#i have roughly...15 ideas compiled?

[erythristicbones]

love that while compiling all the short story ideas for my ocs, it started with actual serious descriptions and devolved into "top ten ways to get rid of your abuser, feat. Nat with a shovel" and "do not look at me, do not perceive me, sometimes you just wanna write smut"

[sysmedsaresexist]

So have you talked about Colin Ross abusing and traumatizing his patients, or him believing he can shoot beams of energy out of his eyeballs, or any of that stuff or did i miss those posts or what

I did :) keep looking, I'm sure you're almost there

In all seriousness, no one is saying he's a saint or unproblematic, but him believing he can shoot lasers doesn't exactly affect the results of fmris or the readings of other clinicians in the studies compiling results

I mean, unless he shot the lasers right into the machine

That might skew the results a bit

But if you're going to dismiss Ross, you also have to dismiss van der Hart, Braun (RIP???), Poznanski, and all of the other psychotherapy clinicians involved in 15-20% of yearly medical malpractice lawsuits (statistics in these areas are horrible to wade through).

Malpractice lawsuits are a fact of life in the medical field and that's why every doctor is legally required to have insurance. It's estimated that by the age of 65 years, 75% of physicians in low-risk specialties had faced a malpractice claim (this includes psychiatry), as compared with 99% of physicians in high-risk specialties (surgeons and the like). At least 10% of an average 40 year career is spent with an open lawsuit on file. 96% of medical malpractice cases are settled out of court, without you ever knowing they happened. Your family/general doctor has more than likely been sued before, and you have zero idea. Of the cases that go to court, over 55% are dismissed. Of the remainder, over 70% are awarded to the physician. These numbers are terrifying. Not only are the number of frivolous lawsuits incredibly high, the fact that so few cases are won by the patient is just depressing.

Based on the above, like 1 case out of roughly 3,500 yearly malpractice suits against therapists will succeed in court.

(The above numbers are US based)

To reiterate, over half of those cases never go to court and you don't know they happened, because at that point, insurance companies prefer to just make things go away with money, whether it's valid or not.

How many can't afford to sue?

These cases range from therapists oversharing, bad note taking, confidentiality concerns, sexual relationships, business relationships, misdiagnosis, prescription management, lack of training in techniques, disagreements, and any number of other things. More often than not, malpractice suits aren't for emotional damage, but procedural and ethical issues.

The more well-known you are, the harder the cases you take, the more likely you are to be sued. I don't actually know of a case where Ross was the sole named physician, usually there's 3 or 4 named and Ross has only made it to the settlement stage once, though we can't see what part he played or if he was held responsible over the other physicians. I don't think he was ever named as the primary physician, meaning he came into these cases after another doctor had made the diagnosis.

How would you feel if every doctor decided to reassess you themselves rather than trust another diagnosing physician? This is a real question that matters. It's not rhetorical. I'm not defending Ross, either, but I'd be pretty frustrated by the third round of testing. Multiple diagnosing clinicians just isn't always feasible, and yes, it leads to errors. But that's not just psychiatry.

I don't really know what to say to this ask. No one is denying he's got problems, but can those problems be directly tied to the research and did they skew results? Where do we draw the line to decide who's officially useless as a clinician (people like Hart) and who's just getting sued in a normal daily event?

Can we talk about the laser beam thing for a second, though?

Colin Ross has an eyebeam of energy he'd like you to hear

Ross applied to the James Randi Educational Foundation’s One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge

Ross's basic claim is that with the aid of special goggles he’s assembled using a blue Aqua Sphere swim mask, electrical wiring and, naturally, scraps of tin foil, he can harness the energy from his eyes and use the energy to play a tone on a computer. He describes it like an on-off switch. And he plans to use the technology he’ll develop to add receptors to such devices as iPods and light switches, allowing folks to turn them on or off using our eyebeams.

He won an award. A Pigasus. I think this is hilarious.

The Pigasus Award is given each year, “To the scientist or academic who said or did the silliest thing related to the supernatural, paranormal or occult.” Dr. Ross’ 2009 Pigasus Award stems from his ability to focus his own electromagnetic field to send a beam of energy from his eyes and make a tone sound out of a speaker. He has applied to the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge administered by the JREF.

The JREF has ridiculed Dr. Ross since he filed his challenge application. James Randi wrote on his web page: “You think you’ve seen every sort of claim that could be thrown at the JREF…. Most have been preposterous, silly, irrational, and/or astonishing. Now we have one that is all of those…Dr. Colin A. Ross.”

“I am not the first unconventional thinker who has had to endure the snickering of cynics and skeptics, so I happily accept this recognition,” said Dr. Ross. “Every significant scientific advance faces resistance, but it is time that the JREF stop ridiculing me and tests the protocol.”

I don't know where I'm going with all this, it's just food for thought, context. Nothing is ever quite so black and white, even eye lasers, and sometimes you keep the bathwater and toss the evil baby.

It's hard, it's a balance. Do we say you can't trust the ToSD because of Hart? Can bad people still make reliable resources? As much as it sucks, I think some research is still valuable, and we need to teach people how to critically examine methods and conclusions to decide if the research has merit, not just decide based on whose name is first in the authors list.

[hospitalterrorizer]

diary301

7/16-17/24

tuesday - wednesday

gf is still at work.

and i feel really hideous, like i look at my face, i see so much wrong with it, and i feel like my hair is stupid and making my face look long and other words i can use that will hurt my own feelings, a bunch of stuff re: dysphoria basically. unpleasant. i do not like that i feel like i can't even know what i actually look like. the image shifts and i can't gather what i am at all. it's just like... ugly. i feel so ugly and like i look at my face and wonder if it's always seemed so masculine or if tomorrow i'll wake up and feel fine. it's so weird. maybe it's just being inside a lot right now.

anyway, today i re-did some lyrics, so tomorrow i should be ready to try them out.

i also got a new song mostly written, roughly, i think i need to work on making it easier to follow though. there's a little synth in it that kind of makes some moments weird to follow, i need to mix it down i think. that and some drum patterns are weird, maybe i need to also mix out some mids from the snare so the guitar comes through a little more, and boost that too.

i didn't do too much else today... i feel like i am giving myself a bit of option paralysis right now, with music, there's anxiety working on stuff cuz i don't wanna deal with crashes, that paired with the fact that i have a lot of material waiting to be worked on, + new ideas already written out like those tabs (i need to do some more of that it's very fun), there's a lot here for an ep or however many i want to do. i'm happy for that, of course, and i'm deciding maybe the hard limit on time should be like 15-20 mins on this one. we'll see where i end up, but i guess at minimum, 21-22 minutes (extra 1-2 minutes as flex time but really i would prefer under 20 but over 15...).

anyway,,, i listened to the whole ep this song is off of today, crazy views on this i forgot abt that:

the overall effect this song has feels very mr. oizo, while not really sounding like it at all. the chiptune synth is rather pristine, all the sounds are, but it feels so cheap and scuzzy still, really great thing, that.

another song i spent a while looking for this morning, talking about that one japanese idol group with all the dots in their name, they were dancing to this fred frith no wave release, the band's called massacre, the frith thing, but it got me on the thought train of j pop no wave, and i had to go and hunt for this:

i'd never seen the video before!!!! it's like the inside of my head!!!!!!!! it's like everything i like, and the song too, it's so funny, when i heard it like, in 2018 it must have been, it was so special to me.

also yesterday i was revisiting teenage jesus and the jerks, to keep it on no wave, i hadn't heard them for such a long time, but they're still very very good, to me at least, and i guess it's more about the inventive guitar thrashing and lydia's vocals, the drums aren't as energetic as i'd like, i guess, they are rather minimal, which is fine and maybe i should think about working with drums like that more, cuz i do have a tendency to make some stuff toooooo messy. or idk. not too messy, cuz i like it. but you know, it makes problems, but they're problems worth having for me i suppose, anyway here's a track i like a lot:

love the scrape of the geetarzzz here, it's funny, when i first heard them, it must have been before this compilation had come out, because i was stuck with this other one that had this cover on spotify, this was back in highschool, so it must have been in 2015 before that comp w/ lydia on the cover + pink came out (oh, i guess it was actually just reissued then, how odd, it was not online before then, i think it also came with a remaster, though, the 1995 comp does sound a little different) or before then in 2014:

it's such a vivid memory to me because my parents took away my headphones because of something dumb i don't really want to get into, and i still wanted to listen to my dumb fucked up music, so i was playing this on the computer in the dining room, where my computer had to be and stuff, and my mom walked up to me and asked wtf i was listening to, not that she's not into weirder stuff, she tried to get me into zappa around that time, but honestly he doesn't do too much for me, i have a friend who has had better luck with him though, anyway, it was so embarrassing for me, to be caught like that, but it's what i liked. soooo whateverrrrrrrr.

here's something else and then i gotta sleep:

i never heard this / saw it, idk why he'd delete this because the music video is at least probably one of the best of the last decade. not really even exaggerating it feels like a meditation on the weird place violence has in american youth culture and the runoff from videogames, where it's like this derealized cruelty, and then all the sports imagery, it's like from within these really american/western feeling things, at least portrayed at their most american, like paintball and airsoft, military fetishism, the fortnite dance in the football field, that part's like, it blows my mind a little. idk how he made that work as a poignant moment, it's like, humorous of course, it knows, and still it works. that is special! it feels super observant of our surroundings and the undercurrent that's got no recourse outside of like, the avoidance / attempt to sublimate / impossibility of reckoning with it, the impossibility as like, an excuse to just ignore, you know, like the girl just kind of looking like an ad for vr headsets, the super commercial look of the whole thing, the perfect cameras for most of it, everything with that wal-mart / best-buy tv demo sheen, but it's all pointed and a little venomous, it's like, got teeth in the eagerness to avoid, you know. it's crazy, anyway back to my points re: it using stuff that's so american, it's like reaching some kind of actual american denpa thing almost. not the music but the kinda stuff that came out that people describe as denpa in anime and movies. also like the willingness to have that little interlude part with the guitar in the middle of the track sound like pure buttrock is crazy. like what the hell. that's bold as hell. damon rush is definitely kind of a #genius rn. he could outlast the hellp maybe. we will see though. i really love the shot of the fortnite dance in the football field... that and the part where they're shooting the shirtless kid with paintballs... and when he gets the ball kicked into his head. the pseudo execution scene is like. it's soooo loaded!! it really feels crazy to see idk. it's a very exciting piece of art . for me .

anyway , i have to sleep now

so

byebye!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[cheeriersandals]

My Return to Blogging.

Recommitting to fixing my internet habits to be little more mindful or meaningful.

I believe this is achievable by following more news sites, blogs and content creators and also by throwing my hat into the ring and contributing myself.

The idea is not to be too self-serious, have fun and avoid any update schedule.

There are a few factors moving me in this direction, I recently found out an old blog account had been compromised. It's a 20 year old password that is mostly unused but still was being used on some site, it was good blackmail bait. I promptly backed up and deleted the account.

This scare encouraged me to compile every blog post I've ever made into one place, spanning roughly 15+ years of takes and this formed my identity greatly.

I'll post a link when I get there, even the drafts held some merit. In the meanwhile, I posted a tonne of small gaming reviews to backloggd. Tracker sites might are the new blog IMO - Letterboxd, Goodreads, etc.

In looking over 15 years of posts, I've scattered my takes all over the place - Wordpress, Blogger, SubStack, Cohost and even here in Tumblr. I'm finding it all overwhelming, while having it all in one place where I can decide what is public or public, and with a timeline is important to me.

While I could recommence on any of these sites, there is no best platform and I found all of them have baggage.

Many have a tonne of customisation options, and tend to measure success by page-clicks or monetary value. It is a useful tool in today's gig economy and many have full-time careers working independently which is great! Just not for me.

Tumblr is niche, but the editing options are simple. I found a theme in 5 minutes and drafted this post super quick.

I can sync this to a mailing list when I get going and when I am ready.

I've been tethered to the internet ever since I knew it existed. It was new and exciting, however today it's ever present and unavoidable - but I can manage how I engage with it, which is enough for me. Thanks for reading this adminposting.

[linghxr]

A Closer Look at Chinese Names

This post has been a long time coming. In spring 2020, I posted two of the most popular posts on this blog:

Reading Chinese Names: Female Names

Reading Chinese Names: Male Names

More recently I have wanted to revisit the idea behind those posts but with a different, more in-depth approach. I also made some decisions while compiling data for those posts that I now regret. So in late summer 2021, I set out to completely redo my data collection with the eventual goal of creating this very post.

About the Data

I will include more information about my data collection process at the end of this post for those interested.

I gathered 3,277 names (1602 male, 1675 female) from idol shows and groups. In the grand scheme of things, this is not a lot of names at all. But I think it's enough that we can explore names, observe some generalities, and have fun! These names belong to individuals roughly 15-30 years old. Most names belong to individuals from Mainland China, but there are some Hong Konger and Taiwanese names as well.

Some of the name sources include:

偶像练习生/青春有你

创造101/创造营

明日之子

以团之名/少年之名

SNH48

快乐女声/快乐男声

菱格世代DD52

Various groups like 时代少年 and SING女团

I also wanted to note something important: the definitions I am using (via MDBG) are only the surface. For example, a name containing a character meaning jade might also have implications of beauty and virtue. So the meaning is more than just "jade." However, it just isn't practical to go into all the nitty gritty here. I encourage you to seek out more resources if you are interested.

