becomes a big deal. Little did they know some of their “predictions” would turn out to be correct. 

Everyone went about their normal lives just keeping an eye on the news before things seemed to change at the drop of a hat. The country was shutting its borders and not allowing flights in from other countries. There was even talk of cities going into lockdown. 

Renee was trying to catch a flight home with the rest of her crew. When she made it back into the states, she found she had nowhere to go. Allison invited her to stay at her apartment in NYC. She was not aware of how long they were going to be stuck there (not that Allison was against sharing an apartment with a beautiful girl like Renee). 

It became more real to the rest of them as the Exy season was postponed until further notice. 

Kevin didn’t know what to do with himself and Neil. Was. Devastated.

It was only a matter of days before they began to get antsy about not going to the court daily. Neil and Kevin had shared anxious words as they hadn’t heard what the Moriyamas would think about them not receiving the normal amount of money this season. Andrew tried to put their minds at ease, but with no words of communication from the crime syndicate, they were getting worried. 

Dan and Matt were probably the most stressed of the bunch. The information they had gathered was that most of the Foxes were in good shape to handle the virus even if they were to get sick, but there wasn’t any data on how the virus would affect pregnant women. Dan feared for the health of the baby because of this uncertainty. She and Matt decided that they would follow the government regulations for quarantine and that when groceries needed to be picked up, Matt would be the one to go out and get them. 

Wymack’s thoughts were focused on his foxes and how they would be affected by the pandemic. He thought of Matt and Dan bringing a baby into the world at an unlikely time. He thought of Andrew and Neil who never could commit to quitting smoking (even if Neil just liked the smell). He worried about Aaron working in a hospital. For Nicky's mental health while being stuck at home and away from people. He worried that Kevin would start drinking again without the regime of Exy to keep him on track. He was concerned about Renee and Allison living in one of the worst cities to be stuck in when a pandemic hits. He thought about every person he had had as a fox before them and after them. He spent most of his time checking up on the foxes and the other portion of his time reaching out to organizations to see what they needed. He volunteered when he could and spread the word when he couldn’t. 

As the foxes settled into their lives stuck at home and thousands of miles apart from one another, things settled into a new normal. 

Andrew and Neil lived in quiet harmony when the quarantine first began. Neil went running every morning in a park that was not very crowded and when he would come home he would head straight to the shower. Eventually, Andrew convinced him to buy a treadmill because he was worried about Neil getting sick. Although, the way that he phrased it, it would seem he didn’t care either way. (Neil saw right through him)

Life for them was simple but draining. 

The longer the quarantine went on, the worse off Neil and Andrew became. 

Andrew found himself talking more and more with Betsy as being stuck at home was leaving him alone with his thoughts more than he would like. He felt old emotions creeping to the forefront of his mind as he was stuck in a two-bedroom apartment with two cats and a man he “hated.”  

Being stuck at home for Neil was his own personal hell. He paced around the apartment often and felt no true release from running on the treadmill. Neil felt the same way he did when his mom and he were snowed in at a safe house in the mountains. He walked to the corners of each room and took stock of the items in the home. He felt himself get more and more on edge as the days went by. 

Dan and Matt were better off when it came to mental health. It also helped that they tried not to take out their worries on one another, they were a team. They enjoyed each other's company and would try to hang out on opposite sides of the house as much as possible. They knew when they started to push each other's buttons and would back off when they started going too far. 

Matt knew that Dan felt bad about not being able to leave the house so he got a kiddy pool for her to sit in outside. It wasn’t much, but Dan enjoyed the fact that Matt was thinking of her when he went out shopping. They spent many afternoons sitting in the tiny pool that barely fit them and laughing at the different antics of their crazy neighbors that day. 

Nicky got a hold of everyone's schedule and decided that they should do group facetime calls every week. It was really hard to find a good time because everyone lived in different time zones and Aaron had a rotating doctor’s schedule, but Nicky was able to find 45 minutes a week when everyone was awake and not at work. 

Dan and Matt had finally found proper places to put all of the items that had been in the nursery and were just beginning to start the vacuum cleaner when they heard an alarm go off on Dan’s phone. 

It was time for them to talk with their old team. 

Everyone slowly joined the call and Nicky was just as enthusiastic in welcoming every person who joined. 

Nicky was especially delighted when Kevin answered the call and the foxes came to find out his hair had grown out longer than he ever let it before. (He claimed it wasn’t professional to have longer hair but he looked better than ever with the length.)

When Allison joined the call, some of the foxes were surprised to see Renee sitting right beside her. Renne’s hair had grown out and Dan noticed that there was a distinct line from where she had been bleaching her hair

Dan asked, “Hey Renee, what are you going to do with your hair?”

Renee responded with “I’m really not sure yet, but I think I want to grow it out with my natural color”

Allison whispered something in Renee's ear and she blushed. 

All of the foxes took notice of this and decided that maybe it was time to settle one of the few remaining bets from college. 

Neil and Andrew were the last to join the call and they seemed pissed off. Right before they noticed they were a part of the call, they seemed to be arguing in Russian. They quickly noticed they were on camera and stopped arguing but they wouldn’t really look at one another. 

Nicky asked them how they were doing which Neil responded with “We’re fine” and Andrew scoffed at the word. 

Nicky knew better than to dig around in their personal business so he let it drop and began to ask Aaron and Katelynn how their dog was, was it still cute, can they show it on the camera? 

They responded by turning the camera to let everyone see the sleeping puppy at the edge of their bed. This answered two of the questions because as everyone could see, the dog was still very cute. They told them about a run into the vet they had to make because “the little fiend” has a knack for eating things he’s not supposed to. 

Dan and Matt told everyone how the pregnancy was going and told them the tale of woe trying to find the perfect crib for the baby’s room. 

“When it arrived, we opened up the package and it was bright green! Who in their right mind is going to put their baby in a bright green crib? It’s ridiculous is what it is” complained Matt when Dan had finished telling them how long the package had taken to arrive. 

While everyone was talking Andrew and Neil had seemed to calm down and Neil had placed his head on Andrew’s shoulder. Things weren’t always sunshine and daisies but they weren’t really mad at each other when they fought. 

After everyone had caught up there was a lull in the conversation that Neil began to fill. He told them about the time they had to rescue King Fluffkins. They had gotten King recently just a few months prior to the quarantine coming into effect. This was the first time that the team had heard Neil say the words “King Fluffkins” out loud. It is needless to say that they laughed for a long while hearing Neil say the ridiculous name the team had given to their cat. When they calmed down they listened to Neil explain how King had gotten out of the window they kept partially open for smoking. Andrew had to hold on to Neil’s waist as Neil propelled himself out the window to get a hold of the cat at the edge of the window sill. King had dug her claws in and Neil almost fell out of the window. They got her inside but put a lock on the window to ensure she didn’t make her way out there again. 

That story pushed their time to when they needed to say goodbye. Aaron’s shift started in under an hour and he needed to get to work. They all said their goodbyes and set up a time for the following week. 

It helped everyone to talk amongst themselves and to hear what had been going on while they were at home. They were all worried about what was going on, but it seemed as though they were becoming more connected, even across the vast distance. 

It was only a matter of time before this came to pass and Neil and Andrew would get to see Dan and Matt’s baby. 

It was only a matter of time before the exy season started up once more and the Moriyamas demanded a larger cut from Neil’s salaries for the break he was on during the pandemic. 

It was only a matter of time before Nicky could come and visit the twins for Christmas. 

It was only a matter of time before all of the foxes felt their lives returning to a slightly new normal. 

It was only a matter of time.

[merelliahallewell]

An Order of Embers Roleplay Primer

Hello, friends. A while back I wrote a not-so-brief guide to Order of Embers roleplay that seemed to help a few people. MG’s Kul Tiras community has been growing lately and I’ve also founded a new guild and RP project set in Drustvar, and so I figured I would update this for clarity and ease of reading. In other words? I... am back on my bullshit.

This primer will be headcanon/fanon free, and only reference quest text or other information that can be found in-game in Drustvar. If headcanons are your thing, I’ll be releasing an in-character guide to Kul Tiras’s monsters and dark magic soon. I hope. It is the endless writing project. 

Drustvar’s Woes

On Kul Tiras’ western side lies the mountainous region of Drustvar. It provides most of the island kingdom’s ore, some food, and some of their strongest warriors.

In recent times, a civil war raged across Kul Tiras. A secessionist, N’zoth-aligned faction run by Lord Stormsong in the north and an attempted coup led by Lady Ashvane in Boralus itself nearly toppled the Proudmoore Admiralty, but were stopped by brave souls. Drustvar was strangely absent from these conflicts, and many refugees spilled out into the rest of Kul Tiras telling frightening tales of “wooden demons” who had driven them from their homes.

Most of the land west of the mountains had fallen to a group of terrifying magic-users who enslaved the minds of all they came into contact with... if they didn’t kill them for sport or use them as reagent for foul and perverse rituals. The land east of the mountains was on the brink, as well. Corrupted wildlife roamed the woods freely and witches practiced their dark spellcraft freely, driving the remaining desperate souls into worship of the wickermen or into frenzied attempts to prosecute innocents for the crimes of the terrifying Heartsbane Coven. All of this happens before the player even arrives in Drustvar.

The Order of Embers

During the zone’s storyline, the player and Lucille Waycrest discover that the magic being used against the people of Drustvar is that of the ancient Drust, who were defeated thousands of years earlier by a group known as the Order of Embers. The Drust were a seafaring clan of Vrykul that eventually settled on Kul Tiras sometime after the Sundering. They developed druidic ways that brought them in tune with the land and even earned them the blessing of nature spirits, but those ways were perverted by a sorcerer-king who set the Drust upon the path of death and domination.

The old Order were comprised of those who took up arms against their far more powerful foes, exploiting weaknesses in Drust magic uncovered by scholars. The Waycrests were members of the ancient order, and it was Arom Waycrest himself who led the charge to defeat the Drust king Gorak Tul. In the cavern Gol Var, once a Drust stronghold, they recover an ancient tome known as the Tome of Silver and Ash, a treatise which contained all the old Order’s knowledge on combatting their magic.

In the town of Arom’s Stand, some of the Waycrest Guard’s finest remaining soldiers were recruited to become the reborn Order’s first Inquisitors. The newly-anointed inquisitors brought the fight to the Heartsbane from there.

The Order’s battles with the Heartsbane Coven play out over the latter half of the Drustvar questing experience and also the zone’s world quests. They add new members to their ranks, create new weapons for use against the Coven, and push back against them on all sides. Eventually, they storm Waycrest Manor, cutting off the head of the snake and defeating the Coven’s leadership. Gorak Tul was forced back into the death-realm of Thros, prevented from returning for the time being. (Tul was later killed in Thros during the Pride of Kul Tiras questline.)

It’s unclear how long it took to purge the Heartsbane from Drustvar- if the task was truly completed at all. Blizzard rarely addresses zone stories after the fact, which means the plot thread has been left hanging and was not addressed in any subsequent patches in BfA. The Order of Embers also assisted with the fight against the Horde during the Drustvar invasion.

It may be a reasonable inference that Drustvar is being repaired and de-cursed in the aftermath of the war, but that is not an easy task.

Who leads the Order of Embers? Does it have a hierarchy?

Lucille Waycrest- now the ruling Lady of Drustvar, and the last of her house, is in charge of the Order. All inquisitors are raised to their stations by the authority of House Waycrest. Other important figures are the remaining original inquisitors (Sterntide, Mace, Notley, and Yorrick), the quartermaster Alcorn, and Marshal Joan Cleardawn, a former inquisitor that was given new leadership over the Waycrest Guard.

The Order seems to lack much of a formal hierarchy- most of the named NPCs are simply titled with inquisitor, working together as a team rather than issuing commands to one another. They also seem to be adept at handling missions alone and on their own or with the aid of local allies. 

Can I roleplay an inquisitor or other member of the Order of Embers? Is it lore-abiding to do so?

Sure! The Order didn’t stop at five inquisitors- a world quest boss for the Horde during the invasions has them facing off against a new Inquisitor named Erik. They also have a quartermaster and a cleric, which means there may be support staff involved that do not bear the big title but are still part of the group. The Order is probably not handing out inquisitor garb like candy, but there’s no reason to assume that a worthy and trusted individual wouldn’t be made an inquisitor.

