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writing-prompt-s · 4 years ago

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Hey there! First time anon asker, long time follower. I appreciate all the work you do for this blog. Just want to keep the conversation going about the Edison quote you retweeted, on "giving up" versus "knowing when to stop." Though Edison sucks as some comments pointed out, I happen to agree with the quote to an extent. I'm curious to know more about your experience. First, some background for my opinion: I work as a student tutor for fellow college students. One of the biggest things we learn as tutors is how to encourage students NOT to give up when they face a challenge. Lots of people, especially first-gen college students, give up when they're struggling in class because they assume they're "not smart enough" or something along those lines, when research and my personal experience show that that's not true. They are able to change their school habits and seek out help, but only if they already have a mindset where they believe they can do it. Those who don't believe in themselves are less likely to seek help and thus, more likely to fail. Students might also drop out of college or get bad grades because of things outside of their control, like losing their job or other difficulties that make it hard for them to continue at college. This is also an issue because some (not all) colleges have programs to help students during difficult times, but many students don't even try, they just drop out. I have benefitted from some of these programs personally, so even though they can't cure everything, these programs should be considered when a student is struggling. And sometimes, dropping out of college IS the best decision for a person, whether they intend to return later or go a different path. It's just that for many students, they don't have to give up on their education/career goals because of the hardships they're currently trying to work through, but they believe that there's nothing else they can do. The solution may be out there, but they "give up" because they didn't look for it. As a tutor, that's why phrases like "don't give up!" are so important for the people I work with. Not because college is for everyone or that people should sacrifice their well-being for a degree, but because students (again especially first generation college students, students of color, and low income students) have such low confidence in themselves and their ability to learn and grow through obstacles. The Edison quote wasn't about college, but I'm using my experience as a college student and tutor as a more concrete example of why the Edison quote could be useful. College student or not, I think having a "don't give up" attitude can get you through some hard times. So all of this is to preface my question: in your opinion, how can we know the difference between a healthy, "I will do everything I can to meet my goals" situation and an unhealthy, "I will sacrifice everything" situation? Sorry for this lengthy ask btw, if you don't want to respond I completely understand. Just hoping to hear your insight to the topic more. Thanks for this blog and for sharing your thoughts! -S

Hey S!

Read “The Dip” by Seth Godin. It counts about 80 pages but reads like 30. I highly recommend reading it and using the ideas in guiding your students. When you read it, it’s mostly common sense with a bit of oh damn, nice! But sometimes common sense needs to be conceptualized, made concrete, or put into context, and this little book does just that.

The main idea is to know if you should quit or persevere during ‘a dip’ by forecasting the probability of success and take costs/rewards into account.

However, this might not be everyone’s best skill, so some people might need practice or guidance. As Ray Dalio points out in his book ‘Principles’, everyone is wired differently. Just as our bodies come in different shapes and sizes, so do the compositions of our brains. Some people might have weak bones or naturally have lots of muscle mass. Others might regulate emotions well, or are weak at visualizing the future. (By the way, neuroscience tells us we can shape and improve our brains!)

The different compositions of our brains also affects communication between people. Everyone encodes and decodes information differently, and then also gets filtered through one’s own life experiences. So advice such as ‘first seek to understand, then to be understood’ is paramount before encouraging people to ‘not give up.’ If the other person doesn’t feel that you completely understand their situation, saying that actually might work counter-productive!

In my opinion, in most cases 'don’t give up!’ is a good motto for college students. You know what to expect from college. If you do x you will get x. If you stick through the dip (time spend getting good grades), you will get the reward (degree). However, as you point out, some students might face additional stress outside of college, or society might already have put them at a disadvantage. It might just become too much. You helping and encouraging students who are at a disadvantage is incredibly helpful. As humans, we are naturally wired to be interdependent. We cannot do everything by ourselves, nor should we want to. We thrive on meaningful relationships and social connections.

So where is the line between healthy and unhealthy? That’s actually a very tough question. Most people tend to think of life as a journey, always trying to get somewhere, trying to achieve something. It would mean telling people how to live their life and I have no clue. Of course, if in trying to get to your goal your body shows signs of it being unhealthy, stop or take a break. Stress is good, but not to the point where you break down. Self-management is key. Overall I would say it’s healthy if your values align with the process to achieve the goal, the goal, and the consequences of achieving it. But then again, always be realistic. Quitting frees up time, energy and other resources that can be spend on achieving a different, perhaps more rewarding/meaningful/attainable goal.

An attempt at a more concrete answer would be:

It’s impossible to generalize what is healthy and what is unhealthy as everyone has a different idea of what that is and is living their own complex life. Therefore, on a case-by-case basis, people should be taught to take a step back sometimes, contemplate what they are doing, analyse it, be open-minded, seek help from (qualified) people and ask for feedback and advice, and then make up their minds themselves whether what they are doing is healthy or not.

As @zeadtalost said in the comments: “Man’s gotta know his limitations”. But then I would like to add to it that ‘man’ should not be fool enough never to test what they believe to be their limitations. Because what you say is true. Often limitations are in the mind, and overcoming them is what will make people more confident and capable! So please keep doing what you are doing. I doubt you find this a concrete answer, but I am pretty sure the book by Seth Godin will help you lots! Also, by the length of your ask I can tell you are very dedicated and a compassionate tutor, and it’s your caring attitude that will give your students the best chance of succeeding!

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strawberrysoup · 4 years ago

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Let’s Review || Chapter 21

Peter Parker knew that his big sister would do anything for him to be safe and happy. She’d given up everything for him twice over already and would do it again in a heartbeat. And that’s why, when the criminal mastermind Tony Stark started inextricably following him around, he didn’t say a word. Because he knew without a doubt Penny would do whatever she had to if it meant keeping Peter safe. He had to protect her, just like she always protected him. He never considered what would happen if Stark decided both Parker siblings were worth taking. Never considered who else in Stark’s inner circle would agree. He just wanted to protect her and yet somehow, they both ended up with needles in their necks.

relationship: Steve Rogers/Original Female Character/Bucky Barnes, background Peter Parker/Tony Stark rating: Explicit warnings: Dark Steve Rogers, Dark Bucky Barnes, Dark Tony Stark, Dark Avengers, kidnapping, non-consensual&dark sexual situations, underage Peter Parker, emotional and psychological abuse, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat more warnings: you know what? there’s really not anything. except like... this ones gonna hurt 🤙🤙 good luck

read this: fuck guys this chapter was draining and insane, please reblog and comment if you liked it. pleeeease.

The anxiety had been building for a week now, but as the final day of Penny’s stay in the tower progressed Peter found himself practically vibrating with panic. He’d been trying, desperately, to make Tony change his mind—he’d spent an entire day not talking to the man, had screamed and raged against him, he’d cried and begged, offered anything in exchange for Penny to stay. The older man had held his ground remarkably, gently admonishing him for all of his misbehavior and brattiness and explaining, every time, that it was what was best for Penny.

In all fairness, Peter realized about half way through the week there was no hope for convincing Tony, but he had to keep up the behavior lest he rouse suspicion. Thankfully it wasn’t exactly hard to be depressed and angry and petty, not when Tony was endangering his sister.

The garbled piece of technology in his pocket felt heavier than ever, in his head the iridium electrodes were ten thousand degrees. Peter didn’t want to use it—kind of. He didn’t want to make Tony sad or angry, but he kind of did? What he knew he wanted was for Penny to escape, with or without him. Any disappointment or anger would be worth it, he’d revel in it just a bit, and Penny would be safe.

“Come here baby.”

His feet moved before he even thought of it, trailing over to where Tony was standing at the bar with a finger of scotch in a tumbler. They were getting ready to head down to the soldier’s floor, freshly showered after a day in the lab and just waiting for it to be time. Peter didn’t understand why they couldn’t just go early, why did they have to wait all day anyway? He could’ve been with Penny hours ago, he could’ve helped her escape hours ago. The clock was ticking and his nerves were rising.

“You are freaking out,” Tony told him pointedly as he drew Peter into his arms once he was close enough, tucking the boy against his chest, “I can feel your brain going nuts. What do you need baby?”

“Penny.” It wasn’t a belligerent or angry response, just short and desperate.

Tony sighed heavily, weight settling on his shoulders at the teenager’s words. He’d been conflicted for the last week, ever since Steve told him the ‘plan’. The plan to take Penny a thousand miles away and tuck her away inside of a cabin until they could condition her to behave. He understood the method to the madness—he’d considered spiriting them away before too. But the keyword was them. He had considered taking them both off to some secluded cabin. It was the same sensation Tony had gotten when he decided he would steal Penny away along with Peter; they were supposed to be together.

But that wasn’t to say he didn’t see the necessity.

Tony was fully aware that Penny was not adapting the same way his boy was. Where Peter had fallen into tolerance and was moving towards acceptance and potentially even appreciation, Penny was still actively resisting most of the time. Steve revealed that she’d started to break after reaching her pain threshold, there had been small cracks in the surface and the soldiers were managing to pry their way through the gaps. Had it been Peter, they would’ve had him calm and docile and perfectly behaved by now—but Penny was a completely different animal.

It was slow going though, agonizingly slow. And her reluctance caused a correlating reluctance in Peter, who generally matched her opinions and emotions but at about a quarter of the level of passion. Not to say Peter wasn’t passionate about things, the kid was, but Tony still wondered if the teenager realized the gravity of what had happened the way Penny did.

For all of his intelligence, Peter was still young. His ability to think logically was great, but his immaturity hindered him; Penny had shielded him, a lot, from the realities of the world. The idea that he was with Tony for the rest of his life likely didn’t mean much, it was a concept but Peter didn’t have any way to conceptualize the future like that. His brain was perpetually stuck in the present, just like most kids his age.

Penny understood consequences. She understood harsh realities and disadvantages and unescapable struggle; she’d lived it for so long. Three jobs, no bed, no insurance, no degree, no— Tony had to stop himself. Penny understood suffering in a way she hadn’t allowed Peter to, had protected him from. Penny knew what forever meant and she knew it was crippling. Peter was in the early chapters, still in his exposition and living in the moment. His sister was at the end of her story, a tragic dénouement of everything she’d ever known.

Peter had retained his rose-colored glasses, whereas Penny’s were smashed when she was thirteen. Hard stop, no condolences for the loss of her childhood—they were obliterated when she could barely comprehend what life was and the difference between the pair was palpable.

If they kept the siblings together, Penny would never adapt beyond protecting Peter. She wouldn’t be able to see the future as an opportunity versus a loss, not while she felt like she had failed him. Seeing Tony touch him, talk to him, look at him was enough to make Penny fall into a pit of existential dread over her failure to protect her brother. The separation had to happen; him and Peter needed to develop away from the soldiers and Penny—there was no other viable solution.

The way Tony’s arm tightened around his back for just a moment, a quick reassuring squeeze, told Peter that despite the silence the man hadn’t changed his mind. He wouldn’t relent. He wouldn’t fucking fix it.

“Here, you know what? Let’s peek in,” Tony gestured towards the TV with the tumbler, tugging Peter around the bar to stand just behind the sofa, “JARVIS, how’s Penny and the Popsicles?”

“Ms. Parker has just changed clothes and is awaiting your arrival, sir,” the AI responded smoothly, “shall I pull up the camera feed?”

“Yeah, throw it on the TV,” Tony wrapped his arms around Peter and pulled him into his chest once again, resting his cheek against the side of his head while they focused on the screen, where Penny was walking into the living room.

She was wearing a long sleeved shirt that dusted her knuckles and leggings, her masses of hair pulled into a bobble on the top of her head. The camera was focused on the living room as a whole, angled to see the front of the couch and armchairs, Penny’s daybed just barely visible in the corner. Bucky was sitting on the armchair, phone in his flesh hand while Steve skirted the top corner of the screen, walking around the kitchen and dining room.

Peter clocked that something was amiss immediately. Penny was hugging herself around the waist, shoulders hunched towards her ears as she crossed the room. They were able to catch her profile as she came to a stop in front of Bucky and waited until she had his attention, a hint of the expression on her face something Peter recognized to be heart wrenching. When he put his phone down and sat up slightly, looking almost concerned, Penny immediately tucked herself into his lap—of her own volition. Bucky was visibly in disbelief, arms snapping up to help settle her, tucking her close when she rolled even further onto her hip and pressed her chest against his. She went so far as to press her face against the slope of his neck, arms tucking around the back of his neck and shoulders tightly.

Bucky had followed all of her movements valiantly, helping her adjust and tugging her knees to rest between his thigh and the arm rest. Steve even crept further into the corner of the screen, looking at Bucky with raised eyebrows and signing something with one hand while absently holding up a pitcher with the other.

There was something crawling under Peter’s skin; he could feel it slithering over his muscle tissue and insinuating itself into his being. A sharp tremble ran down his back and he pulled away from Tony, pretending to turn to wipe away tears when instead he was trying to get a handle on his shaking. He couldn’t identify it, didn’t know what was going on, it felt like his blood was bubbling in his veins and he tamped down the shiver fiercely before Tony could tug him back into his chest.

“See baby, Penny’s fine, she’s just waiting for us,” he murmured gently against the side of Peter’s head—Tony didn’t know, didn’t recognize how sad she looked— “I know this is going to be hard. It’s gonna be hard for all of us, but Penny won’t be gone long baby. They’ll be back before we know it.”

Penny would break before they knew it. Penny would break. Penny would shatter. Something viscous was festering in his chest, constricting his organs. His heart was pounding but blood was oozing rather than pumping through his veins, it felt thick and congested—he felt sick, he was going to puke but Tony was shuffling him towards the elevator already. Peter swallowed hard, allowing himself to be ushered inside while the man followed behind.

“Soldiers’ floor, J.”

“Of course, sir.”

Tony cursed before the elevator doors closed, sticking his arm out, “I forgot Penny’s present, wait here baby.”

And all of a sudden the blood was rushing through Peter’s veins. He didn’t even think—the moment Tony was out of sight he ripped the piece of tech from his pocket and opened the tiny pocket that allowed whatever little physical maintenance that was necessary for an AI enhanced elevator. He couldn’t have imagined such a pristine opportunity, hadn’t had any idea how he was going to execute his plan.

“Mr. Parker, I do not—”

“Sorry JARVIS,” he gasped, on the verge of a panic attack as he hastily connected the circuit board to the elevator system and, by proxy, JARVIS’ system.

Peter had just closed the panel before Tony returned and the teenager found himself gasping for breath, leaning against the railing in the elevator. Tony sighed upon seeing his distress, obviously believing it was a result of Penny’s impending departure—it wasn’t like JARVIS could explain otherwise, Peter glanced towards the red dot in the corner of the elevator, once again apologizing to the AI in his mind.

When the elevator stopped and the doors opened, he stepped into the foyer where the soldiers’ front door was located and waited, shaking, to see what happened when Tony stepped off. He let the man shuffle him along, listening for the sound of the elevator doors behind them. Tony didn’t seem to notice that it stayed in place, open, an anomaly for either of the tower residents’ personal elevators.

The front door opened and Penny burst through, immediately jumping up to wrap her arms around Peter’s shoulders to tug him into the biggest hug she was capable of. He could feel her shaking, Tony’s hand rested on the small of his back and the soldiers were standing inside the apartment, waiting to welcome them in. Peter reeled with scenarios, looking to the side at Tony’s face, his eyes. He let his eyes trail over him for just a few seconds before shifting.

He made eye contact with Steve for all of four seconds before sweeping Penny up and darting back to the still open elevator, “JARVIS! Down, now! Fast!”

He slid through the doors with Penny clutched to his chest just before the door closed and the elevator started to descend at the fastest rate that was safe for unaided, standing human transportation.

“PALTI CHAYIM WHAT DID YOU DO?!” She was screaming in Hebrew, words flying from her mouth so fast he couldn’t even keep up—something about stupid, why, what they’ll, safe—

“PENNY—Fuck! You have to run! Stop screaming, listen! When we get to the floor you run!” He shouted back, trying not to shake her too hard while they continued to descend uncomfortably fast, “I don’t know how long it’ll work!”

“Peter why did you do this?” Penny was sobbing into his chest while he struggled to get them both to their feet, “Palti Chayim, I—Fuck! Fuck—”

Her hands dug into his shirt roughly and she shoved him into the back corner of the elevator, falling against him just a moment later. Peter’s arm lashed around her waist when she almost fell while trying to turn, her back pressing him further into the corner and he realized the elevator was starting to slow. Penny’s hands gripped the railings to each side, trapping him in the corner. His eyes snapped to the blue dots over the doors and his heart seized in his chest—they were only on floor 35, for the elevator to have slowed so much they would’ve needed to be on the 20th floor minimum to stop on the 1st floor at the current rate of deceleration.

JARVIS was back in full control, carefully dropping their speed until it came to a complete stop on the 12th floor. Penny’s body locked up like she’d gone into rigor mortis when it started to ascend again, her breathing coming in frantic pants. It was going up at the usual clip and Peter realized that every second it took made his heart beat faster in his chest. He was light headed, dread setting in.

Tony had told him multiple times that anticipation was the real punishment sometimes, the overwhelming paranoia and fear and desolation. His thoughts immediately began to spiral and his knees weakened slightly.

“When it stops you stay in here,” Penny’s voice shook as she spoke.

“Wha—”

“Shut your mouth!” She screamed, once again defaulting to Hebrew, “Be quiet. Do as I say. Do. Not. Move.”

