#i have now had at least 7 errors and lost out on 7 separate events tickets because of this damn company

[chaosseeking]

nothing pisses me off more than trying to use ticketmaster. istg evrytime i try it creats a new error or issue that blocks me from getting tickets

[snowdice]

Gaps in His Files (Part 9) [Relabeled; Refiled Series]

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Relationships: Logan/Patton

Characters:

Main: Logan, Patton

Appear: Remy, Virgil (but only in the epilogue)

Summary:

Logan Berry has learned many things the last 10 years: a lot of math and physics, a bit of humility, and how to be a hero being just a few. Through his education, his experience teaching, and his exploits as the superhero Bluebird, he’s changed in a lot of small and large ways. He has recorded these changes in well-organized documents and files. He’s even had to create two new file designations: a red one for files about his moonlighting at Bluebird, and a light blue one dedicated to his boyfriend, Patton.

When Bluebird is targeted by a memory device and all of those 10 years of progress suddenly disappear, Patton Sanders and Logan’s extensive files are left as his only resource to get those memories back. But what is Patton supposed to do when there are clear gaps in his files? And what does he do when he is one of them?

This is set 25 years before Sometimes Labels Fail though it’s story is completely independent of it and it is not necessary to read that one first.

Notes: Superhero AU, memory loss, past child abuse, past child neglect, unhealthy ideas about ones place in relationships, emotional suppression, self-deprecating thoughts, medical procedures mentioned, very brief unhealthy views of sex

In which Logan was being a petulant little shit and so I slapped him in the face.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8

Logan’s future-self had made this ridiculously easy. He and Patton had fallen asleep on the floor of the office and woken up at about 6am. Logan had complained of boredom over breakfast and asked if they could take a break from the files and go to the library to get him a book to read whenever they were not trying to jog his memory. Patton had, predictably, told him that he wasn’t comfortable taking Logan out especially to the library since he frequented the location and people who know him might try to talk to him. Instead, he suggested Logan stay at the apartment and he would go alone to get a book for him himself. The man was surprisingly easy to manipulate for someone his future-self deemed a worthy romantic partner.

Said future-self had written his weekly schedule out in the front of his planner along with the buildings and classroom numbers each event took place in. So, he knew where he needed to be and when. He also had written the sections he was supposed to cover in the calculus textbook that day in the daily part of the planner. Logan could not find said textbook in his apartment, so he imagined it was in his on-campus office. Luckily, his future-self had the foresight to write his office number on the inside front cover of the planner in case it was lost and needed to be returned.

Now he just had to find these places. Getting to the campus was easy. When he exited the apartment building, he could see large buildings that were likely dorms only a few blocks away and, upon walking in that direction, easily found himself on a college campus. Then, it was simply the task of finding a map of the campus to locate the buildings he needed and going through the needlessly complicated process of figuring out his office building’s strange numbering system. Honestly why were rooms 7-9 and 13-15 in a separate hallway than all of the other numbers? It took him under half an hour all together to find the little room in the basement with a door who’s lock perfectly fit one of the keys on his keychain.

Perfect. Now, he just had to find the textbook in his desk, glance through the sections the planner had indicated, and make it to the classroom in less than 25 minutes.

He was honestly quite pleased with his own cleverness when he opened the door to the office.

…

Patton was there.

He was sitting on one of the three desks in the room, arms folded over his chest. They stared at each other for a long moment.

“Hey Logan,” a woman seated at a different desk said looking between the two of them. “Everything okay?”

“Oh, everything’s fine Lia,” Patton said cheerfully, but there was a bite to his smile. “Logan is just being stubborn even though he’s in no state to teach today.”

“I’m perfectly fine,” Logan said, teeth clenched.

“Is this another Logan gets pneumonia incident?” Lia asked.

“Yep,” Patton replied without hesitation.

Logan frowned at him. “I am fine.”

“You are not,” Patton hissed.

“I have no physical ailments,” he insisted. Lia and Patton exchanged a look Logan did not understand, but which still made him bristle.

“Look Logan,” she said. “I owe you a couple for last semester; I can teach your classes for you today and next week too if need be. Like, we really don’t want a repeat of fourth year, do we?”

He had no idea what she was talking about. “That won’t ha…”

“Thank you, Lia!” Patton interrupted. “I’m going to go and take him home. We’ll have to get together once Logan’s all sorted out.” He hopped off the desk and grabbed Logan’s arm in a firm grip before yanking him out of the room. He was clearly irate, but Logan was too; he ground his teeth together.

“How did you even get here before me?” Logan grumbled.

“Because I know where your office is,” he spat back. “Unlike you who knows nothing about anything.”

Logan gave an irritated huff.

“Don’t,” Patton warned. “Listen to me. You cannot teach this class. I would do a better job at teaching that class than you right now and I don’t even have a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. Lia is a great teacher with as much experience as you’re supposed to have. She will handle it. You need to focus on trying to get better. Not on ruining your own life for whenever things get back to normal.”

This felt infuriatingly like a scolding. “I don’t appreciate being coddled,” Logan said coldly.

Patton took a breath. “I will endeavor to stop doing so as soon as you’re mentally in your 20s again.”

“We don’t even know if I even can get my memories back.”

“Maybe you will or maybe you won’t, but I am not letting you risk what you spent the last 10 years building because you have a pathological need to not take a day off.”

“Maybe I don’t want what I built,” he said stubbornly. Patton went stiff and Logan realized his error. He honestly hadn’t meant it in that way, not even in anger, but he didn’t know how to explain that when he saw Patton’s face smooth out.

“The parking lot is this way,” Patton told him, turning from him. Logan opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

They didn’t speak again until they were inside Patton’s car. “Here,” Patton said, shoving a book at him.

“What’s this?” he asked, snapping out of the mix of panic and anger still pounding in his ears.

“You said you wanted a book,” he replied and clearly nothing had snapped him out of his own anger yet. “You like that one and you said you always wanted to forget it and read it again, so I guess you get your wish.”

Logan stared at it as Patton started the car. He’d known Logan was lying when he’d asked for the book, but he’d still gone to the library and gotten him one anyway. What type of person would do that? What kind of person would still go through the effort to get Logan a book he liked even though his anger was clearly boiling under his skin?

No one was like that. At least, no one Logan had ever met was like that. Not even his parents, no matter how kind they were, would ever do something like that, for fear that it would be like rewarding bad behavior. This didn’t feel like it was a reward for bad behavior though. In fact, Logan felt bad even though he still thought he was in the right. It was an odd sensation.

He looked down at the library book. It was a symbol of something Logan couldn’t quite put his finger on. A lesson he had a feeling he’d probably learned already.

Affection coexisting with ire.

His parents had always been good people and loved him, but he’d spent most of his life living up to expectations. Teachers liked him because he was smart and rarely misbehaved. His peers tolerated him because he was able to help them with their schoolwork. His parents loved him for loves sake, but he was pretty sure they liked him because he obeyed their rules and he was good at things.

So, who was this man who got him a book he liked and gave it to him even when they stood opposed to each other? Even when Logan had lied to him and tried to manipulate him? Even when anger hung in the air between them in this car? Who was this man? Why did his kindness and affection not require Logan’s compliance?

He had the sudden though that while he didn’t know if he’d ever remember anything else about this life he’d found himself in, he could probably remember how to love this man.

Want to read more? Click below!

Part 10

[nouveauweird]

bullshit-free guide to actually fucking writing your wip

disclaimer: this isn’t a fool proof method. when it comes to writing advice and techniques for productivity I say keep an open mind, but take what works for you and leave the rest. 

disclaimer 02: this is more or less for people who want to eventually publish, but there may be elements in here that benefit hobby-writers.

Where & When You Write

Some people will tell you that your writing routine needs to be sacred. I don’t quite believe that. You can absolutely curate a space for yourself that you aim to write in, but at the same time, focusing very strongly on the ritual of writing makes it hard to create an adaptable habit. 

The Writing Zone: 

Your desk or table should face away from your bed, my mother always swore by that and it stuck with me. If space doesn’t allow for that, consider putting furniture or some partition up so you can’t see your bed. For some reason, this makes focusing easier. 

For those of you who may be bedridden or have limited space, a good bed-desk is absolutely just as acceptable (I am actually planning to get one). 

If you have a space separate from your bedroom, the follow applies as well: 

Eliminate as much distraction as possible from your desk. Your experience of distraction is unique so do what you gotta do to eliminate it. 

Make sure your space is well lit. Background light is essential to avoid eyestrain when staring at a screen.

Your chair should be comfortable, and support your back. Scoot your ass all the way to the back of the chair and try sitting on your thighs as much as possible to take strain off your lower spine (my chiropractor told me this).

The Writing Time: 

You need to make time for your writing. Summer means the sunshine is waking me up at 5:45 AM and it’s too hot to doze comfortably so my ass is up and writing or reading until 7 AM when I gotta start getting reading for the day. If I have to catch the 10:15 AM bus, I’ve for about 4 hours to work with between waking up and leaving. 

I finished July 2019 Camp Nano by writing in the morning. And I’m not even a morning person, I swear.

Make time for you writing. If you can make a routine you can stick to, excellent, if you have a handful of 5-10 minute time-pockets— also okay! The 30 minutes your dinner is in the oven is just as good a time to write as any other.

How do you learn how to write in tiny time pockets, you ask, well here it is: Micro Writing Sprints and Macro Writing Sprints. The former applies to pockets of time under 15 mins, while the latter applies to pockets of time over 20 mins. All you have to do is set a timer and challenge yourself to write as much as you possibly can. 

Another thing to keep in mind is knowing your personal limits. If your attention suffers and you start to wander after 15 mins, keep your sprints to 5-10 minute blocks, and give yourself 5-15 min breaks where you get up, drink some water, move your body and then come back to your writing. 

How to Write More, Faster

You have to kill your inner editor. Or at least subdue them. You can fix a typo or whatever but that’s really it. The idea is that you need to allow yourself to get into a mindset where you’re only focusing on the writing, your prose is allowed to be a mess. Insecurity and doubt have no place here, only writing.

Your first draft doesn’t need to be clean. You get to clean it up when it’s done. Stephen King says you write your first draft with the door closed, and the second with the door open, and I like that saying a lot. The revision process is actually way more fun than I thought it would be. I get to make fun of myself for my weird writing quirks— every single one of my “most common errors” in my Grammarly report is about misusing commas!— and restructure and improve upon the foundation I laid with the first draft.

If you come up with something that changes something significant to your story, write a note about it, and then continue on with your draft like it’s been that way the whole ass time. Do not go back and change things. Just keep writing.

Learning how to do Writing Sprints allows you to quickly get into the habit of putting everything down as fast as you can without overthinking it. Because the real thinking is for later, when you’re revising. Essentially these Sprints enable you to get into the writing zone much faster, so feasibly you could write in small time-pockets at the bus stop, in a waiting room, on the bus—anywhere.

Outlining will make you write faster.

Yes I am pro-outlining, please don’t click away because of that, because I also still think that you need to use what works for you, and if you’re reading this something isn’t working, so please keep your mind open.

The very least you should try is preparing or pre-planning what you need to write for your writing session (no matter how short). You will write more and faster this way. Most of all, you will be less likely to “wander” around. 

I wrote out a small fragment-filled paragraph of what needed to happen in the first few scenes of my July 2019 Camp Nano project and got them out more easily and faster compared to when I didn’t. I wrote sustainedly in 30 minute time-pockets with a great deal of focus when I prepared my writing before actually writing.

Your WIP Outline

What if your outline was also actually super connected to your character sheets? Libbie Hawker makes this sound so easy in her book “Take Off Your Pants” in which she broke down some very interesting ideas on how to build your characters and your story that I hadn’t previously considered. 

What I ended up with was something like this: 

CHARACTER NAME Character: write down the basics; age, career, small relevant facts Flaw: what problem do they have that hinders them External goal: the thing they want that they can’t get unless they overcome their ‘flaw’ Ally:  who pushes the character toward their goal when they stray Antagonist: who has same or aligned goal, but with different motives and execution Events:

Opening scene

Inciting event

Character realizes external goal

Display of flaw

Drive for goal

Antagonist reveal

Thwart 01

Revisiting flaw

New drive for goal

Antagonist attacks

Thwart 02

Changed goal

Ally intervention

Renewed Focus

Battle

Death

Outcome

End: success or failure or neutral result with regards to overcoming ‘flaw’

The stuff under the “Events” category is stuff everyone has seen before in narrative charts, and it won’t be the last time you see it either. You can use or discard or repeat them however many times you need to. I still think this plot chart that I made it great for figuring out pacing, so check that out if you need some help there.

You can also apply these to series, where the character’s “Flaw” and “External goal” change as the narrative progresses. 

All of these parts are explained in Libbie Hawker’s book, but I’m happy to explain if you DM me! 

I applied a central idea for my WIP “Hyacinth Stalks” and all the central characters share a common idea with regards to their flaws. Hawker recommends filling in this information for all central characters, and working in which events which characters will interact in. 

The common idea is that my characters are “holding onto the past to feel more in control in the present”. Juliet Shain maintains habits of maintaining a “perfect athletic body” in the same way she did as a dancer five years earlier. She can’t exercise that same control over her mental health, which she struggles with, because of questions she has pertaining to the accident that lost her her leg remaining unanswered. 

Juliet’s ultimate goal is closure about the accident, which she won’t be able to access unless she stops holding onto the past and in turn the idea that the accident “ruined” her. 

I can apply the same things to Alana Murdock, another central character in “Hyacinth Stalks”, who, because she could only rely on herself after her sister’s murder while her parents grieved and her brother cut all contact, rejects her brother’s attempt to reconnect in order to protect herself in the present despite the stress of the upcoming 10th anniversary of the Hyacinth Killer’s disappearance. Her goal, would be to make it to the Olympic Volleyball team, which she won’t be able to do unless she stops isolating herself.

I can now approach the Events sections with more clarity because I know what the characters’ goals are and what their hindrances are as well. I can apply the same ideas to the other central characters, as well as the Serial Killer and weave their stories into the narrative as well. When you have a strong character arc, you can build a strong story.

When you can answer the questions about your character(s) you can fill in those Event sections with far more ease, and begin to break those sections down into chapters, scenes, or beats, with as much or as little detail as you want. Libbie Hawker’s method involves writing out paragraphs worth of scene details before actually getting to the writing. She says this isn’t necessary, but that for her it eliminates “wandering” and any doubts about what needs to be put on the page. 

Personally speaking, I lie somewhere in the middle, wherein my scene outlines involve small paragraph or bullet points for what needs to happen. 

Hawker has written books in 21 days, so there is definitely some magic in her method. In her book, Hawker details that creating her outline took 4 hours. When I outlined “But a Monster” it took a week (5 days), and despite not having had her method then, the existence of the outline made writing the novel much clearer and focused, which my writing had not been prior to admitting I needed to give outlining a chance. 

All writing advice is a tree of wisdom

Take what benefits you most and leave the rest. 

I have fully taken the advice that I have attempted to explain here. I read in “5000 Words Per Hour” by Chris Fox and “Take Off Your Pants” by Libbie Hawker and felt incredibly inspired and motivated, but some of what they say or eschue doesn’t resonate with me or my craft. I have to do what works for my writing, and if I’m happy with the pace the work is going at then alright! 

What I’ve written here is meant to give you new ideas on how to be more productive. I read the books that helped me come up with this because I felt like something was lacking in my writing routine and I had my eyes opened. I hope I have opened yours too and that your work benefits from this.

[curserp]

first of all, i just want to say i loved seeing all the thoughts and theories that were going on around all of this !!!  honestly, i think some of you guys gave me too much credit, because most of this is a lot simpler than the intricate stuff you came up with--- i wish i had thought of some of the things you all did !  but for now, finally, here’s  ( most of )  the clues i purposefully placed, as well as some general info, which i’ve tried to break up into sections for ease of reading.