Some Thanks

Thanks so much to @liu-anhuaming, @meichenxi, and my friend Tiffany for their help and advice during the process of creating this post! 非常感谢你们，你们是最棒的！

Given Names (Overall)

First let's look at the most common characters for ALL the given names in the dataset. There were 1093 total unique characters across all the given names. I'm going to include more characters (almost rounding out the top 100) at the bottom of this post for those interested. There is also some information broken down by gender below.

Top Given Name Characters

宇 yǔ - room, universe / 87

子 zǐ - son, child, seed, egg, small thing, 1st earthly branch, midnight, 11th solar month, year of the Rat, fourth of five orders of nobility, ancient Chinese compass point / 82

佳 jiā - beautiful, fine, good / 68

雨 yǔ - rain / 63

嘉 jiā - excellent, auspicious, to praise, to commend / 59

文 wén - language, culture, writing, formal, literary, gentle / 58

欣 xīn - happy / 55

一 yī - one, 1, single, a (article), as soon as, entire, whole, all, throughout / 51

俊 jùn - smart, eminent, handsome, talented / 51

思 sī - to think, to consider / 49

杰 jié - hero, heroic, outstanding person, prominent, distinguished / 49

豪 háo - grand, heroic / 48

怡 yí - harmony, pleased / 45

天 tiān - day, sky, heaven / 44

泽 zé - pool, pond, (of metals etc) luster, favor or beneficence, damp, moist / 43

琪 qí - fine jade / 40

婷 tíng - graceful / 39

鑫 xīn - prosperity / 38

晓 xiǎo - dawn, daybreak, to know, to let sb know, to make explicit / 35

浩 hào - grand, vast (water) / 35

晨 chén - morning, dawn, daybreak / 34

恩 ēn - favor, grace, kindness / 33

博 bó - extensive, ample, rich, obtain, aim, to win, to get, plentiful / 32

慧 huì - intelligent / 32

明 míng - bright, clear, to understand, wise / 32

轩 xuān - pavilion with a view, high, tall / 32

辰 chén - 5th earthly branch, 3rd solar month, year of the Dragon, ancient Chinese compass point / 32

Top Given Name Characters (Female)

佳 jiā - beautiful, fine, good / 56

雨 yǔ - rain / 50

欣 xīn - happy / 49

怡 yí - harmony, pleased / 44

婷 tíng - graceful / 39

嘉 jiā - excellent, auspicious, to praise, to commend / 37

琪 qí - fine jade / 35

思 sī - to think, to consider / 33

慧 huì - intelligent / 31

梦 mèng - dream, to dream / 30

Top Given Name Characters (Male)

宇 yǔ - room, universe / 68

子 zǐ - son, child, seed, egg, small thing, 1st earthly branch, midnight, 11th solar month, year of the Rat, fourth of five orders of nobility, ancient Chinese compass point / 55

豪 háo - grand, heroic / 48

杰 jié - hero, heroic, outstanding person, prominent, distinguished / 47

俊 jùn - smart, eminent, handsome, talented / 45

泽 zé - pool, pond, (of metals etc) luster, favor or beneficence, damp, moist / 38

浩 hào - grand, vast (water) / 35

一 yī - one, 1, single, a (article), as soon as, entire, whole, all, throughout / 34

文 wén - language, culture, writing, formal, literary, gentle / 32

明 míng - bright, clear, to understand, wise / 27

Single-Character Names (单名)

There were 668 single-character names, which is about 20% of the total names. I know that 单名 are pretty rare in Taiwan (I'm not sure about Hong Kong), so that's something to keep in mind. More of the top 单名 are at the bottom of this post.

Top Single-Character Names

鑫 xīn - prosperity / 12

欣 xīn - happy / 10

洋 yáng - ocean, vast, foreign, silver dollar or coin / 9

静 jìng - still, calm, quiet, not moving / 7

丹 dān - red, pellet, powder, cinnabar / 6

娜 nà - graceful, elegant, beautiful / 6

恩 ēn - favor, grace, kindness / 6

敏 mǐn - quick, nimble, agile, clever, smart / 6

昕 xīn - dawn / 6

雪 xuě - snow / 6

颖 yǐng - head of grain, husk, tip, point, clever, gifted, outstanding / 6

Female Single-Character Names

欣 xīn - happy / 9

鑫 xīn - prosperity / 8

静 jìng - still, calm, quiet, not moving / 7

丹 dān - red, pellet, powder, cinnabar / 6

娜 nà - graceful, elegant, beautiful / 6

敏 mǐn - quick, nimble, agile, clever, smart / 6

雪 xuě - snow / 6

倩 qiàn - pretty, winsome / 5

洁 jié - clean / 5

颖 yǐng - head of grain, husk, tip, point, clever, gifted, outstanding / 5

Male Single-Character Names

洋 yáng - ocean, vast, foreign, silver dollar or coin / 7

恩 ēn - favor, grace, kindness / 5

杰 jié - hero, heroic, outstanding person, prominent, distinguished / 5

宇 yǔ - room, universe / 4

浩 hào - grand, vast (water) / 4

涛 tāo - big wave / 4 (Taiwan pr. táo)

硕 shuò - large, big / 4

磊 lěi - lumpy, rock pile, uneven, sincere, open and honest / 4

立 lì - to stand, to set up, to establish, to lay down, to draw up, at once, immediately / 4

耀 yào - brilliant, glorious / 4

聪 cōng - wise, clever, sharp-witted, intelligent, acute, quick at hearing / 4

超 chāo - to exceed, to overtake, to surpass, to transcend, to pass, to cross, ultra, super / 4

鑫 xīn - prosperity / 4

鹏 péng - large fabulous bird / 4

Two-Character Names (双名)

For the lists below, I removed all 单名 and just looked at 双名 characters. One of the things I was most excited to examine in this post was what characters tend to be found in the first vs. second positions. As you will see reflected below, some common characters used in names tend to occur more in one position, like 子 which is more prevalent in the first position. Others are more balanced. I bolded characters appearing in both positions.

Additional top 双名 can be found at the end of this post.

Top Two-Character Names

俊杰 jùnjié / 7

佳怡 jiāyí / 5

嘉欣 jiāxīn / 5

天宇 tiānyǔ / 5

浩然 hàorán / 5

婷婷 tíngtíng / 4

子杰 zǐjié / 4

安琪 ānqí / 4

Top First Characters

子 zǐ - son, child, seed, egg, small thing, 1st earthly branch, midnight, 11th solar month, year of the Rat, fourth of five orders of nobility, ancient Chinese compass point / 72

嘉 jiā - excellent, auspicious, to praise, to commend / 49

佳 jiā - beautiful, fine, good / 48

思 sī - to think, to consider / 44

一 yī - one, 1, single, a (article), as soon as, entire, whole, all, throughout / 40

俊 jùn - smart, eminent, handsome, talented / 40

雨 yǔ - rain / 36

天 tiān - day, sky, heaven / 34

宇 yǔ - room, universe / 34

晓 xiǎo - dawn, daybreak, to know, to let sb know, to make explicit / 34

Top Second Characters

宇 yǔ - room, universe / 48

豪 háo - grand, heroic / 45

杰 jié - hero, heroic, outstanding person, prominent, distinguished / 41

琪 qí - fine jade / 34

文 wén - language, culture, writing, formal, literary, gentle / 32

怡 yí - harmony, pleased / 30

婷 tíng - graceful / 29

轩 xuān - pavilion with a view, high, tall / 27

辰 chén - 5th earthly branch, 3rd solar month, year of the Dragon, ancient Chinese compass point / 26

欣 xīn - happy / 23

涵 hán - to contain, to include, culvert / 23

雨 yǔ - rain / 23

Female First Characters

佳 jiā - beautiful, fine, good / 38

嘉 jiā - excellent, auspicious, to praise, to commend / 31

思 sī - to think, to consider / 29

雨 yǔ - rain / 27

晓 xiǎo - dawn, daybreak, to know, to let sb know, to make explicit / 26

诗 shī - poem, poetry, verse / 24

梦 mèng - dream, to dream / 22

小 xiǎo - small, tiny, few, young / 20

欣 xīn - happy / 19

雅 yǎ - elegant / 19

Female Second Characters

琪 qí - fine jade / 30

婷 tíng - graceful / 29

怡 yí - harmony, pleased / 29

欣 xīn - happy / 21

雨 yǔ - rain / 21

君 jūn - monarch, lord, gentleman, ruler / 19

慧 huì - intelligent / 18

涵 hán - to contain, to include, culvert / 18

瑶 yáo - jade, precious stone, mother-of-pearl, nacre, precious / 17

莹 yíng - luster of gems / 16

Male First Characters

子 zǐ - son, child, seed, egg, small thing, 1st earthly branch, midnight, 11th solar month, year of the Rat, fourth of five orders of nobility, ancient Chinese compass point / 54

俊 jùn - smart, eminent, handsome, talented / 35

一 yī - one, 1, single, a (article), as soon as, entire, whole, all, throughout / 26

浩 hào - grand, vast (water) / 24

泽 zé - pool, pond, (of metals etc) luster, favor or beneficence, damp, moist / 22

宇 yǔ - room, universe / 20

明 míng - bright, clear, to understand, wise / 20

天 tiān - day, sky, heaven / 19

嘉 jiā - excellent, auspicious, to praise, to commend / 18

柏 bó - cedar, cypress / 17

Male Second Characters

豪 háo - grand, heroic / 45

宇 yǔ - room, universe / 44

杰 jié - hero, heroic, outstanding person, prominent, distinguished / 40

轩 xuān - pavilion with a view, high, tall / 21

辰 chén - 5th earthly branch, 3rd solar month, year of the Dragon, ancient Chinese compass point / 20

翔 xiáng - to soar, to glide / 19

文 wén - language, culture, writing, formal, literary, gentle / 17

霖 lín - continued rain / 17

铭 míng - to engrave, inscribed motto / 15

泽 zé - pool, pond, (of metals etc) luster, favor or beneficence, damp, moist / 14

鑫 xīn - prosperity / 14

龙 lóng - dragon, imperial / 14

Comparing Characters by Position

After examining the most popular characters by position, I was curious to look more specifically at which characters appear in one position but not the other. In this section I decided not to include lists separated by gender because it was getting to be too much information.

Exclusively First Characters

Below are the top characters that never appeared in the second position.

晓 xiǎo - dawn, daybreak, to know, to let sb know, to make explicit / 34

小 xiǎo - small, tiny, few, young / 24

紫 zǐ - purple, violet / 16

美 měi - beautiful, very satisfactory, good, to beautify, to be pleased with oneself / 15

若 ruò - to seem, like, as if / 14

智 zhì - wisdom, knowledge / 13

书 shū - book, letter, document, to write / 11

婉 wǎn - graceful, tactful / 11

振 zhèn - to shake, to flap, to vibrate, to resonate, to rise up with spirit, to rouse oneself / 11

永 yǒng - forever, always, perpetual / 11

秋 qiū - autumn, fall, harvest time / 11

Largest Deltas (First Position)

I also wanted to see characters that were found in both positions but for which there was a big difference in occurrence. I bolded characters that appeared both here and in the list above.

The math is formatted: # times first position - # times second position = difference

子 zǐ - son, child, seed, egg, small thing, 1st earthly branch, midnight, 11th solar month, year of the Rat, fourth of five orders of nobility, ancient Chinese compass point / 72 - 10 = 62

思 sī - to think, to consider / 44 - 4 = 40

嘉 jiā - excellent, auspicious, to praise, to commend / 49 - 10 = 39

晓 xiǎo - dawn, daybreak, to know, to let sb know, to make explicit / 34 - 0 = 34

佳 jiā - beautiful, fine, good / 48 - 15 = 33

一 yī - one, 1, single, a (article), as soon as, entire, whole, all, throughout / 40 - 9 = 31

俊 jùn - smart, eminent, handsome, talented / 40 - 9 = 31

天 tiān - day, sky, heaven / 34 - 7 = 27

小 xiǎo - small, tiny, few, young / 24 - 0 = 24

诗 shī - poem, poetry, verse / 24 - 2 = 22

Exclusively Second Characters

豪 háo - grand, heroic / 45

霖 lín - continued rain / 22

然 rán - correct, right, so, thus, like this / 20

琦 qí - curio, valuable stone / 17

仪 yí - apparatus, rites, appearance, present, ceremony / 14

航 háng - boat, ship, craft, to navigate, to sail, to fly / 13

晴 qíng - clear, fine (weather) / 12

萱 xuān - orange day-lily / 12

帆 fān - sail, to gallop / 11 (Taiwan pr. fán)

璇 xuán - jade / 9

Largest Deltas (Second Position)

豪 háo - grand, heroic / 45 - 0 = 45

杰 jié - hero, heroic, outstanding person, prominent, distinguished / 41 - 3 = 38

琪 qí - fine jade / 34 - 2 = 32

婷 tíng - graceful / 29 - 6 = 23

辰 chén - 5th earthly branch, 3rd solar month, year of the Dragon, ancient Chinese compass point / 26 - 3 = 23

轩 xuān - pavilion with a view, high, tall / 27 - 5 = 22

霖 lín - continued rain / 22 - 0 = 22

涵 hán - to contain, to include, culvert / 23 - 2 = 21

然 rán - correct, right, so, thus, like this / 20 - 0 = 20

怡 yí - harmony, pleased / 30 - 13 = 17

君 jūn - monarch, lord, gentleman, ruler / 22 - 5 = 17

琦 qí - curio, valuable stone / 17 - 0 = 17

Gender Associations of Characters

This section is more experimental and exploratory. There are probably better ways to examine the gender association for characters, but I just wanted to take a quick look for fun, not develop a whole new analysis technique.