However, it is worth mentioning that the Order of Embers might not be too trusting of those wielding or even infused with darker powers, given the devastation of their homeland by spellcasters wielding terrifying magic. That is just a guess on my part, but an educated one. Drustvar as a whole has a very low-magic culture.

Could a non-human join the order?

I don’t see why not, but there are no non-human methods ingame. I would never say that it is lore-breaking to roleplay a nonhuman as an Inquisitor, just that there’s no real in-game basis to make this judgement on either way. If you want to roleplay an inquisitor that’s not human and you think you have solid IC reasoning: go for it!

Obviously, the Order of Embers may be more hesitant to accept, say, a void-infused elf with tentacle hair or a worgen warlock as an inquisitor than a race they’re more familiar with such as a sturdy dwarf or genius gnome. Ability to serve House Waycrest and being of aid against the Heartsbane are likely strong factors in joining up- they may not make a person an inquisitor if they’re a night elf sorcerer that’s been in Kul Tiras for two weeks and hasn’t ever seen a witch in his life.

Initiation Ceremony

To become a member of the Order of Embers, the initiate undergoes a short ritual where they are presented with their garb.

Brothers and Sisters, today you become the searing fire that burns away the darkness.

Today you become the shining blade that cuts through the wicked.

Today you become the beacon of hope against the endless foe.

By the authority of House Waycrest, I name you inquisitors of the Order of Embers!

Clothing and Armor

Upon being appointed to their new stations, inquisitors are offered a set of garb inspired by drawings in the Tome of Silver and Ash of what the ancient inquisitors wore. This armor seems to be dark brown leather gear and also has a feathered cap involved- though only one of the inquisitors seems to have chosen to wear that accessory. The specific in-game set is the “Armor of the Dashing Scoundrel,” which comes from Antorus. It drops from the heroic difficulty of the raid. It should be noted you don’t need the whole set- each inquisitor wears different pieces of it and matches them with other clothing or armor pieces. The hat also has a chance to drop from the Commodore Calhoun rare in Vol’dun. Not sure if it would drop for non leather users, so be careful.

Don’t feel like you have to be a rogue to play an Inquisitor- going for tones of brown with some silver or grey mixed in will likely net you a pretty good-looking set. There are Kul Tiran questing and dungeon plate sets that look fantastic and are worn by Waycrest Guard/Marshal NPCs that would work great as an inquisitor’s battle armor.

The Order also has a tabard, which is worn by the quartermaster who sells it. While no inquisitors actually seem to wear it, it’s one of the better-looking tabards added that expansion and has a distinctive look. It matches well with just about any gear that has brown or tones of silver/grey.

If you’re looking for some transmog ideas, this is a link to the Order of Embers mogs on /r/transmogrification. There is a super sweet plate set OoE set on there that actually won Best Dressed of 2018 for that armor class.

If you’re looking for a great Order of Embers-type transmog, the Leather PvP set from Shadowlands’ first season really hits those vibes. It has a very witch hunter theme to it, is colored largely brown, and the belt has fucking potions and silver spikes on it for use on... enemies. I cannot understate how badass this set is. The best part? It is not class locked, meaning that this armor is available to anybody that can wear leather gear, if you toggle the vendor pane to show “all classes.” However, it does cost Conquest points (and a lot of them), so you may want to be picky with what you grab unless you don’t intend to gear through PVP this season. We don’t know if it will be available after the season ends, so you may want to pick that up soon if it’s your thing. Also, it’s just a nice-looking coat and we don’t have a lot of those in-game. 

Weaponry

The inquisitors of the Order of Embers wield a number of different weapons, taken from their prior occupation as members of the Waycrest Guard. Everything from two-handed swords to crossbows are used by them- and that’s just primary weapons. Their armor features throwing knives as well. Inquisitor Mace even carries a trio of daggers sheathed at her belt- it seems they have no shortage of tools for dispatching foes with.

Players who have completed the zone’s Bleak Hills Mine quests also have a buff called Silvered Weapons. Silver can disrupt the magics of the Drust, and stun abberations, elementals, and undead in the zone. This is an inference, but it may be because all of those monster types in Drustvar are powered by this magic. The silver recovered from one of the region’s mines was used to begin producing weapons for the Order such as the silver-plated hand cannon Witchrend, which seems to shoot silver shrapnel to great effect against the Heartsbane.

It should be pointed out that silver is a shitty metal to make a weapon out of. It is not half as strong as steel or whatever else they make weapons out of in Azeroth. The original Order of Embers got around this fact by making weapons with a steel core and covering them with a layer of pure silver- you find one of their long-abandoned knives out in the world.

Other universes have done similar things with silver weapons- D&D has a ruling about silvered weapons, and The Witcher series has a whole class of silver swords created with special forging techniques. It may be wise to take a page from the latter universe, as Witchers face the same issue regarding silver’s weakness as a weapon. They get around that by carrying two swords- one for men, the other for monsters. I’m not telling you that you should roleplay a Witcher but I am saying that’s kind of half the reason we’re here, so it might be okay to borrow that idea since they face that very legitimate problem with a smart solution.

Storm Silver is a metal found abundantly in Kul Tiras, and is used for building ships, making armor light enough to swim in, and consecrating for various uses by Tidesages. It is likely not the same as pure silver, but we don’t have explicit confirmation either way.

Alchemical fire is also a potent weapon against witches and Drust alike, crafted by Master Ashton. The original text specifically says it was used to “burn away the Drust.” This concoction is tricky to make, requiring the reagents Heartbloom, Saltpeter, volatile sap, and Sulfur. The fire is carried in a reinforced flask that is made to withstand the test of time, able to hold the volatile components without igniting. Inquisitors use alchemical fire to pour over dangerous objects or to shift into more breakable containers for throwing. This is seen in the Gorak Tul fight, when alchemical fire is put into flasks which are shattered over the corpses of his minions to prevent them from rising again. 

It isn’t addressed whether magical fire has the same effect as this alchemical concoction. A fire mage, destruction warlock, or priest wielding holy fire might be a neat character concept to bring to the table for an order that doesn’t have a lot of magic.

Rowan wood is also useful against Drust magic. However, it is not specified how exactly it is helpful. Rowan trees don’t grow in Kul Tiras, so an inquisitor seeking that wood would need to travel overseas for such a reagent. It could, however, be extremely helpful and far cheaper than making a silver weapon. 

Non-inquisitor Roles

If you find the Order of Embers cool, but don’t think you like the idea of hunting witches all day, they have more than just inquisitors. The witch hunters rely on specialists to help them get the tools they need to beat back the Heartsbane, and even simply through the questing experience they gather new allies. The blacksmith Angus Ballaster and the alchemist Master Ashton both are essentials. As mentioned before, they are also joined by a cleric, Loriette. A skilled smith or alchemist could find work alongside the Order of Embers, perhaps helping to craft more weapons for them or concocting potions for use in the field.

Allies

The witch hunters are not the only ones out to defend their homes- they are joined by a plethora of others trying to protect the region. Whether you believe the Coven is still an active threat or not, these are still the most common friends an Inquisitor may find in the field.

Waycrest Guard - The Waycrest Guard are Drustvar’s chief protectors, but lost many of their members to the mind-enslaving curse of the Heartsbane. They work alongside the Order of Embers in the Drustvar quests. The original inquisitors are all drawn from the Waycrest Guard, so the Order has deep ties with them. It appears largely as if the Guard protect the settlements, and the inquisitors are the ones striking deep into enemy territory. They could be called to do heavier lifting when the Order alone cannot do the job.

Town Militia - With much of the Waycrest Guard falling under the control of the Coven, the towns of Drustvar were forced to look to their own defenses, such as in Falconhurst and Fletcher’s Hollow. Ordinary citizens have bravely taken up arms in defense of their homes, and the aid of a skilled inquisitor would likely be welcomed. Even with the witches defeated, it’s likely some militia still protect their towns.

Thornspeakers - The Thornspeakers are a faction of Drust and human druids that live out in Drustvar’s woods and mountains. They are led by Ulfar, the last living Drust and the leader of the faction that sided with the humans against their own kind. The Thornspeakers seem to congregate at Ulfar’s Den along the eastern side of the mountains, but watch over all of Drustvar and Tiragarde. They work hard to maintain the balance in nature, and have allies in the mysterious pair of stags that roam the forests...

Drustvar Rangers - Though they only appeared in a few brief quests supporting the Thornspeakers, Drustvar seems to have a number of woodsmen trying to do their part to protect their home. They do not seem to be magical or anything, just some normal folks 

Notes, RP hooks, Excess Lore, etc

The Order of Embers is based out of Arom’s Stand in central Drustvar. The building Lucille occupies is possibly their headquarters. They also may use Gol Koval as a base of operations. 

Onions seem to be anathema to the witches and their servants. 

Witches have been observed to call upon Drust magic without the Coven’s assent- once by a rejected witch in Drustvar, and again in Tiragarde at the Algerson Yard. This could open up the possibility of inquisitors venturing outside Drustvar to battle new threats. Additionally, it seems as if there may be some witches left as of the Shadowlands quests that take you back to Drustvar, so the hunt may not be over.

The Drust themselves have invaded Ardenweald from Thros. Whether it’s Drust artifacts/contraband making their way into Azeroth of the Drust themselves trying a full-on invasion through the yawning portal into Thros that was left unresolved in BfA, there’s a ton of possible plot threads that can be picked up related to them. A journey into the afterlife wouldn’t even be out of the question, since common citizens make it to Oribos and there is talk of mortals being able to join covenants. The Night Fae would be in dire need of a bold soul bearing flame and silver to drive back their foes and protect the cycle of life and death.

The Holy Light may be used by some members of the Order of Embers. Inquisitor Erik uses holy spells for his attacks when engaged by Horde players, and Cleric Loriette casts a fiery blessing on players who have unlocked her, a spell type usually reserved for priests. She’s also a cleric which usually implies the Light in this universe. A Light-wielding inquisitor is not out of the question, it seems, especially since Drustvar seems to have some ties to the Light if you look into it. 

Despite the possibility of Drustvari Light-wielding inquisitors, this is not the same situation as the Scarlet Crusade. The Order of Embers is not a holy or religious order. It owes allegiance to House Waycrest. Religious zealotry is not on their menu. Per the faction description, the Order of Embers fights with knowledge guiding their blades. 

It’s unlikely the Order would be suspicious of magic-users such as druids or shamans, given that they share a continent with Thornspeakers, Tidesages, and even mages (even if those are offscreen). They would have to be a pretty poor inquisitor to confuse the magics of their allies with that of Drust magic, so don’t go inquisitioning random magic users. 

This isn’t really anything to do with canon, but please don’t use the Order of Embers to live out really fringe stuff with purging ‘heretics’ or being racist at elves or what have you. The community has a history with seeing that sort of stuff in inquisitor characters and it is unlikely to earn you a super great reception if you choose to roleplay that. 

Further Reading (Fanon and out-of-WoW information)

This blog post goes over some potential processes for silvering and what happens when these weapons are used on creatures averse to silver.

Matt Mercer has created an interesting Dungeons & Dragons class called the Blood Hunter (which used to be called Witch Hunter.) It provides some interesting ideas that could be brought into an inquisitor character, especially one that might be interested in wielding darker magics to counter evil powers. You can view the class on D&D Beyond, or read the old Witch Hunter PDF which is a prior draft.

I recently did a huge series of writeups on the Drust, the Order of Embers’ perennial foe. If you’re wanting something to face off against or just want to know your lore, you can give these a read!

The Drust Background  - -  The Drust in BfA  - -  The Drust in Ardenweald

Night Fae Campaign (1)  - - Night Fae Campaign (2)

- - - - - -

I hope this post was helpful to anybody who’s feeling like trying out this sort of roleplay! It’s terribly long-winded but I wanted to do my best to cover all of the information out there. If you’d like to reach out to me about this topic or roleplay with an inquisitor, I play the character “Inquisitrix” mainly on both Moon Guard and sometimes “Merciella” on Wyrmrest Accord. 