SKELETONS / NUMBERS :

the skeletons are listed below with their id numbers  ( the tags are linked as well ) :

andromeda : #0237632.

arachne : #0272463.

cassandra : #0276372.

daedalus : #0323357.

helen : #0043536.

heracles : #0472537.

jason : #0052766.

medea : #0063332.

midas : #0064327.

narcissus : #0672787.

orion : #0067466.

pandora : #0726372.

paris : #0072747.

perseus : #0777387.

each of the id numbers were decided by entering the skeleton names onto the dial pad of a phone--- abc = 2, def = e, ghi = 4, jkl = 5, mno = 6, pqrs = 7, tuv = 8, wyz = 9.

phones in general were hinted at a few times.

in asks, as i tried to use the word ‘call’ repeatedly when asked about it, ‘key’ once, as well as the word ‘phony’ at one point. get it ? phone-y ?  that one was kind of a stretch, i know.

a phone prominently featured in a branch on the classification quiz.

the encoded text messages were, obviously, sent from a phone.

on an update before dropping stage 3, a strange voicemail was mentioned and you were encouraged to delete it from your phone.

the database speaks to you over the phone during curse finalization.

on the graphic for stage 3, a phone is the only object in the hallway.

some names did need to be shortened in order to fit all the same number of digits, so andromeda became adrmda, pandora became pandra, etc.

honestly, this code was weirder and more random than most of the other things, so i’d call it bonus points more than anything else. a lot of you puzzled out who was who without knowing what the numbers meant.

CURSE REGISTRATION / STAGE I   ( here ) :

i asked you all to send in these results to the curse database, and used those totals to decide the order in which the skeletons would be released ; midas ended up with the most results so they’re posted first, cassandra got the least so they’re last, etc.

results from all three stages will also factor in to some future plot drops, though i’ll keep those quiet for now.

TEXT POSTS :

these are pretty straightforward ; i chose text that i thought suits each skeleton as i’ve written them, and tagged them with their respective curse ids to tease the fact that there were ids at all.

FOLDERS PAGE   ( here ) :

this displays not only the skeletons’ classifications, but also their active danger levels ; one exclamation point for low, two for medium, three for high.

while the classifications were shown as only numbers 001-007 at that point, since the curse classification blog hadn’t dropped yet, in this ask a few posts previous i wrote the types as the first word of each corresponding number on the list.

CURSE CLASSIFICATION / STAGE II   ( here ) :

when you reach a result on the curse classifications, the clock at the top of the screen stops and displays a single time. that number corresponds to the number on the files image. when you get an error it shows only zeroes.

the classifications are :

chaos   ( pandora, paris )

death   ( arachne )

hero   ( heracles, jason, perseus )

infamy   ( cassandra, midas )

loss   ( daedalus, medea )

love   ( helen, narcissus, orion )

monster   ( andromeda )

yes, those are alphabetical. when i was making the folders page i just kinda said fuck it.

i took the hands off the clock on the image in the post, both because i wanted to draw attention to the clocks on the actual pages, and cause it looked sick.

if you get to page /c6, the clock stops and zeroes out. that’s because there’s no way to get anything but an error after that point.

i asked you all to send in these results to the curse database, too, and they were used as tiebreakers for the skeleton posting order. like, medea and pandora ended up with the same amount of results from registration, but there were more loss results than chaos from classification, so medea goes first.

TEXT MESSAGES   ( here, here, here, here, here, here, and here ) :

the encryption on the text messages is caesar cipher, where you shift the alphabet a certain number of letters over and substitute those letters for each other. for example, an alphabet with a shift of 1 would have a become b, b become c, and so on. the shift changes for each text message, depending on what the character’s curse classification is. so the text from narcissus  ( #0672787, classification of 6. love )  has a shift of 6.

the decoded texts are :

#0063332.  ( medea, shift 5 ) : you made your choice. now i am making mine.

#0672787.  ( narcissus, shift 6 ) : at least you’ll be hung in the stars. i’ll only be remembered like a cautionary tale.

#0072747.  ( paris, shift 1 ) : don’t blame me, please. i am not the villain.

#0272463.  ( arachne, shift 2 ) : did you make this for yourself, too ?

#0472537.  ( heracles, shift 3 ) : wasn’t my strength meant to earn me a better reward than this ?

#0237632.  ( andromeda, shift 7 ) : you cannot be a hero all the time. what if my monster wins ?

#0064327.  ( midas, shift 4 ) : i could have known better, at least. nothing this gold could come without consequence.

i also wanted to use this to kind of further their feeling of being watched ---which i hope i started to get across just in some answers to anons ---with the messages between skeletons be ‘intercepted’ by the database.

CURSE FINALIZATION / STAGE III   ( here ) :

before dropping this stage, a ‘data breach’ was mentioned twice in separate posts. this was to  ( hopefully )  encourage people to look for hidden information--- aka, the data that was breached.

there are five total hidden pages on this stage, and one secret extra message.

first is another intercepted message from one of the skeletons. the link is here.

on page /b2, click the word ‘key’ to get here.

the text message is from #0276372, aka cassandra, who is prophetic. cassandra is the only skeleton with anything set about their curse, and their prophecies will be a part of gameplay.

the url for this page is 0677437, and if you use the same keypad method as the numbers for the skeletons, that translates to ‘mssges.’

second is a chart monitoring active danger levels. the link is here.

on page /b3, the clock has stopped at 00:00:14, for the 14 skeletons. if you wait those 14 seconds, you will automatically be redirected.

the url for this page is 0003282, or ‘data.’

the third is a contact log between the database and a god. the link is here. 

on page /c2, a ‘source’ is mentioned. if you view the source code of the page, the first thing at the top is the url.

the clock on this page has stopped at 02:09:01, and the connection was lost at that same time ; if you substitute letters in for numbers, 291 spells ‘bia’, the goddess of violence, who the communication was with.

the url for this page is 0005647, or ‘logs.’

the fourth is an incident report from a monster attack. the link is here.

on page /c7, ‘time’ is mentioned repeatedly. click on the clock to get here.

the incident report is 8-1-18-16-25, which, with a substitution between numbers and letters, translates out to ‘harpy,’ the type of creature from the attack.

the url for this page is 0737678, or ‘report.’

the fifth is the list of id numbers and their skeletons. the link is here.

on this ask, i asked  ( yes, i sent this one to myself )  about the numbers, and responded ‘why haven’t you searched.’ put /numbers directly after the url of curse finalization to get here.

if you highlight above the ‘submitting’ text on the /finalize page, you can find a message : ‘you’re not safe here.’

the codes you all reached are going to remain kind of a mystery for now. there is a solution for it, if you’re really interested in puzzling it out, but i’m not going to list the answer here. they’ve helped me decide the first plot drop of the group. this is somewhat of a teaser for how the gameplay will go here ; the curse database will remain an active player, and you’ll often be helping choose events. you just might not always when you’re doing it, or how.

easter eggs / fun facts, i guess !

when you get an error in curse registration or classification, if you hover your mouse over the word ‘error,’ it shakes like a glitch. this serves no purpose and means nothing, it just took me a while to figure out how to code, so i wanted to point it out. just let me have this

i actually had a very different stage three planned when i dropped stage two, one incorporating the results from registration and classification more, but the classification results i got were totally different than what i’d expected. while the registration results were pretty varied, over half of the 40-something answers i got from your classifications were for ‘love,’ and i actually got only one ‘monster’ and zero ‘death’ results from you guys. which i suppose is fitting, since there’s only one skeleton of each !  but still, it threw things off a bit, and i had to pretty thoroughly rework stage three. besides, i ended up with like 100+ results from both stages, and i got kind of overwhelmed with my original idea. you all kept me on my toes !!

i sent two asks to myself : the one i needed to set up so i could list out the curse classifications, the one to drop a hint about the /numbers page. the rest all came from you guys !  and for that i am hugely grateful--- i had sort of escape plans the entire time if there wasn’t enough interest, where i’d be able to drop the main after stage one or two and skirt around the extras, but i’m so glad i got to follow through on this thing to the end. i wouldn’t have been able to do it without your engagement. every single time i get a little inbox notification i get excited.

i noticed some of you were getting a lot of error results, but that’s not on you !  there were 32 possible results on curse registration with 16 of those being errors, and 15 results on curse classification with 8 of those being errors. so don’t worry, you were more likely on those stages to get an error than a result.

some of you wondered if the general urls  ( /a1, /b2, etc. )  of the different pages on the registration, classification and finalization blogs meant something, and i’m sorry to say they don’t. originally i was going to customize them so they’d be harder to just sift through later, but there ended up being 130+ total pages between all three blogs--- and for my own sanity, and for the sake of easier organization when editing them, i just left them as they were with their letters and numbers.

someone asked me if this post was for cassandra since the quote involves cassandra in the source material agamemnon. whoops. it’s not, that post is actually just a nod to the fact that i don’t know how to read.

i think that’s just about everything !  there are all kinds of other small things as nods to skeletons, the plot, the database in general, future plot drops, all scattered throughout answers on the curse database--- and i’ll be here all day if i list them all. if you have any specific questions about anything i would love to answer them, so please feel free to shoot them my way !  i believe that’s the gist of it, though. thanks so much again for going along with me on all of this !!

[solesurvivorkat]

all of them for sarah?

I love you @foofygoldfish. It was kind of a tough day for me today, but this made me happy. Thank you for caring, you're such a sweetie and a good friend. ♡♡♡ :-*

Far Cry 5 Deputy Ask Meme

Re: my female deputy, Sarah Rook

(...Don't judge me, 'Sarah'. Lol.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Basics

1. Give their full name, and describe them or post a picture! (Height, build, hair, eye, and skin color, etc.)

Sarah Elizabeth Rook. Faceclaim is actress Katie McGrath (as pictured above). I sometimes picture her hair slightly lighter/a tiny bit more 'warm' toned. Blue eyes (maybe even rivaling the Seed men's, lol). She stands a few inches shorter than John Seed (like... her eyes meet his nose or mouth, give or take). 3 piercings in each earlobe. Wears a silver cross necklace (w/ a small diamond in the center) under her clothing (originally her mom’s).

2. How old are they?

28 (B-day August 24th)

3. Sexuality and gender?

Straight female

Pre-Game

1. How did they end up at the Hope County Sheriff’s Department? How long have they worked there?

Had some 'stings' in her personal life (to make a longer story short), moved to Montana when a job opened up for a Deputy in Hope County. Been there at least a few months.

2. Relationship with Pratt, Hudson, and Whitehorse?

Not like, best friends w/ Deputies Pratt & Hudson, but still has a light, joking relationship w/ them (not quite like siblings... maybe more like cousins, lol). They all still enjoy calling her 'Rookie' (especially b/c of her last name), despite the fact that Sarah's been a Deputy there for a little while now. They like to give her a bit of a hard time, but they do care about her, all of the, having each others' back.

Sheriff Whitehorse is kind of like a surrogate dad to her ('Sheriff Dad'!), even though they're both too stubborn to admit it.

3. Do they have an education?

Attended the University of New Haven, got her degree in Criminal Justice w/ a minor in Legal Studies

4. Where are they from? Did they speak a different language there?

Stamford, Connecticut. Knows a little French (is a bit rusty). Also knows some sign language (also not perfect at it).

5. Is there anyone outside the valley that might have come looking for them?

No. Unfortunately, there's no one. :-( (no family, parents both deceased)

6. Did they have a religious background of any kind?

Oh-ho-ho yes. To be succinct, her parents were religious (not fanatical), her mom got cancer & died, her dad lost his faith as a result. Sarah's pretty well-versed in the bible (as evident in 'TBoJ') but hides this from others as much as she can b/c of the Project's reputation.

Inside Hope County

1. What was going through their head when the helicopter went down and during the subsequent chase?

Definitely feared for her life, didn't know if she was going to make it out alive. Recited the Lord's Prayer quite a few times in her head, silently asking Him for help to get away until she could get more help to fight back against Joseph and the cult.

2. Were they afraid of Joseph and Eden’s Gate? Angry?

Definitely afraid at first. Joseph can be quite the imposing figure, and she and the other law enforcement were very clearly not welcome there from the beginning. Once she started finding out/seeing more of the after effects of the Project, fear became replaced by anger.

3. Did they trust Dutch?

He certainly didn't give off a 'warm & fuzzy' vibe at their 1st meeting... but he seemed like he genuinely wanted to help bring down the cult, and he did save her life after she was separated from Burke, so she decided to trust him.

4. How did they feel about their team being taken by the cult, did they count them as lost, did they want them back, did they not care?

Sarah definitely wanted them back, determined to do her best to rescue them all no matter the cost.

5. How did they take to the idea of being part of, if not leading, the resistance?

Sarah definitely doesn't consider herself a leader by any stretch of the imagination, but believes in doing what's good and what's right. If that means leading others against the Project, then so be it.

6. Which companions did they recruit, and who did they travel with the most?

She's met/recruited all of them, but usually travels with either Boomer or Sharky.

7. Did they have time to find romance amidst the chaos? How did they do it?

Though 'TBoJ' isn't quite there yet, Sarah's OTP is with John Seed. In 'confessing' her past with him, he revealed a little of himself as well, and over time the two of them find an odd kinship in each other than slowly blossoms into more.

8. Feelings about Joseph?

Joseph definitely has an intimidating presence, being extremely passionate about Eden's Gate and God. Sarah understands some of his thoughts and feelings to a point, but hopes she can make him see the error of his ways and (if nothing else) prevent any furthur death/suffering of innocent people.

9. Feelings about the other Seeds?

...Definitely not digging Jacob right now (understatement of the year). No specific feelings about Faith (yet).

10. How did they handle having to kill animals and other humans? Had they done it before?

Sarah takes no pleasure from killing any of 'God's creatures'. She hunts reluctantly for survival (a girl does have to eat), and only kills other humans in self-defense, and/or when absolutely, positively necessary.

11. Which canon ending did they choose in-game, and would you have changed the ending at all?

In-game canon, Sarah went the path of the 'Resist' ending, not wanting to stand back and allow her friends to be controlled by Joseph and the Bliss.

And yes, I would have loved an ending in which you didn't have to kill the Seeds, but maybe detain them instead (even though they were not good people, I didn't like being forced to kill them w/ NO other options).

Personal

1. Favorite weapon(s)?

Usually prefers a rifle or bow & arrow (still relatively accurate while allowing distance from her intended target). Always makes sure she carries a hunting knife as well, just in case.

2. Stealth or firepower?

Sarah absolutely prefers stealth, and likes to avoid fighting if there's an alternate option (but unfortunately, the cult doesn't usually leave her w/ one).

3. How did they spend their time, when not fighting peggies?

Reading, exploring, practicing her fighting skills, helping the Resistance rebuild where she can

4. Where did they live during the events of the game?

Usually takes shelter in abandoned homes during the night, but knows her friends won't mind sharing their space if she needs it (like with Sharky or Mary May).

5. Any other facts you want to share about your Deputy!

Stay tuned to 'The Book of John' for more details about Sarah's sad past, and new friends she'll make along the way!

[daresplaining]

not sure if you have been asked this before but how would you rate the daredevil runs from miller to soule, and why?

    It has taken literally a thousand years to answer this, and I apologize– it’s just a huge question, even skipping all of the pre-Frank Miller runs (thank you for that, by the way– maybe I’ll rank them in a separate post, because I love a lot of the pre-Miller stuff!). Every reread brings with it new insight, and so my preferences are ever-evolving. That said, here’s how I would rank the main Daredevil runs from Miller onward (I’m not including annuals, mini-series, or novels, and I’m skipping the really tiny one-or-two-issue runs for the sake of brevity):

1. Mark Waid Daredevil volumes 3 and 4 are, for me, a perfect encapsulation of everything that makes Daredevil great. It’s all there! Smirking, swashbuckly Matt pulling off badass feats to save the day? Check! Dark, emotionally turbulent Matt trying to cope as the world falls apart around him? Check! An excellent supporting cast? Check! Fantastic hypersensory moments? Check! Great stories? Stunning art? Stilt-Man? Check! Everyone needs to read this run. It’s pretty much perfect.

