#feel free to use as an icon! its a bit big but its square shaped so idk if itll work 😭

[sentimentalexis]

what doesn't kill you, makes you ugly

life gives you lemons, at least it gave you something

[plush-rabbit]

Red Tipped Ears

Random. Prompt 2

“Sharing is caring, now give me the hoodie!” - Shigaraki Tomura

Word Count: 1.7K A/N: Your comments always make me cry and heart full of love and i- !!!

There’s a bitter chill that runs through the city, people huddling together and wrapped with jackets and scarves. It’s nice weather, perfect for curling under a blanket, and watching an old classic, just something to take your mind off for the rest of the day and relax. 

And yet, the building housing the League runs with a chill that makes your teeth chatter and goosebumps rise over your exposed skin. Everyone sits in the same room, blankets thrown around, while they watch a member in envy.

“You know it would be nice if you shared your flame Dabi,” Atsuhiro says, blanket wrapped around his body, shared by Shuichi who glares over at the cremation villain.

“At least share it with the one who needs it the most,” Shuichi grumbles, burrowing himself deeper in the couches, a light chatter of his teeth filling the room. 

“And what do I get out of that?” Dabi asks, covered in a thin blanket and you glare over at him.

“Come on Dabi,” you complain, “hell, I’ll share my rations with you. Just light up a flame so we all don’t die.” Himiko grumbles next to you when you shift, cheeks dusted over in pink. “You know, if you don’t, I’m never going to leave you alone.”

“You already don’t,” Dabi sighs, throwing his head back. He rises with a groan, blanket fisted in hand, and he waves his hand over the large couch. Atsuhiro and you share a glance and shuffle to make room for Davi who sits in the middle, tossing the blanket above him and sitting with his arms spread and head thrown back. 

Immediately, the warmth that emanates from him reaches the rest, even the thin of his arms provides comfort and everyone lets out a sigh, inching closer to the villain who holds a harsh look with a red hue dusting over his cheeks.

“You’re not joining Jin?” Himiko asks, still cuddled to your side.

“Not enough room,” he grumbles, rubbing his hands together. “So if some-”

He’s cut off with a creak of the door, eyes snapping and tense muscles until a familiar face steps in shrouded by a red coat, a black mask covering his lower face and pale fingertips peeking from a pocket, bulging in an off shape. 

“Heya boss, you’re back. How was it?” You ask, tilting your head to get a clear view of him. He grumbles out an inaudible response and you slump your shoulders. “You-” He walks away before you have the chance to finish your sentence.

“Leave him be,” Dabi mumbles beside you, eyes closed, face free of worry. “He’s always in a mood- you know that.”

“It’s cold-”

“That it is,” Atsuhiro says in a low voice. “He probably had a long meeting, just leave him be.”

“Hey, we have that old fireplace, it still works right?” Himiko points out, eyes half closed. 

“For fucks-”

“There should be some wood around- broken furniture or something.” You rise from the couch and you feel eyes on you, a noise of protest as you wrap a blanket around your shoulders. “You guys get looking, I’ll go get Shigaraki.” You wave at them as you make your way toward his bedroom, the floor cold underneath your socks and you wish you had worn your shoes for added protection

“More room for me! Himiko, move over- I’m cold!” You hear Jin say distantly.  A smile creeps to your lips and you shake your head, pulling the blanket closer to you.

-

His door stands closed in front of you, a barrier from you to him, from him and the rest of the world. There’s a moment of hesitation, wondering if this is even worth it when you know that he’ll no doubt turn you away. But it’s cold and no doubt, he’s cold but too stubborn to admit anything. You knock on the door, knuckles tapping against it gently and you hear a grunt of acknowledgment. “I’m coming in, okay?” Another grunt and you enter the room, peering in through the crack before entering completely, closing the door with a soft click. The room is dark save for a yellow glow from an old lamp and a screen lighting the room in a soft blue hue. “You know if you stare too long at screens you’ll get a headache.”

“What do you want?” He asks without sparing you a glance. His shoulders rising is the only indication that he gives when you stand behind him.

“You’re not cold?” You peer over his shoulder and half of his monitor is filled with icons from various games. “You just came back from the outside. “Don’t tell me you bought something to warm you up and you didn’t share?” You walk around to the side of him. “What-”

“Do you need something?” His hand holds a controller in his grip, careful and firmly. 

As you look him over, you frown when you notice his cheeks darken in red, a slight tremble in his hands and a tight line on his lips as he clenches his job. “I know you like to play games after a meeting with,” you look towards the door, “with whoever you meet with. But, do you maybe want to come hang out with the rest of the League? I think we’re finally wearing Dabi down for him to make a warmer flame.”

“I’m not trusting that bastard with a bigger flame than what he has right now,” he grumbles, starting music, cutting him off and the title screen flashing on the monitor. 

You roll your eyes. “He’s not going to burn us Shigaraki.” You feel worry lines etch on your temple. “I’m at least ninety percent sure on that.”

“How comforting,” he mutters under his breath, fingers darting onto the controller, his character moving. “Are you done?”

“You sure you don’t want to hang out?” You pull the blanket closer to yourself. “I-”

The game pauses and he swivels on his chair. You take a step back and your eyes widen, as he scowls at you. “Why did you enter my room?”

“You let me,” you say, giving him a nervous grin. It falters when his eyes narrow. “I uh, wanted to know if I could borrow your hoodie.” You point a finger over to his bed where his hoodie lays- simple, black and comfortable looking. 

His eyes widen, the annoyed persona dropping, only to be replaced with a puzzled look. “You want to borrow my hoodie?” You nod, your index scratching at your jawline. “Why?”

“Well it’s cold and- if you’re going to use it, it’s fine. I’m sure there are other-” 

You yelp when he stands from the chair, feet dragging across the floor as he walks over to the bed, holding the hoodie in hand with a pinky extended. You watch as he staggers over to you, shoulders squared and standing at his full height. You blink at him and when he stands in front of you, you straighten your back and meet his eyes.

“Fine.” Your mouth parts and your hand jerks upwards, moving on its own, until his voice stops your movements. “But,” his head tilts and the glow from the screen illuminates the side of his face, “you leave my room.”

You pout. “Really? And here I thought we were friends, Shigaraki.” You cross your arms and upturn your chin, the corners of your lips twitching upwards. “I’m a bit hurt if I’m being honest.”

“You’re being difficult on purpose.” He dangles the hoodie close to you and flutters it away when your hands reach for the worn fabric. “If you rather stay, fine. But you don’t get my hoodie.” He sits back on the chair, fabric on his lap and controller back in hands. 

You scoff and look towards the door. “You know, if I do get the hoodie, I could just stay in your room and you really couldn’t do much about it.” Your hands tap on your thighs and you grab the edge of the blanket, pulling it farther up your body.

“You really don’t want my hoodie, huh?” The video game soundtrack starts and you watch him for a moment. “Are you going to leave?”

“You’re awful,” you sigh. 

“I guess you aren’t cold.”

“Shigaraki,” you whine, bouncing in your place. You lose your eyes and sigh. “Fine, fine. If you want to be alone, I’ll take the hint and leave. With your hoodie of course,” you add, gripping the blanket tighter around your frame. 

“Really?” His eye glances at you, and returns back to the screen.

“Yes, yes,” you nod, holding your hand out. “Now, come on. Sharing is caring, now give me the hoodie!”

“You’re awfully needy,” he laments. His hand grabs at the hoodie and he holds it towards you, hand pulling away when your hands fist into the fabric. 

You walk towards his bed, letting the blanket drape at the edge and you feel his gaze in you as you slip his hoodie on, tugging down at the hem and fixing the hood. You reach for the blanket and wrap it around your body, turning towards him with a grin.

“It’s warm!”

“No shit.”

You frown and shrug your shoulders. “Okay. Well, as promised, I’ll leave you be.” You give him a wave and as your hands wrap around the cold doorknob, your turn around and your fingers run over the blanket. You walk towards him and you hear him sigh. “Relax. I’ll leave in a bit. Just-” you walk to the side of him and hold the blanket out to him- “here. Take it.” 

His eyes dart between the blanket and you. “I thought you were cold.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll be with the gang and body warmth or whatever and you’re here all alone so-” you shake the blanket in your hand, eager for him to take it- “take it.” 

“Isn’t it yours?”

“Yeah, well,” you look down at him and give him a cheeky grin, “you’re free to come to my room anytime.” You chuckle when his ears burns red. “If you’re that big on personal space, then I’ll pick it some other time.” You let the blanket pool onto his lap, a slight frown when the corner of it grazes at the floor. You tap at the bridge of his nose and let your finger slide down the edge of his nose. You turn around and walk towards the door, stepping out when you turn around and call out to him. “Don’t be a stranger Tomura!”

[180abroad]

Day 178: ...and We’re Still in Bruges

After a pretty intense day visiting the WWI battlefields and memorials of Flanders Fields, Jessica and I decided to spend our last day in Bruges enjoying some of the lighter things it had to offer: chocolate, fries, and a whopping bell tower.

After a return trip to the I Love Coffee espresso bar and a walk through the market square---this time filled with stalls of flowers and produce---we started the day with a trip to Bruges's Choco-Story museum.

We'd visited a different chocolate museum back in York, so we were interested to see how the chocolate museum in this other world capital of chocolate compared. A lot of the subject material was similar---obviously---but we found the Bruges museum much more interesting. Instead of a flashy guided presentation like we experienced at the York Chocolate Story, the Bruges Choco-Story is an actual museum filled with informational displays that we could take in at our own pace.

As we already knew, the earliest form of chocolate was a sort of cold bitter tea brewed in Central America from cocoa nuts.. What I hadn't known is that the word chocolate is derived from the Nahuatl (Aztec) word cacahuatl, meaning "cocoa water." The earliest known use of cocoa was by the Shuar people of Ecuador around 5,000 years ago. Archeologists have found traces of Shuar pottery still coated with traces of brewed cocoa.

The later Mayan and Aztec civilizations especially favored a type of foamed cocoa made by churning it with a special whisk. The foam apparently cut down the bitter taste of the unsweetened chocolate.

In addition to the more typical museum displays, the Choco-Story also had some delightful Duplo block dioramas.

Much later, Spanish nuns in Oaxaca were the first to add sugar to their cocoa. The drink became so popular among female Spanish colonists that they couldn’t even make it through church services without taking a break for their servants to bring them more. A local bishop tried to crack down on the problem by banning cocoa in church and was found murdered shortly thereafter. (An important lesson about men trying to get between a woman and her chocolate…)

It was nearly a century after Columbus’s first voyage before cocoa made it back to Spain, and it was another century after that before it became popular outside of Spain. But when it finally did, it quickly became a sensation across the continent. In the 1700s, the French philosopher Voltaire mixed cocoa with coffee to create the world’s first mocha. He drank over 40 cups of it per day---to his doctor’s great distress.

Apparently, people were so afraid of spilling their cocoa that a new type of saucer was invented with a basket or cup for holding the cup secure. Maybe they were so afraid of spilling it because it was so expensive. In 1800, a pound of chocolate cost five times the average daily wage.

It wasn't until the mid-1800s that solid chocolate as we know it was first developed by the Quakers of northern England, whom we'd learned about at the Chocolate Story in York. But even though the English invented solid chocolate, the Belgians would argue that they perfected it.

Belgian chocolatiers pioneered the use of fun shapes and fillings to make chocolates even more enjoyable. Belgium was also one of the first countries to impose strict purity laws governing the production of chocolate---sort of like what Bavaria did with beer centuries earlier.

We also learned a bit about the process of making chocolate. (Or rather, I learned, since Jessica was already well-versed in the making of chocolate as a former chocolatier herself.)

I learned that there are three main varieties of cocoa plant: Criollo, Forastero, and Trinitario. Of these, Criollo makes the best chocolate and Forastero makes the least-good chocolate. Still, Forastero is much easier to grow than the other two, so the vast majority of chocolate is made from Forastero beans.

On average, one cocoa tree produces enough nuts to make just one pound of dark chocolate per year. That means that it takes literally billions of cocoa trees to feed the world's sweet tooth.

They also had a diagram showing the composition of dark, milk, and white chocolate. I knew that milk chocolate has a lot more sugar and less cocoa than dark chocolate, but seeing the pie charts really drove the difference home for me.

We also got to eat as many sample pieces of dark, milk, and white chocolate as we wanted, which was nice.

The museum ended with a walk through some incredible chocolate statuary and a demonstration of how to make Belgian pralines. It was pretty much exactly like the demonstration we saw in York---the chocolatier filled a mold with chocolate, poured it out, filled with filling, then filled with chocolate. But it's always fun to see people make chocolate, and it's even better to get free samples afterward.

On our way out to the gift shop, a set of computer terminals offered to reveal our perfect origin chocolate based on our taste preferences. Apparently mine is Venezuela and Jessica’s is Vietnam.

Our next stop was to climb the iconic bell tower that overlooks the market square. I have to admit that I spent a lot of that time thinking about the movie In Bruges, in which the tower plays a prominent role.

Crowds have apparently become more of an issue in the ten years since the movie was released. It was about a thirty-minute wait in the newly installed queue room before we could climb the tower. The price has also grown along with the crowds–twelve euros per person instead of the five quoted in the movie.

While we waited, we watched a looping video showing how the design of the tower has evolved over time. It was once actually even taller than it is now.

During the Middle Ages, a lot of towns around Belgium made deals with the local lords. The lords gave the towns economic autonomy, and the towns used this freedom to make astronomical amounts of money that the lords could use to raise armies when necessary. Each town had a market hall where local merchants would keep their wares safe during winter, and it became a point of pride for each town to build the biggest, most elaborate tower possible on their market halls.

As we climbed up, we got to see some exhibits along the way. We saw an old lock-box and the original wrought-iron doors dating back over 700 years to the hall’s original construction. Back in the day, this chest would have contained important contracts and decrees, and it would have required multiple respected members of the community to open it together, since they each would carry one of several keys that were all needed to open it.

We also saw the giant brass cylinder that runs the tower’s carillon bells just like a music box. I hadn’t known before this trip that that was how they worked!

It's very clear from the inside how much the tower has been expanded and renovated over the centuries. The designs and angles of the staircase change dramatically every few floors or so, seemingly without any care for convenience or continuity. It clearly feels like a place that was originally intended to be behind the scenes and not seen by visitors.

Also, as far as I could tell, there wasn't any point along climb where the stairway matched the one shown in In Bruges. Oh well.

The view from the top of the tower was just as spectacular as we could have hoped. There was a web of wire mesh covering all the windows, possibly to prevent people from inadvertently reenacting the film’s climactic scene.

Still, we were able to get some spectacular shots of the surrounding town and skyline.

Back on the ground, we bought some fries at one of the stands flanking the entrance and sat down in the bell tower's courtyard. Fries are a big deal in Belgium, and there are dozens of condiments to choose from. There's the American staple of ketchup, the Belgian staple of mayonnaise, and a host of other sauces we'd never heard of before. Thankfully we had plenty of time in line to do some quick research on our phones.

We both settled on “Andalouse sauce”–a blend of mayonnaise, tomato sauce, and peppers. If you've ever tried Red Robin's Campfire sauce before, it is very similar to that. They were easily the best fries either of us have ever had.

After doing a bit of final shopping in town, we headed back to our Airbnb to rest up and get packed for the next day's trip up to Amsterdam, where Jessica’s brother Nic was already waiting for us. We were leaving a day earlier than we had originally planned at the beginning of the trip since we'd gotten tickets to a soccer match in Amsterdam tomorrow night, but we still had a great time. Belgium seems to have a bit of a reputation for being an underwhelming tourist destination, but we had a fantastic time. The people were great, the food was great, the beer was great, and the scenery was great.

Speaking of beer, we didn't do any other beer-related activities after the De Halve Maan brewery tour, but we did our best to sample the local offerings back at our Airbnb in the evenings. We enjoyed a bottle of Kasteel Rouge, the cherry-liqueur-fortified dark ale we'd tasted back in Prague. Just like before, the first sip was heavenly, but each sip afterward was increasingly cloying. It would make a great digestif, but a full bottle---or even half a bottle---is far too much.

Another ale we enjoyed was the ubiquitous but still impressive Leffe Brown. It is the standard dubbel offering of the Belgian abbey-style macrobrewery Leffe, part of the Anheuser-Busch InBev family. But like I said, it is still really good. As long as you like dark ales, that is. The first thing that struck me was just how appropriate the name was. Sure, "Brown" doesn't seem like the most unique or descriptive name for a dark beer, but I can't think of a better word to encapsulate its flavor. It's earthy, bready, and nutty---like drinking a fermented organic bakery.

And of course, we got some Lambic beers. Jessica had gotten me into Lambic beers back when we were first planning this trip. Technically, Lambic beer is just beer that's produced in a very specific part of Belgium using wild yeast instead of brewer's yeast. But commercially, Lambic beers are known for being mixed with fruit syrups to create a deliciously refreshing beverage that even people who don't normally like alcohol can enjoy. The main brand you can find in the US is Lindeman's, and one of the first drinks we opened upon our arrival in Bruges was a Lindeman's Framboise (raspberry). It tasted pretty much the same as it does in the US--which could be seen as either mildly disappointing (since it wasn't any better) or moderately encouraging (we don't have to feel depressed for not getting "the good stuff" back home).

Plus, we also had a ton of chocolates we had to eat our way through. Yeah, life was pretty hard for us in Belgium. But all good things in this life must come to an end, even if it is only to move on to the next good thing. And the next good thing for us was Amsterdam, a family reunion, and my first European soccer match.

[bahrrss-blog]

DIGITAL PROTOTYPING  Malmö University -2019

DE/RE CONSTRUCT  - 1st of April

De/construct. Promoting our insight into the ongoing course, this task wants us to investigate and "deconstruct" an actual GUI, recognising configuration examples of the interface. Deconstruct phase is followed by reconstruction.

Beginning with the procedure of deconstruction, I started from researching the applications on my phone, seeking around to check whether there are applications with specific capacities that are confounding, hard to enrol naturally, or just inadequately planned. That being stated, telephone applications these days have experienced a lot of cycles and update that most apps are about flawless usefulness astute other than the occasional bugs. I unquestionably experienced serious difficulties finding an application that I had serious issues with. So I decided to avoid confusion this time and go for just any app, giving myself a hard task. That I chose to look at as a challenge rather than an unsolvable problem.

I settled with the application of Instagram. Instagram is a popular application. It is structured is founded on picture sharing. What makes this application emerge is the exceedingly adaptable showcase. You can change the look of your pictures and videos, comment, explore, share, and chat, privately and publicly. In a case of private chate, this feature, probably due to a secondary role for Instagram is very locate.

The fundamental issue I'm having as I utilise this application is that as the primary GUI is made for single communication/share and not to interact.

STUDYING THE STRUCTURE OF INSTAGRAM

I generally end up experiencing considerable difficulties finding and getting to the page where you can see private messages. The application makes it easy to glance through the communities and explore but could be troublesome when you might want to rapidly access chats your friends sent you. 

As an extrovert and someone who likes to communicate, this seems overly complicated for times when talking to people anywhere in the world is free of charge. I attempt to deconstruct in detail Instagram and understand why they have placed direct messages in a place where is hard to find.

These are some of the Instagrams GUI. Here you can five different pages and choose between 5 different functionalities of Instagram. Each display has its purpose. To navigate, to explore, to follow, to add new media, and your own profile.

The main issue with the page I have is, the messaging part. Insofar it is available only on the main page. So not even on your profile, nor any other page of the applications. And, to make even stuff more dislikable for me, there is no even messaging part when the application is accessed from the browser, computer or phone.

The app makes it easy to navigate through all features, such as, follow, like, add a new photo, the main page, or your own profile. However, once you find yourself in any place except on the main page, you can’t see messages being delivered. And, this, in my opinion, can be troublesome, due to a pure fact that messaging is a huge part of social networking.

It is that much complicated that Instagram even made official guidelines on their ‘’how to’’ page. You can see their guidelines on the picture under.

REI found messaging one of, if not the main reason why I use social networks, especially Instagram, it is convenient, retro, and modern way of exploring and sharing, so obstacles like one presented above, strike accords, and that's why I am talking about it. Especially as a Student living abroad, and having friends and families all over the world. I would benefit from facilitated messaging options. I will deconstruct Instagram into details furthermore down in this post. So, stay here around and keep reading.