Gender Neutral Characters

Here I simply took the average of the ranks of each character for male names and female names. If a character was only found in male names or only found in female names, it would just end up with the overall rank of N/A.

The math is formatted: (Female names rank + male names rank) ÷ 2 = average rank

子 zǐ - son, child, seed, egg, small thing, 1st earthly branch, midnight, 11th solar month, year of the Rat, fourth of five orders of nobility, ancient Chinese compass point (12th + 2nd) ÷ 2 = 7th (82 times)

嘉 jiā - excellent, auspicious, to praise, to commend (6th + 18th) ÷ 2 = 12th (59 times)

文 wén - language, culture, writing, formal, literary, gentle (15th + 9th) ÷ 2 = 12th (58 times)

宇 yǔ - room, universe (30th + 1st) ÷ 2 = 15.5th (87 times)

思 sī - to think, to consider (8th + 29th) ÷ 2 = 18.5th (49 times)

一 yī - one, 1, single, a (article), as soon as, entire, whole, all, throughout (34th + 8th) ÷ 2 = 21st (51 times)

天 tiān - day, sky, heaven (31st + 12th) ÷ 2 = 21.5th (44 times)

雨 yǔ - rain (2nd + 45th) ÷ 2 = 23.5th (63 times)

佳 jiā - beautiful, fine, good (1st + 47th) ÷ 2 = 24th (68 times)

恩 ēn - favor, grace, kindness (37th + 30th) ÷ 2 = 33.5th (33 times)

Female-Leaning Characters

For this section, I looked at characters in female names that did not appear in male names. This isn't a perfect technique, but I think it is still interesting to see the results.

婷 tíng - graceful / 5th (39 times)

诗 shī - poem, poetry, verse / 16th (26 times)

静 jìng - still, calm, quiet, not moving / 18th (23 times)

莹 yíng - luster of gems / 28th (20 times)

丽 lì - beautiful / 29th (19 times)

依 yī - to depend on, to comply with or listen to sb, according to, in the light of / 35th (17 times)

妍 yán - beautiful / 36th (17 times)

媛 yuán - beautiful / 40th (16 times)

月 yuè - moon, month / 41st (16 times)

紫 zǐ - purple, violet / 43rd (16 times)

Male-Leaning Characters

Likewise, for this section I chose characters that appeared in male names but not female names. I actually know women with 龙 and 伟 in their names, so it's important to remember that leaning male =/= only found in men's names. There are always exceptions!

豪 háo - grand, heroic / 3rd (48 times)

浩 hào - grand, vast (water) / 7th (35 times)

龙 lóng - dragon, imperial / 28th (17 times)

伟 wěi - big, large, great / 36th (14 times)

峻 jùn - (of mountains) high, harsh or severe / 38th (13 times)

耀 yào - brilliant, glorious / 42nd (13 times)

钧 jūn - 30 catties, great, your (honorific) / 44th (13 times)

成 chéng - to succeed, to finish, to complete, to accomplish, to become, to turn into, to be all right, one tenth / 48th (12 times)

振 zhèn - to shake, to flap, to vibrate, to resonate, to rise up with spirit, to rouse oneself / 53rd (11 times)

飞 fēi - to fly / 54th (11 times)

While looking at gender was fun, in the future I'd really like to look at tones/tone combinations, open vs. close syllables, and more. I'm still thinking about the best way to do this.

Surnames

Since surname rankings are actually known, I thought it would be interesting to briefly compare my dataset to the true populations.

Top Surnames

李 Lǐ / 240

王 Wáng / 206

张 Zhāng / 186

陈 Chén / 173

刘 Liú / 147

杨 Yáng / 94

林 Lín / 91

黄 Huáng / 88

周 Zhōu / 69

徐 Xú / 66

Mainland Top Surnames

李 Lǐ

王 Wáng

张 Zhāng

刘 Liú

陈 Chén

杨 Yáng

赵 Zhào

黄 Huáng

周 Zhōu

吴 Wú

Taiwan Top Surnames

陈 Chén

林 Lín

黄 Huáng

张 Zhāng

李 Lǐ

王 Wáng

吴 Wú

刘 Liú

蔡 Cài

杨 Yáng

What stood out to me most was 林 making #7 on my list. I suspect this is due to the inclusion of Taiwanese names. In Mainland China it actually ranks around #16 I believe. 赵 didn't make the top 10, but I think it was actually #11, so that's not too far off.

About the Data Cont'

For my original posts 1.5 years ago, I had difficulty maintaining a gender balance and decided to add male names from other types of sources as a supplement. I have since regretted that choice, so this time I worked hard to maintain balance without using unrelated sources. One result of this is that there are names in the original dataset that do not appear in this dataset, so even though the new dataset has more names, it's possible that there could be fewer occurrences of some characters. I did my best to remove duplicate individuals (not duplicate names!) and remove stage names that do not sound like real names (or replace them with real names). However, I did not try to swap out all stage names for birth names because that would have been too difficult and time consuming. I also made the assumption that any four-character name could be segmented into two surname characters and two given name characters. It's important to note that these names are not necessarily representative of the 15-30 population as a whole. Idols or trainees might change their names to something sounding more cool or hip, and like I mentioned, it simply wasn't feasible for me to find everyone's birth name. And my data collection didn't take into account things like geography/population spread or keep track of ages (but I did for the most part avoid any shows older than 5 years and groups with members 30+).

Extended Lists

Top Given Name Characters

28 星 xīng - star, heavenly body / 31 29 梦 mèng - dream, to dream / 31 30 倩 qiàn - pretty, winsome / 29 31 涵 hán - to contain, to include, culvert / 29 32 艺 yì - skill, art / 29 33 雅 yǎ - elegant / 29 34 雪 xuě - snow / 29 35 君 jūn - monarch, lord, gentleman, ruler / 28 36 翔 xiáng - to soar, to glide / 27 37 霖 lín - continued rain / 27 38 哲 zhé - wise, a sage / 26 39 梓 zǐ - Catalpa kaempferi (type of tree), printing blocks / 26 40 羽 yǔ - feather, 5th note in pentatonic scale / 26 41 诗 shī - poem, poetry, verse / 26 42 凯 kǎi - triumphant, victorious / 25 43 家 jiā - home, family / 24 44 小 xiǎo - small, tiny, few, young / 24 45 洋 yáng - ocean, vast, foreign, silver dollar or coin / 24 46 铭 míng - to engrave, inscribed motto / 24 47 奕 yì - abundant, graceful / 23 48 柏 bó - cedar, cypress / 23 49 静 jìng - still, calm, quiet, not moving / 23 50 馨 xīn - fragrant / 23 51 丹 dān - red, pellet, powder, cinnabar / 22 52 安 ān - content, calm, still, quiet, safe, secure, in good health, to pacify, to harbor (good intentions), security, safety, peace / 22 53 洁 jié - clean / 22 54 然 rán - correct, right, so, thus, like this / 22 55 瑶 yáo - jade, precious stone, mother-of-pearl, nacre, precious / 22 56 心 xīn - heart, mind, intention, center, core / 21 57 扬 yáng - to raise, to hoist, scattering (in the wind), to flutter / 21 58 玉 yù - jade / 21 59 阳 yáng - sun, male principle / 21 60 源 yuán - root, source, origin / 20 61 琦 qí - curio, valuable stone / 20 62 瑞 ruì - lucky, auspicious, propitious, rayl / 20 63 莹 yíng - luster of gems / 20 64 丽 lì - beautiful / 19 65 宁 níng - peaceful, to pacify / 19 66 语 yǔ - dialect, language, speech / 19 67 云 yún - cloud / 18 68 敏 mǐn - quick, nimble, agile, clever, smart / 18 69 琳 lín - gem / 18 70 睿 ruì - astute, perspicacious, farsighted / 18 71 菲 fēi - luxuriant (plant growth), rich with fragrance / 18 72 辉 huī - splendor, to shine upon / 18 73 颖 yǐng - head of grain, husk, tip, point, clever, gifted, outstanding / 18 74 依 yī - to depend on, to comply with or listen to sb, according to, in the light of / 17 75 妍 yán - beautiful / 17 76 希 xī - to hope, to admire / 17 77 昊 hào - vast and limitless, the vast sky / 17 78 超 chāo - to exceed, to overtake, to surpass, to transcend, to pass, to cross, ultra, super / 17 79 龙 lóng - dragon, imperial / 17 80 东 dōng - east , host / 16 81 凡 fán - ordinary, commonplace, mundane, temporal, of the mortal world, all, whatever, altogether, gist, outline, note of Chinese musical scale / 16 82 媛 yuán - beautiful / 16 83 宏 hóng - great, magnificent / 16 84 志 zhì - aspiration, ambition, the will / 16 85 昕 xīn - dawn / 16 86 月 yuè - moon, month / 16 87 瑜 yú - excellence, luster of gems / 16 88 紫 zǐ - purple, violet / 16 89 航 háng - boat, ship, craft, to navigate, to sail, to fly / 16 90 钰 yù - treasure, hard metal / 16 91 雯 wén - multicolored clouds / 16 92 元 yuán - currency unit, first, original, primary, fundamental, constituent, part, era / 15 93 廷 tíng - palace courtyard / 15 94 承 chéng - to bear, to carry, to hold, to continue, to undertake, to take charge, owing to, due to, to receive / 15 95 晴 qíng - clear, fine (weather) / 15 96 美 měi - beautiful, very satisfactory, good, to beautify, to be pleased with oneself / 15 97 言 yán - words, speech, to say, to talk / 15 98 逸 yì - to escape, leisurely, outstanding / 15

Top Single-Character Names

12 佳 jiā - beautiful, fine, good / 5 13 倩 qiàn - pretty, winsome / 5 14 凡 fán - ordinary, commonplace, mundane, temporal, of the mortal world, all, whatever, altogether, gist, outline, note of Chinese musical scale / 5 15 宇 yǔ - room, universe / 5 16 帅 shuài - handsome, graceful, smart, commander in chief / 5 17 悦 yuè - pleased / 5 18 杰 jié - hero, heroic, outstanding person, prominent, distinguished / 5 19 洁 jié - clean / 5 20 聪 cōng - wise, clever, sharp-witted, intelligent, acute, quick at hearing / 5 21 萌 méng - to sprout, to bud / 5 22 霖 lín - continued rain / 5

Top Two-Character Names

9 丽娜 lìnà / 3 10 丹妮 dānnī / 3 11 佳慧 jiāhuì / 3 12 佳欣 jiāxīn / 3 13 依依 yīyī / 3 14 俊毅 jùnyì / 3 15 博文 bówén / 3 16 嘉宝 jiābǎo / 3 17 嘉怡 jiāyí / 3 18 媛媛 yuányuán / 3 19 子铭 zǐmíng / 3 20 子龙 zǐlóng / 3 21 家豪 jiāháo / 3 22 心怡 xīnyí / 3 23 心雨 xīnyǔ / 3 24 思佳 sījiā / 3 25 思雨 sīyǔ / 3 26 晨曦 chénxī / 3 27 梓豪 zǐháo / 3 28 梦瑶 mèngyáo / 3 29 欣妤 xīnyú / 3 30 浩宇 hàoyǔ / 3 31 美琪 měiqí /3 32 诗琪 shīqí / 3 33 雨晴 yǔqíng / 3 34 雨航 yǔháng / 3 35 雪莹 xuěyíng / 3 36 静怡 jìngyí / 3

Well, if you made it to the end, congratulations! You are a brave soul. But seriously, thanks so much for reading all of this monster of a post. I hope you leave knowing at least a bit more about Chinese names.

[mischief-and-tea-by-the-sea]

Tarot and Rune Readings

Let me preface this by saying that the job hunt is a lousy and stressful thing, leading to many sleepless nights and nauseated and crying mornings. I put out at least 10-15 applications a day, and with a BA in English and MFA in Creative Writing, I should've had non-scam bites by employers by now. This has been going on for months. I wanted to move to NC this year and get the hell out of Texas, which is becoming more and more dangerous to live in by the day. I never know when I leave my house if I'm going to be shot for being bisexual, genderfluid, pagan, a uterus owner, wearing a mask in a world that isn't done with the pandemic yet (despite what anyone says), or just for existing in a space that a cis white straight conservative Christian man (or woman) is in where they just don't like my face that day. The lack of a job and incoming funds has made my sister, with whom I live and hoped to move to NC with before the end of the year, hesitant to move because it will be expensive to move across country, find a place, and live without it, but the jobs are just not coming, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm terrified of what will happen if we stay here.

I've got 30 years experience in reading Tarot and probably roughly 20 reading runes. I also have 22 years using psychometry, which comes in the form of symbols and ideas that mean something to the owner of the object. I've been doing dream interpretation even back into my teens (I'm almost 50 now, if that helps). I've worked dozens of psychic fairs when I still lived in South Texas and there was a shop there that held them four or five times a year. I'm good at what I do, and I'm prompt at getting back to someone who requests and pays for a reading. Only if I'm away from my computer on errands am I just not available at that moment but will make myself available as soon as I can.