2. Brian Michael Bendis I’ve learned that my Daredevil preferences tend to lean light(er…), but dang, Bendis writes a heck of a noir comic. He balances intense crime drama with striking character moments, changes the status quo over and over again (in a good way), and gives Matt some of the best zingers he’s ever had. (Seriously. Bendis’s Matt is really funny.) He also gave us Milla Donovan and Angela Del Toro, and for that I am eternally grateful. And whooo, that Alex Maleev/Matt Hollingsworth art… This is a classic, enduring run for a very good reason.  

3. Karl Kesel/Joe Kelly Okay, I’m cheating here. These are two separate runs. But they happened back-to-back, had the exact same tone, and were great for all of the same reasons, so I usually squash them together. If Karl Kesel and Joe Kelly have a problem with this, they can take it up with me (preferably in person– I have a lot of comics for them to sign.) These runs are fun. The Daredevil pendulum swings from light to dark and back again, and these guys landed on the upswing, after Matt had reconnected with his quippy, swashbuckly past. They feel old-fashioned, nostalgic in the best possible way, not afraid to be a little silly while still delivering solid, character-rooted stories. And it helps that the cast of characters is top-notch. Karen is around, trying to re-start her life while juggling humorous relationship issues with Matt. Foggy’s family drama is on full-force as Rosalind Sharpe and Candace come to town. Misty Knight stops by, as does Natasha Romanov. Kathy Malpher, one of my favorite minor DD characters ever, has lots of panel time. Deuce the Devil Dog is there. And it all ends with the breathtaking DD #375, which has got to be one of my top five favorite issues of all time. If you haven’t read these runs yet, go do that and thank me later.  

4. Frank Miller Darkness is only effective when interspersed with some light, and lightness is only effective when injected with some darkness, and Frank Miller (pre-”Born Again”) hit that perfect balance. It’s noir. It’s deep. It’s intense. It’s also some of the funniest Daredevil material ever written. Please go back and read “Guts”, or “Hunters”, or the Power Man and Iron Fist crossover. Let me say it louder, because I feel like I’m alone here: I love Frank Miller’s Daredevil because it is FREAKING HILARIOUS! And it goes without saying that “Born Again” is also stunning– definitely one of my favorite DD stories. And he gave us Stick and the peerless Elektra Natchios (three different versions of her, in fact) and the world has never been the same.

5. Denny O’Neil Denny O’Neil had the misfortune of getting sandwiched between Frank Miller’s two runs, and I feel like that’s the reason he doesn’t get the attention he deserves for some truly fantastic comics. Uh… weird comics, in a lot of cases, but heck, I like well-done weirdness. O’Neil added an international angle to the comic. He sent Matt to Japan and Italy (and even- gasp- New Jersey) and brought in Glori O’Breen, a great character even with her slightly over-the-top accent. He reconnected Matt with Natasha Romanov for a few beautiful one-shot team-ups. He killed off Heather Glenn in a horrible way, but did it with such grace and style that it didn’t feel entirely gratuitous. And he’s responsible for “The Price”– one of my favorite stand-alone issues. Plus, the fact that he was working with David Mazzucchelli didn’t hurt either.  

6. Ann Nocenti Superhero comics– superhero comics writing in particular– has been a white male-dominated profession for far too long, and there are far too few women who have written Daredevil. I hate to start a discussion of Nocenti’s run with “Look! A woman!” but it’s worth pointing out because look at this list. Seriously. (And for anyone unfamiliar with the pre-Miller runs, I assure you, it’s more of the same.) Ann Nocenti’s run is fantastic for the ways it really digs into the heart of the material. She took the post-“Born Again” landscape and ran with it. This was the period that tied Matt to Hell’s Kitchen, and Nocenti made that plot point stick by showing us the fabric of the neighborhood, bringing in characters like the Fat Boys, placing Matt and Karen within the community with the founding of Karen’s free clinic, and turning the Hell’s Kitchen of the Marvel universe into a living, breathing place. In contrast, she also took Matt out of the city, and in doing so, wrote some of my favorite Daredevil stories. She wasn’t afraid to address pressing social issues. She wasn’t afraid to tell stories that were just plain weird. And her run is utterly unique and complex as a result.

7. Ed Brubaker/D.G. Chichester Yeah, okay, this is really cheating. These are two completely different runs, but they are nevertheless tied because of the same factor: I adore some parts, and dislike other parts. “The Devil in Cell Block D” (the first arc of Brubaker’s run) is phenomenal. I re-read it a lot. So is “Last Rites” (by Chichester). Chichester wrote two of my favorite stand-alone issues: “34 Hours” (vol. 1 #304) and “Just One Good Story” (vol. 1 #380). Brubaker gifted us with the awesomeness that is Maki Matsumoto (A.K.A. Lady Bullseye), and Master Izo! Chichester gave us D.A. Kathy Malpher, one of my favorite DD characters ever (bring her back, Marvel! Where did she go?)! Also, his hypersensory writing is visceral verging on gross– which, for me, is ideal. However, Brubaker’s run went downhill a bit after the first arc. I mentioned the light/dark balance in regards to Frank Miller’s run, and Brubaker went all dark. (I consider it the darkest DD run yet.) It’s great storytelling, but not my style. And while I love his shorter arcs, Chichester’s longer work– “Fall From Grace” and “Tree of Knowledge” in particular– don’t do it for me. I find them overly convoluted and lacking substance. Also, while Scott McDaniel draws my favorite rendition of the radar sense, he’s my least favorite DD artist. D.G. Chichester + Lee Weeks 4ever.

8. David Mack I like “Vision Quest” a lot more than “Parts of a Hole”, though that’s somewhat due to the artist switch partway through the latter. “Parts of a Hole” did an excellent job of introducing Maya Lopez, and has a lot of great moments, but “Vision Quest” is practically a piece of fine art. It’s stunning, both narratively and visually. I consider it more of an Echo comic than a DD comic, but it still belongs on this list.  

9. Charles Soule I haven’t had a chance to reread this run in its entirety, since it just ended, and I really need to do so because I’m having a hard time figuring out my feelings on it. There are aspects of Soule’s characterization of Matt that I disagree with. The sensory writing varied in quality, and we clearly have different perceptions of the radar sense. There was a distinct shortage of female characters– and, in fact, of side characters in general. And the mind wipe was a huge misstep, since it erased so many of Matt’s long-held friendships. In a comic that has traditionally drawn much of its power from its strong supporting casts and Matt’s dynamics with them, that decision has caused serious lasting damage. However, there’s also a lot I loved. Sam Chung, though (I feel) underused, is a great character in his own right, and he also provided the chance for us to see Matt in a long-term mentorship role– something I’ve wanted for a while now. Muse was a fascinating and terrifying antagonist. And Soule’s perspective as an actual lawyer added extra zip to many of his stories, whether it was putting Matt in the mayor’s office (finally!) or sending him to the Supreme Court in what may be my favorite law-centered DD story ever. But the real reason Soule’s name is this far up this list is because of the “Double Vision” arc (or, as I call it, “Mike Murdock Must Die 2.0″) which is sheer brilliance, and to my mind, one of the greatest Daredevil stories ever told.

10. Bob Gale “Playing to the Camera” does not get nearly as much credit as it deserves for being a genuinely hilarious superhero law-based comedy of errors, and a bright spot amid the angst-fest that is Daredevil volume 2. My major complaints are that it’s too short and I dislike the art.

11. Andy Diggle I don’t dislike “Shadowland”. I don’t love it, but it’s a cool story concept that suffered– as events often do– from storytelling spread too thin, across too many characters, in too short a timespan. (Though I need to know if he came up with the “Matt Murdock dared evil… and lost” tagline, because if so, that wordplay would rocket him right to the top of this list.) I prefer the lead-up to “Shadowland” to the event itself. But I love DD: Reborn (yes, I said I wasn’t going to cover mini-series, but it’s essentially part of the main comic because it bridges the gap between two volumes. I say it counts). I’ve always enjoyed stories that take Matt out of NYC, and Reborn is a fun adventure story that gets back to basics and serves as a great bookend for volume 2.  

12. Scott Lobdell I like “Flying Blind”. It’s quirky and unusual (which I appreciate), and Matt is written very well. I just don’t love it. It’s one of those arcs that slides right to the back of the memory and only returns to the forefront when you’re reflecting on the first time Matt ever saw Foggy, or wondering if Matt’s bad French in Brubaker’s run is left over from his SHIELD-implanted fluency. It’s a neat idea, but could have been executed in a more engaging, lasting way.

13. Gregory Wright This short run went right out of my head the instant I finished it the first time, and upon rereading it has remained fairly unmemorable. The art is hit-and-miss, and the story– while perfectly fine– isn’t anything exciting or innovative. There are some great hypersensory moments, it’s worth reading, but I don’t have much to say about it beyond that.

14. Alan Smithee “Alan Smithee” is a pseudonym used in the entertainment industry by writers who don’t want to be associated with a certain project. The commentary on manwithoutfear.com states that this run was actually written by Chichester, who used the pen name as a way of protesting his abrupt firing from the comic. I treat it as a separate run, since that’s clearly what he wanted. I always tend to group the Wright and Smithee runs together in my mind because they take place one after the other, are both very short (only 5 issues each), and are very similar in both tone and quality. I like the art in Smithee’s run more, and the writing is solid. However, the whole thing is colored for me by the horrific and unnecessary death of Glorianna O’Breen, a character I love. I’m perfectly fine with characters dying if their deaths are well-written and impactful (heck, I’ll be honest– I love a good death), but Glori’s demise just seems gratuitous, and is therefore not appealing to me.

15. J.M. DeMatteis This run is super weird, but not in an interesting way. It leans toward the religious, which is not my thing, and it relies on the dead sex worker storyline from Man Without Fear, which is really not my thing and should have stayed out of the main continuity. It’s good to read, because it’s a major shift in Matt’s life and sets up the fabulous Kesel/Kelly runs, but… eh. That said, Matt battling his different identities in a graveyard while getting heckled by Stick, and yellow suit DD running around creating mayhem, are 100% my things… so credit where’s it’s due.  

16. Kevin Smith You may have noticed that “Guardian Devil”, the first arc of Daredevil volume 2, the run that rescued the series after its cancellation and brought Matt Murdock to the forefront of the Marvel street-level universe once more…! …is rarely ever mentioned on this blog. That’s because I really don’t like it. At all. I’m grateful to Smith for bringing readers back to DD, but would be happy if he never wrote these characters again. His run is poorly paced, out-of-character, and covers themes/topics/etc. that I personally don’t enjoy. I forced myself through it because I’m a Daredevil completist, but I haven’t read it again. I probably will someday, just to make sure I remember all of the key plot points, but… not yet.  

[topweeklyupdate]

TØP Weekly Update #56: I’m So High (7/27/2018)

I’m still adjusting to Twenty One Pilots once again being a regular part of my day-to-day life. Just when things look like they might be settling down, Tyler Joseph jumps back onto our timelines with more Quality Content to carry us through to the next album, the next tour, and whatever else is on the horizon for our favorite band. Let’s pick apart this week in Twenty One Pilots news together, shall we?

This Week’s TØPics:

“Nico and the Niners” Video Drops

Tickets to the Bandito Tour Go Straight to the Secondary Market, the Clique is Real Sad About It

“Jumpsuit” Soars to #1 at Alternative (and Other Chart News)

And More! 

Major News and Announcements:

The biggest news from the last week was yesterday’s surprise release of the music video for “Nico and the Niners”, which came out with no dmaorg.info buildup or any other cryptic nonsense to prepare me for how much I had to write last night. 

Announced as the second of a trilogy of music videos telling the Trench storyline, this video depicts Tyler inside of Dema itself. Shot in what appears to be Taras Shevchenko University in Kiev, Ukraine (not coincidentally the first concert date on the Europen leg of the Bandito Tour), this video gives us our first clear picture of the community that Clancy’s been telling us about for months now. 

As Reddit detectives discovered two weeks ago in the background of a few shots in “Jumpsuit”, Dema is nestled in the middle of that gorgeous and wild Icelandic countryside. The walled city is laid out (more or less) exactly how the dmaorg.info map suggested. It looks run-down and exceptionally gray (matching the clothing of all its non-bishop denizens), with the only direct light coming from strange florescent strips and tubes. These light sources seem to be created by the bishops themselves in weird religious ceremonies involving glassblowing and waving their arms around in an impression of Michael Phelps getting really lost on dry land. One important note: it seems like the bishops are making much more than just weird art installations...

The video narrative depicts Tyler in his small Dema apartment packing up his belongings (notably the yellow flowers from “Jumpsuit” and the red beanie and white sunglasses of the Blurryface Era) and preparing to escape Dema with the help of the torch-wielding Banditos. When the group meets up, Josh removes his mask; Tyler and Josh smile at each other like gosh darn angels and perform the full secret handshake, marking the first time that we’ve seen the duo physically together outside that single promotional photo since 2018. I’m still crying about it.

The Banditos set up a drum kit and hand Tyler a microphone, and the band perform the song, literally starting a concert that draws the bishops out of their weird little church service. The Banditos flee through ad underground tunnel, with Tyler leaving his jumpsuit behind so two Dema children can find it and be inspired by the sign of yellow. As the band marches into the light, the Banditos attach more yellow duct tape to Tyler’s clothes, demonstrating that the costuming is a deliberate choice and not just the results of cutting costuming budgets.

The Clique has asked a lot of questions about where precisely in the timeline this video falls and what it means for the Trench storyline as a whole. It is pretty easy to read this as coming directly after “Jumpsuit”, with Tyler being rescued by the Banditos he met in that video. However, others have suggested that this is set before Tyler’s failed escape attempt due to the lack of a cut on his nose, leaving open the possibility that Tyler did in fact die in the “Jumpsuit” video, gripping onto a wild flower that reminded him of those he had previously collected by other means within the city. I honestly don’t know how much I buy that- How would Tyler have gotten separated from the other Banditos by the events of “Jumpsuit”?- but I’d be very excited to see if the third video in this trilogy fills the gap and explains how Tyler wound up lying unconscious in the middle of Trench.

The other pertinent question is how this entire narrative relates to our boy Clancy. Tyler appears to be acting out the distraction Clancy described creating several weeks ago, which would make sense if this was a prequel to “Jumpsuit”... but it also doesn’t make sense, because Clancy described the distraction as a signal for attracting the Banditos into the city in the first place, not something that they planned themselves. This discrepancy could just be choked up to an error on Tyler’s part, but I’ve known this kid too long- he cares about his art too much for those kinds of errors.

My theory? This is set before “Jumpsuit”- and also set before Clancy’s escape attempt. Perhaps Tyler initially sought out Dema as a place of temporary refuge, was forbidden from leaving, and then was rescued by his friends and family? Perhaps the band’s performance and them leaving behind their instruments/ jumpsuits alerted Clancy to the possibility of escape in the first place? Maybe Clancy is the kid, or one of the parishioners? I don’t know, man, but I’m pumped to see where this story leads when we get a new video (and a new song) in just a few weeks. (Just please don’t make us wait until Trench comes out.)

In other, potentially less exciting news: this time last week, tickets for the upcoming Bandito Tour were just going on sale. Now... they’re pretty much all gone, at least from the direct-from-source market. Thousands of fans logged onto Ticketmaster at 10 am to grab some tickets priced from $60-$80, waited in a virtual line for half an hour, and were left with only a few scattered seats in the nosebleeds priced at Platinum rates of as much as $500. Even while several sources tried to spin the news of near-complete Day One sell-outs as pointing to the passion of the fanbase, it was pretty apparent to everyone that the vast majority of the purchased tickets did not go to people excited to see their favorite artists, but rather to bot accounts set up by scalpers- StubHub, Seat Geek, and similar websites are filled to bursting with secondhand tickets being offered at double or triple the original listed price.

In all honesty, I’m not sure how we fix this problem moving forward. Ticketmaster and concert promoters truthfully have no incentive to say no to guaranteed sales of all their tickets; if anything, it just encourages them to continue to raise prices. The only way scalpers would stop investing their resources in huge shows like this is if the US followed the lead of several European countries and passed legislation banning the practice or if scalpers had reason to believe that they couldn’t resell most of the tickets for at least slightly-above market “value”. In major markets, there are certainly 20,000 folks rich enough to drop a couple hundred dollars on a night out, so the latter seems unlikely; Twenty One Pilots will keep getting bought out until Josh’s nightmare of only fifteen people in the crowd really comes true.