BREAKING IT DOWN

As you can see on the image, in the right upper corner messages are placed, and on the exact opposite side, down left corner is the home page. (the little house looking alike icon)

Furthermore, I will talk about the Instagram story, in the media presented below, you can notice circles and some of them has a red outline, and some not. The red outline is to show that there is a new story published to buy the user. Once you watched the story (the circle becomes grey and moves away from the top of your notifications)The way to watch someone's story is to just simply press (and hold to pause) on the top of the story. Stories usually can’t be longer than a few seconds, and a maximum number of stories is 100 per day. Each story disappears after 24 hours, with the possibility of being stored on the profile afterwards. It will be available (hidden on the profile, meaning only visible to the owner of that profile for next 12 months, and then it is lost forever)

You can see the stories from the main page, or you can access them also when visiting the page of the person or desired agency.  Also, if you desire to share it outside of Instagram you choose from pressing and choosing the option for three dots in the right corner of the media.

In order to not be too subjective, I have asked some of my colleagues to look into this and give me their honest opinions. I also asked some of my friends who are not familiar with the school project, thinking this way I could avoid bias.

Below is a deconstruction of Instagram with annotations of patterns and functions.

RE/CONSTRUCT

If you look closely to provided re-constructed xd prototype. The icon for messages is located in the bottom grid. Inheritably the bottom grid is fixed on the GUI. Hence, to access the messages will be easy and quick. As explained in deconstruct part, the messages/share feature was placed in multiplied places. Giving the cluttered look and giving a feeling of confusion to users. This design patterns can be blamed on Instagram policies to keep their platform explorative and not based it on messaging. It can be argued that Facebook came to a similar problematics, which Facebook solved by creating separate app only for messaging, But this caused the decrease of usage of the main Facebook overall. However my improved design look is minimal, it would not cause major division between messaging and sharing content on Instagram. On the contrary, it would facilitate the usage of both features.

User testing

In user testing, the general feedback I got is can be summed in three words. ´´Oh, THANK GOD´´ what users meant to say was: someone else is also feeling the same way, Some of the users mentioned that they use Instagram as calling app, video calling app. Instagram has incorporated video and voice calling together with iOS and Android, so when someone is calling on Instagram, feels like you are getting regular phone calls. Furthermore, accessing to the deaths of this calls is a bit harder. Because of the issue mentioned previously. Thus having messaging (which is call and video call) feature display on the main GUI of Instagram on the bottom fixed grid, seemed as change worth changing.

Analysis

When starting this project, I wanted to focus only on a rather overall redesign than touching only some visual design patterns. Like messaging feature. However, the visual design does have a big impact on user experience. For the above solutions, I wanted to show how small changes can make a big impact.

The patterns, as far for the control that Instagram induces, is hard to notice. Mainly because announcements are very well integrated, it is hard to distinguish them from real person posts. It is, however, a typical iOS application pattern. It is very well adjusted with adds.

Instagram has an integrated variety of shapes in its design. Rounded, and squared icons.

The font used on Instagram is: Roboto is used along with Freight on Android. The Instagram website uses Proxima Nova for all text with Neue Helvetica and iOS Freight Sans.

On Instagram, when uploading a photo the design pattern of carousels can be noticed. You can scroll between pictures to select as many as it is allowed to upload.

This is the noticeable design patterns, I was also when user testing attempting to found more of them, but I couldn’t notice. I would need to do an in-depth analysis to find more, or maybe with any new updates of design, the new pattern will appear. Sometimes also, when we are to dwell into deconstructing.

BEYOND THE NORM - 15th of April

Questions: 

What is the speculative approach? What is the critical design? How to relate this to interaction design? Should we, as designers, ignore issues of the world? Should we, as citizens, be satisfied with the world we have?

How can a designer play a role in engaging with the world most critical issues?

Check out the video called Technological Dreams Series No. 1, Robots Dunne & Raby, 2007. It talks about interactive experiences. This video has no voice-over, explaining but clearly explain the power roles that we have over the objects. 

https://vimeo.com/2611597

Critical design is rather about asking a question than finding solutions or looking for the problems.

Answers:

Rather than finding a solution to current life problems, Critical design offers a step into the future and gives us feedback about where should we go further. Critical design tests wander and explore with ideas in a rather than unconventional way. Their exploration can be understood as something between reality and impossible. There is an attempt of drawing distinction between affirmative design (design that reinforces the status quo) and Critical Design - design that rejects how things are now as being the only possibility, it provides a critique of the prevailing situation through designs that embody alternative social, cultural and technical, or economic value (Dunne and Raby 2001)

Manifesto of the Critical Design: Design as a medium, asks, questions, social fiction, parallel worlds, functional fictions etc.

Is it even needed? Do we need art in design? Positive critique is that is pushing boundaries that might result in positive changes. Negative critique is that this type of design is just trying to make some noize and that we don’t really don’t need this design.

What to be thoughtful about is that critical design creates a space for critique.

Thoughtful design is taking into perspective, projecting scenarios and establishing the use of emerging things. Discursive design is distinguishing design field, commercial, experimental, and discursive design. What is essential in design fiction is that the object fits into its surroundings.

Relation of these designs to #IXD 

Prototypes are tenuous, material and experienceable. Prototyping is aligned in order for situations to be understood. 

Issues with Critical Design, it is very hard to know you are on the right path. We don’t know if we are doing a good or bad job. 

In a short conclusion: Critical Desing is here to provoke, to question, to change values, to challenge the status quo, do it with great care if you adopt the techniques of critical design.

Adobe XD tutorials

Learning XD in detail has its advantages. Basic functions sometimes are not enough, it is quite a time saving when you know where something is located. Most of the things we learned in the first Adobe tutorial, I have already been familiar with, but haven’t really used them so much. For example, doing animation with xd was valuable insights. We were wireframing the news app. We created load screens, and the screens were supposed to give feedback. And the feedback was load time. I find this very funny, in times when 5G networks are to be implemented.

We created only a few screens and made the animations. But, it is interesting how this animation would look like for enormous news apps, that contain thousands of information and it is updated literally every minute. I guess this information tells how important this trick was when designing an app.

If you look closely you can see that the small dots under the titles are not all the same for each screen. This, when using the app would give the impression of time passing.

Furthermore, learning about wireframing tools, was also valuable. The thing is not only learning is enough, but this skill also has to be practised and put to use. We used already made screens, in my opinion, it is a bit limiting the creativity of the designer, but on the other hand, the time-saving aspect has to be taken into consideration. It would take much longer to make these screens from scratch. Hereunder you can see some screen I made during the XD workshop.

ANALYTICS EXERCISE  -23d April 2019

After an in-depth exploration of Google merchandise store, there are few design suggestions that I could recommend for googles improvement in sales. Right under you can see chars that are visualising backing up my argumentations.

If we look closely to these numbers under. There is an enormous differentiation between mobile users and desktop users. It is certain there today in mobile purchases are common and becoming the main way of using the internet, also purchases.

This makes sense in many ways because mobile phones are always in our pockets, and we reach for mobile more often then we do with our laptops.  So, I am raising the question about this issue, since Google merchandise store, has more visits from their desktop site.

Overall desktop visits are around 51 000 visits, where on phone it is only around 16000 visits.

This data, made me go and look at the mobile site of the store, and here I have found several design changes that can be applied. This, in my opinion, would give the store market standard, and boost mobile visits. Let take a look at the mobile site (check the media under). There we can see a variety of information hidden, behind the same icon. There are cluttered and not even necessary because all of the information this icon contain can be placed within one icon, or simply displayed on its own. The number of items purchased can be placed on the basked. And the icon next to towards left can be eliminated, or unified with the same icon under.

In conclusion, the site is clean from announcements, which gives it a peaceful place to do your shopping. Adding these small changes would make a site mobile friendly and it would boost visits and purchases made through the phone.

Digital Prototyping -  How do speculative approaches reveal qualities of digital prototyping practice, and what are these important qualities?

To begin with, I can mention that speculative design process requires definitely more than one iteration. In my opinion, there is a need for researching the topic of choice from different angels. To understand the complexity of the design opportunity. It is practically a necessity to deconstruct the science behind the design opportunity.

In this course, the topic was drowned from the perspective of the UN sustainable goals. The pros of having to work with information like this is that is a very well researched topic. Easily accessible information online, multiple sources. All of this facilitates the process of speculation.

On the other hand, I will argue that this limits the creative process. Which many would agree, is necessary for any good speculative design process.

However, since this was the first project of speculative design, having predefined filed of work, can be taken as beneficial, then disadvantageous

Furthermore, if we would attempt to answer the following question: How speculative design is relevant to prototyping experiences in general? We can argue that relevance depends on the design aim. In this project, there was a necessity to use previously acquired prototyping skills, but the context was directed towards, information, visualising or grabbing attention overall. To achieve this our prototyping practice needed the help us come up with this design. I would argue that it help to understand speculation in design, but not to the point where the speculation was entirely clear.

For instance, the design process that my group was undertaking in this course, was clearly divided into two major ideas. Where the first idea, was a bad attempt to speculate, and a rather good attempt to solve the problems. Prototyping wasn't contributing much. On the contrary, on the second interaction, when the ideas were considered quite speculative, prototyping, especially using digital tools (such as xd) made the project harder. This is due to the fact that the initial ideas needed to be transferred to visual aspects. Thus, everything seems as constrained. With each small design implementation, the idea of speculation seemed losing its value.

Conclusively, it is worth considering, in future speculative design practices. that the prototyping practices can be arguably big constraint to the speculative design process.

To relate just argued pros and cons of the mentioned topic to the question of this essay (How do speculative approaches reveal qualities of digital prototyping practice, and what are these important qualities?) I can say the digital prototyping has visual aspects as support. Meaning, the tools digital prototyping uses are dependent by the large scale on the visual aspect. Whether we use video or just images. Having said this, and taking into consideration the complexity of the speculative design. Digital prototyping can serve to clarify this complex nature of this form of design.

To wrap up this thought, I can say, the visual aspect is (if well made) self-explanatory, and overall easy to understand (compared to other expensive mediums) therefore, this characteristic of digital prototyping can serve as an advantage when used in speculative design.

However, there are other qualities of digital prototyping that speculative design can reveal. For instance, these qualities can be reviled depending on which angle we are observing digital prototyping. If we looked at it from the perspective of humans needs, then we have to understand that people seek influence over their environments, and digital technology has traditionally extended possibilities to extend knowledge and control (Gaver & Martin, 2000).

There are examples where just simple machine intelligence was used to arranged and to shape birds' behaviour, by approximating a target tune for birds singing. This allowed could allow the different birds to be trained to take different harmonic roles in an overall composition. Hence, digital prototyping can give a man much more than even imaginable at first glance. We can argue that digital prototyping practice could allow people to extend control to the very wildlife and navigate the future of   (wilderness and of nature) simply uncontrollable. Another example can be given from this course speculative design project. The project Swipe Dream, developed with my classmates, held in itself speculative understanding of the UN sustainable goal number 17. Partnership for goals. Swipe dream places serious manners such as development and many flows from developed to developing world, by using modern dating environment such as tinder. There is no-the less controversy in this project. But, it proves the point that speculative design allows (with use of digital prototyping) us to see important questions in another light, thus illuminating problematics, that otherwise would pass unnoticed.

Furthermore, when the design is used to ends that are provocative,  we are bridging and constructing things. We are also telling stories through objects, which become effectively conversation pieces in  a  very  real  and  persuasive  sense.  Through the projection of design scenarios, design fictions, and narratives of use, the designer as storyteller shifts focuses beyond efficient use, to embrace uncertainty, interpretation and meaning (Malpass, 2016).

It can be argued that speculative design holds immense importance for society. It pushes the boundaries from what we know already. It teaches us new perspectives on the stuff that are already around us. It gives purpose to things that presumably are useless. I connect us with objects around us and allows us to create better futures. Speculatively, digital prototyping shines the most in my opinion when using storytelling through film and images. And when mediums for expression is mixed. Her plays important roles in the ambiguity,

Furthermore, when prototyping in relation to the digital world, if we position design as an effective medium with the intent to construct public and engage user audiences by questioning conditions in everyday life. We need a powerful perspective for the user to understand our points. We need to achieve this critical perspective of the user or observer.Here is when digital prototyping can show it’s powered. If done correctly and with huge dedication, we as a designer can affect the direction where our society is going.

Design can push furthermore from orthodox way of thinking. If we manage to encourage the user to interpret the object, we put the user in a role that opens up for exploration, reflection and engagement. And, is it even necessary to explain how important is for every individual to fully engage in explorations of their own lives.

Conclusively, we can argue that there are multiple design approaches when it comes to speculative design. Firstly the combinations of disciplines. Design can be related to art, architecture or even philosophy. But, due to a necessity for clarity and simplicity, to my knowledge, we can narrow down speculative approaches in at least three different ones. The first sees designers reflecting on and critically questioning design practice. In this course, it was a digital prototyping design practice. Also, the second approach is based on re-thinking the design discipline. For example, rethinking if the digital prototyping is the best approach to explain certain problematics, or would is politics the best place to express concern about climate change, and so on.  When we are talking about politics, to my knowledge and from what literature supporting this paper is indicating, one of the approaches of speculative design could actually be related to the overall importance of this speculation and design for society. Nonetheless, it is important to see the speculative design more as a discursive practice, based on critical thinking and dialogue, which questions the practice of design than to try to select and eliminate this practice in any other way (Malpass, 2016).

On the other hand, digital prototyping practice in too many ways can be a limitation in the ability to explore possible futures. We are all explorer, and the medium we use matters.  Different strategic approaches are both desirable and necessary to achieve the best results possible in the process of exploration.

Digital prototyping is a way of thinking and expressing. It is certainly no so different from physical prototyping. But none the less, the experience digital prototyping can create, might interfere with how we think of our future and how we as mankind will continue to go about our lives. Yes, I argue of the benefits of digital prototyping, but however good and beneficial this prototyping is, it will never bring better results than feedbacks that real users give us.

In conclusion, it can be stated that digital prototyping together with the speculative design is of big importance, it gives us a modern perspective of ourselves and of the context we found ourselves in.

Literature

Gaver, B., & Martin, H. (2000). Alternatives. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI ’00. https://doi.org/10.1145/332040.332433

Malpass, M. (2016). Critical Design Practice: Theoretical Perspectives and Methods of Engagement. The Design Journal. https://doi.org/10.1080/14606925.2016.1161943

[valentinaforerocreativeblog]

Major Project - My Visual’s Development

Due to getting sick and basically starting off two months later I decided I wanted to stick with a digital program I felt comfortable with since I didn't have much time to learn a new one, and that's why I ended up using Spoke Mozilla Hubs. I had recently used Spoke for my previous project last semester, so it was fresh in my mind, but the only issue is ..... I didn't have a good time with it, to say the least. I had previously found it restricting and just annoying to design on, but that didn't stop me from using it and learning more skills for it.

I started off with the simplest idea that came to me, a gallery layout. I just wanted to showcase my collages and I was even thinking of maybe creating a short video to play in the background.

First Take on Spoke

Now after creating the layout seen above, I'm going, to be honest ... I knew it wasn’t good at all, it didn’t have anything exciting to it and it was just plain boring to look at. I remembered one important thing I learned from the VR exhibition I had created in the previous semester and that was not just to recreate an environment, but an experience.

Focusing on creating an immersive environment

Having the idea of wanting to create an experience, I wanted to immerse the viewer in a ‘color cube’. I was trying to recreate this idea I had in my mind of the viewer stepping into a rubric cube but instead of the viewer seeing squares of color, I wanted them to see my scene collages.

After seeing how my rubric cube would look like, of course, it was the first attempt but I wasn’t feeling too excited about it, it just looked too simple to me, I wanted more for my visual. I started sketching an idea that involved recreating important scenes of the films using digital art. I thought by recreating the scene of the film and surrounding the scene, would create a ‘more’ immersive environment for the viewer (along with being able to show off my skills on Spoke).

Beginning of the immersive environment 

As you can see in the images above, I decided to create a pathway using the collages to guide the viewer throughout the environment. At this moment I was combining the collages all together, not separating them due to which film they are from. I had the idea of creating the space on top of the water to ‘show off the use of VR, but after creating the waterfall effect I noticed it wasn't really noticeable and it also took too much space, making the scene lag too much.

This video was taken right before I decided to change the layout of the space. As you can see I was still getting used to the program, learning the best way to navigate the space. (also I couldn't screen record at the time since my laptop was broken and the laptop I was using at that moment was very old, so my apologies for the horrible quality.)

After taking away the water effect, I decided to also change the layout of the rooms. I thought placing them in a ‘cross’ shape would allow the viewer to see all three of the rooms once they enter the space. I also took away the roof I had previously place on the center collage because it looked too close up and the whole point of VR is to allow the viewer to wander free.

Including digital art 

When it came to deciding on the design for the digital art, I decided to rewatch the three films I decided to base this experience on, Lost In Translation, Marie Antoinette, and The Virgin Suicides. While watching I decided that in Lost In Translation that the Kyoto gardens were iconic to represent the location of the film. When it came to Marie Antoinette the scene in which Marie Antoinette expressed her happiest moments were in the gardens of Versailles and that led to the decision of recreating them. Lastly, in The Virgin Suicides, the iconic Lisbon’s house seemed to be the perfect representation of the film.

Now knowing exactly which scenes I wanted to recreate I start designing the spaces using digital art. As you can see in the images above at the start, I wanted to include two scenes from the movies, for example in the Lost In Translation room I wanted to recreate the Kyoto gardens in the front and then the busy central streets of Tokyo. Then in Marie Antoinette, I wanted to recreate the gardens of Versailles in the front and then the dining halls in the back. Before I started working on The Virgin Suicides room, I noticed that some of the art pieces I wanted to use were too large for the room to load. I really want to pact the room with several objects, including water, light particles, and flashing images but the size of the spaces wasn't big enough for my ideas. Like in many moments in design I found myself using the concept of ‘less is more.

 New Changes - More constructed layout 

As you can see, I made some subtle changes to the rooms. Firstly, I decided to change the background of the lighting in the environment to represent a sunset since Coppola’s use of natural lighting is the reason why her films have a ‘dreamy’ aesthetic to them. By changing the environment’s lighting, I wanted to try to recreate the same ‘dreamy’ feel to the experience. Another change I decided to do was the movement of the digital art in the rooms. By pushing back the digital art the viewer has more space to walk around the room and notice the collages on the walls. I also thought by pushing the digital art to the back, sort of made the viewer have to go to the back. Before there wasn’t really much reason for the viewer to check out the back and now having the digital art in the back gives the viewer a more structured layout without really constraining them.

Deciding on bubble backdrop 

After changing the layout of the rooms, I had the idea of including a space background. I wanted to create a more enclosed environment for the viewer to focus on the rooms and not wander off. I found out that in Spoke you can try an image and create a 360-degree bubble image. I decided to enlarge the bubble and found out that you can immerse your room into the bubble, which creates this enclosed environment I was looking for. 

For my first try, I wanted to use Yayoi Kusama’s exhibition, the Infinity Mirror Rooms. I thought it would be a great fit with my whole idea of the viewer being enclosed but still having the feeling of infinitive space. Another reason is the fact that Kusama’s artwork was another inspiration for my VR experience. I was inspired by the psychedelic sense of her artwork, the idea of making her viewer feel as if they’re in another worldly environment surrounded by lights of all different colors is the same ‘feeling’ I wanted to create with my collage rooms.

 Golden lights - 

Color Scheme -

After trying different types of images of Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms, I noticed that there was a clash between the collage rooms and the image of Kusama’s artwork, I needed a simpler image to have as the backdrop. I, later on, thought of just having the image of the color wheel since my collages were all about showing the color variation of each film. I know looking at the backdrop by itself, it looked a bit boring but combined with the collages I thought it might work.

After trying it, moving it around the room I still wasn’t convinced that it was the best backdrop. Even though of its simplicity, it still looked a bit too ‘crowded’ in the room.   

Natural light - sunset 

In the end, after trying different types of images, I decided to discard the idea of an enclosed bubble and stick to a more natural backdrop. I created sunset lighting to embrace Coppola’s use of natural lighting in her films. I thought the sunset backdrop combined well with the collages since the colors of the sky didn't clash or fade away into the color of the collages. It was the perfect combination, it gave me a sense of comfort and dreaminess that Coppola’s films uniquely have.

[welldresseddadblog]

Welcome to the 12th instalment of the “Garmsman Dozen” question and answer session. The response so far has been tremendous. Did you miss earlier ones? There are links at the end of the page.

This week we welcome to the Garmsman Dozen Iain Trickett from Great Britain!

Who are you, where do you live and what interests you?

My name is Iain Trickett, 31, and I am the head honcho at TRiCKETT England… Well, I am the only honcho actually. I live in Accrington, Lancashire where the pies are plentiful and the skies are grey. When I’m not making clothes or thinking about clothing, I am found looking at Californian Tattooists, researching British subcultures, listening to hip-hop and walking my dogs.