I'm not going to lie. I need to get some financial security under me so that I can pay my bills, help cover rent, groceries, and to push for the move out of the rapidly growing more dangerous state that I live in. I'm willing to work for the money, and I'm not going to give half-assed replies to questions. I've got PayPal and Venmo and a selection of Tarot and Divination Cards to choose from as well as runes. If you're interested, I sure would like to talk and pull cards for you - in helping you, you'd be helping me, and it would be a great cycle of exchanged energy that would make things positive for the both of us.

My prices are:

$30 for 3-5 tarot cards

$50 for a full spread, 30 minute reading

$75 for for full spread, 1 hour readings

$25 Dream Interpretation

$35 Rune reading

Readings done online over IM chat (I have FB Messenger and Discord and can be persuaded to get back on Skype if preferred). I'm still learning Zoom but can probably work that out as well. I will provide a write up and photo of the reading, with the exception of Dream Interpretation, which will just have a write-up. Payment up front and readings to follow immediately.

I have also set up a secondary Tumblr for tarot/dreams where I may compile interesting topics from time to time as life permits. Please feel free to follow this blog, too, and messaging me there will also message me on my main Tumblr.

Mimir's Well.

Message me on Tumblr for further communication.

Thank you!

[juicenet]

which "h2o: just add water" episodes centered each character? a quantitative analysis

hello, 2021 h2o enjoyers! lately, i've been thinking about how many h2o episodes focus on a specific mermaid. naturally, i wondered—which main mermaid (cleo, rikki, emma, and bella) has the most episodes dedicated to their character arc? and what percent of the show focuses on that character? so i wrote up this quantitative analysis and... yeah.

caveats:

-there are many h2o episodes that don’t center any specific character, which is why these episodes are not included on the list.

-there are some episodes that focus a lot on on lewis, charlotte, will, et cetera. however, i decided to only compile episode lists for the four main mermaids.

-there’s no perfect methodology for this type of analysis. some episodes that i included in one character’s category also included a substantial plot point for another character. i just tried to use my best judgement; typically, if an episode mainly revolved around [insert character], significantly contributed to a character’s arc, and/or if that character had the most screen time in that episode, i labeled it as [insert character]-centric.

under the cut, you’ll find each character’s episodes!

list of cleo-centric episodes:

season 1

1x02 pool party

1x03 catch of the day

1x08 the denman affair

1x12 the siren effect

1x14 surprise!

1x16 lovesick

1x19 hurricane angela

season 2

2x05 hocus pocus

2x06 pressure cooker

2x07 hot water

2x10 missed the boat

2x16 double trouble

2x19 the gracie code, part one

2x25 sea change

season 3

3x03 keep your enemies close

3x07 happy families

3x09 the sorcerer’s apprentice

3x13 to have and to hold back

3x17 a magnetic attraction

3x24 too close for comfort

total: 19 episodes

divided by the number of episodes in the series*: 19/78 or ≈24%

list of rikki-centric episodes:

season 1

1x06 young love

1x09 dangerous waters

1x10 the camera never lies

1x18 bad moon rising

1x22 fish out of water

1x23 in too deep

season 2

2x03 the one that got away

2x08 wrong side of the tracks

2x11 in over our heads

2x24 three’s company

season 3

3x05 big ideas

3x12 crime & punishment

3x16 the dark side

3x18 into the light

3x21 the jewel thief

total: 15 episodes

divided by the number of episodes in the show: 15/78 or ≈19%

list of emma-centric episodes:

season 1

1x04 party girls

1x07 moon spell

1x11 sink or swim

1x15 the big chill

1x21 red herring

season 2

2x04 fire and ice

2x12 fish fever

2x14 get off my tail

2x17 moonstruck

total: 9 episodes

divided by the number of episodes in which emma appeared: 9/51 or ≈18%

divided by the number of episodes in the series: 9/78 or ≈12%

list of bella-centric episodes:

season 3

3x02 jungle hunt

3x06 secrets & lies

3x08 kidnapped

3x10 revealed

3x11 just a girl at heart

3x20 queen for a day

3x23 beach party

total: 7 episodes**

divided by the number of episodes in which bella appeared: 7/26 episodes or ≈27%

divided by the number of episodes in the series: 7/78 or ≈9%

overall, 50 episodes (or ≈64% of all h2o episodes) focus more on a specific character’s arc, leaving 28 episodes (or ≈36%) that focus more on the group as a whole.

what does this analysis tell us? well, unsurprisingly, far fewer episodes center emma or bella. but 18 episodes center cleo—does this mean that she's the main main character of the series? i'd argue that the writers framed her character this way. still, rikki, emma, and even bella are hardly minor characters. after all, h2o is about the Power of Friendship in this trio of girls who have been brought together by the mermaid secret—and each girl is supposed to play a roughly equal role in all of this.

footnotes:

*cleo and rikki were the only mermaids to appear in all 78 episodes of h2o. therefore, i didn’t break their screen time down any further like i did with emma and bella, who appeared in 51 and 26 episodes, respectively. (no, emma wasn’t in all 52 episodes of her two seasons—she didn’t appear in “the gracie code, part one”.)

**i feel like i should add that most of bella’s episodes are also will-centric. while she has more episodes dedicated to her in season 3 than cleo or rikki, this doesn’t necessarily translate to more character development or meaningful plot lines. i’ll let you form your own opinions on that, though.

[ckneal]

Sometimes I need to remind myself that not everyone watched Supernatural with an ongoing gen fic happening in their head, all about the family life of the angels before Chuck’s disappearance and the rise of humanity. And as such, not everyone was constantly compiling stray details thrown out about the angel characters, clustering them together into this rubber band ball of ideas that was just so fun to play with.

I mean, for instance, not everyone took in the way the other angel characters seemed to look down their noses at the cupid characters (who, it’s worth noting, are never once referred to by their individual names, but instead by the human pet name for their category of cherub [which in Lucifer’s case, was certainly framed as an unflattering term], despite Castiel once boasting that he knew everyone in Heaven), and reason to themselves that it was surely because the other angels were jealous. Because obviously, the cupids are given classified information from God himself about what bloodlines he wants to see continued and merged for the sake of his Plan, putting these silly, non-combatant angels on par with the archangels in terms of secret knowledge about what was to come. For the first couple billions of years of existence, while the other classes of angels were sitting around with nothing to do, they all had to watch the cupids happily zipping around the earth, cooing over blue-green algae and gradually coaxing different species into existence with their magic love arrows. And every time a significant milestone was reached, they also had to watch as the insipid little harbingers of love scooped the newborn creature up and raced over to the nearest archangel to excitedly show them their progress, like a little kid with their first art project. And the archangel in question, regardless of which one, would nod encouragingly and smile as the cupid in question babbled about the tiny, tiny lungs this fish had, or the beginnings of feet at the ends of its fins. Even Lucifer, who would also add the additional suggestion to try and give the next one more teeth.

Additionally, not everyone looked at the way that Lucifer was able to just insert himself into Sam’s head from inside the cage, and considered how Azazel needed to visit a specific geographic location to communicate with Lucifer, and even then was only just barely able to do so, and thus came to the conclusion that clearly Michael and Lucifer must have come to an agreement to pool their powers to project Luci’s image into Sam’s head. Which explains why Sam’s special link disappears right after leaving the cage, and also why Michael didn’t interfere when Lucifer was freed, even though season 15 makes it clear that Luci did not sneak quietly out the backdoor. Michael was fully aware who was responsible for the jailbreak, thus leading us to consider that perhaps Lucifer was supposed to turn around and free Michael and Adam in turn, but did not. Thus leading us to imagine Michael spending roughly a year (Earth time) tapping his foot in the cage, until . . .

“He’s not coming back for us, is he?”

And Adam, cracking open a molecule-flavored soda (manifested courtesy of Michael), snickers. “Nope. Told you not to trust him.”

“Right. . .” Michael exhales, looks around for a moment, settles on side-eyeing Adam. Then, with an air of ‘fuck it’ says, “Want to make out?”

And Adam promptly chokes on his soda.

And not everyone heard Metatron specifically say that he personally tattooed the names of every prophet of the Lord ever on the inner eyelids of every angel, and immediately had the thought, “Poor Michael” spring to mind. Because of course Michael was the first one on the proverbial chopping block, trying his best not to flinch as his little brother gradually figured out how to handle the needle. (To this day, Michael is still not sure if the prophet after Chuck Shurley is named Kevin Tran or Rovim Frun). And all the while, Michael was probably also trying his best not to worry about how things were going on Earth while he was busy getting his eyes stabbed.

After all, Lucifer was God’s second eldest son, barely younger than Michael in the grand scheme of things. He could handle watching over their younger siblings for a little while. And Raphael and Gabriel were there to help. Everything would be fine.

However, Michael isn’t aware that about five minutes after being left in charge, Lucifer yelled, “HEY EVERYONE, CHECK THIS OUT!” And then promptly threw his grace into the body of a nearby pterodactyl. Possession being a new ability that Chuck had recently invented, the surrounding angels were mystified as Lucifer piloted the prehistoric reptile through a series of dizzying loop-de-loops that saw the poor creature—not suited to containing angel grace—explode midway through, leaving Lucifer gleefully giggling in the sky.

About half of the angels looking on gaped in horror.

Gabriel whispered to Raphael, “We’re still beta testing that, right?”

The other half of the gathered angels, however, like the impressionable young followers that they are, start grinning, because Lucifer is grinning, and he’s their cool older brother, and as Lucifer—relishing the attention—makes a beeline toward the earth’s one continent, Pangea, and an unsuspecting herd of ornithopods, these younger angels eagerly follow.

Soon, Earth is full of the anguished cries of cupids, watching their hard work blown to bits again and again. Swept up in the crowd, are Castiel and Balthazar. They watch Uriel and Zachariah excitedly throw their armored dinosaur bodies against one another in the moments before both vessels combust, after which Uriel and Zachariah excitedly dart off to take on new ones.

“Are we sure this is. . .okay?”

“Well, Lucifer is in charge. We’re supposed to follow his lead. . .aren’t we?”

Meanwhile, Raphael is frantically trying to stem the carnage. Several dinosaurs are levitating in mid-air, as Raphael tries to simultaneously keep them from exploding while also ordering the angels possessing them to vacate the vessels immediately. But none of them have ever taken a vessel before, and do not know how to get out of them without tearing them apart. Raphael keeps expanding their powers to more and more creatures as their young siblings continue to follow Lucifer’s example.

“GABRIEL, DO SOMETHING!”

“RIGHT!” Gabriel looks around, locates Lucifer running amuck in an apatosaurus that he’s forcing to walk on its hind legs, and fires off a lightning bolt to startle him out.

The lightning bolt misses its target in spectacular fashion, and several trees catch on fire.

Gabriel throws another lightning bolt.

“GABRIEL, THAT IS NOT HELPING!”

“RIGHT!”

Gabriel then grabs a giant meteor from outer space and begins trying to smother the flames by whacking it against the continent, to Raphael’s horror. More cupids begin to cry. Thick clouds of dust fly up, choking out natural light on the planet’s surface—now only illuminated by flames, as well as the magma that rises up out of the cracks that form in Pangea, as Gabe unintentionally creates the first tectonic plates from the sheer force of his assault on the planet.

Trees fall over. Fire continues to spread.

Lucifer is still in the apatosaurus, but he’s fallen onto his side, laughing hysterically.

“WATER, GABRIEL! USE WATER!”

“OH! RIGHT!”

Gabriel throws the meteor into a nearby sea, creating a tsunami.

It is at this point that Raphael abandons the dinosaurs to their sad fate, forgetting their solemn oath to not reveal any secrets regarding evolution and God’s plan, to broadly yell out to any and all of their angelic siblings who are listening, “QUICKLY, SAVE THE MAMMALS!”

And it is at this point, that Michael returns. Samandriel, clutching a dozen or so rodents in his wings, is the first one to spot him. All of Michael’s eyes are red and puffy from abuse. The cupids are sobbing, the Earth is battered, flooded, and scorched. Angels are getting into fist fights with reapers as they dart back and forth, trying to ferry as many warm-blooded creatures as they can find from the site of the catastrophe to the relative safety on the other side of the mountain range Gabriel accidently made when he bashed a crater into the planet—relative, as it turns out some of those new mountains are in fact volcanoes, and it took some trial and error to figure out how far away from an active volcano could be considered “safe.”

Nearby, Castiel and Balthazar are somehow both stuck inside the same mosasaur, beached from the tsunami, and loudly panicking as they struggle to de-possess it before it explodes. There’s a snapping sound, and then suddenly all of the angels still trapped (or willfully frolicking) inside vessels are ejected, at the same time that the fire goes out and the volcanoes cease erupting.

Consequently, everyone goes very still as Michael scans the damage and his bedraggled siblings. With humans not yet existing, the art of facepalming is not yet a thing. But looking at Michael, one might just expect him to invent the practice right then and there.

When Michael gets to Lucifer, he’s greeted with, “What? Pop’s 86-ing the lizard kingdom anyway!”

Michael promptly drags Lucifer off to Heaven.               

The next day, it was made an official rule, written into the very fabric of angelkind: vessels could only be taken after obtaining explicit consent.

Additionally, everyone agreed to never, ever mention the existence of the dinosaurs or how they ended ever again. And, rather than fixing the damage to the Earth’s surface, the tectonic plate situation was just sort of left to do as it would.

Many, many years later, Adam was shocked by Michael’s reaction when the cage door suddenly swung open in Hell. Adam had immediately surged to his feet in excitement, ready to leave and never come back.

