#he doesn’t even have to go through the whole “learn teamwork” phase

[blauequuleus]

Listen I love the DC x Danny Phantom crossovers so much but it has the funniest set up if it goes the “Danny gets adopted by Bruce” route.

Cause as everyone likes to joke Danny would be “adoption bait” with his black hair and blue eyes, being a teen vigilante and quipy.

But it’s made even funnier when Dani gets thrown into the mix cause it’s literally giving serial adopter Bruce Wayne a two for one special on new kids.

They both even come preloaded with trauma and their own rogues. They’ve even made it easier on him and already gotten past the “trying to kill each other” phase most of the Batfam has been through at one point or another. And they have an tech guy, a snarky badass with a soft spot and the mom friend/sister of the group. So really he ends up getting a 5 for 1 deal if the whole gang goes along. They’re literally perfect lol

[masterjedilenawrites]

My guy, can I just say that I LOVE your writing? Its absolutely amazing and wholesome! speaking of wholesome, could I maybe request the clones with an s/o who wants a child? Or maybe the clones as fathers?

Wow thank you, I'm flailing on the floor from these compliments! Glad to provide some wholesome content for the fandom in these trying times... #bringcrosshairhome

I just did a Clones with pregnant S/O request, so here's Clones as fathers...

Cody is a dutiful father. He takes the job seriously right from the start, seamlessly readjusting his life to include his child as if they'd always been there. He'll take any opportunity to teach his child all the important things, from hands-on tasks like fixing a speeder or shooting a blaster, to more abstract concepts like being polite to strangers and apologizing when in the wrong. When he has to choose work over home, he makes up for it with extra attention when he returns.

Rex is a super-dad. His kids look up to him their entire lives, believing he really is a superhero. Think Jack Pearson from This is Us. He'll dress up for tea parties, and listen to the same stories over and over, and chauffeur them and their friends around town, and help with homework, and lend them money for when they go on their first date.... He's tired all the time, but he never lets it show. He and his S/O are partners in this endeavor; their teamwork is admirable and enviable.

Wolffe is a private dad. He keeps his family life separate, that way he can be the tough leader he needs to be in battle, and then let all of that go when he returns home. He's a secret softie and only his S/O and child ever see that side of him. They have him wrapped around their finger; he knows this, and loves it. There isn't a single thing he wouldn't do for either of them. They are his world. He gets sentimental about a lot of things and doesn't like how fast his baby grows up.

Fox is a doting father. He'd spoil the shit out of his kids. Sneaking candy when their mom says no, buying the toy they secretly eyed in the store, letting them stay up late and watch him clean his armor. He gets in trouble with his S/O a lot, but he can't help it. He wants to give his kids the entire galaxy. He can discipline them when necessary, and because he only does so sparingly, his kids take it seriously and never act that way again. He thinks they are just perfect.

Fives is a proud dad. Everything his children do is amazing. He keeps every last drawing or craft they make for him. He recounts every milestone of their lives to his brothers. He cries over them a lot. He is just in awe of how they grow up, all their strength and potential and innocence, he just eats it up. He definitely wears T-Shirts that have puns of the word dad in it, so anyone who sees him knows who he is. It's the most important part of his life, far more than being a soldier.

Echo is a nurturing father. He is very concerned with the health and happiness of his child. He's more nervous when they're young, wondering if they're behind in their development or whether their runny nose is a sign of something more serious. He's more comfortable when they get older, letting them do more on their own. He's big on communication and uses little codewords. Like, Cover-fire means he needs them to just do as they're told. DMZ means they're free to speak their mind, no judgement. Retreat means they need to rethink their bad attitude and apologize.

Jesse is a hip dad. He doesn't try to be, he just is. He never really let go of that part of himself after becoming a father, listening to certain kinds of music or having a fun night out. He doesn't set a lot of rules; in fact, he openly allows certain things that other parents might balk at. He figures it's better for them to experience these things in the safety of their home, rather than doing it behind his back and getting hurt. His kids like their cool dad, they're never embarrassed.

Kix is an affectionate father. His favorite thing in the whole galaxy is coming home to his children tackling him with hugs and kisses. He might coddle in the early years, letting them sleep in his bed or carrying them around everywhere. But as they grow, he's more encouraging of their independence, so long as they still let him hug them whenever he wants. He's also obsessed with health; totally the dad who never lets them eat any sugar or watch TV if the sun's still shining.

Tup is a timid dad. He second-guesses himself a lot, wondering if he made the right decisions or said the right things to his child. He does his best to learn and catch on to the best way to go about things, but it seems as soon as he's finally comfortable, his child has grown up or moved on to the next phase and he has to start over. He is best during the quiet moments of his child's life: reading stories before bed, giggling during bathtime, comforting a broken heart...

Dogma is a responsible father. He prioritizes rules over all else, but puts a lot of thought and care into crafting them. And he's created a lot of rules for himself, too. Things like always wishing them good-night, even when he's away on missions. Or never expressing his frustration in front of them. He creates plenty of opportunities for them to earn privileges or other rewards. He disciplines firmly but fairly. He splits the child-rearing duties with his S/O evenly, as well.

Hardcase is a dorky dad. He's not as hardcore at home as he is on the battlefield, but he still has a lot of energy and releases it through corny jokes, silly antics, and other displays of tomfoolery. Think Phil Dunphy from Modern Family. He wants to be his children's best friend. He tries to keep up with all the trends and slang, which just makes his kids cringe in embarrassment. He's not the best with discipline, but he does get more serious if one of them is hurt or struggling.

Hunter is an interactive father. He will never be considered distant, oh no. He engages with his kid on every level, being a constant and dependable presence in their life. He talks to them as a baby even when they don't understand. He lets them tag along as a toddler, indulging in their curiosity. He checks in with them when they're older, having honest conversations about whatever is on their mind.

Wrecker is a playful dad. Life is an adventure and he's excited to take his children along on the ride. He'd have a lot of kids, filling his home with sounds of laughter and fighting and joy and tears. He'd encourage them to develop a hobby and would attend every competition, performance, etc. without fail. Even with so many to keep track of, he manages to make each one feel special, they all have an important place in the family and never get left out, not on his watch.

Crosshair is a protective father. He knows he's not the best with emotions, so he makes up for it by always having his child's back. Looking out for them. Keeping them safe. He'd teach them how to fight from an early age, going to shooting ranges or on hunts. It'll be their "thing," a way for them to quietly connect through the years. And heaven help the poor soul who ever hurts his little one. He will not hold back in defending their honor and squeezing out an apology.

Tech is a chill dad. He isn't bothered by much, so he keeps his cool through even the roughest stages of his child's development. This ends up creating a sense of stability for his family, they can always count on Dad to keep things steady and real. He won't pry into his child's life; if they want help, they'll need to come to him. But once they do, he is passionate about teaching them everything he knows. He will support them in all of their studies, hobbies, and interests.

[felassan]

DA4 Lead Producer Scylla Costa’s BIG Festival talk, “Challenges of Dragon Age production during the pandemic”, can currently be rewatched on YouTube here starting roughly at timestamp 8:57:02 after a lil presenter blurb/intro. It’s 1 hour long. When it was streamed live, there was an English translation ‘voiceover’. There isn’t in this vid, however I want to post the link for Portuguese speakers, and also it’s neat for everyone to be able to see all the slides he presented with for themselves in context.

I don’t know if an English-language version will get put up so I’m sharing the notes I took during the talk below, in case anyone’s interested and because I might as well since I wrote them. The rest of this post is under a cut due to length.

Edit: Found a place to re-watch the English version of the talk

(Quick note: I didn’t note down everything, mostly things that caught my interest, so this isn’t exhaustive, and when I was watching I was real tired, so pls bear that in mind and don’t take these notes as bullet-proof 100% accurate gospel or direct quotes. If you watched it and think I’ve written down something wrong/misunderstood, let me know and I’ll fix. Also if you’re a Portuguese speaker and I’ve gotten something incorrect or missed something important etc, again just let me know.) **

** Edit: I’ve now gone through my notes while watching the talk again. I’ve filled in some of the gaps (although they still don’t cover everything said) and so forth, and now I’m no longer worried about there being possible errors in this post.

-----

For some context, this slide contained the breakdown of the talk’s structure. Bear in mind there are other slides present in the talk than the ones I’ve posted here, I didn’t include caps of all of them, just ones which were of note to me.

In the talk, chief Producer Scylla goes over challenges of DA4 production during the pandemic. He discusses the adaptations - necessary skills and learning from remote work - and he ponders on the future of teamwork.

After the launch of ME3 he became a producer, all his MMO and other experience helped a lot. He was on DAI for 3 years and MEA for 9 months, then Anthem. Today, on DA4, Scylla and another Lead Producer were the heads of the whole project, and there is his boss is the Executive Producer Christian Dailey. 

^ the usual AAA game development cycle (brief introduction)

AAA games are games that are launched for several platforms simultaneously. 

In BioWare’s case, the pre-production phase of the game development cycle can have from 5 - 30 people, and up to almost 60 people when they’re just about to go through the gate to production. 

In the pre-production phase, they go through the game’s concepts and prototypes and start developing systems. They seek the game’s concept and focus, and its key features. They do lots of market research. In the case of BioWare, all their games are strong in narrative, so they have lots of tools related to game narratives and supporting the development of a narrative (cinematic design, dialogue system etc) that get focused on in this phase. Other parts of the team such as writers and cinematic design need these systems to do their own roles. 

In BioWare’s case, the pre-production phase through to launch can take 4 - 6 years, but it does depend on the size of the team during development.

With regards to Dragon Age 4, they were coming close to the time when they would shift from pre-production to the production stage when the pandemic hit.

During the production phase is when the development of content and features takes place, with the systems mostly already existing from the pre-production phase. A few new systems may be developed in this phase. In the production phase is when things start escalating, and the team really starts growing, to like 2- or 3-fold the prior pre-production phase size. 

(DA4 is currently in the production phase.)

In the alpha phase, features have to be fully implemented and systems all have to be running / working. All the game features should already be in the game by now. They test from pre-production onwards, but this phase is when they run heavy technical tests with lots of players trying to play at the same time. In the beta phase, the idea is that you should now have full content and that now you’re balancing it and running more and lots of different tests with players before launch. There are final tweaks and then the final launch, when in the weeks prior to launch, all the different business units and areas e.g. marketing team, technology team, publishing team, get together once a day and all of the game’s issues are reported and brought to the table to be prioritized. Then they decide the next steps re: these issues (this is known as ‘the war room’).

After the launch there are usually patches like day zero patches and other patches, this being standard industry practise. The last stage is the new content stage where there are DLCs and a game with more content.

On March 12th 2020, the team gathered to review the DA4 story in the new office. Everyone was very excited. (They had spent over 10 years in their last building and had noticed that with the team growing they needed more space. In August 2019 they found the new studio in the city center.)

Anyway that evening, they got an email from the CEO which contained instructions and said that due to the pandemic, they should from now all start working remotely. They had known that this happening was a possibility so they had been planning on how to have all the devs working from home, but initially less than 50% of the devs were able to work from home successfully/efficiently due to various issues e.g. you need a VPN to be able to log in remotely to do your job normally, varying home office setups. The day after this, the office was basically deserted, except for Scylla, the IT infrastructure people and one or two odd devs.

Scylla was part of the team that was working on allowing the devs to work from home. They first started looking at the short-term changes they needed to make to allow this.

“First, take care of our developers”. 

When the pandemic first hit, their and Scylla’s [as Lead Producer] first priority was to look after the devs. Many of them are parents (schools and day-cares were shut, children were studying from home), others have relatives living with them, others have other personal circumstances which of course need to be taken into account when it comes to assessing what needs to be taken into consideration for this new scenario. So, they looked at each dev on a case-by-case basis in order to evaluate, speaking to each one and asking them what they could do to support them.

One of the first changes/adaptations they could implement was flexible working hours and flexibility around deadlines. Generally speaking the devs got a lot of support, EA was really good and really supported the devs especially in the first months of the pandemic (and they are still supporting them). Initially not all devs had suitable office spaces at home, some were working from the living room from laptops or at the kitchen table. The whole covid situation basically just happened over night and nobody was really ready to deal with that change. So their first step was to enable their devs to work remotely. As a producer, Scylla’s main task is to communicate with the team such as via a number of daily meetings. He doesn’t depend so much on powerful hardware.

“Enable developers to work remotely”.

This slide shows some of a BioWare audio team. Different teams have varying and specific needs in order to do their jobs and therefore in order to do them remotely. For example, the audio team need good-quality speakers and amplifiers, while the lighting and art teams need other specific equipment such as tablets and large screens. So there was a lot of work they had to do to go through each dev to understand their individual needs and what needed to be done for them. ‘Could they download the builds? Did they have the right performance [tech-wise]? Could they submit their changelists, their codes to the server?’

Some devs needed a more powerful internet connection as it would take 6-8 hours to download a build (some devs live rurally). Some needed a lot of cable, as they were working far away from their routers (sometimes up to 50m). As time went by things got better and better. 

The chair devs work from is also important; a kitchen able chair etc is not suitable to sit in for long-term desk work, possibly leading to health issues like back ache and blood circulation problems in the legs.

Every 3 months they had money given to help devs buy new mice, keyboards, monitors - anything they needed really in order for their office setting at home to be improved. For a while, because lots of people [generally, in society] were needing and buying them, it was quite hard to buy things like webcams and microphones.

On mid- and long-term changes:

In terms of DA, we have to look at this from 2 perspectives, the change in the personal and the professional environments. 

As a consequence of working from home, people tend to be less active during the day (even in an office, you go between meeting rooms, up and down stairs etc). Physical activity supports life quality and therefore work quality. Scylla noticed that he began to feel listless and such, and found that he needed to change his routine that he had initially developed when he started working from home, for example; having a normal start time (as in, have a semblance of structure in your day as if you were still working in the office site), get dressed at the normal time, not having meetings over lunch etc. This wasn’t just him, lots of other devs encountered this and had this experience too. Devs which adapted faster had better productivity and became more productive faster.

Scylla bought a stand-up desk which he can raise up and down, and at meetings he would be delivering a talk while standing or even while walking on a treadmill. Other devs also got stand-up desks. He tracked his body’s data on a Fitbit. These sorts of things helped improve physical and mental wellbeing. Other devs did similar things, like starting going out for jogs or began practising yoga. Essentially, everyone needed to make changes to their daily routine in comparison to what they had been doing prior to the pandemic. 

The pandemic has been a thing for over a year now. In their location, every couple of weeks a new restriction is put into place or a rule is changed, and every two weeks there’s a new thing that you can and can’t do. Scylla also started moving around his property. He worked on his desk, fixed it up and painted - taking up a new hobby. Other devs picked up new hobbies too. These are good ways to be active and also to be somewhere else, i.e. to break up the working day and not be spending it all in one home office-type location. Scylla found that when he made these sorts of changes to his routine to improve his lifestyle, the data output by his Fitbit as indicators of his health/wellbeing etc improved, e.g. number of steps taken in a day, heartbeats per minute while at rest. As stated many of the other devs went through a similar process.

On the professional side of things:

They had to improve remote delivery of builds. Accessing things from home as a dev requires a VPN. They need to download a build every day and then upload it to the server after making their changes to the game. They had to work with infrastructure and research other tech, such as streaming tech to allow remote console access, in order to better facilitate this process. For remote access, they also had to work on adapting communications channels.

“Adapting channels of communication.”

In this slide, the team are working on the storyboards. Before you can implement motion capture & performance capture, you have to ‘run the storyboards’ like this. These are small illustrating drawings which reflect the drafts and are meant to quickly reflect the intention of the scenes that are to be built. Before the pandemic, the team would go to meeting rooms like this, sit down, talk and interact in person. After the pandemic, the question became ‘How do you do this over Zoom?’ You can, but it’s not quite the same; it’s harder to see peoples’ expressions, some people are embarrassed speaking over Zoom etc. Therefore they had to adapt their communications systems, and unlearn the ways in which they developed before in order to relearn and learn new ways of communicating.

Slack was a tool that they adopted on this front. Communications channels can be confusing on Slack, so there was a need to develop structure. For example, how quickly should someone reply (as a recommended convention for the purposes of work)? They had to define the process/procedures for the channels so it was clear for the team as a whole how it would all flow (this is important especially if you have a team with say 30 people or as a whole hundreds of people). Before the pandemic, they had stand-up meetings where they’d go around in a circle every morning and talk about their activities - what they’re going to be working on, any roadblocks they had encountered etc. The question arose ‘How do you replace these?’ They ended up doing Slack messages at a certain time of day and updating their statuses with some details on what they’re working on and color-coding (green - fine, yellow - need help, red - busy/blocked out).

Another issue that they faced was unforeseen - the number of meetings that devs were having really shot through the roof. When there wasn’t a good structure of communications channels, any conversation would become a meeting. Everybody began scheduling meetings left and right, and at the end of the day they would have little time left in which to actually work on their to-do lists. Hence, they had to work with the team to really analyze and be very pragmatic. ‘Which meetings needed to happen? Which didn’t? Is a specific meeting really necessary? Which meetings should be recurring? What can be done over Slack?’ This guideline had to be given to the team to help, and it improved things a lot. The number of meetings decreased a lot and they got more effective. For example, by making sure to set an agenda for meetings beforehand, and by having meeting notes (then a dev who didn’t really need to be at a meeting could skip attending and just quickly review the notes output after instead). They also decreased the standard length of meeting times from the default Outlook blocks of 1 hour and 30 mins to 55 mins and 25 mins respectively. This 5 minute change gave devs time for things like bio breaks (also 4 hours in a row at a computer in a home office with one meeting after another just isn’t good for a person).

“Adapting p-cap and mocap”.

On content:

From a content point of view, the most difficult thing in terms of the pandemic was adapting p-cap and mocap (performance capture and motion capture). They hire actors and it’s a large studio. The pandemic meant big limits to what they could and couldn’t do. The actors had to be masked and 5 meters apart in distance (although it doesn’t look like it in some of these shots due to angles). Also there could be no other person around in the studio - only the actors. The directors instead would ‘patch’ in remotely on big screens (you can see this in the second photo in the top right). 

Before the pandemic, they felt that they wouldn’t be able to do p-cap or mocap properly remotely, as the directors would usually stand right next to actors giving guidance on their performance. The techs would also usually be near. But they adapted! The keyword is adapting, changing process. It’s harder and it’s different, but it is possible, and people start rethinking what is possible. What was said to be impossible before now is possible.