Another way things could change is if multiple A-list artists really put their foot down on a populist stance that $80 a ticket will make everyone plenty enough money and that they won’t work with companies that don’t invest in defending against bots. And, no, that’s just never gonna happen. Perhaps Tyler and Josh could one day expand the pre-sale program so that every die-hard fan who wants one can access and afford a ticket before bots can get to it, bu that just carries the problem of potentially excluding people based on their fandom instead of their bank account. Sadly, that’s still the only hope I can see on the distant horizon. 

If you did not get tickets, be on the lookout for giveaways and keep watching for the secondary market prices to drop to more reasonable levels as the show date nears and the scalper becomes more desperate to recoup their investment. Godspeed.

Chart Performance:

After their return last week was slightly dampened by the mid-week release date, the band continued to see their new tracks rise up the Billboard charts. With a full seven days of sales and radio play, “Jumpsuit” rose up to #1 at Alternative, the fastest a song has reached that peak since Green Day’s “Know Your Enemy” nearly a decade ago. “Jumpsuit” gained at most every chart save for sales, which we already knew would be front-loaded in the modern marketplace. In its first full release week, “Jumpsuit” gained airplay and moved up to the third most streamed rock song (passing all of the band’s legacy tracks from Blurryface). All this allowed the song to move up ten spots to #50 on the overall Hot 100 (coincidentally the same position the track debuted on the UK charts last Friday).

That’s not to imply that “Nico” didn’t get any action prior to the release of its music video. It also predictably sunk in sales and still isn’t getting significant radio play compared to its brother, but it was still the fifth best streaming rock song of the week (again passing “Stressed Out” and company) and managed to ride those seven full days of data to a #79 debut on the overall Hot 100.

So what can we take from all those numbers? I’m still entirely not sure. I can’t emphasize enough how important having the full week of data has on the songs’ performance. Chart forecasters projected last week that “Jumpsuit” would rise far more than ten spots on the Hot 100 thanks to all those extra days, and it’s hard to not see it as looking a little front-loaded. However, seeing concept rock songs as decidedly non-mainstream as these two tracks on the Hot 100 is both a huge breath of fresh air and a definite accomplishment in itself. I can’t imagine anyone at Fueled By Ramen headquarters being displeased with securing an Alternative #1- the band is still unquestionably the crown jewel of the label’s current lineup. 

I don’t believe “Nico” will stick around on the Hot 100- it’s definitely really weird- but “Jumpsuit” still has a few weeks to gain traction, and the steadily improving radio play seems promising. We’ll just have to wait and see how the songs do next week. 

Power to the local dreamer.

|-/

[magistralucis]

Breakbot + Busy P + MYD + Alan Braxe + Borussia @ XOYO, 26 May 2018  [Review]

A fantastic reward for the comedy of errors that is my life.

Been a while since I did a review of a gig! Technically, I should have done one for Justice last September, but given the amount of content I gained from that performance, I keep thinking that one has to be several gifsets and a video upload instead of me rambling on. I’ll get to it in a billion years;;; Over the weekend I went to this all-nighter and didn’t sleep for like, 30 hours? And I’m still recovering. So much like the TBB review last year, this is going to read super disjointed, like a bunch of random stream-of-consciousness notes I took over several hours. (Which 70% of this review actually relies on.) There are pics and a few lil’ gifs, all splendidly red-tinted to reflect the lighting in the club, but the tl;dr is essentially:

The Journey

As previously stated, I do not live in London. London is not easy to navigate. I do not have the strongest sense of direction and frequently map out walking paths and exact number of turns and landmarks nearby my intended destinations, which works for me 9/10 of the time - but this means that when things go bad, they tend to go really bad holy fucking shit under the influence of certain factors XOYO is the hardest fucking club to find in the entire universe. I have never had this much trouble finding a single location despite having such clear directions from multiple sources. It’s not the club’s fault, of course, thousands of people find it just fine - the stars just utterly refused to align for me this particular weekend, turning what should have been a straightforward path from A to B to over an hour of running around.

To attend to this spectacular all-nighter, I took the train from my university city to London, alighting in King’s Cross St. Pancras around 7pm. XOYO is located about a minute away from Old Street Station, which as you can see from the above image of the Northern Line is only two stops away; I could have been at the club in less than ten minutes. Because of this, I was slow to take the Tube when I initially arrived, instead stopping for a snack and some adequate hydration at King’s Cross (also tutting at Platform 9¾ which is not that impressive a display but that’s neither here nor there); I don’t think that was unwise in itself, but it was a decision that I ended up regretting, because it meant I didn’t find out about the spanner in the works until it was almost too late. 

ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

A five-minute journey on a single subway train from A to B was all I was asking. Well it turns out I couldn’t do that!!! Because fucking engineering works!!!! All the Northern line service bilboards and directional posters were papered over and the information being given was often deeply counterproductive (or outright incorrect). First I was directed to Euston to try to make a switch there, but no Northern line services were running at all. Then I came back to King’s Cross and subsequently tried out Moorgate on the Circle/Metropolitan line, which was running Northern line services - but nothing northbound, like I needed! This was exceptionally infuriating because Moorgate is only one stop away from Old Street station. I was delayed for nearly an hour purely trying to solve this problem, because even past 7-8pm the stations were s t u f f e d with people all trying to navigate this Northern line dilemma in their own way. This line splits along the way, too, so depending on where you’re headed to and where in the ‘part closure’ your intended destination sits, you could be lost in utterly infuriating bullshit like I did, being only 1-2 stops away from where you are and being unable to get to it unless you walk or take overhead transport. 

And, you know, those people had already paid and gone past the barrier when they found out about the closures. Most of that info could only be had inside. At King’s Cross St Pancras, the only info available outside the barrier were announcements on rail replacement buses - confusingly worded at that, all three of them entirely northbound from King’s Cross St Pancras (I needed southbound for Old Street). The London Underground isn’t obscenely expensive, but it’s not disposable money either! There’s a bus directly from King’s Cross to Old Street Station (which I ended up taking in order to return) - but if you paid and entered the Tube station, you’re going to want to solve the problem before signing back out of the barrier! 

fml in the end I just walked. 7-8 mins from Moorgate and then XOYO itself is hidden in an alley between two massive building complexes with naught but a red neon sign to point your way. It’s not a big neon sign. On one hand maybe it was a good thing I was held up traveling. I arrived about 5 mins after the club opened and was let in straight away. If things had gone as I’d planned I might have ended up camping out in front of XOYO for an extremely awkward hour or whatever. There was no queue; despite it all, I was that early, and was amply rewarded for my earliness. But man. 

On the other hand, I was dehydrated all over again.

Hour-by-Hour Review

Contrary to the anguished nature of the vent above, most of the night was damn excellent and the review below is the main meat of the experience. I recollected this through small notes I was making on my phone - mostly of timestamps and a single keyword, like what songs were playing at the time - and some videos I took, the position of each photo, and my own memory from yesterday. They are patchy notes, but they are as detailed as I can make them, and largely accurate. Essentially: if you’ve read this far, I invite you to come live the night with me all over again! :D

9:30PM - 11:00PM: I was the only person seeking entry to XOYO when I finally turned up, though music was already playing inside. “You here for an event?” The guard asks, and I produce my ticket and passport. “Just so you know, there’s a band playing in there at the moment - the actual, uh, techno, that’s not going to start until ten o’clock. You can go in now, but once you’re in, you’re in - you won’t be able to come back out and back in again.”

I just look at them. “What am I going to do outside for half an hour. That’s fine.”

Ticket scanned, passport checked and confirmed, bag check occurs. I read that XOYO has airport-security level bag checks, but that was not my experience. I might just have been too damn early to raise any alarms. I’m let in, visit the bar, buy some water, visit the bathroom, tidy up a bit, tie my jacket around my waist to conceal my bag, etc. Around 9:45PM I peer down at the main room downstairs to check out this band, although I come back up shortly to prepare for the main experience...

... which, uh, doesn’t take place until eleven. After the band leaves around 10PM, what actually happens is that the main room is sealed off for DJ setups while in Room 2 upstairs Joshua James plays. I had the choice of saving my energy for later and resting on the bench, or going to see him; I chose the former. Security guy lingering in front of the main room says it might open in ‘half an hour’ when I ask him on the dot at 10PM. My guy that’s the longest damn half hour I have ever waited in my life. At least I can people-watch and save my place because like always, I want to be at the front when the doors open.

11:00PM: The main room finally opens and Borussia is in the house. The dancefloor is very empty for about half an hour while he gets the crowd going. Ushers frequently come by, brandishing red penlights to take away glasses and empty bottles and lost property and the like. XOYO only has a max capacity of 800~ people and I’m fairly sure that’s spread across two rooms; the glasses are like, proper solid pub glasses, too, actual breakage hazards. I imagine it’s because it’s a small and intimate club that the choice of glasses makes sense; even in Electric Brixton they gave out plastic, and that one holds close to 2000 people. I saw several toppling over or rolling on the ground before someone came to snatch up the whole stack of them. I applaud their diligence. 

11:10PM: Also this dancefloor is incredibly sticky. Pedro is visible on the left. He talks to a backstage fan before disappearing.

11:23PM: There’s a girl next to me with her boyfriend. We meet eyes. This girl will recur a few more times during the night. Swig of water taken. 

11:30~PM: A note about the stage structure of XOYO.

As mentioned previously, XOYO is a two-room club, one upstairs and one downstairs. Downstairs is the main and the top one’s for opening acts and smaller shows; the downstairs has a dancefloor, a bar off to the side, and an elevated stage. Now the important thing about this stage is that you can get on it. There are no barriers between audience and DJ in a XOYO set, except for the ready-built DJ booth and all the speakers and equipment set that may or may not be piled around it. There is a steel mesh of sorts to separate the sides of the DJ booth from the stage/dancefloor viewing area, but aside from that, it is entirely possible for you to mount the performing stage and be about two feet from the DJ at any given time. Around this time is when people begin to mount the stage and like. Dance. But sparsely.

I will return to this stage later. I’m currently parked in front of the DJ booth.

11:40~PM: 

Pedro pops back into the scene briefly. He doesn’t linger for long there, but he’ll be back for the switchover. This is the best photo I could get ffffff

11:40~PM (not long after the above): Borussia puts Gorillaz’s ‘DARE’ on and the room goes fucking wild. The girl returns. This time we meet more than eyes and actually dance together, her boyfriend hitching her up on his back for about 30 seconds midway. This is the first point of the night that Borussia starts smiling and I’m taken by how sweet his smile is.

11:54PM: You know what I think Borussia kind of looks like Gesa if you squint

12:00~AM: Pedro in the house. He takes over slowly from Borussia, who exits amidst thunderous applause. For some reason, Pedro did not look awfully happy for most of the show. Compared to the last time I saw him DJ (opener for Justice) he seemed like... stoic? Like he had a lot in his mind. He was capable of cheer when need be, man knows how to drive a crowd, but like... the air about him was different. I have no explanation for this. It may just have been my perception.

12:00 - 12:30AM (?): I genuinely cannot remember when this first happened, only I remember Pedro being at the forefront and giving the people involved an amused glance at some point in the night. So it goes here, even though they might first have appeared during Borussia. Two incredibly scantily dressed and also gorgeous dancers, one male and one female (visibly), rolled out of the backstage area and began dancing on the elevated stage around the same time e v e r y o n e began piling on. I’d kill for the ability to dance on the heels they did holy fuck

12:13AM: I CAN SEE IRFANE OFF TO THE SIDE YES HE CAME AFTER ALL I know he’s officially part of Breakbot now but the XOYO description made it sound as if only Thibaut was coming. False alarm! The duo lives on.

12:28AM (?): Girl I was dancing with earlier + her boyfriend reappears from the bar direction. She mounts the elevated stage and disappears into the crowd.

12:30AM (?): THIBAUT AND SO-ME SPOTTED I WANT TO ATTACH THE PHOTO OF THIS MOMENT but it’s too blurry fuck shit

12:34AM: With a grin worth a million pounds Pedro puts on ‘Audio, Video, Disco’. Lighting changes to bombastic yellow and everybody just about dies for the next five minutes to follow. This was universally the reception whenever anything Daft Punk or Justice came on (Pedro also played ‘D.A.N.C.E.’ immediately after) - many people, Thibaut included, had Justice shirts on and earlier on the 26th Justice played a set on All Points East, so this was understandable.

12:39AM: Fuck it. I’m going on the elevated stage. I just hitched myself up.

12:40~AM: I can see so much better from here.

There’s a bit on the stage where the steel mesh barrier ends, and the DJ set curves away from the rest of the stage, where you can see everyone in the booth really clearly. Currently this spot is occupied by a dude and a girl who I progressively come to realize was getting increasingly drunk/high - she was clinging onto the sides - so I just gravitate towards the steel mesh instead, neglected by most people. For most part my view is blocked by people hanging around from backstage but every now and then they vacate, and I get a good side view. Not long after I settle in, Thibaut pops up for a short while, swigging from a bottle - and the girl I was dancing with from before almost crashes into the mesh shouting her hellos at him. (This is when I realize that she’s French.)

And, uh, I mean. What can you do when a thing like that happens. I join in, of course. Thibaut did not hear either of us before slinking back, but this did have the effect of the girl patting me on the shoulder for our first real conversation:

French girl: [Muffled something]

Me: Ah?

French girl: [After a few tries through the noise] You like Thibaut?

Me: Yeah! Came to see him mostly!

French girl: 😍💖😍💖😍 I’M THE BIGGEST FAN 😍💖😍💖😍

The oddest thing is that during this exchange, the boyfriend guy with her kind of gently takes off my hat and tries to put it back on me backwards. I have no idea what the fuck and I give him a look that conveys that I have no idea what the fuck ‘cause like... dude why are you taking my hat exactly??? Am I missing something??? I replace it and carry on. The girl’s swept away towards the bar again.

12:40~AM: Pedro is the only person who can pull off LeLe’s ‘Breakfast’ in a DJ set without it descending into narm territory imo 

12:40~AM: MYD IS HERE MYD IS HERE

1:00AM: Thibaut and Irfane take over at last, the latter first, then Thibaut more fully. Mama P stays at the back, watching over the situation, before silently withdrawing. 

The stage is so crowded I can barely breathe. French girl does not return. Ushers begin to move about the dancefloor carrying large foreboding black bags, not for glasses but for lost property.

1:00~AM: J E S U S 

1:10~AM: So-Me is the third one in the booth. I wish people would announce it properly whenever he turns up - I didn’t think to expect him at all, as he was not there with Pedro when I saw him open for Justice and his name wasn’t on the guests list. He feels like a lottery treat ; w ;

1:10~AM: Usher on the elevated stage. He finds a credit card on the floor and flashes an exact 🤨 look in my direction, as I was the closest to him. “Not mine,” I mouth at him, and he stashes the card in the lost property bag before vanishing into the crowd.

1:11AM: Come to think of it I’ve seen people lose some seriously scary shit on dancefloors. Like when I went to see TBB and Justice, on both occasions I’ve seen someone lose their foreign identity card. I’d be fucking terrified for my life if that happened to me - and given that I’m toting my passport around (some places don’t seem to accept BRP...?), which I cannot afford to lose whatsoever, I enter a state of brief panic while I check that nothing has been thieved from my bag. All clear.

1:23-25AM: Jesus Christ Irfane is so touchy-feely with Thibaut they’re in love I’m literally crying

1:30~AM: Because of the above mentioned affection-shenanigans, I stop dancing in order to get some photos and videos of the pair. One of the backstage fans notices. “Do you want me to take a picture for you?” He shouts through the mesh; I hesitate, because I’m not in the business of giving my phone away to strangers, but I take the risk. It turned out he made this offer during a period of very weird lighting and it wasn’t a good time for photos, but this is the best out of several attempts from him:

“It’s not a good time,” he shouts as he hands my phone back over. “sorry.”

“Thank you anyway,” I holler through the bars. He flashes a grin and we carry on.