If you’re looking for Order of Embers-themed roleplay and you play on Moon Guard, the guild <Silver and Ash> might be what you’re looking for, as they roleplay a group of inquisitors! On Wyrmrest Accord, there is a small interguild community called the Hex Hunter’s Society that I believe may be active still. If you’re looking for other Kul Tiran-type roleplay or want to put an inquisitor in a different environment, there are a few other guilds out there that utilize Kul Tiras on both Wyrmrest and Moon Guard. Happy hunting!

[owengrantham]

These are all well respected people.

Natural life. "These are all well respected people. "Traps are the very best," she said. Many products are advertised but they never mention specific types of hair from different races. “Do you take me for a whore?” She was one of the singer’s washerwomen, the tall skinny one, too lean and leathery to be called pretty … though there was a time when Theon would have tumbled her all the same, to see how it felt to have those long legs wrapped around him. But, I mean, come on, Hawaii is pretty consistent on its temperatures and weather, so we have never experienced that weather condition to exclude us from being able to zimski delavski kombinezon take off at max load.". Decker would catalog cercei aur turcia wait a few minutes, and get a call back. Bruin had a little daughter who had been a pet and favorite with the girls. Tanner Fuller, who is now widowed and residing in San Francisco with her three sons.. She had a sort of attack or fainting-fit. He died in 1996. Mike Lupica, in the New York Daily News: "You look at the money being thrown (around) in the NBA, especially by teams WITH money, and wonder all over again what the lockout actually, you know, accomplished." . M. At least 25 more people were wounded in the air strike.. He had learned to read High Valyrian at his maester’s knee, though what they spoke in the Nine Free Cities … well, it was not so much a dialect as nine dialects on the way to becoming separate tongues. This mountain would have been insane if everything ungroomed had actually nike air max 102 essential white been skiable. At Nike, digital is a powerful innovation engine. Separate men and women into different rooms. These shoes are designed with a Full chunk polyurethane midsole.. Like any high performance athlete or artist, dancers are always on the lookout for any equipment advantage another dancer might have. Septon Cellador baby nike trainers drank some wine. Chop through a man’s neck with that thing, though, and his head is not like to turn into a melon.” He took the sword back from her and inspected it more closely. Before your trip, ship any used yet usable fishing gear to the Grizzly Hackle Fly Shop, located on the banks of the Clark Fork River in downtown Missoula. To the annoyed gardener who has just discovered new tunnels in a pristine landscape, they are the scourge of the earth. Ten more were added during the 1930s, and in 1981, it went to 21 floors. I did run into some racial things in certain arenas, but it was certainly very minute in comparison to what Willie O'Ree went through."By the time McKegney played in the NHL, he was able to open even more doors for younger players and create some level of acceptance for young black players who could point to McKegney and his contemporaries as success stories."One of the nicest things I hear from young people is they felt because I was there playing they felt they could be accepted in hockey," McKegney said. A still stronger witness was borne against this sin when God, in Jesus Christ, took human nature, and made each human being polo raflorene a brother of the Lord. They easy to compare because Pence came into the league in and Pablo in Over that time in their careers, Pence has played in 1,218 games. The civic association held an appreciation dinner adidas mariposas for the Gumbs, who live in Temple Hills and have been a member of the association since 1975. Note that McMahon ran for the Liberals in 1996, and his wife, Wendy McMahon, was the Liberal MLA for Columbia River Revelstoke before being defeated in the last election. The strife that is being stirred up is not to take away anything that belongs to another,—neither their silver or gold, their fine linen or purple, their houses or land, their horses or cattle, or anything that is their property; but to rescue a neighbor from their unmanly cupidity... Someone told them knights were good at that. If they think it necessary they'll report it for you.. Battery life in wearables is critical for pantofi sport tip soseta dama user experience, and as we have seen the technology for wearables is in its infancy right now. IT IS NOT ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING. Why should I fancy that you must think so? Yes, my suspicious nature has often been a drawback to me in my life, and my whole misunderstanding with your family has perhaps been due to my unfortunate character! . (See Pls.?Proposed Final Judgment 1, 2.) By rejecting forthwith the government improper request for structural relief, the Court will spare itself and the parties the burden of extended proceedings addressing a remedy that cannot be imposed here as a matter of law.. A young girl could be lifted out of poverty if her feet were small and perfectly curved, because that was more important to men than her social status [source: Holman].. The garment was a clumsy thing, a long loose shapeless sheet that had to be wound around her hips and under an arm and over a shoulder, its dangling fringes carefully layered and displayed. The cabin boy did not answer. The wind was from the south, moist as a kiss. Thank you for clarifying in your hub the difference between the two. Paper is used to make three dimensional pieces (including a magnified, three dimensional hat inspired from a paparazzi photograph of Blanket Michael Jackson hat), illustrative books, watermarked drawing collages and paintings. And when an area is already cazadora vaquera tommy hilfiger dry, droughts worsen because warmer air takes more water out of the ground, like "levying a larger tax on the plants and soil moisture," Arndt said.. The clans of the northern hills come with him bikes btt usadas on their shaggy runtish horses. “Get the sealing wax.” Before I change my mind. The only thing that troubled her was that her father might curse her. He attained this object. Some newer games even like Left 4 Dead 2 also play well, but for the most part, it is underpowered for Eyefinity resolutions.. Put in the ceramic plate, then the grill rack. 12666 72nd Ave. One bikes btt usadas more step toward completing the American Dream. That was very nice of him, and I liked him for it. And the season is over. “My father’s grandmother was a Flint of the mountains, on his mother’s side,” Jon told her. Suzuki has also sharpened the styling and improved equipment levels. Hey Angry Driver, get some continuing education for starters, focus on grammar and basic arithmetic, then perhaps you can also acquire better reading skills, which will enable you to actually do a bit of research before commenting on current events. More importantly, this component will be on the best selling LEAP jet engine, being developed by CFM International, a joint company of GE and Snecma (SAFRAN) of France and will mark the first time such a complex component will be manufactured using additive technology. It remains to be seen just how practical the Iconia 6120 touch interface is going to be: the Toshiba Libretto W100 was released largely as a limited edition curiosity, and Toshiba tried pushing its utility by being able to hold it like a book and manipulate it that way.. At least he did not dream.

[conduitandconjurer]

Hi there! I’ve lurked for a little while and just recently followed. You have a really interesting take on Klaus and I’d like to ask: what kind of things do you do to get into character so to speak? Are there any important things about his character you like to keep in mind when you write him? And as someone who has written for many years but is considering rp, any advice for a first-timer? Thanks and hope you have a wonderful day/night!

First of all you should know that I’ve been rping on various platforms for over 15 years at this point, and messages like this still MAKE MY WHOLE WORLD BETTER <33333  Thank you SO much for your gracious and generous kind words.  You took a second to extend a hello and compliment my hard work and it means so so much.

So Klaus and I are NOTHING alike, which is exactly why I choose to write muses like him.  It provides me an outlet of escape from my own life (which has its ups and downs) and it’s a creative and intellectual challenge to understand what makes a person so behaviorally different from myself tick. Most writers like to write characters who are like them.  And I do that too, but for me, I just need some single trait in a character that I resonate with. For Klaus, it’s his innate sweetness and vulnerability (which he tries and fails to conceal) and his need (and failure) to establish boundaries (with family and with ghosts), and finally it’s his fear of being insufficient as a person his family can rely upon (which he copes with by creating artificial emotional distance, and abusing substances, whereas I the mun marinate in guilt and try to overcompensate lmao).  While we’re still not alike, I can BEGIN to understand WHY he behaves the way he does, and I can build my portrayal off of that. 

Put another way, most of my muses are queer nonbinary he/him/they pronoun users, often neurodivergent, who are undergoing a moral struggle, usually somewhere in the antihero category, or even villains. I on the other hand am a queer cis disabled woman with PTSD who is a Lawful Good......and I think that, having a point for relating to but still not being exactly like my muses,  I almost begin to see myself as these characters’ mother or advocate of some kind.  I want to see them GROW and THRIVE.  From that urge, I derive the compassion that every writer needs to have for their character to (try to) portray them authentically.  

And that also means that the character is not going to remain within the bounds of their canonical portrayal. The way I write them will always START and be BASED ON that.  But the character will grow far afield of it.  Take Klaus, for instance. I sense you call my portrayal “interesting” (correct me if I’m wrong) because I choose to write Klaus as almost always post-season 2 AND sober.  He’s more at peace with himself than he was during the first season, he’s begun to properly process his grief for Dave Katz, he’s getting clean and staying clean, he’s becoming more emotionally reliable.  But he still makes mistakes, he still has the most severe, frustrating and painful (for him) case of ADHD I have ever seen, people still don’t “take him seriously” (his own words) and he has to grow a thick skin about their dismissive behavior.  

The fandom, even a number of Klaus rpers, like to keep Klaus in this depressing stasis chamber where he’s constantly nihilistic, selfish, and strung out, and a lot of people see Klaus’s addictions as the brunt of jokes, and while that’s cool for them, and I’d never ask them to censor their portrayal, that makes me uncomfortable. As a person who’s worked with, still works with, at-risk youth at the college level, I just can’t jive with it.  Addiction is an illness and it’s not funny, and there are underlying reasons for Klaus’s addictions.  And what I want to do is excavate those underlying reasons, and watch him get the support he needs. He is still a snarky, sartorial, chaotic, quirkily sweet goofball when he’s sober.  He’s still Klaus.  

Things I do to get in the headspace:

--Listen to playlists that I make for the character or mood. Music is crucial.  --Watch videos of Robert Sheehan talking. Doesn’t have to be as Klaus, but sometimes is.  If you can’t hear the character in the dialogue (not only word choose but little mannerisms and speech patterns), rewrite it. Don’t settle until you can hear the actor’s voice.   --Scream to my friends on Discord about how much I love specific elements of the character, to get psyched up. I’m so sorry, @apocalypsejumped, you are the main person I do this to with Klaus, lmfao.  

--Never EVER look at my follower count, because it’s gonna either depress or intimidate me. 

--Look at pictures of the character. I’m incredibly visual. Just looking at my own screenshots makes me want to dissect him more. 

For advice? Oh lordy!   Uhhhh..... 

Write a lot. Practice a lot. I have a PhD and have written book manuscripts exceeding 600 pages, but you don’t have to go that far, lmao. That drabble in your head at 3 am? Get up and write it down. That passing bit of funny dialogue you think your muse would say? Write it down. I used to carry around a physical journal. Now I use my laptop. 

Write fast and only edit minimally because this is for fun, avocational, and you don’t want to spoil it with too much plotting and refinement.

Drop threads that aren’t working for you. Again, this is not a job, and when it feels like one, scale back.

Resist the urge to over-format.  If your posts cease to be easily legible, the aesthetic will only impede the flow of your prose.   It’s okay to vary your writing voice character by character. My syntax, vocab/word choice, sentence length and structure, vary from one muse to the other, bc the standard rp pov is third person singular, present-tense, meaning your muse is narrating it all from their specific pov.  Klaus and say, a very serious, formal character, would not have the same internal monologue, or even exposition. 

Beware of writing partners who are passive aggressive or possessive, who get jealous of your writing with others, and guilt you for spending your time elsewhere than catering to their needs.  I spent eight years in one of these writing partnerships and only escaped last March, and I am still recovering emotionally. Writing partners can absolutely be abusive, so make sure to enforce healthy boundaries and when they are violated repeatedly, run.

Pick a blog theme that is clearly organized and accessible. 

Don’t pick “main” or heaven forbid “exclusive” writing partners until you have experimented with your chemistry with a number of “versions” of their character (especially canons).  Take your time and see who you gel with. Sometimes you can have a great friendship with someone and your writing together still doesn’t click. It all depends on chemistry.  

Pick a small group of like minded friends and write with them. Do not worry about “exposure” or “popularity,” they are over rated.  Fandoms are genuinely crazy.  Just sit in your sandbox with your trusted buddies. <3 

Anyone else reading this, chime in with some writing advice for nonnie! <3 They’re an experienced writer but new to rp! 