Thinking back to your childhood, what were your most memorable or favourite clothes?

From a very, very young age, I was obsessed with sportswear and in particular training shoes. My mother was really into trainers and bought me my very first pair of Nike Air Jordans at the age of 4. As my interests developed I become interested in sporting apparel and the performance, however, the two items that set me off on a voyage into fashion or clothing were the Newcastle 1995-97 home shirt by Adidas and the LA Gear Gretzky One street hockey trainers.

First, the Newcastle shirt was just beautiful. The team that wore it was one of the great ‘could’ve been’ teams and the period that the shirt was introduced was a great period for sportswear design. The shirt featured a granddad collar, alternate mesh and solid polyester black and white stripes, piping on the three stripes and the infamous Newcastle Brown Ale logo. This item proved that football shirts were just for the pitch, but also fashion items that would be worn after the turnstiles closed.

The Gretzky shoes were something that I imagine went into a metaphorical sportswear landfill. Manufactured by the now defunct LA Gear, these shoes were unlike anything I had ever seen before. I used to visit Florida quite regularly with my parents as my mum had a great Aunt that lived in Clearwater. Most days were spent sat outside, basking in the sun. For a child under 10, this isn’t the most fun you could have, so my dad bought me copies of Sports Illustrated and other American sports magazines to keep me occupied. It was world unlike any I had ever seen and one person who stood out was a Canadian fellow wearing a pair of black and white boots with a #99 on the side. I later learned that this was the great Wayne Gretzky, who had just made his unpopular switch to the LA Kings. The boots themselves were pretty unremarkable, mesh and leather mixed together with some traditional hockey skate laces and the great one’s signature and number on the side. The shoes themselves were by no means a piece to keep in the memory of the sporting collector, but for me, it represented a gateway to a world I have never seen before.

How would you describe your style today, and what are your influences?

When I was younger, I used to listen to DJ Shadow, I always admired how he could take bits and pieces from all over the place and put it all together to create one coherent piece. I am not for a minute saying that what I do compares to the great Shadow, but I would say that I like to be influenced by all kinds of things. I am obsessed with Italy and Italian elegance, for me it isn’t necessarily having a suit made entirely hand in a tiny Sartoria down a backstreet in Napoli, or that weird sprezzatura thing that was cool a few years ago, it is more about being comfortable in your skin and having elegance with it.

I think I will always be obsessed with footwear and I believe dressing from the feet up, you can never go too far wrong. So if I had to describe my style it’s footwear-obsessed, sports-fan, who likes his pasta al dente and his top button done up… that probably makes no sense.

Most garmsmen will have a few “grail items” in their collection. Not to out you, but if your house is burning, which garments do you grab?

I think if my house was burning down, I would think about my new kitchen that is just about to be put in and whether the plinth heater would’ve been worth it in the winter. After a pause, I would make sure that I have my original deadstock pair of Nike Air Jordan Is. They are in a size 10, the original banned colourway and are just waiting to be worn. My plan was to wear them at my wedding, but not being married, they are just waiting for that perfect moment… Maybe my debut in the Accrington Observer.

Are you budget-conscious or spendthrift? Are you a single-shot shopper, or go large and buy bulk? Where are you on slow-fashion and buying less?

I think for many people, getting dressed in a morning is pretty stressful. We are at a point in society where we buy more, have more options and dress much more casually than our parents and certainly, our grandparents do/did. I would like to think that I am the kind of person that buys what I like and for the most part, that tends to be from smaller brands. I do like the idea of buying less and just buying a couple of very expensive suits, but truthfully, I am just not sure that works in the 21st Century. I’d love to be able to turn up to ASDA in Accrington wearing my Rubinacci suit, selecting which bananas best represent who I am, but chances are, I would probably get asked if I worked there. I do think we should make an effort to buy from smaller brands because owning one, I can’t stress to you how many different people are impacted by your £30 you spend with them, rather than oiling a huge conglomerate that doesn’t really care.

Having a large collection of clothes can lead to changing outfit on a daily basis, but if you were going to wear a single outfit the next two weeks, what would it be?

I genuinely believe that you can’t go too far wrong with a varsity jacket (either loads of patches or none, there is no middle ground), a really nice white t-shirt (no curry stains), very, very dark selvedge denim (listen, I am not a denim geek, it is just nicer to wear and everyone likes to see a flick of selvage on their turn-ups) and just a pair of very white leather trainers. In this outfit, you are a bit casual, but at the same time, who wants to be wearing a navy blue suit everywhere they go?

What are your best tips for buying?

If there is one thing that I have learned over the years of buying and designing clothes it’s buying stuff that fits. I know that seems like an obvious thing to say, but it really does help. I went through a phase of wanting to dress like a skinhead, the look is so incredibly iconic and its a really clean aesthetic. However, I know, now, that my shape doesn’t suit that style, I am very, very broad and not well endowed in the shin department so I just end up looking like a square in more ways than one. So my advice is, get something you feel comfortable in and then take it to a tailor, it’s their job to make you look good.

Big lads, don’t buy baggy stuff, you just end up looking worse and for goodness sake you don’t need shoulder pads in your jackets, go get them taken out. Napoli is great for many things, but in particular for making the natural shoulder in suit jackets cool. Forza Napoli Sempre.

Anyone that buys clothes will have made mistakes, what is your most memorable bad buy?

I have been lucky enough to work with Patrick Grant of E. Tautz and Community Clothing fame. One of the more famous items of clothing that he has in the lineup is the field trousers. A wide legged pair of kecks (that’s Lancastrian for pants) that are based on trousers that Naval officers would in the ‘40s and ‘50s. They look very elegant when worn with converse and swish from side to side in almost a hypnotic way. They look great… That is until you are wearing them in TESCO in Accrington only for an old man to say ‘Thas looks like a pillock in them ‘owd lad.’ I nodded in agreement, sadly I am not built like a model and the 42 rolls at the hems did nothing for the shape.

Do you have any style icons, historic or current?

I like to pinch bits from lots of peoples style, so I am sorry if this turns into a massive long list.

Sid Mashburn – his shop and Southern (American) charm are something that you always feel like he is wearing. One of the only two men I know that can wear white jeans convincingly. He also likes Italian tailoring and American football, so he is OK with me.

Alessandro Squarzi – A chap who can seemingly throw on any old thing and look absolutely amazing, I much preferred him with a shaved head, but that is probably because I am follically challenged. He is also the second person I admire who can wear white jeans convincingly.

Lino Ieluzzi – Milan just wouldn’t be the same without this bloke, great hair, great suits and great labradors. I literally don’t know what else you could want from life.

LeBron James – LeBron has literally made wearing his trousers too short in the leg his trademark. Obviously being a basketball player there isn’t much ready-to-wear that would fit him in the leg, but he always manages to produce a certain air of elegance about him.

My Uncle Peter – Only ever wore a rugby shirt and chinos. Every. Single. Day. I admire anymore who has an almost cartoon character-like wardrobe and sticks to it.

My mum and dad – Both have very different views on clothes and how to wear them, but both are passionate about what the put on and that is really all that matters.

Does your interest in clothes influence other aspects of your life?

Clothing does mean a great deal to me and I think most subcultures like to dress up. Be it new Romantics, skinheads, Teddy Boys whatever, I don’t think you can be into clothes without liking the things around it. However, my obsession with all things American and Italian pretty much means that I spend any free time I get there. Whether it is seeking exceptionally old shops in Italy or finding a brand new trainer shop in LA, travelling for clothing and discovery of the cities and towns is, for me, the best part. The internet has so many great uses, but it has slightly killed this adventures. However, there are still a few hidden gems that are on the list, that I am not telling you about!

How do you see your style evolving going forwards?

I think style is the appreciation of beautiful things. I always used to get caught up with the notion that style had to be something of the moment or it had to be something that was a set of rules set by other ‘stylish’ people. I think style is the word we use just for the stuff we like. Sometimes the stuff we like makes us cool and other times it can make us very uncool. However, I think as long as we are appreciating beauty whether that is food, art, clothing, whatever that can only improve our style. I hope my style evolves and my interests develop, I have an insatiable appetite for learning and I can’t see that changing.

Do you have a good style or garment based story?

When I was much younger, I absolutely loved Bape (a Bathing Ape), my friend and I were obsessed with this picture of the Notorious B.I.G wearing a camouflage jacket with ape’s head floating around in it. On the front placket it had A BATHING APE in bold lettering, so we set about finding out where we could get it. To cut a very long story short, we found a tiny shop in London where Bape was sold. We pooled all our money together for the tickets, bunked off school, bought the jacket, came home, feeling like we really had achieved something only for my dad to be waiting on the platform when we returned. I still don’t know to this day how he found out and whats even worse is that I never really wore the jacket much that me and my pal bought together. He was Blackburn Rovers fan. Says it all really.

Thank you for your Garmsman Dozen Iain!

Iain’s website is at trickett-england.co.uk and his Instagram is @trickettengland

Did you miss the first Garmsman Dozens?

Jon from Great Britain

Shaun from Scotland

Klaus from Germany

Roland from Italy

Daniel from Sweden

Enoch from the USA

Even from Norway

Kris from Belgium

Michael from Great Britain

Liam from Great Britain

Lee from Great Britain

PS: If you have suggestions for participants, let me know. Or have your mother suggest you, if you’re a bit keen to suggest yourself. My email is WellDressedDad (@) gmail.com

The Garmsman Dozen #12: Iain from Great Britain (Trickett_England) #trickett #garmsmandozen #mensfashion #madeinengland #accrington #lancashire #mensstyle #menswear #sportswear #vintage #retro Welcome to the 12th instalment of the "Garmsman Dozen" question and answer session. The response so far has been tremendous.

[freechoicedreamer]

Body and Soul (Ch. 2)

AO3

A side note: a potential plea against the 'canon-compliant' claim - a fundamental premise set out to both stories of this alternate Final Season series - may come from the background seen on the thematic illustration of this chapter. It is a screenshot of the United Realms, as portrayed in one of the final scenes of OUAT series finale. Despite the clear visual evidence, I refuted the idea of all realms being this closely gathered around Storybrooke, seemingly as if they were mere aggregated parts of one single town. I based my assumption on the likelihood that practical production/logistics issues were more prevalent than the need to craft more carefully a setup that would not imply on geopolitical garbage and storytelling nonsense. To be honest, that came with no surprise, even for OUAT typical narrative patterns, well known for not going beyond a superficial and only apparent coherence; after all the series finale condition loosened the need of establishing a minimum continuity level. As a matter of fact, the image appears to be just an iconic concept instead of an accurate representation of a real (and reliable) geographic distribution of the united realms. Actually, it looks - more likely - as a random collage of castles and kingdoms (taken from some OUAT-CGI database) quickly assembled for just one single and short scene. In other words, one may argue that this conclusion is open to interpretation but I may counter argue that the concept all realms physically gathered like all-stuck-together has not been consolidated-by-a-solid-narrative enough to acquire the 'canon' status. In summary, in any feasible configuration, even taking into account the innumerable storytelling possibilities opened by the 'magic' combined with 'mixed fairy tales' formula, the realms should be, at least, a little bit more physically spread, say... throughout the territory of Maine, for instance. That would assure to each kingdom a minimum space to breathe without culturally suffocating their neighborhood neither being suffocated in reverse, thus preserving their original identity. That is the premise I chose to assume, as proposed by the thematic illustration on the previous chapter. 

Opening theme

There are people who paint it as the absolute absence of heat; there are those who imagine it as the infinite absence of cold. Neither cold nor heat, neither ice nor fire, there are souls who know it as the absolute absence of love, the pinnacle of hopelessness, the utter void of hatred, the utmost devastation of war, the despair of hunger and thirst, the desolation of loneliness, the consummation of envy, the slavery of the ego, and the corrosion of jealousy. For as far as these souls know, more than the absence of the breath of Life, more than Death itself, Hell is the lack of Significance.

*

Storybrooke, Sweet-Jones home

Emma and Emm are spending the afternoon together, one more afternoon in a recent row of three afternoons together at Hope's insistent requests, always justified as being “very important, Mommy”. Visiting Luna, Missy, Aunt Em, and the Belly Babies is the recurring excuse. Usually, Emma does not like to fulfill all requests for not spoiling her daughter too much but, given the current exceptional circumstances, she has found it best to give in to the girl’s wishes. And for her it is also nice, she loves talking to her sister. Each day the two realize how deeply bonded, by mysterious ties that transcend any purely familiar connection, they are. And so, here they are, sitting by the kitchen counter for a little snack while Hope runs around the house playing with the two pets. If times were different, Hope would be at Storybrooke’s Kindergarten so that Emma could work half term, but because of the exceptionalism of the moment, she took a leave of her Sheriff duties thus freeing herself to observe– and to protect - her daughter more closely.

“It's amazing how the loft became the exact expression of you and Key, Emm. I never imagined that you two would be able so soon to superimpose your personality on the legacy of who was once known as 'Mary Margaret'. The aggregated details are just a few pieces and touches here and there, such as the paintings on the walls, new curtains, a new rug, other quilt covers on the beds, but all the little details make up a whole that adds to the atmosphere in an incredibly harmonious way, not to mention the musical instruments on the mezzanine - where once was my room, creating a magical atmosphere. Your music is really magic, you know that, don’t you? It lights up the house."

"Thanks, Emma, coming from you the compliment has a special significance to me. While Mary Margaret lived here under a curse that prevented her of being close to her daughter, in a parallel reality, my mother was fulfilling the dream that was denied to yours: the dream of seeing her kid growing up, of being able to raise her daughter together with her Prince Charming. Therefore, it is a deep honor for me to live in this space, you know, it is with reverence that Key and I add such 'little details' to the vintage decor. You see…” she then starts to pointing to the objects, “these nautical-motivated paintings are all Key’s, except that canvas that we both painted ‘magically’ during the Sweet Suite adventure. There are also those oceanic-motivated frames and the big starfish, which is a magic connection with Alice - her and Robyn’s gifts to us, something like our ‘wedding gift’, and those two landscape paintings near the sofa, which are my Henry's gift. Other than that, the curtains, the bedspreads and the rug were manually woven on Hearty Island, one of my hobbies there. Now, about the magic music, I think you and I have it in our heart – and I know that not because I watched your ‘music in the heart’ story through the magic mirror, but because I feel it. Music is as much of your essence as it is of mine. Our stories may have shaped us differently: I may not have developed the warrior side towards being a bad-ass - as you use to say. Nor may you have not developed the domestic docility side, but in essence, our magic has the same origin, our essence has the same substance, our strength will always show itself – on its own style - when necessary."

“I agree with you, I also feel this connection with Music, even though I have not had a formal music education, I feel this force so deeply, like an explosion of feelings. You know, it is really impressive how mysterious this empathy between wish and non-wish versions is. For example, in my turn, I understand and deeply feel the loss of your parents and I know - I feel - that you understand on a deep level the difficulties I had in childhood mainly, to cope with the abandonment of my parents, unaware that through Music in my heart I was always connected to them. This degree of empathy doesn't just happen between us, look at our husbands, or even see how my parents feel connected to you and, I believe, to their deceased wish counterparts. This is an incredible mesh of love and union entwined after an evil wish of Split Regina - it’s really incredible..."

"Yes, it is a Mystery, one more in the Book of Mysteries: Split Regina... Back in Hearty Island, I used to hate her. I’m not very proud of that feeling, but it is the truth, I simply could not accept what she did. But… ironically, it was this wish, driven by dark feelings, that originated, in a distant past spread to the present, the duplication of worlds thus creating the wish and non-wish versions. She changed our lives with only one wish against you – and me. And then, I also hated the Good Queen because of her cruel method to bring your memories back – at least that’s how I used to think based on what I had watched. You know the story, thanks to the gods’ intervention, who kept me in touch with my parents’ souls, I could finally understand, accept, and forgive her. And thanks to all of that, Key and I could find each other, could live on its plenitude our true love. And then… there is also Wish Regina, the Evil Queen I grew up fearing and hearing about, now a reformed sorcerer in charge of the Social Assistance Ministry of the United Realms. Too many turns and plot twists with too many Reginas, don’t you think?” she asks playfully while watching Luna in Hope’s lap, both surrounded by a watchful Missy.

“Too many, I agree. I have had my own dose of struggle to deal with them, that is, rigorously speaking, with the first two of them, but I also have learned to cope, to accept and to forgive them… About their names, Killian told me that Captain Nemo suggested a numbering system to simplify their identification but they are still reluctant to accept that. Particularly, I think this may be a good ID system. Differently from the multiple wish/non-wish people, who come in pairs, in their case there are 3 of them!!" Emma chuckles.

Thoughtfully, Emm caresses her belly, "yeah, coming in pairs..."

“Confirmed then?” Emma asks tenderly.

"Twins, indeed…" Emm nods. “We have to concede this one more credit to our little Pythoness’ account!”

“Yeah…” sighs little Prophetic Priestess’ mother, “get ready for a daily renewed surprise brought by your little products of squared True Love! Wait for squared surprises, in your case!” Emma grins reticently, noting in awe the tiny points of light Hope is creating in the air to entertain Luna and Missy, and then completes her question: “How are you feeling about that? How are you and Key dealing with the idea?”

“I’m feeling truly happy and scared at the same time. You see, it is intense in two extremes: extremely amazing but also really scary given the present uncertain context and then… things are changing so quickly that Killian and I… oh, rephrasing, Key and I, had no option rather than adjust ourselves really fast to the news. Perhaps, if the circumstances were different we would have more time to freak out about the prospect of being parents of twins. But given the scenario, we both went into ‘protecting offspring at any cost’ mode and then we calibrated our momentum in that direction.”

…

As the afternoon falls and the sisters’ conversation continues, Hope and the two pets eventually join them for a snack. Emm mentions that she and Key were positively surprised and became very fond of Dr. Stephen Maturin, not only because of their personal rapport with him but, also, for his patience to explain in details all medical procedures they will follow along the pregnancy. She confesses that, despite having had a good preparation about the modern world, it was not enough to provide all the knowledge related to what she would deal with. In this sense, Dr. Maturin’s empathy is natural since he experienced the same learning stages when he came from the Land of Untold Stories less than 10 years ago. In terms of adaptation, strictly speaking, Dr. Whale's entire medical team has been updating their skills because the 21st century medicine was recently introduced to them with the arrival of those who lived in Hyperion Heights.

…

“Mommy, why Daddy and Uncle Key did not come for a snack with us yet? They are hungry too and I miss them."

"They won't be long, Sweetie, first they had to meet with Grandpa David. They learned that two other kids of Storybrooke also had sad visions that same day you had a sad vision and, as it happened with you, they didn't like it at all."

"Aye, I did not like it, Mommy, too scary... Want to know why?"

“I do, only if you want to talk about it, Honey. If you are okay with that, tell Mommy and Aunt Emm, please, why nobody liked the vision…”

“Because.... it was dark, it had a green river... Hmmn, what more… it had other colored rivers… it had Mommy, Daddy, Hope, Uncle Key, Aunt Emm, Belly Babies, everyone and… all scared… and it had empty bodies and empty souls. Luna and Missy saw everything too, they told me what ‘body and soul’ is; I did not know before, but now I do.”

Exchanging glances with Emma and changing the subject of the conversation, Emm intervenes: "Speaking of emptiness, I'm seeing two empty bowls and one empty glass of juice, so... Who will want more rations with water and more juice with chocolate cake? Raise your hand, who has a hand, and wag the tail, who has a tail!!”

…

In the late afternoon, Killian and Key arrived and joined them at the snack table. Hope asked to bathe in Aunt Emm's tub and is now in the bathroom playing the game of ‘sailing the pirate ship’ while the two couples continue to talk. Emma comments about the girl's revelations and the brothers, in turn, tell them that Storybrooke's other two children also spoke about the world of the dead. Gradually the pieces of a huge puzzle begin to fall into place and some shapes and contours begin to unfold. In this way they already know that there is indeed a threat coming from the Underworld.

Embracing Key, head resting on his shoulders, Emm mutters under her breath: “It would be so good if my parents could talk to us now, as it happened on Hearty Island through the magic mirror...” Turning to Emma and Killian she explains: “even though it has been installed on the mezzanine next to the same musical instruments as before, the mirror never turned into a magic screen again. Maybe it was the case of going upstairs tonight and trying to contact them; I could sit at the piano, meditate, concentrate and then, if I am fortunate to be inspired, play a heart-dictated song… I really wish I could talk to them again, if only the gods gave them permission...”

Elysium, Islands of the Blessed, Wish White-Nolan’s home

Sitting on the lakefront pergola at Wish Charmings' home, Rumple, Belle, W. Snow and W. David silently watch the parade of images reflected by the calm water mirror. As if watching the scene, the whole landscape of the garden - birds, leaves of the trees, flower bushes… everything is quietly still. The only movement comes from the black and white images transmitted by the retinas of Luna and Missy in their dreamy state on Earth.