P-cap differs to mocap in that it also captures voice and facial expressions.

On the future of work after covid:

There will probably be more working from home and more flexibility for workers e.g. being able to work say 3 out of 5 days from home. It does depend on what a dev’s specific job is however. For example, the audio engineers require lots of specialist equipment and said equipment is of higher quality and quantity in the office. So, depending on role, devs might be working more often or less often from home.

Another development is that lots of devs are moving house. In lockdown etc people started reassessing what’s most important in life. Some are moving further away from the studio to get a cheaper rent or for example couples who both needed an office space to work from home from but their current place only had one area. Others are moving closer to nature for a better quality of life, and still others have other different reasons for doing so. Over 10 devs that he knows in fact have recently moved, including Scylla himself.

The pandemic changed certain skills being used by people on a daily basis. Scylla used as an example of this one of his soft skills, being able to tell from looking/interacting in-person with someone if they are stressed out. Obviously it’s less easy to tell if someone is stressed out when you’re remote, so you adapt different ways of checking in with people in the new situation. To continue carrying out his role as Lead Producer, he began checking in with his team pro-actively on the new comms channels and asking how they were doing.

Also, now that companies are more open to working remotely, there is going to be increased competition for hiring devs. They saw both sides of this coin at BioWare. They were able to hire devs from many places that they couldn’t hire from before e.g. Montreal, Vancouver, the US, as there’s less need for devs to relocate to Edmonton or Austin. This opens up opportunities to hire really intelligent and skilled people that they would not have had access to before.

Question and answer segment:

The pre-production phase has been concluded. They’re in the production phase.

They are not giving out a lot of details yet but Scylla is really excited as a big fan of the whole series. He thinks that with DA4, they will have the opportunity/possibility to launch the best story out of all DA games. He feels that the characters they’re making are amazing. He’s dying to say more but can’t. 

When you work from home you need to keep your team as productive as possible. During the pandemic, when people started working from home, they noticed that some people became more productive and some people became less productive. They were analyzing it on a case-by-case basis so as not to make assumptions. They were interested in seeing what they could do to help. At the beginning of the pandemic, they were looking at the devs as people and seeing what they needed.

Production of DA4 still needed to continue during the pandemic because they want to be able to launch the game.

This slide shows a writer. Writing is an example of a role which is more able to work from home easily.

Their productivity did go down in the first month of the pandemic. After adaptations, some people then became more productive than they were before (this was role and personal situation-dependent, examples of this being artists and coders who were able to art and code at home without being interrupted, thereby being able to produce more). Covid has affected productivity in general, but this is part of our new reality. They have adapted and adjusted some deadlines. They have enough data (Scylla LOVES data) now to understand how long it will take them/how long they’ll need to launch the game. They have always had historical data for this purpose, but they’re doing more of this sort of thing now to ensure that they are doing things at the right time.

Remote hiring opens up the door to more talent joining, so if someone has talent geography will hold them back less. Some companies though may choose not to hire people from other countries due to labor issues, cumbersome legal aspects, time zones. But even in such cases there are activities for example that can be carried out while the rest of the team is asleep such as testing or working on the build, or there are cases where those companies still will want to hire a specifically/highly talented person even in spite of the potential legal aspects and so on.

On mental health: People were affected. There is the mental, physical and social impacts of the pandemic situation on people. EA supported them during the pandemic in terms of their mental wellbeing, there are specific companies (services offered, speaking to a therapist) that they can contact if they need something or help. EA had always been good at supporting them with this sort of thing but this has improved further during the pandemic. Another change was that they could/can take a couple of days off if they needed/need to because of the pandemic e.g. to take care of children, who were obviously not at school at the time. As a producer he had to be very mindful of all of this. How much they were monitoring peoples’ wellbeing really went up during the pandemic.

A question that was asked - in terms of DA4′s storybeats, is there anything in there that they decided to change due to the pandemic as it wouldn’t be sensitive or appropriate to include anymore, for example a plague plotline or something? Scylla’s answer is that DA and ME are games in which they try to have narratives that are relatable, which include things which people will identify with, so that players understand what characters are going through etc. Nothing in DA4′s plotline/storybeats has been changed (in the frame of this question, relating to the pandemic), as it didn’t have anything in it that could be specifically or a directly connected to a pandemic-type situation or anything. Of course the DA story has Blights and the Taint, but these are different & fantastical things and existed long before the pandemic situation. So this wasn’t the case with DA4 and there was no need to change anything, but this has happened to other games where they decided to change a storyline due to a strong correlation with something in the real world.

There were then concluding/closing remarks. The message he wants to send is that a crisis will always spark opportunities. Look at a crisis and try to see how you can grow.

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[☕ found this post interesting or useful? my ko-fi is here if you feel inclined. thank you 🙏]

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #237: Meltdowns and Mayhem

November, 1983

Pandemonium at Project Pegasus!

Oo, that might have been a better title! It’s just fun to say! Meltdowns and Mayhem is good too. And mayhem and pandemonium really does describe the cover.

Its one of those big mishmash fight covers. Just a big confusing scrum. And Wasp yelling at She-Hulk for some reason. Yeah, I dunno.

Hey, Spider-Man is still pretty front and center so this is still the Spider-Man Guest Stars, starring the Avengers book.

Oh, and the cool new logo is still here so I guess its the new thing. Rad.

Last time on Avengers: Spider-Man decided he was going to join the Avengers because money. He stowed away when the Avengers were called to an emergency situation at Project Pegasus, which turned out to be lava men. Captain Marvel’s presence accidentally released Nova villain Blackout who freed Moonstone. On her say so, he also freed Rhino and Electro. Captain Marvel also managed to resolve the lava men situation since they for some reason worship her as the prophesied savior the Lady-of-Light.

Avengers lead interesting lives.

This time on Avengers:

Captain Marvel tells the lava men to go home.

And they do.

Spider-Man grouses that he gets no respect from lava men. I’m not sure why he was expecting any?

Cap(tain America) has been briefing Plain Michael O’Brien - the once (and future? when he stops sulking?) Guardsman - on the situation re: the lava men invasion being a big misunderstanding.

Project Pegasus accidentally sent a magma tap right into the lava men village. Common mistake, could have happened to anyone. But O’Brien promises the magma tap will be moved.

Elsewhere in the facility, Moonstone’s quirky quartet watch Cap, O’Brien, and the lava men make peace. With different reactions.

Rhino doesn’t think its a big deal because he wants to pound ‘em. Electro is more hesitant because the Avengers outnumber them as is AND have Spider-Man and Spider-Man pretty consistently kicks his and Rhino’s asses.

Rhino still doesn’t care.

But if Electro doesn’t want to do the superhero fight then he can guard the rear and keep an eye on Blackout who Rhino doesn’t trust anymore than he would Spider-Man.

Because since Blackout is so new a villain (only previous appearance an issue of Nova), Rhino hasn’t heard of him. AND ISN’T IT CONVENIENT THAT A VILLAIN HE’S NEVER HEARD OF RELEASED HIM FROM HIS CELL SAME DAY THE AVENGERS SHOWED UP?

Pretty suspicious.

Blackout is hyperbolic and has a persecution complex even by the standards of supervillains.

Blackout: “How dare you accuse me of such a thing!! You’re just like all the rest! You’re against me... All of you!”

He uses his vague powers to encase Rhino in “solid black-light” and then waxes melodramatic.

I mean look at this shit.

Electro’s reaction to this in-fighting is more on the lines of scoffing at all this nonsense comic book science compared to his super cool normal electricity powers.

Electro: “Solid light? Black-star power? Moonstone, what’s he talking about? Anyone who’s had even a grade-school science education knows that he’s spouting gibberish! Black-light is just ultraviolet...”

Moonstone: “... And what he controls is much more. Yes, I know... But I don’t think that he fully knows.”

Wow. Co-villains be snarkin’.

Also, while Blackout continues monologuing about how anyone that stands against him will be merged with the light spectrum (???), Rhino just breaks out of the solid black-light, grabs Blackout, and goes to bounce Blackout against the wall until he blacks out.

But Moonstone and Electro separate the idiots and reminds them that they should be more mad at the Project Pegasus scientists who imprisoned them.

AND MOONSTONE HAS A PLAN, of course.

Back two levels down where the lava men plot is still wrapping up.

The lava men have gathered around the magma pit with the lead lava men chanting for the powers of earth to carry them home if they could kthx.

Spectating Spider-Man: This is screwy! He just keeps chanting and waving his arms over the trashed opening to the old magma pit, like he was some second-rate Dr. Strange! What’s he think he’s going to accomplish?

And then the earth blasts magma up from the pit and whisks the the lava men away home to Spider-Man’s great incredulity.

I mean, sure, the Avengers’ lives are weird but is this really weirder than your own life, Spidey?

Just a few years before this comic, Amazing Spider-Man #2 had to be retconned so you wouldn’t have dealt with aliens in only your second issue. Your life is weird!

Anyway, since the lava men are gone, Wasp decides its time to rip Spider-Man a new one for stowing away and interfering with Avengers’ business.

Spider-Man: “I’m sorry, Wasp. I...”

Wasp: “Sorry?! Is that all you can say for yourself? Well, I should hope you’re sorry! You might have sacrificed our entire mission!”

Spider-Man: I really blew it this time! “I only meant to help, Wasp. I just wanted to show you that I’d make a good Avengers... But I guess you’d never consider me for membership now, huh?”

Wasp: “I didn’t say that! If you promise not to ever do anything this rash again, we’ll see what we can do about making you an Avengers-in-training!”

(Good to see Wasp got over her inexplicable ‘ew spiders are gross’ phase from the 60s)

Much excitement until Spider-Man remembers that he didn’t want to be an in-training and protests what would he even need training for?

Captain America: “Well, for one thing, to learn how to follow orders!”

Hah!

Its like a criticism sandwich. ‘You almost fucked everything up!’ ‘But we still want you to join us.’ ‘But you need to learn teamwork dammit!’

I’ll give Spidey credit, after I was a bit rude last time, that he has learned to take criticism between the time in Amazing #1 and now. He didn’t immediately jump out a window rather than face embarrassment at fucking up. Part of that is probably that he’s underground in a government facility and there’s no good place to run away but still, some of it has to be growth.

Scarlet Witch backs Cap up that all the Avengers had to learn how to work together as a unit.

Wasp and Cap also mention that if he becomes an Avenger, he can keep his private life private but no secret superpowers. The Avengers need to know what each other can do in a pinch.

This is news to Starfox who begins musing about his own SECRET SUPERPOWER (which I’m pretty sure I’ve spilled the beans on repeatedly already). Since there hasn’t been a situation where his SECRET POWER would have been useful, he just hasn’t mentioned it but not wonders whether he should just tell the other Avengers or maybe lean into the omission and keep not mentioning it forever.

I feel option 2 isn’t a great idea but, hey, you do you spaceman.

Anyway, Spider-Man agrees that telling them about his cool powers is a fair trade for becoming an Avenger. And seriously, he’s prone to explain his powers at the drop of a hat anyway so this is no kind of huge task.

Wasp decides that they should return to the mansion so they can get this wrapped up and O’Brien shows the Avengers the cool and not at all dangerous vortex beam transport tube.

The vortex beam propels the passengers up and is apparently susceptible to irony. Because as soon as Spider-Man asks what would happen if the power went out, the beam fails and the Avengers start plummeting twenty stories.

Thankfully, Captain Marvel, Wasp, and Starfox can fly and Spider-Man catches the rest in a web net after catching himself against the wall of the tube.

Maybe stick to elevators and stairs, Project Pegasus.

But O’Brien protests that there are hundreds of failsafes and automatic safety systems that would have had to fail for them to plummet even if the vortex beam lost power.

This was SABOTAGE.

On Wasp’s order, She-Hulk punches them an egress into the side of the tube.

O’Brien gets over to a security monitor and discovers the breakout. The guy on the other end of the monitor informs him that the four escaped prisoners are on their way to the nuclear research dome.

Wouldn’t you know it! The Avengers just left and now they have to head back.

They find that the doors to the dome have been melted and Starfox and She-Hulk have to KRA-THOOM them open to pieces.

Spider-Man: Geez, next to those two, I feel like a 98-pound weakling!

Unfortunately, its one impediment after another. Past the doors into the dome, there’s a big black wall that’s not supposed to be there.

Spider-Man tries climbing it but slides right down, to his bafflement.

Spider-Man: “I can climb a wall of teflon if I have to! What’s this thing made of?”

She-Hulk tries punching it and finds that it breaks just fine but when she BAMs a hole in it, Electro zaps her with electricity through it. And the hole seals up when Spider-Man tries to web Electro.

Moonstone starts broadcasting through a monitor so she can gloat that her boys and her have taken over the nuclear research dome which means they’re in control of the whole project and the Avengers (plus Spider-Man) can’t do a thing to stop them.

And as a pretty vehement gtfo, Electro juices up with a backpack connected to the dome’s nuclear generator and electrifies the black wall.

So now the Avengers can’t even try to punch through.

Wasp: “Dangerous or not, we still have to get through and stop this madness! That wall has to come down... and you’re the one best equipped to handle that -- Wanda!”

And her probability borking powers are, as ever, a good do anything button.

Its not very probable for Blackout’s barrier to break down but it does! And its not probable for the electricity on the barrier to discharge into Electro but wouldn’t you know it, Wanda waved her hands a certain way and its happening!

Supervillains hate her. Her one weird trick for doing heroics.

But with the barrier down, Rhino charges the Avengers (plus Spider-Man), bowling over Starfox who was probably momentarily baffled to see a man dressed as a rhino charging him.

Captain Marvel dodges Rhino in her light form only to be immediately captured in a bubble by Blackout.

Alas, she had such a good showing this issue. I guess Stern decided that some other people needed time to look cool.

Spider-Man jumps on Rhino while he bowls through the Avengers and Starfox punches Blackout in the head for capturing Monica.

Blackout: “You think you can intimidate me just because you can fly?! Well, you’re wrong! Wrong! Blackout can also defy gravity!”

Starfox: “A challenge! Marvelous!”

Blackout sure is something. Like I said, even for a supervillain, he sure is something.

But its funny how Blackout and Starfox are on completely different wavelengths.

Electro recovers from getting Wanda’d and goes to fry Spider-Man but Cap(tain America) throws his mighty shield and severs the cord giving him extra juice.

Spider-Man, webbing the cord so its not a hazard: “Thanks for the quick save, Cappy!”

Captain America: “Don’t mention it, son! That’s just teamwork in action!”

It’s a teachable moment. Cap-style.

Electro tries to fry Cap for interfering but Cap’s mighty shield blocks... the... electricity. Okay, its metal though. Where is the charge going??

Scarlet Witch comes to ruin Electro’s day twice-over and waves her do-anything hands at him.

He scoffs that nothing happened and then immediately passes out.

Cap: “Wanda? What the blazes did you do to him?”

Scarlet Witch: “Basically, I tried to make all the carbon dioxide in the room cluster around his head, so he’d pass out from temporary lack of oxygen. Looks like it worked!”

Cap: “Uh... yes!”

Cap’s thinking ‘damn Wanda, you’re scary.’

The thing about do-anything powers like Wanda’s is that she really should be able to shut down most opponents like this but she probably won’t do this very often because it would be boring.

Meanwhile, Spider-Man blindfolds Rhino with webbing and lets him ram through a wall.

Rhino: “A few inches of steel don’t mean anything to me!”

She-Hulk: “Is that so? Well, how about a few knuckles of She-Hulk? Does that mean anything? Hmmph! I guess it does!”

I mean, you didn’t have to phrase it that way but good job, She-Hulk! You punched him in his rhino face.

And it was more good teamwork from Spidey. He set ‘em up, She-Hulk knocked ‘im down.

Also meanwhile, Captain Marvel is fed up with not being able to escape Blackout’s globe. And, hey, nice touch, from the outside we can see that the globe is wholly opaque so yes, it would be impenetrable to the visible light spectrum.

And no matter what energy she tries, she can’t get out. But she does a force-blast and that does bust the globe.

Whiiiiich distracts Starfox as he chases Blackout around the room and Blackout takes advantage of the distraction to blast Starfox.

Captain Marvel: “You devil! I’ll get you for that!”

Blackout: “Get me? Yes, you all try -- don’t you? You’re all out to get me!”

In this situation? Yes they are! Ya goof.

In the control room, Moonstone knows that Rhino, Electro, and Blackout don’t stand a chance to beat the Avengers but all she needs is for them to be a distraction while she uses the controls.

Wasp flies in but too late. Moonstone blasts not Wasp but the control panel.

Her plan all along was to destroy Project Pegasus for daring to study her powers like she was some kind of lab rat. And with the controls destroyed, she’s confidant that the Avengers won’t be able to stop what she started.

She blinds Wasp by doing a taiyoken with her chest and then flees out the evacuation exit, gloating that Project Pegasus is about to get very unpleasant.

What a goof.

Blackout also takes the opportunity to escape, sealing the exit behind him with one of his black light constructs.

Captain Marvel starts to blast through but Wasp tells her that there’s no time to chase supervillains right now, the reactor is going critical.

Spider-Man: “Critical? Is someone being critical again?”

Wasp: “This is no joking matter, Spider-Man! Moonstone’s left the reactor in an awful state!”

Spidey seriouses up immediately and goes to take a look, commenting that he has a little scientific training.

Oh, hey, another great reason to have Spider-Man join the team. He can be the new science guy and Starfox can get back to being the flirt. Everyone would be happier then.

And then Spidey even more seriouses up.

Spider-Man: “Moonie pulled all of the damping rods out of the power core! If we can’t get them back in place, we’ll have a meltdown that’ll leave the entire project uninhabitable for the new hundred-thousand years!”

Geez, Moonstone! You don’t half-ass revenge!

Moonstone broke the controls so they can’t just plunk the damping rods back into place. Wanda’s do-anything powers could do it, if she wanted to melt before she could do it.

Apparently her powers are reliant on direct line-of-sight (even though that doesn’t gel with when she fought the Wizard recently) but the radiation levels are so high in the reactor that she doubts even She-Hulk would survive it.

But Captain Marvel could.

Radiation wouldn’t affect her energy forms and she can get into the reactor through the circuity in the control room.

Spider-Man gets on a microphone and tries to walk Captain Monica through what she needs to do.

She needs to cut through all five supports on the damping rod assembly. If the assembly doesn’t fall as a unit, NUCLEAR DISASTER.