“Penina—”

“Stop.”

Peter swallowed down a sob, head dropping to rest on her shoulder. The passing of floors was marked by a soft tone and between the two of them, they were barely able to remain standing when the silence between beeps started to lengthen. Penny’s grip on the railing slipped, her hands sweaty from sheer panic, her knees just barely holding up the extra weight. His arm was still slung around her waist, but his hold was too slack to keep her up despite the strength with which he clenched her shirt in his fist.

“Stay.” Penny managed to choke the order out just seconds before the door opened, a panicked sound escaping her lips when she realized her legs weren’t moving the way she needed them to.

It just amped the anticipation, Penny’s brief but agonizing hesitation before she forced her limbs to react and lead her out of the elevator. He nearly gagged on a sob, watching as she put her hands up and out to her sides, just slightly. Penny was vibrating with fear, her fingers almost blurry from a distance.

“P-Please—” Peter couldn’t see them, they must’ve been standing to the side of the doors, in front of the second elevator, “it’s m-my fault.”

“No—!” He launched himself forward, only for his sister to turn faster than he thought she could move.

Penny had never laid a violent hand on him, but the way she shoved him back into the elevator bordered on it, “SHUT UP!”

He’d never noticed the way Penny’s voice cracked when she screamed before. It had always been there, he was aware in the back of his mind, but he’d never really noticed. It hurt in a special way, when the bottom seemed to fall out of her words until she could rally through the rasp. Penny had been smoking some combination of weed and cigarettes for almost as long as he could remember—had she been fourteen or fifteen? He was only eight, maybe nine at the time. Did her voice crack like that before?

His thoughts spiraled once again while Penny turned forward again, putting herself between his seated self and the three men’s towering forms, “I’m his guardian. His actions fall on me, not him. I should’ve stopped him, I shouldn’t—if I had stayed inside t-to wait, it wouldn’t have—”

“Babydoll,” Steve sighed, shifting to step closer but stopping short when a full body cringe racked her form and her hands lifted to cover her face, just for a second before she clasped them tightly in front of her chest, “Penny…”

“You—you can just… p-punish me, okay?” Her voice was shaking as badly as her body, hitching every few words and she shuddered violently for a moment before lowering herself onto her knees, “H-He’s just a k-kid, I should’ve—”

“Okay, precious, come here,” Tony scooped her up under her arms, bringing her back to her feet before tucking her into his chest, “I know that this is just what you do. It’s a compulsion, trying to take the blame like this? But we both know nothing you did could’ve stopped him. He grabbed you and ran before Steve could get to you, sweetheart.”

“N-No, I—”

“We had audio and video in the elevator the whole time, doll,” Steve cut her off gently, “JARVIS was translating to Tony’s phone. We know what you said, and we know what he said.”

A choked sob escaped Penny and her fingers dug violently into Tony’s old t-shirt, her nails scratching him through the fabric. Bucky immediately darted forward and snatched her out of Tony’s arms, spinning them around until Peter couldn’t see her around the bulk of his body. It had been preventative—if they got to her before she did damage, there didn’t have to be a punishment. He could see her legs kicking and the sound of her crying but not much else.

“Peter,” his attention snapped to Tony, who’d stepped directly in front of him, “we’re going to go inside, everyone is going to calm down, and we’re going to have a good night. Do you understand?”

His breath froze in his chest for just a moment, whooshing out when the man crouched to look him dead in the eye, “are you willing to calm down so that you can be with Penny this evening?”

It took him a half second longer than he intended to nod, murmuring a quiet response. He was rewarded by a small smile and Tony helping him up, the older man immediately wrapping an arm around his waist once he was on his feet.

There wouldn’t be any opportunity for escape, of course, whether Tony was physically holding him or not. He’d give the kid one thing: he never thought Peter would get so close. Never thought Peter could get so close. He wondered how long he’d been working on that particular piece of tech—something that overrode JARVIS’s response to his orders. It only worked in the one elevator and it was corrected within two minutes of the breach, but it was still incredibly impressive. Especially considering Tony had been very careful not to provide him with any parts or pieces that could facilitate a runaway attempt.

Inside the apartment, Bucky was still cradling Penny tightly to his chest but now in the same position that they’d seen on the security camera. Tony could feel Peter tremble against his side at the sight, his chest jumping with a suppressed sob. There were a pair of kittens worming their way around Bucky’s ankle, the little white one particularly loud in its’ efforts to be noticed.

“It gets upset when Penny’s upset,” Steve stated from behind, startling Peter for just a moment when he walked around the pair and towards the chair, “here you go, doll.”

The super soldier scooped the tiny cat into his hand and deposited it right against the exposed crook of Penny’s neck before swiping the orange one up as well, setting it on the arm of the couch a few feet away.

“That one doesn’t?” Tony questioned, guiding them over to the couch and pressing Peter sit before sitting next to him.

“It doesn’t like to be touched as much,” the blond answered, already walking towards the dining room again, “food should be up soon.”

Tony knew that Steve was doing his best to distance himself at the moment, lest he lose his temper on Peter. He was pissed, practically steaming in irritation and honestly Tony appreciated the lengths he was going to. The orange cat let out a squeaky meow from where it sat, looking hesitant to be on the same surface as other people. It very carefully hopped from the arm of the couch to a seat cushion, toeing the very edge before backing away nervously.

“Here, I’ll put you down,” Peter murmured quietly, reaching over and carefully picking the kitten up, relieved when it didn’t protest and sat it on the ground gently.

“Do you need a cat too, baby?” Tony nosed his temple gently before pressing a kiss there, watching Peter smile when the orange cat went up onto its back legs to knead its little paws against his ankle.

The teenager reached over and picked the kitten back up when it continued to meow and scratch at him, obviously looking for attention. As soon as it was on his lap it started to squirm, but only until his hands weren’t wrapped around it. The little thing was sniffing around him curiously, stumbling across his lap on unsteady paws.

A tone sounded near the front door, alerting them that the food had arrived. Steve was quick to respond but Penny didn’t even shift and Peter certainly didn’t look much inclined to move while the kitten was, adorably and painfully, clawing its way up the front of his shirt.

“How about we eat around the coffee table,” Steve suggested as he walked into the living room with two large, brown paper bags full of food, having evidently read Tony’s mind, “Tone, can you get everything out? I’ll go grab plates.”

Tony started absently digging through the bags and pulling out the styrofoam containers. He was definitely checking what was in everything and stacking it around the table depending on who’d be eating what, but his eyes were mostly locked on Peter. The kitten had made its way up to his shoulder and was furiously rubbing its face against his cheek, purring up a storm.

“It usually only lets Penny touch it,” Bucky’s voice rumbled from the armchair, his eyes also focused on Peter and the cat while his hands absently roved over Penny’s still form, “even then not for long.”

“Maybe it has discerning taste,” Tony reached out and tried to scratch it under the chin, only to jerk back when it lashed out with sharp little kitten claws, “exquisite tastes, I guess.”

“It’s cute but those claws are sharp as hell,” Steve returned with plates and silverware, two six packs balanced on top and a few bottles of soda tucked under his arm, “Bucky would be covered in scars if we didn’t heal.”

“I was trying to play with it, I didn’t think it would turn into a psycho killer and go for the jugular.”

“Says the psycho killer who regularly goes for the jugular,” Tony muttered under his breath, making Steve and Bucky both snort in amusement while Peter wondered if an actual ice cube going down his spine could make more goosebumps than that statement, “why not get it declawed?”

Steve and Bucky exchanged looks, both cautiously glancing towards where Penny’s face was tucked into the brunet’s neck, “it’s not—”

“Declawing a cat is cruel,” Penny’s voice was watery and angry, “they’ll be in pain for the rest of their lives. You want them to stop scratching but all it does is make them angry and mean and they’ll spend the rest of their lives hating you. Making your life as miserable as possible until you give up and either euthanize them or give them away. It’s what you get for ruining their fucking lives.”

#steve rogers x oc #bucky barnes x oc #steve rogers x oc x bucky barnes #dark!steve rogers #dark!bucky barnes #dark!tony stark #dark!fic #dead dove do not eat #let's review chapter 21 #let's review

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linastudyblrsblog · 4 years ago

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Burnout, unfortunately, is everywhere. If you haven’t experienced it personally, you probably know someone who has self-diagnosed.

Defined by the World Health Organization as a syndrome “conceptualized as resulted from chronic workplace stress,” it causes exhaustion, “feelings of negativism or cynicism,” and reduced efficacy. That’s a big umbrella, and the condition has become something of a catch-all for chronic, modern-day stress.

Here are 11 of our favorites to help you create your own escape plan:

1. Figure out which kind of burnout you have.

The Association for Psychological Science��found that burnout comes in three different types, and each one needs a different solution:

1. Overload: The frenetic employee who works toward success until exhaustion, is most closely related to emotional venting. These individuals might try to cope with their stress by complaining about the organizational hierarchy at work, feeling as though it imposes limits on their goals and ambitions. That coping strategy, unsurprisingly, seems to lead to a stress overload and a tendency to throw in the towel.

2. Lack of Development: Most closely associated with an avoidance coping strategy. These under-challenged workers tend to manage stress by distancing themselves from work, a strategy that leads to depersonalization and cynicism — a harbinger for burning out and packing up shop.

3. Neglect: Seems to stem from a coping strategy based on giving up in the face of stress. Even though these individuals want to achieve a certain goal, they lack the motivation to plow through barriers to get to it

2. Cut down and start saying “no.”

Every “yes” you say adds another thing on your plate and takes more energy away from you, and your creativity:

If you take on too many commitments, start saying ‘no’. If you have too many ideas, execute a few and put the rest in a folder labeled ‘backburner’. If you suffer from information overload, start blocking off downtime or focused worktime in your schedule (here are some tools that may help). Answer email at set times. Switch your phone off, or even leave it behind. The world won’t end. I promise.

3. Give up on getting motivated.

With real burnout mode, you’re too exhausted to stay positive. So don’t:

When you’re mired in negative emotions about work, resist the urge to try to stamp them out. Instead, get a little distance — step away from your desk, focus on your breath for a few seconds — and then just feel the negativity, without trying to banish it. Then take action alongside the emotion. Usually, the negative feelings will soon dissipate. Even if they don’t, you’ll be a step closer to a meaningful achievement.

4. Treat the disease, not the symptoms.

For real recovery and prevention to happen, you need to find the real, deeper issue behind why you’re burnt out:

Instead of overreacting to the blip, step back from it, see it as an incident instead of an indictment, and then examine it like Sherlock Holmes looking for clues.

For example, you could ask yourself: What happened before the slip? Did I encounter a specific trigger event such as a last-minute client request? Was there an unusual circumstance such as sickness? When did I first notice the reversion in my behavior? Is some part of this routine unsustainable and if so, how could I adjust it to make it more realistic?

5. Make downtime a daily ritual.

To help relieve pressure, schedule daily blocks of downtime to refuel your brain and well-being. It can be anything from meditation to a nap, a walk, or simply turning off the wifi for a while:

When it comes to scheduling, we will need to allocate blocks of time for deep thinking. Maybe you will carve out a 1-2 hour block on your calendar every day for taking a walk or grabbing a cup of coffee and just pondering some of those bigger things. I can even imagine a day when homes and apartments have a special switch that shuts down wi-fi and data access during dinner or at night – just to provide a temporary pause from the constant flow of status updates and other communications…

There is no better mental escape from our tech-charged world than the act of meditation. If only for 15 minutes, the ability to steer your mind away from constant stimulation is downright liberating. There are various kinds of meditation. Some forms require you to think about nothing and completely clear your mind. (This is quite hard, at least for me.) Other forms of meditation are about focusing on one specific thing – often your breath, or a mantra that you repeat in your head (or out loud) for 10-15 minutes…

If you can’t adopt meditation, you might also try clearing your mind the old fashioned way – by sleeping. The legendary energy expert and bestselling author Tony Schwartz takes a 20-minute nap every day. Even if it’s a few hours before he presents to a packed audience, he’ll take a short nap.

6. Stop being a perfectionist; start satisficing.

Trying to maximize every task and squeeze every drop of productivity out of your creative work is a recipe for exhaustion and procrastination. Set yourself boundaries for acceptable work and stick to them:

Consistently sacrificing your health, your well being, your relationships, and your sanity for the sake of living up to impossible standards will lead to some dangerous behaviors and, ironically, a great deal of procrastination. Instead of saying, “I’ll stay up until this is done,” say, “I’ll work until X time and then I’m stopping. I may end up needing to ask for an extension or complete less than perfect work. But that’s OK. I’m worth it.” Making sleep, exercise, and downtime a regular part of your life plays an essential role in a lasting, productive creative career.

7. Track your progress every day.

Keeping track allows you to see exactly how much is on your plate, not only day-to-day, but consistently over time:

Disappointing feedback can be painful at first – research shows that failure and losses can hurt twice as much as the pleasure of equivalent gains. But if you discover you’re off course, reliable feedback shows you by how much, and you then have the opportunity to take remedial action and to plot a new training regime or writing schedule. The temporary pain of negative feedback is nothing compared with the crushing experience of project failure. Better to discover that you’re behind and need to start writing an hour earlier each day, than to have your book contract rescinded further down the line because you’ve failed to deliver.

8. Change location often.

Entrepreneurs or freelancers can be especially prone to burnout. Joel Runyon plays “workstation popcorn,” in which he groups tasks by location and then switches, in order to keep work manageable, provide himself frequent breaks, and spend his time efficiently:

You find yourself spending hours at your computer, dutifully “working” but getting very little done. You finish each day with the dreaded feeling that you’re behind, and that you’re only falling farther and farther behind. You’re buried below an ever-growing to-do list. There’s a feeling of dread that tomorrow is coming, and that it’s bringing with it even more work that you probably won’t be able to get ahead on.

List out everything you need to do today. Try to be as specific as you can…Next, break that list into three sections. Step 1: Go to cafe [or desk, a different table in your office, etc.] #1. Step 2: Start working on item group #1…Once you finish all the tasks in group #1, get up and move. Close your tabs, pack your bags, and physically move your butt to your next spot. If you can, walk or bike to your next stop…When you get to the next cafe [or spot], start on the next action item group, and repeat…

When you’ve completed everything on your to-do list for the day, you are done working. Relax, kick back, and live your life. Don’t take work home with you because that won’t help you get more done – it will just wear you out.

9. Don’t overload what downtime you do get.

Vacations themselves can cause, or worsen burnout, with high-stress situations, expectations, and sleep interruption. Use it to help in recovery from burnout instead:

Make a flexible itinerary a priority. [A] study from Radboud University found that effective vacations give you the choice and freedom to choose what you want to do. That means two things: Try to avoid structuring your vacation around an unbreakable schedule, and plan on going somewhere that has multiple options to pick from depending on the weather, your level of energy, or your budget.

10. Write yourself fan mail.

Seth Godin uses self-fan mail as a way to keep motivated instead of burning out on a project that seems far from completion:

I define non-clinical anxiety as, “experiencing failure in advance.” If you’re busy enacting a future that hasn’t happened yet, and amplifying the worst possible outcomes, it’s no wonder it’s difficult to ship that work. With disappointment, I note that our culture doesn’t have an easily found word for the opposite. For experiencing success in advance. For visualizing the best possible outcomes before they happen. Will your book get a great testimonial? Write it out. Will your talk move someone in the audience to change and to let you know about it? What did they say? Will this new product gain shelf space at the local market? Take a picture. Writing yourself fan mail in advance, and picturing the change you’ve announced you’re trying, to make is an effective way to push yourself to build something that actually generates that action.

11. Break projects into bite-sized pieces.

Taking a task on in one entire lump can be exhausting and provide little room for rest in between. Breaking up your projects into set chunks with their own deadlines provides a much healthier, and easier, way of completing a large project:

The default take on deadlines is typically to consider them to be cumbersome and stressful. Yet, from another perspective, a deadline can be viewed as a huge benefit to any project. Without the urgency of a hard deadline pushing a project to completion, it’s easy for you, your team, or your client to lose focus. We’ve all worked on agonizing projects where the timeline just bleeds on and on, merely because the flexibility is there…

It turns out that the manner in which a task is presented to someone – or the way in which you present it to your brain – has a significant impact on how motivated you will be to take action. A study led by researcher Sean McCrea at the University of Konstanz in Germany recently found that people are much more likely to tackle a concrete task than an abstract task… It seems to me like the difference between being handed a map versus following the step-by-step instructions of a GPS device. Not everyone can read a map, but everyone can follow the directions. By breaking your project down into smaller, well-described tasks, the way forward becomes clear and it’s easy to take action.

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melmoths · 4 years ago

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james and thomas can build a happy life together post-canon.

i'll go out on a limb and say that it's the only plausible scenario for them - and not simply because i feel like they deserve it, but because i feel like their narrative arcs lead to that conclusion no matter what.

of course the road to recovery would be long and hard, considering how deeply traumatised they both are, but once you accept that james mcgraw and james flint are not two separate people, that both james and thomas knew this, and that thomas is not a static character, no other future makes sense for them - whether they choose to retire and live a cosy domestic life or to dedicate themselves to another cause bigger than them both.

first things first: when silver claims that the man who reached savannah was not james flint, but james mcgraw he's lying. it's a lie! and not in the sense that it's something that he knows "deep down" even if he wishes things were different: it's a plain, old-fashioned lie, and he doesn't believe in it, not even for a second! he stands in front of madi, after having destroyed everything she's ever worked for and condemned her people (and many others) to centuries of oppression, and he lies.