"Fascinating and disturbing," Rumple breaks the silence to comment. "So .... Every time Luna and Missy sleep on Earth they broadcast images, like journalists reporting to you the latest news?"

"Not always," Snow replies. "In general, they do not communicate at all, that is, if there is no transmission, we infer that there are no problems and we are released to our eternal rest in peace, even though there are times that they dream happy dreams and we can watch our Emma with the other Snow and David, or with her twin sister, their respective husbands, and Hope. Luna and Missy simply love the sweet little girl, a special child indeed, as far as we could observe..." she sighs, turning to the lake, worried with the sequence of projected images showing the scary visions shared by Luna, Missy, Hope and the other seer children.

"I have one question. Well, actually, I have several questions, but I will start with this one," Belle chuckles trying to lighten up their mood before continuing, "exactly, do you know who Luna and Missy are?"

David shrugs before saying, "to such a straightforward question, Belle, an equally straightforward answer: exactly, we don't know. Now, by inference, we know that they are beings of Light most likely sent by the gods to the Heart-shaped Island as a company to our daughter, to look after her. I believe the time will come when we will know the exact answer to your question but until then, the inaccuracies and doubts are many..."

Snapping her fingers, as if remembering useful information, Snow goes on. "We also have a mirror in our living room that has functioned as a magical screen transmitting colorful images from Earth; actually, it used to function as a screen when Emma was in the Heart-shaped Island, it never worked that way since Emma moved to Storybrooke," Snow remembers. "It was through this mirror that we were able to talk to her, you must remember when we told you the story."

"Yeah, we do remember," Belle confirms, "… and now that you mentioned it, you see, there is a mirror in our living room as well, but it has never worked as a window between worlds. So far it has been just a mirror..."

"We should confess something," Rumple interrupts Belle. "It’s about what brought us here. It all started with a philosophical talk about rules of incarnation, a curiosity that led us to wanting to talk to the gods about the subject and that, by its turn, ended up on us missing our son and triggering our memory about the story of your communication with your daughter. We know that it happened thanks to a divine intervention so, because of this sequence or reasoning, we decided to visit you. What happened during our teleportation to your house, on the light of these transmitted images, adds more relevance to the case: Belle felt an inexplicable concern, an intuition about a metaphoric storm getting close to Gideon, which should be enough to increase our initial need to meet the gods. Now, seeing these premonitory images clearly indicating a real threat originating from the Underworld hovering over the Earth – I assure you that the need has just become an urgency."

“Well, what I can tell you is that they found us…” David explains, thoughtfully searching his own words for clues on how they should act in the present situation. “To be precise, the gods found us. Actually, Zeus found us; he came to us and told about an intense outburst, from our Emma, addressed to the Sea gods from the sands of the Island. He said it was a completely justifiable outburst that deeply touched them to the point where he came to meet us in our house and allowed us to talk to her. The rest is history but I have no idea how we could try to contact the gods...”

“There is no need, they have already contacted us…” says a voice coming from the backyard, approaching the group. They all turn to the voice direction and meet a smiling Merlin, accompanied by his loyal Apprentice, Jack.

…

After everyone exchanged greetings, Merlin revealed the reason for his and Jack’s visit. He told them that Jack was meditating in the tower, where they live, when a mirror on the wall began to display the image of a cocoon opening and morphing into a transparent-winged butterfly. Almost in a trance, he called Merlin and they both witnessed the butterfly turning into a woman of extraordinary beauty.

She introduced herself as Psyche, the goddess of the Soul and the wife of Eros, the god of Love, and told them that she was, once, a mortal princess that became immortal because she drank the gods’ nectar of ambrosia. She then explained to Merlin that the origin of his full name, Merlin Ambrosius, dates back to the desert oasis where he was born. The first trees whose fruits came to be known as ambrosia were original from that oasis although, initially, they had no magical property. Only later, when planted in the orchards of Mount Olympus and irrigated with waters of the Holy Fountains, did the fruits acquire special properties, among them to confer immortality on those who drank the nectar produced from them. Psyche then reveals to Merlin that it was this nectar, drank in the Holy Grail, which made him an immortal Wizard. Or rather quasi-immortal, since immortality is not synonymous with invulnerability - and Merlin, better than anyone, knows this Truth.

"And why did you come to me to reveal this story?" Merlin asked.

"Because the Ambrosia trees from the Olympus Orchard are drying up, as well as the waters of the Holy Fountains. Some gods - my husband included, believe that the source of the problem lies in the Underworld Rivers, and we will need the help of the Elysium souls as well as some souls in the Underworld, under the command of Persephone, to locate and neutralize this source. If the problem spreads, everyone may be affected, especially the mortals, on Earth."

…

The visitors are already gone and W. David and W. Snow are now in their living room. Sit in front of the mirror - functioning again as a magic screen, they watch their daughter playing a piano piece she has dedicated to them. The harmonious notes cross the spaces until pulsating in sync with the two monarchs’ ethereal hearts and, although not seen by her, they feel that she feels their presence. Resigning themselves to what they are allowed, the two send to their  Emma - and to the two little points of light shining in her womb - the blessings of their eternal love.

“And they say rest in peace for all eternity…” David mutters.

“Yeah,” Snow chuckles, “they never mention the stormy weather in between two lulls.”

“What can we do, Snow? Psyche didn't explain much beyond what she briefly told Merlin. According to him, she only warned that we will be – her words – ‘activated’ when the right time comes. Until then ... what can we do, Snow?"

"We can listen to the music our daughter is dedicating to us, David; we can send our beloved ones all our best energy. We can keep in tune with the other Snow and David. In practice, they are our representatives on Earth and worship our daughter as their own. In addition to looking after our loved ones, we can keep the flame of Hope alight - theirs and ours...”

On Earth, sensing the presence of her parents, Emma raises her head and looks at the mirror. In a flash, she sees their smiling faces mouthing ‘I love you’ while their image dissipates.

Enchanted Countryside, White-Nolan’s home

“Neal!”

From the porch of the ranch headquarters Snow shouts for her son, whom she hasn't seen since early in the morning, at the breakfast table.

Looking around, she sighs. The Charming Farm is the fulfillment of an old dream of David combined with more room for the vibrant energy of a preteen practicing light magic and within easy reach for Snow on her way to work. They were well adapted to the routine of a country life close to an urban life but since David accepted Regina's invitation to the Ministry of Defense the farm has not been so carefully taken care of. Snow would not say it has been neglected; on the contrary, it would not be fair to belittle Anton's good work as a farm administrator, but the lack of David's almost magical touches everywhere - in the stable, in the pastures, in the corral - is remarkable. Exception, of course, for the magic bean plantation, always over zealously cared for by Anton. Although magic beans are no longer needed to open portals between realms, as they are now unified into the same time-space dimension, the delicious feijoada prepared with them by Snow for special occasions, an adaptation of the classic Brazilian feijoada - became famous. In fact, its fame crossed the borders of Storybrooke and for the Summer School closing dinner, in Camelot, in response to everyone's insistent requests, she prepared a cauldron of feijoada that deserved the highest praise. The ceremony just couldn't be as triumphant and joyful as Snow would have liked because of the worrying news that began to come from various parts of the United Realms…

PUFFF!!!!

Lost in thought, Snow jumps in fright at Neal's sudden appearance on the porch, surrounded by a pale blue cloud.

“Did you call, mom?”

“Neal, how many times do I have to ask you not to scare me like this? Yes, I called you, my boy. Although we are discussing in the Ministry about setting up a school recess while dealing with the current crisis, classes have not yet been suspended. Are you ready to go?”

“I do but… look, there comes Dad; he seems in a hurry - as always, recently.”

“Snow! I just got a call from Killian warning that Nemo is about to land on the northeast coast. He reported an anomaly in the Enchanted Sea on the same day as the premonitions. It seems that, with the exception of humans and humanoids, all other inhabitants of the oceans exhibited, during a few hours, a completely chaotic behavior as if in a collective trance, an underwater hysteria that only ended with Poseidon's intervention - neither Triton nor Ursula could contain the sea fauna fury - the seas have been very rough, it seems. If that happened with the creatures of the Ocean, now I’m worried about the inland creatures. I’ll call W. Robin, Merida and Kristoff asking for a report on the Enchanted Forest, the Enchanted Highlands’ and the Enchanted Mountains’ wildlife; maybe it’s the case for increasing the vigilance in these areas to protect the animals.”  

“Dad, you are thinking Wish Cruella may be behind all of it, isn’t it?

“Yeah… I'm suspecting she may be behind the erratic behavior of the sea creatures, indeed.”

“Then, Dad, I'm telling you what I am thinking. I think I should work on the protection spell that Gideon taught me so that Wilby won't be left defenseless. And I think we should leave him indoors, is that okay?”

“Agree about protecting Wilby, good idea, son. If you feel safe preparing the magic, go ahead, maybe we should ask Anton to help you in extending the spell to the other animals. Do you think you can manage that? You will be late today for school but it will be worth.”

“Sure Dad, be back in a minute!!” Neal answers already puffing himself into the house to get the ingredients he will need.

“David,” Snow says, “I do not want to increase the overall worry or to generate another panic wave but, is that a case to sanction a general school break?”

“Maybe, but we’ll have to talk to Regina and some ministers first. We will deal with that in Storybrooke, after Neal works in the protection spell, okay?”

…

On their way to Storybrooke, Snow and David talk about what they are working with and what they would love to do. David knows he is much needed in the present crisis but he wishes he could go back to his farm activities, he misses the country life. Snow is happy in her dreamy work, being able to promote a real revolution on Education…. They keep talking and end up commenting on the good partnership the two Killians are developing at Storybrooke’s PD, despite Emma’s temporary license, and that reminds them how the two Emmas are becoming as close as two close sisters. To be quite honest, they have to admit that not only the two Emmas are tightening their emotional bond, they feel that the ‘girls’ are more and more becoming their very dear twin daughters...

“David, because of the fuzz yesterday night caused by Hope’s description of her vision, I forgot to mention that Emm had called me earlier with good news: they are indeed having twins!”

“That’s great news, Honey,” David smiles at his wife and sighs, “at least one really, really good news.”

“Yeah… two more babies for us to love,” Snow completes, looking at the countryside landscape through the car window.

“Mom,” Neal cut them from the back seat, “isn’t that Zelena’s farmhouse entrance? Look, there is a car getting into there!”

“It’s Robyn’s,” David explains, “she and Alice are temporarily living there while deciding where to move for good, to finally settle down – I guess they are tired of being on the roads. They have traveled a lot in the Land without Magic since they got married.”

“Oh, that reminds me of another novelty, Charming. Did you know that Zelena and Chad are our neighbors now, I mean, sort of?” Snow asks.

“Really? How come? What about Chad, doesn’t he have relatives that will want to visit him?” David asks, impersonating his Defense Minister mode.

“Split-Regina didn’t enter into little details, we talked just a bit, while waiting for Neal and Coralline at the school door, but what I know is that Zelena and Chad moved to Portland, Maine, a couple of weeks ago. It seems that he got a transfer to the East Coast in a scheme that appears to be safe, David, no need to worry. Living in Portland will allow Chad’s relatives - as well as the couple’s friends from San Francisco - to visit them without any suspicion. Regina told me that their house is near Storybrooke’s town line, it looks like Zelena has created an amulet for Chad so that he may cross it whenever he needs regardless of whether she is with him, so they both have free access to the United Realms."

“This is so cool…” Neal smiles dreamily, “I would love to have a strategic base for horseback ridings and explorations outside the Realms…”

“You can get your little horse out of the rain for now, young man. As long as the current crisis is not abated, the only strategic base you are allowed to have is our home, next to your parents," David warns him playfully..

Portland, Maine, Zelena and Chad’s new home

“You were right, the view from the room at the tower top is really beautiful, Zelena: a panoramic view of the city and the sea. A view of Paradise, with this blue sky; and I can imagine how incredible it might be during starry nights, I’m sure they will love it!”

“I agree, it’s perfect for them. It’s not a hexagonal room with a balcony, like ours on the floor below, but it has the exact breadth of sight they asked for. It was really fortunate that we found this house in such particular coordinates and with such an architecture that satisfies Robyn's poetic request, and I quote:  an architecture that reminds towers but, at the same time, invokes free space, liberation; a tribute not only to Alice's experience of breaking free from her prison in the tower but also my passing ritual of giving up magic in favor of becoming an archer, thus embracing the dream of honoring my father’s memory: a tower symbolizing a springboard for us to fly freely.”

"Poetic… Robyn was quite inspired when specified her dreamy room in our home if we were to buy a house. Listening to this quoted description leave me with no doubt, they will love their towered room. The house is beautiful. To be honest, it’s a bit too much for just the two of us but it’s fitting to be always full of life and visitors. Besides Robyn and Alice, I hope to get more guests occupying our 4 bedroom house,” he turns to Zelena.

"They will come, from the Realms and from the West Coast, I’m sure. I will love to welcome your parents and our friends from San Francisco. This is a fresh start for us, Chad, but it is also continuity. I am happy to be here, near my family and friends from the Realms and, at the same time, to keep the door open for the world we built to ourselves in the Land without Magic."

All of a sudden, interrupting Zelena's words, a feminine voice echoes off the hexagonal tower walls: "the doors of this house are also open to the worlds below and the worlds above, Zelena!"

Petrified by fright, Chad can only move his eyes toward the woman's form materializing before him and his wife. "What the hell!?" he mutters.

"Technically, not necessarily a 'hell', Chad." Smiling, the beautiful woman walks slowly towards the couple and continues, "please, do not be scared, nor fear, I come in peace. Oh! What a bad behavior on my part... I did not knock neither introduce myself. Forgive my bad manners…  So, I ask permission to come in.  I’m Persephone," she bows extending both hands to them, “nice to meet you”.

“Persephone, as in…. the goddess? I mean, Greek Mythology? Really?” he asks incredulously taking one of her hands.

“Says the Wicked Witch’s husband!” Persephone replies with a small chuckle and immediately corrects herself, “actually, ex-Wicked Witch, nowadays, a respectable sorceress. It’s an honor to finally meet you, Zelena.”

“Yeah, sure, ah… permission granted, I guess, and, thanks… my pleasure too, Persephone.” Zelena and Persephone shake hands.  “I’ve wondered so many times about you and your whereabouts, you have no idea. Hades once spoke to me about you. Despite the hardships you couldn't quite solve, he said you were determined and firm…” Zelena returns the compliment and invites her to the living room on the first floor.

…

“You must be curious about my visit," Persephone explains, "it is natural to be so. I'm not planning to go around in circles, because time to lose is something we no longer have, but... I believe it is necessary for me to explain the context of my visit to you. As a start, I think it is important to make it clear that, in the time count, Hades and I broke up for over a thousand years. While in a marital life, our marriage arrangement was described in the literature with reasonable accuracy. I did in fact alternate - and still do - my stay on Earth and Underworld with a periodicity of six months, although the part that associates this alternation with the creation of the seasons has been very romanticized and mythicized. In other words, there are truths and there are myths related to that. Truths refer to the majority of storylines dealing with my relationships in a more personal level, the mythicized part, to the creation of the seasons. You see, I’m not affirming that there is no relation between the cycles of my stay and the seasons; I’m just saying that everything is much more complex and intricate than a metaphoric legend, or myth, describing something that is real but too complex for the rational mind to absorb completely… there are Mysteries and Secrecies that are so named for a reason; for decoding them one needs to combine wisely all sciences, all areas of human knowledge, so to speak...” she smiles reticently.

“But resuming this not so short ‘introduction’, in general Greek myths are about an early world; usually, they explore themes of parental treachery alternating with tales of filial betrayal,  love and loyalty - all the essentials of good plot-lines linking birth and cosmic creation. Seen today, they have become ancient stories and part of the ancient mythological worldview. But, believe me, gods and goddesses, existed then and still exist now. We may be known only for the ancient part of our existence, but we are still ‘around’. This way, to contextualize, Demeter is in fact my mother and Zeus, her brother, is, indeed, my father.  Athena, Aphrodite, Ares, Apollo, Artemis, Dionysus, Hermes, and Hephaestus are indeed my brothers and sisters. And Hestia, Hera, Demeter, Poseidon, Hades and Zeus are, indeed, brothers and sisters…”

“The moral code of your family is, indeed, quite different from ours,” Zelena mutters with high dose of sarcasm.

“Indeed,” Persephone agrees, with a wink, “but you must remember that we are talking about early human civilization. I understand that incest is a taboo now, but it was considered ‘normal’ and most prevalent in families of royal lineage to keep the bloodlines ‘clean and pure’. Non-royalty rarely participated in incest. Maybe that is the origin of all the drama in my family, that and our immortality, but, looking cautiously, even in many religions and traditions of nowadays, the myths of creation start with the narrative of incest…”

“You are right, when we really think about we see that most of them do start this way,” Chad concedes.

“Of course they do. The key is to never be too judgmental and keep in mind all historical and cultural context. We are talking about metaphoric stories explaining complex transcendental science. These stories usually use hyperbolic language to exaggerate some colors, or to emphasize some attributes. Take Hades, for instance. He was not as bad as they usually say, at least until the Olympian Crystal incident.  As the god of death and the Underworld, he suffered a bit from a bad image. He is often treated like the Greek version of devil, but that’s a bit of a stretch. To start, Hades never chose the Underworld as his domain. He and his brothers, Zeus and Poseidon, drew straws to see who would be lord of what realm. Zeus drew the Heavens and the Upper world, Poseidon drew the Seas, and Hades drew the Underworld. As the Underworld rulers go, during the time we were married he was a pretty decent king. When Orpheus descended into the Underworld to retrieve his bride, Hades was moved by his pleas and agreed to let the woman go, on the condition that, when leaving, Orpheus wouldn’t look back. You know, he did, of course, and lost her – but that was not Hade’s fault. Today, when I think about it, I see how Hades started to downgrade into darkness because of that passage, which led him to cut the Ambrosia tree in the Underworld. That used to be the only tree of my garden - in that quadrant - that wasn't dry… But it is important to note that he was not responsible for the condemnation or redemption of souls. Those who died were subject to the judgment of demigods, not Hades. As for me, although he did in fact, tricked me to stay in the Underworld - he kidnapped me - after a deal with my father he became a respectful and good husband. Differently from most gods and goddesses, we were both faithful to each other – and quite possessive, I must confess. There was a time that he fell in love with a nymph and I turned her into a mint plant so that my husband wouldn’t be able to have her as a lover. That is not my most glamorous story, I know, but, as far as a marriage between gods goes, those were good times for us,” she sights reminiscent.

After a pause, while Zelena and Chad exchanged discreet glances but didn’t say a word, Persephone continues. “Anyway, things deteriorated fast between us because of that ancient crystal, shaped like a crude lightning bolt, the Olympian Crystal. Because of an old sibling rivalry, the crystal, which belonged to my father, was stolen by Hades. My father, by his turn, cursed Hades' heart and, since then, Hades changed radically. He could not love, he could not feel. You know the story, Zelena. For us, that's when we parted and he became the cruel, vengeful god without noble feelings. Only you, Zelena, was strong enough – and I admire you for that – to penetrate his petrified heart and break the curse with a true love kiss. You were able to see his remaining good, but even that was not enough to lead him into a redemption path. On the contrary, with his distorted mind he deceived you, he schemed against you and your sister, and he caused suffering and losses. Eventually, he ended up losing his immortality. Not even his soul could be saved and, sadly, disintegrated. The irony is that he ceased to exist because of the illegitimate power he wanted to possess. That was the end of Hades but that was not the end of Evil, and that is the reason of my visit today.”

“Are you implying that you came because you didn’t like me not only killing Hades but also disintegrating his soul and your father’s Crystal? Well, I’m sorry and not sorry at the same time. In my defense, I had no option, he was going to disintegrate my sister in the same way he tried to do with Robin right in front of us. You see, I did love Hades, but not to the point of living with the burden of Regina’s death. At the end of the day, after all struggles, many curses and turns of the world, here I am. I met a man who loves me as much as I love him and we built up a healthy and happy life together. Even Regina, despite not being allowed to live side by side with the love of her life, came out of all that victorious. She was able to save his soul by opening her heart to host his soul; in other words, their love was so strong that they could overcome the soul disintegration power of the Olympian Crystal, did you know that? ” Zelena vents, holding tight to her husband's hand.