Captain Marvel zips about as a laser, I guess, cutting through the supports. One isn’t cut through all the way through, giving Spider-Man a startle, but Monica zips about lightspeed and finishes cutting through, allowing the assembly to fall into place with a WHUNK.

Spider-Man: “The reactor’s shutting down. Uh.. Can someone help me get my heart restarted?”

Ha, I like Cap(tain America)’s ‘whew’ gesture.

Y’know, the selling point of this arc seems to be ‘HEY LOOK SPIDER-MAN IS HERE’ but its been more of a Captain Marvel focused story. She resolves the lava man situation and she has a ‘this looks like a job for Aquaman’ moment with the reactor too.

Still, Spidey pulled his weight. He c-c-c-combo’d Rhino with She-Hulk. His spider-sense came in handy. And he got to be a science guy since Starfox was knocked out.

I tend to be iffy on Spider-Man as an Avenger overall but heck, lets have him on the team!

Later, after Spider-Man’s heart gets restarted and everyone has returned to the Mansion, Cap and Wasp call the Government (specifically their liaison Mr. Sikorski who doesn’t want to be here and hates dealing with superheroes. Its frankly amazing that Gyrich’s understudy is a worse Avengers liaison than him) to request clearance for Spider-Man to become a new trainee Avenger.

And over slightly to the left, presumably off-camera from the call Wasp and Cap are having, Spider-Man ponders whether this is actually something he wants.

He still doesn’t like the idea of being treated as a rookie. He’s been superheroing since he was in high school and darnit, he’s dropped out of grad school by this point! And he doesn’t know whether he’s a good fit for a team at all.

But on the other hand, he’s got a thousand good reasons (a week) to join. I’m sorry, I typed reasons, I meant dollars.

But what Spider-Man does and does not want becomes a bit moot as Mr. Sikorski shoots the idea down flat.

Mr. Sikorski: “Spider-Man?! Are you out of your minds? We have a file on him that’s a yard long -- and it still doesn’t tell us a blasted thing about him! The man’s a major security risk! No! I absolutely forbid it!”

God. He even wags his finger at Cap and Wasp.

The nerve.

The unmitigated gall.

Spider-Man takes this with all due sour grapes.

Spider-Man: “They’ll okay, Starfox -- a guy from outer space -- but my own government won’t approve me?”

Yeah, that’s a good point!

Cap offers to go over Mr. Sikorski’s head by going right to the president (which in FAIRNESS is kinda how Starfox got on the team) but Spider-Man tells Cap not to bother.

I’d guess a combination of bruised pride and ‘oh thank god now I don’t have to make a decision, I just get to be indignant about it.’

Spider-Man: “Naw, don’t put yourself out, Cap! Me joining the Avengers was a dumb idea anyway! But I’ll tell you one thing... my Congressman is definitely gonna hear about this!”

Sad Starfox with an icepack on his head: “Congressman? What on Earth is a Congressman?”

Hah.

Also, the tiny next issue box promises UNLIMITED VISION which is definitely not ominous at alllll.

So! Not a bad two-parter by any means! It is a shame that Spider-Man can’t join the Avengers, because of the government and probably writers and editorial, he has a fun dynamic with the team.

But in these times where Marvel tried to keep things consistent in the shared universe, a big guy with his own book like Spider-Man would be difficult. I mean, they’ve only recently written out Thor and Iron Man for having troubles in their own books and Spider-Man is constantly having trouble in his book.

Your time will come eventually, Spidey.

Follow @essential-avengers​ because maybe one day I’ll get to the point where Spider-Man is a reserve member. Also like and reblog because I like to feel liked.

[stilydinski]

Haikyuu Family Headcanons

Okay so my friend @panbitchx and i spent the whole day thinking about the family lives of some of our haikyuu boys since the anime gives us little to nothing about it for most of them,,,,,,so enjoy what we came up with!

This is only part 1 with all the karasuno first years. More parts will follow!

Hinata

So we know about him growing up with his mom and his little sister Natsu

Since their household is female dominated Hinata never had a problem with doing “girly stuff” like playing tea parties or smth with his sister because he knows it doesn’t make him less of a man or anything and it’s just normal to him !

Hinata always uses a fruity shampoo which is because when they were little shoyo and natsu took baths together and used the same shampoo. He grew up just using the shampoo that his mom and sister use as well because why bother buying a different one when it smells so good??

He’s naturally a cheerful and happy person but it was for sure greatly influenced by his sister. When she was a baby he always tried to make her laugh

All in all a sweet older brother, his mom raised him well, 10/10 would recommend as son

Kageyama

We had a bit of a conflict with this one because it could go exactly two ways with him

Possibility #1 is the obvious choice of him being an only child

If he grew up without siblings he for sure fell into the classic role of a selfish only child who was spoiled by his parents

He didn’t really adapt to the concept of teamwork which is what ultimately resulted in his King-phase in middle school

As a child he was used to things going his way and compromising was just not something he had to deal with a lot so he became very demanding, especially since there was a gap in talent between him and his fellow players

Possibility #2 for his family is him having an older brother!

His brother is about the same age as Tsukishima’s brother and they probably are friends too, maybe they were even on the same volleyball team in high school

Kageyama’s brother is actually quite similar with Akiteru,,,a very sweet guy who loves his brother and plays volleyball, he brought the sport to his sibling and taught Kageyama the basics, he also realized that the younger boy learns rather quick

He left the house rather early for college so Kageyama did end up spending a lot of his childhood on his own

The only problem with their dynamic was that their parents kind of favored their oldest son. They were really proud of him because he is very smart and succeeds well academically. It’s not Kageyama’s fault tho, since he was still rather young while his brother was busy at high school and impressing their parents

However because of this Kageyama felt kind of neglected and had this need to be successful as well. He put everything he had into volleyball since school stuff was pretty boring to him. He wanted to make his parents proud too but he slowly turned from ambitious to demanding which again resulted in his emo middle school King reputation

The relationship between Kageyama and his brother is not that bad tho, of course there is jealousy on Kageyama’s behalf and this subconscious need to be better or just like him,,but he also just really looks up to his brother and wants to make his parents proud like he did

His brother is also the reason why he admired Oikawa in middle school since he reminded Kageyama of his brother!

Our first choice for canon would be possibility #1 but we both enjoyed the second theory

Tsukishima

So we already know much about this household but we’ll go through it anyways

Akiteru and their father are very similar personality-wise but he looks more like their mom i think this is canon but i’m not sure while Tsukki looks more like their dad

Their father is really tall, probably also used to be an athlete,,,,also tsukki got his bad eyesight from him

Their mom however is short and really beautiful, also looks rather young. It happened more than once before that she and Tsukishima went shopping and people mistook her for his older sister!

I love that Tsukki is canonly a dinosaurs kid. He probably still has some figures standing in his room to this day but the only ones who see it are just his family or Yamaguchi anyways so why bother storing them away?

But all in all we know most of his family stuff canonly

Yamaguchi

So for this cutie we settled on him having like 2 older sisters

Both of them are really confident and cool and beautiful

Yams is pretty shy because he kinda grew up as the baby of the family, his sisters both being a few years older so he had everyone in the family cherishing him since he’s just adorable

He looks up to his sisters a lot because they are outgoing, confident, strong and independent women. They are kind of his rolemodels in that aspect!

Both of them would literally fight anyone who tries to hurt their baby brother, wouldn’t want to mess with these ladies,,they adore him but who wouldn’t

Yamaguchi is also a great son to have, he’s a caring person because he grew up in a very loving household with his parents and sisters!

Let me know if u got any additions or interjections for these since these are just our theories!!

[linkspooky]

Don't know if somebody already asked but what do you think about All Might and his character in general?

All Might and the two ideas he represents, one a symbol for peace that will always come to save those in need, and two always smiling for the sake of other people around you are two well-intentioned but heavily flawed ideals. All Might is capable of being both a good hero who wants to save as many people as he possibly can, and also a flawed person who is part of upholding a flawed system. He is both at once, that’s what it means to be a complex human being. I have always read All Might as this kind of complex character, someone who wants to be a force for good, but is also ulimately broken. It’s even written into his character, he literally switches between being an all powerful hero and a shell of a man that looks like a skeleton and regularly spurts blood. 

While All Might is obviously a very heroic character, he’s far more interesting to me as a character for all the people he fails to save, or when his particular brand of heroics doesn’t work. 

This is something that’s been brought up since Midoriya and Shigaraki’s first confrontation. That there are people that All Might couldn’t save, that there are people he didn’t save. Shigaraki speks from the perspective of the people who would never be saved by All Might because society deliberately lets them fall through the cracks, and All Might is the support pillar upholding that flawed society. 

While All Might himself tries his best to be a good guy, you can notice there are a lot of toxic attitudes he unconsciously repeats. One of the most obvious ones is how much he endorses a person like Endeavor. To be fair, All Might genuinely does not know what Endeavor did to his family but still there are times where it’s kind of obvious and All Might still doesn’t notice. 

Such as when Endeavor says to his face that he “made that boy” and also calls Shoto a “ridiculous cretin going through a rebellious phase” with genuine anger in his eyes and All Might still doesn’t notice.

It’s even discussed in Twice’s chapter, that Endeavor is the kind of hero that mostly men from twenties to fourties would support, his fanbase indicates he represents a certain toxically masculine part of society. Twice even comments that Endeavor gets high results but at the same time, he has had violent incidents where he goes way too far with villains.

Endeavor is the exact kind of hero that All Might isn’t. He’s in heroics mainly for himself, for rank, and status, and he also cares much more about destroying the villains in front of him rather than saving people. However, All Might cannot notice Endeavor’s toxicity, because questioning Endeavor would mean questioning hero society, which All Might is not allowed to do because he is the pillar supporting all of it. 

All Might is at times, either oblivious or entirely passive to the bad parts of hero society. He never makes any attempts to reform it because he is too busy supporting the whole of it. 

Which is why I said once again, there are people that All Might cannot rehabilitate and cannot save. Even though All Might knows exactly what kind of person All for One is, and he can only imagine how horrible Shigaraki’s been treated by him all his life, he lets himself be stopped by Gran Torino’s words. Shigaraki cannot be rehabilitated, he is only a crimminal to be put down because that is how hero society works.

All Might in choosing to become a symbol of strength above all else, ends up fostering some extremely unhealthy ideas within the society he is trying to protect. Rather than promoting cooperation and rehabilitation, he’s become a symbol of being so absolutely strong that you’ll never lose. One of the injustices in society, quirk prejudice, the fact that strong, flashy, violent quirks are valued over quirks that are not immediately and apparently useful but might be better for cooperation or teamwork is an attitude that All Might himself has a hand in promoting just by always relying on his strength. 

All Might’s complete and utter inability to show any weakness or even admit his own weakness was more damaging ultimately in the long run. Just like his own body, All Might chooses to keep trying to be a hero even though he knows it’s too broken and it’s not working any more, rather than give up and try something new. All Might will keep continuing to fight in a broken body to the brink of his own death, because he cannot simply ask for help. 

All Might dehumanizes himself for the sake of the system. To exist as a symbol means that he has no human weaknesses or emotions that the public knows about. But once again, that just pushes a dehumanizing system. Look at the type of people that All Might inspires. 

People like Endeavor and Bakugo don’t see someone who is always trying their best to save others in All Might, they see his strength. In All Might believing that society has to rest entirely on one person’s shoulders, he’s also pushing forward what is a toxic and unhealthy mentality, that encourages people to value physical strength above all else and to believe you have to accomplish everything on your own and stand at number one. Individualism is not a bad thing, but in hero society it’s been repeatedly shown to be those who pursue individual strength above all else forget the role of heroes is to save other people.

Bakugo can look at All Might and see a hero violently beating bad guys into submission and never losing, and ironically his attitude which is the exact opposite of Toshinori’s personality that he needs to trample over the weak to get ahead was inspired by the image of All Might himself that he saw. 

And All Might himself never really confronts with these flaws. He never seems to realize what kind of person Endeavor is, or what he’s done. That by pushing Bakugo towards Endeavor, he’s once again setting up the wrong kind of exmaple. Bakugo should learn that there’s more to being a hero than just defeating bad guys or being the strongest, but All Might himself doesn’t seem to realize that a lot of heroes think that way because the hero system is an absolute good in his mind. 

Which is why what the story needs is not for Midoriya to become exactly like All Might, but rather for Midoriya to surpass him and become capable fo what All Might wasn’t able to do which is realize the flaws around him and the people who aren’t getting saved and try to fix them and help them. The “symbol of peace” plan did not work, and what’s needed is something different and new, rather than just attempting to find a second symbol of peace to replace him. 

[with-pryde]

spot the difference:  excalibur kitty pryde v. evolution kitty pryde

𝙴𝚇𝙲𝙰𝙻𝙸𝙱𝚄𝚁:

academics.  in junior high (so grades 7-9, approx. ages 12-14), she was enrolled in college courses and was so ahead of her peers that she barely had anything to do with them, and rarely ever saw them.  like a lot of gifted kids, she sees herself as “better” than her peers and she can be quick to alienate kids her own age, and isn’t entirely sure how to socialise with them.  she got off on the wrong foot with the new mutants even before getting put on their team by calling them babies, despite the fact that some of them were older than she was.  problem was, she had more experience and was smarter, thus, age didn’t factor into her assessment.

the two exceptions to this rule are her two roommates, illyana and rachel, but it should be noted that, as roommates, both spent a lot of time with her to break these barriers.  and both had such horrific childhoods, illyana in limbo and rachel as a hound in the future, that they were forced to grow up and mature faster than kids their age.  and, thus, like kitty, they both also don’t really have much of a connection / fit in well with their peers (unless they work at it), so they’re more exception cases than the norm for kitty re: friends her age (though rachel IS maybe a few years older than her anyway).

aggression.  as noted above, kitty had very little to do with her peers and, after joining the x-men at 13 (and a half), her main influences were those she served on the team with (namely ororo, colossus, kurt, logan and the professor, with scott and psylocke also featuring).  of those, she forged strong bonds with kurt, logan and ororo, but she takes after wolverine a lot, even using his phrase bub when in a bad mood.  she’s pretty quick to resort to violence, though she’s of course mindful of who she’s up against.  the goal is to hurt, not kill (though when she’s mad she often thinks about how good it would be to kill them).  granted, she doesn’t understand wolverine’s “berserker rages”, and isn’t much like that, until she joins excalibur and Sees Some ShitTM that makes her understand what whole consuming hate and rage feels like. 

also worth noting during this time she’s dealing with a lot, including loss of those who were like family and chronic pain, but even so she has a pretty short fuse and will punch you in the face.  or, in the case of a friend, will have something smart and sarcastic to say.  also kitty is very much the type of person where, if she’s mad, she’s mad at the whole world and will unduly take her anger out on people who aren’t even remotely responsible for her misery.  she gets better about not yelling when she lashes out (she mostly drops that by excalibur), but she still lashes out with mean / sour comments or gets very snappish and snarly.

authority.  again, like logan, she doesn’t always take kindly to authority.  granted, she does tend to like her teachers and likes to receive praise from them, but she will also yell at the authority figures in her life without batting an eye.  she will also go against their wishes, too, like facing threats on her own to prove she belongs on the x-men main team instead of the new mutants.

colour palate.  she loves colours, mostly jewel tones and saturated colours.  blues and hot pinks and creams.  when she wears her cream sweaters, however, she’ll accent it with colours like red elsewhere.  while she used to wear the most eye-catching bedazzled outfits, she’s mainly toned it back to a bright splash of colour in her outfit, usually her shirt.  her clothes also favour comfort over style and attraction, and the one time she tries skinny jeans she hates them.

computing.  she’s a computing genius and sometimes jokingly calls herself the goddess of computers, with every right.  she especially excels at hardware, and can make a stunning array of gadgets, including a handheld non-telepathic cerebro.  she can also programme, however, one of her best friends, doug ramsey, a mutant gifted with an ability in language (including machine languages), he could often take her most mediocre efforts and make it work amazingly well and, often, handled a lot of the code and programming.  they did work together and she learned a lot from him.... but she also relied on him a lot, too, and so when it comes to software and programming, she’s not as strong as her evo counterpart for it.  

confidence.  in the toilet.  again, because she has little contact with kids her age and looks down on those her age, kitty pryde tends to crush on older people who are out of her league age-wise.  they don’t really pay attention to her, at least, not in a romantic way (as it should be), but she tends to take this as rejection of who she is.  her roommates, illyana and rachel, too, are very good looking and tend to get a lot of attention that she doesn’t, and so kitty goes through her younger years believing she’s not very attractive.  she’s also incredibly self-critical and just.  doesn’t have much self-confidence outside of her ability to beat people up.

cussing.  she doesn’t outright cuss, but instead uses words like flamin’ and devil.  it doesn’t sound bad nowadays, but i’d say it’s like the equivalent of crap, and she’s constantly reprimanded for her inappropriate language when she uses these terms.

demeanour.  when she first arrives to the x-men, she’s bubbly and cheerful, if a little introverted.  by the time excalibur rolls around, she’s travelled to space, across galaxies, faced gods and aliens and her worst fears ten times over.  excalibur forms, in large part, because the x-men are dead.  she also has no real way of dealing with and working through all the trauma.  as such, she’s more serious when excalibur rolls around or, at least, knows when to get serious.  she’s still quippy but more measured and, again, she has a short fuse, a problem that’s only exacerbated by sharing a small living space with the whole the excalibur team.

music taste.  kitty absolutely had her boy-band phase, and loved dazzler (sidenote, it’s because of dazzler she wanted to wear the roller skates in her first costume) however, by excalibur, she’s refining her taste.  she still likes music she can dance to, however, her favourite band, cat’s laughing, is one whose lead singer is also kitty’s favourite writer.  it’s more refined, with good lyrics and writing.  think kind of like hozier lyrics but with more of a danceable beat.  she also likes big band music and jazz from her dancing days, music that’s old for her even then.  the key is danceability, though.

personal style.  while she absolutely detests “preppies”, kitty pryde dresses like one when she leaves the house, with collared shirts under sweaters and full on suits being things she wears out.  often, she’ll pair her outfit with her black leather jacket, a prized possession, which often lends a bit of toughness to her otherwise preppy look.

at home, it’s usually it’s loose sweaters / shirts and leggings with her hair restrained in a ponytail, especially when she’s working on something.  she also wears glasses when tinkering.  as mentioned above, she always has a splash of colour somewhere, which applies to at home as equally as going out.

because this is the 80s-90s, when she dresses up (and even her costume), the outfit usually features poofy sleeves and/or very pointed and defined shoulder pads.

relationships.  as colossus and pete wisdom are not canon here, she hasn’t had a canon relationship, which also feeds into her insecurities and low self-confidence.  again, because she tends to have eyes for older guys and gals, relationships rarely pan out for her.  occasionally, however, someone her age catches her interest (in canon, part of her loved doug ramsey, for instance, because although he was her age, he, no pun intended, spoke her language) but, usually, she needs to be forced to see people her age.  like with larry, she was told by a teacher to dance with him at a school dance and only then did she find out he was pretty nice (that ended badly but the Concept applies).

teamwork.  kitty tends to do her own thing.  she can and does operate as part of a team, but she doesn’t always coordinate well with them.  she definitely starts out as more of a team player because she’s not equipped to handle situations on her own, and because she’s scared, but as she receives more training and her confidence in her abilities increases, she often thinks she can handle it on her own and grows more self-reliant.  it makes her more capable and better at devising plans, but sometimes it means she bites off more than she can chew.  as well, if she thinks she has something to prove, she’ll try and tough it out alone.

training.  she’s been possessed trained into a killer ninja by a master with a bone to pick with wolverine in a very traumatic milestone.  she hates to think about it, but the training did remain even when the “demon” did not.  she’s incredibly deadly, though she still hasn’t added the swords to her repertoire.  also, during the events of excalibur, her default state is to be phased, making her extremely difficult to target (barring her powers malfunctioning for whatever reason).