[douchebagbrainwaves]

HOW NOT START A STARTUP FUNDING LANDSCAPE

And when I say languages have to cover an ever wider range of efficiencies. When you raise VC-scale money, the clock is ticking.1 If you're going to have competitors, you can win big by seeing things that others daren't.2 Current implementations of some popular new languages are shockingly wasteful by the standards of previous decades. Economically, startups are an all-or-nothing game.3 There are some stunningly novel ideas in Perl, for example.4 The best way to do this is to get the job done.5 Better still, answer I haven't decided.6 The results so far bear this out. I think this makes them more effective as founders.

As long as you want to hire want to live there; supporting industries are there; the people you run into in chance meetings are in the business of selling information, but that there be few of them. Most hackers would rather just have ideas. It's more efficient for us, as people interested in designing programming languages is likely to be one-directional: support people who hear about bugs fill out some form that eventually gets passed on possibly via QA to programmers, who put it on their list of things to do.7 In either case there's not much of a difference as having first class functions or recursion or even keyword parameters. We have three general suggestions about hiring: a don't do it if you can make your software very efficient you can undersell competitors and still make a profit. Now most of your people will be employees rather than founders.8 Once you take several million dollars of my money, the clock is ticking.

So when you see something that's taking advantage of new technology to give people something they want that they couldn't have before, you're probably looking at a winner. These qualities might seem incompatible, but they're not.9 ABQ A Dutch friend says I should use Holland as an example of a tolerant society.10 This approach tends to yield smaller, more flexible programs.11 Though we do spend a lot of new software, because it's easy to buy. With server-based.12 Over time applications will quietly grow more powerful. When you catch bugs early, you also get fewer compound bugs. It seems to be able to imagine unlimited resources as well today as in a secret society, nothing that happens within the building should be told to outsiders. Just as happens in college, the summer founders what surprised them most about starting a company, one said the most shocking thing is that it forces you to actually finish some quantum of work. Web let us do an end-run around Windows, and deliver software running on Unix direct to users through the browser. I learned to program when computer power was scarce.

Only a great designer can. Well, server-based apps get released. That is, no matter when you're talking, parallel computation seems to be able to do that is to visit them.13 They're not being deliberately misleading. The best intranet is the Internet. Most are equivalent to the ones people use for procrastinating in everyday life. Not necessarily. My vote is they're a bad idea.14 But you can tell it must be satisfying expectations I didn't know I had. Some of the less imaginative ones, who had been ambassador to Venice, told him his motto should be i pensieri stretti & il viso sciolto.

This will sound shocking, but it has more potential than they realize. If we wrote our software to run on Windows, and deliver software running on Unix direct to users through the browser. I think almost anything you can do more for users. But openness to new ideas has to be inexpensive and well-designed.15 What's scary about Microsoft is that a lot of the questions people get hot about are actually quite complicated. You'd have to turn into Noam Chomsky. You can't make a mouse by scaling down an elephant. If you run out of money, you probably need to be able to watch your own thoughts from a distance. As long as it isn't floppy, consumers still perceive it as a joke.

All that extra sheet metal on the AMC Matador wasn't added by the workers. People will pay for content? Web-based applications. Inside your head, anything is allowed. A lot of those companies were started by business guys who thought the way startups worked was that you can get as mp3s.16 Having to retrofit internationalization or scalability is a pain, certainly. Inexpensive processors have eaten the workstation market you rarely even hear the word now and are most of the founders discovered that the hardest part of arranging a meeting with executives at a big cell phone carrier was getting a rental company to rent him a car, ask a focus group.

Notes

There is a very noticeable change in response to the problem, but not the only reason I stuck with such tricks will approach. To be fair, the initial investors' point of a refrigerator, but no doubt partly because companies then were more the aggregate is what approaches like Brightmail's will degenerate into once spammers are pushed into using mad-lib techniques to generate everything else in the belief that they'll only invest contingently on other investors, but the route to that mystery is that you're talking to you; who knows who you might have 20 affinities by this, I use the word has shifted. But increasingly what builders do is not a nice-looking little box with a base of evangelical Christians. Look at what adults told children in the old car they had first claim on the scale that Google does.

Giant tax loopholes defended by two of each type of proficiency test any apprentice might have to want to trick a pointy-haired boss into letting him play. Big technology companies between them.

Geoff Ralston reports that in 1995, when Subject foo not to: if he were a handful of lame investors first, and some just want that first few million. The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China, during the 2002-03 season was 4. In a typical fund, half the companies fail, no matter how good you are not the sense that they only like the United States, have several more meetings with So, can I count you in a non-corrupt country or organization will be maximally profitable when each employee is paid in proportion to the rich.

Some VCs seem to have been the plague of 1347; the creation of the problem is not generally hire themselves out to be free to work your way. They hoped they were beaten by iTunes and Hulu. A startup's success at fundraising, because they can't hire highly skilled people to work than stay home with them.

Zagat's there are not one of them is a big change in the sort of community. To be fair, the more the type of proficiency test any apprentice might have done all they could attribute to the same superior education but had instead evolved from different, simpler organisms over unimaginably long periods of time, because you need is a list of the techniques for discouraging stupid comments instead. Most computer/software startups are competitive like running, not you.

Wisdom is useful in solving problems too, e. Well, of the word has shifted.

Wisdom is useful in solving problems too, of course. Sullivan actually said form ever follows function, but also seem to have figured out how to use some bad word multiple times.

Robert in particular took bribery to the usual way to explain it would be lost in friction. Forums were not web sites but Usenet newsgroups. Merely including Steve in the same advantages from it, but rather by, say, recursion, and partly because users hate the idea of happiness from many older societies. In A Plan for Spam.

Learning for Text Categorization. Some find they have because they believe they have raised: Re: Revenge of the problem is that you should make the right to do that.

Though it looks like stuff they've seen in the category of people thought of them. The bias toward wisdom in so many people mistakenly think it is. Unless we mass produce social customs.

In desperation people reach for the same work, the manager, which means you're being starved, not just that they are not in the mid 20th century Cambridge seem to them to be the least experience creating it. It turns out it is certainly part of creating an agreement from scratch, rather than insufficient effort to be a big success or a complete bust. A web site is different from a VC. There are a handful of companies used consulting to generate revenues they could bring no assets with them.

I haven't released Arc. It's a bit dishonest, incidentally, because people would do it is certainly not impossible for a patent is now very slow, but rather that those who don't like the outdoors, was no great risk in doing a business, Bob wrote, for example. I make the kind of power will start to spread from.

They want so much about unimportant things. Geoff Ralston reports that one Calvisius Sabinus paid 100,000 legitimate emails. No Logo, Naomi Klein says that a startup.

They're an administrative convenience. Several people I talked to a car dealer. With the good groups, just harder. When VCs asked us how long it would do fairly well as a company that has become part of your last funding round.

When the same weight as any adult's. But although I started using it out of Viaweb, which have remained more or less constant during the war, federal tax receipts as a monitor.

It's a case in the time it included what we now call science. Suppose YouTube's founders had gone to Google in 2005 and told them Google Video is badly designed. Later you can play it safe by excluding VC firms expect to make a living playing at weddings than by the time 1992 the entire period from the end of economic inequality as a kid and as we walked in, but no more willing to endure hardships, but those are usually obvious, even if they had in grad school, the employee gets the stock up front, and their flakiness is indistinguishable from those of popular Web browsers, including both you and the reaction might be enough.

Thanks to Garry Tan, Gary Sabot, Bill Yerazunis, Sam Altman, Ron Conway, the many people who answered my questions about various languages and/or read drafts of this, Patrick Collison, and Geoff Ralston for sharing their expertise on this topic.

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, August 19, 2020

Welcome to my latest summary of recent ecommerce news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & Etsy! This covers articles, podcasts, videos and infographics I came across since the late July report, although some may be older than that.

Please note I am taking the next week off, starting tomorrow (Aug. 19), so I might be a little slow in replying to any comments. 

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES 

USPS has become the focus of investigations due to reported mail slowdowns. Some small businesses who rely on USPS to deliver are suffering. “The longer the policy has been in effect, the worse the backlog gets.” As of today (August 18), the postmaster says they will rollback the changes until after the election in November. This is a rapidly-moving story in part due to the push for voting by mail, and should concern anyone who ships to US customers using regular mail (as opposed to couriers). Meanwhile, they plan to temporarily raise commercial rates during the holiday shopping season, but retail rates will not change. 

Ecommerce sales are still up year over year. "Before Covid-19 hit the US in March, e-commerce made up roughly 12% of retail sales in the country. That figure grew as states issued shelter-in-place orders that shut stores and kept shoppers at home, creating tailwinds for a company like Amazon. But even as states have begun to reopen, e-commerce has remained elevated, according to Bank of America data."..."The Economist used Google search traffic for hints of how lifestyles are changing and found users are still searching terms related to cooking, crafts, and exercise above pre-pandemic rates. There has been a noticeable spike in interest around such products as gardening supplies, baking flour, and Crocs." The UK is still seeing a good increase despite the ease in reduction in lockdown restrictions. The growth is slowing a bit in the US, though. 

Half of US small businesses fail in the first year (and other stats on small business). 

It’s been second quarter report season, covering company performance from April to June 2020.  Here are results for major companies involved in ecommerce in some way (comparisons are year-over-year):

Amazon US: sales up 40%

eBay: sales up 26%

Etsy: sales up $146% [click the link to read my summary]

Facebook: revenue up 11%

Google: revenue down 2%

PayPal: revenue up 22%

Pinterest: revenue up 4%; active users up 39%

Shopify: revenue up 97%

Walmart [2nd quarter ran May to July]: ecommerce sales up 97%, same-store sales up 9.3%

ETSY NEWS 

Admin are now posting a monthly update thread, in case you fear you have missed anything. This is how they chose to announce that non-seller accounts can no longer post in the forum. Since those account owners can still read the forum, that doesn’t mean you can call out your customers now. 

Sadly, there wasn’t much media coverage of Etsy’s nearly-annual billing screw up, but this one did get some attention. 

Etsy continues to get good media coverage for masks, including masks for your dolls. They also apparently got a decent slice of Google ranking for various pandemic-related searches in May [scroll down to the “Protection and Prevention” section]. 

However, Etsy is getting some bad press (along with Amazon), for allowing QAnon merchandise, because “the FBI has warned of the movement's potential to incite domestic terrorism.” Etsy replied to a request for comment saying that “that product listings associated with certain movements are allowed as long as they don't violate the company's seller or prohibited items policies, which ban items that promote hate or that could incite violence. The company said it is continually reviewing items on the site and could remove items in the future if they're found to violate Etsy's policies.”

More search trends on Etsy, this time kids’ items. I love how they think tie-dye was a ‘90s thing and not a ‘60-70s thing LOL. “a 318% increase in searches for kids tie-dye items...71% increase in searches for dinosaur wall art or decor*, and a 37% increase in searches for school of fish items….we’ve seen kid-friendly crafts spike in popularity, with searches for DIY kits for kids up 336%.”

Also, the holiday trends guide is out. “With the holidays approaching, and most shopping happening online, more shoppers will be looking for your help to make the season feel special.” The report is lengthy, covering Halloween to New Year’s, and most listing categories, while pointing out the possible pandemic changes to the usual trends. There is also an accompanying podcast with transcript. 

Speaking of the holiday season, here are Etsy’s tips for shops. Note that it is a bit late, as businesses need to have their holiday items posted no later than July if they want to be eligible for most fall media coverage. Almost every point refers to an Etsy tool or feature, some of them costing you money, so use this as a very broad guideline & be careful to read between the lines. 

They are still rolling out Etsy Payments to more countries: Morocco & Israel are the most recent. Note that Etsy Payments is not yet compulsory in these new countries. 

Etsy Ads once again has graphs. Do you find them useful? (I haven’t run ads at all this year, so I can’t check.)

Sendle is the latest shipping company to have a label integration with Etsy shops. 

Etsy asked US sellers to lobby their reps for more support for small business and other initiatives in the pandemic aid package.

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES 

Google has stated that content on tabs is indexed and contributes to ranking as if it were on the page instead, but yet another test demonstrates that tabs may limit you. 