'cause if he truly thought james was out of control and blinded by his rage over losing thomas, if he truly thought that getting thomas back would "kill" flint and his desire for revenge, if he truly thought thomas' death was the only reason he was fighting england, why bring james to savannah in the first place? why sell him into slavery? silver could have simply freed thomas (a man that he knew was innocent, by the way!) and let the two of them start a new life together wherever they wished - but he didn't, because he knew that james was truly fighting for the cause at that point, that he would have finished what he'd started because it was the right thing to do (and that thomas would have probably joined his efforts). killing him would have turned him into a martyr for the cause, so he had to remove him from the action entirely and spread the rumour he'd retired, and the fact that he chose for james the prison thomas was already in doesn't make it any better (eat my whole entire arsehole if you think otherwise).

i also want to stress the fact that not even james thinks james mcgraw and james flint are two different people. sure, james talks a lot about creating a persona that he later wants to get rid of, but he never truly believes he can separate himself from his own actions; that's why carrying their burden becomes harder and harder as time goes on. and on top of that, an element of performance is always present in the way he thinks about himself: he's a closeted gay man in XVIII century england! he's forced to live in a state where he has to lie constantly if he doesn't want to experience systemic violence.

but he's always fully aware of who and what he is (despite being ashamed of it, at least before meeting thomas). he knows he's got a tender, gentle side and a much more violent, flawed one: he knows he possesses the potential for great violence - maybe he's not aware of how far he can go, but he knows he's capable of causing great harm, although it doesn't necessarily bring him joy (in fact he tends to opt for violent solutions only when he feels trapped, but changes his mind when shown another way that might lead to his desired outcome). james flint is his persona in the sense that he's a version of james mcgraw in which his "good" side isn't allowed to exist - a hyperviolent façade that doesn't fully match his true self, and a façade he has to keep up almost everyday until he's done what he needs to do (i know people like to call him "unhinged" a lot, but if you exclude his mental breakdown after miranda's death he's always in control of his actions).

and again, i think thomas and miranda were aware of james' violent side. miranda might have seen it first-hand, but i do think thomas knew about it as well. their connection is so deep ("my truest love," hello?) and they seem to know each other so fully that i don't think a relationship between them could have worked otherwise. maybe thomas heard of the fight that broke out between james and the officer that insulted him and miranda, and that got him thinking; maybe he worked it out otherwise (although i do believe they eventually talked about the fight, and about hennessey's weirdly protective attitude); but the fact that he's the one to come up with the pardons, unbeknownst to james, is pretty telling. it shows that despite his privilege thomas is instinctually more capable of understanding why disenfranchised people might turn to violence (i.e. piracy). and if he's ready to forgive all the pirates, all the violent men, why would he not extend the same courtesy to the one he loves?

when he wrote "know no shame" he wasn't simply telling james not to be ashamed of being gay; he was telling him not to be ashamed of any part of himself, including the one that's more prone to violence, because at that point i don't think james truly believed himself worthy of being loved in his entirety, and thomas felt he had to fix that. and he succeeded - not immediately, of course, but by the time he'd come back from nassau james had fully internalised his message, based on the way he talks about his relationship with thomas to miranda and his wish to get away from london with the both of them (and ten years later, when james and miranda fight, he tells her that he does not feel ashamed of having loved thomas, but only of his inaction once thomas had been locked up in bedlam).

for this reason i don't believe that thomas would be "disgusted" by james' actions when they eventually reunite in savannah. i'm not saying he would enthusiastically condone all of them - he wouldn't go "hey, darling, good job on snapping your quartermaster's neck!", for example - but he would understand the motive behind them. he would understand why james - james who believed him dead, james who'd been stripped off the career he'd worked so hard for, james who had truly lost everything - felt like he had no other choice and put himself through so much pain. when james arrives in savannah i don't think thomas believes in reconciliation with england anymore.

i've noticed a weird tendency in this fandom to idealise thomas, to deny his growth in order to present him as flawless, as exclusively kind and "good" and stuck in time (often in opposition to post-london james). i hate it!

first of all, i feel like this angelic persona does not fit his characterisation at all. he is a good man, but when his father says he's impertinent and self-righteous, or when miranda talks about how he'd basically make people wish they were dead during his salons, i don't get the impression that thomas is a tall giant who simply smiles at everyone and can do no harm. he's an extremely opinionated man that wants to do the right thing even if that makes him unbearable to the people in his proximity because, as james says, he truly believes in what he's saying and, just like james, he's shown to change his mind when presented with new facts; he's open to new ideas, and that's why he comes up with the pardons.

second of all, we're talking about a man who's been betrayed by those closest to him, who's been imprisoned, tortured and dehumanised to the point that no one questioned his apparent suicide, who's been enslaved for ten years and subjected to yet more and more horrors. why would he not be a changed man, in the same way james is? why would his own ten years of hell not have stripped him of any trace of naivety he had left (the naivety inherent to his privilege and that had led him to believe that gradual change was the best solution), in the same way james was stripped of his after learning of peter's betrayal and seeing miranda killed in front of his eyes? just because this change happens offscreen for thomas it doesn't mean it doesn't happen at all.

if anything, i would say that the conceptual passage from gradualism to revolution might have happened sooner for thomas than for james. let's also remember that when silver asks james if he'd trade the war to have thomas back again, james says thomas wouldn't want him to. he believes him dead, but he knew him well enough to be certain that if he were alive he'd agree with him that no compromise can be made with a colonial empire.

i'm also convinced that thomas always knew (or at least very strongly suspected) james was captain flint. he was imprisoned and isolated from the rest of the world, sure, but plantations didn't exist in a bubble where no news about the outside world could reach them (and the show makes it clear so many times). thomas is an extremely intelligent man. i doubt he would have had a hard time connecting the murder of his father, the rise of captain flint, the events of charlestown, the existence of an army of people still willing to follow a pirate captain in battle despite the pardons and tom morgan coming to look for him in savannah (although i suppose he thought james had found out he was alive and was going to get him out). when james shows up looking very much like a pirate, thomas is clearly happy beyond belief - but he doesn't strike me as someone who had no idea james might come to him someday.

that's why i think that any scenario in which james and thomas drift apart is not only completely unjustified, but extremely cruel and partly motivated by a desire to justify silver despite all evidence of him being a massive piece of shit. and justifying silver is justifying the english empire and all the atrocities it has inflicted - and i can't stand for that. in truth, i can't stand for any scenario in which two people who loved each other so dearly and were so harshly punished for it and for wanting to better society, even if just a little bit, don't get some measure of peace and happiness in which to heal together.

on a side-note, all the people who claim thomas was exactly like woodes rogers and that james' war was not really revolutionary because he was only waging it for selfish reasons fail to understand that:

1) thomas was trying to challenge the status quo and to defend a group of disenfranchised people in an age where criminals were seen as less than human and death sentences were extremely common, while woodes rogers was trying to preserve the status quo and to get rich in the process without giving much of a shit about pirates at all;

2) every revolution or civil rights movement is at least partly motivated by selfish reasons: people don't want their loved ones and future generations to go through what they've gone through, and often seek some form of retribution in the process. and frankly, i don't care how "selfish" someone's motivations are as long as their actions lead to a more equal world and to better conditions for the people who inhabit it - and i'd rather fight alongside those who try to challenge hegemonic powers, whatever reasons they might have to do so, than be a passive observer of all the horrors that happen around me as long as they don't affect me directly.

anyway, love is real, james and thomas burn that plantation to the ground and silver sucks me good and hard through my jorts

#black sails #flinthamilton #i regret to inform you all that love wins in the end!! motherfuckers!!

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antibioware · 4 years ago

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My final thoughts on Mass Effect: Andromeda (a 3 years late review)

So I spent the past week and a half playing a game I paid 13€ for, one that I promised myself I wouldn't touch but that in the end I gave a solid try to anyway, because I was willing to give Andromeda the benefit of the doubt. Because I'm aware that sometimes I'm a bitch, and that the Mass Effect trilogy had its own problems too, but I still regard it as one of the best gaming experiences of my life.

It wasn't as bad as I had expected it would be, but that doesn't make it good. Above all else, Mass Effect: Andromeda is a game that could have been interesting, had the creators actually cared to make something out of it outside of just “Dragon Age Inquisition in the Mass Effect universe”.

I wanted to write a more coherent post about what I didn’t like about it, aside from just shitting all over it like I’ve been feeling like doing since the canonical bury your gays in the game slapped me in the face. So here it is, an overlong post about a 3 years old game.

Before getting into the main elements that I disliked, I wanna preface this post by saying that I enjoyed parts of the game. The main characters, while not as well characterized as they could have been (no Bioware character ever is), grew on me the more I played the game, and by the end were the main reason why I kept playing. Unlike DA:I, the writers did a really good job building up the found family trope in this game, and while it turns corny at times, it’s very heartwarming. I think many of the planetary settings in Heleus were stunning to look at, to the point that I didn’t even mind all that much having to drive from point A to point B.

I didn’t hate the game, and I’m speaking from the point of view of someone who enjoyed it, but not enough to simply accept its many flaws.

The problems with the gameplay itself

There are three main things that I don’t think work well and are up in your face since the first seconds of the game: the game interface, the fight mechanics, and the open world aspect of the game.

◦ The first impact I had on Andromeda, right from the first 2/3 hours of playing it, was that it was very cluttered and very, very confusing. I had just finished playing ME3 and I had issues understanding how to move without having a proper map onscreen, how to read throught the thousand tutorials for the 100 new, useless elements they added to the game that are either reused from ME1 or taken directly from DA:I. The game didn’t need a crafting system, especially not one DIVIDED IN TWO DIFFERENT SECTIONS, it didn’t need an inventory system, and especially it didn't need to have the sheer amount of sidequest it had.

◦ The fight mechanics + leveling up/classes system is a hot mess. I understand they wanted to try something new, and in part they did make the fighting feel more fluid, but not being able to rely on teammates for necessary stuff like overloads/specific powers that you need during fights severely impaired the strategic element of the game. Now it’s just a third person shooter with teammates dying left and right because you have 0 control on how they fight, aside from putting them in one place or another.

The fact that you can only use 3 powers at the time is a consequence of the confusing leveling up system. Because you can have an endless amount of powers you can give your character, they needed to find a way to make them not too overpowered. The problem is…. You had more powers to use in-game in ME1. It doesn’t work so well.

When the fighting mechanics in ME3, a game that came out in 2012, feel way fluider and more enjoyable than the ones from the game that came out in 2017, something is very wrong.

◦ Open world games are a challenge, because too many developers don’t understand that turning a game into an open world doesn’t make it good, it just makes it bigger and slower. It was a problem with Dragon Age Inquisition, and it’s a problem here with Andromeda - with the only good aspect being that at least Andromeda gives you a decent car to explore the planets.

ME1 had some level of open world-ness, and there was a valid reason why ME2 and ME3 got rid of the concept: the maps you’re given are a big, cluttered mess of nothing. You have several thousands sidequests, many of which incredibly similar to each other, and nothing fucking else. Sometimes you will accidentally stumble upon something interesting, and then return to a 6 hours drive into the nothingness that keeps repeating over and over again.

It got to the point I almost stumbled upon the endgame because I got exhausted of running around doing errands, and I tried continuing the main plot, only to realize I was almost done with it. That was it.

Empty self-referencing

This is the term I used to describe my girlfriend why the way the game made call backs to the previous games bothered me so much. Call backs aren’t new to the concept of the game (the Mass Effect trilogy literally lived on characters returning from previous games, referencing things that had previously happened, etc.), but because this game wanted to be a separate thing from the ME trilogy, it couldn’t use this sort of material. And that’s completely fine! The game wanted to be its own thing, I was happy about it at first, because the trilogy was over and done for. If Mass Effect was indeed gonna continue, it needed a fresh start.

The problem is, it also needed to remind players that it’s a Mass Effect game, the game from which Commander Shepard came.

So, how to solve this matter? Well, instead of referencing stuff that actually happened in the trilogy, it solves the referencing aspect by putting a bunch of relatives of characters from the trilogy in the game. You get Conrad Verner’s sister, Nyreen Kandros’s cousin, a lost illegitimate son of Zaeed Massani, a brief cameo of Garrus Vakarian’s dad, a krogan on New Tuchanka being from clan Urdnot, and so on. And it was funny the first time or so, maybe even the second, but at some point it just turned awkward, and I started asking myself, “is this it? Is this all that’s left of the trilogy, just a bunch of big name characters to remind the player you belong from the same universe?”. The brief way they referenced back to Shepard was also very awkward and felt... out of place, with the rest of the game.

A couple call backs I really liked were:

Liara being acknowledged for her work as a Prothean researcher and being in contant with Ryder Senior, without much reference being done to her time in Shepard’s crew. It was good, seeing her from an outsider perspective.

The fact that Avitus Rix, being a turian ex-Spectre, knew Saren and was in fact his disciple.

Both these elements are things that make sense and tie the game back to the trilogy beyond just going “hey, this x character is the relative of this other x character, isn’t it crazy!”

The plot, and the problem with binary choices

It’s easy to make fun or critique the game struggling to find its own plot after something as big as the ME trilogy was. But Bioware isn’t an indie developer, it’s a huge fucking company, and they could have done better.

While I liked the design of the Remnants architecture and enemies, putting a plot point revolving around an ancient, long lost alien civilization who was much more technologically advanced, sounds a lot like a bad repeat of the Protheans.

I liked the Angara conceptually, but I didn’t like their design all that much and I often found it hysterically funny that angara are supposed to be a deeply emotional race, when the animators left them stuck with those mono expressive faces and unemotional eyes.

And on top of all of this, the kett are boring villains. The exaltation progress is really just a bad repeat of how Reaper indoctrination worked, and the way they talk reminds me of the big bad templars from the Dragon Age universe. It’s literally nothing new, and because of it, it’s boring.

When I was playing the endgame, all I kept thinking was “this is it? this is all they came up with? for real?”. I liked the twins aspect of the endgame, but aside from that, it didn’t feel satisfying.

And now comes the reason why it didn’t feel satisfying: the game got rid of the Paragon/Renegade system from the trilogy, and because of that, they also got rid of the possibility of additional problem-solving solutions during big choices.

In Andromeda, almost every major quest has a binary choice attached to it: choose this or that. Burn the facility or save all the angara but leave the facility standing. Save the krogans or Raeka. Pick Sloane or Reyes. Keep Sarissa as the Pathfinder or not. Etc.

in the trilogy, complete, important binary choices were rare (choosing Ashley or Kaidan is probably the biggest one) and the consequences had long lasting effects. Not all of them did (saving or killing the rachni in ME1 and rewriting or destroying the geth in ME2 didn’t have so many long term consequences in ME3, for example), but a great deal meant big changes in the following games.

The issues with these choices in Andromeda? None of them matter. Characters will get angry at you for going against their will in a single dialogue line, and then never mention it again. The opinion on the Nexus won’t change if you expose Spender, Addison’s connections to the Exiles, or Nexus people targeting the angara. None of your companions will betray you or leave you for going against their will during their loyalty missions.

A Mass Effect game with choices that don’t influence the final result of the game feels like a joke, and while I know in many ways the trilogy also had a problem on this matter on some parts, dead characters stayed dead and betraying a friend’s trust meant losing them in the near future

The unavoidable part where I mention the issue with LGBT rep in this game because I’m a nonbinary lesbian and I can’t detach that aspect of myself from how I consume media

Endless gays and trans folks out there have already written this sort of matter so as my last point of critique, I’ll make it quick. Bioware has a long story with homophobia and transphobia in its character writing - this without mentioning the huge problems with racism in the character writing, too. Many gay/bi women in Bioware games are written by the same homophobic straight cis man with a lesbo fetish, AKA Lukas Kristjanson, and that alone gives a really good feeling on why such issues exist.

The original Mass Effect trilogy had very little gay romance options, out of the amount of romance options: as of ME3, there are two main gay romance options for fShepard (Liara and Traynor, without counting the mini-romances that were put in the previous games for pure fetish fuel) and two for mShepard (Kaidan and Cortez, both only added in the last game).

Andromeda wasn’t... the big breath of fresh air in the representation department they tried to pass it as. There are more romance options, but for once, there add to add another m/m romance option later on because the only gay romance available were with minor NPCs, and there’s an issue with the amount of content gay romances get compared to main het romances.

There’s a single trans NPC, and it's a random person you meet who tells you her deadname and the reason she transitioned right away. Ugh.

And now we come to the bury your gays mission that made me almost uninstall the game: the mission to find the turian Pathfinder with the help of his partner, the previously mentioned Avitus Rix, who also happens to be the first gay male turian character in the game (the first gay female turian being Nyreen Kandros, who dies btw). You invest time to trace back to the turian arc, while listening to Avitus talk about how important the turian Pathfinder is to him, you realize pretty fast they’re lovers, and when you find out the turian arc, it’s all to discover that the Pathfinder is already dead. Not a choice in the game that could accidentally kill him, like with Raeka, or an active choice you make to keep him in his role, like Sarissa. He’s already dead, and you’re left with Avitus alone and mourning.