𝙴𝚅𝙾𝙻𝚄𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽:

academics.  kitty is taking advanced and college level classes and graduates a year early, however, unlike her excalibur counterpart, she’s not so far beyond her peers that she never sees or interacts with them.  at most she’s a year or two younger than those in her class and, in this verse, all of the x-men are teenagers meaning she spends a lot more time with people her age and is generally more social and more sociable.

aggression.  again, she’s got more social skills.  this translates to an increased understanding of those around her and her first tactic is to try to mediate and preserve social cohesion.  like her counterpart, she can and will stand up and say something if needed, and she will get into fights if needed, but it’s usually to protect a friend rather than herself and when there are no other routes for compromise (like when duncan takes away scott’s glasses and tries to get him kicked out of school, she shows up ready to brawl but, also, when duncan and his pals leave, she lets them, without pushing for a fight).  

while sometimes sarcastic, she’s also less sharp with her sarcasm.  for her, it’s less about hurting the other person and more about highlighting the situation whereas, in excalibur, her words hit much harder.  part of this, i think, is her social cohesion with her team; she’s more mindful of how her words can hurt and, therefore, doesn’t throw them around as quick or to be mean.  she also knows how to contain her anger better; she may be annoyed and grumbly, but she won’t be yelling at someone who isn’t responsible, only maybe venting if they’re willing to lend a listening ear.

authority.  again, like her excalibur counterpart, she thrives on praise from her teachers and authority figures in her life.  unlike her excalibur counterpart, she’s much less likely to go against them and usually only does when it’s a friend on the line.

colour palate.  kitty also favours colours here, but she wears a lot of pastels that her excalibur counterpart doesn’t really.  pastel pink, sherbert orange, pale lavender.  she does also wear some jewel tones (green, burgundy and purple), but her go-tos are the pastels.

computing.  she favours software to hardware, unlike her excalibur counterpart.  she has no doug ramsey to help in this show, so she has to develop and write her software on her own.  hardware-wise she’s not inept, training with the x-men gives her a strong base with it, but it’s not something she nurtures.  because she grows up in a more typical school setting, she still wants to have a sort of normal life, and working on hardware just isn’t it.  software is easier and, as she takes a computer class, she also meets people who are into it and she can connect to over the interest, namely in risty (mystique in disguise, but obviously she doesn’t know that) and arcade (yes, that arcade, though the show changed him considerably).

confidence.  because kitty tends to like guys (yes, guys, i’ll get into the heteronormativity piece in the relationships section, but that’s deliberate wording here) her own age and they’ve liked her back and she doesn’t have the same superiority complex (resulting in looking to older people outside her league and facing their rejection), kitty in evo has way more confidence than her comic counterpart.  of course, like any high school girl she has things she hates and she does find flaws in the mirror but, on the whole, she doesn’t feel ugly or less than compared to the other x-men the same way her comic counterpart does.  (if she does feel inept next to them, it’s mainly due to her inexperience, though that inspires her to do better and eventually goes away as she gets more settled into the life of being an x-man).

cussing.  no cussing.  heckin is about as bad as she gets.  granted, as she grows up she starts cursing more but, during her years in canon her language is pretty tame.  because this is the 90s / early 00s, she does say lame a lot which, while not a cuss word, isn’t good to say, but for different reasons (ableist and rude), but that’s a different thing.

demeanour.  she hasn’t quite had the same level of traumatic experiences as her excalibur counterpart and, moreover, they’re way more spaced out than they are in the comics so she’s pretty bubbly and upbeat throughout most of high school.  this changes a bit with the emergence of mutants and when the world hates them, she’ll sometimes get down about it, but, on the whole, her world tends to look up.  like her excalibur counterpart, things do eventually take a turn for the dark and in future verses she’s more measured and has lost some of this shine, but she definitely is upbeat for longer.  

music taste.  very, very pop heavy.  boy bands, britney spears, taylor swift, katy perry etc.  she’s not a jus.tin bie.ber fan but that’s about it in terms of restrictions.  as she gets older she branches out more, including into electroswing, but she’s more of a pop girl at heart.

personal style.  again, she tends to dress “preppier”, but 90s/00s style: so a collared shirt except it shows her midriff or capris and a cardigan but the shirt under her cardigan shows her midriff.  lots of midriff outfits (even her school dance dress was two pieces and showed some stomach) and collars (her costume even has like that business shirt collar thing going on).  she tends to favour comfort, too, but also pairs it with some style (like, platform sandals: comfy but also very in).  also plastic jewellery, chokers, etc.

relationships.  as she goes to school and has a lot of contact with her peers, she actually crushes on and dates people her own age in this show (and we love to see it).  granted, she kind of lets a lot of things slide in her first relationship that aren’t cool, something which informs her relationships going forward (in that, she realises they weren’t okay and isn’t going to take it in future ones), and her first relationship is very, no pun intended, rocky, with break ups and get togethers galore but.....it’s with someone her own age which, have i said how much we love to see it?  because kitty is in school in the 90s/00s, and felt the pressure to try and fit in for longer, she absolutely internalised some heteronormativity (in the comics, too, but she sheds that faster after leaving school so young and joining the x-men), and, while she looks at women, it’s very much in a “wow i love that outfit on her” or “wow how’d she get to look so pretty, i gotta ask for tips” way, and it takes her time to connect this to an interest in women, too so, generally, for her canon / high school years, she only really looks to guys/male presenting peers in a romantic way (or, that she connects to as romantic).

teamwork.  finally, she’s better about working in a team here, too.  partially because she doesn’t have the skills to be completely on her own (no ninja training til post canon) and partially because her team is all the same age and her friends both at school and at home, she’s more used to looking to them for support, especially scott.  something happens and her first instinct is to go to him and get his take on it.  sometimes she’ll still act on her own but, barring a time crunch or someone really instantly in danger, she favours waiting for the team.

[real-jaune-isms]

RWBY Volume 7 Chapter 13 (Finale) Rundown

It’s been a month or two since the finale aired, and honestly I needed that time to organize my thoughts on it and what I think may happen next. And I was busy becoming an art major. That too. Oh, and a little thing called COVID-19.

So our season finale begins with one of the fights we had most been looking forward to, JNR and Oscar vs Neo. Jaune wants to avoid a fight and tells her to surrender since she’s outnumbered, but Neo is too confident in her capabilities and just draws her parasol blade. So Nora and Ren start shooting at her to no effect and rush in for melee combat. Also ineffective at first, she just dodges and blocks and counters. Even Ren’s new grapple line blades do next to nothing, she just does a split to dodge under his flying kick. Oscar runs in to attack with his cane, but she counters and flips him into the air with the lamp getting knocked off his belt and being in the air between them. Both thrust their sticks to try and catch it, but Oscar gets it first and sticks his landing. Neo just starts slashing at him as he backs away, and Jaune steps between them to repel her with his shield’s gravity Dust burst. One thing you notice pretty quickly about the fight is how casually Neo seems to be taking it, taunting her opponents the whole time by making faces and being theatrical with her every move. It’s maddening, but it’s the attitude we came to expect from her after Volumes 2 and 3. Teamwork seems the best move, so Nora launches Ren through the air at the ice cream demon while Oscar holds her legs so she can’t move out of the way. Too bad her Semblance is still pretty OP and Ren just shatters an apparently fake Neo. They check down the corridors for any sign of her but instead see Atlesian soldiers who chase after them on Ironwood’s orders.

Back to the battle of the seasons, Penny flies at Cinder with a high speed punch that sends her back into the hallway but she just catches it and uses her Grimm arm to toss her around a bit. Winter attacks with a flock of tiny Nevermore summons before charging in herself with a sword slash, though both do little to phase the nimble Maiden. She summons two glass swords of her own to fight back, and seems to have the advantage. She even takes the time to lecture Winter on how Atlas’s elite hoard so much power in the hopes of maintaining it forever, and how that just starves the rest of the world. It seems like she really means it once starved her, and she refuses to starve again. Some hints of what may have been her tragic backstory here, which I would be very interested to learn in greater detail even if it absolutely won’t redeem her character from the cruel and insane devil she is. I just want to see how she got to this point, where this lust for power came from. It’s certainly ironic that she’s complaining about other people hoarding power when she’s going around stealing Maiden powers all for herself when those were literally made to be divided among four people. Penny re-enters the fight with her swords on strings, but Cinder’s reflexes are apparently on the level of Ultra Instinct since she’s able to dodge and block all her spinning blades AS WELL as Winter’s attacks once she draws her second sword and joins in again. The two are at least able to avoid getting hit in return, but the whole is just going nowhere fast even if they’re blocking her way back into Fria’s room. So Cinder lashes out and flies at them with all her might, grabbing them both by the neck and rocketing through the other wall of the medical room... to reveal this secret room was not in a subbasement as we may have assumed but the top floor of a skyscraper. Now they’re all in the open air and Winter is the odd one out since... y’know, she can’t fly. She doesn’t make things better for herself by stabbing Cinder’s hand and making her drop the Specialist. With only one person to worry about now, Cinder tosses Penny away and kicks a flaming sword her way. Penny catches it, but didn’t expect it to explode and knock her back some more. The two have a floating standoff with Cinder becoming increasingly frustrated and calling Penny a toy, as if she’s Tom Hanks in 1995. But her attention is brought elsewhere as she’s hit by a blast of ice. In one of the most badass sights this Volume has offered, Winter is flying on the back of a summoned Manticore. The 2v1 fight resumes in this airborne setting, and Cinder has a harder time dodging and countering their speedy strikes while also focusing her powers on staying in flight. But when she and Winter charge at each other, her sword is unfortunately able to cut through the summon and leave Winter in a freefall. As if to add vindictive insult to injury, she also shoots a fireball at the Schnee that takes down her Aura. Satisfied with her work, Cinder flies back to the building while Penny is left with the choice of following her and dutifully protecting the Maiden powers or saving Winter. She makes the right choice, and saves her friend. Winter thinks she should have just been left to die, that she matters less than the mission. But Penny disagrees.

Back with JNRO, they’re still running from the Atlas soldiers. Whatever scuffle Oscar had with Neo before the others came along is now wearing on him and he begins to fall behind. In all the rushing through the labyrinth of hallways, he gets separated from the group. Just as he’s lost hope of rejoining the others and the guards are just around the corner, the farmboi gets pulled into an empty room and kept quiet via a hand over his mouth by... Nora? A very silent and smiling Nora... A Nora who suddenly lunges at him with a lace parasol... okay this is clearly not Nora. This is clearly Neo in a very cruel and deceptive disguise, as made clear by her eyes changing to the usual pink and brown when Oscar fortunately dodges out of the way of her attack and back into the hallway. Worse still, she swiped the Lamp from him in the heat of the moment, and the little devil makes a break for it. Jaune is looking for Oscar, but finds Neora instead, and she just dodges around him and springboards off his shield. Then... things get rough. She runs into Ren next... while looking like Nora. He still shoots at her as she barrels towards him but she just blocks with her parasol as she is want to do. When he meets her halfway and takes a jumping slash at her... she twists the knife in; changing her eyes back from her own determined mismatched pink and brown to Nora’s scared and confused turquoise. In that split second of seeing his beloved’s face staring at him with such fear, Ren hesitates and stops the attack, so she hits him in the face and trips him to the floor before running away some more. Jaune is still on her tail and runs past his dazed and shellshocked teammate. When he rounds the corner Neo had just headed down however, he only finds more Atlas soldiers firing at him. The real Nora comes running from gods know where and the three head back the way they came. Nora checks over her shoulder to see if they’re still being followed, but what’s more interesting is that Ren can be seen crying as he brings up the rear. Obviously he’s quite upset with how easily Neo could get him to hesitate just by posing as Nora and playing on his feelings for her. She probably didn’t realize just how complicated the Renora relationship is, but it worked perfectly in her favor. Ren’s tried to set aside his feelings but they’ve now dramatically affected his capacity to do his job. Like it or not, he HAS to talk about it or else everything is gonna implode. And of course, when we cut to see the armored soldiers chasing our heroes there’s also a more formally uniformed female officer in the back who goes sauntering off in the other direction. That was a very speedy costume change, you little sugar gremlin. Anyway, she got away with the Lamp. That’s no good.

What’s even less good is that we cut back to a temporarily black screen and the harsh wrenching sound of tearing metal. Turns out its the POV of Fria as she blinks back into consciousness and sees the satisfied face of Cinder as she starts a monologue about how the elder woman’s time is up. Fria admits she has been waiting for a good long while, but she can’t remember what or whom for. Cinder confidently informs her it was for this very moment. For her~ But as she goes for the Reverse Flash kill with her Grimm hand, the Winter Maiden shows off one of the reasons she’s survived this long. A good strong grip on Cinder’s wrist stopping her before she can make contact and keeping the Fall Maiden from getting any further. The hungry wolf won’t be gobbling up Granny tonight, deary. Faced with the tired but steadfast face of a woman who has likely lived and fought several times longer than Cinder has been alive, accented by the blue flame of her Maiden magic, the evil woman pulls back. But she’s persistent, and tries a glass dagger instead. That goes even worse, as a pulse of magic sends her flying backwards. With more magic on display than any Maiden we’ve seen before, Fria summons a cyclone of pure cold air and ice around herself and starts floating in the middle of it. Cinder’s Grimm fingers start to freeze (since they don’t have Aura like the rest of her body and thus get no protection from the cold, thank you for setting that concept up in episode 3 Weiss!) so she has to back away further. That becomes a full temporary retreat out of the room when the coldnado sends a pod door at her and the intensity only keeps increasing. Much like Professor Xavier in Logan, Fria is already very old and isn’t in the most stable state of mind anymore, so she loses control of the tempest and it busts a hole in the roof. Penny and Winter land a short distance away and marvel at the majestic chaos. Winter claims this is the power of a fully realized Maiden, which makes me wonder if Raven was able to do something similar or if it takes decades to unlock this kind of mastery. Winter tries to get in closer and reach Fria, but the blizzard winds are enough to destroy the material of her glove and leave her fingers red with chill. Something has to be done, but after the beating she took she’s in no shape to do it. So Penny jumps in instead, much to Winter’s dismay.

Continuing the hopscotch course of dismal vibes, we go back to JNRO as they’re hiding in the training room and Oscar is apologizing for having lost the lamp. Jaune tries to reassure him, but Ren is even more pessimistic. He doesn’t think they were ready to even become Huntsmen and Huntresses which is just so painful to hear. Nora of course disagrees, but Ren has a harsh rebuttal: if they’re ready and capable, then why don’t they have any of the relic they’re supposed to be protecting? Why haven’t they succeeded in their most important mission? Oscar seems even more hurt by this reminder, and Jaune puts on his serious leader voice to tell Ren that’s enough. I would half agree with Ren, and unfortunately its a half that blames him. It’s not that the team wasn’t ready for this, it’s that HE wasn’t EMOTIONALLY ready for this. Like I said before, Neo took advantage of his emotional state to make him hesitate and overwhelm him.  Their moping is interrupted by Pietro and Maria chiming in over their Scrolls. Was there any doubt that a genius like Dr. Polendina would be able to undo Ironwood’s communication shutdown?? We see Yang and Blake for the first time this episode as they shoot at Atlas robots and head for an airship, one which Maria is getting ready to pilot as their getaway vehicle. Nora informs her of their current hiding place, but the soldiers happen to close in at that moment and the three hide behind Jaune’s hard-light extended shield... wait. Three?? OH NO WE LOST THE BABY!!!! It would seem Oscar ran off on his own to try and fix things, and he insists they leave without him.

Back to the impending ice age, Penny is slowly making her way through the blizzard. Her foot gets frozen to the ground, but she hits the boot jets and it busts out again. There in the eye of the storm she finds Fria, and the android approaches carefully before gently touching her ankle to get her attention. The fire in the old lady’s eye dies down and she notices Penny. Penny is a of course a sweet and thoughtful girl and rather than demanding Fria stop the storm she just asks if she’s okay. Fria most certainly does not seem to feel okay, again mentioning that she had a job to do. She clarifies that she was supposed to protect the power of the Winter Maiden until the time came for her to pass them on. Penny notices the machines are broken and buried in a wall of ice, so the more safe transfer method is no longer possible. Fria laments that she may have taken longer to be ready for passing the powers along than she should have, but promises she’s ready now. She knows that means dying, that’s one thing she still remembers quite well. The elderly Maiden quiets the cyclone and floats down to collapse in Penny’s arms. Not gone yet, just weary, and hoping to learn the name of the sweet young lady who’s helping her like this. Penny gives her name, and now Fria asks the million lien question: Since Penny is suddenly showing up now after Fria’s only interactions being with Winter for so long... does that mean Penny is the One? The poor little android doesn’t know what to say to that, and for damn good reason. She knows Winter is supposed to be the one to get the Maiden powers, but she also knows Winter would use those powers to obey Ironwood’s cruel plans for Atlas and Mantle. If she takes the powers, she can make sure that doesn’t happen AND that they don’t fall into Cinder’s hands. But that would also mean betraying her boss and her orders, betraying her friend Winter. So what is she gonna do, what she’s been told to do or what she feels is right? This is the culmination of the struggle she’s been wrestling with the entire volume, nay her character’s entire existence! She is a creation of Atlas, but she is also a girl with a heart and soul of her own. Such a tragic clash of motivations! 