1:30~AM (after the above): Remember the scantily dressed gorgeous dancers? They’re back, dancing on a bunch of speakers (?) next to the side view. Drama with the (drunk?) girl hogging the side view; she gets into a conflict with one of the dancers and it gets really fucking tense. I’m not 100% on what happened, but I can imagine that something that wasn’t meant to be touched was touched or that she was giving the dancer some serious attitude - like the girl was literally grabbing the (drunk?) girl by the face and telling her to get a fucking grip. The dude with her eventually leads her away and the dancers dismount the stage, disappearing into the crowd - I didn’t see them return again, which was a right shame. 

tl;dr I took the empty spot and was able to photo marginally better than before.

1:35AM: 

Jesus God this is heavenly

1:41AM: 

Best quality: his wiggles

(He was mouthing along to ‘Why?’.)

1:40~AM: I keep thinking I stepped on something. This continues for some five minutes before I finally look down and yep whoops I was stepping on something all right. It was a hefty croc leather wallet/purse thing, all black, very sticky from the floor. I set it down in front of me and handed it over to an usher less than two minutes after. Another swig of water. Thibaut’s wiggles do not in any way pale next to Irfane’s.

1:50AM (?): Yet another event I know happened but can’t remember where exactly to place. ‘My Toy’ comes on. I hear this one is a fan favourite and while I can think of better songs in Still Waters, I get to see for myself just how true this statement is. In fact, Breakbot played quite a few of their stuff - not a lot, but enough to bring on significant cheers whenever they did. ‘Back For More’ was the starter and ‘Fantasy’ came on at some point but ‘My Toy’ was easily the most popular of the lot!

2:00AM: Alan Braxe takes over. Irfane and Thibaut continue to linger, as does So-Me, but I’m beginning to see Myd far more often - he must provide the climax to this all-nighter. He had a vinyl signing earlier on the 26th; he’s greeted with cheers whenever he’s visible.

2:00 - 4:00AM: A broad sweeping observation to indicate that my phone is dying a horrible death by this point of the night. I brought an external battery and had it going again once I left the club, but fuck trying to fumble with that in the middle of a club. All those photos did it, especially the videos, and burning the battery on that so quickly was not a good idea because I wanted to take more of Alan and Myd boo

2:20~AM: Alan’s set is considerably darker in tone. Probably more like what I’m used to before I got into EDM, in fact. I consider him responsible for the mild whiplash I got from headbanging.

2:24AM: XOYO’s smoke machines are at their peak performance around this time and I can barely see a thing. Not being a big venue, this is a problem. Irfane and Thibaut and So-Me pop back up for a selfie with one of the backstage fans and rope Alan into participating; he does so exactly once and turns back, as professional as always, while the other stay on for a second and third go. 

2:30~AM: wHAT’S THAT I HEAR???? CRESCENDOLLS?????

2:30~AM: IT’S CRESCENDOLLS

2:35AM: Hey remember when it took Irfane 10 years to figure out the Very Disco = Veridis Quo pun

2:40~AM: By this point I’m getting super hungry and I’m just about out of water. Water in XOYO is expensive. Something like 2.50 for a 300ml bottle. The DJs had a stack of these bottles by the side and were powering through them at alarming speed when they weren’t drinking other things. It’s my policy to go early and buy a bottle of water at the bar of wherever I attend a gig or concert, pretty much always. It’s my first time running out with more than an hour to go, though, but despite this I keep dancing with the empty bottle clutched in my hand. I don’t actually remember why. Maybe I thought I’d fill it up after the show or something. Spoilers: I didn’t

2:55AM: Right as Myd is taking over some dude pokes me and asks to have a sip of my water. I should not have been dancing with that empty bottle. He looks disgruntled when I tell him it’s empty and moves on. Sorry my dude I only wish I’d have been able to spare even a drop but I was genuinely out;;;;;

3:00 - 4:00AM: I hate having to sum it up like this but due to aforementioned factors (dying legs + low battery + lack of water) I do not actually remember much of Myd’s set. This is a great injustice to the man and it’s pretty much entirely my fault for not taking any time to rest (seating was provided near the bar) or not buying myself another drink; next time he’s in the UK, wherever he may be and whoever he might be with, I shall make the effort to hunt him down and give him a proper listen. What I remember of his set was brilliant, cheery but mysterious, coupled with Daft Punk’s ‘Rock n’ Roll’ somewhere in the middle. Please enjoy this terrible picture of him taken with my phone’s dying strength.

3:18AM: I can timestamp this accurately because it’s on the last video I took of the night. Enjoy some Myd wiggles

3:30~AM: This was roughly when ‘Rock n’ Roll’ was on! Irfane chatting away in the corner. So-Me lending a hand. Five minutes in he leans over and distributes stickers (I think) into the crowd. I was sadly on the other side and did not get a chance to receive any.

3:40~AM: People are beginning to hunker down on the elevated stage or leaving altogether. The night is drawing to a close. 

3:55AM: Phone blinks out completely at this point. XOYO is open from 9:30pm-4am on Fridays and Saturdays (also 21+ years only policy, which I appreciate) so I figured Myd should be winding down about now. Every DJ participating so far has switched out/bowed out after an hour, after all. Myd might need a minute more to think about it.

4:03AM: Myd might need three more minutes to think about it.

4:04AM: Myd might need four or five more minutes to think about it.

4:10AM: Myd why are you doing this. Myd it’s past closing time. Myd my guy you’re pouring ambrosia upon the unworthy. Myd ple

4:15AM~: In the end I leave a few minutes early. I have to stress that this had absolutely nothing to do with the quality of Myd’s set nor that he was playing beyond closing time - encores and extra content are extremely good! It’s just that my legs were dead! ;A  ; I limped upstairs and washed my face etc and he was still playing when I came out. That’s dedication. 

The End

As soon as it’s actually over, cheers went up - and as I’m sitting at the bench near the entrance of the club just trying to get my shit together, everyone files out all at once to a bunch of weary-looking security guards wishing us all a good night.

I join the line. It’s bright outside already. Some of the guards offer to call us a cab and some of the people take them up on it. I myself walk out of the club, turn left, and down Old Street Yard to examine the bus stops. One of the bus lines are 24hr and go directly to King’s Cross; as I reach one of the relevant stops and lean around, trying to figure out the times, the French girl from earlier recognizes me and pats me on the shoulder. “You were the girl dancing next to me, right?”

“Yep, that’s me.”

“How are you?”

“I’m good and so exhausted I could melt into the floor.”

She giggles and bids me goodnight as she moves to another bus stop. I didn’t get to ask her about Thibaut, as she wasn’t by me when he came on, but I can only assume she had a good time too. Soon the 214 comes along and I hop on towards King’s Cross. The sun is rising and the white noise in my legs dissipates, just a little, only to be gone completely some twenty hours later. Feels good man.

[run-the-secret-show]

Trip to the Collingwood & Co Studio

On Thursday I arrived per invitation to Tony’s studio in Acton-Town to attend a meeting about TSS with Glynn Hayward and Helen Shroud. Andrea Tran also popped in later on and we all had a wonderful chat together.  I was there for 4 hours (for what was supposed to be a 1 hour meeting), with Helen and Tony regaling me with tales of inside info and what-could-have-beens. I was allowed - even encouraged - to record the whole “interview”, but it turns out that the phone I was using didn’t actually save it (A real “Secret Spider” moment for sure). Everyone was absolutely charming, and apart from the recording flub it was a lovely day that couldn’t’ve gone better.

Highlights include, to the best of my recollection:

• If the website is to return it might have to be heavily re-structured to cope with Flash essentially being a dead platform at this point. • Roy was voiced by Tony’s son Harry • The Commander in Secret Spider is called Vin, and the female actor from World Savers is Jilly • Ray’s name is Raymondo not Ray Mondo - and it’s Zebulons not Zurbulons. • VANITOR IS CANON AND HAS ALWAYS BEEN CANON • CD “drinks too much” - the lines “I’ll stay here and hold the port” and “12%? That’s all the proof I need!” are references to this, in addition to his wine-bottle wrapping in Secret Santa and his favourite food in one of the books being Madeira cake, the main ingredient of which is wine.  • Victor’s lesser-noticed catchphrase of “Aw, c’mon..!” is inspired by the fact that Alan Marriott actually says it quite a lot in real life.  • Masters were located for 2 full 1/2-hour Nicktoons broadcasts, completely uncompressed, and there are likely more - although we still don’t know exactly how many were modified.

• Masters for 4 previously-unknown shorts were discovered, with the theme of “What’s The Deal With _____?” - Helen was greatly surprised they weren’t on the DVDs as the Profile shorts had taken their place. (can’t find the photo of the master as we only found it towards the end of the day but I have a pic of Helen’s copy)

• An unused villain was going to be The Puddle Heads, sworn nemesis's of The Floaty Heads - he couldn’t find the concept art for them so he drew one in front of me to keep! I shouldn’t say much about them except that you might be seeing them sooner than you think... • There were initially plans for each 4-digit code in the episode to each unlock something different individually on the website - this was never implemented as they never made enough goodies to cover 52 different codes. • Helen used to have a copy of the show’s entire soundtrack on her iPod until it broke. • Tony knows about the DeviantArt fanfics. To hear him actually say the site’s name out loud was a very surreal moment indeed.  • The disclaimer that the Bogie Ball blooper was “deemed Too Gross for national television” is actually true - everything except the end of that scene was actually going to be in the original episode but the BBC said it was too much. • There’s a 4th BTS called “The Music Of the Secret Show”, which would’ve been with Roger Jackson - we found the master for the 3rd one (“The Sounds Of The Secret Show”) but not the 4th. • There were also 4 PP Lectures made, which means there are two of those that have never been released either. • The Space Wasps (from What’s In The Box and Planet PP) have a different origin in both simply because they needed to reuse the assets. • Tony had the entire plot to the potential Series 3 opener all planned out, and gleefully recounted the first half of it to me in great detail. I’ll keep the specifics mum for the time being just in case it ever ends up happening after all - but I’ll say that it would’ve been amazing. Also Tony totally should’ve been a VA, his voices were great. • Everyone was fascinated by the number of international dubs I’d managed to collect, and when I showed them the Latino-Mexican intro there was much groaning and laugher all ‘round. Speaking of which, we discovered a sampler-disc of the Catalan dub that even Tony was surprised they had:

• The reason why it’s never revealed what CD won his medal on the Mantlepiece for is because nobody could think of anything funny enough to warrant revealing. • Unbeknownst to anyone, the physical masters for episodes 7 and 28 were AWOL from their designated boxes and remain unaccounted for, although they are still stored digitally - I know this because I re-sorted their entire TSS disc-archive for them while I was there. Andrea was happy for the heads-up and Helen gladly suggested I make a note of it on the box. • Martin Hyder was hired almost by accident - he was called in just to record the Temp Track for Stephen Fry’s lines in the pilot as Fry had to record them separately. Someone asked Martin to fill in a line for Ray, and he suited the role so well that they casted him on the spot. • The One Breath Lady was both voiced by and inspired by one of the writers, Jimmy Hibbert. Tony recounted that Jim had a habit of speaking in run-on sentences for so long that your eyes would be watering on his behalf, willing him to actually inhale some air and take a goddamned breath once in a while.  • There was an event known as “Spy Day” in which a whole bunch of children were brought together to do TSS-themed spy activities. There are two separate recordings of this. • Tony knew that Nicktoons had once broadcast The Martian Dub (Sep 20th ‘08) but Helen was unaware. Her reaction to finding out was amazing. • Anita’s parents were never given a backstory simply because they were never relevant to the plot - Anita’s aquatic origins shall remain a mystery.... • Glynn and I both agreed that due to internet speeds and technology advancing a truly substantial way since 2006, remastering the site’s audio from 22050Hz to 44100Hz is completely feasible, and that I could even help resample it. Tony and Helen admitted they’d lost us completely during our nerd-out which we all had a good laugh over.  • Tony asked completely of his own volition if I knew of TheSecretShow4You, which is of course our friend and empress, the Vanitor Queen. He greatly admires how much she has come up with over the years and says he loved the 10th Anniversary video. • Helen was very surprised to learn that the first 24 episodes had reaired all throughout last April this year in Germany - presumably Disney Germany renewed their licence. Speaking of which:

• The Spider was supposed to appear in Secret Sleep - about 6 minutes in, crawling on the front edge of the bed just before PP falls asleep. Neither DVD nor Broadcast version has this due to a rendering error, although they didn’t actually believe me at the time:

The top photo is from “The Book Of Revelations” - a pair of .pdfs that track every single hidden thing from every episode along with a few other things. They are now in the Google Drive folder under “Books” for your viewing pleasure. • I gave Tony my still-shrink-wrapped copy of the Italian Vol4 DVD as a gift for basically putting up with my wall-of-text emails over the last three years. In return I was presented with a take-home copy of the 2004 Pilot version of Lucky Leo as Tony still had a few copies left. It is now in the Drive under “Rare Broadcasts” - you will notice more than a few differences to the final version, I’m sure:

• There was an entire marketing pack produced of which only two exist. Photos of literally everything from it are in the “Studio Visit 02/11/17″ folder, along with all the master discs that we found in the cupboard.

• Two Betamax masters were found as well - I don’t know about you but I thought that was absolutely amazing:

The second tape contains an 11-minute Interview with Tony about the show which has never been shown outside the industry. • A prototype of the UK version of Vol2 was also discovered, along with two different prototypes of Vol1 - Sadly none were found of 3 or 4 as BBC WW were actually the ones who pressed them, Col & Co simply handing the files over to them to compile.

And last but certainly not least: • This morning, the day after the meeting, Glynn emailed me several files from his archive of the website which were previously lost - the U.Z.Z./T.H.E.M. Doorhangers, the CD Cutout, The Spiderbikes game (literally called spaceinvaders.swf) and the rarest of all, the 2007 Easter Exclusive Site Map - available now at your local Website Downloads folder. He also kindly sent some original concept art for the games that he’d drawn himself back in the day, including one that never made the cut, of which I will make another post about separately. (if you want a sneaky peek, look in the Cocept Art & BTS folder...!) One final thing, for now at least - While I was there Helen and Tony deigned to show me the trailer for their newest series, “Thorgar” -  I was “the first person under 30 to see it” and I can tell you now it’s absolutely amazing. Seriously, as soon as it starts airing you guys need to watch it immediately, it’s spectacular. 

[awildtrashcan]

So here’s what I have so far for chapter 1 of the AU. I actually wrote this back in February so there’s probably some stuff in here that I might need to change later on(and possibly some errors regarding the locations of some buildings in Meridian City), but here’s what you get for now.

Space. The endless void that holds everything in the universe. So vast that if you and your best friend were separated you would probably never find each other. Staring at the emptiness interrupted by the occasional star or planet usually made the more emotionally sensitive reflect on their feelings in the isolation.

Such as now.

The (Half-built)Nefarious Space Station lay dormant within a sector out of the range of any radar from neighboring planets. The only activity within the station was the bustle of a lone robot, following a schedule of cleaning and construction. He looked through the windows surrounding the walls of the room as he finished folding another pair of socks, picking up the basket of laundry. After walking down one of the many empty hallways for a few minutes, he began humming to himself, attempting to fill the unnerving silence with white noise.

In all honesty, Lawrence had found this to be a welcome change over having his audio receptors constantly assaulted by his employer’s voice, but after a week, he actually started to miss the orders barked loudly enough to be heard from the other end of the station.

Two weeks later, and he felt like something was wrong.

Three weeks later, and he knew that something was wrong.

Four weeks, and he found himself staring straight into the crack separating the two doors leading to Nefarious’s office and living quarters. Lawrence chuckled to himself, amused by the fact that he was actually considering asking what was troubling the doctor. Previous attempts had rarely gone any farther than Nefarious denying everything that was going on, that “No, Lawrence, I don’t need counseling.” Looking back, the doctor was actually right in that regard, as the anger management sessions, yoga, and spirit walks only resulted in the Great Clock debacle, and that certainly turned out splendid.