The game is from 2017. This sort of bullshit is unacceptable, and I will keep screaming it until Bioware manages to pretend like they care about their LGBT fans.

To end this mess of a post - Mass Effect: Andromeda lasted me a total of 50 hours of game, and in a way, I’m glad I got it out of my system. It was a delusion, but at least now I can cross it off my list and go back to playing other stuff. I understand that this is a game many ended up liking, and I’m sad I can’t say I’m among them, and that I couldn’t even fully enjoy the game at times. Also I promised myself I wouldn’t mention this but goddamn the facial animations of the game were so ugly.

DESPITE THIS, I really loved the characters, and I very much enjoyed Vetra’s romance, which was the main reason why I bought the game.

#long fucking post ahead beware #mass effect #mass effect andromeda #me:a

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angeltriestoblog · 5 years ago

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I figured out what I want to do with my life! And made a vision board!

It came to me in a flash, really. One minute, I was watching a handpainted narration of the life and death of one of the greatest painters of all time, and next thing you know, I've abandoned it completely and started furiously typing away at my laptop about what I envisioned myself to be in five years' time. And I know I've had my fair share of false alarms in life: I thought I had what it takes to be a lawyer after seeing Legally Blonde for the first time while on my way to a school field trip, and seriously considered pursuing a career as a fashion blogger or MTV VJ because I was kind of fed up with school.

But this one just makes sense. Advising and assisting clients in producing content, collaterals, and campaigns according to their business objectives and based on collected data! It marries my love for writing, my knack for snooping around (the academic term is research!), and the specialty in technology and management my university ensures I'll have at the end of my four-year degree. i have yet to see how it’ll allow me to give back to society since that’s also a factor I want to consider in looking for a dream job but I’ll make it work. I found it hard to sleep that night, thanks to this nerdy, giddy kind of adrenaline rush I had. I broke down this big idea into smaller and smaller action steps until all I had left was a refined list of ideas and intentions, and a splitting headache.

I needed to make sure I was constantly reminded of their existence so all my choices and decisions would serve as a step closer to reaching all of them. So I caved in to the wishes of the "law of attraction" side of the Internet, and created my very own vision board! Simply put, this act of visualization is a powerful technique that can be used to manifest desires and reach goals. Our subconscious minds mainly recognize symbols and images: by merely looking at our vision boards everyday, subliminal messages are being sent to our brains, which will encourage them to work tirelessly to achieve the statements we are feeding to them. I can't find any explanation for this that's less abstract but since many people seem to swear on it and I have a lot of free time and printer ink, I figured why not, right?

It was convenient that I had this small corkboard from Daiso already stuck to one corner of my bedroom wall with several layers of double-sided tape. It used to be a year-long calendar of birthdays but I realized that I've never referred to it and often have to rely on either Facebook reminders or stock knowledge--there is no in between. All I had to do was to look at my list of goals, and compile photos that correspond to each of them, cut them up and arrange them in an aesthetically pleasing manner. You'll see below that I lacked the stereotypical luxury car and beachfront mansion with a walk-in closet and that's because I decided to focus on my goals for the next five years so it looks even a little bit more achievable.

Here's the finished product, along with explanations for each picture, to make this how-to more personal and to also hold myself accountable.

Make my girl Jenna Rink and everybody at Poise proud by writing for a magazine | I had listed a specific one at the time, and if you follow me on Twitter and Instagram, you already know what it is and how this endeavor turned out - but on this blog, I'll shroud it in a little cloud of mystery for now and talk about it more in a future post. I'm very happy producing content for this space of mine and have no intention of stopping any time soon. But at the same time I know that I'd be missing out if I didn't take the chance to be part of a community that leads me to like-minded individuals, allows me to grow even more in my craft, and "gives creators a space to speak their minds and push the limits of their artistry, without imposing any restrictions or expectations", as I stated in my application form.

Be active in three organizations next school year | (I had to blur one of them out because I'm not a member yet and I don't want to jinx it.) I know it's bold of me to assume that we'll be returning to school any time soon, but if we are ever lucky enough, I want to outdo myself when it comes to the orgs I'm a part of. I have been a good follower throughout my first two years of college but now I believe it's my time to try my hand at leading a group of people and being more involved in the conceptualization and execution of projects.

Go on a trip to Europe | Not even just a specific group of countries anymore (I used to be a France, Italy, Spain supremacist)--I mean the entire continent! (But then again, with its rich history and culture, picturesque tourist spots, diverse cuisines... even the sheer adrenaline rush that comes with being in a land completely different from the one you come from, how could anyone not want to go?

and 12. Get the job of my dreams | I actually nicked these photos from the website of a cooperative I want to work for once I graduate from college. I know that I can't plan out the rest of my career trajectory as early as now: things are bound to change at some point, but I hope that I stay in a field that combines creativity and business strategy to craft campaigns, create meaningful content, and market solutions to brands.

Expand my network | I acknowledge how knowing people who know people who know people can open windows of opportunities that I wouldn't have been able to have anywhere else. But I also look forward to building genuine connections with people from all sorts of industries. Talking to the same circle of friends can sometimes feel like you're trapped in an echo chamber: there is certainly much to learn from others' viewpoints.

Volunteer to teach kids | I don't think the written word could have changed my life as much as it did, had it not been for the presence of English teachers who believed in the power of the language to shape the minds of the youth. I guess this is just me trying to give back and help the next generation express their ideas and bring them to life by channeling my inner John Keating.

Maintain a clean workspace that is conducive to productivity | Especially during these days, I spend a solid 18 out of 24 hours sat at my desk, trying my best to make magic happen. It's very important that I keep it a constant and active source of inspiration, free from any distractions, and at the right level of comfort. Although it's not as minimalist as I hoped it would be and my table is about an inch too high for my liking, I'm still pretty satisfied!

Document memories consistently, be it through a physical or online journal | Speaking of clearing out my room, I recently found around 20 notebooks I had filled up over the years. Though maintaining them must have been such a hassle especially as I got older and reading through them was a distraction from completing the task at hand, I am thankful I painstakingly chronicled everything going on in my life and kept them in good condition. Seeing the goals I had set for myself all those years ago and how I achieved most of them without making a conscious effort has inspired me to do my older self a favor by putting in the work now so she can reap the rewards. (While I'm on this note, can anyone recommend a good app for journaling? I keep all my current entries in my Mac's Notes app because even though I am more of an analog person, I seemed to have lost the patience and persistence required to keep a physical journal. But at the same time, I'm scared of my laptop suddenly cr*shing and wiping out everything I had stored)

Stay focused on my work always | I didn't know how to show this without having to spell it out in words so I Photoshopped my face onto the head of a woman working in a cafe because those who study in coffee shops along Katip always look like they're getting stuff done.

Keep learning about the world even when I'm outside of the classroom | And this is not limited to frequenting the nearby museum, although that does sound like a great idea right now. This could also mean attending seminars, workshops, and talks, buying books and binge-watching documentaries or YouTube videos about a topic that I find interesting, engaging in discourse with someone (plus points if they have a different viewpoint!)

Write my own book | Before I even found out that humans were destined to pick a career and work until they died, I already knew that I wanted to spend my days as a writer. Specifically, I wanted to see my name on the cover of a book: By Angel Martinez. (Please refer to the 4:32 of this video and look at how far this dream actually goes back.) But once I realized that I wanted to enter the world of business, I thought I would have to give this up altogether. Thankfully, I now know that one's ability to get published is not reliant on their career--I mean, even beauty gurus get book deals these days. I'm not really sure what it's going to be about but I'd honestly be down for anything: even if it's just a compilation of my best entries on this blog.

13. Go all out when I take myself on self-care dates | I'm talking about picnics at the beach, with a basket full of fruits, a posh looking hat, and a good piece of classic literature! Or fancy dinners for one complete with as many glasses of red wine as I can down! People watching at Downtown Disneyland like my paternal grandmother in hand, with a plastic bag of souvenirs on one hand and a cream cheese pretzel on the other! (The possibilities are endless and I'm already mapping most of them out.)

14. Be financially stable enough to re-enact that one scene in Pretty Woman where Vivian Ward struts down the streets of Beverly Hills in a chic white dress and black hat, an endless number of shopping bags in tow | The part where I humiliate a sales lady who snubbed me the day before because she didn't think I could afford what she was selling by saying, "You work on commission, right? That's right. Big mistake, big, huge." is entirely optional.

I also included some two inspirational sayings that were originally laptop wallpapers from The Everygirl. I feel like they perfectly sum up the attitude I want to have as I forge my own path and accomplish everything I have set out for myself. If I was somehow able to convince you that this activity serves as the perfect springboard for all your dreams and aspirations, here are a couple of tips that could hopefully help you make yours!

Be ready for some intense introspection | Though it may look like a simple arts and crafts activity at the surface, making an effective vision board simply cannot be achieved if you're not willing to do some much needed reflection and watch it balloon into a full-on existential crisis. Identify which areas of your life are most important to you and how you would like to see them evolve over a period of time.

Specificity is key | The trick is to make your goals as concrete as possible, then translate them into visual elements. I know some people who wanted to get into particular universities, who have Photoshopped their names onto acceptance letters and pinned those to their corkboards. As stupid as that may sound in retrospect, I reckon it's an elaborate way of claiming something that's right within your reach.

Design it any way you want | Don't feel pressured to make it look like it's worthy to be on someone else's Pinterest because that's exactly how you lose sight of why you're doing it in the first place. The only person your final output has to resonate with is you.

Don't get discouraged | Although a vision board can attract positive energy and manifest your intentions to the universe, one thing it isn't capable of doing is granting your wishes in an instant. Don't be upset if what you have cut out and stuck on has yet to happen: I truly believe in the saying that the more you look for something, the more it seems to avoid you. Instead, continue to work hard and focus on the progress that you have already made.

Have you made a vision board of your own already? How has it turned out, and how many of the things you had put up have come true? I know you may be a complete stranger from the other side of the world but I'd be happy to hear from you anyway! Wishing you love and light always, especially during trying times such as this. Wash your hands, pray for our frontliners, and check your privilege!

#recs #personal #quarantingz #angeltriestoblog #vision board #goal setting

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dippedanddripped · 5 years ago

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While research can help us understand our generation’s new morality and its changed consumption habits, the impact that the Covid-19 crisis will have on how our future looks and feels remains the most unclear. While times of crisis are when clothes seem to matter least, the irony is that fashion has been making itself at home with the idea of apocalypse as an aesthetic for quite some time.

“Survivalism” isn’t a word one normally lumps in with others like “glamour” and “style,” but according to the strategist and writer Lucas Mascatello, the idea of braving a dangerous future is one that has been a central pillar to many trends for quite some time (and will continue to be). Here, he explores the myriad ideas of the apocalyptic aesthetic — from dystopian to utopian — in our past, present, and future.

What Is Survivalism?

“Survivalism is a mentality. More than the daily practice of preparing for some unknown disaster, war, famine, or disease, it’s a complete worldview unto itself. Survivalism is a kind of reasoning that invites paranoia in, hammering your senses for warning signs and cranking your adrenaline into hyper-vigilance. In nature, we see the armored hides of armadillos and the scales of fish as practical choices made by mother nature, tactical choices that create an aesthetic. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs introduced the concept of tiered values, saying that at their most base, people first satisfy physiological needs like food, water, and sleep. These needs are followed by safety needs (security and shelter), then belonging and love, followed by self esteem and, finally, self-actualization. As a luxury market, fashion largely considers this top tier need: How can I achieve my full potential and what does that look like? It’s a far cry from where we started, concerned with security and defense ideas that inform military design and created armored organisms like turtles, serpents, and dinosaurs.”

Thirst for Annihilation

“Thinking about the end of the world is a romantic idea. And similarly, believing that you are living in the end of times is a great way to add meaning to one’s life. Fashion trends such as chest-packs, camouflage, and tactical gear all gesture toward survivalism as an aesthetic, one that feels like a rebelling against the classic luxury object (even if it’s just as expensive). There’s a long menu of world ending possibilities, each inspiring designers, authors and artists to consider what it might look like if the ice caps melted, if an asteroid hit, if locusts wiped out the crops and we were forced to live off of dehydrated proteins. The thirst for annihilation has helped propagate an array of disaster-based looks.”

Cyberpunk and Tech Gibberish

“Dystopia has its own aesthetic, one reaching deep into fetish and counterculture, mashing sex against sexlessness, turning nerds into heroes, and flipping the paradigm. The incel-meets-BDSM style of The Matrix was the brainchild of costumer designer Kym Barrett. And now, violent models dressed in spandex at a Burning Man-style orgy is how we imagine dealing with a hostile future. In Hackers, costume designer Roger Burton created the most everlasting pop-cultural reality for cyberpunk, featuring club kids rollerblading through New York City. This idea of a post-apocalyptic youth culture would later be echoed in the work of Alexander McQueen, in particular his FW99 collection for Givenchy, a collection created for the eve of Y2K that explores the possibility of a post-human type of glamour. Even in the face of disaster, there’s optimism.”

Disaster Chic

“Trend forecasting is about predicting the future, or at least making a bet on outcomes. Yet style is almost always about being ahead of the curve. At a citizen level, many of us want to be first: stockpiling, prepping, or wearing a mask before everyone is else wearing one are different ways of signaling a truth to come that most are too stupid to recognize. Crises are always a surprise, and yet they always feel inevitable in a way that hangs over even the quiet times. And it’s not always as straightforward as Diesel’s famous 2007 ads Diesel-ifying global warming. Brands like Acronym, Maharishi, and Stone Island have made their bread and butter by sexing up survivalism as a type of high tech roleplay. The apocalypse is stylish because it communicates pessimism, irony, and indifference — like being a smoker or drinking hard because we’re all going to die anyway. Rather than the classic outsider stance of ‘Fuck the World,’ it’s infinitely cooler to say, ‘The World is Fucked.'”

The Dirty Future

“If you zoom ahead 20 years, it is very unlikely that we will all be Errolson Hugh-style cyber ninjas. For while the future is generally tied to the idea of progress — the notion that things develop over time in some cumulative type of way — the unfortunate thing is that beings tend to decay. Colossal world events create the kind of disruption that upends progress, causing fissures and deltas in place of what was once stable. Films such as Mad Max show a world filled with skin rash, poverty, and violence. Kanye West’s first Yeezy Season collections (despite their flaws) were an example of embracing this kind of back to roots, spartan future. Martin Margiela’s first runway show on a playground in Paris’ 20th arrondissement was arguably the first to propose this dirty future in the context of fashion, an idea that began as something romantic and would later spin out into heroin chic. The idea of fashion role-playing destitution is so seminal that it plays a central role in the most famous fashion parody of all time, Zoolander, whose creative director villain Mugatu is planning a homelessness-inspired runway show called ‘Derelicte.'”

Hypothetical Optimism

“Having spent considerable resources imagining the apocalyptic future in its various manifestations, generations of designers and thinkers have proposed speculative solutions that point toward an apocalyptic brand of optimism. Geniuses like Issey Miyake explored survivalism as a pure function through conceptual brands like Final Home and APOC — both dedicated to innovating adaptive solutions for the barren earth to come. Founded in 1992, by Lica and Masahiro Nakagawa, the label 20471120 epitomized Harajuku maximalism while showcasing a future aesthetic based in recycling old products, fighting industry waste, and setting up studios where fans could donate old clothes to be remade as one-of-a kind pieces. Yet even in their most earnest, these future-facing solutions were at best speculative, never made to scale and living firmly within the realm of academia.”

Conclusion: Predictions About Our Real Future

“In the face of our present global disaster, we find ourselves in a situation that feels as though we’ve skipped the bells and whistles of dystopia and gone straight into decline. Few would imagine that New York City would be enduring a shortage of medical supplies and pondering the creation of mass graves — and, for now, the future looks more like looted Wal-Marts and canned tuna than flying cars and floating cities. Today, we’ve become focused solely on what we know works, turning away from novel aesthetics and how things look and returning to our most basic instincts. The real future involves catering to our physiological needs, making masks from old dish towels, draping ourselves in plastic, and wearing latex gloves. These are the aesthetics of coping, one where many of us are considering our own survival for the first time. Rather than replace the expressive and aspirational elements of style, fashion will likely come to play dual roles — both as the expression of our fantasy self and as the reality of who we are today.”

#q1: highsnobiety's quarterly insights week #fashion blog

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lady-divine-writes · 5 years ago

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Moral Arguments (Chapter 2 of 2)

Summary: Crowley doesn't exactly take assignments anymore, but sometimes he does things for fun - like answering the call of a broken-hearted woman summoning a demon on St. Valentine's Day. But what Crowley thinks is going to be a simple hex-and-go turns into more emotionally charged than he bargained for.

(AO3)

Bzzz-bzzz

…

Bzzz-bzzz

…

“Holy Heaven!” Aziraphale exclaims, batting the air around his face. “The mosquitoes are out and about early this year. Odd considering it’s been so cool out lately …”

“Uh … I think that’s your phone.” Anathema gestures to the table with her half-drunk tumbler of whiskey.

“My wha---?” Aziraphale turns to his rotary phone sitting on his desk and waits for it to make a noise, but it doesn’t.

And the buzzing continues.

“Not that phone.” Anathema snorts. “Your cell phone.”