Michael, however, remained stationary on the floor, squinting at the doorway, wondering what dystopian nightmare must be waiting on Earth after leaving his siblings unsupervised for a solid decade.

“Michael? You okay?”

“Adam, before we go back to Earth, I think I need to tell you a story. . .”

[voteformightyclocks]

Why I’ll Never Watch She-Hulk

I had an idea earlier for a post roughly asking “What’s really wrong with Star Wars? What’s the real issue? What’s the key underlying problem that’s messing 50% of Star Wars content up?” But then a friend sent me a 15 min YouTube video in which a guy basically went through She-Hulk episode one and brilliantly compiled everything wrong with the storytelling. And I decided “Why not cover this right now since She-Hulk is actually relevant and a perfect example of what not to do?”

And let me clarify something. This isn’t just me watching a video and automatically agreeing. I tried to watch Episode 1 of She-Hulk a few days after it released, and could not get into it. I turned it off within 5 minutes. That being said, let’s get into the analysis, and feel free to watch the video (linked below) if you wish to see the context for my breakdown.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LQ7B4TFOu4&t=755

1. Character Sympathy. This was a huge part of the video’s focus. Jennifer wasn’t a likeable character at all. Right off the bat, as the video states, she easily overcomes her first challenge. We’ve established that she’s capable, not that she’s relatable, or human, or anything of the sort. A major connection with the audience gone/wasted. But I want to expand on that. A lot of character sympathy comes from individuality. When something stands out, we become interested, when we’re seeing something we’ve already seen a million times, we gloss over it. Jennifer Walters is by no means an original character. I couldn’t find anything about her ethnicity, so maybe she has an ethnic background...? But all I could tell was “White girl”, so she’s already mixed with the majority of MCU heroes at this point. She’s female, but we already have a solid roster of female heroes in the MCU, so Marvel has to do more than that to make her special. She’s a Hulk, so yeah, nothing new. Dark hair and brown eyes, so no standout physical features, although I guess her hair being curly is cool...not original though. Nothing about Jennifer Walters screams “I’m new! Like me!” It just screams “I’m a generic superhero who’s just here to fill the Disney+ schedule gaps.” And yeah, as the video establishes, she doesn’t garner sympathy as being an underdog. She’s just...well...successful. At the height of her life

2. Character Contradictions. I didn’t even know about this rant until today, but apparently at the end of the first episode, Jennifer Walters goes off at Bruce Banner about how she knows all about containing her rage because she does it daily...because of all these ways men are oppressing people...and directly mentions “murder” as a potential consequence if she can’t contain it? Ben Shapiro actually got confused at this line and showed statistics. On an annual basis, there are roughly 17,000 homicides. 3,000 of those are female, 14,000 are male. I googled on my own volition and statistics indicated that roughly 80-81% of homicide victims are male, which is slightly less than Shapiro’s 83% statistic, but close enough to solidly say “Hey, uh, Jennifer...you’re exaggerating.” But another focal point is that in the beginning of the episode, she is criticized by a male coworker and he’s quickly kicked out of her office...? Male oppression, Jennifer? Really? Furthermore, she ends up a bar in the first episode, and what I get out of the video is that Jennifer basically beats the guys up before they make any real moves...yes...excellent at controlling rage, and you’re more likely to get murdered...for sure...I mean, sure, they were harassing you, but when I’m “oppressed” or challenged on my Discord server, I don’t even think about making a joke about them dying, let alone threatening to dox them or beat them up or anything to harm them or their image, let alone actually beat them to a pulp. Life is uncomfortable, folks, and violence is never the answer

And that’s all I’m going to say about it. I have other thoughts, but nothing is well-formulated because, as I’ve already said, I never finished the first episode. This is all going off of what I have seen about She-Hulk

So  yeah. That, my friends, is why I will never watch this infamous show

[fwoopersongs]

送清上人归苕溪 - Seeing off Venerable Qing as he returns to Taixi

by 释行海 (Shi Xinghai, 1224 - ?)

寻常送客尚多愁，况是天涯寂寞秋。 xún cháng sòng kè shàng duō chóu, kuàng shì tiān yá jì mò qiū. Ordinarily, seeing off a guest already rouses sorrow, what's more, on a lonely Autumn's day, to a faraway land.

晓别蛩声黄叶寺，夜分渔火白苹洲。 xiǎo bié qióng shēng huáng yè sì, yè fēn yúhuǒ bái píng zhōu. Parting at dawn amidst chirping crickets, yellowed leaves, a temple; at midnight, in the firelight of fishing boats, the river’s banks are white.

病余骨肉添新林，归后风烟忆旧游。 bìng yú gǔ ròu tiān xīn lín, guī hòu fēng yān yì jiù yóu. After illness, flesh and bone add to a forest, new; upon returning, wind and mist spark reminiscence of our past travels.

何处何时又相见，青山长在水长流。 hé chù hé shí yòu xiāng jiàn, qīng shān cháng zài shuǐ cháng liú. Where and when will we meet again? The verdant mountains shall always stand; running water flows ever on.

...................................................................................................

I actually came across this poem before while translating 《送灵澈上人》  Seeing off Venerable Ling Che by Liu Changqing, but didn’t really pay a lot of attention beyond thinking, ‘oh nice, very atmospheric first line’. More recently, a friend from discord started a conversation on the common chinese drama and novel farewell line ‘青山不改， 绿水长流’ // roughly: verdant mountains do not change, emerald waters flow ever on, that was falsely attributed to the poem    《离别》, which was in turn falsely attributed to the Tang Dynasty poet, Bai Juyi.

As an aside, questions such as: 1. So what is the TRUE origin of this sentence? (findings inconclusive, but it has existed in this exact form since at least Lois Cha’s novels from the 1950s and 60s, and with similar phrasing and meaning since the Song Dynasty) 2. When and how exactly did the line get misattributed? (this is a super impressive piece of detective work - the author traces internet posts all the way back to 2006 with screenshots! do check it out if you’re comfortable reading chinese.) have already been answered very thoroughly by amused, curious, confused and outraged Chinese netizens. xD Lo and behold, the remarkable chaotic energy of the internet ~

And from our English speaking areas of cnovel fandom: 1. What is the Bai Juyi connection anyway? Has been answered by @hunxi-guilai. 2. What does the line really mean though? Has been answered by @wrecklwj. Righto, so with all that out of the way, I’ll start off by saying, yes! This poem was identified in the replies to the post on the phrase’s origins because of its last line to which the ‘parting phrase’ is somewhat similar in both form and intent. See for yourself below:

青山不改 绿水长流 qīng shān bù gǎi, lǜ shuǐ chángliú verdant mountains do not change, emerald waters flow ever on

青山长在 水长流 qīng shān cháng zài, shuǐ chángliú verdant mountains will forever be here, water flows ever on

Pointing this out is all I have to say on the topic. 

Shi Xinghai, the poet, lived in the Song Dynasty. We do not know his date of passing, but his birth year of 1224 CE can apparently (according to the poet’s quick bio which is the only thing about him available all over the internet) be approximated from this book by the title of ‘Spring of Gui You, Visiting and Staying At Wuwei Temple’s Guiyun Storeyed Pavilion, Using Age 15 to Present Age of 50’s Travels as a Monk as Loose Inspiration for Casually Writing Ten Poems’ 《癸酉 / 春 / 侨居 / 无为寺 / 归云阁 / 以十五游方今五十 / 为题 / 信笔十首》.

By the way, I have no idea how the person who wrote this description arrived at the conclusion of 1224 as his birth year, because the closest Gui You year to 1224 would be the 13th year of Jiading (under Emperor Ningzong of Song), which is 1213.

Having been ordained as a Buddhist monk at a young age, he lived in Jiaxing’s Xianfu Temple and was originally from Shan 剡, which is part of present day Shengzhou. Shi Xinghai’s art name was Xuecen, and he was a prolific writer with at least three thousand poems to his name. But when Lin Xinyi 林希逸 (119 to 1271), Neo-Confucian of the Southern-Song Dynasty, compiled Shi Xinghai works, he could only pick two hundred out of the original twenty epics and three thousand short poems which he then published as ‘Xuecen The Monk’s Works, Continued’《雪岑和尚续集》.

And now for the poem itself, which should be a fast one ~

寻常送客尚多愁  | Ordinarily, seeing off a guest already rouses sorrow, 况是天涯寂寞秋 | what's more, on a lonely Autumn's day, to a faraway land.

My choice of 'seeing off a guest' for 送客 is somewhat inelegant, but given that this may range from anything between simply bidding farewell and actually accompanying this visitor right up till you can't go any further, I do hope to be excused xD. In any case, the slightly surprising connection of 'an ordinary farewell' and 'sorrow' is explained very well with the next sentence, because it is Autumn - ever the season for melancholy as the liveliness of Summer fades (In fact! The word for sorrow 愁 is made up of the radical for Autumn 秋 and the word for heart 心) - this guest is likely a good friend to have travelled so far to pay him a visit, and now will go away back home to 'the edge of heaven', which is a dramatic way of saying… somewhere far far far away. Of course it is lonely.

晓别蛩声黄叶寺 | Parting at dawn amidst chirping crickets, yellowed leaves, a temple; 夜分渔火白苹洲 | at midnight, in the firelight of fishing boats, the river’s banks are white.

The first thought that popped into my mind was that this poem was very atmospheric and I stand by what I said! From setting the scene and filling it with this reluctance to part, and painting it in Autumn's colours, the dawn farewell in the warm sunlight, the yellow leaves, the gentle hum of insects - the goodbye was beautiful. But afterwards, there is only the dark night and the white riverbank. A little less beautiful, 'a little' less light, no longer warm.

病余骨肉添新林 | After illness, flesh and bone add to a forest, new; 归后风烟忆旧游 | upon returning, wind and mist spark reminiscence of our past travels.

There are two ways from what I can see to interpret this, maybe more. The first, being that the poet fell ill after seeing off his friend, but made a quick recovery (from his sadness also) with renewed vigor and life, and returned home, the sight of mist in the wind causing him to revisit fond memories of their times  together. 旧游 can be travels, can be places travelled to and can also be the companionship on a journey. The first option marks this as a positive turning point. The second option goes a little dark, with 病余骨肉添新林 being understood as, 'illness has left flesh and bone from which a new forest sprouts' which is pretty self explanatory… and 归后 simply being an euphemism for death.

I'm inclined to believe the first interpretation is what Shi Xinghai is going for, because of the tone of the final line though.

何处何时又相见 | Where and when will we meet again? 青山长在水长流 | The verdant mountains shall always stand; running water flows ever on.

Where shall we meet? When will we meet again? There are so many chances ahead still - just like how the mountains will always be right there, and the rivers flow on and on... for sure! that day will come.

[myaekingheart]

20 [Fanfic Writer] Questions Game

Thank you so much for tagging me, @lemony-snickers! This is tons of fun, I love answering these kinds of big questionnaires 😂💕 Also putting mine under a cut because there’s a lot of questions and I like to ramble. 

Also gonna go ahead and just tag whoever wants to do this! 😅💕

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

As of August 27, 2021, I have a total of 77 works on my AO3! 

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

Funny enough, I was just looking at this, specifically, earlier today and kind of laughing about it. Right now, my total word count across all my works is 1,148,941 😬 

3. How many fandoms have you written for, and what are they?

Apparently 12, but some of them I don’t really consider “big” in my fandom repertoire. Naruto is my greatest fandom with a total of 60 fics so far, followed by The Chronicles of Narnia and Rise of the Guardians. The rest are ones I either did crossover fics with or just did one-off little pieces with--The Incredibles, Tangled, Brave, How to Train Your Dragon, Arthurian Mythology, Disney Princesses, Fairy Tales and Related Fandoms, Back to the Future, and Frozen. 

4. What are your Top Five fics by kudos?

The Scarecrow and The Bell (Naruto) - 470 kudos The Day Kakashi’s Mask Slipped (Naruto) - 139 kudos Sunflowers (Naruto) - 92 kudos Sakumo the House Husband (Naruto) - 81 kudos Someone to Lean On (Naruto) - 67 kudos

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I always try to respond to comments, because I like to acknowledge when people respond to my work. I cherish comments like nobody’s business, especially when they’re kind and reactionary. I just really love seeing/hearing what people think of the way a story is progressing, or what they thought of a one-shot. Comments keep me going especially when it comes to longfic so I want to be able to let readers know that I do in fact see their comments, that I’m acknowledging what they’re saying, and that I appreciate them. Plus, it can be kind of fun to tease upcoming events in a fic through responses to people’s comments, too. Because I’m mean. 

6. What fic have you written with the angstiest ending?

Definitely Hothouse (Rise of the Guardians/The Incredibles; Jack Frost x Violet Parr; American Horror Story AU). This was the first multi-chaptered fic I ever wrote to completion and I honestly cringe when I remember it exists both because it’s so poorly organized (and full of nasty plot holes) and because I just went ham on the gore factor. It definitely has a really bittersweet and heartbreaking ending to it, too. 

7. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

I think I’ll definitely have to say Temptation. The story itself was kind of a ride, and it’s only the first installment in a series, but it follows the plot of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe but remixed due to the presence of an original character, but the ending is still roughly the same as the original: they defeat the evil, the Pevensies are all crowned kings and queens, happy days. Reading the last few paragraphs of the last chapter honestly still gets me all up in my feelings. 

8. Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you’ve written?