“Yes, I did, they were impressively brave. And let’s be clear, I’m not here because of Hades or of what happened to him and the Crystal. As I told you, Hades and I rarely spoke or saw each other for over a thousand year. You see, the Underworld is big enough to ‘accommodate’ its King and its Queen in such a way that I always managed to keep my distance from him, mainly because I didn't approve his evil behavior. Only after his death I went back to where you and your friends have been, that place he called Underbrooke - a section of the Underworld he built to please you. There, I helped Arthur to reorganize the broken kingdom, as Arthur used to call it. Thanks to my intervention, Arthur was able to rescue and to retrieve the essence of some lost souls who had accidentally fallen or been thrown into the Lost Souls river before being judged and without deserving such a sad fate. Actually, to be extremely honest, my coming here is indirectly connected with Hades. Going straight to the point, I came because of Hades’ legacy, the evilness he planted in a land that cannot be called fertile unless the sowing is dry, hard, and… cruel. For Evil, the ground is fertile, and that is what Hades sowed. Unfortunately, it seems, the harvest has just began. In fact, the process started a few months ago, a period of great light and love for people from the United Realms thanks to the harmonious waves of the Sweet Suite. Meanwhile, the counterpart was being unfolded downstairs, so to speak, as reported to me by Arthur, when he noticed the first anomalies in the smoke coming from Tartarus.”

“Anomalies?” Chad, increasingly frightened and uncomfortable, interrupts to ask. “What kind of anomalies do you refer to? Could you be more specific?”

“Of course,” Persephone concedes, “I’ll get there. Continuing, I was talking about Arthur. Although he and I have taken every precaution in our bailouts, some lost souls not supposed to get free and to recover their evil ego managed to escape without our help, probably they were helped by the one who took over the Underbrooke’s City Hall and became a stumbling block in Arthur's path: Cruella Deville. Apparently obsessed with the idea of returning to Earth and taking revenge on Emma Swan, who killed her to save her son's life, after freeing some lost souls Cruella stole from the library of Hades one of the ‘Mysteries & Secrecies’ books accessible only to the gods and a few humans who get permission – in this case, granted by me to Arthur."

Taking a sip of tea, Persephone inhales and exhales deeply before continuing. "Here, a parenthesis is needed, since you and others have already been in the Underworld and may wonder about what I'm about to reveal. Despite having similar buildings, as you must know Storybrooke and Underbrooke do not share exactly the same layout - quite the contrary, actually. Particularly, downstairs, the public library - where Wish Belle, a soul with unfinished business, works - is adjacent to Hades's forbidden sector. Belle isn't allowed to get in there but she has been given permission to borrow some books from there. To read and decipher their ancient texts she uses a magical translator, a gift of mine, an appreciation for her good behavior and impressive achievements as a researcher. Now, closing the parenthesis and going back on track, Arthur and I found out that Cruella not only had stolen Belle's translator but had also broken the magic lock to the forbidden library. We managed to prevent her from stealing all banned books but one of them she hid and, especially with the help of two other souls, Pan, whom she rescued from the river of Lost Souls, and Wish Rumple, she managed to read - and learn - the content of a very specific Mystery & Secrecy tome: ‘How to clone human bodies’.”

“Is that a Mystery, or a Secrecy, really?” Zelena interrupts Persephone with a nervous chuckle. “I mean, not that I don’t believe the seriousness of what you are telling us, but I’ve seen so many wish and non-wished versions of people, or split versions, of whatever that it’s really doubtful this is such a mysterious secret…”

“There's a big difference between what you have seen and what I’m referring to: you have seen body-and-soul alternate versions of people, duplication even triplication of people in a so-called quantum process of magic involving the concept of infinite possibilities. I am referring to cloned bodies, you can think about them as empty bodies, ready to host deceased souls in a process that does not involve reincarnation as we know it. It does not involve a restart, a reset with forgetfulness and detachment of the past life, with the loss of ego for starting all over again aiming at a spiritual evolution. In short, their plan is to clone bodies – your bodies, before killing you so that in a fraction of seconds they will magically switch places with your souls which will force your souls to descend to the Underworld. This way, by taking  your place, they will enter your clones. They also plan to clone all gods’ bodies, after drying our source of immortality. The process of this kind of cloning involves a hibernation state of the cloned body until the new soul enters the empty ‘vehicle’.”

“Bloody hell…” Chad interjects.

“You have no idea how bloody this hell is,” Persephone acquiesces. “The anomalies refer, as I said, to a kind of smoke that may change Nature's behavior across all kingdoms - including the Underworld. They precede, as an alarm, the main and final cloning magic, which involves the use of a special fruit cultivated in the Olympus associated with water from a special fountain there. With them we have indications that our enemies are on their way, unfortunately. Although we managed to send Pan, Cruella, Gaston and James Nolan to Tartarus, attempting to avoid the problem, now we think that sending them may have increased the likelihood that it will occur. Wish Rumple hasn’t been judged yet and remains in Underbrooke, Arthur and I will see what we will do with him, but I guess sending him to Tartarus will not be a good idea…”

After a prolonged silence, during which Zelena and Chad processed the huge amount of information, Persephone concludes: “There are some facts that we don’t know yet, for example, it seems that they have a connection on the Upperworld, some sort of help coming from the United Realms, and we really fear that, led by Pan and Cruella’s souls, the condemned souls may be plotting from Tartarus. As I said, there are lots of things we still don’t know but we do know that the situation goes beyond what our power alone can handle. We need you, humans from Earth and souls from Elysium, to help us. There is a major disaster with proportions that I would not like to think about being forged and we need to prevent that. So, there you have it, the reason of this unexpected visit of mine. I came to ask for your help.”

Enchanted Seashore, Wish Regina and Roland’s home

“Roland, where have you been? After my sister Queen announced, this morning, the suspension of classes, I didn't see you anymore; I was starting to worry and thinking about using a location spell...  I waited but you took so long that I decided to have lunch first. Now… let's go to the kitchen, my dear, to warm up your food.” Wish Regina tells the 15-year-old as he begins to climb the back porch staircase.

"No need for worry, Gina, I won’t go too far from here, promise. I was in my other room, at the tree house and didn’t hear you calling because I was chatting with Lucy, Neal and Coralline. Neal and Aline are staying at Lucy's house while their parents are in a meeting with the Queen and the others, at the City Hall."

"I see…  Well, as you know, I attended this meeting via Web, as well as a few other ministers who did not travel to Storybrooke, but in my case I only needed to be present for 2 hours. We decided that, at the moment, the activities of my Social Assistance Ministry will remain in a standby mode, waiting for more information regarding the mysteries behind the children visions and the ocean ‘turbulence’. By the way, one of the absent ministers, Nemo, warned us that he is about to land near our house and I have, since then, been waiting for the Nautilus, cooking a few dishes, a couple of apple pies… I guess they shouldn't be long. Now, about you: seriously? 6 hours of chat?" she asks playfully. “Thankfully, the power consumption of the equipment developed by Nemo and the Dragon is 100% self-sustainable, otherwise people with magic in all United Realms, working in sync, would not be able to energize all transponders that the young people use!" she quips.

“I see no problem in talking too much. Adults can spend a whole day in conversations and meetings – which is accepted as normal. What about us? This is our world too, what happens now affects our future. The current crisis seems to be so serious that the four of us needed to get together to discuss our positions, nothing that won’t be coordinated with what you will decide, don’t worry. Adults are in charge - and we know that, but we needed to align our claims and we can help. Neal and Coralline have magic, Lucy is a True Believer and I am a champion Archer, not to mention our cunning intelligence! And do not forget:  as the senior of the group, I’m kind of their leader!” Roland responds proudly, already devouring a heated lasagna.

“We will see about that, young ‘senior’…" Regina’s reply would be longer but, fortunately for Roland, the conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Nemo, Liam Jr, Wish Brennan and Liam Senior, together with Ursula and W. Ariel, who traveled swimming by the Nautilus' side, “just for the fun of it!”

…

"Like Lieutenants Martin & Harris who, by the way, opted to have lunch and stay nested aboard, those four out there are becoming inseparable couples, if you know what I mean..." Brennan smiles muttering under his breath to be heard only by Liam Senior and Regina, the three sat on the oceanfront balcony. He refers to the couples walking arm in arm along the shore with the excuse of digesting Regina's hearty meal but, in fact, looking for an alone time. That is especially valid - it seems - to Liam Jr and W. Ariel, moving away as if in search of a more private corner.

“You prepared a real feast for us, Regina, everything was delicious,” L. Senior says, between sips of an herbal tea.

“Thanks, Liam. Knowing that six people were coming was an ideal excuse for me to try and forget about the problems. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to prepare anything special, I hope you stay long enough to enjoy something more elaborate. Oh yeah… something that doesn't involve seafood, out of respect for Ursula and W.Ariel. Maybe a cheese soufflé with a good red wine...” she plans dreamily. “You know, cooking for me is a therapy, especially when I'm just like now, really worried. There was a time when I used to vent going to the 'witch's cauldron', instead!!” Regina and L. Senior have a good laugh at that, and she goes on, “but now that my witchcraft times are past, my hobby is cooking, I love to try new recipes, combine new seasonings and condiments ... Sometimes I resent from not having a taste keeper more open to novelties, you know, since Roland is not that much given to spices - especially seafood, I must confess. Well, I love the sea, no wonder I chose to live in front of it taking care, obviously, to find a seaside location close to the Enchanted Forest, which is Roland's natural habitat.”

“Well,” Liam Sr. replies bluntly, “if registration for tasting your cuisine is open, I'll be the first in line to appreciate the Chef's production!”

Rubbing his beard thoughtfully, Brennan interrupts the flirtation to ask about Roland, and Regina goes on to explain how the two eventually got closer, and today share a bond resembling the one between a son and a mother.

…

Approaching the balcony, Ursula, accompanied by Nemo, asks:

"Regina, do you know why we came to your house before going to Storybrooke?"

“No, I don’t. Although I feel much honored by your visit, I must confess that I was curious about it,” Regina replies.

“The reason is simple and complicated at the same time, but I'll try to summarize it,” Ursula explains. “The location of your home is special. In fact, Nemo and I found out that some homes in the United Realms are very specially located. I do not know whether by the architects’ intuition or knowledge of occult sciences, or both, but many houses are located at points of telluric energy chakras and they are very useful as a communication channel for the members of my family. You probably know my family tree from literature – so you might know that I'm the daughter of Poseidon's union with Amphitrite and I'm Triton's sister. You might also know, I imagine, that I have many uncles, aunts, and cousins, including my cousin Persephone, daughter of Zeus and Demeter. So… yesterday, Persephone telepathically contacted me to let me know that she was going to visit your half-sister, Zelena, at her new home in Maine. Although it is located outside the borders of the United Realms, Zelena chose a house positioned at one of these energetic crossing points to which I referred, and that opened Persephone's passage to the Earth plane coming from the Underworld. I don't know exactly the subject of their talk, but I do know that my cousin asked me to be at one of these energy points because she needed to talk to me too - with urgency - and the conversation would be lengthy, thus more complicated to sustain, via telepathy, if I were outside of them. In face of that, Nemo and I searched in his maps to locate the nearest point in relation to where we were – in other words, your home was the answer. And this is, my dear friend, the original reason that brought us to your welcoming house. The extra bonus, that is, our great time here and the opportunity to strengthen the emotional ties that bind us, might be a result of one of Cousin Eros’ romps,” Ursula mumbles and Nemo giggles.

“I see, interesting…” Regina replies, pensive. “Well, while Persephone doesn’t contact you, I invite the two of you to join us in our tea time and, then, if possible, I would like to know more about these energy lines and points, that is, if you or Nemo, or both, could teach us about them. If I got the idea roughly right, they may be useful for us to deal with what is coming even though we don’t know yet what it is.”

“I will tell what I can for now,” Nemo addresses the small audience, soon joined by Roland, Liam Jr, and W. Ariel, while Ursula quietly retreats to the living room, “so that Ursula may be free to relax and meditate.  Well… let’s start from a scientific fact: there are straight fault lines in the earth’s tectonic plates, to many people known as ley-lines. It’s also scientifically known that through these cracks the magnetic energies released are very powerful. Our ancestors have known about these lines for thousands of years: each culture on the planet has known about them yet with different names. Native Indians of this same region where we are right now, for example, used to call them spirit lines  because their electro-magnetic energy helped their Shamans to contact the spirits. The druids called them  mystical lines. In Wales, as in eastern countries, they were called dragon lines. For the aboriginal people of Australia these lines were known as dream lines. Throughout history all megalithic structures have been strategically built on top of these so called ley lines. These electro-magnetic lines may be seen as veins that receive energy from the sun, thus connecting and affecting every living thing on this planet. The atoms of our bodies, because they are surrounded by electrons, are connected to the earth’s electro-magnetic fields and our heart, as a battery, may be charged by them. Right now, Ursula is in the living room, meditating on one of these crossing points, or megalithic centers, to elevate her electrical aura, intellect, and connection to her higher self, which will activate her energy centers (or chakras).”

“Wow...” Roland exclaims softly.

“Of course there are dark forces that are knowledgeable of these lines and concentrate effort to manipulate these fields and to control or influence the geo-electrical grid. For this reason the access to this knowledge is not allowed to every mortal and few cultures have it completely mapped - the maps in my possession are a rare treasure, among the few out there with the complete grid involving all alternate and superimposed realms – such as the United Realms, which is superimposed to Maine, the Upper world, the Underworld and the Olympus. Around the world, multiple alternate realms, aligned to multiple cultures and traditions, are superimposed, which explains how Henry Mills, our Author, ended up in a realm with another Rapunzel, another Cinderella – which is made possible due to a magic quantum process of infinite possibilities.”

“I have a question, Sir!” Roland raises his hand.

“Go ahead, young man,” Nemo replies in a benevolent tone.

“How is it possible to converge, to the same time and space, characters and stories, known through literature for hundreds of years, which were, according to their origins, mismatched in time and in space? And how come that they all speak the same language - English, in our case?"

"Wow, I'm positively impressed with the complexity of your question... what's your name again, my boy?"

"Roland, sir."

"Very well. So, Roland, the ley lines - which I usually refer to as Earth’s meridians of energy, in an analogy with the millennial Chinese medicine, allow connections that mix time and space and activate, on those that are transported through them, the necessary adjustment of language skill and, sometimes, cultural adaptation. In other words, they equalize the inner communication channel of the person crossing a portal. This means that you need portals, like those opened by magic beans, like the ones I used to open, for the Nautilus, with kraken blood fuel - thanks to Ursula, this is a method I no longer use - or any other magical means to open portals between realms and dimensions. They translate different temporal and spatial planes to converge into the same plane. Before you ask – yeah, I’m seeing your eyes shining while your mind is processing the information - let me tell you one thing. Time travel in the same realm is far more complicated than that between planes of different realms and often requires dark magic. So, back to the convergence of characters originated from different times in History into a common space-time, you’ve got to remember that they are characters like all of us, right here and right now. We obviously know that these characters and stories are absolutely real – we are real!" Everyone laughs at that, before Nemo resumes, "the fact that we are known in the Land without Magic literature is also explained by the Earth’s meridian theory: during their dreams, writers, supposed to be our creators, travel through the dream lines and visit our original and very much real realms, they get to know real people that they turn into fiction characters, and by doing it the way they do, they frequently translate their dreams into mixed distortions of our real stories, you know the rest. In summary…” he sighs and pauses for a little while, “there you have it. Are you happy with my answer, Roland? "

"Very, Sir, thank you very much," the boy responds with a distant, dreamy look, sailing the waves of imagination fueled by Nemo's response.

Concluding his explanation, Nemo takes another sip of his tea and finally states, “to conclude, the Grid, with capital letter - that is how I call my maps, establishes higher levels of consciousness in a scale of 7 keys, but this is something to talk about in another day. Let’s hope Ursula will help us in understanding what is going on in our present situation and, also, in knowing what we should do to prevent chaos or to fight potential enemies.”

Underworld, Underbrooke

The air is dry, reddened by the pollution caused by a high dose of toxic gas spewing from chimneys spread along the sidewalks. However, for those who inhabit the decaying town, the existence of the permanent anomaly does not affect them yet: they do not properly breathe with lungs; though through their semi-densified souls, molded in the shape of the body they had on earth, runs a viscous liquid which - under the effect of torture, in Hades' time, gushed and bled.

The streets are empty; most of Underbrooke’s inhabitants are gathered in an assembly promoted by Arthur and Persephone, at the City Hall. The subject of the meeting may be or may be not new to everyone except for the two beings walking down Main Street: Wish Belle and Wish Rumple discussing and, in vain, trying to seek an understanding, a convergence of viewpoints.

…

"Rumple, no matter how hard you try to justify it, the fact is that you lied about not acting dominated by your Dark One persona. Dark Ones trick, Dark Ones lie! When Baelfire came back from Neverland, you tricked him and lied to me!"

Tousling his hair with his hands in exasperation, Rumple continues to argue. "Belle, we were a happy family until Regina killed Baelfire and you. We lived years of peace, harmony and love. What difference does a harmless lie make?"

"Harmless? Really? It's the cornerstone of everything that went wrong later, Rumple. It's the first domino, the first lie followed by a string of more lies. It means that all our happiness was grounded in lies. Our harmony was false, and I no longer know if your love was false too. Your love of power has corrupted your noblest feelings, Rumple.”

“How dare you?! Of course I loved you! I love you. Everything I did was because I loved you and Bael more than anything!” Rumple cuts her.

“Rumple, you know that I've always been able to see beyond the Beast, to see your primary light source despite your Dark One persona. The fact that you can't understand a truth as basic as this: our happiness was built on a lie, makes me wonder. It makes me think that you continue, even after you are dead, trying to delude yourself and, as a byproduct, to fool me too!"

"I lost everything Belle, I lost you, I lost my son, differently from the other Rumple I was left with nothing. My only option was to give up. I know I am worse now than I was when you died but ... I had no choice but to surrender to darkness. I lost Hope."

"Don't you see the pattern? Everything and everyone to blame but you! You're victimizing yourself again and we're going around in circles. I know it got harder for you after Bael and I died. But it was hard for me too! After dying we arrived here but he quickly moved on to the Islands of the Blessed. Meanwhile, with this hellish unresolved business called Rumplestiltskin, I've been here for almost 12 years now, always in a library, reading, studying the human psyche, and waiting for my unresolved, unfinished business to come in. Then you arrived, a soul completely darkened but … still, I still hoped, I still do, Rumple. I have not given up on you or on us. I wait because I'm your Hope. Can't you see, Rumple? You haven't lost Hope."

“Nah… you are the one not seeing, Belle. I know that I had lied to you and to Bael but I had good reasons. I did that so that I would be able to trick Regina and Hook by making them believe that she would cast the dark curse and he would follow me in a world where I would be vulnerable. I made them believe that I needed to go the Land without Magic to find my son when, in reality, I had already found him and we were secretly living in peace. All I wanted was Hook to cross the realms and be trapped there, staying there for the rest of his life. And why should I care in betraying Regina? She was Evil, she was a villain. So, I plotted with the fairies to capture her and to steal her magic – in one way or another, the result would be positive: the Enchanted Forest would get rid of two villains. What happened was not exactly what I envisioned, but it worked well, for a while at least. Hook moved to the other Enchanted Forest, to raise his daughter, and we neutralized the Evil Queen’s power - all realms benefited from that. I was convinced, and still am, that the end justifies the means - and the end was noble: to live in peace with you and my son, being a family of nobles with noble attitudes: charitable, generous, fair … Bael became a knight and married a Princess! We lived a happy life, we did!”

“Until we did not,” Belle sighs, and continues, “I don’t know what else I could do or say to make you see, Rumple. I don't know how far you still have in your soul traces of the connection with the Dark Ones lineage, or if it's all just you. I do not know how far you have not understood that lying is like non-consensual, abusive, sex; it is the absence of resonance, of transparency, of respect. There is no nobility where there is a lie. Nobility is, above all, a state of honesty, of sincerity. I’m not saying you did no good to a lot of people, I’m saying you did no good to yourself, mainly. Once I read a text, written by a man called Carl Gustav Jung, in his ‘Memories, Dreams and Reflections’, stating something like: You may feed the hungry, you may forgive an insult, and you may love your enemy…these are undoubtedly great virtues… But what if you should discover that the poorest of beggar and the most impudent of offenders are all within you, and that you stand in need of your own kindness; that you are the enemy who must be loved? What then?”

“Are you implying that I should love myself? Well, dearie, that would be the opposite of what you have always said when you accused me of being selfish, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely not, these are two different things and there you are again, trying to locate a loophole in my reasoning. I’m saying that you are your own enemy. Don’t trick me with your word playing, Rumple. You know what I meant. We are both too old and too dead for this kind of game.”

“One more reason for us to go back to Earth, to inhabit healthier and younger bodies, Belle...”