Aziraphale turns to the table, searching amid the half-empty cups of tea and the polished clean glasses of alcohol for the new cellular phone Crowley had given him. The accursed thing wasn’t so much a gift from his demon but a means to an end since Crowley isn’t fond of not being able to get in touch with his angel every blessed hour of the day - hilarious conceptually since they live together.

In protest, Aziraphale rarely answers it, requiring Crowley to race down to his shop anyway whenever he needs to speak with him.

The phone is apparently on vibrate, and Aziraphale neither knows how it got there nor how to get it to stop. Crowley must have done it when he entered his number in because there’s a rather obnoxiously smug photograph of Crowley on the screen with the words Anthony J Crowley underneath.

“Oh, yes. So it is. Thank you, my dear.” He picks it up and presses an icon marked call. “Hello?” he says, but it continues to buzz. He presses a green picture of a phone and repeats, “Hello?” but that does nothing either. After a third try and fail, Anathema, not quite drunk enough to deal with this hiccup in their plan, grabs the phone out of Aziraphale’s hand, swipes the phone icon with a terse, “There,” and shoves it back.

“Aziraphale! Aziraphale!” he hears Crowley whisper hoarsely.

Aziraphale gives Anathema a bitter eye as she goes back to her seat on the sofa. He squares his shoulders, puts the phone to his ear, clears his throat, and says, “Crowley?”

“Aziraphale! I found the place.”

“Excellent!”

“Put the call on speaker,” Anathema says. When Aziraphale shoots her a confused look, she grabs the phone again and does it herself, laying it down on the table for all of them to hear.

“Now what?” Crowley asks.

“What do you mean, now what?” Aziraphale says, leaning in unnecessarily to talk into the phone. “You’ve done this sort of thing before, I trust. Go … do whatever it is you do.”

“Yes, I recognize that, but there are complications.”

Three pairs of eyes meet across the table, equally bewildered. Anathema and Aziraphale look to Samantha for an explanation, but Samantha shrugs and mouths, ‘I don’t know.’

“What sort of complications?” Aziraphale asks.

“I don’t want you mad at me, do I? Revenge work is highly desired amongst demons because it tends to get bloody. Now, I don’t mind getting my hands dirty for a good cause, but if anything I’m about to do will get me banished to the sofa for the foreseeable future, I’d like to know beforehand.”

“I see. What would you normally do?”

“I could turn him inside out.”

“Ewww!” Samantha and Anathema say in unison, while Aziraphale looks like he’s about to lose his lunch.

“Anything else?”

“The usual, really. I can bury him up to his neck in sand, pour maple syrup over his head and let the ants have at him. I can turn him into a one legged rabbit and throw him to the wolves. I can give him a flesh-eating disease. I can poke out his eyes and make him eat them …”

“Enough, enough!” Samantha says with a hand to her reeling stomach. “A-are all his options so violent?”

“He is a demon, my dear.”

“I could castrate him,” Crowley offers.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale snaps. “If Samantha wasn’t amenable to the idea of eye eating, I don’t think …”

“No, no, wait, Mr. Fell,” she interrupts. “He may be onto something.”

“Are you quite serious?” Anathema gasps.

“I …” Samantha bounces the idea around in her head, looking as certain as she looks uncertain. “I---I think so.”

“That sounds like a yes to me,” Crowley says in a chipper tone. “Let’s get on with it!”

“Let’s back away from the cheerful dismemberment for a moment, shall we, and have a bit of a chat. Look …” Aziraphale leads Samantha back over to the sofa and sets her down, taking a seat beside her “… take a moment and think – if you were going to make him pay for his crimes without demon assistance, how would you do it?”

“Well, I wouldn’t want it to be fast,” she says. “I mean, I assume you can’t live once you’ve been turned inside out, right?”

“I can make that happen.”

“Shhh!” Aziraphale scolds the phone. “No,” he says, turning back to his guest, “he can’t live once he’s been turned inside out.”

“That’s what I thought.” Samantha’s eyes go distant, her thoughts drifting between Aziraphale’s bookshop and somewhere else. “The bigger person in me wants him to learn. To be sorry. To be better. But the petty person inside me wants him to suffer …”

On the other end of the line, Crowley cheers.

“… to live the way I’ve been living. In fear. With heartbreak.” Her lower lip wobbles, her voice cracks. “But mostly the things I want, I want for me. I want my sister back. We haven’t spoken since they ran off together. I want my sense of security back. Every time I change the locks on my house, he seems to find a way in anyway. A-and I don’t have the money to move. Not that it would matter. He’d probably find me.” She sniffles. “A-and I … I want my dog back.”

She drops her head to her hands, weeping openly. Anathema sits beside her, puts an arm around her shoulders and hugs her. Aziraphale takes her hand and gives it a squeeze.

“I know, my darling. I know.”

“Necromancy?” Crowley pipes in. “Is that what we’re talking about? Or just a straight resurrection? Because I can do either.”

“No, I don’t think that’s the way to go,” Aziraphale says, “but I do have a plan. Stand by, Crowley, my dear. I’m about to send you a textual message.”

Crowley sighs. “A text message, angel. A text message. For Satan’s sake.”

“Ah, yes. A text message,” Aziraphale repeats, throwing Anathema a conspiratorial wink. “Thank you.”

“Angel?”

“Yes, Crowley?”

Crowley clears his throat. “Could you … uh … take me off speaker?”

“Dearest, I wouldn’t know where on Earth to begin.”

“Oh … right. Well, before I go, I just wanted to say …” Crowley clears his throat again “I … I love you.”

Aziraphale smiles at the phone. “I love you, too, dear. Now hold on, and be careful.”

“I will.” The phone clicks, the call ended. Samantha peeks up and sighs.

“You guys seem so much in love,” she says. “How long have you been together?”

“Oh, my dear girl …” He hands her a tissue for her watery eyes, taking one for himself after “… it feels like an eternity.”

***

It had not been a good day for Richard.

Not a good day at all.

Being a sewage monkey, on the whole, was a crappy position (pun intended).

But it had its perks.

The salary for one. He couldn’t sneeze at 45,000 euros per year. That’s been more than sufficient to keep him comfortable and then some. What with the way the sewage works kept mucking up, contracts abounded, needing to be filled.

Ergo, the work never ended.

People gotta shit, right?

And they had to be full of it lately.

If things kept going the way they were, he’d be able to retire in roughly ten years.

And for another thing …

…

Nope, that’s it. The salary is the only perk.

But today, everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

There were three major clogs in London proper, and even though that meant o.t. padding his paycheck close to triple, he’d been working in a damp, congested sewer for nearly three days straight with little sleep and less of an appetite.

And boy, did he smell like it.

Today he found out the brat he’d been training is the nephew of his supervisor, poised to take his uncle’s job next year! He should have been offered that position hands down! He’s been working with this same company for over two decades, slogging through putrescence and unimaginable filth, and for what? Now he’s going to be answering to a kid half his age!

Nu-uh. No way. From day one, that kid steps onto site, Richard is going to make his life hell.

To top it off, just as his crew got the all clear to leave, he took a wrong turn, ended up on the M25, and got stuck in traffic for over three hours!

Three hours of traffic? At midnight!?

It seemed evil, like the whole world was out to get him.

Richard turns off the engine of his sedan and sighs. Yup. Today sucked, but at least he’s home now.

He can’t really see things getting worse.

He opens his driver’s side door and pours his numb ass out of his seat. He can’t feel most of the left side of his body, having shifted his weight over an hour into his commute when the right side said, “Fuck you!” and fell sleep. Now he’s limping like a castrated dog up his driveway to his pitch black house.

And that triggers another awful realization.

Valentine’s Day ended hours ago.

And he missed it.

Not just that, he outright forgot about it.

And from the fact that there’s not a single light on in his house, his girlfriend must be pissed.

Temperamental little bitch, just like her sister. She’ll nag the shit out of him about this the second he walks through the door.

Or she’s dressed in head to toe sweats and a hoodie, wrapped beneath the covers like a mummy, prepared to give him the cold shoulder till the foreseeable future.

He’s gotta think of something quick to save his sex life.

“Fuuuuuuuuck!” he bellows, kicking stiff-legged at gravel on the asphalt. “Fuck fuck fuck!” He spins around, searching for a solution that will hold her off till morning. Maybe some flowers from the neighbor’s yard? They looked morbidly brown and wilted when he left for work, but in the dark, would she know the differ---?

“Pardon me, but does your name happen to be Dick Bag?”

“What?” Richard sees the man who interrupted his thoughts emerge from the shadows, strolling over in all black from his jacket to his jeans. “Whaddya mean is my name Dick---?” He rolls his eyes. “Richard Sack. My name is Richard Sack.”

“Same difference.”

“What’s it to ya?”

“I have a message for you from an old friend. Samantha?”

‘Speak of the devil …’ he thinks. “And who are you then? Another process server?” Richard chuckles. “You can tell that bitch she can take me to court all she wants, but nuthin’s gonna happen. She can’t pin shit on me.”

“Ah, now, you see …” Crowley takes a few more steps forward “… you just said the wrong thing.”

“Why? You fuckin’ her?” Richard slams his car door, then goes about punching his palm with his fist, trying to come off intimidating. “I didn’t take her for the goth type.”

“Not the goth type.” Crowley cracks his neck. “More like the demon type.”

“Yeah, right. You shittin’ me or sumthin?”

“Not at all.” A wind blows around them and, suddenly, Crowley stops. His nose wrinkles. He makes a noise and takes a step back. “But it smells like you’ve been. Jesus Christmas! What the Heaven did you step in?”

“Gonna be the remains of your skinny dead ass in a second!” Richard lunges at Crowley, swinging away. Crowley steps to the side, snapping his fingers when he does. Richard flies past him and lands on the ground, struggling within the confines of his clothes, extreme alterations made to his body.

His legs have been fused together, forming one thick limb resembling a mermaid’s tail covered in denim scales. Likewise his arms have melded to his sides, creating an overall fish-like effect.

And he has no mouth. Not a seam of it remains. Just a patch of smooth skin where lips should be.

He squiggles and writhes, building up momentum until he starts rolling down the driveway. Crowley follows him leisurely, knowing where he’s headed. The wriggling mass of human flesh called Richard rolls and rolls until he hits the tire of his sedan and stops, wedged in underneath with his head sticking out, his face staring up. He moans and groans with eyes squeezed shut, begging with muffled words for God to help him.

Crowley waits to see if She will. When She does nothing, he takes that as the go ahead.

He taps Richard on the forehead with the toe of his snakeskin shoe to get his attention. Richard opens eyes bulging with fear. Crowley can feel his fear, taste it like a fine wine slipping down his throat. A rare vintage.

Like an angel’s kiss.

And it’s delicious.

For a moment, he has to remind himself that in this situation, he’s one of the good guys … so-called.

“You have to admit, you had this coming. Now …” He crouches low so the man can hear him clearly “… I’ve got some good news and some bad news – take it as you will. I’ve been on the phone with my people all night, trynna figure out what would be the best possible punishment for a slimy piece of work like you. I wanted to go with an old favorite – turn you inside out and let the buzzards pick you apart … alive …”

That shuts Richard right up.

“… but my lot, well, they’re a might more compassionate than me. So I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do. And you’re gonna go along with it, because the second you deviate from the plan, I won’t care what my side has to say - I’ll snap my fingers and turn you into a human meat suit. Understand?”

“Mmm!” Richard mutters, nodding emphatically, scream-murmuring to the tune of, “I understand! I understand!” if it were being yelled behind a thick wall of flesh.

Which it is.

“Good. Nice to see you being reasonable for a change.” Crowley raises his hand and Richard’s eye go wide. He starts mumbling, something that sounds vaguely like, “No! No! You promised!” but Crowley has stopped paying attention. This is where the fun begins. “Let’s go, Dicky! Time to do some penance!”

***

“So, you framed him for how many crimes?”

“About eighteen.” Crowley accepts a glass of wine from Aziraphale as his angel sits beside him on the sofa, cuddling in closer than usual. “All very old, and very, very cold, but within a reasonable enough timeframe to make them plausible.”

“But … but what about the real criminals?” Samantha asks, worried that, in solving her one problem, she’s unknowingly created problems for eighteen other people. “Will they ever be held accountable?”

“There’s no need,” Crowley says after a swig. “The crimes in question never happened.”

“Let’s just call them a work of forensic fiction,” Aziraphale offers, beaming at his clever demon.

“Mmm …” Crowley interrupts his next sip to say “… except for one. He’s been charged in connection to the disappearance of the Roanoke Colony. I threw that in there for fun. If anyone ever tries to double check it, it’ll disappear.”

“So all’s well that ends well,” Anathema says.

“I guess,” Samantha agrees halfheartedly, gazing sadly into her cup.

Crowley looks at his husband, his angel watching the young lady, their triumph of the night bittersweet, all things considered.

“Look,” Crowley says, “you were right. There was no reasoning with him. He wouldn’t hear it even if I tried. I could read his thoughts. They were very clear on the subject of you. He deserves what he got. Every damned inch of it.”

“I agree,” Samantha says. “I just wish things were different.”

“They will be,” Aziraphale promises. “Tonight was simply the first step.”

“Yeah, have hope and all that.” Crowley downs the remains of his wine and snakes an arm around Aziraphale’s shoulders. “And before you know it, things will turn around, just like that.”

Crowley snaps his fingers.

Aziraphale smiles.

Outside the bookshop, someone knocks on the door.

“Oh! Who in the Devil could that be this late at night?”

“’dunno,” Crowley says, picking up his miraculously filled glass of wine. “Someone should go check. I would but …” He raises his glass and hugs his husband.

“Would you be a dear and go answer that, Samantha?”

“Um …” Samantha eyes Aziraphale and Crowley suspiciously “… okay?” She gets up from her seat and slowly walks through the stacks to the front door. Before she gets there, the person outside knocks again, making her jump nearly a mile high.

But this time, the phantom visitor speaks.

“H-hello? Is … is anybody in there?”

Samantha’s brow furrows, her fear dissolving, replaced by confusion “Libby?” she says, opening the locks as quickly as she can.

“I --- I’m a little bit lost, I’m afraid,” the voice continues. “I don’t know where I am. I saw the lights on and I …”

Samantha unlocks the door and holds it open wide. A woman darkens the doorway, dressed in blue jeans and a plum hoodie, a brown leather bag slung over her shoulder, bulging as if it may contain most of what she owns.

A woman who looks remarkably like her.

“Sammy?” the woman whispers, peering at the figure in front of her like it may be a ghost, might disappear with her breath if she speaks too loudly. But as she realizes what she’s seeing is real, she throws her hands to her mouth and cries. “Sammy!”

“Libby! Oh my God! Libby!” Samantha grabs Libby by the elbow and pulls her inside. She throws her arms around her sister, hugging her with all her might as she cries into the shoulder of her sweater. “H-how did you know I would be here?”

“I---I didn’t!” Libby confesses. “I was on the bus to London and the driver let me off outside. He said … he said he didn’t know why he even came here, but he couldn’t take me any further.”

“What were you doing going to London at this hour?”

“I … I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know, but at the time, it seemed really important.”

“What do you think, angel?” Crowley asks, relaxing into the cushions in his favorite way possible – with a glass of wine in one hand and his angel under his arm, holding him tight. “Did I do good?”

“Fabulously,” Aziraphale says, glowing in the low light. “I don’t think I could have done better myself.”

“Uh … and the dog?” Anathema asks, speaking in hushed tones between the two. “You didn’t forget the dog, did you?”

“Oh, a dog will come,” Crowley says like a dark promise, grinning wickedly.

Aziraphale gasps. “Tell me you didn’t order up a Hellhound?”

Crowley snickers. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“Crowley!”

“Like you said, she did summon a demon. I’ve been all sorts of noble tonight. I get to do one demonic thing, don’t I?”

“Anthony!”

Crowley goes pale. In all their time together, Aziraphale has never voluntarily called Crowley Anthony. If he’s doing it now, he must mean business.

Crowley has no intention of finding out what that business entails.

“All right, all right,” he accedes, snapping his fingers twice. “Labrador it is.”

#good omens #ineffable husbands #crowley x aziraphale #aziraphale x crowley #frankie writes

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sainathsen-blog · 5 years ago

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How to Build an Awesome eCommerce App? A Complete Guide to Developing a Mobile Application

A Complete Guide to build an eCommerce App

Shopping Spree, Shopaholic, Fashionista, and what not! All thanks to Social Media Platforms for bringing in the fact that people love to shop; irrespective of the time; irrespective of the place. With the touch of digitization, the entire brick and mortar commerce arena revamped itself into eCommerce, wherein people started shopping online with the very ease provided by their devices, that too in the very comfort of their home.

eCommerce website, what once was a revolution has been commemorated by eCommerce mobile application. Indeed! eCommerce mobile apps with the slogan, “Shop on-the-go” are reigning over the smart users and their smartphones today. Amazon, the biggest player in the eCommerce game along with its counterfeits Alibaba, Myntra, Snapdeal, have become an integral part of people while malls and supermarkets are being lowered to “Selfie zones”, “window shopping fads”, and “Check-in” hangouts.

Who would want to spare the precious time of their weekends, standing in long queues at the billing counter, waiting for their turn while France is playing against Croatia! Well, with eCommerce mobile app, all they could do is shop and yet never miss the game. So, an eCommerce app is an awesome game-changer in so many different ways.

That’s eCommerce mobile app for you!