I used to be more of a crossover writer due to one of my main ships being a crossover ship. They weren’t super crazy, though, because they were both CGI-animated films. The craziest crossover I’ve ever written is an in-progress/unfinished multichapter piece, Kakashi, Enchanted, that sees our favorite Copy Ninja get kamui’d into the Disney princess dimension and has to help the likes of Snow White, Cinderella, and Rapunzel on his journey to find a way back to his own world. It’s a super weird premise but definitely one of my more lighthearted works and fun to revisit when I need to decompress. 

9. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I don’t think I’ve ever received hate so much as I’ve received criticism. The closest I ever got to hate on a fic, I think, was someone left an overly personal and mentally disturbed comment on a chapter of my main fic that made me convinced they needed to seek therapy and deal with their own personal issues rather than take it out on a fanfic about animated ninjas. 

10. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Maybe 👀 I’m super vanilla when it comes to smut, though. I think the wildest thing I’ve ever written in smut is breeding kink. 

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of, and I hope I never will. 

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not yet! I had someone ask to translate a one-shot of mine in Russian but I never got a response back when I laid out my terms and conditions. 

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I have not! I used to do paragraph-style roleplay which was kind of like cowriting fanfiction but writing is so personal and sacred to me that I don’t know if I could ever actually cowrite a fic with someone. I like brainstorming with other people, but writing for me is more of a deeply personal and independent endeavour. 

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

Oh god, this is a tricky question because it depends on fandom. I absolutely love New Dream (Rapunzel x Eugene, Tangled) and have for the past ten years, and my love for them as only grown since watching Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure. I don’t write or even really read a ton of fanfiction for them, though. I’m also still highly dedicated to my favorite crossover crackship, Frostfield (Jack Frost x Violet Parr, Rise of the Guardians/The Incredibles) and to this day, if you search for that ship on AO3, I am the sole provider of every single fic about them so far. I’m not as active with them as I used to be, but they got me through some really rough times back in the day and still mean so much to me. A lot of my favorite ships across fandoms, though, are honestly canon x OC ships of mine because I am a self-indulgent bitch who needs to project. So Peter Pevensie x Eilonwy (The Chronicles of Narnia) and Kakashi Hatake x Rei Natsuki (Naruto) are really important to me and I’ve poured so much of myself specifically into their stories. I think it’s safe to say Kakashi and Rei is my all-time favorite ship across all fandoms, though, just because of how much their story means to me. The Scarecrow and The Bell is my magnum opus, my pride and joy, and I’m sure it will be my biggest fandom footprint of my entire life. I’ve dedicated the past three years to this story and these characters and I intend to continue doing it until it no longer brings me joy (which I hope it always will). There’s just so much I could say about this story and Kakashi and Rei’s relationship but I don’t think we have enough time or space in this post for that 😅 Just know that they mean the world to me and I will always hold them in the highest regard as a beautifully messy, flawed, passionate, soulmate-y ship that I love with all of my heart 🥺

EDIT: I also feel obligated to tack on some of my absolute favorite Naruto ships because I may not have written for all of them (yet) but they still make me unbelievably happy or I find them really compelling and enjoy the idea of exploring them: 

Naruhina is precious happy sunshine and The Last honestly felt like a wonderful Disney princess movie to me, it was so cute and the romance was so on-point, Naruhina just makes me so incredibly happy and I love them with all my heart. 

MinaKushi also gets me all up in my feels and I adore them with every fiber of my being. Their romance also gave me Disney princess movie vibes which I love, their story is just so damn sweet as is their character dynamic and I am still so heartbroken that they never got to be a happy family with Naruto because you know what? It’s what they deserved!

SasuSaku is so compelling to me and I really feel like we were cheated out of seeing their relationship develop and evolve postwar in the same way The Last did for Naruhina. They’re my favorite angst ship and while I don’t think they were written that well in canon, I love the possibility and potential of them together and am excited to explore them more in-depth in my own writing. 

NejiTen is just too cute, I really love the way Neji and Tenten’s personalities compliment each other? I don’t have much else to say about them except that I really love them together and think they have so much untapped potential that I also can’t wait to explore in more depth in my own writing. 

15. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Paper Hearts and Impromptu Bookmarks, probably. I love the premise of this story a lot and I have so many interesting ideas for it but at the same time, it also feels kind of cheap and cringey to me, in a way? It takes all of these ideas I probably would have had if I had been into Naruto when I was a kid and kind of compiles them all into one big story. Kakashi and Aiko’s relationship and story is still really important to me and I want to continue it someday but for right now, I just haven’t had the motivation or desire to write any more of it. I think I’m just so overwhelmingly preoccupied with writing Kakashi and Rei’s story that I can’t imagine writing any other Kakashi x OC fics right now. 

16. What are your writing strengths?

I want to say that I’m really good at capturing complex emotion? I don’t know, I write a lot of angst and mental upheaval in my fics which can be really difficult to try and capture, but I think I do a decent enough job of it? And just writing difficult subjects in general. I think it’s really important to address difficult topics such as mental illness and relationship difficulties and everything but I also want to try and write those topics in a way that is both authentic to the experience while also still tasteful. I don’t want to drive readers away with heavy subject matter but rather present a situation that feels real and authentic while also still being digestible. I may not be doing a very good job of that during the current arc of my fic that I’m working on, but I’m trying haha

EDIT 2: I also want to add onto this to say that I’m really proud of my organizational techniques for writing longfic. It’s not necessarily a strength in terms of the prose itself but it’s something that’s taken me years to really get a grasp on and find a method that works perfectly for me and so far, it’s been extremely helpful and beneficial to me. I don’t know where I would be now as a writer without these essential tools in my pocket. 

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I feel like I do a really bad job of the “show, don’t tell” thing. It can be really hard to balance descriptive prose with straightforward writing that moves things along. I don’t want to dwell on mental dialogue to the point where you lose track of what’s going on, but I also don’t want my stuff to read like “Character A did xyz. Character B said abc. They went to 123″, whatever. Another thing I struggle with is sentence variation. I always fall into the same patterns when I’m writing prose and I get really self-conscious about it because I don’t want to sound repetitive or disrupt the flow of the writing. One of my favorite things about prose is focusing on the cadence of the words, I think it’s one of the most beautiful things about writing in general, but it can just be really difficult to get a good grip on that. I’ve been told in the past that I apparently have a really good grasp/control of the language or whatever but sometimes I just find that really hard to believe when I look at my work with such scrutiny. I think one of my biggest pet peeves with my own writing, too, is feeling like I start all of my sentences the same five different ways. I’ll read other people’s works and they’ll write sentences like “Glass-blue water lapped against the shores of a deserted beach as a lonely woman gazed off into the distance” and I can just never figure out how to realistically write sentences that start like that in the context of my prose and it drives me fucking crazy, like I’m definitely jealous  😅

18. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I’ve never really thought much about it before, but I think there are pros and cons! For bilingual/multilingual readers, I think it can be a really enriching reading experience because they know what’s being said in both languages. For people who only know one language, however, unless a translation is provided, I feel like it can be really alienating. I think the best use of that for both worlds is using it as a means for miscommunication humor. Other than that, I think it can be a slippery slope that depends on what kind of reader you are and how it’s written. 

19. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

The Chronicles of Narnia! My very first fanfiction was a Narnia fanfic that I barely remember except that it laid the basis for Temptation and my Narnia fanfic series as a whole. I never posted this first iteration anyway, but I remember it was 2008/2009 and I wrote a solid 80 pages (which was wild for me at the time) and had gotten halfway through remixing the events of Prince Caspian when my computer crashed and I lost absolutely everything. I’m still heartbroken that it’s gone forever, not because I’d want to go back and read it necessarily (since I’m sure it was actually hot garbage) but at least for nostalgia’s sake. Either way, like I said, this long-lost fic laid the basis for the very first fanfiction I ever posted, the first published (and never finished) iteration of Temptation back in 2011 on deviantART and the since-defunct Figment. I fell out of the fandom around 2012/2013 and left the story alone for a while before ultimately deciding to completely redux and rewrite the story when the fixation swung back around again between 2016 and 2018. 

20. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

Despite the fact that it’s still in-progress, definitely The Scarecrow and The Bell. This fic just genuinely means so damn much to me and I will cherish it for the rest of my life because of how much it’s given me, how much love and passion and time and even parts of myself that I have poured into this, and also just how expansive of a story this is. Not only does it touch on some very dark and heavy topics, but I’ve also created so much of my own characters and meta for this story that it’s almost an entire universe in and of itself. I’ve just contributed so much additional world-building and created so many new OCs to fill important roles in this story and in Rei’s life, and they’ve all become so deeply important to me as they’ve developed further over the years. I’ve come up with so many interesting ideas for everyone and their lives, which are all slowly becoming so rich and varied. Not to mention that it’s my most popular fic to date as well as my longest fic at 632k and counting. I’ve really just genuinely poured so much of my heart and soul into this story, it’s my absolute favorite thing I’ve ever done and I really mean it when I say that I will cherish it for the rest of my life. 

[airlock]

so, I’ve been showing people this for a while now, but I was thinking today’d be a good day to expose this wretched creation to the world

it was roughly a month shy of a year ago now when Brian David Gilbert did a video where he rated Mortal Kombat characters on the quality of their cuddling, and I’m nothing if not forever smitten with making silly graphs, so I attempted the same thing with the FE16 gang (although I made this before we had the ashen wolves so bear with me on that one)

(for those who aren’t looking to have one of the best 15 minutes of their lives yet: the vertical axis is for emotional availability, the horizontal axis is for physical risk, and a great cuddler lands as close as possible to the middle.)

under the cut I will provide a brief rationale for each of them (and it will be gently spoilery at times, but nothing very major; if you’ve cleared the pre-timeskip on any route you’re good to go)

The Body Pillows (low emotional availability, low physical risk)

Cyril: look, it’s not that he’s not entirely touch-starved deep down, it’s just that he still is supposed to be handling some chores and you’re interrupting him

Gilbert: the only way anything exciting is going to happen with him is if you lean in close to his ears and start speaking heresy

Hilda: she could hypothetically reach the zenith, y’know! but that would be haaaaaard

Ingrid: the good news is, you’ll probably get a great deal of constructive criticism if you cuddle ingrid. let’s leave it at that

Leonie: come for the cuddle session, stay for the advice on how to get a mattress as good as this one but a lot cheaper. like, if you do choose to stay, that’s what you’re getting

Linhardt: you see the name of this archetype? it was made for linhardt

Marianne: she’s really sorry. she knows you said you wanted to cuddle with her, but she thinks you’ll just have a bad time and get disappointed. she's afraid bad things will happen to you if you touch her

The Michael Ceras (high emotional availability, low physical risk)

Alois: ever wonder what happens to a himbo when he breeds? like, dadification? well, you don’t have to anymore

Anna: imagine someone trying to cuddle you and, every single time they move around or try something, they ask you, “IS THAT THE ONE?”

Ashe: if so little happens as, say, you shift and rustle something and a draft blows in at the same time, he will assume it’s a ghost coming for him. if you really wanted to, you could scare him on purpose. oh god, you’re going to do it, aren’t you. you bastard. you villain. you meanypoop

Ferdinand: “am I, ferdinand von aegir, cuddling you better than edelgard? am I, ferdinand von aegir, cuddling you better than edelgard? am I, ferd”

Ignatz: don’t be fooled into thinking he’ll make a canvas of your body; he gets ideas for sure, but they’re all too scandalous for his shy little hands

Mercedes: why cuddle with her when you could get roughly the same effect by falling asleep to an ASMR compilation

Petra: to have honesty, she tries with a small amount of too much hardness

Raphael: aw, he might be a big guy, but he knows not to hurt you! just don’t expect him to know a lot of other things

Sylvain: as easy as it is to get him into a bed, you’ll really be wishing you’d taken him to a therapist’s couch instead

brian didn’t name these (low emotional availability, high physical risk)

Catherine: those calloused hands might feel nice until the part where they’re abruptly zooming into your face

Edelgard: you know what it means to cuddle with someone who “dislikes losing control”? it’s just not an experience designed around the idea of you having a good time

Felix: watch him find some way to turn this cuddle session into a spar session

Hanneman: cuddling hanneman is all fine and well until he goes for the blood sample extraction

Hubert: he nasty

Jeritza: “why are we cuddling? why won’t you spar with me?”

Lysithea: are you the kind of person who always hoped to die comfortably laid on a bed? if so, there’s exactly one thing that’s going the way you wanted it to in this scenario

Rhea: this isn’t even speculative, it’s empirical. you can, in actual canon, on any route, witness a scene where Rhea cuddles you and it’s fucking terrifying

Shamir: the least you’ll want to do if you find yourself cuddling shamir is to telegraph your every move; if she feels something unexpected, she might assume it’s a bug, and your finger will thus be pest controlled

The Scissorhands (high emotional availability, high physical risk)

Annette: cuddle annette and you will experience things you could never have imagined. things she could never have imagined either, because she didn’t mean for them to happen, and yet, somehow, they did.

Bernadetta: at the very least, she’s the girl to ask if you want the ultimate range of possibility. anything can happen, from her fainting to you fainting

Caspar: don’t mistake this shrimp for an ordinary himbo; given enough provocation he can and will jump into the nearest fight with you still attached to his shoulders

Dimitri: so needy, and yet, so likely to break your everything with so much as a hug... an archetypal scissorhand

Flayn: you’d think it’d be a decent time, besides the fish smell, but if you touch flayn you get vaporized by seteth, that’s just how it goes, it’s a law of nature

Lorenz: say what you will about the man, he’s open to experiments. for better or for worse. ever wonder which new and exciting places you don’t want to find a rose in?