Speaking of motivations clashing, we cut down to Ironwood in the Atlas vault. He hears the hum of the elevator approaching and assumes it’s Winter coming to report Fria’s demise and her own acquisition of the Winter Maiden powers, and thus begins apologizing for making her perform such a morally dubious act. Instead he finds Oscar, posing rather seriously with Ozpin’s his cane and fixing James with his best look of fed up disapproval. With such a formal air about him, James has every reason to suspect Oz is back at the helm and asks which of the two he has the pleasure of addressing. It’s just Oscar though, but Oscar is plenty on his own. James thankfully doesn’t yet know that Oscar has lost the Lamp and thinks he just chose not to bring it down here with him, acknowledging that he isn’t very trustworthy right now. Oscar is a farmer to his very roots and wants to help the trust between our heroes and the Atlas forces regrow. He believes they can all come together again. But James is stuck in a guarded state of mind and thinks Oscar came to fight for his cause. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. Oscar admits that he feels scared, and whenever he does he holds the cane and it helps calm him down, likely due to its significance to those who came before him. But he puts the cane away as a sign that he will face his fear without that aid, that he will be brave. James just thinks that’s another dig at him, that Oscar is calling him scared. Oscar reminds him that EVERYONE is scared right now, for good reason, and that fear is not something to be ashamed of, that it just gives us a chance to show the content of our character by how we handle the fear. James just snaps at him, says that it’s easy for Oscar to spout such platitudes when he doesn’t have to make life changing decisions for the sake of a Kingdom. As he starts circling around the poor farmboi and backing him towards a dead end ledge, he insists that no matter what labels they put on him he was RIGHT. He was right about what would happen if he opened his heart and trusted others, that all his worst fears came true because he went against his gut and did what the kids told him he should. Except he is absolutely NOT right. Things were going far more smoothly for him once he started trusting Robyn and told her and the council about the trouble he had to deal with, and despite the obviously concerning setback of Watts shutting down Mantle’s heat they handled that situation with very little trouble. It was only once Cinder popped in to sew doubt and paranoia back into his mind that it all spiraled out of control, and that was entirely his fault. If Cinder hadn’t stepped in, they might have found the Seer in Watts’ bag and killed it immediately instead of it interrupting a tense conversation. Robyn now knowing what the Tower is for would mean construction could resume without shipments getting stolen, and perhaps they could have negotiated a way to divide up the materials so the wall could get fixed too. Just spit balling here, what could have been. But no, it all went belly up and Jimmy is only fanning the flames. Oscar tries to remind him that his current plan of abandoning Mantle will be betraying an entire city of thousands to die alone in the cold, but James is having none of it. It’s an excellent philosophical puzzle to try and work through, but the way he sees it none of that matters compared to preventing Salem’s victory. He thinks he’s the only one who can see the big picture, who is making his moves with the intention of changing the final result no matter the cost.

But that’s what’s so dangerous about that mindset. People he writes off as small minded and soft, like Robyn, the council, and even Oscar (possibly by extension even Ozpin)... they’re the good people who think first and foremost about preventing tragedy and loss in the moment, who refuse to budge on their morals of protecting the innocent and will never trade lives. It’s the same kind of difference seen in Superman vs the Elite. Team RWBY and their friends don’t believe in necessary sacrifices for the greater good, but Ironwood has become singlemindedly focused on stopping Salem, likely out of the guilt and humiliation of being so helpless against her back in Volume 3. This is a chance to reclaim his honor, and he thinks of little else. That’s how I see it anyway. Oscar calls James out, saying this mindset makes him just as dangerous as Salem herself. But I guess that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and he insists Oscar refer to him as General. Only his friends may call him James, and it seems our good good boy has lost that status. Not that he seems to expect Oscar will have much chance to show him that due respect any time soon, because he pulls out his pistol and SHOOTS THE INNOCENT FOURTEEN YEAR OLD BOY OFF A LEDGE TO FALL TO HIS DEATH!!!! Ironwood has officially made the transition from misguided good guy to full on villain.

As if there wasn’t enough tension and bad news, we go back to Penny who is still unsure how to answer Fria’s question. What is the right choice to make, the best choice for everyone’s sake? She has no idea. But she had better decide fast, because Cinder crashes through the ice wall and screeches that the powers belong to none but her. Unfortunately for our vicious villain, her Gum Gum stretchy arm comes with a weakness to blades and gets sliced off by a suddenly appearing Winter. Cinder reacts with the appropriate amount of bloody terror and pain that you would expect of someone conscious for an amputation. Winter surveys the room and realizes Fria isn’t long for this world so time is of the essence, but doesn’t have much longer to ponder that before Cinder enters a bloodlust rage. See, apparently whatever monster makeover Salem gave her in the wake of Volume 3 included the ability to regrow her Grimm limb, though it sounds like the process is terribly painful for her and may not have even been something she was expecting to have happen. Regardless, she wants revenge and starts lashing out by summoning blade after blade to throw at Winter. The Specialist manages to block most of them and they turn to dust on impact, but it’s a brutal onslaught that she has to face without any Aura, and one cuts her left arm enough to draw blood, though since it’s burning glass it also seems to cauterize the wound immediately. Let me take another moment to praise the talents of Jessica Nigri. This scene in particular required her to do a lot of screaming and screeching as Cinder, and that cannot be easy on the throat. So the fact that she pulls off those deep dark emotions so well is worthy of respect and sympathy in equal measure. Okay, back to the action. Fria lies on the floor and closes her eyes, passing away peacefully all things considered. Penny holds her hand in her final moments, and a blue glow passes from elder to younger woman. We go back to Oscar for a moment or two, but I’ll tackle his last couple scenes in bulk in just a minute. Winter is getting tossed around, and her hair has been pulled free of its bun to add to her disheveled look... and our overwhelming thirst for her. Battle battered or not, she’s looking like a real snack with her hair down. Cinder stalks toward her to continue the beating and possibly deal the killing blow, but is distracted by a snowflake flying past her face. Well that’s interesting... And then it becomes many snowflakes, a veritable flurry kicking up. She turns around with some legit fear and concern on her face, and her worries are confirmed. Penny’s eyes glow and flare up with a fierce green fire as she stands resolute as the new Winter Maiden. She seems ready to use her new powers to fight Cinder despite only just getting them, and clearly has some manner of control already if she was able to start generating snow already. And this does settle another matter of fan speculation, if she qualifies as a candidate for the powers. Welp, now we know. According to the guidelines set by Oz’s bestowing of the original powers and how he explains their transfer process back in Volume 3, you just have to be a young woman below a certain age (or else they probably would have given Amber’s power to Glynda) and have a soul to receive the power from the last user’s. I guess Penny’s blue fairy has come and said she is a real girl in all the ways that count. Her soul is unique and separate from her dad’s, even though he used his old man aura to create her. And she does in fact have a soul and is considered a legit person even though she’s got nuts and bolts instead of squishy guts. Cinder is of course outraged that this “toy” was bestowed the powers she came all this way to steal, and gets ready to fight her, but is distracted by Weiss entering the upper observation room and yelling her sister’s name in concern and fear. Cinder probably has a confused and annoyed moment of “I thought I killed you back at Haven...” She gets ready to kill the little Schnee brat for piling on further interruptions to her plan, but that too goes out the window when she notices Ruby had accompanied her partner down to find their Atlesian allies, and likewise Ruby notices her. Ruby does not hesitate for a second and without needing any time to get into the right head-space blasts off a wave of Silver Eyed energy to essentially Solar Flare the whole room.

Now we can go back to Oscar and his dramatic descent. The shot from Ironwood took out his Aura, and he seems like he’s resigned himself to death once he hits the bottom of this pit. As he closes his eyes, they glow for a moment and he hears a voice that’s been absent the entire Volume. Ozpin. He only says Oscar’s name, or at least that’s all we hear, but the boi seems to regain his determination and tries to reach his cane again. He holds it with both hands, extends it, then holds down the lever on the side. Guess a single squeeze was all it took to pop out the cane part under normal circumstances... But now the gears inside the hilt start really turning, and glowing, and it becomes a flashlight as well as a cane. Well, that’s all that seems to happen at first. With a spin and a jab, Oscar thrusts the tip of the cane downward just as he reaches the bottom of the pit. There’s a momentary flash of green lightning around him then... fade to black.

And now we come to what seems to be the epilogue/wrap up of the episode and the Volume itself. And it begins how the show began, with a voice over narration. Not from Salem though, it’s our first motivational speech from Ozpin in a year. He talks about how fear is the only feeling in this world that is universal across every living thing, yet for how common it is we constantly underestimate how powerful it can be. We experience the fear of making close connections and growing to care for others, because that can lead to a loss which we also fear. We fear failure a great deal, I know I definitely do. And those fears only get stronger the more people depend on us to help them with the decisions we make. But Ozpin reminds us that fear itself is not something to worry about or even, dare I say it, fear. The real concern is how we act when we are afraid, who we become. Can we be proud of that version of ourselves, forgive them for what they do under duress? Will you understand why they felt the need to do the things they did? Will you even recognize them as the same person you normally strive to be, or will you look in the mirror and see the enemy you should have feared from the very start? We all find the answer to that eventually.

Now on to what actually happens in these last few scenes, the fitting content to go with Ozpin’s speech. Oscar is falling through the sky towards the ground waaaaay down in Mantle. Guess his attack with the can was strong enough to bust a hole in the bottom of Atlas... straight into the Vault chamber... hope nobody else finds that. Back in the icy former hospital room, Ruby falls to her knees from the exhaustion of using her Silver Eyes. She and Weiss notice a freshly burned hole in the ceiling, as Cinder apparently avoided getting damaged by the SEW blast and escaped. Weiss rushes to check on Winter and see how badly she’s hurt, but all her sister has for her is an accusation. She still doesn’t know what Team RWBY did to get a warrant for their arrests, but she knows it was the catalyst for all of this. Meanwhile Ruby looks to see how Penny is doing, and the ginger girl’s eyes lose their fire as she meets her friend’s gaze, only to gain regret and fear as she turns back around to kneel by Fria’s side. The Winter Maiden is dead, long live the Winter Maiden. But Penny can only mourn the loss of a good person’s life, she takes no satisfaction in being the one to carry on her legacy. Winter actually does reassure her a bit, saying that some part of Fria will always live on in Penny now. We cut down to the blood stained tundra as Atlas police arrive to arrest Qrow and Robyn, who is only now regaining consciousness. Qrow puts up no fight, and it looks like neither will Robyn. Cinder is seen flying above Atlas Academy and screams with rage and hatred, even getting a bit of a dragon vibe in it by having fire erupt from her mouth. I was glad she was the one shown when Ozpin talked about fear of failure, because she did indeed fail. We don’t know how, but JNR make it to the airship pad and onto the getaway ship where the Bees and elderly people are waiting. They take off and of course question the meeting lacking the presence of Oscar and the Lamp, and JNR can only look sad in response. From one sad ship to another, we see Qrow and Robyn aboard a prison airship in cuffs, and Qrow is holding Clover’s bloodstained lucky badge. Despite the last interaction the three shared being a fight, Robyn shows sympathy to his mourning and puts a hand on his shoulders. Can’t wait to see if the two of them try to break out of jail next Volume~ As they fly up to the city in the sky backdropped by the eastern sunrise, a large dark cloud approaches from the west accented by flashes of red lightning. Back to Oscar, he clips the cane to his back and closes his eyes for a few seconds to concentrate and steel his composure. Back to the ice room again, Winter says the girls should surrender to Ironwood. Weiss is heartbroken, you can hear it in her voice, but she has to disobey her sister’s wishes, they simply cannot comply with his cruel plans. Winter seemed to expect that answer, and instead urges them to flee, but Weiss doesn’t want to do that either because it would mean leaving Winter behind while she’s so badly injured. Her big sister insists it simply isn’t like that, this is her giving them a head start before she calls for reinforcements to hunt them down. Weiss is disheartened, but reaffirms the lesson Winter had shared with her earlier in the Volume, they booth have to make decisions for the sake of their own futures that might take them down separating paths. The getaway ship arrives and hovers just outside the first hole Cinder had made in the wall, and Yang greets the group. She’s very relieved to see everyone is okay, but soon finds a lot more happened than she expected. Ruby affirms that they need to head out while they still can, and Weiss gives her sister one more glance before departing. Ruby and Penny also share a look, and Penny decides she will be leaving too. Guess she’s decided once and for all she won’t be helping Ironwood. Winter seems concerned by this development, but realizes she has no right to object or stop her after everything the two of them had talked about since the dinner party. On the airship everyone seems very dour and grim, and Penny looks at her own hand as if asking herself if she had the right to make the choices she did when she is just an Atlas robot. But Ruby and Weiss both lean on her shoulders to reassure her and make sure she knows they are happy she came with them and they believe she did the right thing. That seems to calm her down, and Pietro looks happy to see she has such good friends. On an Atlas rooftop, Cinder is quite satisfied to see Neo deliver the Lamp to her, and takes it without a single word or gratitude. Neo doesn’t like that, I guess even Roman would praise her for a job evilly done. She’s probably starting to realize Cinder is just using her to further her own plans. Speaking of unfortunate realizations, Ironwood gets a message from Winter that simply says “It’s gone”. We’re unsure if she means the Lamp or the Winter Maiden powers. Considering what her job was meant to be, it’s likely the latter. Ironwood takes that news poorly and screams with rage. I too screamed with rage, because we next see that Arthur Watts is actually still alive and just in a jail cell, nursing a black eye and smiling ominously at the mysterious black clouds we saw rolling in. 

Oscar seems to have been playing some Halo 3 recently, because he throws up a bubble shield to cushion his badass superhero landing on the ground. Not just any ground though, he seems to be within the crater where Atlas once was before Ozpin lifted it into the sky. The same crater that has apparently become the main Dust mines for the Kingdom. Perhaps next Volume will give us a closer look at just how awful these mines really are. But let’s address what Oscar has actually done here. He had no Aura after getting shot by Ironwood, so that was not his Semblance. That energy bubble he used to shield himself when busting through the bottom of the pit and cushioning his hitting the ground, that had to be Magic. He’s unlocking more of Oz’s old powers, the union of souls is progressing. But he’s still in control, Oscar is still there. He just has more of Ozpin’s memories and abilities now and used them to save himself, as if the old souls are merging into his existing one as opposed to his new soul fading away into the collective. Maybe the process will be different this time around? Regardless, Ozpin’s voice is back in his head and ready to apologize for everything he put him through. But all Oscar wants to hear right now is what their next step will be to save Atlas. As we cut back up to RWBY and friends flying away from the city, we see that it will indeed need saving very very soon. Transmissions are coming in over the radio of multiple incoming hostiles, to a degree that seems impossible to believe. Our view shifts to the dark storm itself, and a shape begins to emerge from the black and red. A GIANT. FLYING. GRIMM. WHALE! With hundreds of Nevermore, Manticores, and Sphinxes flying around it looking as big as flies by comparison. I have personally dubbed this species the Mobius, and this particular specimen has earned the nickname of Monstro. I can’t imagine there ever being more than one of this thing though, so Monstro will be the only one. He has wings, but what seems to keep him in the air is several large chunks of Gravity Dust embedded in his belly and on top of his head. We pan up over his massive glowing forehead to see the Queen herself riding into battle. Salem has come to Atlas, and she’s wearing a badass (and kind of sexy) new dress to celebrate the occasion. There are grey arm bands on the longer sleeves that look like they’re made of bones, complete with jagged spikes, and a new broach to be the centerpiece between exposed shoulders and a noticeably bigger boob window. The unique aesthetic is aided by more red lines down the curves of her figure. The words “step on me” easily come to my mind, but that may just say something about me in particular. Regardless, she smirks at the camera and it is clear she is here to fuck some shit up.

We’ll have to wait 6 months to see how our heroes deal with that though. Cannot wait. Oh, and it must be noted that the new song for the credits “Fear” is very good, and we can see that another song on the soundtrack called “Until the End” was actually written by Casey Lee Williams as opposed to her dad. Good for her!! If only I could remember which song it was...

[tisthenightofthewitch]

Ghost frontman Tobias Forge on the band’s 5th album, songwriting and what’s to come

In less than a decade, enigmatic rock band Ghost has earned a Grammy, released four albums, two EPs, a live album and its latest double-single, Seven Inches of Satanic Panic, but it has built and continuously expanded upon a deep backstory about the band members themselves — the “Nameless Ghouls.”

Each album cycle welcomes a brand new ringleader/singer, each portrayed by frontman Tobias Forge, who is the founder and sole songwriter of the band. The mythos of Ghost is now massively popular among many of its diehard fans.

Now that the Swedish group has wrapped the final North American leg of its highly extensive Ultimate Tour Named Death tour, they’re gearing up to put out their fifth album — a “heavy” one that Forge promises will be “seminal” in Ghost’s timeline.

So does that mean fans should expect to see a new frontman in the near future? Very likely, but not for a little while. For now, Forge, 38, still portrays Cardinal Copia, a charismatic and theatrical character who adds a tinge of humour to Ghost’s explosive two-hour set.

The Cardinal claimed the throne after the “death” of Forge’s Papa Emeritus III character in 2018. He was the first to break the tradition of Pope singers in the Ghost timeline, and it seems his run will soon come to an end. Or will it? We don’t actually know.

What we do know is that next March, the “Final Gig Named Death” is set to take place in Mexico City. It will wrap the heavy promotional cycle for the band’s latest album, Prequelle (2018) — which kicked off in 2018 with the Pale Tour Named Death.

Prequelle launched the Swedes into mainstream success with its first single, Rats, which spent seven weeks on top of the rock charts. The album also included the unexpected disco-inspired smash-hit, Dance Macabre

Ahead of the band’s show in Hamilton, Ont., on Oct. 17, Forge/Cardinal Copia spoke with Global News about Ghost’s newest singles, their live spectacle, progress on the upcoming fifth album, and why he doesn’t like to record with heavy metal producers.

Global News: You’ve outdone yourself on the Ultimate Tour Named Death with not only the beautiful stage setup, but the extensive setlist and detailed choreography. It’s very humorous too, yet you still want more. Is it even possible for you to top the current show?