Who doesn’t have a dream of running a successful business with customers crowded all over the shop? eCommerce mobile app can be your dream come true business as you can target the customers from across the world and you don’t have to travel to market for your brand; that’s an added advantage.

Recently, there has been a great rise in the demand to build an eCommerce mobile app. Every single day, startups are getting into the eCommerce business and all they target is mobile-first, website-second!

Cutting it short, if you are an aspiring eCommerce businessman, you have landed on the right page. Let me tell you, developing an eCommerce mobile app is not a very big deal today, especially with the nascent of tools and technologies playing around.

And the future of eCommerce, AI and VR technologies are decked up to renovate the eCommerce ecosystem completely with unforeseen features like virtual changing room. Must say, even the future of eCommerce is way too bright and now is the time you should seriously consider building your very own eCommerce mobile app.

To start with, it is important that you define your eCommerce business goals with utmost clarity. What type of eCommerce mobile app do you want to launch your business – Android or iOS? What is your product going to be? Who is your target audience? Which brands are you targeting?

Once this is sorted, you can move to the next important step which involves defining the right features for your eCommerce Mobile Application.

Features are the reflection of your USP. That is going to make all the difference for your target audience, when it comes to an eCommerce app. Basically, they are but the deciding factors of whether your revenue grows or flows away to your competitors. Hence, it is important to plan the features for developing your eCommerce mobile app. Below is a list of features extracted from the successful eCommerce Mobile App and you cannot afford to miss any of these:

A Simpler Registration Process

As easy as this sounds, it can be an exhaustive one for your customers and they might simply choose to uninstall the app with pages and pages of information to fill in. Who’s got time anyways! Ensure an easy registration process. With everybody having a Social Media Account today, you can enable sign up and login with two clicks at maximum and your customer is on-board! Plus, an extra brownie point for learning their preferences through their digital age on their Social Media Accounts!

Supports Multiple Payment Options

Let’s say, you have a big fat customer who mostly shops online and visits your eCommerce mobile app to give it a try. After dumping his stuff into the cart, he realizes you do not have the payment option that he prefers. You just lost a big customer. And many more who prefers the payment option that your app does not offer.

To play safer and smarter as an eCommerce businessman, you have to open the doors to the most popular payment methods. Credit card, debit card, net banking, and eWallets being at the top, ensure that you subtly push your customers towards using your app’s in-built wallet.

Push Notifications

Your customers have their needs and want, you have the required supply to fulfill them but how to bridge this gap of communication? Push notification is the key!

Push Notification is one of the most important features that map the success of an e-commerce mobile app. They enhance the customer engagement as it keeps them informed about the referral, discounts, sales, promotions, and offers, to keep them coming back for more. This, in turn, provides you with the opportunity to cross-sell and up-sell for getting you better profits.

Social Media Integration

Don’t tell me that you do not want ALL the attention of your customers. You even want their social media time. And your demand is justified considering the fact that you are running a business.

Not only for one-tap login, Social Media integration will ensure that your eCommerce mobile app is right in front of your customers wherever they are; chatting on Facebook, Tweeting on Twitter, or pinning on Pinterest. This will also help them easily share your special discounts on their social media accounts. What better than word-of-mouth marketing and user-generated content! An eCommerce app that taps the power of social integration works – It’s as simple as that when it comes to an application of eCommerce.

Complete Synchronization

You have your eCommerce website and an eCommerce mobile app. You have come up with a very exciting feature that is sure to strike a chord with your targeted audience and take their buying experience to the next level. But you have to launch this feature before your competitor does. You want better time-to-market but with edits to be made in both the portals separately, time seems to have stopped. What would you do?

Speed up the process by getting our eCommerce mobile app synchronized with the website. Save plenty of time, beat the competition, and increase your sales.

Google Analytics

It’s just been a while since you launched your eCommerce business. You think you are faring well so far. But keeping your gut feeling aside, how do you gauge what is working for and against your business?

Ok, like every time, Google has the answer you want with Google analytics. Optimize the use of Google analytics to find out how your customers are really finding to be on your mobile app with the help of real-time data. Know which product of yours need a different packaging, what offers can make an appealing combo, and which demography is resonating well to your business, all this with Google analytics. Your application of eCommerce will definitely grow from strength to strength.

Review & Rating

Don’t shy away from the fear of getting bad reviews and poor product ratings. A wise businessman is the one who is open to both criticism and learning.

Empower your customers to review and rate your app and its features. The possibility is, the products that you are offering are nowhere in the wish list of your buyers and reviews will help you achieve this sense of realization. Again, after improvements do not delete the negative feedbacks, rather thank them and show what steps you have taken. This will make them feel important and who knows they will stick to your brand like forever!

Wishlist Button

It’s the end of the month. The salary is one week away and your customers don’t want to miss out on what they have recently found out. They want to buy it, not now but definitely after a week. Let wish list play its share.

Wishlist, at times, can be a savior to your sales. It helps your customers to save products they wish to buy later. Plus, you get an edge over knowing the preferences of your buyer and personalized offers and SOLD!

Easy Checkout

All the enthusiasm and energy of your customers is gone in making their choices and adding items to cart. Now’s the tough part – the payment!

To ensure that they do not abandon the cart, build your checkout process as easy as possible. Help them save their card and e-wallet details and take them faster through the payment gateways. As said earlier, your customers hate to wait in the billing queue, don’t let them wait with virtual billing system as well!

There are myriads of eCommerce mobile apps already in the market. You need to stand out from the crowd and these features will help you make a move. If you follow a customer-first approach by providing them the utmost ease to shop, you will easily be able to retain your customers. On the other hand, when your competitor has an amazing experience to offer in reference to features, your customers will be inclined to them.

In this situation, the smart way is to build an eCommerce mobile app with the right features and avoid any fluff that could possibly take away your customer engagement rate. Make them feel that you understand the issues they face while shopping with other mobile app and the solution. Give them the value of the time, energy, and money they spend using your mobile application. This is the only important key to win over your customers and has an upper hand over your competitors.

Things to Take Care of While Building an eCommerce Mobile App

Right from conceptualization of what USP of your eCommerce Mobile app is going to be to launch a Beta Version, there are many important aspects that are to be taken care of.

With time, experience, and analytical skills, I have collated a complete guide with elaborated information on the important aspects of app development.

If you are a first-timer, you might feel the hardship right from the beginning. You might even end up scraping the entire business idea. But do not drop yet. We are here to help.

The basics of any eCommerce mobile app remain the same. All you need to add is that pinch of your branding and the spark of your USP to make your business stand out and stay at the top in the Google search engine results. Some of the fundamentals that you should consider basic while building an eCommerce mobile app are:

· Easy navigation

· UI/UX with right features

· Visual appeal

· Brands integration if at all you are into multi-store eCommerce

· Inventory management

Here is an ideal step-by-step process for creating and launching an eCommerce Mobile app that you should follow in your trail to run a successful eCommerce business:

Keep in mind your eCommerce business goal even before you begin with the development process. Know what uniqueness you bring in or what issue you are going to solve for your customers with your eCommerce business. Do not go “all in” with the launch of your business. You need to know what works and what doesn’t. You need to know your real-time buyers. You need to know what gender you should target. You need to know a lot! Start small but concrete. Make expansion only when your business is ready. Get help from talents and app development experts to upgrade your business version. Take a look at this guide to outsource the best app developers.

In the urge to following the ABCs of your eCommerce business, do not forget the M for Marketing. You need to reach out to your potential customers to help them reach out to you.

Attract them with onboarding referrals, convert them with your USP, close your sales by keeping them engaged, and delight them with information about the products they need and your offer.

Ultimately, it all depends on the quality of development. Hire experts that are passionate about their work as much as you are about your dream eCommerce business. Retain them by providing them the perks and incentives that are best in the industry.

Trustable Ecommerce App Development Companies

Key Aspects for eCommerce App Development

Before proceeding any further, let me give you a detailed glimpse of the key aspects to focus on while developing an eCommerce mobile app:

Market Analysis and Buyer Persona:

The basis of an eCommerce mobile app development lies in determining the buyer persona for your business. Ask yourself, “ Who are you selling your products to?” Accordingly, carry out your research for your target audience. Analyze the behavior and patterns of your target audience. Know their digital age and their likes & dislikes. This will help you create your app as relatable as possible for them.

Know your Competitors:

Extract a list of your competitors. Create a separate list of what they are into and what makes them the obvious choice for the buyers. Do not duplicate their features or their business model, rather research well about the business model and make the maximum out of your analysis.

Choosing Technology:

Know the ins and outs of your business so as to decide on the technology to create your eCommerce mobile app. Keep an eye on the budget of development, know your inventory and select the CMS, database, framework, and most importantly the backend and frontend languages to code your app.

If you want a better time to market, go for the hybrid app, if you want sustainability, go for a native one. Similarly, you have to decide whether you want to launch an Android app, an iOS app or both at the same time, keeping in mind the device usage of your target audience for designing your application of eCommerce.

UI and UX Design:

Give your brand the voice it deserves by soothing color schemes, appealing visuals, and smooth transitions for your customers from one page to another. Create options for your logo and leverage it to the optimum. That is going to be your business’ identity for your target customers. Play with the subconscious mind of your customers by leveraging smart branding tactics for creating a lasting impression.

Cost of Developing an eCommerce mobile app:

Ultimately, it narrows down to whom you are investing and how much you are investing. Without a doubt, the budget is the front of the mind concern for the app development. To save you from this budget dilemmas, I have created some pointers for you to remember while going forward with app development:

· Features: Whether you want to launch your eCommerce app with MVP, or a mixed bag with MVP and advanced features, or a full-fledged eCommerce mobile app with advanced features.

· Android or iOS? The price tag of iOS is on the higher side, decide what device you want to be primary for your business. You can always scale your business later.

· The low maintenance of expensive backend development or the low budget high maintenance third-party APIs.

· A better time to market with hybrid app development or better sustainability with native app development? Make your choice wisely, you are in the business game for the long run.

Outsourcing the resources have a visible effect on your budget and so you need to be very careful hiring them.

Again, a number cannot be projected with respect to the react native app development as there are variables. However, to be as helpful as I can, I have put down an estimate on the basis of the trends I have witnessed considering the generic app development scenario.

· If we consider the most basic version of the app with only the MVP features and simple UI/UX design, the projected price can go to $60,000 just for development. However, there is very little support and maintenance required.

· If we consider a mixed bag of basic features including a few advanced features, the price an go up to $60,000 to $80,000.

· If we consider the app to be developed with advanced features, then the price can be as high as $80,000 to $120,000.

Outsource Developers for eCommerce Mobile App Development:

On the basis of your scope of work, you would want to outsource resources and skilled developers for building your eCommerce mobile app.

There are many different types of pricing models that you could choose from – time-based, scope based, fixed price and fixed time pricing model, or dedicated resource hiring.

Dedicated Resource-based Hiring

When opting for a dedicated resource based hiring, ensure that you know the scope of work and that you are not paying for an extra resource, when it comes to eCommerce apps.

To develop a basic version of your eCommerce mobile app, you will need –

· UI and UX designer

· 2 – 4Developers

· Quality Assurance Engineer

· Backend Developer

· Project Manager

To develop an advanced version of the eCommerce mobile app, you will need –

· Team Manager/Project Manager

· UI/UX designer

· 3 – 4developers for each platform

· Quality Assurance Engineer

· 2–3 backend developers

· Admin panel developer

After this virtual tour to developing an eCommerce mobile app, are you ready to step into the real world with real hiring of skilled resources for your to-be-real eCommerce mobile app?

Having helped in weighing all the angles of your eCommerce mobile app, we can be the partners in your endeavors with our rich experience worth boosting. We believe in work than words. Have a look at various case studies that are being written every time we faced a new challenge and the creative solution we provided.

Nothing better than a client talking to a client. Know what our clients have to say about our work and achievements. Yet not convinced? Here we are with practical and live applications that we have created for our clients. You can go ahead by testing these apps, who knows you might find your perfect app development partner!

We would love to be a part of an eCommerce mobile app development.

Please drop an inquiry about your needs and our experts will get back to you as soon as possible to make your eCommerce business possible.

Are we helpful to you in your venture of building that perfect eCommerce mobile app of yours?

Yup? Nope? Whatever? Still in doubt?

We would love to hear from you. Please feel free to comment your views or confusions and we will strive to get them resolved for you. Drop your inquiries in the comments section below, or drop us an email at [email protected]

#ecommerce #mobile app development

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sultanaislammow · 10 months ago

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Oriental Selection still has a long way to go

In Yu Minhong's plan, Oriental Selection "will build an excellent agricultural and life industry chain." He mentioned the need to establish a three-dimensional sales platform to serve more Chinese merchants. In addition to HE Tuber Douyin, this three-dimensional sales platform will also consider other platforms and even build its own platform.

But what is the result? At the end of February this year, Oriental Selection also disclosed its first performance report after the name change. In addition to revenue growth, during the six months of the reporting period, Oriental Selection's GMV (gross merchandise transactions) reached 4.8 billion yuan, of which self-operated products contributed Sales revenue of 1.089 billion yuan, and third-party products generated commission service revenue of 677 million yuan. The two incomes accounted for 85% of the total revenue, while the revenue of the traditional education sector was only 295 million yuan, and the proportion shrank to 14%. The revenue and profits disclosed in the report were lower than market expectations.

At the same time, Oriental Screening CEO Sun Dongxu and CFO Yin Qiang successively reduced their holdings by nearly 5 million shares, cashing out at a high level of nearly HK$280 million. This unexpected reduction directly caused Oriental Screening's stock price to plummet 20% that day.

Tianfeng Securities analyzed this in a research report and stated that the decline in GMV was one of the main reasons for the correction in Oriental Selection’s stock price. In addition, the reduction of holdings by Oriental Selection executives was also the reason for the decline in the stock price. "Recently, Oriental Selection's GMV has averaged between 20 million and 30 million yuan per day, which has dropped significantly from the 40 million to 50 million yuan before the Spring Festival. On the one hand, the reason is due to the off-peak consumption season and offline recovery; on the other hand, On the other hand, due to the impact of the epidemic two years ago, the pace of launching new self-operated products after the new year will be slow.”

In terms of goods, in March this year, Oriental Selection was included in the hot search for "the wild white shrimps sold in Ecuador are actually farmed." Last year, there were precedents of high-priced corn incidents and moldy peaches growing hairy incidents. The control of the supply chain Obviously, Eastern Selection requires continuous improvement. As a company that makes a living by selling agricultural products, apart from the anchor halo and conceptual packaging, only "product power" is the key factor that can help it go further.

Looking back at the stock price of Oriental Selection, it has fallen by about half from its high point in January this year. This reminds Oriental Selection to a certain extent: the temporary hype will eventually pass, and we should continue to think about the possibilities and solutions for our own business development. It is an eternal proposition.

At present, "Oriental Selection Beautiful Life" has undoubtedly supported the performance growth of Oriental Selection, but is this phenomenon sustainable? Where is the next "Oriental Selection Beautiful Life"? How to increase profits while improving product capabilities? Dongfang Selection obviously still has a long way to go in the future.

Oriental Selection has actually understood this, so it has gone further and further on the road of "diversification". On the one hand, it has opened two accounts, "Oriental Selection Official Account" and "Oriental Selection Member", on the WeChat video account, and launched the Oriental Selection Selection WeChat mini program; on the other hand, there are also Oriental Selection flagship stores on Tmall and JD.com. In September last year, Oriental Selection also launched an independent e-commerce APP.

As for Dong Yuhui, his work focus is actually much more than just carrying goods on the main account of "Oriental Selection". Since the beginning of this year, Oriental Selection has launched a new live broadcast format of "live broadcast + cultural tourism" through its matrix account "Oriental Selection Views the World". Dong Yuhui has become the resident anchor. In addition to bringing goods, he has found a new working status. Perhaps, it is not that Dongfang Selection "does not rely on Dong Yuhui", but that Dong Yuhui's personal value is no longer limited to a single field.

Source: Guosen Securities

An excessively high influence weight increases the probability of uncontrollable events. On the one hand, judging from the gender and age distribution data of Oriental Selection fans, there are more women among them, and 24 to 40 years old account for 70% of the total number. Many of them are the well-known "mother-in-law" of Dong Yuhui. The main fan group, their "love" for Dong Yuhui can be seen.

On the other hand, in the past few years, the issue of "head-oriented" anchors has been the focus of the industry, and the de-celebrification of head anchors has also become an industry trend. With the development of Oriental Selection, it is only time to gradually "de-celebrify Dong Yuhui" question.

There are also specific actions to follow. Starting from November last year, Dong Yuhui’s live broadcast time was adjusted from 7-10pm to 7-9pm every night. At the same time, Dong Yuhui’s personal cartoon image was previously on the packaging of Oriental Selection’s self-operated brand Sirloin Steak, but the new packaging has removed the image.

A cruel reality is that no live broadcast room can continue to be popular with one style. By creating an artistic conception of "life is not only about the present, but also poetry and the distance", Dong Yuhui captured the idealistic feelings of the public, but a kind of Audiences will inevitably feel tired after listening to the content for a long time. The recent difficulty in maintaining the 100,000 traffic mark in the Oriental Selection live broadcast room is a side proof.