Manuela: if you remember spending the night with manuela, you will wish you didn’t. if you don’t remember spending the night with manuela, you will wish you did

Tier List Rodrigue: look at how close he already is. you will never be apart from him again. it’s too late

The Cuddler’s Zenith (perfectly balanced)

Dedue: the strength to make dimitri look like a twink, and the wisdom to tell you not to eat the weeds -- what’s there not to love?

Dorothea: she’s full of youthful, bisexual energy; one day it will expire into a manuela-esque deposit of issues, but if today’s not that day, best not to wait until tomorrow

Gatekeeper: greetings, professor! nothing to report! nothing to disturb our calm, dreamy night

Seteth: don’t be fooled by all of that stiff hardass act he puts on; he’s stronger than he looks... and even softer

Sothis: hang out with her, and you might feel like you could touch the sky, or rip it a new one

Claude: look, I’m not going to explain this to you. just touch the nearest object around you. do you experience a sensation when you do so? if you do, then you have everything you need in order to understand, all by yourself, that claude is the most sublime cuddler in all of Fódlan and beyond

[belladonnasatenaeum]

'Dernière Danse': The Underlying Message

There's a French song you likely might have heard on TikTok, used more often than not in Gothic TikToks or even some Academia TikToks. One TikTok I recall seeing it in was a vampire aesthetic based TikTok, with someone lipsyncing to the chorus of the song. Sometimes, you find out later what the song is actually called, and my goodness, the quick 15 second videos on TikTok do not do any justice to the song. The song is called 'Dernière Danse' by the singer Indila, the title roughly translating to 'Last/Final Dance'.

When you first listen to the song, you would naturally think of balls within a dark manor, candles flickering and lighting the space within its warm amber glow. The unique element of orchestra and pop elements creates a song quite like nothing you've ever heard, and something I've yet to hear other musicians do. However, if you think this is a song of love, you would be sorely mistaken.

You see, Indila isn't just some pasty white woman. Sure, she is kinda pale, but that doesn't take away from her heritage. You see, she has ancestory from Algeria, India, Egypt and Cambodia - so much so that she calls herself "a child of the world." And it seems, 'Dernière Danse' does have a lot of emotion to it, but not of a romantic kind. It is one of deep, immense pain and sorrow. The song tells the story of a young immigrant woman who must endure racism throughout the day as she desperately wishes to escape the torment and comfort herself from the harsh judgement of the people around her.

There is some incredibly interesting wordplay in the lyrics for the song, one only those who speak French can spot and breakdown for those who can't. But once they have, it forever sticks out in your mind. If you want to understand what is being sung, then please follow this link here: https://www.frenchlyricstranslations.com/derniere-danse-lyrics-translation-indila/

The word play comes in the line "Ô ma douce souffrance" (Translation: "Oh my sweet suffering"). This is our indication of what is causing this young woman her pain and misery. It's right in front of you, and yet it takes a keen eye to spot it. This wordplay actually indicates that France itself is the cause of this woman's pain. And let's be real for a second, France is just as guilty as Britain, Spain, Germany and The Netherlands when it comes to colonialism, and thus the rampant spread of racism and all other horrific things that come with colonial rule. And after the terrorist attacks in 2015, 2 years after the release of "Dernière Danse", racism has been sadly seeding it's way into French way of life such as with France's ban on face coverings which could impact specific cultures and religions such as Muslims, which, more often than not, many immigrants making their way to France are. While the bill does try to bring about good - by essentially making it illegal to FORCE someone to wear a face covering veil if they don't want to (especially in the case of children, where I personally believe that religion should be kept away from children until they are old enough to understand it), it could also become a slippery slope to what a certain President Orange-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named attempted in the US, and in some degrees succeeded.

Which leads me to think, while it is a brilliant song and many can relate to it with its feelings of sorrow, how do I feel about seeing white people - like myself - lipsyncing to it? I've not heard any complaints, and as I mentioned, the song is very relatable, and it can be applied to things outwith racism - grief, loss, bereavement, breakups, stress, mental illness and so on, but is it really a song for white people to cling to? The song contextually is about an immigrant, so how come most of the TikToks I've seen with this song are everyone but immigrants and BIPOC people? The ones I've seen get shared on YouTube in compilation videos usually are skinny, white women/AFAB people. When BIPOC creators have made TikToks with this song. In fact, here's a TikTok made by a Black creator also following a vampire theme: https://www.tiktok.com/@tatendaluna/video/6939523674877758722?lang=en&is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1

And yet it seems, as I am scrolling through TikTok, the vast majority of the videos are by white people. Sure, white people emigrate, but we will never truly understand the pain of the immigrant who arrived in France to hatred and disgust, getting abused day in and day out. Now, there could be a logical explanation; maybe more white people just happen to know about the song? Given when I first heard it, I only had the melody to go off of, and Googling "da da da da da-da da da da" isn't going to get me anywhere. But even having that as a factor, there is a known history of TikTok promoting more white people's TikToks over the creations and hard work of BIPOC people.

So, do I think white people should lipsync to the song? I mean, if it's all in harmless fun, then sure. It's a song - we all love to sing and lipsync, it's not gonna harm anyone, even if you sing like a cat just got scared down a dark alleyway. However, I think it is also incredibly important that we understand and recognise the context of the song - it's not a song for vampire lovers to sing, it's not a song for witches to sing during a ritual, it's not even an Academia or aesthetic song; the song is a harsh reality for many immigrants fleeing war and persecution, and wherever they land they are immediately slammed with hatred.

'Dernière Danse' is one of my favourite songs to listen to. It is a beautiful blend of orchestra and pop that never get tiring, and for the people who do like vampires and witches and academia I can see why this song would stick out. For crying out loud, I'm one to talk - I'm a Goth Pagan from Scotland! And with this 'essay', I do not wish to shame people from creating TikToks with this song. On the contrary, actually. This song is brilliant and as an artist myself, the amount of ideas this song brings to me is wondrous. However, I think it is high time that people understand that 'Dernière Danse' is, and will forever be, a song for the immigrants. It is their song to express frustration and pain; and I implore you to look out for your immigrant neighbours. Recently, the city of Glasgow stopped the deportation of some Indian men, which when I caught wind of it made me incredibly proud to be a Scot. Sadly, though, the fight is far from done. It is our duty to fight for those seeking security and safety. If I recall correctly, that's exactly what Odin asks us to do in Stanzas 2-4 of the Havamal, correct? To be hospitable to those who come to our doorstep. Now, I may question Odin's logic from time to time, but on this I think his words are sound wisdom. If even the All-Father tells you to be hospitable to immigrants, then you best take his advice.

At the very least, I hope that either you got the chance to discover this song, or you found a new way to view the song, from my little 'essay'. As mentioned, I do not intend to shame anyone who likes the song. Indila is a brilliant artist and I heavily enjoy her works. I merely hope this highlights the underlying message that I think often gets overlooked. I hope you found some enjoyment in this. If I am incorrect about anything, please do feel free to correct me. I am always open to learning. Until next times, yours

~ Belladonna

[lovebugs-and-snakecharmers]

LBSC SFC FAQ

We’ve done a few challenges now and we’re seeing a few common questions pop up in the discord, so we want to address them here on the blog as well! 

“I got interrupted in the middle of a sprint!” That’s okay, believe us, we know life happens! Add roughly the amount of time you missed to your next sprint. If 15 minute intervals are hard for you, you can break it up differently if you need to. 

“I hate everything I wrote during this sprint! I’ll never finish now!” That’s okay! Sometimes it happens and there’s still value in what you did! You can try to turn it around, ask for WIP feedback and see if there’s suggestions for a simple fix. Or, if you really, really hate it, toss everything you wrote and do a replacement sprint. 

“How much am I allowed to add after the three sprints are over?” There’s no hard and fast rule! Try to stick to the spirit of the challenge and add no more than is needed, but don’t compromise the quality of the story. If you end up having to add a lot, make a note when you post. We don’t want anybody to be discouraged because wow, you sure wrote a lot more than I did in 45 minutes. 

“I’ve done three sprints but I feel like I have a lot of fic left to write...I don’t think I can do this justice in this format!” That’s okay! That’s great, in fact! We still like you to share what you have up to this point, just so we can see how much you accomplished and cheer you on (also because we’re nosy). Give us a shoutout when you post the final, but by all means, go write your fic! 

“I’m trying but I don’t think I’m going to make the deadline!” That’s okay! We’ll still reblog it if you post after the deadline, you just might not be included in the compilation post. We usually do the compliation post the day after the sprint is complete, and we’ll include anything posted before we actually make the post. We still want to see what you made, even if it takes a little extra time!

Are you seeing a trend here? It’s okay. There’s pressure, but it’s supposed to be the fun kind. The point of a challenge is to aim for a goal, and sometimes you succeed, and sometimes you don’t, but the important part is you took a shot! And if you “failed” the challenge but still got a fun fic, had fun, or learned something, that’s still a win!  If tweaking a rule a little bit is the difference between having a fic and not having a fic, do what you have to do! All that we ask is that if you at least try to adhere to the spirit of the challenge, and if you bend or change the rules, that you make a note of what you did differently when you post your piece. 

“Do I need to join the discord?” Okay, I made this one up, because everyone who’s asked us questions has already been in the discord. Joining the discord is completely optional, but it lets us cheer you on, lets you give feedback on the challenges and challenge mechanics, and lets you get fast answers to any questions you may have. We have space to share and discuss wips if you get stuck and need some thoughts, we have space to share prompt ideas. You can sprint alongside others for encouragement, support, and accountability, either for the challenge or for other works you may be working on (not participating in a channel but want to use the Sprinto tool? there’s a channel for that!).  If you think you might want to try a challenge but you’re nervous, joining the discord is a good way to get a look at the process, see how other people are doing, and talk about what it’s involved. There’s no obligation to participate until you’re ready.  Of course, you can always leave us an ask with questions, feedback, or prompt suggestions. 

[killfaeh]

Gul Dukat and timed inking tests

Hi everyone! So as promised last time, today I'm going to talk to you about drawing, and even more precisely about inking techniques and timed tests. I had been thinking for months about making a black and white illustration and inking it several times with different techniques while timing myself to see which one was the fastest. This approach is part of my search for optimization in the time it takes to produce my comics. So there are all the drawing tricks, 3D, Clip Studio Paint's tools, the programs and softwares developed by myself with which I saved a lot of time, but there is still this inking phase whose execution time tends to resist any form of compression. At the beginning of the year 2021 I made a penciled illustration, and it seemed to me to be a perfect candidate for the exercise: a character, scenery elements and various texture effects. The illustration in question:

To introduce you a little bit to the man, it is Gul Dukat a villain from the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine series, a humanoid alien with some reptilian attributes. This is my favorite character of the show. You know me now, I like charismatic bad guys with complicated stories. x) Let's go back to the illustration itself. Concerning the pencil phase, I refined it more than necessary, but it's because I wanted to make a beautiful illustration and it was my pleasure. That said, I still used some tricks to make the work easier. Basically, I drew the different elements of the illustration separately and then scanned and assembled them by computer. This allowed me to draw them carefully without getting bogged down in their interaction and optimize the final composition.

Then I printed copies of the final composition that I have already shown you in magenta for my timed inking experiments. I have made exactly 6 versions of them, as follows. (You can click on them to enlarge them).

Well, if you have the impression to see 6 times the same thing, it's normal, the goal is obviously to have an identical or almost identical result with different methods, the finality being to get the fastest one to use it on my next comics projects. Let's go through them to dissect the different methods. The first version, I made it with liners.

It took me 5 hours. The main drawback of this method is that the clip on the liner cap presses on my « comic artist ball ». A callus ball that formed on my middle finger over time by dint of drawing, where the pencil rests. And after a while it's painful, so it limits the duration of the work sessions.

Then comes the brush version.

This is the version that took me the longest: 6 hours and 20 minutes. The main waste of time is during the inking of the background. It has many geometrical shapes and the brush is unsuitable for that. On the other hand, for the character, it goes just as fast. In any case, the holding of the brush is pleasant, the handle is thin, so it never hurts me. I can work as long as I want with this technique. It is difficult to evaluate at this resolution, but overall the lines drawn with the brush are cleaner and sharper than those drawn with a liner. So! Longer, but prettier and more pleasant.

Then, the 3rd version I made it entirely with the graphics tablet and the software Clip Studio Paint.

This attempt is the fastest so far: 4 hours 15 minutes. The inking of the character does not go faster the flaw being that the pen slides much more easily on the tablet than a traditional technique on paper, so it is more difficult to control the line and I use a lot of ctrl+Z. Moreover, the pen tip does not deform under pressure, so it is more difficult to anticipate the width of the line and you have to repeat the process several times. The big advantage on the other hand is for the background and its geometric shapes (circles, parallel lines, ellipses). The rulers integrated in Clip Studio Paint allow you to draw them really quickly and cleanly. Also, for all textures and particle effects, I created a lot of brushes for Clip Studio Paint. So, I only had to make a click to draw each of the stars. As on this version I had the impression that I was wastig time on the character, so I decided to try a hybrid technique: the brush for the character, the CSP for the rest.