He was kicked out of that train of thought after hearing a dull klunk followed by a noise that could only be described as utter despair. Yes, something was definitely wrong. Lawrence scolded himself for letting this go on for so long. Nefarious tested the boundaries of his patience half the time he spoke, but he wasn’t going to let the doctor waste away on his watch.

Letting out a sigh of resignation, he steeled himself for whatever lay beyond the door as he rapped the metal surface three times.

In space, no one could hear you scream. Especially if you were screaming into a pillow.

He wasn’t even sure why he was screaming. It definitely wasn’t because he was thinking about the space rat, his toaster-for-a-best-friend, and that annoying, infuriating, green-clad buffoon. Because he hated them.

Yes, hated them enough that he would think about how he stole their ship and abandoned them right after somehow traveling hundreds of miles with them without shoving anyone off a nearby cliff and even—the thought made him cringe at the irony—saving the universe.

Of course he would never admit to simply lying there being sentimental. He was a megalomaniac overlord! Feelings were nonexistent for him! Squishies trembled at the mention of his name! He was Dr. Nefarious, the most wanted criminal in the galaxy!

Emphasis on was.

Nefarious let out a frustrated sigh for the hundredth time in what had to be a span of ten minutes, burying his face into the pillow. The past week had become a routine: get up, try to get some evil schemes planned out, fail at doing just that, regret his entire life for a few hours, and fall back asleep. The process was mentally exhausting, and he knew that it definitely wasn’t helping in getting rid of the one (actually several) thought that lodged itself into his mind after ditching his nemeses on that infested planet, but he was at a total loss at what else to do.

Well, diabolical plans won’t think themselves, Nefarious thought as he dragged a hand down his face, getting up from the bed to once again continue the cycle of self-loathing.

Only to promptly bang his jaw against the floor after his legs got tangled in the sheets and gravity decided to add on to the heaping pile of misery that was his life.  The rest of his body slid off the bed as he let out a pained groan, wondering where exactly his life went wrong. An honest question, as there were too many incidents to narrow it down to just one.

Nefarious contemplated remaining there as he couldn’t muster enough energy to bother moving. It wasn’t like he needed to sit in his chair to conjure up a plan, although it definitely helped get the creative juices flowing. And hey, maybe he wouldn’t end up finding It- oh, come on, now you haven’t even seen It and you’re thinking of It again, you freaking mor—

He jumped when he heard several knocks at the door, grateful that he was already on the ground instead of falling again. Peeling himself off the floor, he stumbled as he walked towards the noise, wondering what Lawrence wanted to bother him with this time.

Opening the door, he held up a hand to shield his optics from the way-too-bright lights that filtered behind the other robot. Squinting, he leveled his gaze onto Lawrence before settling into a glare. Nefarious noticed Lawrence stiffen slightly as his optics widened past his usual half-lidded look.

“Sir, are you feeling alright?” Lawrence asked as he regained his usual stance, “you haven’t called for me in… quite a while.”

Nefarious’s eyes widened, surprised at the sudden concern his butler was showing, and noted the slight pause in his words. He glared again, responding, “What do you mean, Lawrence? It’s barely been a week since I asked you for coffee that one time, you know I don’t like being interrupted while I’m working on bigger projects.” Because that was exactly what he had been doing. Nothing involving emotional turmoil. Nope. “Besides, didn’t you ask for a lighter workload before? There, now you have it. Now beat it, I’ve got a blaster to work on.”

Nefarious reached for the panel to shut the doors before Lawrence quickly stepped into the room, the motion sensors preventing the doors from closing. The butler’s more hurried pace and shocked expression caused alarms to ring in the back of his head. Had something happened in the short amount of time he was inside?

Lawrence raised a hand in cautious concern, opening his mouth before closing it again, looking like he was searching for the right words to explain what was going on.

Instead, he decided to reply with, “Sir, it’s been a month.”

Nefarious would have laughed if he didn’t know that Lawrence never told jokes. “A… month—Lawrence, it’s only been a week, a week and a half at most!” He may have lost track of time for that brief stretch of time, but he wasn’t that far gone that he would subconsciously lock himself in his room for days on end. He decided to bring up his internal clock to prove a point as he continued, “What are you even talking abo—“

17:32

November 18, 5362

Well, crap.

“…Oh…” Nefarious didn’t bother to finish his retort as he looked to the other side of the room in acknowledgement, his posture deflating along with his irritation as it was replaced with disturbed realization.

A month. An entire month spent thinking about the events on Magnus. He still couldn’t figure out why leaving those three idiots behind had been so difficult. He should have been overjoyed as soon as Lawrence showed up with a one way ticket to get away from them, but the more he thought about it, the more the more he—well, he had no idea what he was feeling! And that photo—

“Sir?” Nefarious was interrupted from his internal rant when he noticed Lawrence shuffling through the cluttered desk. His hands sifted through the scattered papers until resting upon a particular object. “Would this have to do with what’s troubling you?” He held It up to face Nefarious, whose optics widened when he processed what he was holding.

“LAWRENCE! Give that back!” Nefarious ran towards his butler in an attempt to grab It, but every time he circled the table, Lawrence was somehow able to sidestep just out of reach.

Lawrence wasn’t even breaking a sweat in avoiding the numerous swipes directed at him as he asked, “Sir, I noticed that you seemed to be particularly attached to this photo. When you were staring at it on the ship you had the same look on your face as when you watched the season 7 finale of Lance and Janice.” He dodged another swing. “I’m not certified in this area, but perhaps I could assist you in sorting out what’s on your mind?”

Nefarious glared hard enough in an attempt to bring It to him through sheer thought alone, “I told you Lawrence, I don’t need your help! I’m fine! Or at least I was, until you came in here!” He reached out to grab It but his claw only caught empty air. “Oh, come on! My arms are longer! How are you—“ The doctor cut himself off after crashing to the floor yet again when trying to vault over the table, his hands catching nothing once more.

Nefarious dejectedly rolled to face the ceiling, turning his head to glare at Lawrence. His butler walked towards him with a sigh. A moment of silence passed before he spoke once more, “Is it about Magnus?”

The doctor only replied with a groan, closing his eyes and letting his head drop to the floor. Maybe if he stopped talking Lawrence would leave him alone.

Unfortunately, Lawrence continued, “Or, to be more specific, is it about leaving the others behind?” Nefarious froze.

“No! Of course not! Why would I be thinking about them in any way other than how to enact their very demise?!” The doctor spat denial after denial as he got to his feet, baffled that Lawrence would think otherwise. “I feel nothing but loathing every time I see their stupid faces!” Because loathing meant thinking about them in a non-murderous way for a month, apparently.

Lawrence stared back for a short moment before replying, “Hm, if that is what you believe, sir, are there any other issues you would like to discuss?” He brought out a holopad and began scrolling through pages that Nefarious couldn’t distinguish from his position. “If it would make you feel better, why don’t you take a break from your… ‘work’ and take your mind off of what’s bothering you?”

Well, anything that prevented him from feeling whatever it was he was feeling had to be better than this. He grunted in reply, getting up to prepare for whatever Lawrence had in mind.

Lawrence hummed as he scrolled through various news listings before answering, “A trip to Meridian City, perhaps? There’s a showing of the latest Secret Agent Clank film tonight if you would like to see it, or we could see the Lance and Janice stage play instead. And there appears to be a ceremony today…” He paused and stopped scrolling on a particular page, reading out the article before resuming as he continued his suggestions. “Oh my, there seems to be a sale in the central market. Thirty percent off all kitchen appliances. We can finally replace the microwave after that experiment with the radioactive leftovers.”

“Lawrence, I don’t need you reminding me of my past failures right now, you’re not helping,” Nefarious chided, taking the time to search through his desk. “Now, where did I put the…”

“Keys, sir?” The doctor turned to see Lawrence standing near the doorway and dangling the aforementioned item in front of him.

“Got it!” Nefarious shouted as he snatched them from the butler’s grip, “Come on, Lawrence, get a move on. We don’t have all night!”

Lawrence shook his head as he followed behind him. “Sir, might I suggest wearing some sort of disguise before going out? I imagine it would be difficult remaining inconspicuous when most remember you by the size of your head.”

“I guess you’re right. Those nitwits in the city would be able to recognize my genius if I just happened to pass by,” Nefarious considered as he put a hand to his chin in thought. “Well, Lawrence, any ideas on what to wear?”

Lawrence smiled, turning down another corridor. “I believe I do, sir. It will only take me a moment…”

[gliddenqpmelgarxn59insuranc-blog]

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[dragnews]

How Rescuers Pulled Off the Impossible in a Treacherous Thai Cave

MAE SAI, Thailand — It began as a misadventure by 12 boys and their soccer coach in a flood-prone northern Thai cave, which soon seemed destined to end in tragedy.

It turned into a nearly three-week-long story of survival, international collaboration and triumph over the impossible — one that was avidly embraced and followed live across the world.

A team of cave divers rescued the last of the boys and their coach on Tuesday from deep inside the warren of underground passages near Thailand’s border with Myanmar, one of Southeast Asia’s more remote regions.

One by one, the divers brought the final four members of the Wild Boars team and their coach out of the flooded Tham Luang Cave.

How they did it was a mix of trial and error, improvisation, skill, massive water pumps, miles of guide rope and strategically placed air tanks along the two-mile-long escape route, much of it submerged.

It took 10 days for rescuers to even locate the boys, then nearly a week before the rescue could even begin.

One diver died in preparing the evacuation. The other rescuers, laden with scuba gear, carried the boys — who could not swim and wore full face masks — as they squeezed through flooded crevices that would challenge the most seasoned divers. The final trek to freedom took four hours or more per child.

“We are not sure if this is a miracle, or science, or what,” the Thai Navy SEALs posted on their Facebook page. “All the 13 Wild Boars are now out of the cave.”

The rescue of the Wild Boars touched a global nerve, an uplifting counterpoint to the wars, atrocities, ethnic conflicts and crises afflicting countries like Syria, South Sudan and Yemen — not to mention closer to home in Myanmar and in Thailand itself, where there is a long-running war near the southern border.

For many people around the world, Thailand’s extraordinary operation to save 12 boys and their coach was a welcome contrast to the images of the United States separating immigrant children from their parents and locking them up.

The five Wild Boars who emerged Tuesday were immediately taken by ambulance and helicopter to a hospital in Chiang Rai, the nearest large city, and were to be placed in quarantine with the eight boys rescued Sunday and Monday.

They were expected to stay for about a week in quarantine, where family members who once feared they were dead can see them through a window.

Among the last to emerge from the cave was the Boars’ 25-year-old soccer coach, Ekkapol Chantawong, who helped the boys stay alive by conserving their energy during the 10 days before aid arrived.

Family members and friends were predictably ecstatic over the news that everyone was finally safe. Hundreds of millions of others around the world cheered with them.

“It was 18 days but it felt like years,” said Prayuth Jetiyanukarn, the abbot at a temple in the town of Mae Sai where Mr. Ekkapol works.

The abbot’s eyes welled.

“I’m so happy, but it’s not just for Ek and the team,” he said. “The whole world has been watching over these 18 days and they are celebrating with us.”

At a packed news conference after the rescue, the chief of the operation, Narongsak Osottanakorn, was visibly pleased.

“We have done something that no one expected that we could complete,” he said. “It was an impossible mission.”

Also making their way out of the cave were four Thai divers, an army doctor and three members of the Thai Navy SEALs, who had stayed in the cave with the Boars for more than a week after they were found and helped them prepare for their underwater escape.

Mr. Narongsak said that all four divers were healthy after eight days underground. They are expected to join the Wild Boars and Mr. Ekkapol in quarantine, however, because of the fear of infection.

“This morning, I promised to take nine people out,” Mr. Narongsak said. “We’re a success now.”

Tham Luang Cave, about two miles from the border with Myanmar, is the bed of an underground river that flows during the monsoon season.

The cave also is a maze of passageways and chambers, with side routes and dead ends that make it formidable to navigate, especially when filled with water.

Just reaching the cavern where the group ultimately took refuge was a feat even for the most skilled searchers.

The Wild Boars and their coach entered the cave after their soccer practice on June 23, a week before the rainy season generally begins.

But a heavy rain started falling and the cave complex quickly began to fill with water, forcing them deeper into the maze to avoid drowning.

Mr. Narongsak, then the governor of Chiang Rai Province, began organizing a search, a task that he later said seemed hopeless.

Nonetheless, Mr. Narongsak and other officials threw themselves into it. They mobilized dozens of members of the Thai Navy SEALs, hundreds of soldiers, volunteers and workers from 20 government agencies.

Leaders of the operation tried every approach they could devise.

Some failed, such as searching for a back door to the cave or drilling holes from the mountain above in the hope of lifting the boys out.

But two made a big difference: installing massive pumps to drain water from the cave and building an improvised dam to keep floodwaters from flowing in.

To help the members of the Navy SEALs, who had little experience in cave diving, search leaders turned to a group of highly skilled foreign cave divers, a rare breed of explorer.

The boys and their coach were finally found on July 2 by two British divers who were extending guide lines into the cave.

One diver, John Volanthen, reached the end of his line, fastened it in the mud, and emerged from the water to find 13 pairs of eyes staring at him.

The boys, having no idea of the international fixation over their plight, were surprised to learn that the diver was from Britain.

Had Mr. Volanthen’s line been 15 feet shorter, he would most likely have missed them.

The boys requested food and asked whether they could leave right away. But that operation would take another six days to start, and two more before all were evacuated.

The four Thai divers stayed with them, nursing them back to health and feeding them a high-protein diet.

Officials said that extracting the boys through the treacherous underwater passageways would be more difficult than finding them. Few, if any, of the boys knew how to swim, much less use diving gear.

Ultimately, the rescue officials concocted a plan to have small teams of divers bring out the boys by holding them under their bodies as they swam. The boys wore full face masks, rather than scuba gear, to make it easier for them to breathe underwater.

A successful rescue depended on positioning a supply of air tanks along the route they would take.

Disaster struck early Friday when a volunteer diver, Saman Gunan, 38, a former member of the Thai Navy SEALs, lost consciousness and died as he returned from putting air tanks in place.

“I call him the hero of Tham Luang Cave,” Mr. Narongsak said.

On the first two days of the rescue, 18 divers — 13 foreigners and five Thai — took part, bringing out four boys each time. On the final day, at least 12 divers took part.

Jintrakarn Sriwanithkul, 18, a student at the Mae Sai Prasitsart School attended by six of the Wild Boars, grew excited at word of the successful rescue.

“It’s amazing news,” he said. “When I first heard about them being missing, I thought they’d come out in two to three days because they knew the cave well.”

Foreign journalists converged on the cave by the hundreds in the kind of mass coverage usually reserved for major news events, like the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 four years ago.

For Thailand’s military leaders, who seized power in a coup the same year and have yet to hold promised elections, the rescue was an opportunity to show their concern for residents of the country’s northernmost province.

King Maha Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun, who let it be known early on that he was closely following the search effort, donated food and supplies.

Whether the king’s unusual personal interest gave added impetus to the effort is unclear. But a top police official who visited the cave told search leaders to spare no expense.

The prime minister, Prayuth Chan-ocha, a former general, visited the cave twice to meet with officials, rescue workers and families of the missing boys. He assured relatives that the government would not abandon them.

In the end, the final rescue part of the mission took just under nine hours, starting from the time the divers entered the cave to the time they had emerged with all four boys and Mr. Ekkapol.

“I would like to say thank you to His Majesty and royal family to support us,” Mr. Narongsak said. “I am thankful for all support from Thai people and all around the world.”

Some members of the Thai Navy SEALs stayed near the cave at quarters in Mae Sai. By the end, scuba gear, boxes of instant noodles and wet towels were strewn all around.

One member of the SEALs said that the operation might have looked easy from the graphics in newspapers, but that it was tough. They worked 12-hour days at a minimum and returned to quarters exhausted.

Nangnoung Namun, a weaver by trade who has been cooking hundreds of meals a day for the SEAL team as a volunteer, was elated by the successful rescue.

“Now I can sleep peacefully,” she said. “I’m so relieved.”