Tobias Forge: I’m certain, yeah. [Laughs] But it’s hard to say that without sounding like I’m soiling the one that we’re currently doing. [Laughs] I am fairly certain that a lot of the things that I have in mind right now, I will be orchestrating about a year from now. It will definitely be a vast and advanced version of what we’re already doing. You have to remember that the even though the show we’re doing right now is our most accomplished one so far, it started with us playing in theatres, and now we’re playing arenas… so the stage setup is still in its Frankenstein phase, meaning that we’re still working with the smaller production we had from first year of this tour. Right now, it’s like we’re repairing an old house, whereas next time we can start something fresh.

Similar to the production jump that Iron Maiden took from the World Piece Tour to the World Slavery Tour in the ’80s then? [Earlier on, Forge reminisced on touring with the band, which he called one of his “old heroes.”]

TF: That would be a very good analogy for it actually. [Laughs] I compare it a lot to what bands like Iron Maiden and Metallica have done and continue to do. They’ve always done it right, and so will we. Next time we can start from scratch with a production that is purpose-built for our album and tour, whereas this is more of a mixture between the stuff that we did on the last album cycle, too. It’s just extended, right? We’ll build the set from the ground-up.

Did you always know that Ghost would become such a theatrical band?

TF: I definitely always had a picture of there being a stage show, but 10 years ago, I had no idea it was going to be as [vivid] as it is now.

Are we going to be introduced to Ghost’s new frontman at what you’re calling the “Final Gig Named Death” next March? Will we meet Papa Emeritus IV? Or is it possible that Cardinal Copia might live on?

TF: Well, it’s the last show of this touring cycle, so something will definitely happen. I just can’t tell you anything about it. [Laughs] But this tour has been really incredible, it’s just time for us to do something new. As much as I love being here in Canada, I think we picked a great time (and place) to end this tour. I genuinely love being on the road. I love playing the show, and ultimately, I’m feeling very good about the band this year — who are so extremely fluid.

Overall, everything is working out really well for us, but now it’s like ‘OK, so the restaurant is just running now?’ [Laughs] You start thinking about the next one. It’s just not enough. You go, “I feel like I’ve pretty much done my thing here…” Except of course for coming in and making the infamous carbonara every night; going through the old ancient recipe, you know? [Laughs] My mind is always thinking forward though, and I’m already thinking about the next time we’re coming back here.

You actually paid homage to one of Canada’s greatest songwriters recently, Leonard Cohen. What prompted your decision to cover something as iconic as Avalanche for your latest album, Prequelle?

TF: I think it was the one song that right off the bat just felt most Ghost-like.  It would feel weird to cover Take This Waltz or something like that. It just doesn’t fit our script. It isn’t actually my favourite Leonard Cohen song. Intuitively, I’d probably choose one of his prettier songs, but Avalanche felt very Ghost-like.

What about the future of Ghost? With such a busy schedule have you even had time to think about a plan of attack for the fifth album?

TF: Oh, I think about that a lot. Currently, we’re in the planning stages of it all, which means that I’m hamstering all my material as we figure out scheduling and who’s actually going to be producing it. I’m working very hard on it right now, and as much as I often contest ideas by thinking about what I should and shouldn’t do, I know it’s easier to define that just by looking at your previous experiences.

So for example, our last four records. Having said all of that, overall, I have a fairly good idea of where I’m going with this one. I want to create a record that lives up to my lifelong dream of being able to kick-off a touring cycle in arenas, so by that logic, this album needs to be by a band that starts touring cycles in arenas. You know? You just can’t f**k around with that. You really need to be on your absolute top game.

Is Seven Inches of Satanic Panic a taste of what’s to come for this album?

TF: It’s not a taste of the new record, no. Those songs are like a side note of Ghost — still fitting in the universe, I think — but they’re definitely not close to what I have in mind. [Laughs] The new record will be more in line with the previous four, in the sense that it will feel like part of the whole story. Whereas that of the singles and cover EPs, which are a little bit more tongue-in-cheek. [Laughs] There’s a dichotomy between a lot of the things that we do though, like for example, the records and the live show.The records are like the script, or Bible, they’re not meant to feel humouristic. Whereas in our live show, we present the ideas in a humorous way. Not in a sense where we are mocking our bible or story, but in the same way that a church might go through rituals with children. Where people are giggling a little because they think it’s silly. “A-ha.” Everybody knows it’s a little stupid, but for some reason, it feels purposeful, because your kid is being baptized or whatever. [Laughs] So that’s that’s what I’m shooting for. I don’t want the records to be too fun or silly, I want them to convey a message and have a clear meaning.

Your lyrics contain such unique concepts and qualities too. Do you write Ghost’s albums all by yourself? After all, this band is your project.

TF: Usually. But what I’ve learned and cultivated a liking to do in the last few years, is collaborating with outsiders. I’ve always been accused of — especially in my own bands — not being able to work well in a team. People have said I’m just overall bad at teamwork, and that was the fact for a long time. But when I made Meliora, I did so together with a producer named Klas Åhlund — who is both a producer and a songwriter. And that’s when it dawned on me that I can work really well with people, but I need to choose who I work with. It’s like … I like kissing people, but I just want to choose who I kiss. [Laughs]I’ve been in bands where there’s always someone, or some people, who just f**king crowbar themselves into the process, and that does not work for me at all. That’s unfortunately when I become like a dictator. Whereas if I choose to work with someone, I’m actually quite flexible. Like working with any professional songwriter, you need to establish a little bit of a vibe together. [Laughs] We need to be aiming for a very similar thing. That person needs to have some sort of … hard-on for rock music, or for what we do in Ghost, otherwise, it might be hard if it’s someone who works against that.

Do you find that collaborating helps with the songwriting, then?

TF: Oh yes. You can make incredible progress in your songwriting that way, because all of a sudden you have this person who’s not at all locked into the traps of being in your band; someone who is not the bass player that suddenly wants a bass solo or the drummer who wants to make the album very drummy. If I find those collaborators, it’s like a catalyst for me to write more, write better and ultimately, step up because I want to impress that other person.

In one or two days, I’ll come up with a skeleton of a song and go, “This is my idea, this is the chorus, but I don’t really have a pre-chorus yet. What do you hear? What do you think?” And then once I hear someone else tinkering with it … I become a little bit like a husband who agreed to a wife-swap. In this case, the song would be my partner, and when I see someone else [kissing] her, I’m like, “No! Let me do this.” Then you go and you do it properly, because it wakes you up. [Laughs] It’s really all about just having to impress someone else. If I don’t make the changes right then and there, then the idea is just gonna drift away. It’s a perfect way for me to write, because it really brings me to life.

You produced Opus Eponymous by yourself, and since then you’ve worked with a completely different producer for each of Ghost’s albums, including Dave Grohl. Do you just not want to do the same thing twice, or are you ultimately trying to find the perfect collaborator?

TF: I believe that there are exceptions to all rules of course, and I believe that a good team truly is a good team. But I also believe that it’s very healthy to make sure that you don’t get stuck in your comfort zone, because it can become too comfortable. I’ve had that in the past with at least a couple of my previous producers, where we’re almost too good of friends; we’ve actually hung out so much, that we’re buddies now. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t always allow for further growth, which is exactly what I want to do. In this case, I have to make our fifth record. I want it to be a seminal record for us. That’s why the process right now is to find that perfectly balanced producer that is gonna make sure that we’re making a rock record — it needs to be a heavy record — but it needs to be someone who understands the factor of, “This needs to be relevant, now.”

Ghost is unique for a metal band in the sense that you don’t often work with metal producers. Is there a reason for that?

TF: I’m sure people in the heavy metal sphere might have noticed that too. … And there’s a reason for that: metal producers are very purpose-driven. They do a fantastic job and they know exactly what they’re going for. They’re experts in doing exactly that. And I have nothing against it, but that’s not what I’m trying to do. So I need to be fully aware and completely awake in trying to find the right producer for Ghost in that moment.

Klas was perfect for me. His whole professional life, he has been writing pop music and playing in Teddybears and writing records for Robyn and Ellie Goulding. You have all these different artists and this huge variety, but he started off playing prog music. He was a guitar virtuoso playing Yngwie Malmsteen/Ritchie Blackmore-type stuff. So when I came and talked with him about making a rock record, he was just like, “Yes, I’ve wanted to do that for such a long time.” It was perfect for both of us, because we were able to talk about all the common denominators. We could reference things from Euro Disco all the way to Slayer just to explain a simple idea. Whereas if you end up with the typical metal producer, they might say, “Slayer, of course. But everything else you mentioned is just ‘ordinary music.'”

I’m not saying that every heavy metal producer is like that, I just feel like metal today, as opposed to 1975, is such a defined genre, that people our age and younger have lived their entire lives knowing exactly what heavy metal is. But people who were around when they made Back in Black didn’t really know what that was. There’s so many rules now. It’s too refined. The whole culture breathes a little bit of a puritan-like conservatism. In order to make new records, I think sometimes you need to try not to think too much about all of these rules.

GLOBALNEWS.CA

[my-whumpy-little-heart]

💥 and 🍅 for Floyd and 🔮 and ❤️ for percival (it it’s not too many anyway ahdjdjdk)

Thanks Allen :DD Never too many questions my dude

💥 Are there any emotions your OC doesn’t know how to deal with, doesn’t understand or hates having to feel? Any reason behind this? (For Floyd)

Ooh I think a lot of emotions are hard for Floyd. The only emotions he really feels comfortable with are Being Nice To People and Vague Sadness That’s Always Kinda Stirring Since He Has Unresolved Emotions He Doesn’t Feel Like Dealing With. See, he never really learned How to emotion very well. His childhood was spend in the lower class and working from the earliest age he could. Which, considering this setting is akin to the 1800′s, was probably around the ages of 8 or 9. 

But before I spill his entire life story, yes Floyd had a bit of a hard time and from that has learned the very healthy skill of not wanting to show or deal with his deeper emotions. Feeling too happy in general can make him uneasy, waiting for someone to come around and tell him to knock it off, because a smile must mean he’s been causing mischief and that’s a punishable offense.

Feeling a lot of strong emotions could have impeded him from survival so he doesn’t really like that. Even something like fear, which he felt so so often, stirs those old memories and instincts inside of him. So yeah you can see how that’s working out for him in the main story at the moment lol. (thinks about how i need to write more of that. thinks about all the ideas i’ve got written down. pokes motivation. motivation wibble wobbles and says nothing. i will beat it up later)

🍅 How easily is your OC embarrassed? What subjects make them flush and why? What event has made your OC the most embarrassed they’ve ever been? (Also for Floyd)

Damn, really coming for Floyd’s emotions and insecurities today. Alrighty, well, Floyd gets really embarrassed when he makes a mistake. It’s always been a bit of a thing for him. Just ingrained really, but it’s gotten worse as he’s been mocked or punished for mistakes throughout his life. 

If it’s a particular subject, that’s probably any sort of confrontation. He’s very good at immediately assuming the worst, and will probably flush in a one on one conversation if he gets uncomfortable. The one exception to this is talking with Ray because Floyd trusts him the most and has had a lot of harder conversations with him which he’s handled very well. This buildup of trust has led them to form the close bond they share now. Even so, Floyd still doesn’t like to discuss the more personal topics, it’s just easier now with Ray than anyone else.

Oh, and the most embarrassed he’s ever been... That’s probably gotta be some of the first days Floyd was on the pirate ship. Being found out as a stowaway hiding in their kitchen really wasn’t ideal for him, and sharing a bit about his general life situation to Ray made the man so intensely empathetic that Floyd nearly misinterpreted it as looking down on him even though that’s not what he meant at all. So yeah that adjustment and everything came with a lot of embarrassment.

🔮 What does your OC think is their best trait. What is actually their best trait? What about their flaws? Are they one to admit these flaws or do they like to pretend they’re perfect? (For Percival)

OOooh hm. I think Percival is definitely proud of his swordplay skills and that’s something he values a lot. Which, well, it’s definitely subjective there as to whether or not they’re actually his best trait. Yes, he can hold his own in a fight, but that’s often due to some level of cheating with his magic. Whether surprising an enemy by attacking after having been invisible or avoiding blows by phasing them through him (have I mentioned that power? was that gonna be a secret? yeah part of the invisibility thing is sorta transparency as well, being able to phase through objects or phase objects he’s in contact with through something and wow thinking about that more just gave me a whump idea oh yes. Anyywayyy). So in a level playing field sort of battle where he couldn’t use magic he’d be fairly decent, but yeah his sort of cheating definitely plays a part in his confidence there.

If he had another best trait, it probably would be incredible control over his magical powers. He may not feel like it, but he’s been honing them for a long time and even started developing them at a younger age than most who have magic in this universe. His powers kicked in and saved his life a few times when he was a kid, but he often didn’t notice at the time. So long story short yes he’s very skilled with magic and doesn’t quite realize just how difficult it takes to get to his level of power and control (hehehee and that certainly doesn’t make things easier for Floyd ;D)

Oh and flaws. Wow this is getting long. Well, he’s a fucking narcissist to start. So he isn’t gonna be admitting to any of these flaws anytime soon. But he’s a fairly horrendous leader, not ever doing much to participate with or assist his crew. Though he does care for and respect them more than it may seem, he isn’t much for teamwork and prefers to watch on and do nothing. People flock to work for him because of his status and reputation, not because of his kindness.

❤️ What inspired you to make this OC? How long have you had them? How have they changed in the time you’ve been developing them? (Also for Percival)

Aha, well. I had this crew of really nice pirates going out and being super cool and awesome. And I’m sitting here like: hm I need a reason to hurt this one boy though. Brain said “alright it’s Evil Pirate Time” and I was like yes absolutely I would like that. So Percival came into being. His appearance has changed at least five times in my mind except for his eye color and height (wait that may have changed too oh man who even knows at this point). I knew nearly nothing about his personality or backstory when I started writing him and I just had to kinda go along with it. I’m out of touch with him rn and that hasn’t been making my life with the story easy, but he’s always been pretty spontaneous for me.

So yeah that whole thing happened back in November, so nearly 7 or 8 months now (oh my god it’s been so long that’S WILD WHAT EVEN) and he’s been hanging around being mean and stuff ever since.

[lbibliophile-mcu]

Teamwork in the OG6 Avengers... or the lack thereof

I finally worked out why I get so frustrated with the MCU, or at least the main sequence / OG6 movies (and why I gravitate so strongly towards the 2012-era fanfics).

The Avengers are supposed to be about a group of powerful and slightly broken individuals coming together to be something better. It’s about teamwork, friendship, hope, and beating impossible odds. Except, in the MCU, it isn’t. There ‘the Avengers’ is a dream that is doomed to fail and fall apart.

The main-sequence movies, graded on exhibited and potential for OG6 Avengers teamwork:

IM1: Good origin story. Excellent Iron-fam bonding and cooperation with Coulson (although mostly through Pepper). Fury introduces the idea of the Avengers at the end. 5/10

IM2: Again, excellent Iron-fam. Supernanny is amusing and has potential. Natasha is introduced and swings between betrayal/subterfuge and helping; could lead to an interesting starting dynamic. Then there’s the final scene, and ‘Tony Stark not recommended’; that’s a complication. 4/10

Thor 1: Thor’s introduction, he learns to see Midgardians as potential allies. Introduces Clint, their only interaction at a distance sighting along an arrow, but vaguely positive. Overall, solid character-building background for Thor, and setting up the potential for teamwork. 5/10

Cap 1: Introduces Steve, and in-universe superheroes. Time gap reduces opportunities for interaction, but shows that Steve has the potential to lead the team. Steve waking in the future is met by Fury, his displacement demonstrating why he needs the support of the other Avengers. Immediate lead-in to Avengers. 5/10

Avengers: This is it; their coming together, and the start of their journey as a team. Initially it doesn’t go so well, but then Coulson dies, spurring them to work together to save the day. Then… they separate.  Ok, so they need some time for the dynamic to settle down, but this should be the beginning of the team, not their peak. 7/10

IM3: More excellent Iron-fam… no Avengers or Fury. Only a cameo by Bruce at the end, where he utterly fails to provide the emotional support Tony is asking for. Rhodey is looking like a good Avengers-candidate. -3/10

Cap 2: The only main-sequence Phase 2 movie that really gets it right. The main plot is one of betrayal; Hydra hidden inside Shield and manipulating Bucky. But among the core characters, it only draws them closer together. When Pierce turns on Steve, Natasha is the one he trusts, and together they bring in Sam (Avengers trial-by-fire); Hill saves their lives, and Fury shares the secret of his survival. That cooperation allows them to take down the helicarriers, then they plan together to go find Bucky. The overall theme is that you can’t trust organisations, but you can trust people. This would be an excellent message to then lead back into the rest of the Avengers; so much potential wasted. 9/10

Thor 2: No other core Avengers-characters present. Some nice interaction and bonding with Loki… who then ends up (apparently) dying. Thor gets his happy ending on Earth with Jane… who is never heard from again. 0/10

Ultron: The first 10 mins or so of the movie are peak Avengers. The team is together and fighting bad guys, sassing each other the whole time. Even the awkward developing Natasha and Bruce/Hulk romance is an attempt that could have worked. Then they start officially falling apart. Wanda’s spell brings up all their insecurities, which they aren’t close enough to trust each other with. They play the blame game, fight with each other, and barely hold it together long enough to defeat Ultron. It still ends with Bruce vanishing, Thor heading back to space/Asgard, and Tony and Clint retiring. -2/10 (‑6/10 without the first 10 mins)

Civil War: Enough said. The team gains some new members, but only because the original group split down the middle. No-one seems to want to actually talk to each other, although there were a few good lines during the airport battle. It was probably salvageable, up until the Siberia fight. This marks the end of the Avengers, even if the team name continues on. -­8/10

Thor 3: Actually not too bad on the teamwork. Thor reconnecting with both Bruce and Hulk , Thor and Loki betraying each other but in the minor ways they always have, the inclusion of Valkyrie; even if it did flippantly kill off Thor’s first team (the Warriors Three). For the only time other than Cap 2 (and sort of Avengers), two of the Avengers end a movie together and as better friends than they started. 8/10

Infinity War: So, mixed results here. Characters from the other MCU movies are all brought in for a massive team-up, but Clint is still missing, and Tony and Steve and Thor are in different groups. Then, most of the extras are Dusted, even if all the OG6 survive. Overall, nothing much changes. 3/10

Endgame: Finally we get some team dynamics happening again (even if they seem to spend most of the five post-Snap years avoiding each other). Steve and Tony finally meet again, and Tony unloads. Then Scott comes back, and it is the OG6 and a much reduced cast working together again to save the day, including a visit to their 2012 selves. Unfortunately, Endgame marks the end of the main sequence, and the farewelling of the OG6 characters. Natasha and Tony die, Clint retires (again), Thor goes to find himself in space (again), Steve goes back to the past, and Bruce… does whatever he does as a human/Hulk hybrid. It should feel significant – the passing of the torch, and dispersing of the OG6 – but really, their potential to be a real team was gone long ago. 6/10

[universal-kitty]

I feel like doing writing today, so...!! Time to write about my still untalked about AUs? AKA me in my F/O’s universe, cause that kinda stuff is my jam~ Starting with....!!