#HETuber #Music #Gaming #Entertainment #Science And Technology

0 notes

yfere · 6 years ago

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My problem with Caleb's end goal is that from a meta standpoint, it's unfair to the other players and trivializes all the work they put into their characters and their progression, and relegates them to the less important supporting cast in Caleb's epic saga. Like "cool character arc you had, too bad literally none of it mattered, everything you did was pointless, wasn't that a fun campaign"

Thank you very much for sending in your thoughts, anon, and for your patience as I’ve worked on replying.

I’ve been thinking for a bit, and what I think, overall, is that you’re absolutely right. If Caleb achieves his end goal as he thinks of it now, in exactly the way he (probably??????) means to, it would be terrible. If he really does go back 16+ years alone, save his parents, and prevent himself from existing as he currently is and by default changing everything about the M9 and their history and accomplishments, it would be awful. Actually the worst ending possible for all of them and us, because like you said, it would invalidate everything we’ve seen and fallen in love with up to now, every character journey, every moment we’ve seen and enjoyed from all of them. It’s blowing up the story and campaign, throwing it in the waste bin and saying it never happened and didn’t matter. It is the Bad Ending. And it’s supposed to be that way! It was done on purpose! Sympathize with Caleb all you want, but you can’t deny that his story and motivations were constructed in a way that would make it very difficult, if not impossible, for the audience to want things to play out the same way he does. He’s a tragic character, and I truly believe he’s going to, supposed to fail. The only question is how, when, and to what extent.

And here, I think, there are many possibilities. As many possibilities as there are Calebs, envisioned within the dodecahedron. There are, of course, the many possibilities that lead to Caleb giving up. Finding out that the kind of time travel he wants is impossible and rejecting it for a pipe dream, healing and coming to accept his role in his parents’ deaths—accepting the finality of what was done to them, killing Trent and destroying the structure that supports him and deciding to be satisfied with that. Being faced with a choice between his goal and another thing that he loves, choosing to sacrifice his goal, and choosing to live. Giving up his goal, not being able to continue on, and choosing to die. Then there are the possibilities where Caleb doesn’t give up but fails anyway—where he tries it and gets himself killed, where he puts the goal over his friends in such a way that they either need to turn on him and kill him or he is ousted from the party, and dies off-screen. Or the ones where he just dies because he’s a squishy wizard and the dice weren’t in his favor, long before his end goals even enter the picture of the narrative. Liam comes back with a new character, and that is that for Caleb.

But there’s a third class of failure that I’m personally most interested in, and that’s the one where he succeeds—but maybe not in the way he expected to. Or succeeds, but only partially, and suffers horribly for it. There are the ones where his friends decide to fight for what he wants, where they come up with an unconventional not world-breaking solution he never would have thought of or been able to accomplish on his own. There’s even the remote, remote possibility (and I’m basing this off of Marisha saying there’s a world in which Beau supports Fjord straight-up releasing Uk’otoa—if I’m remembering right) that they decide they all want to go on a 16 year world-fucking time travel journey with him, and are fine with that because they’re together and they want to accomplish their own goals in the past. (I mean frankly this is pretty impossible, and a risky storytelling move to pull off well, but it’s there.) There’s the possibility of Caleb learning time travel just fine, but not being able to accomplish his end goal with it the way he wants. That it’s too limited—can’t go that far, can’t do that thing. Or else, he finds it conceptually impossible to fulfill the goal. For example, imagine there are many universes all caused by choices—he can time travel and prevent what happened in one universe, maybe, but that wouldn’t negate what happened in his own universe, his own time, and he would have to find that there is no escape from the reality that what happened, happened. The reality that his only true power through time magic would be guiding the future. Then there are the possibilities where Caleb again gets the power and time travel he wants, but is shackled for it, like the Raven Queen who suffers and considers her circumstances in godhood a kind of punishment. Where Caleb has the power, but is prevented by external constraints from ever being able to use it for what he wants.

And there are so many other things that can happen, possibilities I haven’t thought of yet. The one thing I’m certain of, though, is that the Bad Ending, the one where Caleb gets to blow up the campaign, won’t happen. It’s just not on the table, not in Liam’s mind nor in Matt’s mind, certainly not in ours. And because of this I think that Caleb Doing Time Shit will not necessarily lead to him accomplishing that end goal, the Bad Ending. I think it’s just a matter of a little imagination to have a world where Caleb can succeed in messing with time, and still fail in his end goal, as this character was created to do.

#answered #anonymous #caleb widogast #critical role #I'm a time travel stan I can't be stopped

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ryanssecurityengineering · 5 years ago

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Week 8 Notes and Reflection

REFLECTION

This was an interesting week, less focused on any technical things about security Engineering and more concerned with this idea of Errors - especially that you can’t pinpoint an error on one or two people but usually due to a bad system. Systems can be actual “systems” like nuclear power plants, or a system of behaviour in an organisation.

The lecture in the night time was incredibly weird. Richard literally read a book about the Three Mile Island accident. For the exam I will have to research a bit more about the accident - I like watching videos on YouTube, and it helps gain a different perspective. What I learnt was that the accident wasn’t caused by one entity - but by many entities involved - System Failure.

NOTES

Books on Errors

Human Error - James Reason

Normal Accidents - Charles Perror

Just Culture - Sidney Dekker

The Challenger Launch Decision - Diane Vaughan

Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe - Serhii Plokhy

Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety - Eric Schlosser

When something goes wrong

What is the root cause? Root Cause Analysis. Do this analysis when something goes wrong. The point is that we can improve for the future. Reactive. You can do one more like an engineer.

Humans prefer to have a signal explanation. But in the rare case they say three things:

Human/user/operator error - You sack that person! Blame the person, problem solved. Looking for a hero/villain.

Every single cyberattack will because of human error. But it won’t be one human.

Story 1 - Aeroplane industry - “the last touch”. Root cause - the engineer who signed off on that last nose cone - the person would be the one at fault and fired. The last person who touched it and is at fault.

Story 2 - The second culprit is culture. We don’t have the right culture we have to change the culture! Culture is nice no need to blame anyone! Pay lots of money for consultants! Doesn’t really tell you how to fix the problem.

The above answers you won’t be able to solve the problem.

Fallback attack - when trying to hack someone, cause them to fall back to a less secure protocol. Only respond with less secure protocols.

Human Weaknesses

Honesty - commander in cheat. Humans not good at telling the truth. Some unis have an honour code - no cheat, no plagiarism. Psychologists what to work out to what extent honour codes alter people’s behaviour. Shredding exam paper - people got higher average score in test when the exam paper was shredded! Dishonest! Before you do it you would have to sign an honour code, saying you won’t cheat on the test. Different result when you sign at beginning vs end. Prinston you are shoved with the honour code. Stanford no honour code. Made no difference!

Misdirection and limited focus - Our attention is like a torch. Imagine it completely dark - you use the torch and focus on a few things. Some areas you never shine the light on - pay attention to only one or two of those factors. We don’t always pick the best factors to follow. Humans subject to misdirection - focus on something else rather than what you are supposed to focus on. Humans should focus on what’s logically important, but tend to focus on what it is psychologically salient. E.g. magician. Magicians make u make sure you can’t tell whats important to focus on. Sleight of hand and misdirection. Planned and executed in plain sight. If the situation is complex need to turn all the lights on. How do you deal with contradicting data? - Confirmation bias. Ignore stuff we don’t like that - confirm theory we are currently theory. The more often you do something, it will become routine. His obsession: "those factors which lead to and sustain wishful thinking rather than wise thinking"

satisficing and bounded rationality - Good enough is good enough, let’s move on.

People prefer positive statements

overriding tendency to verify generalizations rather than falsify them

Group-think syndrome - When you are in a group and the way you act in the group. What is value is group membership. Even if things are going off the rail they don’t want to be the annoying person no one likes.

developmental phases - goed and breaked 2

procedural

meta-procedural

conceptual

The system should be designed so if a human error occurs. it is not catastrophic.

Heuristics

Similarity matching - Have in your head schemes or situations from the past and try to match it. “Muscle memory”. This is how social engineers exploit you. The Brain is optimised to not think.

Frequency gambling - When you got a match - I’m going to recall the pattern and pick the pattern. When you pick the pattern how to pick the best matching one? Most likely pick the pattern that worked most often. Frequency gambling - picked the pattern from the past that worked the most. We are just trying to delegate to a pattern very quickly.

How is an accident different to an attack? - The intent - someone trying to make it go wrong. With an accident our adversary is Murphy. In an attack, you have someone who is adaptive and clever. The bad guy will make the cheese holes line up. Lego trains - interface trains through a serial port. At every Y intersection (switch) you could control it. The real problem was making sure the trains never collide - not the optimal solution. People distracted by the interesting things. Richard attacked them - he made Satin’s simulator. If you engage in an unsafe strategy, you’ve done the bad thing. This is how security is different to accidents.

SYSTEMS

50 trivial problems - old man driving, bus strike etc, full car park, all sounds lame! Primary cause of failing to get to job interview? Human error, mechanical failure, environment, system design, procedures you used. The best answer is all of them? None of the above - none of them caused the accident. it was a systemic accident.

Recognise that sometimes when things happen it is not due to the last person. It is about the system.

If you design a well designed system - resilient in accidents and attacks. If highly coupled and incoherent then that is pretty bad. Redundancy - Defence in Depth. However sometimes some failures cause other failures. COMMON MODE failure.

Cassandra and Apollo and hindsight and Chekhov and simplification - Wooed her about something. Cassandra Syndrome - knowing the truth but no one believes you. Chekhov gun - anything on-screen in a movie is there for a purpose. A gun is on the wall to be used. Hindsight - Looking back everything looks so clear, but at the actual event maybe not.

Belief that event has only one significant cause.

Plan for few contingencies than occur.

-ability to control outcomes - the illusion of control.

- hindsight bias - knowledge of outcome of previous event increases perceived likelihood of that outcome

2911 Things - complexity coherence coupling visibility - visibility - direct error (e.g. instant feedback - ship goes wrong way). Easy to detect. The real errors are latent errors and the consequence of the error stays hidden until the future. Latent errors with defence in depth systems. E.g. memory leak. Fail invisibly and think the system is safe.

operator deskilling due to Automatic safety devices - Ironic!

latent vs active failures

"Dead Battles like dead generals hold the military mind in their dead grip, and Germans, no less than other peoples prepare for the last war." - Barbara Tuchman - planning for future is planning for what happened before.

Exam question about one of these:

Chernobyl

Bhopal

Challenger

Three Mile Island -

Chernobyl will be in the exam. The rods are in same liquid and pumped round and round circulating heat in the red area. Rods drop down to separate things, and absorb neutrons. For safety issues, the red stuff is inside a closed system and there is water cooling.

Nuclear plants plagued with startup problems. Imagine nuclear react is cloud services! The utility charged the builder, and the builder charged the utility in the accident. The water in the secondary system is pure. Resins might get in the water and must be removed. It leaked out and leaked into the pneumatic air system. The system drives some of the instruments. Interrupted the air pressure which went to two of the values for the water system. Emergency pump used but the pipes were blocked! Valves left in the closed position from a maintenance - invisible failure. Operator couldn’t tell the water is pumping through a closed pipe. Mystery how the valves were closed. Operators testified - not unusual to find some in the wrong position.

The decay heat builds up enormous temperature and pressure - normally there is lots of water to cool this. However the cooling system didn’t work. If the red part gets too hot, stainless steel around the red part might be brittle. There are ASD’s to handle the problem. The valve at the top of the yellow thing - relive pressure from the core. Reducing pressure becomes a gas, and explodes into steam. 1 in 50 times valve expected to fail. Presidents commission discovered that the valve fails often in other reactors. Unfortunately in this attack, the valve failed to close again after it opened. The radioactive water is gushing out! Absolute disaster. 32 thousand gallons stream out. The thing was simply uncaught. The indicator was recently added to the valve to indicate the valve had failed. However the indicator itself had failed too. Because the light was showing the valve had shut, they didn’t do any other tests. The valve only records whether a signal was sent to the valve to shut, not whether the thing was shut! The second shift determined the error and fixed it? When the mistake is a latent error - operator never notices. Can’t see that mistake again - new eyes come in and might solve the problem! Humans lead to failure and the failure to detect the failure. Operators couldn’t tell - only thing is “why is the core getting so hot?”. The system was tightly coupled - errors in one thing affect another.

The people were looking for one story to explain the failure - however it was multiple stories. Opaque system. Heat in the bottom tank - its “probably ok” even though it was burning hot. reason to believe the water could have come from anywhere. Went to different wrong tank which overflowed in the wrong building.

Everything will be weirdly connected - leave the tap on and all the password pour out of the tap. Tightly coupled system.

Theoretical thing when the core is uncovered and etc. Possible the reaction can lead to hydrogen gas - can lead to explosion. Theoretical reaction that oxygen and hydrogen - thought it was an oxygen explosion. The whole thing filled up with hydrogen gas. China syndrome, steam in air and Fukishima.

Investigations - Occurred. Reported that operators made terrible mistakes. THere were millions of things that went wrong, causing chain reaction. Can’t pick one person to blame. None of the people are actually the problem - they doing their best in a system designed to fail.

What we have to do is not focus on finding scapegoats, and pretending we have good systems - Design it so that if things go wrong, the impact is minimised.

UNSW how to improve cyber security - One real answer - work out the most important assets and JUST DEFEND THEM. Students? Safety? Staff? Money? Step 2- Assume you are going to be breached, and set it up so that is not a disaster. Have the vice chancellor read the press releases.

HR Department - Can we have a copy of your passport? “I don’t know how long we keep passports, and we built a huge passport database.” Don’t hold the data, and delete the passports. Get rid of the valuable data! Stop building it up. Don’t make a data lake.

PRIVACY EXTENDED LECTURE

When we use online services we forfeit our privacy for online services and fun.

Google Timeline - tracks your location when you left your GPS on.

The problem is when it is compromised - easy target and easy to stalk.

Signal Blocking - Phone in Aluminium foil. Today there was reports of people accessing metadata without warrants. Aluminium foil breaks bluetooth signal. Faraday bags only $6!!! Foil blocks Find my Android.

Methods of Prevention - Incognito mode, Privacy focused browsers, log out when you can, Don’t make accounts with other accounts (e.g. spotify with Facebook), LIE.

VPNS - Everything you connect through the internet is through the VPN, not your local address. Everytime you make a request the person making the request is the VPN. Trusting whoever makes the VPN.

Onion Routing - Diverting your request through intermediate nodes. Between each node is a symmetric key. 3 layers of encryption. Each node doesn’t know enough on its own that if it was compromised that it would give something valuable. Don’t know client or server. However attacker can perform timing attacks - see requests in and out.

A right to privacy - No different to free speech where you have nothing to say. You can get cheaper flight tickets through a VPN from another country.

Should I be concerned? - I have nothing to hide. I have nothing I can think of that I want to hide. If you are a good law abiding citizen then it is all good? Bruce Schenider = false assumptions of privacy and its value. Premise is that privacy is about hiding a wrong. The problem is the Power of The Government - Imbalance of Power. Left powerless as we don’t have a say on who can view our personal records. E.g. several airlines handed passenger records over to federal agencies after 9/11. Entirely different purpose of what the data was intended for. The policies become meaningless! Left us in a powerless position?

Privacy threatened by many small things, not one big thing.

DIGITAL FORENSICS EXTENDED LECTURE

Branch of forensics science

Recovery/investigation of material found on digital devices

Two types of personnel

3 Stages of Digital Forensics Investigation

Acquisition/Imaging - Capture an “image”

Analysis - keyword searches, recover deleted files, specialist tools

Reporting - evidence used to construct events/actions, layman report written.

Type of Forensics

Computer forensics - Memory and data

Mobile device - Phone

Network - Router switches, packet captures

Database Forensics

Video/Audio forensics - Movie, audio

Stenography - hidden files inside files.

Tooling - EnCase, Autopsy, FTK Imager, File, Strings, XXd, Foremost, Binwalk, mmls.

Drives and Partitioning (FAT32) - Allocates memory in clusters. FAT records the status of each cluster. Deleted files name is changed to 0xE5[file_name]. The first character of the file name is changed to show it is deleted. Forensics people check this FAT table and check for these deleted files.

Flag in IMage - https://imgur.com/a/X2mNAIZ

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lyricalive · 7 years ago

Note

What are your headcanons on the Yukari/Maribel relationship ? Same person ? Relatives ? Alternate universe version ? Past/future self ? This question has always fascinated me and I also love to read you talking about Touhou so I'd like to hear your opinion on this subject ^^

What a fascinating topic. Take a seat, take a seat.

Thank you so much for giving me the chance to collect all the thoughts I’ve ever indulged on the subject! So long as it remains ambiguous, I’m interested in considering all the most interesting possibilities, rather than pushing one particular theory, though I have preferences for ones that allow happy endings.

BACKGROUND:

–> Maribel Hearn and Renko Usami live in a future era of Japan, relative to the Gensokyo we see in the games.

–> Maribel seems not to be not native Japanese, and has no family in Japan. She claims to come from a long line of people with natural abilities to perceive gaps in boundaries.

–> Maribel can commute across both time and space via her dreams, evidenced by this note from future-era Maribel discovered in past-era Gensokyo.

–> Yukari Yakumo has probably existed as a youkai of boundaries for countless ages, since the concept of “boundaries” existed. In the late nineteenth century, Yukari led the Great Hakurei Barrier project, officially sealing off the world of fantasy from the world of reality and creating the society of Gensokyo.