The first confirmation that all 13 were finally safe came from the SEAL team with a post on their Facebook page shortly before 7 p.m.

“12 boars and coach are out of the cave,” they announced. “Everyone is safe.”

“Hooyah,” the Facebook post concluded.

Hannah Beech, Navaon Siradapuvadol and Muktita Suhartono contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: How a News Event Destined for Tragedy Turned Into a Triumph. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

The post How Rescuers Pulled Off the Impossible in a Treacherous Thai Cave appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2JdkNeh via Today News

[newestbalance]

How Rescuers Pulled Off the Impossible in a Treacherous Thai Cave

MAE SAI, Thailand — It began as a misadventure by 12 boys and their soccer coach in a flood-prone northern Thai cave, which soon seemed destined to end in tragedy.

It turned into a nearly three-week-long story of survival, international collaboration and triumph over the impossible — one that was avidly embraced and followed live across the world.

A team of cave divers rescued the last of the boys and their coach on Tuesday from deep inside the warren of underground passages near Thailand’s border with Myanmar, one of Southeast Asia’s more remote regions.

One by one, the divers brought the final four members of the Wild Boars team and their coach out of the flooded Tham Luang Cave.

How they did it was a mix of trial and error, improvisation, skill, massive water pumps, miles of guide rope and strategically placed air tanks along the two-mile-long escape route, much of it submerged.

It took 10 days for rescuers to even locate the boys, then nearly a week before the rescue could even begin.

One diver died in preparing the evacuation. The other rescuers, laden with scuba gear, carried the boys — who could not swim and wore full face masks — as they squeezed through flooded crevices that would challenge the most seasoned divers. The final trek to freedom took four hours or more per child.

“We are not sure if this is a miracle, or science, or what,” the Thai Navy SEALs posted on their Facebook page. “All the 13 Wild Boars are now out of the cave.”

The rescue of the Wild Boars touched a global nerve, an uplifting counterpoint to the wars, atrocities, ethnic conflicts and crises afflicting countries like Syria, South Sudan and Yemen — not to mention closer to home in Myanmar and in Thailand itself, where there is a long-running war near the southern border.

For many people around the world, Thailand’s extraordinary operation to save 12 boys and their coach was a welcome contrast to the images of the United States separating immigrant children from their parents and locking them up.

The five Wild Boars who emerged Tuesday were immediately taken by ambulance and helicopter to a hospital in Chiang Rai, the nearest large city, and were to be placed in quarantine with the eight boys rescued Sunday and Monday.

They were expected to stay for about a week in quarantine, where family members who once feared they were dead can see them through a window.

Among the last to emerge from the cave was the Boars’ 25-year-old soccer coach, Ekkapol Chantawong, who helped the boys stay alive by conserving their energy during the 10 days before aid arrived.

Family members and friends were predictably ecstatic over the news that everyone was finally safe. Hundreds of millions of others around the world cheered with them.

“It was 18 days but it felt like years,” said Prayuth Jetiyanukarn, the abbot at a temple in the town of Mae Sai where Mr. Ekkapol works.

The abbot’s eyes welled.

“I’m so happy, but it’s not just for Ek and the team,” he said. “The whole world has been watching over these 18 days and they are celebrating with us.”

At a packed news conference after the rescue, the chief of the operation, Narongsak Osottanakorn, was visibly pleased.

“We have done something that no one expected that we could complete,” he said. “It was an impossible mission.”

Also making their way out of the cave were four Thai divers, an army doctor and three members of the Thai Navy SEALs, who had stayed in the cave with the Boars for more than a week after they were found and helped them prepare for their underwater escape.

Mr. Narongsak said that all four divers were healthy after eight days underground. They are expected to join the Wild Boars and Mr. Ekkapol in quarantine, however, because of the fear of infection.

“This morning, I promised to take nine people out,” Mr. Narongsak said. “We’re a success now.”

Tham Luang Cave, about two miles from the border with Myanmar, is the bed of an underground river that flows during the monsoon season.

The cave also is a maze of passageways and chambers, with side routes and dead ends that make it formidable to navigate, especially when filled with water.

Just reaching the cavern where the group ultimately took refuge was a feat even for the most skilled searchers.

The Wild Boars and their coach entered the cave after their soccer practice on June 23, a week before the rainy season generally begins.

But a heavy rain started falling and the cave complex quickly began to fill with water, forcing them deeper into the maze to avoid drowning.

Mr. Narongsak, then the governor of Chiang Rai Province, began organizing a search, a task that he later said seemed hopeless.

Nonetheless, Mr. Narongsak and other officials threw themselves into it. They mobilized dozens of members of the Thai Navy SEALs, hundreds of soldiers, volunteers and workers from 20 government agencies.

Leaders of the operation tried every approach they could devise.

Some failed, such as searching for a back door to the cave or drilling holes from the mountain above in the hope of lifting the boys out.

But two made a big difference: installing massive pumps to drain water from the cave and building an improvised dam to keep floodwaters from flowing in.

To help the members of the Navy SEALs, who had little experience in cave diving, search leaders turned to a group of highly skilled foreign cave divers, a rare breed of explorer.

The boys and their coach were finally found on July 2 by two British divers who were extending guide lines into the cave.

One diver, John Volanthen, reached the end of his line, fastened it in the mud, and emerged from the water to find 13 pairs of eyes staring at him.

The boys, having no idea of the international fixation over their plight, were surprised to learn that the diver was from Britain.

Had Mr. Volanthen’s line been 15 feet shorter, he would most likely have missed them.

The boys requested food and asked whether they could leave right away. But that operation would take another six days to start, and two more before all were evacuated.

The four Thai divers stayed with them, nursing them back to health and feeding them a high-protein diet.

Officials said that extracting the boys through the treacherous underwater passageways would be more difficult than finding them. Few, if any, of the boys knew how to swim, much less use diving gear.

Ultimately, the rescue officials concocted a plan to have small teams of divers bring out the boys by holding them under their bodies as they swam. The boys wore full face masks, rather than scuba gear, to make it easier for them to breathe underwater.

A successful rescue depended on positioning a supply of air tanks along the route they would take.

Disaster struck early Friday when a volunteer diver, Saman Gunan, 38, a former member of the Thai Navy SEALs, lost consciousness and died as he returned from putting air tanks in place.

“I call him the hero of Tham Luang Cave,” Mr. Narongsak said.

On the first two days of the rescue, 18 divers — 13 foreigners and five Thai — took part, bringing out four boys each time. On the final day, at least 12 divers took part.

Jintrakarn Sriwanithkul, 18, a student at the Mae Sai Prasitsart School attended by six of the Wild Boars, grew excited at word of the successful rescue.

“It’s amazing news,” he said. “When I first heard about them being missing, I thought they’d come out in two to three days because they knew the cave well.”

Foreign journalists converged on the cave by the hundreds in the kind of mass coverage usually reserved for major news events, like the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 four years ago.

For Thailand’s military leaders, who seized power in a coup the same year and have yet to hold promised elections, the rescue was an opportunity to show their concern for residents of the country’s northernmost province.

King Maha Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun, who let it be known early on that he was closely following the search effort, donated food and supplies.

Whether the king’s unusual personal interest gave added impetus to the effort is unclear. But a top police official who visited the cave told search leaders to spare no expense.

The prime minister, Prayuth Chan-ocha, a former general, visited the cave twice to meet with officials, rescue workers and families of the missing boys. He assured relatives that the government would not abandon them.

In the end, the final rescue part of the mission took just under nine hours, starting from the time the divers entered the cave to the time they had emerged with all four boys and Mr. Ekkapol.

“I would like to say thank you to His Majesty and royal family to support us,” Mr. Narongsak said. “I am thankful for all support from Thai people and all around the world.”

Some members of the Thai Navy SEALs stayed near the cave at quarters in Mae Sai. By the end, scuba gear, boxes of instant noodles and wet towels were strewn all around.

One member of the SEALs said that the operation might have looked easy from the graphics in newspapers, but that it was tough. They worked 12-hour days at a minimum and returned to quarters exhausted.

Nangnoung Namun, a weaver by trade who has been cooking hundreds of meals a day for the SEAL team as a volunteer, was elated by the successful rescue.

“Now I can sleep peacefully,” she said. “I’m so relieved.”

The first confirmation that all 13 were finally safe came from the SEAL team with a post on their Facebook page shortly before 7 p.m.

“12 boars and coach are out of the cave,” they announced. “Everyone is safe.”

“Hooyah,” the Facebook post concluded.

Hannah Beech, Navaon Siradapuvadol and Muktita Suhartono contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: How a News Event Destined for Tragedy Turned Into a Triumph. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

The post How Rescuers Pulled Off the Impossible in a Treacherous Thai Cave appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2JdkNeh via Everyday News

[cleopatrarps]

How Rescuers Pulled Off the Impossible in a Treacherous Thai Cave

MAE SAI, Thailand — It began as a misadventure by 12 boys and their soccer coach in a flood-prone northern Thai cave, which soon seemed destined to end in tragedy.

It turned into a nearly three-week-long story of survival, international collaboration and triumph over the impossible — one that was avidly embraced and followed live across the world.

A team of cave divers rescued the last of the boys and their coach on Tuesday from deep inside the warren of underground passages near Thailand’s border with Myanmar, one of Southeast Asia’s more remote regions.

One by one, the divers brought the final four members of the Wild Boars team and their coach out of the flooded Tham Luang Cave.

How they did it was a mix of trial and error, improvisation, skill, massive water pumps, miles of guide rope and strategically placed air tanks along the two-mile-long escape route, much of it submerged.

It took 10 days for rescuers to even locate the boys, then nearly a week before the rescue could even begin.

One diver died in preparing the evacuation. The other rescuers, laden with scuba gear, carried the boys — who could not swim and wore full face masks — as they squeezed through flooded crevices that would challenge the most seasoned divers. The final trek to freedom took four hours or more per child.

“We are not sure if this is a miracle, or science, or what,” the Thai Navy SEALs posted on their Facebook page. “All the 13 Wild Boars are now out of the cave.”

The rescue of the Wild Boars touched a global nerve, an uplifting counterpoint to the wars, atrocities, ethnic conflicts and crises afflicting countries like Syria, South Sudan and Yemen — not to mention closer to home in Myanmar and in Thailand itself, where there is a long-running war near the southern border.

For many people around the world, Thailand’s extraordinary operation to save 12 boys and their coach was a welcome contrast to the images of the United States separating immigrant children from their parents and locking them up.

The five Wild Boars who emerged Tuesday were immediately taken by ambulance and helicopter to a hospital in Chiang Rai, the nearest large city, and were to be placed in quarantine with the eight boys rescued Sunday and Monday.

They were expected to stay for about a week in quarantine, where family members who once feared they were dead can see them through a window.

Among the last to emerge from the cave was the Boars’ 25-year-old soccer coach, Ekkapol Chantawong, who helped the boys stay alive by conserving their energy during the 10 days before aid arrived.

Family members and friends were predictably ecstatic over the news that everyone was finally safe. Hundreds of millions of others around the world cheered with them.

“It was 18 days but it felt like years,” said Prayuth Jetiyanukarn, the abbot at a temple in the town of Mae Sai where Mr. Ekkapol works.

The abbot’s eyes welled.

“I’m so happy, but it’s not just for Ek and the team,” he said. “The whole world has been watching over these 18 days and they are celebrating with us.”

At a packed news conference after the rescue, the chief of the operation, Narongsak Osottanakorn, was visibly pleased.

“We have done something that no one expected that we could complete,” he said. “It was an impossible mission.”

Also making their way out of the cave were four Thai divers, an army doctor and three members of the Thai Navy SEALs, who had stayed in the cave with the Boars for more than a week after they were found and helped them prepare for their underwater escape.

Mr. Narongsak said that all four divers were healthy after eight days underground. They are expected to join the Wild Boars and Mr. Ekkapol in quarantine, however, because of the fear of infection.

“This morning, I promised to take nine people out,” Mr. Narongsak said. “We’re a success now.”

Tham Luang Cave, about two miles from the border with Myanmar, is the bed of an underground river that flows during the monsoon season.

The cave also is a maze of passageways and chambers, with side routes and dead ends that make it formidable to navigate, especially when filled with water.

Just reaching the cavern where the group ultimately took refuge was a feat even for the most skilled searchers.

The Wild Boars and their coach entered the cave after their soccer practice on June 23, a week before the rainy season generally begins.

But a heavy rain started falling and the cave complex quickly began to fill with water, forcing them deeper into the maze to avoid drowning.

Mr. Narongsak, then the governor of Chiang Rai Province, began organizing a search, a task that he later said seemed hopeless.

Nonetheless, Mr. Narongsak and other officials threw themselves into it. They mobilized dozens of members of the Thai Navy SEALs, hundreds of soldiers, volunteers and workers from 20 government agencies.

Leaders of the operation tried every approach they could devise.

Some failed, such as searching for a back door to the cave or drilling holes from the mountain above in the hope of lifting the boys out.

But two made a big difference: installing massive pumps to drain water from the cave and building an improvised dam to keep floodwaters from flowing in.

To help the members of the Navy SEALs, who had little experience in cave diving, search leaders turned to a group of highly skilled foreign cave divers, a rare breed of explorer.

The boys and their coach were finally found on July 2 by two British divers who were extending guide lines into the cave.

One diver, John Volanthen, reached the end of his line, fastened it in the mud, and emerged from the water to find 13 pairs of eyes staring at him.

The boys, having no idea of the international fixation over their plight, were surprised to learn that the diver was from Britain.

Had Mr. Volanthen’s line been 15 feet shorter, he would most likely have missed them.

The boys requested food and asked whether they could leave right away. But that operation would take another six days to start, and two more before all were evacuated.

The four Thai divers stayed with them, nursing them back to health and feeding them a high-protein diet.

Officials said that extracting the boys through the treacherous underwater passageways would be more difficult than finding them. Few, if any, of the boys knew how to swim, much less use diving gear.

Ultimately, the rescue officials concocted a plan to have small teams of divers bring out the boys by holding them under their bodies as they swam. The boys wore full face masks, rather than scuba gear, to make it easier for them to breathe underwater.

A successful rescue depended on positioning a supply of air tanks along the route they would take.

Disaster struck early Friday when a volunteer diver, Saman Gunan, 38, a former member of the Thai Navy SEALs, lost consciousness and died as he returned from putting air tanks in place.

“I call him the hero of Tham Luang Cave,” Mr. Narongsak said.

On the first two days of the rescue, 18 divers — 13 foreigners and five Thai — took part, bringing out four boys each time. On the final day, at least 12 divers took part.

Jintrakarn Sriwanithkul, 18, a student at the Mae Sai Prasitsart School attended by six of the Wild Boars, grew excited at word of the successful rescue.

“It’s amazing news,” he said. “When I first heard about them being missing, I thought they’d come out in two to three days because they knew the cave well.”

Foreign journalists converged on the cave by the hundreds in the kind of mass coverage usually reserved for major news events, like the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 four years ago.

For Thailand’s military leaders, who seized power in a coup the same year and have yet to hold promised elections, the rescue was an opportunity to show their concern for residents of the country’s northernmost province.

King Maha Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun, who let it be known early on that he was closely following the search effort, donated food and supplies.

Whether the king’s unusual personal interest gave added impetus to the effort is unclear. But a top police official who visited the cave told search leaders to spare no expense.

The prime minister, Prayuth Chan-ocha, a former general, visited the cave twice to meet with officials, rescue workers and families of the missing boys. He assured relatives that the government would not abandon them.

In the end, the final rescue part of the mission took just under nine hours, starting from the time the divers entered the cave to the time they had emerged with all four boys and Mr. Ekkapol.

“I would like to say thank you to His Majesty and royal family to support us,” Mr. Narongsak said. “I am thankful for all support from Thai people and all around the world.”

Some members of the Thai Navy SEALs stayed near the cave at quarters in Mae Sai. By the end, scuba gear, boxes of instant noodles and wet towels were strewn all around.

One member of the SEALs said that the operation might have looked easy from the graphics in newspapers, but that it was tough. They worked 12-hour days at a minimum and returned to quarters exhausted.