“Please, Rumple, not this nonsense again. I asked Arthur to come for a walk because he knows how and why I know the news he and Persephone are, right now, communicating to everyone and trying to find out who else, besides you, is behind the plan. He knows I’m aware of you being behind the sad news…”

“I still don’t see the sad aspect of it. You are neglecting a unique opportunity to keep your memories as Belle intact and be given the experience of a new life without repeating the same mistakes of the previous life. Look at my dark soul, I could evolve towards the light, don’t you see? I would be able to learn what still needs to be taught to me. Just imagine, you and I together, no dark magic this time, no magic at all, no tricks, and no lies: a new beginning – a reincarnation without forgetfulness. The prospect is fabulous: a new life in young bodies ready to express physically the pleasures of loving and being loved. Would you do that, Belle? For us, would you build with me a new life? Would you go back with me, if you knew that the cloning plan would work as it is supposed to work?”

Sighing, despite not breathing, just out of habit, Belle responds. “I love you, Rumple, I honestly do, I know – I sense – that underneath your darkness there are resilient seeds of goodness. But I could never go ahead with you in this craziness. And … you know what? I’m so tired; I need to evolve, I need to rest in peace.” Slowly, head down, Belle walks away from him, leaving Rumple completely alone.

…

"Fate behaves irrationally, and the energy of life inconveniently demands a gradient agreeable to itself; otherwise it simple gets dammed up and turns destructive. It regresses to former situations. […] Psychic energy is a very fastidious thing which insists on fulfillment of its own conditions. However much energy may be present, we cannot make it serviceable until we have succeeded in finding the right gradient. […] Life can flow forward only along the path of the gradient. But there is no energy unless there is a tension of opposites; hence it is necessary to discover the opposite to the attitude of the conscious mind. It is interesting to see how this compensation by opposites also plays its part in the historical theories of neurosis. Freud’s theory espoused Eros; Adler’s the will to power. Logically, the opposite of love is hate, and of Eros, Phobos (fear): but psychologically it is the will to power. Where love reigns, there is no will to power; and where the will to power is paramount, love is lacking. The one is but the shadow of the other: the man who adopts the standpoint of Eros finds his compensatory opposite in the will to power, and that of the man who puts the accent on power is Eros. Seen from the one-sided point of view of the conscious attitude, the shadow is an inferior component of the personality and is consequently repressed through intensive resistance. […] The conscious mind is on top, the shadow underneath, and just as high always longs for low and hot for cold, so all consciousness, perhaps without being aware of it, seeks its unconscious opposite, lacking which it is doomed to stagnation, congestion, and ossification. Life is born only of the spark of opposites…" (Carl G. Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology)

*

[kingsleigh]

PS BATCH ICON TUTORIAL

This tutorial will show you how to make any amount of icons you so desire - IN ONE SITTING!  (up too 500 at most to respond properly without lag).  This is largely an image based tutorial, but if anything is unclear, please send me your questions!

you will need:

-photoshop

-some screencaps or images you wish to edit

tutorial below the cut:

STEPS:

1.  open photoshop.  then go to file --> Scripts --> Load files from stack.

2. when the box pops up, select ‘Browse’.  This will open up your documents, in which you can then select all of the screencaps (or other images) you will be using to make icons out of.  After you have all of your files selected, hit ‘open’, in your documents.

3.  All of the files you selected should now be listed in the space besides the ‘browse’ menu button.  If you want to add more, just hit browse again, and select what you’d like!  When you are satisfied with the images in this area, you can then hit ‘OK’, and photoshop will begin to load all of your images into layers.  Depending on your amount, this may take a while.  ( several hundreds of screencaps tend to take about 5 minutes to completely load for me - they’re big images lol. )

4.  Photoshop will look like this when your images load completely.  I have only decided to use 14 images for the sake of saving time.

5. To eventually export all of these images as separate icons, you need to have them each in frames.  To do this you need to convert them.  There is a little dropdown menu in the timeline ( AS SHOWN BELOW ) that you need to click.

6.  Search for the option that says ‘Make Frames from Layers’.  Once you find that, click it.

7.  If you’ve done this successfully, all of your layers should now also have corresponding frames in the timeline!

8. Time to crop!  Most of the time, icons are in a square shape, so we want to crop them!  If you go to the crop tool, and select the drop down menu (AS SHOWN BELOW) you can select the 1x1 Square option.

9.  your cropping selection should now look like this.  feel free to move the square if your subject/muse isn’t in the center, like mine is.

10.  When happy with the placement, select any other tool on the photoshop panel, and it will pop up with a box asking you to confirm that you want to crop the images.  Hit ‘Crop’.  Now your images should look like this:

11.  Time to resize the images, because they are still really big!  If you go up to the tabs next to ‘file’, select ‘image’ and then hit ‘image size’.

12.  When the box pops up, it will show you the current size of your images.  change it to the size you would like your icons to be.  Im going to change mine to 100 x 100 pixels.  Then hit ‘OK’.

13.  After resizing, your image may be zoomed out a bit in photoshop, making it appear smaller than 100 x 100 (or whichever size you chose).  If you go to the lower lefthand corner, right above your image frames, there is a percentage.  That is how zoomed in your image is.  

14. Double click, change that number to 100 and hit enter, and it will zoom in to the accurate size of your image.

15.  Now its time for a psd (the edits you will apply to your icons) !  This is where you can either leave your icons raw, make your own psd, or use a psd that someone has made that you can use!  There are tons of really great ones on here, made by other users!  I will be using one of my own.  

IF YOU INTEND TO LEAVE YOUR ICONS LIKE THEY ARE NOW, SKIP TO STEP 21.

To import your psd, open it as you would a normal image. (note that your separate projects have separate tabs in photoshop)

16.  place your cursor over your psd’s tab and drag it down into the editing space (AS SHOWN BELOW)

17.  Its okay to let go of the cursor, nothing bad will happen.  Your document should now look like this.  It should appear to be hovering above our batch icon project.

18. Place your cursor on the psd image (make sure it is on the image itself and not on the edge of the document) and drag it under itself and onto your batch icon project.  While dragging it, you should see a sort of gray outline of the psd, as shown below.

19.  If you dragged it correctly, the psd should now be applied to your icons!  MAKE SURE YOUR PSD FOLDER IS AT THE TOP, ABOVE ALL OF YOUR ICONS!!!  if it is under any of the icons, those icons above it won’t have the psd applied to them.

20.  Feel free to add anything else extra you’d like, if they aren’t in the psd; such as a border, or a watermark!

21.  Now all thats left to do is save the icons!  To do so, go to file --> export and click ‘render video’.  You click render video because your images are in frames, and you are going to be saving each frame.

22.  After selecting ‘render video’, the box below will pop up.  Feel free to name the icons whatever you’d like, or leave them as untitled.  The ‘select folder’ location is important.  this is where your icons will be saved to.  Click the ‘select folder’ button and choose where you want your icons to go!  ALSO make sure that you have ‘Photoshop Image Sequence’ selected, (PNG) and not a video format.  IF YOU HAVE CIRCULAR ICONS OR ICONS WITH A TRANSPARENT BACKGROUND it is highly important that at the bottom of this box, you change the ‘Alpha Channel’ box from none to ‘straight - unmatted’ or ‘premultiplied with black’.  Either selection will work, but if you leave it as its default of ‘none’, then your icons WILL NOT save with a transparent background.

23.  Hit Render!  If you don’t have very many icons, this should be done without any loading bar popping up.  If you have several hundreds of icons, a progress bar will show up, and you can watch this whole process load!  Your icons should then all be in a folder somewhere where you chose for them to go!  

if you have any questions or run into any problems, PLEASE ASK!  I am here to help you in any way I can!  

[seznz]

So I thought that I would share my top five tips for London, given I have now been here 4 times so obviously I am an expert in the matter :D

Also one of my nieces will be going to London in a few months for her first time so I thought a great way to impart my amazing knowledge was to do a post so everyone could be impressed .. #sadbuttrue

So without further adieu.. here are my Top Five Tips for London (I could have done more but honestly my brain capacity is pretty low right now):

Transport

London is famous for its iconic transport options – from the Tube to the red Double Decker buses, not to forget the iconic black cabs.

The real trick is working out when to use what mode of transport.

For example, cabs can be expensive but you have to do it at least once on your visit.

Most long distance flights will land into Heathrow however it’s important to note that your flight might land at Gatwick or Stansted. If your flight lands in either Gatwick or Stansted, I suggest you check out their websites to find out how to get into the city. I have only ever flown into Heathrow.

One of the first things you should do when you arrive is get yourself an Oyster card (or a Contactless card, which I honestly don’t know too much about to be honest but they keep going on about it). A lot of major cities around the world has these types of cards – NYC has the metro card, Sydney has the Opal card and Brisbane has the Go Card. They all work the same – put money on it and just go.

To get from Heathrow to central London, I would suggest using the Tube – the Piccadilly Line goes right through central London and to Kings Cross Station, just make sure you don’t laugh every time the announcer mentions the final destination (Cockfosters).. in fact a good idea is to get a friend to constantly say “This train terminates at Cockfosters” a few times before you come, just to get it out of your system (that point is mainly for Kiwi & Aussie travellers to London, no one else seems to find it funny!)

If you don’t want your first impression of London to be on the Piccadilly Line at rush hour with all your luggage (a real treat, believe me!), then the alternative is the Heathrow Express, which goes directly to Paddington Station. Here’s a tip for you though, if you choose this option GET YOUR TICKET IN ADVANCE!!! I know all you non planners out there like to fly by the seat of your pants, but doing that with the Heathrow Express will cost you a hefty £22 offpeak or £25 during peak periods. However if you book your Heathrow Express 90 days before travel, then it is a mere £5.50, plus you get free wifi so you can check into Facebook to let everyone you know you’ve arrived and make them all jealous.

The first rule of the London Tube is that you do not talk about the London Tube – actually that’s not true. The first rule of the London Tube is that you don’t look at people on the London Tube. I, however, love the Tube (lets not talk about the tube strikes!) –

you get heaps of exercise walking around some of the stations (you can actually walk for miles under there!)

some of the announcers are pretty lively (some are not)

you feel like you’re experiencing the ‘real London’ travelling by Tube

the stations are pretty central and some of them are pretty cool, with awesome mosaics covering the walls. One of my favourite stations is Westminster – I’ve never seen so many escalators in one place!!

The trains are really frequent. In Brisbane, trains come around every 30 minutes – sometimes 15 minutes in rush hour. But in London, they are like every couple of minutes, so no worries if you miss a train – there is usually another one right after it.

Oh and the other rule of the London Tube (well London transport in general) – try to avoid travelling at rush hour. It’s manic out there!!

Check out the Travel For London website – tfl.gov.uk. I use this site so much that I just have to type the ‘t’ into the address bar and my computer knows what I’m looking for.

Buses are way more confusing that the Tube but definitely use them – they are cheaper than the tube – only £1.50 per trip and you get to see a bit of London as you go. Plus if you get to sit at the front of the Double Decker top deck, then you’re a real winner.. no seriously you are – those seats are like the holy grail! The thing I love about London buses is that they tell you want the next stop is , very handy when you really have no idea what you’re doing!

Accommodation

My number one tip here is:

Don’t try to save money by staying further away from the centre of London – unless of course, you love paying higher transport costs and love travelling for ages to get anywhere.

I’m not going to lie and say that accommodation in London is cheap because it is not – it’s freaking expensive. BUT you can find cheap accommodation centrally if you really want. There are loads of hostels around this city, all offer reasonably cheap accommodation. There is even a women’s only one if you don’t want stinky men around you.

I honestly can’t give you any tips about hostels because I’ve never stayed in one here but I know friends who have. My tip is to do your research – not just in the hostel (or any accommodations for that matter) but also in the surrounding area – is it safe at night? What else is in the area? Is it close to transport?

My favourite accommodation booking site is booking.com. You can set your budget and area (if you know where you want to stay). Plus there is also the all important reviews from other travellers – although I tend to take these with a grain of salt. Some people will complain that there was a loose thread in the carpet.

Only you will know if the accommodation is right for you. I’ve used a combinations of holiday lets, Air BnB, and hotels but I would recommend getting somewhere with a kitchen/kitchenette because it’s a hell of a lot cheaper to prepare your own food than eating out all the time.

Everything is also a bit hit & miss. The first time I came to London, I booked through a holiday let company. The place my sister & I stayed was pretty awesome to be honest. It was a one bedroom place that had everything we wanted – except that it was in Brent, near Wembley. Not really a problem except that we had to travel into the city each day and because it was November, it got dark early. Plus the apartment was about a 10 minute walk from the station and it was the top of 3 flights of stairs (hard work after you’ve been out all day sightseeing!). It was a great place to stay but for our first time in the city, I think it would have been better if we were closer to the action.

I prefer getting accommodation that is near transport and I also try to stay in a different area each time – this gives me the chance to discover more of the city and not focus on just the tourist areas.

Food

Ok, I am not a foodie in any way shape or form. The quicker & easier it is, the better in my book. But I will say, try to go those little cafes as opposed to the big branded places – they are usually cheaper and the people who run them are usually way friendlier and will be more likely to chat to you – always a good thing if you’re travelling solo, it’s nice to keep that human contact.

You can get pretty much any type of food in London – from English Pub Food to burgers of all kinds to curries, lots of curries. You can eat very cheaply if you want or you can have a more expensive meal.

Other places to check out would be markets – on this trip I accidentally came across the Borough Markets, next to London Bridge Station. Whilst I didn’t really explore them, even I could see the loads of food options that were around. Old Spitalfield Markets in Shoreditch is another top spot.

Things To Do

First things first, you are a tourist – don’t pretend you are anything else. And as a tourist on your first trip to London, do not be ashamed to do the touristy things like go on a hop on hop off bus. The best thing about the hoho bus is that it gives you a great orientation of a city.

London has a plethora of things to do (yes I use the word ‘plethora’!) and pretty much has something for anyone – ancient history with the Roman London Wall, amazing architecture that spans the centuries or modern art at the Tate Modern. Even if you aren’t into museums, there are heaps in London that are free to visit, plus you can escape the ever-present ‘London Drizzle’.

I could go ahead and list all the things you could do in London but this would be a completely different post. I will say that you will not be lacking for things to do. Just be aware that some of the more touristy things like the London Eye, can be quite expensive so do a bit of research before you come to decide what you really want to do. For example, I am not sure that a lot of people know that you can buy a day/night ticket for the London Eye, which means you can go around once before 4.30pm and once after 4.30pm. A standard ticket is £22.45 and the Day/Night one is £26.95 so it is definitely worth thinking about if you really must go on the London Eye.

There are alternatives if you want a view and you want it for free.. the Sky Garden (more commonly known as the ‘Walkie Talkie’) has a obsveration deck that is free, however you do need to book your time, which you can do at their website.

Other free options would include people watching in Piccadilly or Trafalgar Squares. Also check out websites like Time Out for things to do around the city. Cities like London always have something happening, so check out what festivals are on while you’re visiting too.

Walking London

Best way to see London is to walk London. There are little corners and alleyways that you just don’t find unless you walk around the city.

I’m not a big walker, especially because I have arthritis in both knees but even I get out and do walking in London (and come back to the hotel barely able to walk but I do feel like I’ve actually accomplished something). There are so many places that you can’t go unless you walk. Of course this also means you can get lost a bit – which can actually be a good thing too.

Central London is actually quite compact and sometimes it’s actually quicker to walk than to take the tube places. Plus if you happen to visit during one of the infamous London Tube strikes, you won’t have a choice but walk.

London is a great city to walk around and I would definitely encourage people to get out there and wander the streets. You never know what you might find walking around London.

Hope this tips help in some way. Obviously everyone is different so what works for me. might not work for others.

So while I’m here, I thought I’d include some other photos of this most recent trip to London:

My Top Five Tips For London So I thought that I would share my top five tips for London, given I have now been here 4 times so obviously I am an expert in the matter :D

[akashamichelleblog]

10 of the Best Notebooks for Designers

Keep track of your thoughts and musings with one of these stylish and practical notebooks.

Few tools are as useful to creatives as a trusty notebook. They might appear pretty simple on the surface – just sheets of paper bound together inside a cover – but they've survived through the years for a reason: they just work.

Notebooks don't have to be charged (well, most of them anyway), they're inexpensive and they're one of the easiest things to use – simply open them and start writing. Even the most sophisticated digital tools have to pack a serious technological punch to appear this intuitive.

But just because notebooks are straightforward doesn't mean they're all the same. I've rounded up 10 of the best notebooks for designers that show off how the same concept can be pushed in interesting directions. So if you're after a new place to record notes or pencil drawings, maybe one of these notebooks is just what you're looking for.

01. MOO Hardcover Notebook

Famous for its frankly dizzying array of business cards, MOO has recently branched out into notebooks. Built by the company's in-house designers with the same care and consideration as its business cards, MOO's Notebooks come in six colours (split into classic or bright) and are filled with crisp, non-glare, ruled paper. There are also 16 pages of shaded paper in the middle that break up the notebook and give you a space to jot down those sporadic, unrelated thoughts that spring up from time to time.

Thanks to their binding the Moo Notebooks can be laid perfectly flat. This is welcome news for left-handers, who need no longer be hindered by spines creating impractical bulges under the pages. Topped off with a quality cloth cover and a slipcase to keep the notebook protected, this is a premium journal with an accessible price of just $19.99.

02. Moleskine

Well, it wouldn't be a list of the best notebooks if we didn't mention Moleskine, would it? In the world of stationery, Moleskine are the Apple of notebooks, with its products generating the same kind of enthusiasm and loyalty as the latest iPhone release.

It's funny to think that the Italian company has only been running since 1997, but its relatively rapid success is the result of a commitment to creating quality products. With a straightforward and practical design, plus a luxurious finish that makes them a joy to write on, Moleskine notebooks have really earned their place at the top of the notebook food chain.

Even the most basic of Moleskine notebooks feel like something special, and with a variety of different styles, including coloured notebooks, memo books, and two-go notebooks to name but a few, it doesn't look like they're going to be knocked off the top spot any time soon.

03. Lockbook

Remember what I said about notebooks not needing to be charged? Well, here's one exception: meet Lockbook, a nifty little notebook that keeps all your secrets safely locked away, for your eyes only. Sealed with a biometric lock that needs the owner's fingerprint to open, the Lockbook is one of the most practically innovative journals we've come across.

However its unique security system doesn't mean you have to use Lockbook to record your darkest thoughts. Once you've opened it up, you'll see that Lockbook's ring binder lets you personalise it in any way you want. With a range of inserts, pockets, sticky notes and more, you can tailor the Lockbook to be as personal as – well – your fingerprints!

The Lockbook is an Indiegogo-funded project which backers can expect to receive in June 2017 at the earliest.

04. Rocketbook Everlast

Another notebook that uses technology in creative and useful ways is the Rocketbook Everlast. Bringing the concept of a journal bang up to date, the Everlast lets users take what they've written on the page and upload it to the cloud with the help of the Rocketbook app.

Once your writing has been sent to a digital location, you can wipe your words off the page and start all over again. It's Rocketbook's aim to cut down on the amount of ideas get lost between different notebooks, as well as making the world a tidier place for creatives. Just like the Lockbook, the Rocketbook Everlast has been crowd-funded and should start rolling out in April.

05. The Bound Book

Writing from the safety of your home or studio is all well and good, but what if you need to work outside, exposed to the wrath of mother nature? Where most notebooks would wilt in the rain, the Bound Book from the rugged Rite in the Rain company is capable of standing up to storms, grime, and even laundry mishaps (they can happen to the best of us).

With a glorious yellow cover made out of an imitation leather material called fabrikoid, the tough pocket-sized Bound Book comes with sewn-in pages coated in a unique moisture shield. This allows users to write in pen and pencil, even if the pages have been soaked.

06. Field Notes

Field Notes is a collection of smartly-designed, vintage-styled pocket notebooks, created by the Draplin Design Company and Coudal Partners. The small notebooks, which measure 3.5x5.5in, come with 48 pages and a saddle stitch binding. And best of all, the Memo Books come in a mixed three-pack, so you're spoilt for choice when it comes to page design.

Available with plain, lined or graph paper pages, the Memo Book collection is ready to suit any task. Inspired by the "vanishing subgenre of agricultural memo books, ornate pocket ledgers, and the simple, unassuming beauty of a well-crafted grocery list", this trio of journals is an essential on-the-go option for designers.

07. UI Stencils Everyday Carry Kit

One for the web designers amongst you now: Let us introduce you to the Everyday Carry Kit from UI Stencils. Just like the Field Notes Memo Book bundle, this set includes three pocket-sized notebooks with 48 pages each. However unlike the entry above, each book in this set contains gridded pages ideally suited to creating digital prototypes.