–> In real life in the late nineteenth century, a foreigner named Lafcadio Hearn immigrated to Japan, adopted the name Koizumi Yakumo, and published a collection of “Stories and Studies” about youkai and Japanese legends. ZUN presented this historical figure as the only hint to the characters’ relationship.

SAME-PERSON THEORIES:

–> Maribel is known for confusing dreams with reality. Doubting objectivity, with only Renko keeping her grounded, she has teetered on the border of her own existence by essentially doubting whether she herself is real. A youkai is something that a human fantasizes that takes on a life of its own. Humans can become youkai, which is a huge issue emphasized in the print works. If a human like Maribel fully loses contact with reality, and believes herself to be a fantasy, then she may indeed become a fantasy, a youkai. Renko knows this and, in Changeability of Strange Dream, she has to decide what kind of advice to give her about her situation. Rather than to validate her experience as truth, or to dismiss her dream as just a dream, the advice she chooses to give is… to clearly separate dreams and reality, so that dreams can be turned into reality with their own hands.

This struck me as (extremely inspirational and) extremely parallel to the concept of the Hakurei Barrier itself. Though the similarities between Maribel and Yukari are more blatant, I want to point out that similarities between Renko and Reimu are there too, from her hair to the red-and-white shrine-maiden-like sleeves she’s sometimes depicted in… and most of all, this particular role she plays with regard to her Yukari-counterpart.

In the ultimate fitting paradox, perhaps the dream-chasers Maribel and Renko are actually retroactively responsible for creating their very own dream. As Merry’s boundary-sensing powers develop, she will eventually be thrown back in time to take on the role of the boundary youkai who establishes Gensokyo.

It feels like a leap of logic to assume that Maribel is the “before” and Yukari is the “after,” but of course “the opposite of common sense” is exactly what Gensokyo is about. Despite time flowing differently between them, it seems plausible that “Hearn” came first. After all, in the case of Lafcadio, “Hearn” was the original name that existed before “Yakumo,” and Yukari is indeed said to have chosen that name for herself rather than it being her original. She also feels nostalgic about the outside world when she visits, as if it’s a part of her past.

Maribel is destined to become a/the gap youkai… and along with her, Renko is going to become a/the first Hakurei shrine maiden. Hakurei shrine maidens are not necessarily related by blood but rather they can be chosen (by youkai), so there’s no need for her to actually be related to Reimu, just parallel in role. Her role is to help enforce that barrier for Maribel between dream and reality, and somehow they can combine their powers to do this.

Because the Sealing Club ideologically encapsulates so much of what makes Touhou meaningful to me as a fantasy world, constantly echoing and reflecting its fascinating principles from an outside perspective, it’s a high-key ideal to be able to see those two girls as being so foundational and important to the scope of the whole series in the most literal way. This is really the main train of thought that I tend to have in mind whenever I write anything about Yukaribel.

–> The more common spin of the theory involves the inevitable angst of Renko being left behind as Maribel disappears to transform into Yukari. I definitely get the appeal – but only when Renko gets to try her damnedest to chase after her and will someday definitely get the chance to meet her again in a really awesome way like a danmaku duel. As I said, a happy ending is very important.

Though, I’m actually even more stubborn than is reasonable in my definition of “happy”… While I have always found it more interesting to think that they are the same person… at the same time, having become very personally attached to the close-knit context of Maribel and Renko, I might hesitate because… I don’t really want the Sealing Club to be such a relatively small part of this one huge person’s lengthy life, you know? It makes for a very uneven relationship, whereas I idealize the Sealing Club’s pure interpersonal equality. Yukari is so much more than Maribel, but Maribel is all that Renko knows. Even assuming that Renko comes along, she’ll only live out a normal human’s lifespan while Yukari by nature is more or less eternal. Renko has said that she would drink an elixir of immortality if given the chance, so she would surely have no qualms about things like training to extend her life in the way of a magician (“physicist=magician,” as noted on the cover of Magical Astronomy), or being kept alive by whatever means. But the main issue is that a person in her role (if she becomes a shrine maiden) isn’t really allowed to be youkai-like or long-lived. So it’s still hard to think about.

And then there’s the fact that Yukari and Yuyuko have their own whole important history together and are wonderfully deep BFFs. If Maribel is Yukari… you can’t have two best friends!! (Disclaimer: You can, but it doesn’t personally satisfy me.) This unreasonably sentimental protest is probably the only thing that keeps me unsure about my main headcanon nowadays… even as I do believe that the conceptually-all-encompassing Yukari should indeed have a shifting, multifaceted life, and that it’s a good answer. (Also *grumble grumble* Okina and whatever other suddenly-confirmed Gensokyo-founding sages can exist in her life too, I guess! I try to be a good, well-rounded fan who accepts and respects all of canon, but I have to confess that sometimes I’m very into cherry-picking what I like about things.)

RELATIVE THEORIES:

–> You don’t have to deal with that kind of drama if they aren’t actually forced to share an identity! Alternatively, let’s say Yukari once used the surname Hearn as she spent time in the real world, and left behind a descendant there. It’s not unheard of for youkai in myths to have relationships with humans, and this would truly make Maribel one of those paradoxically “two-sided” sorts of characters that I love, whose birth roots are “half-fantasy, half-reality,” fittingly along the border. This is, like, a really simple and obvious and likely solution that I rarely think about… I want to say it’s because there’s nowhere to go from there, but there can still be the interesting ongoing dynamic of whether Yukari would approve of her meddling in other worlds as part of the Sealing Club, or whether she would need to keep her away to preserve the balance.

Despite actually aiming more for “same person” implications, I had her speak with sort of a mother-to-daughter tone in my Merry the Magician cover, and that might have helped convince myself. She seems to be a rather encouraging mother, while at the same time it could be interpreted as a trap to lure her fully into fantasy and out of the club. (Can’t she just re-adopt her, grooming her into her role for when she retires, and then have Renko come live in the Human Village? No?)

–> By a more magical conception of “relative,” perhaps Maribel is some sort of leakage or fragment of Yukari’s powers. The doujin Fantasy Melt is a really wonderful and beautiful take on this idea (if a bit confusing on the first read): As Maribel’s power develops, along with the outside world’s attitude toward this kind of power, Yukari feels the need to reabsorb or eliminate this “fragment” to preserve the important distinction between the real and fantasy worlds, while Renko needs to protect her by convincing Yukari that she deserves to exist on her own.

I’m not sure whether she meant the exact same thing, but the phrasing in this post by @amemenojaku struck a chord with me: that there’s something interesting about portraying Maribel as a “concept” rather than a normal “person,” per se. I agree. Believing that the meaningfulness of humanity is defined by experience, and being in the mindset that youkai themselves are concepts, I ironically don’t think the technicality of “being a concept” feels reductive to her personhood or relationship with Renko or anything, if it were to be the case. In the above doujin, Renko says, “For me, [Maribel] is dream itself. That’s why I want her.” The most powerful role for a character, in my opinion, is when they can represent, embody, or express a specific concept. For example, she already as a character represents the “concept” of subjective fantasy, while Renko counters her with a particularly optimistic brand of objective reality. I wish all the best for the dream(er) and the doer.

CRACK THEORIES?

–> Lafcadio Hearn had an actual wife… Would it be problematic to headcanon a real person cheating with Yukari? Maybe it’s less problematic to headcanon that Yukari herself was Lafcadio…? I’m sure that taking a different-gendered form is nowhere near an impossibility for a youkai of her nature, and it would actually make more sense with regard to it being her original name and being passed down through generations. She imparted some youkai stories (his published works) specifically to leave behind as records of “fiction” in the real world, concurrent with the founding of Gensokyo that was meant to solidify that line: it would make sense if she influenced him – or if she was him. I’d file it under “crack” only because of the inability to explain the rest of his unrelated life and why she’d be doing all that outside of Gensokyo at such a busy time, but I think the concept of this more literal blood-relative theory is interesting. And having this simplistic connection to a specific historical counterpart actually seems more like a legitimate Touhou design choice than some of the more complicated possibilities. (You know, like how Miko is just literally Prince Shoutoku.) Furthermore, if “gap youkai” is not necessarily a linear person’s identity but rather a flexible role to be filled by one person at a time, then maybe you could just say Lafcadio was his own person who later fell into that role after delving too much into occult studies, somewhat like the theories about Maribel herself.

–> This is just something I thought about once, in light of the themes of recent games and the upcoming game that deals with possession. If you flip the script… Perhaps Yukari has been possessing Maribel, a normal human, thus giving her visions and abilities, because she is interested in supporting or fostering or distracting Renko, Sumireko’s descendant, who has the potential to cause another incident like Sumi did. Maribel herself is incidental, and maybe her long lineage of power is a false memory. Renko is actually the more special one with real latent abilities!

–> Edit: Well, that “upcoming game about possession” has been released. It was absolutely amazing, and it solves everything. All you have to do while playing Antinomy of Common Flowers is pair up Yukari with Sumireko, take off your glasses and squint, and voila! This is how RenMerry makes it to Gensokyo!! In seriousness, more and more interesting information is being revealed in the core games about the “dream world” and “dream selves,” something that was only a vague concept when Merry first explored it in her stories. Apparently, every person has a “dream world” counterpart. This version of yourself is you, except it expresses all your weird, repressed thoughts and acts fully how you want to. Normal dreams are supposed to take place within the dream realm with your dream self. However, if your physical body enters the dream realm, which it’s not supposed to, but which Merry’s does, the “dream self” is pushed out into the outer world to roam free. The two are essentially the same person, yet they are separate and capable of coming face to face. ….Well, unlike a lot of characters in AoCF, we never actually met Yukari’s dream self. Perhaps because Yukari is Merry’s “dream” self? The idea of one being awake while the other is asleep has been a popular (though hole-riddled) theory for a long time, implicating a very loose definition of “dream self” in terms of the classic “butterfly dream.” But I feel that Touhou’s new and specific lore on dream identities could really be put to good use in Yukaribel theories. Incidentally, someone has also pointed out to me how AoCF’s portrait artist draws both Merry and Yukari with uniquely pupil-less eyes, which is a great nod towards the connection being supported by a very important source.

–> According to Strange Creators Vol. 1, the games called “Touhou Project” canonically exist as fiction in the outside world of Gensokyo. Renko canonically plays danmaku shooter games; she once compared herself to the protagonist of one. One day, Renko is going to pick up and play this ancient game and be like, “Merry, why does this hag look like you?” They play the game while knowing too much, and whatever they do in the game causes an incident’s worth of ripple effects in the actual Gensokyo. This is the long-awaited climax of the Sealing Club stories, revealing the truth that they were “alternate universe” counterparts simply between the game world and the real world all along. I mean, it’d make a fun fanwork anyway.

YUKARIBEL REFERENCES IN MY OWN FANWORKS:

(Just in case you ever thought, “Hm, was Asa trying to imply X?” Yeah, I probably was. It’s usually written in the mindset of the “same person” theory, but just nudging at the connection in general is always fun and widely applicable.)

Schrodinger’s Bakeneko:

(We are the observers now, but what would it take to switch our positions?)

The girls take a lighthearted stance in favor of protecting youkai by keeping their memories alive… underscored by implications that this is actually particularly important because Merry may someday be in the position of a youkai herself.

(My lost kitten, are you far from home? Have you reached the end of your line?

My, perhaps it isn’t just a matter of distance… No, it’s a matter of time.)

The intro and outro can be read as Maribel speaking to the cat she saw (which was totally Chen), or Yukari speaking to Chen, or Yukari speaking to Maribel. After all, in one of the song titles from another album, Merry has been called a “mysterious cat,” compared to Renko’s “strange bird.”

I saw a funny thing floating out on the river:A tattered piece of cloth, all washed up by the rain.Its dye in the water was trailing behind,Where the once-striking pattern looked only like a stain.

The sights you see beyond are the remnants of something;The prints they leave behind, ever hard to discern.If the cat was the dye… if I touched it, would I…?Let’s be careful with wet paint, ‘cause soon we’re gonna learn.

This verse is based on a particularly ominous section of Dr. Latency’s official story (#8, The Taboo Membrane Wall). G-go read it, and try to figure out what ZUN meant when he had Merry suddenly whisper, “…if contaminants get mixed in, they’ve got to be eliminated.”

Hiroshige No.36 ~ Neo Super-Express:

Is it one straight line, first to last?Split this track into a brand new past…(Unbound, turn around at the end of the line~)(A retrospective, back in time…)

The idea is to reach something new by going to the past, implicating the unnatural flow of time involved in the relationship between the worlds and the characters. The world of the past is of course Gensokyo, and the method of transportation to get there is of course a train, something Yukari is fond of pulling through her gaps.

There’s no ticket to be going back!

Hanging on that rail, don’t you fall!

It’s implied that this type of trip is a “one-way street,” if you will, and Merry is the one in danger of falling off…

My my, a conductor’s life is fun!

But she seems to have a natural affinity for the powerful role of a conductor.

By the way, it’s kind of silly, but the verbal tic “oh my” / “my my” – the equivalent of the Japanese “ara ara” – is something I associate very strongly with both Maribel’s and Yukari’s personalities.

Girls’ Sealing Club:

In lucid thought, there’s something caught across the other side.

In broken parts, our maidens’ hearts are never satisfied.

To become what we’re destined to be!

Implying that whatever they seek on the other side of the dream-line is actually a part of themselves. …Also implying that their missing parts are each other, ‘cause they’re in LOVE and they’re being lovey-dovey through the whole subtext, but yeah.

Greenwich in the Sky:

Maybe the day that we next look in the mirror, we’ll even be seeing a new face.

What if they’re just like us? Well, and what if they’re different completely?

The theme of these lyrics is about the importance of seeing new perspectives, and no example of that is more relevant than a possible impending change of identity. The echoes are constantly there, just waiting to be heard.

Transcendental Revelry:

– “Lucky she didn’t hear you make that mistake. Tanuki… simply hate foxes, don’t you know?”

– “Izzat so?”

– “I mean, I don’t really see why. I think a fox would make… a lovely…”

For no reason whatsoever, Merry cut herself short and burst into a fit of laughter.

The laughter was contagious and, in equal ignorant bliss, Renko soon began laughing together with her, almost to the point of tears.

To any passersby, their dazzling smiles may have easily let them pass for tanuki.

This is a fic where a drunken RenMerry catch some glimpses of Gensokyo. In this bit, Merry ends up getting an idea that references Yukari’s shikigami Ran. I was playing with the implication that, if she gets close to anything that would trigger some sort of paradoxically forbidden knowledge of Yukari before the time is right, some force of the universe might be stopping her from reaching it. They get their memories wiped of the experience in the end – but, well, that may have been the fault of the alcohol, not Yukari.

Matryoshka:

Like a matryoshka, there’s a seal to peel away!

It’s the best kind of story when the people who solve mysteries end up being the biggest mystery themselves. A doll with another self hidden inside of her…

AH, I’m about to bust… hold me steady quick, before I tumble free…AH, with the hands I trust… catch my fall for me…

Maribel is slowly increasing in fear of her own growing powers before an oblivious Renko, who pushes forward without realizing until it’s too late. Incidentally, thanks to delicious double entendre, Maribel is also slowly increasing in the strength of her feelings for an oblivious Renko, who doesn’t realize until too late.

Dance along, till we dance out of the frame…!

The notion is that, if you play along with a game for long enough, you’ll eventually become a part of it. In this way, the Sealing Club’s adventures in fantasy run the risk of not letting them return to reality, particularly the very susceptible Merry. The video mostly tells the story of the first theory here, while adding some of the angst from the second. I actually meant to directly reference shrine-maiden Renko at the end by changing her coloring, but I ended up not doing that… Still, the clocks in her eyes clearly turn back time to follow Merry into the past.

Honestly, I don’t think I would ever actually write a story specifically about the culmination of these theories. I love “Yukaribel” just as a really fun idea to play with as part of her character’s concept of being on the brink of a precarious border (of knowledge or identity). I might be happy if it were given a satisfying conclusion in canon, but I’d also be happy just having the Sealing Club explore worlds collecting just short of this knowledge forever… since I just appreciate them all as “concepts.”

P.S. I am also, vaguely yet strongly, interested in the train of thought that involves Renko and Maribel somehow fusing to become Yukari. Yukari’s gaps are a physics-related thing, manipulating time and location, relevant to Renko’s ability. And, as stated before, her Gensokyo was founded largely in accordance with Renko’s ideology. Because I insist that Merry can’t go anywhere without Renko, and because I really adore the sentiment of them being the “two-in-one” Sealing Club – and I’m a Steven Universe fan who idealizes “fusions” – this would pretty much be the ultimate good end for me, even beyond them making the trip back in time as two people. This way, they can truly be together forever, by a manner that emphasizes the direct mutual impact they have on each other and the unity of what they each represent. However, I haven’t found a specific way to explain how that fusion would happen in the Touhou setting without it sounding weird or creepy or unfitting. L-like, there are songs about one literally consuming the other and stuff like that. I don’t know about that. But as a concept of a permanent fusion representing the mixture of their ideas and experiences… *thumbs up*

Thank you sincerely to anyone who read all this!!

A-AND I DON’T THINK IT WAS ANYTHING GROUNDBREAKING BUT I HOPE IT WAS OKAY!!

#ask #touhou #yukari yakumo #maribel hearn #renko usami #renmerry

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