This version took me as long as the one entirely digital. It seems impossible to reduce the work time on the character below 3 hours and I have confirmation that digital mainly saves time on the geometric patterns and elements and effects that can be drawn with brushes. I leave these tests a few weeks and then I had a new idea. Here is the result. I let you guess which tool I used, you have 4 hours before I pick up the papers. :p

Well, I stop making you marinate, here is the answer in picture. :p

And yes! It's simply a mechanical pencil! :p The idea was to see if I work faster than with the usual inking methods and if by playing with the contrasts in the scan I could make it look like inking. For this version, it took me about 5 hours. I was a little faster for the character than the other attempts, but for the background, it's always the digital that wins hands down. The problem with the mechanical pencil is that to have an intensity of black roughly constant is that I hold it strongly to press down enough for a long time and I ended up crushing my thumb, so I had a hard time finishing the background. I think it slowed me down quite a bit at the end. So! No tool is perfect on its own. As a result, I still had one last thing to test: making the character with mechanical pencil and the background with graphic tablet.

And this time I managed to go below 4 hours of work. :D 3 hours and 40 minutes more exactly. I managed to ink the character in 2h20 then before moving to the background I had to do some cleaning up because of an unwise choice to do some textures partly in pencil and partly in digital. I think I have a way to spare a few more minutes of work by optimizing some choices. I'm happy to have finally carried out these timed tests. Used alone, there is no ideal tool. Now I know that, once again, it is in the hybridization of techniques that I will have to look for optimization. I have the idea that in the future I should imagine a small roadmap to ink or at to clean my comic pages. I will put all this into practice in the next project. That's all for today! Next time I will make again a small compilation of our online Drink'N'Draw sessions. Have a nice week-end and see you soon! :D Suisei

P.S. If you want miss no news and if you haven't already done so, you can subscribe to the newsletter here : https://www.suiseipark.com/User/SubscribeNewsletter/language/english/

Source : https://www.suiseipark.com/News/Entry/id/304/

[daprec]

BJJ Floating Mat System DIY Walkthrough

I’m going to share the process of building a floating mat system, from design to sourcing materials and build. I figured I try to take out as much guess work since I had no guidance and had to learn on my own. There were several pieces of the puzzle that came as some small surprises, but hopefully this helps the next person who decided to make the leap to a better mat system. I’m unsure of the process for other countries, but in my case I will detail the process for importing goods into New Zealand – it may differ in other places. I’ll include links to the factory for all the specific mats I ordered in the post.

Towards the end of Sept 2020, just after the Covid-19 lockdown ended in New Zealand, I had an opportunity to expand my BJJ club and sub-lease space in our existing gym we ran out of. I had an elaborate vision of a floating mat system underneath some juicy dollamur mats for use to train in.

I was introduced to the floating mat system years ago when I lived in Los Angeles on a visit to Kron Gracie’s academy in Culver City. I had worked down the street and wanted to congratulate him and have a look around. My friend Ollie Barre worked there and he showed me around, even Kron said hello and mentioned the spring loaded floating mat system to me.

It was about 1/2 a meter high with actual springs under the floor with plywood on top and tatame on top of the ply. It was amazing!

Image courtesy of Kron Gracie Academy Linkedin page

I knew that’s what I wanted but I didn’t have the budget for springs, so I explored other options. After a few searches I came across a couple videos:

How to build the ultimate spring subfloor for your Judo, Jujitsu and Wrestling mats

&

How to build a Bjj subfloor

Foam and ply – sweet I can do that! Let’s measure the space:

9.7m x 4m – pretty decent space!

After the measurement I needed to visualize the build. I knew I had to see it and make something for others to see the vision I had, so I modeled everything out in Maya and made a 3D render:

Concept render

I used real world units to keep everything to spec, that means the units I use in the 3D application are accurate to and equal to the units I would use on the actual build. The sub-floor would be the most difficult thing to explain to a builder, so I did a couple renders of what the underbelly would look like:

14 sheets of plywood with sub-floor foam block layout

Single sheet plywood foam block layout

I began compiling a list of materials I would need:

15 sheets of 2440mm x 1200mm x 12mm non-structural plywood

6 sheets of closed cell polyethylene foam

tons of liquid nail

timber for boxing in – unsure of spec at that time

5cm thick floor mats, tatame finish

21 wall mats @ 183cm x 122cm x 5cm

Living in New Zealand is awesome BUT sourcing some of these materials was going to be difficult and super expensive. I started calling around and emailing different foam companies and dollamur reps. I was getting quotes just for the dollamur mats of $5-6k NZD alone! I found a company that imports foam and was quoted $500/sheet of PE foam! I didn’t even bother looking at the wall mats – it would have cost me closer to 10K to get everything from NZ companies, so I decided to cut out the middle man and source materials myself.

Of course this lead me to Alibaba.com – the Chinese based website that gives people like myself access to factories where these things are typically made. After a few days of searching and multiple emails, I found a factory – Quindao Sanhong Plastic Co, LTD – that appeared to manufacture everything I needed – floor mats, wall mats and PE foam sheets.

It was my 1st time using Alibaba and to be honest I was SUPER dubious. I would be dealing with people outside of the country I lived in which carries a larger sense of the unknown.

I ended up chatting with a service person named Emily. She was incredibly helpful and thorough and made sure she understood what I required. I sent her an absurd amount of photos, videos, all of my renderings of what I had in mind, the measurements and other specs. She talked me into getting a more dense mat (40kg/cbm – a new unit of measurement I was completely unfamiliar with) for both the floor mats and sub-floor mats.

Originally I intended to have that pool noodle type foam, but Emily urged me not to go that route and go for something thicker – the cost was negligible so I went for it. Trusting someone you’ve never met overseas was hard, but I figured I needed to roll the dice.

The floor mat specs I went with were 3 rolls of 9.7m x 1.33m x 5cm with a tatame finish

Link to mats here

Floor mats

Next were the wall mats. I needed 21 wall mats @ 183cm x 122cm x 5cm Link to mats here

Wall mats

Next was the closed cell sub-floor PE foam. Quindao made 2m x 1m sheets of this stuff, and I needed 6 sheets total to accommodate my space. These were roughly $40USD / sheet so if I got it wrong I figured it wouldn’t be TOO much of a loss. Link to foam sheets here

This is the pool noodle foam I was expecting, but not what I ended up receiving

Emily was very patient and understand of my reservations in dealing with an overseas factory. After a few more emails and messages I pulled the trigger and made the order. At this stage Emily walked me through the process and gave me a general idea of several unknown import costs. Her estimate on the NZ import tax was very close, but she did inform me there would be other costs she had no way of providing an estimate for.

I forgot to mention that a couple months prior to ordering I had already setup a legit business in anticipation of building my dream in the future. Emily had requested an NZ Import ID so fortunately I was already qualified to apply for a NZ business import ID through NZ Customs. This cost me about $200 to register my business and get an import ID.

After providing all of my information, she came back with a total cost and import tax estimate I would pay on arrival. Freight costs from China to NZ were SUPER cheap – about $80NZD to ship 700kg worth of stuff, so that was fine.

I paid the deposit so the manufacturing could get under way. Once they were finished making all of the mats/materials I would then pay in full prior to loading onto the ship. It took them about 4 weeks to finish everything. At that time there was one final check through that they had all of my correct information and import ID and that was that. The order started on 11/02/2020 and was shipped on 12/08/2020

Because of Covid, there were huge delays with international shipping and unloading, so the wait time was longer than usual. It was supposed to take 40 days but ended up being much longer than that. The mats arrived in NZ the 1st week of February 2021 – phew at least they made it safe!

This is where a lot of the surprises and unknowns came into play. I received an email from some guy at a freight company saying my mats had arrived and I needed to send all of the arrival documents to my broker

Evidently I had to obtain an import broker to forward all of the documents to, which no one makes any mention of. But here’s where things get a little…rackety. I ended up going with EasyFreight brokers who charged me about $200 for their services. They emailed documents from NZ Customs where I then had to pay around $500NZD for the Import Tax.

Once the Import Tax was paid, my mats could then be released BUT…the mysterious freight company who initially emailed me now says I need to pay them $1900NZD before they ship my mats to Wellington. This fee was for unloading the mats from the ship and onto the dock and storing them in a warehouse until all of the documents cleared. This almost doubled the cost of the mats I ordered and by now the total cost was getting close to what I was getting quotes from NZ based companies.

I paid the invoice and they put my mats onto a truck to be shipped down to Wellington to ANOTHER freight company – not directly to me for whatever dumb reason. I contacted the new freight company, had a bit of confusion and back and forth but eventually I ended up having to pay them another $250NZD to ship my mats to the gym. What a racketeering outfit huh?

They delivered the mats and I immediately started ripping up the packaging to have a look at my new goods. I have to say that what I purchased exceeded my expectations. The floor mats where BETTER than what I expected, the wall mats were BETTER than what I anticipated and the sub-floor foam ended up being more closer to memory foam than pool noodle foam. Holy hell we’re gonna have some sweet mats to roll on!

To the build!

After a trip to Bunnings to pickup timber, liquid nail and a few other things, that tallied up to over $1000NZD we were on our way.

The 1st order of business was to cut the foam sheets into blocks. I had originally calculated 7cm x 10cm x 10 cm but when we laid everything out, we’d only be using 2 sheets of foam and would have had to cut relatively tiny blocks. So instead we went with 20cm x 20cm x 10cm blocks – much easier to cut and deal with and even then we had a ton left over (which we made use of by the end of it.

Foam blocks

I worked out the numbers and we did 3 x 5 rows of blocks per plywood sheet

1st row of 8 pieces of 2440mm x 1200mm x 12mm plywood with 15 foam blocks liquid nailed to ply

We had all of the blocks glued to the ply and realized we had HEAPS left over, so we decided to re-jig some things around and use the extra blocks in the spaces inbetween sheets of ply on the seams and corners. This ended up adding an extra level of stability between the ply and would be less likely to damage the mats on top.

Using extra blocks underneath ply seams

Once all the plywood was laid out and the liquid nail given a bit of time to cure, we had to then box everything in to prevent sliding. This required a concrete drill/concrete bit, about 10 dynabolts (basically concrete bolts with anchors), some timber 2 x 4s, more liquid nail and a bit of good old fashioned elbow grease.

We made a mess!

The guys marked where the holes needed to be drilled roughly 1 1/2 meters apart. After the holes were drilled and swept, we laid down a very long 2×4 that was already predrilled with the initial concrete hole drilling. A dynabolt was hammered into the hole as far as it could, then racheted down with a socket wrench to tighten. The 1st piece of timber would be the foundation the other boxing in pieces would be anchored to.

The farside wall was crooked so that meant our sheets were slightly offset on the outside edge. As long as the surrounding box was square, the top layer mats would hide the crooked ply and we’d be fine.

Timber posts are rather expensive in NZ and usually crooked, so we ended up gluing and screwing 2 2×4 together so that 1. they cost less and 2. we could straighten them much easier.

Boxing in almost complete

To secure the 2x4s to the base we used nails and several Stud to Bottom galvanized fixings. We needed to make sure there would be absolutely no flex with the box.

To have a nicer finish, we added a thin layer of finger jointed pine on top of the 2x4s secured with finishing nails. The grain and look of it is much more eye pleasing than the sides of 2x4s and I can stain or paint it later.

Finishing touches on the sub-floor box

We left about a 3cm lip around the box so when the mats sit on top of the ply, the outer frame would contain and lock in the mats from sliding. The mats came very well packaged in three 1.3m x 9.7m x 5cm rolls

1 of 3 mat rolls

We placed extra ply against the walls to create a wedge/spacing for the wall mats. Upon rolling out the 1st roll we realized the wall was not straight…at all, but we made it work. 1st mat down!

The middle roll was relatively easy to to setup and the velcro attachment worked out perfectly.

That tatame finish texture is looking nice!

The final row did prove to be a bit more challenging but we eventually squeezed it into the remaining space. We can do math!!

After a full day of work we got the mats installed. We started at 11am, did a Bunnings run to collect tubes of liquid nail, screws, etc, got to the gym at around 12:30pm and finished just after 1am.

The following weekend we mounted the wall mats which were relatively straight forward. We ran 2 rows of 5m x 18mm pine planks along the wall, one at the top of the wall mats and one mid mat for support. I forgot to take pics but we basically created a support system and something to drill into instead of thick firewall jib.

We finished in the evening, cleaned up and of course we had a roll!

Some after thoughts

I can’t tell you how happy I am with this setup. Having an extra 10cm of foam under the sub floor has made a HUGE difference. It only took about 3 weeks to break in the harshness of new mats, and the tatame finish has been amazing. They aren’t slippery at all and are like heaven to roll on. One thing I would have done, which I most likely will do soon is to place 1 screw into each foam block under the sub floor.

What happens is the vibrations of people moving on the mats will cause the foam blocks to shift if they liquid nail didn’t stick. Not a big deal as we can simply lift the mats/play and move the foam, but that’s the only thing I would have done. Everything else worked out perfectly and I could not be more happy.

I hope this helps anyone who is interested in building something like this. There are a LOT of unknowns that go into importing goods from overseas, but I covered all of the “gotcha” moments along the way. Also I can with full confidence say that Quindao Plastics manufacture high spec and high quality mats/foam. They exceeded my expectations, so you can purchase with confidence. I knew nothing about them, only went by their Trade Assurance certification rating on Alibaba, but who the hell knows what that means? I’m thrilled I rolled the dice – they nailed it!

Reach out if you have any questions

Oss!

BJJ Floating Mat System DIY Walkthrough was originally published on davepreciado