MY HERO ACADEMIA VERSE

Real name is Akira Hayashi. Has a Cat Mutation quirk. Cat ears on her head and a cat tail. Can see and hear to cat-like ability, can fall from certain heights without damage, wonderful balance. However, is usually always overwhelmed by the fact that she’s hypersensitive, so often needs to stay away from people to recharge. Lots of cat naps after using her Quirk extensively.

Short brown hair that parts in the middle. Dark green eyes. Used to wear glasses, but traded them for contacts for convenience. Still has a pair, just in case.

Quirkless mother and a villain father, of all things. Her father is Kuroyama Hayashi, a mafia-esque villain who’s Quirk lets him use crows as a basis to create minions who do his dirty work. It’s taxing and having minions who have free thought isn’t always the best way to go about things, but it gets his jobs done enough that it’s a viable thing to keep doing.

Her mother didn’t know he was a villain until after Akira had been born, but... She’s a bit of a “dangerous optimist” in the sense she finds the whole thing more...”romantic” than anything? (She’s not the brightest bulb in that sense, but Kuroyama does make sure to not involve business at home too much, as well as the fact that his wife isn’t completely open about all in public, so... They get by fine, on that note.)

Still doesn’t help the fact Akira’s father is known pretty well and everyone expects her to grow up like her father, even despite her very persistent dreams of becoming a hero at a young age.

(Her father’s side is even largely villains. Any of them that had kids who became heroes? Removed from the family tree and their history. Completely exiled from the family.)

So when it comes time to enter high school, Akira puts in the effort to become someone else. For her time at U.A. she becomes “Maiko Inoue”.

Mostly a shy child, “Maiko” stresses under the worries that someone will find out about her past... To her luck, nobody seems to and- as time passes- she eventually starts letting go of it.

Meets Toshinori around this time, though they aren’t too close. Mostly just...casual running into each other moments and such. Friendly, but not friends.

Eventually graduates as the “Lucky Cat Hero Mani-Neko” and starts doing hero work for a few good years. A bit of rescue work, but also teamwork with other heroes to bring villains down. Cat-like reflexes, the sharp claws that can extend from her paw-gloves and paw-boots make for a good fighter, when need be!

Outfit Reference Here.

“Maiko” learns of All Might more and more during this time. Still not quite friends, but they work together from time to time. All Might is a friendly hero, as well, so they manage some conversations... Most all work related. (Which is fine.... Kinda. She starts having a crush on him here, but it’s small and something she majorly downplays. He’s a HUGE name, she’s just another hero. It’d never work out, with his loud voice and her sensitive ears!! The press?? Yeah, pfffftt, no way.)

It’s during her “downtime” phase of her hero life when U.A. asks her if she can come in as a teacher. Figuring there’s more to life than just straight up hero work (plus liking being around kids), she agrees to help out.

It’s here she meets Toshinori again (the first time in years, it feels!) and it’s a crush that slams into her without warning. He looks worn out and no longer as bright and full of life as he once was, but... Somehow, that’s his charm, now. Learning about what happened only worries her more, especially since his beloved hero work is suffering for it.

Almost immediately finds a friend in Izuku Midoriya. The bright-eyed, wannabe hero is not only endearing to meet, but his knowledge of her past hero work makes “Maiko’s” heart warm. Didn’t take long for that kid to weasel his way into her heart.

Post the first attack from the League of Villains, her father acts out. Out and about at the time, Mani-Neko helps out the best she can... Only to have her father confirm- in front of the press!- that she’s his daughter.

Not only does the news eat it up, but it suddenly creates a ripple of fear and doubt in U.A. From fellow teachers to the parents’ of the students, everyone is up in a tizzy about the information.

 Her most solid backers in this nightmare of a time end up being Toshinori Yagi (who has seen her pride and love for her work; a passion like that for life cannot be faked), Izuku (who believes the “amazing” Mani-Neko is who she is, and that’s a hero!!!), Hitoshi Shinso (who knows all too well what it’s like to be judged for a piece of who you are, and not WHO you are), and Shoto Todoroki (in the background, but definitely in support and for similar reasons as Shinso).

Eventually, she does manage to make the media calm down again and revert to using her real name- Akira Hayashi- as well as just letting time pass and concerns be dropped as she goes back to work....and into a full embrace of her hero work.

....To the point that it’s dangerous, anyways. If she’s got time, she’ll throw herself into any heroic situation in an attempt to help out and prove herself to near-reckless degrees. This calms down eventually... Especially considering she worries her friends and her own students with her behavior.

Close friends with @madamethana‘s OC, Shikiyo, who works as the school therapist. They went to U.A. together and while- similar to Toshinori- they weren’t friends at the time, they ended up bonding through hero work and the fallout that was the surprise discovery of Akira’s true background. (And where Akira continues to crush on Toshinori, Shikiyo is dating Aizawa.)

Shikiyo is constantly trying to get Akira and Toshinori together already, especially cause of the former’s crush....but the cat-gal won’t have it. It’ll work out.....someday, hopefully.............

(And stop talking to Deku about it!! Don’t put ideas into his head, JFC--)

Villain AU: ...But what if things didn’t work out, after all? Eventually pushed and prodded so much by her dad, to live up to the villain legacy...and Akira cracks.

Still goes to school for a few years, but is extremely reserved. Doesn’t make a lot of friends (if any at all), learns all about heroes as her father teaches her how to be a villain at his personal base... She’s young, it all stresses her out, and provides good enough seeds to grow what will become her motivation to be a villain and stay by it.

(That being her isolation, the feeling she deserves no good things, that nobody helped her is a sign she was meant for villainy...and being a villain is in her blood, anyways.)

Still develops a small crush on All Might that torments her. Largely because he stood for everything she used to believe in. (She hates it. She hates him for being everything she’d never be.)

A few years later- set quite a few months before the USJ Incident- Akira makes her first, official villain appearance. In this AU, she goes by “Bake-Neko” as a villain title (though due to her father, her name is still easily available).

Post-the USJ Incident and the Stein Incident- at the suggestion of her father- they both end up joining the growing ranks of the League, not far behind Himiko and Dabi.

Akira stills tends to try to outcast herself within the group, but ends up making thin attachments due to how much time she and her father spend around the group. Particularly...

Has a fondness for Tomura. Seems to be parental, if her quiet hovering and protectiveness of him says anything her words don’t. However, it’s difficult to tell.

Ditto to Kurogiri; seems to be fond of him- since she hovers around him- but her tendency for silence worries him. (However, has purred in contentment when they hang out together without the presence of others; she’s comfortable with him.)

A...friendly thing? With Dabi? He largely likes to tease her for being so mute around them and the fact she stares when he summons his flames. However, she also makes him uneasy due to how she stares at his scars. Akira doesn’t say much on how she feels of him, in return.

Also as an odd sort of parental-esque fondness for Himiko. Will listen to her talk all she wants and hums agreements to assure the other girl she’s listening. The only one out of everyone who can get her to speak more.

Giran is someone her dad knows better than she does. Akira isn’t thrilled with him, but listens when he talks. Honestly, Kuroyama and Giran get along more than Giran gets on with her.

Jin/Twice is someone that is...one of the select few Akira has shown an open preference for. The duality of his nature intrigues her and is the only one allowed to treat her like a pet without growling, angry-swishing tail, or any violence whatsoever. In fact- as long as it’s just them- Akira will happily act like a full-on, pet cat and play with him when he feels like it.

Tbh, there’s no “official ship” for the Villain AU, so if y’all ship me w/ someone..... HMU.

[junker-town]

A conversation with Myron Rolle on the fight against Covid-19

Former NFL player Myron Rolle is now a neuroscience resident. | Instagram/@myronlrolle, SB Nation Illustration

SB Nation caught up with the former Tennessee Titans DB, who’s a third-year neurosurgical resident at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Former Florida State and Tennessee Titans defensive back Myron Rolle is witnessing firsthand the fight against Covid-19. As a neurosurgery resident at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, his hospital has been on the frontlines of the coronavirus that’s been ravaging the United States and countries around the world.

Rolle first made headlines in college when he awarded a Rhodes Scholarship during his junior season at FSU. Instead of playing his senior year, he accepted the scholarship, and studied at Oxford University in 2009. After a year in London, Rolle entered the 2010 NFL Draft.

He was drafted in the sixth round by the Titans, where he spent one year on the practice squad before being released. The Steelers signed him to a futures contract, and he was cut again before the 2012 season. He retired without having played in a single NFL game, and enrolled in medical school at FSU in 2013. He graduated in 2017, and is now a doctor.

Currently in his third year of his neurosurgery residency, SB Nation spoke exclusively to Rolle about what his experience has been like working as a medical doctor in the middle of a pandemic, as well as the NFL’s response to the outbreak.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

SB NATION: At Mass General, your hospital has been in the heart of the Covid-19 outbreak in Boston, which has over 1,000 confirmed cases. What has that experience been like?

MYRON ROLLE: The hospital has adjusted itself in response to Covid-19, the influx of patients. So walking into the hospital, you immediately realize that you’re playing a different ballgame. You have to wear a mask, I get hand sanitizer as soon as I walk in, and there’s more sanitizing stations around the hospital. There’s also this app that we’re using now to sort of define your symptoms before you even get to work, and if you don’t have any symptoms, you have to show it to the security guards in front to make sure that you’re not bringing in an infection that you may have gotten off the street or from home, so that’s different.

Our operating room is certainly different. We don’t operate as much — it’s pretty much selective cases or emergent cases. The neurosurgical staff has been sort of staggered so that all of us aren’t here and all of us aren’t exposed at the same time.

And then there’s a surge clinic with a hospital within a hospital here at Mass General, which also has recruited non-medical personnel to help manage staff — basically help triage some of these patients who are coming off the street with Covid-19. This surge clinic is accepting and welcoming to people who just want to fight the fight against Covid-19, so it has been definitely a whirlwind.

SBN: What has your hospital’s supplies of personal protective equipment been like?

MR: Here at Mass General, we’re one of the largest hospitals in the New England area and perhaps even the country. We’re Harvard affiliated, so we have a lot of resources just at baseline. I think the hospitals that are being stressed and strained and tested the most would be the smaller ones who are out in the suburbs of major cities.

Nevertheless, our masks are being dispersed around the hospital in a centralized location. For instance, if I was going into the operating room, instead of having the face masks and shields right in front of me, they would be in a centralized location so that they’re better allocated for the people that really need them. And we’ve even been asked at one point to reuse our masks if possible.

SBN: Covid-19 is more dangerous for those over the age of 65, or with pre-existing conditions. What would be your message to young people who perhaps aren’t taking this coronavirus seriously?

MR: I’d say that that’s an irresponsible ideology because you’re still capable of not only contracting the disease, but being an asymptomatic carrier and affecting somebody who doesn’t have the built-up immune system that you have. It’s not just about your convenience, or about your lifestyle at this point; it’s really about the team. It’s about everyone here.

We all have to play our part, including those younger individuals in our community who have a robust immune system and don’t have any of these conditions, who hopefully have a long and fruitful life. This is a time where you need to look beyond yourself and step up and do your active part.

View this post on Instagram

Coming off a 24hr shift. Our hospital has enacted a mandatory “mask on” at all times policy. Future already told us to keep our “mask on” and give out prescription pills when indicated lol. For real though..stay safe, everyone. Do your part. #2% #RepTheSetGottaRepTheSet #FlattenTheCurve

A post shared by Myron Rolle, MD MSc (@myronlrolle) on Mar 22, 2020 at 5:16am PDT

SBN: Switching gears to the NFL for a bit, the league has committed to a 16-game schedule. Is it realistic at this point to see a full season happening as scheduled?

MR: I may be biased because I’m in a hotbed city and state — Boston is going to see a surge even more so than we see now in the next coming weeks. So I may be in a bubble and not speaking with complete objectivity here, but I think that’s ambitious to say that you’ll have a 16-game season and start either on time or just a little bit delayed.

I think we’re going to be going through this for some time. It’s going to take time for us to figure out how to best fix this, manage it, what’s the best vaccine, the therapy, the cure — if we can find one.

Yes, I understand that football and sports in America have been a way for us to get away from some of our most daunting moments. It’s a way for us to bring the country together. We saw it happen with 9/11, with the baseball season was right around the corner and people rallied around sports.

But at this point, I think the health of our country — the progress and the prosperity of our country — relies on these epidemiologists, nurses, doctors, pharmacists who are on the frontlines and trying to make a difference and trying to thwart this pandemic.

Once we get past this phase, we can resume our daily life, including sports like football that we love so much.

SBN: Do you think playing NFL games without fans might be a potential solution to having some semblance of a regular season?

MR: It’s certainly possible, but think about the proximity of these athletes in a communal setting. The locker room, on a bus, in a hotel, they are amongst each other and they can be a nidus for infection if one of these players ends up having Covid-19. Then it spreads and everybody gets knocked out.

It’s best to just be patient right now. Allow some of these amazing scientific minds of women and men around the country and around the world to do their job and do their work.

SBN: The NFL is having the draft on April 23 as scheduled, while following the CDC’s guidelines with respect to large gatherings and social distancing. Do you agree with this decision?

MR: I think that’s certainly reasonable to do a draft virtually. I know a lot of these players have been waiting their whole life to be drafted. I remember myself, I had wanted to be drafted into the NFL for forever and I had to wait until the third day to do it. So I get it, it can be a dream that comes true for a lot of players.

But you have to be smart while doing it. You have to adhere to what the medical professionals and the politicians and the leaders on this fight are saying. And if you can fit within that paradigm, certainly I can see a draft happening.

SBN: What advice would you give to prospects having to deal with the pre-draft process under these unique circumstances?

MR: My advice would be to continue to keep your mind sharp, if you can’t get outside and get some physical work in. Because when this is all done, there’s not going to be a team that looks back on Covid-19 that says, ‘Well I’m going to cut you some slack because you weren’t able to catch the ball or keep your mind sharp in the game.’ They’re going to expect you to hit the ground running.

So whatever it is you can do, [do it], whether it’s getting on the phone with your former coach and going over plays and schemes. Having [them] draw up certain different plays or personnel and you have to think through it like you were a coach — put your mind there.

Be creative, be smart with it, but keep yourself ready because this is not going to be used as an excuse if you are not sharp when everything gets started again. It will get started again — believe that. You have to keep that in mind: There’s going to be an end. I’m optimistic that there will be, [I] just don’t know when. But when it does happen, you have to be on it.

SBN: How has your career in football helped prepare you for one in medicine, and in dealing with a pandemic like this?

MR: Football helped me tremendously, and that’s why I want the sport to stay because it’s so valuable. It’s helped me be a better physician today, certainly. I’ve learned discipline. I’ve learned focus, teamwork, communication. I’ve learned how to overcome adversity, how to prepare. I learned how to win and how to lose graciously. All these things have translated into my life as a physician. In the operating room, it is high stakes, it’s a life-or-death situation in some instances.

A team comes out with five wide receivers, no fullback, quarterback is in shotgun and we didn’t gameplan for that? We didn’t see that at all on tape, this is a brand-new formation they’re showing us? You have to think, ‘how are we gonna match up here, are we just going to fold?’ Or ‘do we have to step forward and meet the challenge?’

Covid-19, in my opinion is something, like that. It’s a personnel that we haven’t seen yet. It’s a novel disease that is different, it’s highly infectious, and it’s just running rampant around the country and around the world. How do we adjust to this? We can’t fold — we have to step forward and meet the challenge.

View this post on Instagram

Now that football’s done, the call is to be a great pediatric neurosurgeon one day, God spare life. But an equally important call is to stand as a representation for young black boys and black girls to see themselves in this journey - achieving more, dreaming bigger and reaching higher. Sometimes it just takes a little push to get the next generation going. And if we’re able to provide that, then that makes life worth the living! They’re up next!! #2% #BlackHistoryMonth ✊ ✊ #Harvard #TheMGHNeurosurgery

A post shared by Myron Rolle, MD MSc (@myronlrolle) on Feb 5, 2020 at 6:39am PST

SBN: As a medical professional, what would be your message to the general public in the wake of this pandemic?

MR: I think going back to when we talked about younger people just having a participatory and active role in stopping this spread. If you have a high infectious rate and just a surge or patients that are incredibly sick to the point that they need hospital care, you put stress on the healthcare system.

Our country hasn’t had its back against the wall like this in a long time with a pandemic that’s hitting so many sectors or our daily life. I’d say that this is a more serious issue than some may have thought, but it’s one that we can get over, and we need to get over it together.

As a team, it’s focusing on lifestyle behavior modifications, proper hygiene, physical and social distancing, and remaining home so that the spread becomes flattened. And that allows some of the wonderful minds that we have working on the frontlines get time to fix this — and not only fix it — but prevent it from happening in the future.

[shbettereveryday]

One Year: Coming home to Outpatient Therapy

The theme of my recovery could easily be titled “The New Normal”.  Going home was scary.  My entire time with this injury I was surrounded by doctors, nurses and therapist.  They watched over me when I had a fever, helped me to go the bathroom, and instructed me on how to do things.  Being on my own meant that safety net wasn’t immediately available so there was a lot of fear.  An entry from my first day speaks to that:

“Going to start making dinner. I started to cry not sure why. This will be something that happens. My feeling was that I missed therapy and as much as I like being home I miss the hospital too. As it got later in the evening I got really tired of sitting in the chair. I just couldn’t get comfortable so I went to bed.

I am sure as the days go by I will be more comfortable on my own house but it feels like I am just learning it again. Just take it day by day on this road to being bettereveryday”

I am also in the early stages of learning the obstacles that I will have to deal with.  There is the obstacle of the house not being as good as it can be for me,  Hitting walls and door frames.  Taking off pieces of laminate on the kitchen island.  Accessibility at home and elsewhere will always be an issue.  When venturing out of the house the first time I noticed it first hand:

“Did discover some of the frustrations that I will run into such as sidewalks heaving up that my power chair can’t navigate so I end up on the street. Cars blocking sidewalks as well can be a problem."