Nangnoung Namun, a weaver by trade who has been cooking hundreds of meals a day for the SEAL team as a volunteer, was elated by the successful rescue.

“Now I can sleep peacefully,” she said. “I’m so relieved.”

The first confirmation that all 13 were finally safe came from the SEAL team with a post on their Facebook page shortly before 7 p.m.

“12 boars and coach are out of the cave,” they announced. “Everyone is safe.”

“Hooyah,” the Facebook post concluded.

Hannah Beech, Navaon Siradapuvadol and Muktita Suhartono contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: How a News Event Destined for Tragedy Turned Into a Triumph. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

The post How Rescuers Pulled Off the Impossible in a Treacherous Thai Cave appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2JdkNeh via News of World

[party-hard-or-die]

How Rescuers Pulled Off the Impossible in a Treacherous Thai Cave

MAE SAI, Thailand — It began as a misadventure by 12 boys and their soccer coach in a flood-prone northern Thai cave, which soon seemed destined to end in tragedy.

It turned into a nearly three-week-long story of survival, international collaboration and triumph over the impossible — one that was avidly embraced and followed live across the world.

A team of cave divers rescued the last of the boys and their coach on Tuesday from deep inside the warren of underground passages near Thailand’s border with Myanmar, one of Southeast Asia’s more remote regions.

One by one, the divers brought the final four members of the Wild Boars team and their coach out of the flooded Tham Luang Cave.

How they did it was a mix of trial and error, improvisation, skill, massive water pumps, miles of guide rope and strategically placed air tanks along the two-mile-long escape route, much of it submerged.

It took 10 days for rescuers to even locate the boys, then nearly a week before the rescue could even begin.

One diver died in preparing the evacuation. The other rescuers, laden with scuba gear, carried the boys — who could not swim and wore full face masks — as they squeezed through flooded crevices that would challenge the most seasoned divers. The final trek to freedom took four hours or more per child.

“We are not sure if this is a miracle, or science, or what,” the Thai Navy SEALs posted on their Facebook page. “All the 13 Wild Boars are now out of the cave.”

The rescue of the Wild Boars touched a global nerve, an uplifting counterpoint to the wars, atrocities, ethnic conflicts and crises afflicting countries like Syria, South Sudan and Yemen — not to mention closer to home in Myanmar and in Thailand itself, where there is a long-running war near the southern border.

For many people around the world, Thailand’s extraordinary operation to save 12 boys and their coach was a welcome contrast to the images of the United States separating immigrant children from their parents and locking them up.

The five Wild Boars who emerged Tuesday were immediately taken by ambulance and helicopter to a hospital in Chiang Rai, the nearest large city, and were to be placed in quarantine with the eight boys rescued Sunday and Monday.

They were expected to stay for about a week in quarantine, where family members who once feared they were dead can see them through a window.

Among the last to emerge from the cave was the Boars’ 25-year-old soccer coach, Ekkapol Chantawong, who helped the boys stay alive by conserving their energy during the 10 days before aid arrived.

Family members and friends were predictably ecstatic over the news that everyone was finally safe. Hundreds of millions of others around the world cheered with them.

“It was 18 days but it felt like years,” said Prayuth Jetiyanukarn, the abbot at a temple in the town of Mae Sai where Mr. Ekkapol works.

The abbot’s eyes welled.

“I’m so happy, but it’s not just for Ek and the team,” he said. “The whole world has been watching over these 18 days and they are celebrating with us.”

At a packed news conference after the rescue, the chief of the operation, Narongsak Osottanakorn, was visibly pleased.

“We have done something that no one expected that we could complete,” he said. “It was an impossible mission.”

Also making their way out of the cave were four Thai divers, an army doctor and three members of the Thai Navy SEALs, who had stayed in the cave with the Boars for more than a week after they were found and helped them prepare for their underwater escape.

Mr. Narongsak said that all four divers were healthy after eight days underground. They are expected to join the Wild Boars and Mr. Ekkapol in quarantine, however, because of the fear of infection.

“This morning, I promised to take nine people out,” Mr. Narongsak said. “We’re a success now.”

Tham Luang Cave, about two miles from the border with Myanmar, is the bed of an underground river that flows during the monsoon season.

The cave also is a maze of passageways and chambers, with side routes and dead ends that make it formidable to navigate, especially when filled with water.

Just reaching the cavern where the group ultimately took refuge was a feat even for the most skilled searchers.

The Wild Boars and their coach entered the cave after their soccer practice on June 23, a week before the rainy season generally begins.

But a heavy rain started falling and the cave complex quickly began to fill with water, forcing them deeper into the maze to avoid drowning.

Mr. Narongsak, then the governor of Chiang Rai Province, began organizing a search, a task that he later said seemed hopeless.

Nonetheless, Mr. Narongsak and other officials threw themselves into it. They mobilized dozens of members of the Thai Navy SEALs, hundreds of soldiers, volunteers and workers from 20 government agencies.

Leaders of the operation tried every approach they could devise.

Some failed, such as searching for a back door to the cave or drilling holes from the mountain above in the hope of lifting the boys out.

But two made a big difference: installing massive pumps to drain water from the cave and building an improvised dam to keep floodwaters from flowing in.

To help the members of the Navy SEALs, who had little experience in cave diving, search leaders turned to a group of highly skilled foreign cave divers, a rare breed of explorer.

The boys and their coach were finally found on July 2 by two British divers who were extending guide lines into the cave.

One diver, John Volanthen, reached the end of his line, fastened it in the mud, and emerged from the water to find 13 pairs of eyes staring at him.

The boys, having no idea of the international fixation over their plight, were surprised to learn that the diver was from Britain.

Had Mr. Volanthen’s line been 15 feet shorter, he would most likely have missed them.

The boys requested food and asked whether they could leave right away. But that operation would take another six days to start, and two more before all were evacuated.

The four Thai divers stayed with them, nursing them back to health and feeding them a high-protein diet.

Officials said that extracting the boys through the treacherous underwater passageways would be more difficult than finding them. Few, if any, of the boys knew how to swim, much less use diving gear.

Ultimately, the rescue officials concocted a plan to have small teams of divers bring out the boys by holding them under their bodies as they swam. The boys wore full face masks, rather than scuba gear, to make it easier for them to breathe underwater.

A successful rescue depended on positioning a supply of air tanks along the route they would take.

Disaster struck early Friday when a volunteer diver, Saman Gunan, 38, a former member of the Thai Navy SEALs, lost consciousness and died as he returned from putting air tanks in place.

“I call him the hero of Tham Luang Cave,” Mr. Narongsak said.

On the first two days of the rescue, 18 divers — 13 foreigners and five Thai — took part, bringing out four boys each time. On the final day, at least 12 divers took part.

Jintrakarn Sriwanithkul, 18, a student at the Mae Sai Prasitsart School attended by six of the Wild Boars, grew excited at word of the successful rescue.

“It’s amazing news,” he said. “When I first heard about them being missing, I thought they’d come out in two to three days because they knew the cave well.”

Foreign journalists converged on the cave by the hundreds in the kind of mass coverage usually reserved for major news events, like the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 four years ago.

For Thailand’s military leaders, who seized power in a coup the same year and have yet to hold promised elections, the rescue was an opportunity to show their concern for residents of the country’s northernmost province.

King Maha Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun, who let it be known early on that he was closely following the search effort, donated food and supplies.

Whether the king’s unusual personal interest gave added impetus to the effort is unclear. But a top police official who visited the cave told search leaders to spare no expense.

The prime minister, Prayuth Chan-ocha, a former general, visited the cave twice to meet with officials, rescue workers and families of the missing boys. He assured relatives that the government would not abandon them.

In the end, the final rescue part of the mission took just under nine hours, starting from the time the divers entered the cave to the time they had emerged with all four boys and Mr. Ekkapol.

“I would like to say thank you to His Majesty and royal family to support us,” Mr. Narongsak said. “I am thankful for all support from Thai people and all around the world.”

Some members of the Thai Navy SEALs stayed near the cave at quarters in Mae Sai. By the end, scuba gear, boxes of instant noodles and wet towels were strewn all around.

One member of the SEALs said that the operation might have looked easy from the graphics in newspapers, but that it was tough. They worked 12-hour days at a minimum and returned to quarters exhausted.

Nangnoung Namun, a weaver by trade who has been cooking hundreds of meals a day for the SEAL team as a volunteer, was elated by the successful rescue.

“Now I can sleep peacefully,” she said. “I’m so relieved.”

The first confirmation that all 13 were finally safe came from the SEAL team with a post on their Facebook page shortly before 7 p.m.

“12 boars and coach are out of the cave,” they announced. “Everyone is safe.”

“Hooyah,” the Facebook post concluded.

Hannah Beech, Navaon Siradapuvadol and Muktita Suhartono contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: How a News Event Destined for Tragedy Turned Into a Triumph. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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When Is It Time To Hire A Money Manager? Wealth Management Can Be A Full-Time Job

When I sold my rental house, I thought my stress would go down at least 80%. After all, my tenants and the maintenance issues were really bumming me out. But what I didn’t anticipate was the rise in stress from having to reinvest a sum 4X greater than I had ever invested before. The last thing I wanted to do was turn a strong performing investment into a poor one.

I went through many hours of deliberation regarding where to invest the proceeds. I wrote quarterly investment reports to track my progress. I stayed glued to the laptop during market hours for months trying to buy stocks and bonds during pullbacks. Further, I went out to dinner with the RealtyShares investment committee twice to do more due diligence on their investment process before deploying $500,000 in additional capital. It was exhausting.

As someone who worked in the finance industry, consulted with a couple digital wealth advisors, and who has been investing his own money for over 20 years, I was familiar with the entire process of managing money. However, I’ve finally reached an inflection point. 

Too Many Investment Accounts

Because I’m actively working from home and helping take care of my little one, my time is stretched. When you earn money, the path of least resistance is to simply hoard cash. At least by doing nothing, you won’t lose money. But hoarding cash since 2009 has been a huge mistake.

What happens as you get older is that your finances tend to get more complicated. Job changes create dilemmas for whether you should rollover your 401(k) into an IRA or not. You might start a business and launch your own SEP-IRA or Solo 401(k). Or you might have some nice liquidity windfall after selling your company. The list goes on and on.

If I was just managing one family investment account, staying on top of our investments would be a piece of cake. But as a middle age parent who feels its important to diversify, I’ve had a lot of investment changes and opportunities since college.

I currently manage or keep track of 17 financial accounts at multiple financial institutions. Each financial institution has something different to offer. Further, we spread out risk, partly due to the $500,000 FDIC insurance cap.

Financial Institution 1 – Sam

After-tax investment account

SEP-IRA

Profit Sharing Keough (Solo 401k)

Son’s 529 Plan

Financial Institution 1 – Wife

After-tax investment account

SEP-IRA

Rollover IRA

Financial Institution 2 – Sam

Rollover IRA

After-tax investment account

Financial Institution 2 – Wife

After-tax investment account

Roth IRA

Financial Institution 3 – Sam

CD (used to have 3 CDs to track)

Financial Institution 4 – Sam

After-tax investment account

Venture Debt – Sam

Fund 1

Fund 2

Real Estate Crowdfunding – Sam

RealtyShares Domestic Equity Fund

Conshy, PA Commercial Property

Every single account requires the following:

Keeping track of asset allocation

Keeping track of cash balance

Researching investments

Selecting the right investments

Reducing commission fees

Meeting capital calls from private investments

Keeping track of when capital is returned

Redeploying capital

Figuring out how each piece fits into a passive income target

As you can see, doing everything right for all accounts can take a lot of time. Further, the more money you have to manage, the more time you will naturally spend because there’s simply more at stake to lose and win.

Here is the perfect example where more money does not bring financial peace of mind. When I had just $100,000 to manage, I couldn’t care less if the market corrected 20%+. I had nobody to support and a job that could easily make up for any losses and then some.

With a sudden $1.8M liquidity event from selling my home on top of managing my existing investments, I was forced to dedicate a lot more brain power to money management.

My Latest Money Management Error

After the market meltdown in early February 2018, I asked my wife to cut three checks: one to my SEP-IRA, one to her SEP-IRA, and one to our son’s 529 account. As business owners, a business can contribute 25% of our salaries to our individual SEP-IRA accounts, e.g., $120,000 salary = $30,000 contribution. As I had already superfunded my son’s 529 plan in 2017, only my wife and others are eligible to contribute up to $14,000 a year.

I invested some of the proceeds based on our agreed upon investment framework in all accounts when I realized about 25% of my wife’s SEP-IRA had been sitting in cash for who knows how long. I was completely surprised because I try to keep all our investment accounts 100% invested. Our cash needs are met separately through various savings accounts.

Due to too much cash in my wife’s SEP-IRA account, her account lost out on potentially thousands of dollars in lost paper profits in 2017. But I’m not sure exactly how much she lost because I don’t remember how long the cash had been sitting there!

Busy buying stocks during the depths of the February sell-off in one account.

Refocusing My Efforts

From now on, I need to go through each account and not only check the holdings and asset allocation, but also make sure there is no excess cash sitting around doing nothing.

What’s also important is making sure my investments makes sense in each account. For example, I’m more inclined to invest and trade more aggressively in my pre-tax investment accounts because I know I won’t be touching them until age 60 and there are no taxes to file.

For my after-tax investment accounts, they are more conservative as they are accounts that will be first accessed during a liquidity crunch or when I finally buy that Hawaiian dream home. Since I’ve got to pay taxes on any dividends or capital gains, my after-tax investment accounts have lower turnover and house all my tax-free municipal bonds.

Finally, I’ve got to do a top down asset allocation of all my accounts to make sure the overall investment asset allocation fits my risk profile and investment objectives. I used to do this manually, but since 2012 I’ve linked my investment accounts to Personal Capital’s dashboard and can just click their Investment Checkup tab to get a snapshot. Below is an example:

Log onto dashboard and click Investing -> Holdings to get an overview of all accounts

When Is It Worth Paying A Money Manager?

I’m close to paying a money manager to manage our finances, but I am still reluctant to pull the trigger because I’ve always managed my money, dislike paying fees, and realize a wealth manager can only manage some of my accounts, not all.

The only accounts a wealth manager can manage are our four after-tax investment accounts.  This means I would still have to manage 13 other investment accounts. As a result, I presently don’t think it’s worth hiring a money manager. Only if the money manager could manage the large majority of my investment accounts would I consider hiring one.

Some considerations for when you should hire a wealth manager:

1) When they can manage most of your investments.

2) When you have no desire to manage your money.

3) When you have no understanding of investing.

4) When investing stresses you out and keeps you up at night.

5) When your job, business, or family keep you too busy to even review your investments.

6) When you can do a much better job making money elsewhere.

7) When they’ve showed a fantastic long-term track record.

8) When you calculate the estimated annual fee and feel you’d happily pay the amount to not have to manage your own money.

9) When you have a significant amount of assets and would feel better if someone or some team were keeping watch every day.

If I had a digital money manager managing my investments, I never would have had a 25% cash weighting in my wife’s SEP-IRA for months. They would have automatically invested my cash based on a pre-determined investment asset allocation, which I’d agreed upon. I would have had to pay a 0.25% fee, but I wouldn’t have missed out on 20% gains on the cash balance in 2017.

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, digital wealth advisors can’t manage a SEP-IRA account, so the responsibility to manage our pre-tax investment accounts will always fall on me.

As I conclude this post, I realize that I no longer enjoy managing our investments. They give me unwanted stress, even in good times – although things are looking dicey now. I get bent out of shape when I don’t buy at the low of the day. When the stock market corrects 10%, it’s hard for me to think of anything else until I see stabilization. When an investment soars 50%, I don’t get pleasure either because I’m not using the profits for anything.

Maybe it’s better to outsource my money management responsibilities and the stress it comes with after all. If I’m not happy with managing money during good times, I definitely won’t be happy managing our family’s money during bad times.

Readers, anybody spend a significant amount of time managing their money? Do you feel like investing can sometimes be a full-time job? Do you feel more stressed managing money when there’s more to manage? If you have a money manager, what are some reasons why you hired them?

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