What sets this collection apart from other notebooks, though, is the unique Pocket Stencil. Complete with cut-outs of frequently used UX shapes, such as touch and swipe icons, phone symbols and social media logos, this stencil makes it quicker and easier for web designers to jot down layouts for the latest groundbreaking app.

08. Leuchtturm Master Classic

Small notebooks are all well and good, but sometimes you want a big beefy notebook that's going to last you a while. That's what you get with the formidably named Master Classic notebook from Leuchtturm. Larger than A4, the hardcover comes stuffed with 233 numbered pages that are either ruled, plain, square or dotted depending on your preference.

If you're not after something quite so substantial, Leuchtturm offers lots of other alternatives in different sizes and thicknesses. To give you an idea of the quality on the table, the company has been running since 1917 and its main rival is the new kid on the block, Moleskine.

09. Baron Fig

We've seen lots of different notebooks on our list so far, each satisfying a different niche depending on what you're after. With so many different demands being placed upon notebooks, Baron Fig decided to ask the design community what they want out of a notebook and go from there.

The result is the Confidant notebook, which from the ground up has questioned what a notebook is and what it can achieve. Pithy sales soundbites aside, the Baron Fig notebooks are truly gorgeous. Available in a soothing light grey or charcoal, the Confidant notebooks can open flat and contain plain, ruled or dot grid pages.

Its quality acid-free fine grain paper makes the Confidant a dream to write in, whether that's with inks or pencils, plus this means the books are safe from degradation. They might be modest to look at, but Baron Fig lets its high-standard products speak for themselves.

10. CIAK Pitti

Bit of a wild card to finish on. Take a look at the CIAK Pitti from Fiorentina, a European specialist in leather products and accessories. They're beautiful to look at and are extremely soft to the touch, and are sure to be one of the most luxurious places you can put your pen to paper.

With contrasting elastic straps to keep the books secure when they're shut, and a dazzling lining that makes them pleasant to look at as well as use, the CIAK Pitti line really is in a league of its own in terms of style.

The only catch? These books are only available to order as a wholesaler, with minimum orders set at $300. However, unless you're desperate enough that you want to order these books in bulk (and we really couldn't blame you), the kind folks at Fiorentina are happy to guide you towards the nearest retailer if you get in contact with them.

It sounds like a bit of a hassle, but it sort of makes these elusive notebooks feel even more valuable if you happen to get your hands on one.

Source URL: Creative Bloq

[beastgamerkuma]

It depends on your outlook on how justice tips in which favor. You are either Guilty until proven innocent or Innocent until proven Guilty. It all comes down to how strong are your convictions to prove that justice has been served. Can you live with the consequences of your client? In Judgment, you will have to face these issues and dance with the blind eye of the law. Let’s check this review of Sega’s Judgment from the makers of the Yakuza series. 

Judgment’s Story

You are a former lawyer now detective Takayuki Yagami who is a hard as nails P.I, but he has some demons. During his time as a young lawyer, he ended up freeing an alleged murderer only for him to allegedly kills his girlfriend and burn the house down. Kind of a slap to the face when you think about it having a victory only to look like a big mistake. So, you are blacklisted while still keeping your lawyer license, but tackling justice in your own way. 

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Things get sketchy as a serial killer surfaces leaving the victims without their eyes. Of course, you are caught up in the middle of all this between a feud going in within the Yakuza. There is a lot to discover in this long plot and sadly all the fingers begin to point at you. Time to use those sleuthing skills and finally discover the culprit and bring peace to Kamurocho or become corrupted trying.

All eyes are on you now as you are trying to solve these murders and save face at the same time. No matter where you go and how you try to do good people antagonize your horrible decisions from your past. Yagami still holds on to his decision and that will come to light later on as you play. 

Gameplay of Judgment

If you played any of the Yakuza titles then you have a pretty good idea of what to expect from Judgment. However, you will not have a grand advantage the Yakuza provided meaning you will not be able to have weapons on the fly to keep with you. You are on the side of the law and must abide by them, but do not worry when it comes to combat you still have environmental weapons to use. 

When it comes to combat, Yagami has two different martial arts styles. You will start with both Crane and Tiger Style. By pressing down on the D-Pad you can switch between stances easily. You will have a lock on the stance button with R1 and Block for L1. Square and Triangle are your medium and hard attacks. Circle utilizes your throws and X is your evade or run. 

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Expect a formula when it comes to Judgments combat and utilizing not only your martial arts but the environment as well. You can jump off walls for an attack, hop over enemies and use either a kick or a throw. The best part is paying attention to your EX moves. With your boost ready, you can hit R2 to give you invulnerability or use Triangle when indicated to perform a power move animation. 

Moving on to power-ups and healing. You can buy food or tonics in order to give you an advantage in a fight. Using the directions on the d-pad left, right and up you can add 3 items. Sadly the food will not give you the full health at times so it is ideal to see who I call the Sewer Doctor. He will provide you with medkits varying from Small, Medium and Large each costing quite expensive. One large kit will run you 110,000 yen. Bit pricey, but worth it when in combat fighting a strong opponent. 

Speaking of opponents, you will have your fair share of them in Judgment. From the random street-thug encounters to Keihin Gang boss fights. Many fights will earn you XP, so if you get a chance to fight do it, but watch your health because some enemies will fight at boss levels.

Time to get your cardio in with pursuit mode. You will have to chase down perps in a fun quick time event. You will have some control while running around, but there will be obstacles. You run into too many and you can guess that you will fail the pursuit. So, be mindful of the streets and keep your hands on the controller at all times.

Build Up Yagami

You want to be a better detective or all around experience player then you need to allocate those skills properly. There will be three different categories for Yagami. You have Abilities, Battle and Special all color coded and require different experience points that you gain throughout your adventures. They are a bit costly but if you enough activities and that includes eating, playing and fighting you will gain what you need in no time.

Judgment is full of Life

There is a level of appreciation I have with Judgment because of the people that reside in the game. The city feels like a city full of life with many strangers showing off or talking out loud their thoughts. The encounters you run into, especially the formal greeting when going into stores or restaurants give it authenticity.

Then you have your cast of characters which are based on real Japanese actors, well except for one. You have Masaharu Kaito who is like your back up and colleague for your detective business. Always getting into trouble together and getting each other out of it as well. Enter Takashi Genda captured from real actor Akira Nakao who is Yagami’s mentor in a way. This senior lawyer runs his own law offices where Yagami started. He kind of scolds Yagami at times, but is a cool father figure. 

With the main Villain Captain Himura one of the leads of the Yakuza who you had to help out in chapter one. His story goes far deeper down the plot hole. There are many situations with over 3 dozen characters that put you through the emotions. This is a great story driven game that makes you question a lot of scenarios and people. But, so far my favorite has been Saori for her quirky nature and that funny scenario with the missing cake case. 

The Art of Detective Work

You can’t bring down enemies without hard evidence and Judgment introduces a new tailing mechanic where you will have to follow behind your target. The trick here is there is a spot meter for the person you are pursuing and you will have to hide behind structures so you are not seen. At times your mark will grow suspicious and start running and this brings a new wave of challenges. If you lose sight of your mark there will be a timer countdown until you spot them again. 

There will be times you might need photo evidence and in this day and age, you have the art of a smartphone by your side. Get the right position and even better catching your subjects in the act for the ultimate proof. 

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At times you will have to go into First person mode or investigation mode. Once here you can see things a bit closer and your controller will begin to vibrate over key items. To access all of your evidence, just hit options and open your phone to your cases and see what you have come up with it. Make sure you have a good understanding of each piece of evidence because you will have to present it during interrogations to gain the truth. 

An Abundance of Side Quest

Even though there is an overwhelming amount of content you don’t feel it. At times there will be gaps within a chapter so might as well take care of many side quest which involve friend events, dating and other detective cases. It is important to do Friend Events as you will gain allies for information or help in fights. They will often give you items for being such a good friend too. You will see icons of green hearts in the shape of hands at shops or in the streets.

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  It is important to gain the trust of the people as it can help you progress through the game. Especially when it comes to matters of the heart. That was a weird segway, but relationships happen in Judgment and it is pretty good fun. Right now I am romancing a young songstress who is going through the issues of a music career and choosing the right choices will upgrade the level of intimacy. This little dating simulator is cute and enjoyable.

Your apartment is your command center where you can see other detective jobs pinned on your board and one particular Friend quest is with your landlady who will leave you food to test out and or give you a boost. Decorate your place with trinkets that you acquire through your playthrough and in certain friend events you can obtain albums to play on your record player. This is almost at the simulator level.

A Game within a Game

I guess the developers figured that the core game is not enough and want you to experience Japan to its fullest or classic Sega titles. As many of you are aware that if you are playing an open world Yakuza style game you can expect visits to Club Sega to play full arcade titles. Judgment takes it up a notch by adding a House of the Dead game that is true to the spirit, but I prefer a light gun instead of using the cursor.

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You can also expect to play Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown, Space Harrier and a game I must have missed during the Saturn Era called Motor Raid. You will also get claw machines to win prizes that you can display in your home. Other games include gambling, batting cages, darts. But the one game that is new to the franchise is drone racing.

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You have a drone that you use for your detective work and you can take it a step further for just racing fun. After you play your first race and trigger the side mission you will notice some pieces throughout the city. These will be needed to upgrade your drone with its own unique paint style and enhancements. As stated previously there is a skill tree specifically for your drone as well to tackle wind resistance. I didn’t do too bad, but once the game goes live I want to see how the online portion is going to work.

You can spend a lot of time just taking in the sights and enjoying the photorealistic food. That’s another thing, shame on your Sega for always having high-quality images of the food that you eat. That’s just wrong, even down to the little snacks. Shame on you! 

Art Direction is on Point

All the titles in this franchise just make you want to visit Japan. The developers pulled no punches in the attention to detail even adding certain tourist attractions. We are even greeted by a celebrity chef Kunio Ichinose who is president of Pepper Lunch. You can explore almost anywhere and walk around in first person mode like a tourist to take pictures of places and people that you can share through the PS4 share button. 

Bad Habits

In all its glory I do have some issues with Judgment regarding the choices you can make or rather the illusion of choices. I have a huge peeve with games that offer a choice, but there is none. For example, I was con’d out of 100,000 yen for a drink and the bar owner threatened to stab herself and you have two options. I chose not to pay to let her stab herself and hopefully get a mini-game to get out of the consequences of that decision. Sadly the option would not change no matter how many times I chose not to pay, so I had no choice but to pay.

The outcome worked in my favor as I obtained my money back, but honestly why give me the choice? I can’t stand that.

I wish the combat received an upgrade as it is still a bit clunky. You have an issue where you run at a wall to perform a wall attack only to just run into the wall or trying to vault over an enemy only to perform a ground slide attack. When it works it is great, but you will have to fiddle with combat at times. 

Final Verdict

Judgment takes a different path to the Yakuza series in a clean way. The new cast of characters even though in the same environment brings a different light. I highly recommend playing this game in the Japanese voice over, because in some of the cut-scenes it is kind of weird when Yagumi introduces himself as if he is on the phone saying, “This is Yagumi!” which is just off in the middle of a conversation.

It is worth the price tag with over 20 hours of gameplay and even more than that with replay value I would say pushes close to the 60’s being the trophy’s you have to get maybe more. You can challenge yourself by changing the difficulties, but even with the funny moments, this is one serious story about finding the truth and innocence. 

Judgment is definitely a Buy, worth the money and if you pre-order, you can play the full game early starting the 21st of June. The official release date of Judgment drops on June 25th, 2019 and thanks to Sega for the early review copy. I hope you enjoyed this review and check out my playthrough on twitch.tv! – Beast Out – 

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Title: Judgment Developer: SEGA / Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio Publisher: SEGA Release Date: June 25, 2019 (NA / EU) | June 21, 2019 (PSN Digital Pre-Order Early Access) Price: $59.99 Genre: Action RPG, Courtroom Thriller Platform: PlayStation 4 Players: 1 ESRB Rating: M for Mature

Beastly Review of Sega’s Judgment It depends on your outlook on how justice tips in which favor. You are either Guilty until proven innocent or Innocent until proven Guilty.

[occasionalgypsies]

After going to Rockport and Port A in South Texas in Jan/Feb to try and outrun the cold (ahem, it was pretty cool and rainy most days but still, better than the weather in Dallas), our next adventure, just as Texas started to warm right up to comfy poolside temps, was to head off to Santa Fe, NM for all of April!

In a nutshell I have to say Santa Fe and all of NM really are: hauntingly beautiful with lots of light variations and distant mountain ranges in shades of blue/black; wonderfully dry so colds aren’t too cold and hots aren’t too hot; amazingly bug free allowing for open windows; quiet, even in the busiest of places because it only has maybe 2 million people IN THE ENTIRE STATE; full of some friendly people; brown (everyone seems to have signed a pact to build only earth tone adobe houses which while beautiful and well designed to blend, can be very monotonous); and loaded with Santa Fe cuisine (lots of red and hatch green chili sauces and stacked enchiladas, packing some heat).

We’ve really loved it. We have the good fortune to be house sitting through Trusted Housesitters, and have a lovely place up in the hills from Santa Fe a few miles. We hear Robert Redford lives right down the road but Stanley and I have yet to see him on our walks up his way. Here’s Stanley, our delightful little Schih Tzu for the month.

Anyway, following are a few of the highlights from our trip that to me, you shouldn’t miss.

Bar Z Winery near Palo Duro Canyon

Palo Duro Canyon

Our abode for the night in Palo Duro

Cadillac Ranch!

On our way from TX, we decided to check one item off of Jim’s bucket list, and spend the night at the bottom of Palo Duro Canyon. Did you know that it’s the second largest in the US, after the ol’ Grand? I didn’t. Don’t ask me based on what, I just read that somewhere. It was pretty amazing (upon driving past the first spot where you could kinda see it, Jim exclaimed, “Look at that, it’s almost like a…” and then he looked at the expression on my face, and stopped talking, because, ya know yes, it’s kind of like a canyon over there, like the one we put in our GPS maybe!) We spent the night in a decently comfy bed/cabin, no heat or air necessary due to it being early April in TX., and we had just a lovely time. FYI, I suggest a stop at Bar Z winery nearby, nice wines and amazing views of part of the Canyon. And you HAVE to check out Cadillac Ranch and spray paint something there. Pro tip: don’t buy any spray paint unless you are really picky, there’s plenty there for the taking.

Palo Duro Canyon

Bar Z Winery near Palo Duro Canyon

Our abode for the night in Palo Duro

Cadillac Ranch!

So after that overnight stay, we were off to Santa Fe! The scenery rather abruptly changed at one point, from flat grassland to scrubby, hilly desert. And then at one point, I realized, holy cow, I haven’t seen a person or a building or a cow or ANYTHING for a looooong time. Texans like to think we have wide open spaces but wow, even on the major highways you might see nothing here for an hour. Pretty cool, I have to say. Except don’t come here if you are addicted to your interwebs on your tele-device. Cell services is more like an occasional surprise than a reliable utility. Get used to it!

If you can, spend some time on Route 66 here. Lots of kitsch of the charming kind. We went through Tucumcari, partly because I like saying it and partly because it said it had some of the best art around. As you can see, it has some mighty fine stuff! I didn’t post the wall crawling with cockroaches because while it was cool, it really creeps me out.

OK, just kidding, here it is.

Anyhoo, we arrived, and all was beautiful if a bit chilly. The mornings were often in the 30s, but again, didn’t really feel too cold and it warmed up fast. Temps in the 60s are pretty mild here, being high altitude, sunny and low humidity. 70s feel great. 80s, you’re going to get hot and thirsty if you are out for long.

One of the first things we did was take a drive to check out the Rio Grande Gorge. It was pretty spectacular, even if the little phone box telling you not to lose hope freaked me out a bit. Smart, but still.

The scenery was awesome. Best part was we found a road that led to the bottom of the Gorge, where just a few people were hanging out fishing or relaxing. We like finding out of the way spots like that. On a warmer day, I could have hung out there all day, reading and swimming.

Rio Grande River Gorge

The crisis hotline at the gorge bridge

Jim at the bottom of the Rio Grande River Gorge, via a remote little dirt road

Another day we decided to take the high road to Taos (they actually call it that, we weren’t being especially virtuous or anything), a drive known for its beauty. There’s a faster way, but don’t do it. We also sort of accidentally took some kind of big circle around the mountaintop called the Enchanted Circle, also known for its scenery, mainly because I also wanted to see Red River where I spent some truly special time as a kid (Community House, you seem a sad shell of your former self, I hope I’m wrong, but prob you don’t have square dancing and hand jive lessons any more, sniffle) and because I wanted to drive through Angel Fire which I had never seen (we didn’t look too hard but it was just OK).

Next, we visited Bandelier National Monument, took a long hike and saw some great petroglyphs. You can also climb up ladders to see inside the old caves the Native Americans carved out of the little mini-caves in the cliff face. Saw some cool deer. Also took a drive to Jemez Springs and saw Soda Falls (below) along the way. Super cool, the river rushes through a small opening, lots of dripping mineral formations and a random hot spring on the side of the road. Also, Jemez Springs seemed fun and nicely isolated although we didn’t stop.

Bandelier Deer

Gophers on the roadside maybe?

Bandelier

Deer everywhere at Bandelier

Soda Springs

Soda Falls

Then, our friends came to visit! Super fast, we did a lot of stuff. We went to some Breaking Bad locations in Albuquerque, went to the Georgia O’Keefe museum in Santa Fe (totally worth it, and then in honor of her I took a very O’Keefe photo of the sky over the buildings outside), we experienced snow shaped like tiny little snowballs, we drove up to the Santa Fe ski area and saw snow-covered trees, we got caught in a crazy snowstorm that made us feel like we were Han Solo hyperdriving through space, and we geeked out on a roadside attraction full of those funny little plywood art thingies that you put your head in for photos. That was in the most adorable town of all around here, Madrid (pronounced like Bad-rid, accent on the first syllable). Some great restaurants, shops and live music, don’t say we didn’t tell you to stop there because we did.

Go see the Key Frances Band at the Mine Shaft Cantina in Madrid. You won’t be sorry. Especially on a beautiful day. (Ugh, didn’t write down the name of the band, sorry).

Also, if you like mysteries or funky art, go to Meow Wolf. Just go. It’s unique, although I highly recommend going when kids are in school if you don’t want to be overrun. And if you don’t want to work on solving the puzzles, you still might like it but you might not think it’s worth the $25 admission fee. We stayed 6 hours so, it was worth it to us, even if I think they need to work on shorter clues for the next rendition!

Jim through the wormhole

“They” are always watching

My fav, the 3D art (glasses required)

Lovely quote: When in doubt, just doubt your doubt.

For our final (up to now) adventure, we took the tram up to Sandia Peak, which was breathtaking. It has the longest cable span in the US (world?), so they say. If you are afraid of heights, I’d advise against it though! And last but definitely not least, we availed ourselves of the iconic spa here, 10,000 Waves. Very Japanese, very relaxing, expensive but not crazy so unless you do what we did and get the Shiatsu 80 minute massage, the head/neck massage, the foot/leg massage, the facial and a regular mini-massage. That’s a bit pricey, but it was a celebration and so, we splurged. Don’t forget to build in time for the baths, the sauna, etc. I hear you can even go to the dining room in your spa robe!

That’s it for now. I guess that’s enough. I’ll have one more post from our weekend bonanza of cramming in all the sights we’ve missed so far, plus our drive home through Roswell and Carlsbad Caverns. So long for now!

Top of Sandia Peak

One of the big towers for the Sandia Peak Tram

Ah…10,000 Waves

  So, logically, next we went to a cool place… After going to Rockport and Port A in South Texas in Jan/Feb to try and outrun the cold (ahem, it was pretty cool and rainy most days but still, better than the weather in Dallas), our next adventure, just as Texas started to warm right up to comfy poolside temps, was to head off to Santa Fe, NM for all of April!

[brendagilliam2]

9 iPad Pro apps that make the most of Apple Pencil

There’s no doubt that the Apple Pencil is an impressive design tool, but to make the most of it you need the right iPad Pro apps – ones that truly take advantage of its power and flexibility.

Happily, as this list shows, there is already a strong roster of iPad Pro apps from companies big and small, which really let the Pencil shine. All you have to supply is talent! (And a Pencil. And an iPad Pro.) 

Here are nine great apps that make the most of the Apple Pencil – and with iOS 11 just released, they’re sure to be even better than ever.

01. Affinity Photo

Requirements: iOS 10.3 or later

$19.99/£19.99

Serif’s Affinity Photo has quickly become the go-to Photoshop alternative on Mac and Windows machines thanks to its solid tool set, amazing performance and one-off price instead of a subscription fee, and its iPad version – used by Apple to demo the iPad Pro and Pencil – is no less impressive.