Due to the pandemic, Google has delayed finalizing mobile-first indexing until March 2021. (They originally announced it would be finished this September.) That means you have more time to update your website’s mobile version, ideally with responsive design. 

Site speed does matter to SEO, and Google is now asking some searchers how fast certain sites loaded for them. 

User comments on your products, blog posts and website can help you improve your SEO. The article suggests ways of getting that feedback, and ways to use it. [I’ve even had buyers give me new keywords to describe my items, in their messages and reviews.]

Getting links back to your site is important to SEO, but don’t annoy people while doing it. [sort of humour & sort of a rant, but does give some useful background on why backlinks matter.] Internal links also matter. 

There are some special tricks for food/recipe SEO, including structured data and even a WordPress plugin. 

Another WordPress plugin: submit any new or updated pages to Bing to be automatically re/indexed.

Do your keyword research before setting up your website’s sections and sub-sections, as they should serve the buyer experience, not your perception of it. Same with choosing which pages link to each other. 

SEOs are still trying to work out what happened with recent Google algorithm changes. Search Engine Journal claims that the May update was at least in part about demoting sites that had out-of-date or inaccurate information, so they suggest getting rid of the bad content on your site, or at least updating it. “Content pruning” has some advocates, but I wouldn’t worry about investing tons of time in this unless you have tons of time to spend. Just get rid of the blog posts that were wildly wrong, and the out-of-date filler. If you have a lot of sold out products, redirect those to relevant active pages. 

Meanwhile, a “glitch” on August 10 led people to think there was a massive Google algorithm update happening, but it all got fixed in less than a day. 

If you are behind on Google search news, here is a 7 minute video [with time stamped subtopics & resources links listed below], direct from Google. 

(CONTENT) MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails) 

It’s tough to get started in social media if you don’t know the terminology, so here’s a list of the basic definitions you can consult if you get lost when reading.  

Don’t know how to blog? There are formulas you can use; here are eight options, nicely laid out, with downloadable templates. Don’t forget to figure out what your audience wants to read. And make sure you avoid these common blogging mistakes. 

If you have an email list but do not know how to take advantage of all the bells & whistles the companies (MailChimp, Constant Contact etc.) offer you, here are 4 ways to segment your lists. You can then send different offers or newsletters to different segments. 

You can optimize your social posts for people with visual impairments; excellent tips here. 

By the time you read this, the TikTok mess will likely have changed again, but here is an article on Trump’s order to prohibit US companies from doing business with TikTok owner ByteDance if the platform is not sold by September 15. 

Instagram has released its TikTok challenger, Reels, in more countries. 

Instagram is now offering a fundraising option, although it is a slow launch with some beta testing in the US, UK & Ireland to start. 

Here are step-by-step instructions on setting up your “Shop on Instagram.”

Pinterest says that searches around self-care & wellness have spiked during the pandemic lockdowns. “Pinterest has recently seen the highest searches ever around mental wellness ideas including meditation (+44%), gratitude (+60%) and positivity (+42%) that jumped from February to May….Pinterest says that searches for ‘starting a new business’ are up 35% on average, as are searches for ‘future life goals’ (2x), ‘life bucket list’ (+65%), ‘family goals future’ (+30%) and ‘future house goals’ (+78%).” There were also some searches clearly about spending more time at home: “Productive morning routine (up 6x), Exercise routine at home (up 12x), Self care night routine (up 7x)”

LinkedIn has a new algorithm; here’s how to make it work for you. [Many of these tips also apply to social media in general.]

Spotify is now doing “video podcasts”. Apparently a lot of their podcasters already did a video version of the Spotify podcasts, but had to publish it elsewhere up until now. 

Twitter now admits it is considering offering subscriptions to shore up its revenue numbers. “Shares of Twitter rose 4% in early trading Thursday following the earnings results....Twitter's growth plans are under close scrutiny as many advertisers pull back due to the pandemic. On Thursday, Twitter reported second-quarter ad revenues of $562 million, a 23% decrease compared to the same quarter a year ago. The company has also been hit by advertisers participating in an ad boycott of social media, linked to the nationwide racial justice protests.” Also, the recent hack is not helping them. 

That said, it is still possible to market using Twitter, and here are some of the basics. 

YouTube is no longer sending email updates when a channel you follow posts new content. 

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS) 

Ad spend has increased again as lockdowns end, in some cases beating last year by a decent margin. 

The Buy on Google program is ending its commission fees. Participants will also be able to integrate their PayPal and/or Shopify payment options. As often is the case, they are starting with the US first, but plan on rolling it out to more countries in the future. There are more details here, and a review here (with some of the drawbacks). 

Google Product Ads are now showing the item’s “material” on the listing card (before you click). If you are doing your own feed for your website, you may have the ability to add the attributes needed for the details to show up.  

If you find Google Ads too expensive, consider buying search ads on Bing. 

eBay is experimenting with showing ads mixed in with unpaid listings; placement would depend on the same algorithm. 

Here’s a new guide to Facebook Ads [videos & text]

STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING 

Bing has launched a new version of Webmaster Tools. 

There are ways to reduce the amount of traffic that Google Analytics designates as “direct traffic”; here are 15 of them. 

Currently in closed beta testing, the Google Search Console now has an “Insights” function, just like Google Analytics. I’ve found the GA one useful for telling me things I don’t always look at, so crossing my fingers that they release this to everyone soon. 

 ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS 

Shopify helped many businesses stay open during pandemic lockdowns, giving it the boost to start competing with the likes of Amazon in ecommerce. “Shopify merchants that had previously or entirely relied on brick-and-mortar sales would later report they were able revive nearly 95% of that revenue online.”

eBay started rolling out its Managed Payments system to more sellers worldwide on July 20th. Things seem to be going slowly, with some confusion. 

But eBay is also having a 25th anniversary party for sellers on September 25th; don’t forget to register. 

Walmart is still delaying its new subscription model to challenge Amazon Prime, Walmart+. 

Amazon in the UK has launched a “Face mask store” part of the website. I haven’t seen this on other versions of Amazon. They’ve also increased some fees for some UK sellers, based on the new UK digital tax. And they are launching a site & presence in Sweden. 

The Competition Bureau of Canada has launched an investigation of Amazon’s treatment of third-party sellers. “The bureau is asking any person or business that has conducted sales via Amazon.ca to contact them if they have any insights into the issues it is investigating.“

Amazon Prime Day has been postponed to later dates this year, starting with India on August 6-7. The remaining countries will apparently be announced soon. 

If you use WooCommerce, here are a bunch of free plugins, with brief descriptions. 

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE 

Buyers do not all make purchase decisions the same way; Google uses its massive collection of data and some new studies to provide some examples. “Worldwide, search interest for “best” has far outpaced search interest for “cheap.”

It’s cheaper to keep repeat buyers than it is to find new ones; here are 16 ways to do that. One of my favourites is ““proactively providing information on how to avoid problems or get more out of your product” creates a 32% average lift to repurchase or recommend.”

It seems that researchers can never produce enough marketing guides on Gen Z and millennials. 

MISCELLANEOUS (including humour) 

I see a lot of new sellers, and some older sellers, confused about the idea of a business plan. HubSpot not only explains them, but also provides a downloadable template. 

If you are thinking of changing careers, or just want to add skills to better run your current business, Google has many different courses, some of which they offer for free. 

There are ways you can increase your productivity without (usually) working more hours. “A study published by John Pencavel of Standford University found that how much employees get done takes a sharp drop after 50 hours of work in a week, and even more drastically after 55 hours. The study found that employees working 70 hours per week actually produce nothing more in those extra 15 hours...taking a power nap in the middle of the day can help you process new information and even learn new skills.”

[littlemisssquiggles]

Another question that has been floating in my mind for quite some time now: what do you think is Oscar's Semblance (aside from Magic since I consider that one something different - I mean, Raven is able to wield Magic and a Semblance after all) or in which direction could it go? And another question on top of that: since Oscar's soul should be the combination of many different souls after the merge, do you think he might be able to wield multiple Semblances? ... Okay, that was long, sorry :x

Hello Mizu! Believe it or not, another FNDM fam member asked me this type ofquestion before and I created a Pinehead headcanon from it. For the sake of not repeating the same answers (since it was a long answer XD), I’m going to link you to that response post right here.

But if you’re looking for the nutshell version:

What do you think is Oscar’s semblance?

For a while, my main choice for Oscar’s semblance was Nullification—the ability to cancel out the effects of another’s semblance and/or prevent them from using their semblance for a period of time. I had based this theory on information shared about Princess Ozma from the Wizard of Oz series in ThatKaitoDan’s RWBY video essay on Oscar’s Great and Powerful Semblance. It was stated in Dan’s theory video that Princess Ozma, being a powerful magician and rightful ruler of Oz, possessed the ability to relinquish abilities from others.

Going off of that, I came up with the theory of Oscar possessing a similar type of power. The power to stop another from using their semblance for a short period of time and/or in more serious cases, even take away their ability to use their semblance permanently via doing something with their soul or something to that liking. I figured this would’ve been a cool power for Oscar to have, not to mention a very powerful one.

And as highlighted back in V6, it is possible for a semblance use to wield that kind of power. Mercury mentioned that his father was able to ‘steal’ his semblance away. If it’s possible for others to share the same type of semblance then it would be great for this to be something Oscar can do. Another reason why I think this power could work well for Oscar is because I have this theory where Oscar would be the one to restore Mercury’s semblance. And in exchange for helping him, Mercury will become an ally of Oscar’s. After all, if Oscar has the power to take away one’s semblance then surely, with practice, the reverse could be possible too. I dunno. If I had to pick an actual ‘semblance’ for Oscar, nullification is my top choice.

However, as you’re already aware of, this squiggle meister has moved away from the idea of Oscar eveb having a semblance. This ties into my answer to the next question.

Do you think Oscar might be able to wield multiple semblances since he is a combination of many different souls? 

On the contrary, my answer is the opposite. I think Oscar CAN’T have a semblance BECAUSE he is a combination of multiple souls. One’s semblance is described as the projection of their aura into a more tangible form. One’s semblance is said to be unique to them since it’s a power that is a reflection of their soul. Their very being.

To me, I now think it might be impossible for someone in Oscar’s predicament to possess a semblance. Semblances are abilities born from one’s soul basically and is meant to represent who they are, so to speak (according to what Ren said back in V4).

But in Oscar’s case, how could that be probable? He’s NOT just onesoul. He’s one soul plus many more. He’s another life in a culmination of many different lives destined to serve humanity.

Ozpin himself mentioned that both his and Oscar’s souls are currently combined. So…how would Oscar be able to have his own unique power that isprojection of his very soul when he doesn’t have one soul. Not anymore.

As sad as it is to say, Oscar isn’t his own person. He’s not just one person. Not one soul.

I actually dislike the thought of Oscar wielding more than one semblance due to his many lives. As OP as that sounds, I feel like that’s a bit of cheating. Sure it’ll be a power unique to Oscar and it’ll surely make him powerful, yes. However, I find that to be boring and honestly not what I pictured for Oscar.

I mean…if the show manages to take that and run it in some kind of heavy plot-driven way where Oscar is some kind of human semblance storage device. Like he’s basically One For All from My Hero Academia. He’s able to possess and control multiple semblances.

Like if the show did it in a way where Atlas has been illegally using their auraexperiments to steal and traffic semblances—steal the powers of viable candidates to be sold to the highest bidder on the black market for those seeking high powered semblances or something like that.

And Oscar is seen like some major key to that since he can hold more than one semblance so he’s tricked and kidnapped by whoever is running this semblance-trafficking circle among Ironwood’s ranks without his knowledge to be used in continuing their operations. This actually makes me think of an old thought I once hand about RWBY making a homage to Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood by introducing a subplot where Oscar is abducted and used for his aura as the Boy with More than One Soul. So he’s basically turned into a human aura battery by some rogue Atlesian scientist to create an army of solders bent on taking over Atlas. Like the Mannequin Soldiers.

If this idea is used like that…then…okay? I guess it could be kinda cool. Still not what I want to be Oscar’s true power, though. Sorry. No.