The early days of the New Normal was finding our routine.  Sleeping schedule eating schedule all worked around my needs bowel routines, cleaning, cathing, and meds etc.  There was frustration because I was expecting home health care but it took a little over a week to get that started and it wasn’t quite as helpful as I had hoped.  The biggest thing was trying to find help and support to use the shower transfer seat we had so I did a lot of bed baths during this time,  The shower seat I practiced on in the hospital but in the small space we had the tranfer was difficult and daunting.  We hoped the OT would help in reality she gave use the confidence to try with her standing by,  Here is a pic of that transfer seat:

You can probably see the difficulty in getting a chair in there and than transfering at an odd angle might be problematic but as we did get used to we already started another new normal.  One other thing that I struggled with was accepting that needed all this assistance:

“The thing that came out of this is that Michele and I are working well together as a caregiver and somebody who needs care.  We are doing this just as well as we have made a team in life.  It is a difficult thing to have this new dynamic.  Difficult for me not only because I require this assistance but it also difficult to ask this from somebody who has already done so much for me,  It is difficult for Michele because it is very hard work as well as take care of Norma our other resident.”

The teamwork lesson was an important one and is really a big part of where I am now that we have been able to work efficiently as a team,  But needing to get assistance is part of what brought me together with Vocational Rehabilitation services and you will hear a lot about them but there was a struggle at least internally about getting that assistance:

“There is something about accepting help from the government that makes if feel like you aren’t able to contribute or do what you need to do on your own.  I don’t think anybody prepares enough for this sort of thing so I shouldn’t feel too bad about it but it will be really helpful and will allow us to do some things that would probably have been well out of our reach.”

Most of the next few weeks were trying to figure out how to function in my house in my chair.  We had PT/OT coming to the house with the eye on starting outpatient day institute therapy for a few more months before being able to return to work.

I was learning how to get around the kitchen and other places in and outside my house but for the first few weeks we didn’t travel at all.  I did have doctor appointments I needed to get to.  Establish care with a new PCP and a urologist.  I did find a taxi company that I could use for transport but this obviously wasn’t cost effective solution.  I had hoped to have the metro bus call-a-ride as my solution but after weeks of frustration getting my info from the social worker to the Metro Bus people.  It turns out my chair with me in it was too heavy to be able to take call a ride,  I had to take the regular bus which based on where the stop was and how I wasn’t ready for that it wasn’t an option either.  More on transportation  later.  In the process of getting comfortable in the house we got comfortable with having people over.  Mostly family but others had also stopped by,

Here I am enjoying a visit from my sister, brother in law and their pets.  This is Peggy she loves me and also makes Norma jealous.  In the middle of this I am still dealing and struggling with what has happened to me and all that it entails as my post grad day 10 (Day 56) shows:

“I have to accept where I am now and not dwell on what if’s and second guess my decisions.  That is all too much distraction from what is the fight of my life for my life.  To say I have never done or dealt with anything this difficult in my life would be an understatement.  This is physically and mentally the hardest thing I could have imagined.  I am stressing the parts of my body that are working and there is pain everyday.  There are days when I can’t imagine just having the strength to get out of bed”

Back to transportation.  I finally got it worked out where I could start the day institute almost 2 weeks after I got home.  It doesn’t seem like a long time but to me at the time it seemed like an eternity sitting at home feeling like I was sliding backwards in my abilities on top of already shaky confidence.  The good part is they would transport me too and from.  The bad part is there was another delay based on transportation for another few weeks.  We eventually worked a schedule that worked for their drivers and me.  This will begin the next phase of my recovery and start yet another new normal..For the next 2 months I will for 3 days a week leave at 9:45 and return home at 3:30 or so spending those days in much needed therapy,  I did get my first trip out of the house before that would begin and that was to see my new Primary Care Physician.  I used the taxi service I had talked about.  It was important because it was my first trip into public outside of the hospital or my house since my injury.

View from my spot in the back of the cab.  We used them a few more times but the first driver we had was the best of them all and we only had him one other time.  I think we used the taxi a few times.  I still carry the card as a back up to my current transportation situation,

On/e thing I wrote on day 62 is important and something I have tried to maintain through the whole process:

“Keep celebrating life and always keep the most important things first. Yes my injury was/is a big deal but remembering to celebrate the more important things is part of being bettereveryday.”

During Outpatient Therapy I was dealing with other things.  Obviously multiple medical issues and of course insurance and Disability Insurance for work.  The latter was very frustrating and difficult to deal with and that caused a great deal of stress to me during my therapy.  Meanwhile we had gotten to that new New Normal.  Having therapy 3 times a week was nice but we were still lacking independent transportation so besides goling to therapy we were home all the time and it was still difficult to get to doctors.  We had a taxi company that we were using and one day we rented a wheelchair van for a Neuro Surgeon follow since it was further away and that was my first experience of having some independent travel.

As it turned out later this was the same model of vehicle we would end up with. I was in the process of working with Vocational Rehab.  I had started a bunch of different things. One of the first big things was a workplace visit from the OT from Wash U.  We used this van again for that and it was a special and emotional day.  It worked out well because the same day they happened to be having a going away event for the man who hired we at KSDK.  He was going to work at corporate in Virginia,  He and his wife who also worked for us as a producer were one of quite a few visitors I received in the hospital.  They had also coordinated an increadible gift that my co-workers had given a large sum of money they had collected from coworkers.  Anyway this day was the first day I will have entered my work since a week before my surgery.  The support that was shown to me on what was an event for somebody else was amazing.  So many people came up to me and expressed how happy they were to see me and couldn’t wait for me to come back to work.  They made me feel as I no this day Day 85:

“It truly was a feeling of belonging and affirmation of being in the right place for me to move forward working with my injury.”

This was a group photo I was involved in.  It was a very special day to be back. Everything still feels like that now by the way and sometimes if feels like the chair just melts away and it is just me doing my job. After all this it was back to business.  The OT,  the Chief Engineer, and HR made our way around the building and the OT made notes about things they could do to help make it is accessible as they could for me.  My notation in the blog represented my feelings about this day:

“My work was very receptive and involved in the process. When I mentioned how great they have been through this whole process. She said I can tell you the majority aren’t that way and they will fight you on every suggestion where to their credit they were on board with everything we discussed. In the end it was a great trip because of all we had accomplished but most of all because it reassured me that I work with some fantastic people who not only like they value me.”

I did have a brief hiccup in my therapy where the Insurance didn’t seem to be covering my therapy so I stopped going letting them know we needed to get that worked out.  It took a week and they did but it was stressful and very upsetting.  In the middle of all that a coworker who’s family owns one of the nicest restaurants in the city set up a night out on him.  He covered transportation and a dinner at this restaurant as well as a visit back to work to see some people on a more informal visit.  It was an incredible night.

Finally during the last few weeks of Therapy we were able to get our own transportation.  It was a long time coming and a lot of work with Voc Rehab in driving evaluations, van evaluations etc but the day finally came.

This was a life changing thing for us and allowed us to start being independent in our life but start considering a return to work on a part time basis which would be allowing me to meet one of my long term goals set way back in the beginning of therapy but in the short term it allowed up to as noted on Day 123:

“Expanding our boundries together will help us be bettereveryday."

I had time all along to reflect and express feelings about my injury and my life since and one of those things you might not think about is:

“I am thankful to all the doctors, nurses, techs, and therapists that have helped get me to where I am at. I can say they convinced me that I could do things that I have thought weren’t possible the entire way. All along they encourage me to think of the possible and not allowing me to think about the past. That is exactly what it is, the past, and I just keep looking ahead and moving forward.

I am thankful to have the opportunity to be bettereveryday.”

It lead to me being very thankful to all the therapist, and doctors that allowed me to get to this point where I could be starting work again.  I still had thereapy to go just a few more days at the day institute and so much unsure about how I would continue therapy and physical improvement but I finally got to go back to work and it was amazing and a culmination of everything I had been working torwards This link below is video of my first day back to work:

https://youtu.be/7lHDHyyPqBc

[luxus4me]

Lifehack - Feed How do you go from idea to implementation? By setting goals. In your personal life and at work, goals give you direction. They allow you to split projects into manageable pieces, and they help you hold yourself accountable along the way. But setting goals is only the first step. More than nine in 10 people who set goals for the new year never achieve them.((Inc.:Science Says Only 8 Percent of People Actually Achieve Their Goals. Here Are 7 Things They Do Differently)) If you want to actually accomplish your goals, you can’t just think of the finish line. You need to set yourself up to reach it, which means strategizing how you’ll run the race. What’s the best way to do that? By setting some ground rules for yourself:

1. Setting Goals the SMART Way

Setting any sort of goal is better than nothing, but you can set yourself up to succeed by keeping the acronym “SMART” in mind. A SMART goal is: Specific Whatever your goal is, you need to know when you’ve achieved it. The more specifics you give yourself, the better. Say that you’re saving money with the goal of buying a new car. How much money, exactly, do you need? Are you willing to defer some of the cost through financing, or would you prefer to make a cash purchase. When do you hope to make the purchase? Your specific goal might be, “I want to save $5,000 for a down payment by December 2020.” You’ve given yourself a yardstick by which to measure your progress. Measurable A goal can be specific but not measurable. You might want to become a better father in the new year — but by what standards will you judge yourself? Those standards are obvious for goals like saving money. But for something like becoming a better father, you’ll need to come up with proxies. If you’re worried that you don’t spend enough time with your son or daughter, maybe you want to measure the time you spend per week with him or her. If you haven’t been giving your child the help he or she needs with schoolwork, perhaps improvements in his or her grades is how you’ll know you’ve been a better parent. Attainable Specific and measurable goals aren’t necessarily attainable. If you’re trying to get fit, good on you. Realize, though, that you probably won’t be able to run a marathon by the end of next week. Shoot high, but beware: A recent study by the University of Basel found that people who set attainable goals for themselves enjoy greater wellbeing than those who set unreasonably high ones. The reason, according to researchers, is that a sense of control over outcomes results in greater life satisfaction.((Science Daily: Live better with attainable goals)) Relevant Your goals should always map to a greater plan. Why bother to lose weight, for example, if your body mass is already at a healthy mark? If revenue is your company’s greatest need, then don’t set a goal to deck out your company’s office. Relevance is also important for two less obvious reasons: If a goal doesn’t actually matter to you, you’ll struggle to stick with it. And at least in the context of workplace goals, you’ll struggle to get team buy-in or resources if it’s not clearly relevant to your mission. Time-dependent Although attaching a timeline to your goal does make it more specific, timeliness deserves a special shoutout: If you have no deadline for achieving your goal, you will struggle to make time for it. Think through what the actual work of the goal will look like. Say you’d like to lose 25 pounds: Medical experts suggest aiming to lose 1-2 pounds per week, which means you should expect to reach your goal in 12-25 weeks. Be patient with yourself. We’d all like to achieve our goals faster, but setting unrealistic expectations is not the solution. You may burn out or, in the context of the weight-loss example, even endanger your health. You know that setting goals is important, and you know what a good one looks like. But your time is limited; the next step is to choose: What do you most want to achieve, and how do you actually do it? Every goal has an opportunity cost. Working toward one means that you can’t use that time to do something else. And so, the next few points will focus on how to achieve the right goals.

2. Think about Others

Few real achievements involve just one person. Be a team player: Before deciding to spend weeks or months working toward something, think about others. It’s important to keep your ears open. Say you learn that you’re not the only member of your family who’d like to get fit in the new year. Prioritizing that goal is a good idea because it benefits you both: Having an accountability partner makes you both more likely to hit the gym after a hard day.

3. Know Your 'Why'

As great as it is to take others into account when setting goals, your first priority should be just that: yours. To maximize both your time and your chances of achieving a goal, it’s important to stay inspired. Think deeper than “earning more money” or “being healthier.” Do you want to build a better life for your family? Is seeing your kids graduate college what gets you out of bed every day? In professional life, this is particularly key. Mike Novotny, CEO of clinical trial software company Medrio, gets through the hard days by thinking back to his mission is to cure disease and save lives.((Mike Novotny: CEOs, The Purpose Of Any Organization Is The “Why.” Here Are 3 Essential Questions To Ask Yourself Before You Launch)) Medrio won’t cure every disease, Novotny realizes, but he does believe it’s possible for the industry to do so. Your “why” doesn’t have to be changing the world in order to be a worthwhile goal. But it should be something that you believe in, stand a good chance of achieving, and are able to break into specific steps.

4. Look at the Long Term

Short-term goals have value, but they should really be seen as steps toward long-term goals. Use legacy goals to organize your operations. Challenge yourself: Can you map every item on your calendar to one of those three long-term goals? What about your task list, purchases, and investments? What might legacy goals look like in your personal life? Think about things that would actually alter your life trajectory. If you want to improve access to education, perhaps starting an online learning company should be one of this year’s legacy goals.

5. Put First Things First

Once you have your big picture and annual priorities in mind, you need to drill down: How are you going to get there? Start with a simple question, suggests Say Insurance’s Erin Thompson: “What do I want to achieve today?” Without a specific plan of action for the day, it’s all too easy to get caught up in the little things. The truth is, most of what you do in a day probably doesn’t get you closer to your goals. Things like answering emails, cooking meals, and commuting have to happen, but they’re best seen as chores rather than steps forward.

6. Be Humble

Whether you’re working on a solo goal or one that involves a whole team, recognize that others’ ideas can help you achieve it faster and more effectively. Look beyond things like age and job title. Teenager Greta Thunberg has broken through to more people on climate change than many scientists. Mahatma Gandhi was a small-time lawyer before he helped India overcome British rule. Always assume that the person you’re interacting with has something valuable to tell you. Be open with people about what you want to achieve, and humbly accept their input.

7. Give Yourself Some Credit.

Most goals worth setting are achieved in phases. If you can’t see and feel yourself making progress toward them, warns Teamwork CEO Peter Coppinger, you’ll struggle to achieve what you set out to do. When setting goals, think about the waypoints you expect to see along the way. Say you hope to become a CEO someday. You can’t expect to leap straight to the top, so consider what roles you might want to hold first. As you work your way up, celebrate those wins. When you earn your first management role, go visit a national park you’ve always wanted to see. Once you become a VP, take that European vacation. After you’re promoted to the c-suite, reward yourself with a cruise. Setting goals is good, but achieving them is even better. Choose wisely, listen carefully to those around you, work hard, and remember to celebrate the wins along the way.

More on Setting Goals

How to Use SMART Goal to Become Highly Successful in Life

How to Create an Action Plan and Achieve Your Personal Goals

How to Become Goal Oriented and Achieve More in Life

http://j.mp/2G2Pd3J via Lifehack - Feed URL : http://j.mp/2RCV6c6

[techscopic]

Why The Right Change Often Feels Wrong

On Tuesdays I write about the top voted question on Ask Berkun (see the lovely archive). This week’s question came from J.R. [via email]:

What is a favorite theory that you wish more people understood?

A favorite theory I wish was more well known is the Satir Change Model. It’s popular in some circles, but often when I mention it in talks at events few have seen it before.  Virginia Satir was a family therapist who studied how families behave, and in particular, how they respond to change.

We like to believe change and progress are predictable, especially if we’re applying an idea we’ve used before or that is widely accepted. But according to her research (based on family behavior), and her model, even when we’re making the right change, at the right time, confusion and fear are likely.

The Satir Change Model is simple and has 5 parts (image source):

Late Status Quo – this is the present, where things are stable, at least in the sense that they’ve been the same way for some time.

Foreign element – This is Satir’s term for any change that is introduced, which could be something deliberate (a new healthy diet) or something surprising (new neighbors move in next door). It could be a new idea, process, team member or anything. Often people resist foreign elements, even if they come with the promise of solving a problem. People often prefer to keep doing what they have been doing (status quo), even if there are things they don’t like about the status quo, especially if they don’t have much trust in their leader or their coworkers.

Chaos – (IMO this is the central idea of the model). Even if you are doing everything right, and the change is the right one, volatility will rise for a time. Average performance will drop as people experiment with adjustments to incorporate the new idea. Hidden assumptions, and emotions, will be revealed, which can be painful at first. A new idea may require new conversations, redistribution of responsibilities and more. What makes this phase challenging is it’s hard to predict how long it will take or if the path is the right one (e.g. “do we need to keep going, or is this direction a mistake?”)

Transforming Idea – The job of a leader is to help a team work through the chaos phase until they reach clarity. This is challenging as each person might require different coaching, advice, support or training to adopt the new idea. And the team as a whole may need to reform, with different roles and responsibilities. Someone with leadership skills might correctly identify a new direction, but it takes someone with people management skills to help them through the transitions that the new direction demands.

Practice and Integration – Once the new idea is understood and adopted, finally the expected gains can be seen and progress becomes predictable. And eventually stabilizes again as the new status quo.

The model isn’t predictive. It doesn’t tell you how much chaos a particular idea will generate, if any at all. It also can’t tell you whether the new idea you’re introducing is the right or wrong one. It’s simply a useful framework for thinking about the psychological patterns likely to arise when something changes.

Inexperienced people often confuse the chaos phase as a failure in their choice. And if they quit early, assuming “chaos” means they made a mistake, and revert back to the old ways of doing things, they likely will never have the confidence to try something that bold again. They now confuse the chaos phase with failure. This is a kind of self inflicted learned helplessness, where the necessary cost to improve and grow is now too psychologically expensive. People and organizations can become paralyzed here, as they’ve become extremely resistant to any threat of a “foreign element”, even though that’s exactly what’s needed to grow.

Some foolish people dismiss Satir’s work based on the question what do families have to do with workplaces or individual adult choices? But workplaces are based on relationships, and we learn our models for how to relate to other people from… our families! Your favorite, and least favorite, coworkers learned many of their patterns of behavior from their early relationship with their parents and siblings. How we define trust, love, collaboration, friendship and teamwork all come from our experience with the first and primary tribe in our lives.

Anuradha Gajanayaka compares the Satir model to Kanter’s Law, which states that “Everything looks like a failure in the middle.” She suggested that we “Recognize the struggle of middles, give it some time, and a successful end could be in sight.“

And that is a key takeaway from the Satir model. Even if you’re doing everything right in your life, or as a leader, when you try to change something be prepared for surprises. Plan time for “chaos” in response to the change, where it’s normal for performance to drop and for experimentation to happen until the new idea is understood, incorporated and refined.

Why The Right Change Often Feels Wrong syndicated from http://ift.tt/2wBRU5Z