While it’s compatible with earlier iPad models, it’s when you pair it with an iPad Pro and Pencil that Affinity Photo really comes alive. Already engineered to make the most of the iPad’s hardware and touch features, on the iPad Pro it’s also built to take full advantage of the Pencil’s pressure and angle sensitivity, whether you’re painting with its professional brush engine or applying realtime lighting effects.

It’s built for a professional workflow, with support for raw and PSD files as well as full cross-platform performance and file compatibility in case you feel the need to add some final polish on your desktop. But the fact is that you probably won’t need to.

02. Procreate 4

Procreate is the king of natural media apps on the iPad

Requirements: iOS 10.0 or later

$9.99/£9.99

This is the king of natural media apps on the iPad, and it is completely transformed with the addition of the Pencil. Sure, you can use your finger with it, a simple stylus, or even one of the increasingly complicated and expensive third-party styluses from the likes of Adonit, but none of these give you the fluidity and analogue-like experience that the Apple Pencil does.

In part this is down to the Pencil’s fine tip, in part the low latency and double-speed sampling rate, and in part because the palm rejection is nearly flawless. But all that technical stuff just fades away into the background when you’re faced with the joy of sketching with a 6B pencil, turning it flat to block in big areas of shade, or mucking about with paints.

The newly released Procreate 4 boasts a significant technological overhaul, along with a litany of improvements including the introduction of wet paint options and an intuitive redesigned menus. 

Read our full Procreate 4 review.

03. Adobe Comp CC

Create production-ready layouts as smoothly and easily as drawing on paper

Requirements: iOS 9.0 or later

Free

The Adobe Comp CC iPad pro app is a revelation, and makes the process of wireframing or mocking up designs a cinch. The idea is that rather than pulling out your notebook and drawing dumb rectangles for pictures or a few horizontal lines to indicate where text would go in a layout, with a few simple and intuitive sketched shapes you can actually start building those layouts for real – and then pass them into InDesign, Illustrator or Photoshop. 

It’s worth familiarising yourself with all the different gestures for aligning, grouping and so on so you can work quickly and efficiently. You could do all this with just your finger, but using the Pencil feels delightfully like drawing in a notebook with a magical pencil, where birds you draw come to life and fly off the page. 

Draw a rectangle, slash it with a diagonal cross and it becomes an image box that you can populate with assets from, say, your Creative Cloud Library. Draw a box and scrub a few horizontal lines in it, and boom, it’s a text box, which you can style manually (there’s also a handy, quick slider control for point size) or apply styles to from your CC Libraries. Rough squares snap to perfect geometric shapes.

It’s fast, fluid and easy, and while sure, pro designers are likely to work from these wireframes like they would with one drawn in ink in a Moleskine – that is, merely referring to it but building from scratch, rather than importing it from Comp – but it can still be a boon to your productivity to be able to quickly mock up your designs using real live assets and styles.

04. Adobe Photoshop Sketch

Sketch comes with some lovely natural media types built in

Requirements: iOS 9.0 or later

Free

Procreate may be the king of natural media apps on the iPad, but if so Adobe is like a deposed Ancien Régime monarch, plotting, in its exile, to win back its crown. And Sketch is genuinely really good, with not only some lovely natural media types built-in (and the option of adding more brushes via Capture CC), but also some features that might quickly endear it to you.

For starters, it can push layered PSDs directly to Photoshop on your Mac or PC, and you can add either a flat grid or even a configurable 3D plane grid to the background, plus preset geometric shapes, to help keep you on the straight and narrow. When you want to go on the wide and sinuous, there are French curves that you can trace against.

But that would be for naught if the natural media tools themselves were rubbish, but in fact they’re generally very nice. Pay attention specifically to the watercolour tool, which has colours bleed into one another in a most pleasing manner. 

What’s even nicer is that you can tap an icon – which looks like fan blades – to ‘dry’ the paint so that new colours added on top don’t bleed, giving you some terrific flexibility. The tools are Pencil-aware, so react wonderfully to pressure and tilt differences.

05. Pixelmator

iPad Pro app Pixelmator makes the most of the Apple Pencil’s features

Requirements: iOS 9.1 or later

$4.99/£4.99

We could have recommended Adobe Photoshop Mix here in place of this stalwart iOS bitmap editor – and certainly, the former’s cut-out tools, layers, and paintable filters are generally quite nice – but Pixelmator just feels like the more mature and useful app.

As well as offering some (frankly a little underwhelming) natural media drawing tools that work with the Pencil, it gives you the ability to tweak the colours either by applying Instagram-style filters, or with sliders for brightness, contrast, saturation, RGB and white balance – or indeed by tweaking the curves.

But the pairing of Pixelmator and the Pencil really shine if you want to do some touch-ups or object isolation. The touch-up controls – repair, dodge, burn, sharpen, saturate and more – are easy to apply with the Pencil especially given its precision. When painting out backgrounds this precision, plus the various different eraser types available, are hugely welcome.

If we’ve one criticism it’s that we’d like the option of pressure-sensitivity to affect the size of an eraser rather than its opacity, but nevertheless this is the closest thing you’re going to find to Photoshop on the iPad – and the Pencil just makes it better.

Next page: four more great iPad apps for Apple Pencil…

06. Paper

Requirements: iOS 8.0 or later

Free

We’d love to be able to recommend Noteshelf here, which is overall a richer notebook app (albeit one that’s not quite as pretty or simple) but although it has recently added support for the Pencil, it’s very basic – there’s no tilt- or pressure-sensitivity.

Happily, though, Paper is easy to love. At first glance it might look like a reasonably simple drawing and diagramming tool – and on one level, for sure, that’s what it is – but there are some smarts here. 

They are frustratingly difficult to discover, but again it’s worth poking around the support files online to understand how the apparently simple tools can be used to create graphs, org charts and Venn diagrams, can easily duplicate shapes, link shapes with lines (with optional arrows at one or both ends) and much more.

Paper doesn’t demand the kind of precision you get from the Pencil, but it’s certainly welcome, and the slightly, delightfully cartoonish media work great with its sensors.

07. Evernote

Evernote is a rich, capable iPad Pro app

Requirements: iOS 9.3 or later

Free

Ah, Evernote. Now, this definitely isn’t for everyone. For some, this uber-notebook has become an indispensable place for gathering websites, sketches, notes, to-do lists and more – the detritus of modern life as well as inspiration and creative work – but for others it’s just a bit baffling and never quite clicks.

It’s definitely rich and capable, though, and the ability to record audio – during a briefing meeting, say, while you sketch ideas for a client – using its simple but effective drawing tools is great (though this isn’t the only app to offer that, of course). It’s pleasing how the eraser tool creates nicely rounded ends to the ink strokes rather than just slicing them into sharp points.

Using the Pencil rather than a dumb stylus or your finger gives you a more expressive line since it’s pressure sensitive, but more importantly the palm rejection means that you can lean your hand on the screen like you would with paper, and Evernote won’t get confused and make marks where your hand is resting.

08. LiquidText

This PDF document reader lets you annotate and excerpt texts

Requirements: iOS 10.0 or later

Free

Even without a Pencil this is a handy tool for reading and annotating PDFs, Word and PowerPoint documents, and web pages. It’s designed to support ‘active reading’, so as you’re reading you can be highlighting and snipping out sections to refer to later, collapsing sections of a document down so you can refer to disparate bits of it at once, and more.

Add in the Pencil, though, and it becomes even faster to use, and it’s a great example of how the Pencil’s pressure- and tilt-sensitivity can be used not just to mimic real-world drawing tools. 

Dragging the Pencil over text instantly selects it (rather than having to tap-and-wait with your finger), pressing harder selects any part of the document as an image, and dragging across text with the Pencil held at a flattened angle selects and highlights it. Smart.

09. uMake

This 3D drawing app makes great use of the Apple Pencil

Requirements: iOS 9.3 or later

Free

We’ll come clean: despite its assurances that it ’empowers anyone to create 3D designs easily and intuitively’ we don’t have the chops to produce anything remotely impressive in this 3D drawing app, but we can nevertheless see that it makes great use of the Pencil. 

The idea is that you can sketch in 2D – optionally making use of smart symmetry controls – and then extrude your designs or even draw entirely in 3D space, connecting points on different planes.

Even if you’re a bit clumsy and jittery, your lines are smoothed into flowing curves, and with practice we can see that it would be possible to create some elegant, organic forms at speed – and the precision of the Pencil’s tip will make this whole process simpler than with any other stylus.

It might get frustrating for highly technical engineering work, but you can always use it as a tool for getting an initial concept down before exporting to IGES or OBJ files so you can work it up in other apps.

Related articles:

The 12 best iPad apps for pro designers

The best drawing tablet: our pick of the best graphics tablets in 2017

How to draw and paint – 100 pro tips and tutorials

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[lindoig]

Days 27 to 30 - Cobourg!

Day 27 - Tuesday

Tuesday dawned like all the other days up here – it got light and right after that, it got hot!  Almost no cloud and being closer to the Equator, the Sun burns more directly and hotter.  All days are hat and sunscreen days.  But it is soooo beautiful, the heat is hardly a problem.

On the road by 7.15 after a healthy brekky and off to Cahill’s Crossing on the East Alligator River.  It is a tidal river (tides flow in and out with the river flowing against the incoming tide and augmenting the outgoing one) and your crossing needs to be timed to ensure the water level is sufficiently low (no more than half a metre seems to be general practice up here) and the current abated enough to avoid being washed off the road into the croc-infested torrent. There is an upside-down Landrover in the river just downstream from the crossing left by people who misjudged the current – and I think two guys died as a result. One needs to be aware of a few different hazards up here.  While there, we saw some guys fishing and one of them caught a huge barramundi – I think Alex guessed it at 12-15kg, possibly more.

Once the Crossing was successfully crossed, we travelled through a beautiful area of grassland containing patches of water festooned with water lilies and water birds.  There were numerous species when one searched carefully, but the white herons really stood our – all 4 species!  (We Had lunch at Fogg Dam on our own a week later and counted 30-odd species in an hour – among maybe tens of thousands of birds.)

Next stop was Gunbalanya – an indigenous community with a strong arts focus and we watched several of the artists, mainly painters, creating their masterpieces.  They are not something that I particularly hanker after, but having watched them at work, I am in awe of their ability to draw straight lines, circles and other shapes using the most primitive tools (brushes cut from speargrass stems) absolutely freehand with never a mistake.  Seemingly quite natural for them, utterly impossible for most of us.

We picked up a local guide at the Arts Centre and set off for Injalak Hill, maybe 5km out of town.  We parked the car at the foot of the hill and set off for the summit!  We saw some Jabirus fly in to their nesting sites on the top of the hill and said ‘if they can do it, so can we’.  No idea why, it was a silly thing to say, but the challenge was there.  It was a really strenuous climb with frequent pauses to catch our breaths and let the stragglers catch up, but we made it. Michael, our Aboriginal guide, was most solicitous of we oldies and from time to time, he started small bushfires to clear some of the tall grass to make it easier for us to take particular routes up the rocky climb.  I have commented on the use of fire elsewhere, but Michael simply lit fires wherever he thought appropriate and they burned 20-30 square metres and then went out quite spontaneously.  Apparently, the indigenes know where and how to use fire to ensure it achieves its objective and then dies out itself, rather than creating an inferno – having said that, it was a hot day and heat from the fires was quite intense.

Injalak is an amazing conglomeration of large/huge/enormous rocks and the aborigines have been painting on them for millennia.  Michael told us some of the stories, but many of them are secret men’s or women’s business and can’t be disclosed to the uninitiated.  One area he took us to was a former burial site and there are still skulls and other bones hidden, but visible, in the area.  We eventually reached the top of the hill (the jabirus were on a nearby inaccessible outcrop) where we had lunch.  We were very high up and we could see miles and miles of floodplain, including the billabong the town of Gunbalanya is set beside.  It was quite breathtaking – hectare on hectare of brilliant green grass and huge swathes of water lilies encircled by many thousands of birds – egrets, herons, terns, raptors, waders……  Just thousands of them all doing what they do every day, but gobsmacking for me.  Iconic NT wetlands as I have always imagined them.

We had a few other stops as we headed north – out of Kakadu, across Arnhem Land and up the Cobourg Peninsula to the Cobourg Coastal Camp operated by Venture North (our touring guides). The Camp is more of a Glamp, set on a 100-foot cliff overlooking Port Essington (4 times the size of Sydney Harbour). After a brief tour of the Camp and being shown to our tents, it was time for a quick cold shower and a Happy Hour with champers and nibbles at the ‘patio’ on the edge of the cliff.  The sun was setting and it was a most wonderful experience.  The tide was low and a big 4-metre croc was basking in the shallows almost at our feet. We saw several 2.5-metre sharks cruising by. Also, some big rays seemingly flying along with undulating wings and the odd turtle or two.  It was like being on another planet or in another time – but that is what we paid our money for and it was worth it.  The food was excellent for every meal and by the time we rolled into bed, I think we were all completely sated with the adventures of the day and looking to more in the morning.

Day 28 – Wednesday

Our rooms are tents, but a bit more elaborate than the usual cub-scout ones. They are set up permanently on raised hard-floor platforms, each with two single beds and a minimum of furniture.  (As a result of our feedback, the managers were out buying more furniture and a few minor accoutrements the following week.)

The toilets and showers (hot and cold, but we only needed cold!) were a short walk away and had wonderful views of the bush.  Great birdwatching locations. All very private, but with the roof and one side (above a metre or so) open to the sky and bush.  All equipped with frogs, some with toads, and at least one with a snake.  Plenty enough mozzies to go around, and unfortunately, most seemed to prefer to dine on Heather and she has been suffering ever since. The toilets were all self-composting, but to reach the throne, you had to ascend three steps to the elevated dais – but at least the climb improved the view across the woodland and facilitated the birding.

After breakfast, we boarded the boat (wet landings both ends) and set out for Victoria Settlement.  On the way, we stopped a couple of times to look at some shorebirds, including a couple we had not seen before (one of which is quite endangered) and encountered a pod of dolphins that enjoyed surfacing right next to the boat on numerous occasions before becoming bored with their human spectators.

Victoria Settlement is the area where a British ‘colony’ was established for 11 years in the mid-1800s. It failed (like the other two they set up nearby) but we did a 3.5km walk in extreme heat to look at what was left of the ruins.  It was all very interesting, but not so unlike things we have seen elsewhere and the heat and exertion was sapping – I think I drank at least 5 litres that day, not all of it beer.  Back in the boat, we headed back to camp, but spent an hour or so ‘fishing’ for our dinner that night.  We trolled along and Peta was given the rod and caught several barracuda that were released (they don’t eat them) and one rock cod that became dinner, mainly for Heather and me because neither the other Heather, nor Peta eat seafood. Incidentally, there was a third Heather at camp - she was the mother of the owners.  She and Ross, her husband, were up there helping out for a couple of months so there were actually three Heathers at dinner each night.  She was fine – really nice – but Ross was a bit overpowering at times.

After lunch, the afternoon was free and I spent most of it wandering around looking at birds. Heather was really unwell after the morning’s exertion (and the previous day’s mountaineering) so spent most of the afternoon asleep.  At least that meant she was feeling much better the next day.

Day 29 – Thursday

Another interesting day!  We left camp about 8am and headed north to the northernmost point in the NT – Smith Point (via the pig trap, unfortunately empty, but we rebaited it with kitchen scraps).  We stopped numerous times en route, this time staying quite close to the coast and noting the different nature of both the landscape and the vegetation.  We called in at a few places to look for mud crabs and Alex was very proud of himself for catching a really big one. He broke his crab spear at the first place we stopped, but gaffa-taped it together and caught the crab with a seriously incapacitated spear at our next stop.  We also collected quite a lot of cockles in the shallows and our booty was augmented with some huge oysters that had been collected by Heather, the camp mother.  That was mainly (my) Heather’s and my Happy Hour food that evening – Ross scoffed some of it, but there were plenty of other delicacies to choose from anyway.  (I think I said that Peta and her Mum don’t eat seafood.)

We saw a few new shorebirds and did some beach-combing at several spots and eventually stopped for lunch just shy of Smith Point.  The coastal country was quite different from what we had previously been driving through so we had new trees and plants to discover as well as unusual shells on the beach and a quite different environment to explore.

We went on to Smith Point and spent some time there learning a bit of local history and looking at (and photographing) different flowers and unusual rocks. We went on to the Ranger Station where the Ranger’s wife offered a ‘Buying Opportunity’ of some of her jewellery, craft and photographs. Heather indulged, but I went looking for birds at the nearby billabong – with very limited success.

We called in at a couple more quite beautiful billabongs on the way back to camp, always aware that there could well be crocodiles lurking mere metres from our feet.  The water is crystal-clear and often quite shallow, making it a bit harder for a croc to creep up on you – but they are sneaky critters – huge animals that ambush their prey by stealth.  We have watched them with only their eyes above water, sometimes not even that, slinking through the water ever so slowly creeping up on a wallaby or a fish – and Ross tossed a couple of slices of bacon onto the beach 20-30 metres from where a big croc was lurking (we spent a lot of time on the ‘patio’ watching him - the croc rather than Ross) and he simply exploded out of the water and rocketed up the beach to eat it.  It was sooooo scary – nobody would stand a chance against the speed and power of this most ferocious animal if he decided that you were his next meal.  Still, plenty of people go swimming or stand in the water to fish so they must know something we don’t – but I won’t tempt fate anyway.

Back at camp, I went birding for a while before Happy Hour and a scrumptious dinner, but we were all tired and crashed early.

Day 30 – Friday

I awoke pretty miserable with a cold.  I had a sore throat the previous day, but sitting in the enclosed car all day with Sean hacking and sneezing all week, it was probably inevitable.  I was determined not to let it spoil anything, but by early afternoon, I would have been quite happy napping the rest of the day. It was mainly a day of driving the 500-odd kilometres back to Darwin, but we stopped to enjoy a few things along the way.

On the way up, we had seen a bus bogged on the side of the road, laying half on its side, it was bogged so deeply.  It was one operated by an up-market touring company that seemingly employs rather careless drivers. They had bogged one of their buses about a week earlier and it took several days to dig it out.  Of course, they also had to ferry their customers out a few hundred kilometres back the way they came instead of them flying out from the resort they were heading for.  The very next day, the driver bogged a second bus in exactly the same place and it took a while to get the passengers out because the bus was leaning over so far, they couldn’t get the door open.  They ended up leaving the bus there and used two more buses, one to take the clients to where the bus was bogged where they had to walk past the bog and onto another bus to take them onto their destination.  We bumped into one of their drivers more than a week later when we were both fuelling our vehicles and he said they had only recovered the bogged bus the previous day – a very costly couple of mistakes and a serious dent in their reputation.  At least it gave us a talking point and a few photos to memorialise the escapade.

We stopped at the Murganella low-level river crossing for morning tea and Alex went fishing – maybe a bit risky in our view, but he did catch a couple of barra although too small to keep so they were released, possibly only to be eaten by the next passing crocodile. We had to stop again at Cahill’s Crossing and had lunch there while we waited for the tide to recede enough for us to cross.  We watched a big croc lurking near the floodway and saw several fishermen and women – but they caught nothing while we were there (nor did the croc).  A few rather foolhardy punters crossed with the tide at close to 700mm, but one was nearly washed sideways by the current so we wisely waited until it dropped to just under 500mm.

Back in Kakadu, we went to Ubirr where there were a lot of aboriginal rock paintings.  It was quite a steep climb to the top of the hill for the enthusiasts who wanted to see all of them, but with me suffering shortness of breath with the cold and Heather a bit puffed too, we saw what we saw and wimped out on the steepest section – and let the others go to the final level (which by report was little different from what we had seen anyway).

We stopped for fuel at Jabiru and saw some penned crocs and buffalo and it was very sad to see.  These magnificent wild animals were confined for life in quite small areas and after seeing their cousins in the wild only days before, it was quite depressing.  There were plenty of cute little agile wallabies hopping around though so that was more encouraging.

We finally made it back to Darwin and the caravan about 7.30 and we were both a bit worse for wear.  Heather’s was also developing a cold and we both had mozzy bites (Heather had heaps and hives as well) so we were quite glad to be ‘home’ again. We ate dinner from a can, had a cold shower and watched the final episode of Vera - and crashed.

It had been a WONDERFUL trip, the experience of a lifetime, a fabulous adventure in the remotest of Aussie wilderness – but it was hot, sticky and exhausting, on the go for long hours each day, and with our minor health issues emerging, probably long enough for us.  We had had a great time, but it was really good to be back home.