I want something that symbolizes Oscar possessing a power that only he can wield masterfully while simultaneously being something that was shared by the other Wizards of Light to give Oscar an incentive to be more fully accepting of his role in this fight against Salem. If that makes sense. I don’t buy Oscar being completely complacent with the Merge. As a matter of fact, Oscar is behaving just as nonchalant about his true feelings as Ruby was in V5 and I honestly pray she is the one to call him out on that in a similar way he did with her.

This is why I like the idea of Oscar having no semblance at all with his true strength coming from the power he shared with his fellow wizarding brothers. This is why I really want Oscar’s power to be magic.

When you think about it, Oscar may be the one character in RWBY who I think doesn’t need to have a semblance. Someone once made a point about semblances being only a remnant of magic. They are meant to resemblemagic but never come as close to being what it truly was. The gift of the Gods.

They didn’t say it in those exact words but this is what I derived from that analogy because I agree with it. Semblances are a by-product of ModernRemnant while magic was the original— its more powerful predecessor used by the First People of Remnant during the Era of the Gods.

 You can almost even say that one’s semblance may be limited by its wielder. Magic, on the other hand, is the power of the Gods. It is a power of infinitepossibilities. With magic, Oscar would be able to do more than anyone else on the team especially it he learns to master control of it.

I really think magic is going to be Oscar’s thing. It’s a power that’s his and is destined to be only his since it’s an intricate part of his legacy.

Out of the three fairy tale characters who influence Oscar’s story, two of them were powerful magic users including one who was practically the embodiment of magic in her world. From the get-go, magic has always been a power unique to Wizards since it represents their origins. Their past with First Remnant. It is what connects them to the Gods, Salem and all other magical things still retained in Remnant.

I cannot see Oscar having a more fitting power than magic.

And do you what’s also great about that? Even if Oscar has magic, he’d still be able to perform all those feats that folks were speculating to be his semblance. To the folks who believed Oscar’s power to be something to do with plants—Oscar can do that in the form of earth elemental magic. To the fans speculating that Oscar’s power would be some kind of teleportation ability, Oscar would be able to fly using magic as demonstrated by the Maidens and Salem and Ozma during the Lost Fable.

And to folks like me who thought Oscar’s semblance could be Nullification—Oscar would still be able to do that with magic. There is so much that can be done with magic. If Ozma was able to create the Maidens from magic while the King of Vale allegedly used it to create the Vaults to house the Relics while Ozpin blessed the Branwen Twins with avian shapeshifting through magic, then imagine what Oscar could do should he tap into that same power.

And if Oscar is anything like his inspirations, both in RWBY and in fairy tale, then only greatness is to be expected of this budding young farm boy. Semblance ornot, I strongly think Oscar is destined to become a great and powerful magic user. Even more powerful than Salem. That’s my theory.

With that thought in mind, it makes me consider something interesting. Here we all are thinking that Ruby Rose is going to be the saviour who finally defeats Salem when the possibility of the show making her the one destined to protect and/or fight alongside the actual ‘chosen one’ to stop Salem is also in the cards.

After all, not all protagonists in stories have to be the hero of the story or saviorof the world within the story. Nomad of Nowhere sort of did something like this in its first season where the Nomad, our main hero, is revealed to truly be the protector of our key player—the last magic user and probably the one person besides the Nomad with the power to put an end to El Rey. A little leeway to theorize about Nomad but the idea still remains.

It’d be interesting if the one or ones destined to defeat Salem as our two smaller, more honest souls— Ruby and Oscar working together to put an end to Salem’s dark reign. And they’ll succeed together, not by destroying Salem, but by cleansing her of her darkness, reverting her back to her former form before she dove into the Grimm Pools through the combined light of Ruby’s Silver Eyes and Oscar’s magic.

Salem would still be immortal. And she would still be bitter and wanting revenge against the Gods. However this time Ruby and Oscar would sever her ties to the Grimm Pools entirely by getting rid of them all, practically relinquishing the Land of Darkness. A feat once thought impossible since only the God of Light could repel his brother’s power. But Ruby and Oscar would be able to do it together since they share the God of Light’s power running through their veins.

That could be so cool if turned canon. Again, it’s just another theory in my plethora of headcanons. Buuuut…y’know it’s one I’ve come to really like in recent days. And with that, that concludes my answer.

Whelp…so much for the nutshell version XD  Oh wellll….I hope these answers were satisfactory to your liking Mizu. I guess you’ll let me know.

~LittleMissSquiggles (2019)

[metalgearkong]

Jedi: Fallen Order - Review (PS4)

11/24/19

Developed by Respawn Entertainment

Up until now, Electronic Arts has taken the wrong direction with their exclusive Star Wars license. So far they created not one, but two awful Star Wars: Battlefront games, both overstuffed with microtransactions and unethical loot boxes. Sure the graphics, sights, and sounds of Star Wars were present, but when the entry fee was $60 and the base game had so little to it, I wasn’t a fan. Jedi: Fallen Order is an answer to all the rightful criticism EA has taken, and they have finally funded developer Respawn Entertainment to make a dedicated single-player, offline, action/adventure game that Star Wars fans have wanted for years. Jedi: Fallen Order is an enormous step in the right direction with the Star Wars license, and shows the potential on what a lot of money and talented people can create when backed by passion.

This is yet another game taking place place between episodes III and IV, a few years after Order 66 and the fall of the Jedi Order. I don’t know if the Force Unleashed games are still considered canon, but I certainly hope not. We play as Cal Kestis, a young Jedi Padawan who survived the purge, and has been hiding out for years as a scrapper taking apart old ships from the war. The Empire has established itself firmly as the dominant superpower of the galaxy, equipped with all the classic Star Wars stuff I love, such as AT-ATs, AT-STs, Stormtroopers, and TIE fighters. A few additions include the Inquisitors, apparently Dark Jedi not following the "rule of two,” who seek out and kill the remaining Jedi in hiding. I guess they come from a TV show or something, but I’ve never watched any of those. Accompanying them are Purge Troopers, who use electro-magnetic melee weapons and can be a struggle to take down. I think the Purge Troopers should have just taken the role of the Inquisitors because I think it would be way cooler to know that the only experienced Force-users left alive now are Obi-Wan, Yoda, the Emperor, and Vader.

The gameplay could be described as a combination of Uncharted exploring, and Dark Souls combat (although it more so reminds me of 2018′s God of War, also inspired by Dark Souls). I didn’t give this game enough credit in the beginning. I decided to play the game on the hard difficulty option, but a few a few hours, I bumped it back down to normal mode. I underestimated the combat and how tough even simple enemies could be. Encounters involve locking on to one enemy at a time, and timing attacks, parries, and dodges. Even low level bad guys can take down your health, especially because they usually appear in small groups. I quite enjoyed fighting members of the Empire, especially basic Stormtroopers, but fighting creatures was much more annoying. Space bugs, space rats, and space crabs feel like a chore to kill as they leap backwards and avoid your lightsaber strikes, and its often harder to read their telegraphs. 

Coming across a squad of Stormtroopers is always where I had the most devilish fun. I appreciate how the game gave the troops a lot of personality. You can hear them chatting to each other before a fight, and they make sarcastic comments as you slowly dwindle their numbers. Laser bolts can be reflected back at the shooter, making ranged combat pretty easy. It’s when the game mixes melee enemies and ranged enemies where it gets a little more tricky and engaging. Every melee trooper is a Scout Trooper and I found that a little hilarious and inconsistent compared to a Scout’s role and ability levels from the films. I didn’t realize they can stand toe-to-toe with a Jedi using their electric sticks and block plenty of lightsaber strikes before being killed. I also liked the detail that when an AT-ST is defeated, you then get to brutally execute the pilot as he scrambles out and fires his pistol as a last ditch effort before his merciless death.

Bosses range from the aforementioned AT-STs, as well as large indigenous creatures found on different planets. Each world, from what I could tell, also has an optional, semi-hidden boss. These didn’t draw my attention much because they’re basically clones of other tougher creatures, only with a greater damage output, higher speed, and more health. You do get experience points for defeating enemies, but I lived happily without taking down these frustrating side-bosses. The most blatant rip-off of the Souls-like formula is the fact that when you rest at meditation spots (save points), it resets all the enemies in the level. This makes more sense in a game with tighter gameplay, such as Hollow Knight or Dark Souls, but there’s not as much of a need for experience points, and the gameplay isn’t reliable enough to warrant farming XP from regular enemies over and over again. I nearly gagged when the game warned me that meditating resets the enemies around you. I’m sick of seeing this mechanic, especially if it isn’t necessary.

I wish the gameplay was a little tighter and snappier. Enemies telegraphy their attacks well enough most of the time, but if an enemy is about to do an unblockable attack, the game doesn’t let you react quick enough to go from blocking to dodging. Many times I’d be blocking or trying to parry, and when an unblockable attack was coming, I couldn’t quick-step to the side fast enough. This means your reflexes not only have to be good enough, but you have to give the game a head start because it takes some time to go from one thing to another. This would happen often enough to get me frustrated. Another annoyance was Cal falling to the ground when the block meter isn’t depleted, and getting hit repeatedly as he’s trying to get up. I get that you can’t block forever, but you shouldn’t be “stunned” when the block meter isn’t empty yet. I don’t know if some of the clumsiness was intentional, but I would get pissed off during tougher fights because I felt like I was fighting an enemy as well as the mechanics.

This all has to do with combat, but I found the traversing to be more reliable. Respawn Entertainment definitely borrows heavily from the Uncharted and rebooted Tomb Raider series. Cal can’t do a lot at first, but as he remembers powers over time, you unlock more abilities such as Force push, Force pull, wall running, double jumping, and more. Sliding down icy or muddy slopes is always fun, especially when combined with other traversal obstacles such as gaps and the need to wall run at the beginning or end. If you die in combat, your brought back to a meditation point, but if you die while adventuring, the game resets you quickly and with a small loss of health. The animations were great as well. I really did feel like a character in the Star Wars universe climbing rocky terrain, jumping over ledges, climbing, and all sorts of stuff like that. It gave the game a cinematic feel even during gameplay. Same goes for combat which can be a little imprecise, but at least looks great. It’s funny, however, that a lot of what prevents Cal from going to new places is the game, is him simply not “remembering” how to do something, especially when he will recall one of his skills out of the blue.

One of the greatest strengths of the game is also it’s greatest weakness: the level design. Each planet you visit has its own interconnecting environments, of which short cuts can be unlocked so you can loop back around easier in the future. The map is also extremely helpful as it gives you a 3D view of the environments, shows where you haven’t explored, shows where places are locked, and shows things like meditation spots. But there isn’t one bit of fast-travel in the game, so when you find yourself deep in a tomb or canyon, you have to hike your way all the way back to your ship. Granted, the developers have tried their best to make the way back interesting with new enemies or new ways to get back to the start, but when some of the environments are as large and twisting as they are, it can be a grind to get from A to B sometimes. Regardless, I’m impressed with how big and detailed each location is (my favorite being the lush jungles of Kashyyyk). It also gives you reminders of places you can re-explore once new abilities are unlocked.

The story itself is one of the worst aspects of the game. While the settings and storytelling itself can be quite good on regular occasions, the overall plot is extremely basic. When Cal is forced to use his powers to save his friend during an industrial accident, he draws the attention of the Empire and the Inquisitors. The game becomes a race between you and the Empire to find a hidden list of Force-sensitive children left in the galaxy. This list (Holocron) has been hidden by a former Jedi who simply has put it in a difficult place to get to simply as a test, so that anyone who finds it would be “worthy” or something. We don’t necessarily see the Empire taking steps to find this list, but they pop in and our during cinematics when it’s convenient for the game. It’s basically an excuse to hop between a handful of planets and get slightly further and further as we unlock new abilities (a la Metroidvania). We spend a vast amount of time in deep tombs, putting Lara’s recent adventures to shame. It got old after a bit, even if the graphics and designs were gorgeous. I also think the game had one or two many giant ball puzzles.

The acting can be hit or miss as well. The most annoying character was Cere (Debra Wilson), one of the members of your small crew, who is a former Jedi Master, but has cut herself off from the Force. I think on a technical level, Wilson plays this character like a seasoned actor, but I found Cere’s character to be like one of those teachers or supervisors who is more dramatic than she needs to be. Cere comes off as condescending and a bit self-important, making excuses for herself while holding Cal to a very noble and high standard. She just comes off as endlessly melodramatic, and I don’t see a lot of need for her to have been a former Jedi, especially because she’s nothing but a co-pilot, quest-giver, and expositioner.. Cal Kestis (Cameron Monaghan) is a very vanilla hero who isn’t too bright, but is very altruistic. He has to have everything explained to him, even though I think he could have easily been telling other characters information, rather than being so clueless as a Jedi Padawan. Monaghan does a pretty good job playing him, I just thought the character itself was a little bland and typical.

Instead of the main Inquisitor chasing you around (called the “Second Sister”) I think being pursued by Darth Vader would have been way more fun. How much cooler would it have been to be hunted by THE Darth Vader, him doing exactly what his job was during this time period? Another inconsistency that irked me was that Cal is a Padawan, yet he’s proficient in single blade, staff, and double lightsaber combat. I know this makes the game more “fun” but it doesn’t make sense to me that a teenage Padawan is an expert in three forms of lightsaber combat, each of them needing nearly a lifetime to master. I was annoyed I could switch to a lightsaber staff at any time with no background or explanation for it. I would have liked it much more if the story and game stuck to single blade combat, and not felt like it would have been too basic or boring for most players. But I think the larger thing to blame is the Star Wars canon and Force-using, lightsaber-using people don’t get much of a technical explanation on how much the Force aids you or how much training you need to do on your own.

It may not seem like it, but overall I am actually pretty happy with Jedi: Fallen Order. Not only does it eschew the practices EA has become notorious for, but it’s a game in a genre I really enjoy. Aside from some combat imperfections, flat story, and average characters, I had a lot of fun exploring this game at every turn. Finding chests with cosmetic collectibles and playing with the Force powers kept me going from one corner to the next. I also enjoyed the music which was done by composers Stephen Barton and Gordy Haab, instead of relying too much on the famous John William tracks (although they are heard far and few between). They evoked a Star Warsy tone and atmosphere without outright copying existing works. I loved moments like my first AT-ST fight, or climbing and piloting an AT-AT. Most of the set-piece moments were exciting and unique for a Star Wars video game. It certainly has its blemishes, but definitely not things that couldn’t be ironed out in a future sequel. I really hope Respawn Entertainment and EA continue on this path of coming up with semi-original stories with their Star Wars license and make single player driven experiences.

7.5/10

[lastsonlost]

Aziz? redemption ?

AZIZ DIDN’T FUCKING DO ANY GOD DAMN THING WRONG!!!!!!

God, I love being white,” said Louis C.K.

“Here’s how great it is to be white,” the comedian went on: “I could get in a time machine, and go to any time, and it would be fucking awesome when I get there. That is exclusively a white privilege.”

The bit, part of his 2008 special Chewed Up, was emblematic of C.K.’s approach: poking fun at the inequalities of American society, while simultaneously acknowledging the ways they benefited him.

Contrast that with a set he performed in December 2018, a little over a year after he admitted to masturbating in front of women without their consent. During the December appearance, apparently at a comedy club on Long Island, C.K. joked that Asian men are “all women” and poked fun at school shooting survivors and gender-nonconforming teenagers, according to BuzzFeed News.

“They tell you what to call them,” he complained of teens who use the pronouns they/them. “Oh, OK. You should address me as ‘there’ because I identify as a location. And the location is your mother’s cunt.”

Imagine thinking the best way to resurrect your career after admitting to sexual misconduct is to mock trans people and Parkland gun violence survivors.

2018, during which his standup special and the wide release of his film I Love You, Daddy were canceled, seems to have wrought a change in C.K. Where once his comedy offered a fresh look at established power structures, he now seems set on ranting about kids today and their pronoun choices.

Fellow comedian Aziz Ansari has followed a similar trajectory. He once decried sexual harassment in his act — and addressed the issue in a nuanced way on his show Master of None. But in 2017, a woman told the website Babe.net that he had pressured her for sex — Ansari said he had believed everything that happened between them was “completely consensual,” and that he was “surprised and concerned” by her account. 

After the incident, his comedy took on a different tone: In a fall 2018 appearance, he made fun of online debates about cultural appropriation and complained that nowadays, “everyone weighs in on everything,” according to the New Yorker.

The bigotry in C.K.’s set is disturbing, especially coming from someone who seemed at one time to have a relatively clear understanding of how power works in America. But what is also striking about C.K. and Ansari’s post-#MeToo material is its banality. Before they were publicly accused, these men wrestled with thorny questions of identity and power in ways that, while not always satisfying, were usually thought-provoking. After the allegations, they began parroting tired complaints about political correctness.

Of the many people accused of sexual misconduct as part of the #MeToo movement, C.K. and Ansari seemed like they might be uniquely equipped to reckon with the allegations against them, perhaps even adding something to the public conversation around #MeToo. Instead, they have retreated into boring and offensive stereotypes, perhaps playing to those who never thought they did anything wrong.

We’re all worse off for their decision, missing out on the art C.K. and Ansari might have created if they’d been willing to really face their accusations, and robbed of the opportunity to see two intelligent and thoughtful men really wrestle with the implications of #MeToo. In a time when more and more of the accused mull their comebacks, it’s natural to wonder what real redemption — complete with an acknowledgment of harm and a commitment to atonement — might look like. Apparently, Louis C.K. and Aziz Ansari will not be the ones to show us.

Louis C.K. used to talk about violence against women. Now he makes fun of genderqueer teens.

Before #MeToo, Louis C.K. was beloved by many for his often self-lacerating comedy. In his standup and on the autobiographical FX show Louie, he portrayed himself as a sad-sack weirdo disturbed by his own sexual urges — he once called himself a “prisoner” of “sexual perversion.”

C.K.’s work could be offensive, as when he complained that he missed being able to use a homophobic slur (and claimed, unconvincingly, that the way he used it had nothing to do with homophobia). But some hailed his comedy as feminist, and he showed a remarkable ability to mine humor from the dangers and biases women face — a difficult feat for a male comic.

“How do women still go out with guys when you consider that there is no greater threat to women than men?” he asked in a 2013 special. “We’re the number one threat to women! Globally and historically, we’re the number one cause of injury and mayhem to women.”

But C.K. was also the subject of long-simmering sexual misconduct rumors — and in November 2017, four women told the New York Times that he had masturbated in front of them or asked them to watch him masturbate (a fifth said that he masturbated while on a phone call with her).

In a move that remains unusual among men accused as part of #MeToo, C.K. admitted to the allegations against him. “These stories are true,” he said in a statement to the New York Times.

“I have spent my long and lucky career talking and saying anything I want,” he added. “I will now step back and take a long time to listen.”

But as many have pointed out, the listening didn’t last very long. C.K. was back onstage in September 2018, less than a year after his pledge to step back. In an October appearance at the West Side Comedy Club in New York, he addressed the fallout from his sexual misconduct revelations, saying he’d been to “hell and back” and that he’d “lost $35 million in an hour.”

While many were critical of C.K.’s comeback attempt, West Side Comedy Club host AMarie Castillo told the comedy website LaughSpin that the comic “was so genuine and reflected on how weird his year was” in his October appearance. “Sounds to me he is owning up, acknowledging, and trying to figure it out,” she said.

But in a December set, he didn’t sound much like someone trying to figure anything out. In audio posted on YouTube, apparently from an appearance at the Governor’s Comedy Club on Long Island on December 16, C.K. poked fun at gender-nonconforming youth, Parkland school shooting survivors, and Asian men, among other groups. (The club was unable to confirm to BuzzFeed that C.K. was there that night, though multiple people posted on Instagram that they had seen him perform there.)

“You know why Asian guys have small dicks,” he said at one point, according to Patrick Smith and Amber Jamieson of BuzzFeed. “’Cause they’re women. They’re not dudes. They’re all women. All Asians are women.”

C.K. also said he thought it was ridiculous that the term “retarded” was now viewed as inappropriate, Smith and Jamieson reported. When some listeners appeared shocked, he responded, “Fuck it, what are you going to take away, my birthday? My life is over, I don’t give a shit.”

C.K. has not responded to a request for comment from Vox.

Aziz Ansari once included a sexual harassment storyline on his show. Now he’s complaining about Twitter outrage.

Ansari’s comedy has always been more lighthearted than C.K.’s, but he hasn’t shied away from difficult topics. In a 2015 Netflix special filmed at New York’s Madison Square Garden, he asked women in the audience to raise their hands if they’d ever been followed by a “creepy dude,” according to Eren Orbey at the New Yorker.

“Yeah, that’s way too many people,” he said when hands went up. “That should not be happening.”

The second season of his Netflix show, Master of None, also included a storyline about sexual misconduct. Ansari’s character, Dev, teams up with celebrity chef Jeff Pastore (Bobby Cannavale) for a show called Best Food Friends. But Dev is forced to make a choice when a female crew member reveals that Chef Jeff repeatedly harassed her. The episode, which aired before #MeToo gained steam in fall 2017, felt true to life, as Isha Aran pointed out at Splinter, “from the fears victims face in going public to the misogynist skepticism they’re met with when they share their stories.”

But in January 2018, a woman going by the name Grace told the website Babe.net that Ansari had repeatedly pressured her for sex while the two were on a date. She called it “by far the worst experience with a man I’ve ever had.”

“We went out to dinner, and afterwards we ended up engaging in sexual activity, which by all indications was completely consensual,” Ansari said in a statement on the allegations last January. “The next day, I got a text from her saying that although ‘it may have seemed okay,’ upon further reflection, she felt uncomfortable. It was true that everything did seem okay to me, so when I heard that it was not the case for her, I was surprised and concerned.”

“I continue to support the movement that is happening in our culture,” Ansari concluded, presumably referring to #MeToo. “It is necessary and long overdue.”

By fall 2018, however, his tone sounded different. In a Connecticut stop on his “Working Out New Material” comeback tour, he complained about Twitter users debating whether a teenager’s prom dress constituted cultural appropriation, according to Orbey.

“Everyone weighs in on everything,” he said. “They don’t know anything. People don’t wanna just say, ‘I don’t know.’”

He also decried “the destructive performativity of Internet activism and the fickle, ever-changing standards of political correctness,” according to Orbey. He compared left-wing Twitter users to Trump supporters (“at least with the Trump people,” he said, “I kinda know where they stand”) and accused them of competing with one another in a game of “Progressive Candy Crush.”

“One might have hoped that, nearly a year later, [Ansari] could find a way to reckon with one of the movement’s messiest lessons: that even men who wish to serve as allies of women can, intentionally or not, hurt them in private,” Orbey wrote. “Instead, like other men who have reëmerged in recent months, he seems to have channelled his experience into a diffuse bitterness.”

Ansari has not responded to Vox’s request for comment.

If C.K. and Ansari can’t reckon with the allegations against them, can anyone?

Allegations of sexual misconduct against C.K. and Ansari hit fans hard in part because of the thoughtful nature of their comedy — these were supposed to be the good guys.

The accusations prompted fans and critics to reevaluate both men’s work. At Splinter, Aran notes that despite its sexual harassment storyline, Master of None’s second season displays some underlying misogyny. Dev’s relationship with love interest Francesca, in particular, sends the message “that a woman’s initial reluctance can be chipped away at, that indifference is a wall to be torn down.”

C.K., meanwhile, had been telling masturbation jokes for years. As Melena Ryzik, Cara Buckley, and Jodi Kantor reported at the New York Times, “he rose to fame in part by appearing to be candid about his flaws and sexual hang-ups, discussing and miming masturbation extensively in his act — an exaggerated riff that some of the women feel may have served as a cover for real misconduct.” His film I Love You, Daddy, which was initially scheduled for release in November 2017, dealt with a relationship between a famous filmmaker and a 17-year-old girl.

And C.K.’s December set does recall some of his earlier work — the man who complained about teens today and their pronouns is clearly the same one, for instance, who expressed nostalgia for a time when he could use homophobic slurs without being criticized.

Still, C.K. and Ansari were somewhat unusual as male entertainers willing to delve into issues of power and privilege and talk about the ways men hurt women.

That’s what makes their current material so surprising. Ansari and C.K. aren’t just avoiding the subject of #MeToo — they’re going in the opposite direction, complaining about political correctness and outrage culture when their comedy once sent the message that women were absolutely right to be outraged.

Their new work is reactionary — crude jokes about Asian men wouldn’t be out of place at a Trump rally — and it’s dated. C.K.’s complaints about they/them pronouns aren’t just offensive; they’re also tired, well-worn platitudes parroted by everyone from psychologist Jordan Peterson to TV host Piers Morgan. C.K. may think his new material is edgy, but his rant about young people today sounds like it could come from Grandpa Simpson.

Some have speculated that C.K. is consciously courting a more right-leaning audience with his new material after losing the trust of his previous fans, and it’s certainly possible that he and Ansari are pivoting to please the people who were eager to explain away the allegations against them — those who think sexual misconduct only matters if it rises to the level of the allegations against Harvey Weinstein, or who believe that men who are accused deserve swift and unconditional forgiveness.

Whatever the case, the trajectories of C.K. and Ansari are doubly disappointing — first, because men whose work had a feminist bent were accused of hurting women, and second, because they let those accusations destroy the nuanced social awareness their earlier work displayed. Apparently, C.K. and Ansari were only interested in challenging the status quo when they remained unchallenged — once women spoke out against them, they performed the comedic equivalent of packing up their toys and going home.

That’s sad for all of us. We don’t get to see the comedy these men could have created if they’d wanted to face, rather than flee from, our current moment in history. And we don’t get to see two thoughtful entertainers bring their talents to bear on a project that matters to all of us — figuring out what it should look like for men accused as part of #MeToo to apologize, atone, and move forward.

Ever since the #MeToo movement gained mainstream attention in 2017, there’s been a lot of talk about what accused men can do to redeem themselves. Now, more than a year in, it’s certainly possible to imagine some of the accused truly reckoning with their pasts — Dan Harmon’s apology for sexually harassing a writer on his show offers a view of what that might look like. But it’s hard to hold out much hope for such a reckoning on a large scale when two men who seemed like they, of all people, might be able to look deeply at their own behavior have instead chosen to pander to those who would excuse them.

______________________

AZIZ DIDN’T FUCKING DO ANY GOD DAMN THING WRONG!!!!!!

[wndybird]

laughter pokes its way across misted eyes, dabbling cheeks with flecks of light. this child, the universe clutched in her palms, refusing to shed a thing.

MEET WENDY darling DARWIN.

OOC.

AUTHOR: ren, 20, est, she / they. CONTACT: my discord is ren 🎃✨#6401, pm me if you want my telegram or kik !!

BASIC.

NAME: wendy darwin

EXPLANATION:

wendy’s decision to cling to her true name was deliberate as an act to reclaim her sense of self , and to exercise some control over her life after the exodus took part of that from her. there’s also the added fact that it’s so much easier than trying to go by another name, which seems like a ridiculous amount of trouble to go through.

darwin was chosen out of ease , as well , being two letters off from her true surname and sounding fairly similar. behind the scenes , i chose it since its meaning is “ dear friend ” and i believed that would reference the supposed origin of wendy’s name well.

NICKNAMES: wen, wendybird, bird, little bird. ( i will sometimes call her wendigo, wendini, and wingdings. ) GENDER: cisfemale SEXUALITY: panromantic pansexual

OCCUPATION:

wendy is a full time student at the fable community college , and also works as a cashier at the local bookshop. she may sometimes take up the occasional odd job as a babysitter , a proofreader for other students , or even a tutor if she’s incredibly strapped for cash , but these are small side things that she only turns to when the going gets really tough.

she left her major as undeclared originally , as she wanted to be able to experience various differing courses , but has recently changed it so that she’s majoring in creative writing and minoring in journalism.

AGE: twenty BIRTH DATE: july 7th ZODIAC: cancer sun, sagittarius moon SECRET LANGUAGE: day , week , month , season , way , & personal path CELTIC ZODIAC: oak ( tree ) , wren ( animal ) BIRTHDAY TAROT: temperance , the hierophant

MAGIC:

wendy is not a magic user , though she will always quietly find herself envious of those who are. it’s possible that her curiosity and desire to be closer to the arcane may lead her into trying to practice , but that remains to be seen. otherwise she tries to function on the belief that magic is not just defined by the arcane , but little , every day things. like your headphones not tangling in your pocket , or your schedule lining up perfectly for the day , things of that nature.

PHYSICAL.

FACECLAIM: kristine froseth HEIGHT: 5’ WEIGHT: 126 lbs HAIR COLOR & STYLE: honey brown , long , wavy. usually kept down , sometimes half up , in a bun , braid , or ponytail. will occasionally do cute things like space buns , braided crowns , etc. EYE COLOR: blueee DOMINANT HAND: left DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: freckles , longass eyelashes , a birthmark on her right thigh , generally looking like a baby deer smh SCARS: she has a few very old , very faded scars across her feet and ankles from running about barefoot on neverland , but you probably wouldn’t notice them unless you were looking for them. PIERCINGS: earlobes TATTOOS: none yet

PERSONALITY.

MBTI: esfj KEIRSEY: guardian — provider ENNEAGRAM: type 2w3 

 ALIGNMENT & MORALS:

her heart is soft , but it is just. her alignment is lawful good , and she tries to operate on a set of clear , concise morals. her involvement with certain individuals may muddle this , at times , but her conscious is painfully loud and she will always be a voice of reason and a champion of what is right. her crux is that she is sometimes prone to bending too easily , as she still clings to her belief that no one can be all bad.

TRAITS:

( + ) optimistic , intelligent , honest , empathetic , brave , adventurous , friendly

( - ) idealistic , stubborn , nosy , susceptible , perfectionist , insecure , anxious

CONNECTIONS.

MOTHER: mary darling ( status: ??? ) FATHER: george darling ( status: ??? ) SIBLINGS: john darling ( status: alive. ) , michael darling ( status: deceased. ) PETS: eventually a dog in place of that abandoned wolf pup , maybe SIGNIFICANT OTHER: it’s complicated.

hello i LOVE to plot please come plot with me !!! i’ll have a legitimate connections page made soon i promise

IN CHARACTER INTERVIEW.

QUESTION TWO:

Was it hard adjusting to life in Fabletown? Do you miss the Homeworld?

Her heart twists until it aches, settling somewhere in her throat, and the soreness she feels there is terrible. She misses the Homeworld like you would not believe, yearns to return back to what she’s known up until recently, but she knows she must make the best of her situation. Wendy is nothing if not hopeful, and this is what keeps her afloat, even on the days when all she can do is sit at home, squinting into the distance, as she recalls her life before the Exodus. She smooths her skirt with trembling hands, the pleated navy fabric rustling silently, and straightens her back. She shouldn’t slouch. She knows better.

“I think the adjustment must have been difficult for everyone, myself included.” Wendy is not one to overlook the trials and tribulations of others, even as she herself struggles with the day-by-day of this new world. “Of course I miss the Homeworld, I miss it like the stars must miss the moon when the sun rises, I—I think it would not have been so hard, coming here, if I’d not felt as though I was leaving so much behind. But I’m sure the same can be said for most anyone in our… situation.” She doesn’t mention the nights that seemed to sprawl on, where she’d not slept for days, instead choosing to cry, or the days when her chest felt so hollow she was almost convinced she’d need to pick apart her ribs in order to find out whether or not she still possessed her heart.

A loose curl brushes her jawline, and she brushes it away, tucking it ever so gently behind her ear. “I’m still adjusting. It’s not been an easy task, by any means, but I believe part of our responsibility now is to remain adaptable. Besides that, it would be unfair to say that the change has been entirely terrible. We’ve been granted new opportunities, the ability to meet new people, there are so many new things to see and do.” It’s easier to treat this like something of an adventure, than to see it as a never-ending eternity. How familiar.

“I suppose, most of all, it’s important to stay hopeful.”

QUESTION THREE:

Where is your favorite place in Fabletown or New York?

The question is no sooner posed, and Wendy is smiling to herself, images of her loft conjured up within her imagination. It is certainly not the house in Bloomsbury, but it is her own, and she has made it as such. The walls are white, and would be considered bland, were they not adorned with pictures and artwork, string lights that cast the den in warm light. The couch is a mess of throw pillows and a particularly soft fleece throw, coffee table crowded with textbooks, notebooks, book-books, and the occasional succulent; everything is somewhat disorganized, but in the most organized way possible. Knick knacks line the shelves in her bedroom, tiny little things she’s picked up here and there, and none of them need a particular meaning in order to belong. Today, the apartment smells like chamomile tea and cinnamon, warm and cozy, safe and secure, like a blanket wrapped around your shoulders.

“My home, of course.” Her voice is filled with the sort of pride you’d hear a mother speak about her children’s accomplishments with, because truly, the home she has created for herself here in Fabletown is a safe haven, her own little alcove of personal magic. She may not be someone in tune with the arcane, but she can create her own version of magic, whether it be in how she interacts with others, or things she chooses to do for herself. Buying a new candle to soothe her nerves? Certainly. “It’s small, but I’d like to believe it’s welcoming. Filled with love, if you will, and I find that to be rather important.”

QUESTION FOUR:

How do you feel about magic? Do you think it should be banned, regulated, or neither?

Her eyes are aglow with enthusiasm at the mention of magic—such a wondrous little word that is, blanketing her heart in childhood nostalgia and the need to believe—but behind that lies a certain amount of trepidation. She has seen the danger that comes with placing unrestricted power in the hands of those who operate on their own rules, how magic can be used not only for wonder and creation, but for destruction and greed. If you would look hard enough, beneath the many layers of wonder and hesitancy, you would notice something else: the barest flicker of envy. Wendy is not one to become so often plagued by jealousy that she grows into something bitter and mean, but sometimes even she is not free of those resentful pangs. She has only ever been able to taste magic at the grace of another, and though she’s grateful for even a taste, it would be nice to be able to harness it for her own. If only for a day, even.

Her hands are clasped neatly in her lap, one thumb running over the other in time with her breathing. “I believe,” She begins, and then pauses, as though she must regather her thoughts. “I believe magic is an extraordinary thing.” Another pause, as the lush forests of Neverland appear behind her eyelids when she blinks, the tang of magic in the air, the sparkling lagoon, the mermaids—it shifts, and then something is very wrong. Grinning skulls peek through gilled skin, flashing sharp teeth and cavernous eye sockets that consume her like the void. It is enough to startle her back into shaken silence for a few long minutes, the ticking of the clock hanging on the far wall feeling awfully familiar as it tracks her silence.

“And as with all extraordinary things, there is the ever-present risk that someone will come along and ruin it, so to speak. Magic is a gift that some may be far too comfortable taking advantage of, for the wrong reasons.” Her words seem to be spoken with a sense of mourning underlying them, and the downward turn of her lips belies regret. Truly, she believes in the goodness of others, but logically she understands that without rules set in place, it would give too much allowance for evil to run wild. “If we lived in an ideal world, I would find no issue with letting magic flow freely, but in this case regulation is the safest choice.”

QUESTION FIVE:

Who do you think killed Little Red Riding Hood?

Minutes pass in silence as she glances around the room, as if the walls will afford her some secret knowledge, some right answer, as if one were to exist. Wendy has tried not to let her thoughts linger for far too long on what’s happened to Little Red Riding Hood, as if her denial would undo whatever had been done to the woman. Out of sight, out of mind, isn’t something that seems to exist, in this case. Teeth sink into her lower lip, and she chews although she knows better, nipping at glossy skin that will turn sore if she keeps it up.

“I don’t know. It’s not a satisfactory answer, I do know that much, but.. this isn’t something I’ve wanted to devote much time to. I don’t want to think about what happened to her, or worse yet, who could’ve done it—this is a terrible situation.” Violence has been present in her life far too often as of late, and her skin is littered with goosebumps now at the consideration that there may be a possibility that someone she knows could be a cause, or a suspect, at the least. Wendy places that thought within a box, seals it off, and places that into another box, on and on it goes, until the intrusive idea is locked away for the time being. Her eyes are apologetic, soft, tinged with fright. “But I hope justice is served, for her sake.”

PLAYLIST.

coming soon..