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asexual-abomination · 3 years

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Plat!Yan!Chrollo x Autistic!Reader x Plat!Yan!PT - Soulmate AU Part 1

This is largely self indulgent writing, as I know that very little of this niche exists, if any. The reader here is largely based on myself and my own thoughts of the world, but I hope others enjoy my writing. I have no formal education in writing, so if you have any advice for my writing style, please feel free to send it in.

This idea was largely inspired by the lovely @kiame-sama, who wrote this concept with a romantically yandere Chrollo, though I am aro-ace and changed it just slightly for my own writing. I hope to continue this series with more parts, but they may not all follow the same story thread.

This part just includes the body swap.

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You were never going to make the best impression on your soulmate. Or at least, you could never make the best impression on their friends, and that was what mattered largely to you. Talking to people would never be your strong suit, but at least on your end you had many months and other friends to keep your soulmate entertained. Waking up in a stranger's body, talking to other strangers about all details of their life? Horrible.

It should have been a comfort that there was a small yellow flower tattooed just below the date on your back, indicative of a platonic soulmate, but the idea that you would likely be expected to spend time not just with your soulmate, but with their friends as well threw you off so incredibly. Your soulmate would surely need the patience of a saint to deal with you, at least according to most people you speak with about your soulmate.

Your preparations for the switch were over now, all things embarrassing put away for now, some good food prepped, and a letter you had written taped to the inside of your bedroom door. For now, you were going over the final rules for your friends who were under strict instructions of exactly what they could and could not speak about with your soulmate. Even though they chuckled under their breath about your extreme caution, at this point you had to trust that they would follow what you said, since your switch was just minutes away.

Your closest friend, Jo, assured you that they would keep the rest in line. Knowing their authoritative personality and intimidating aura, you were much more reassured that things would go well. Even as you got up to leave, they were giving everyone their famous evil eye to keep them quiet.

Heading into the bedroom, you laid down, only to realize that your breathing was coming short and there seemed to be not enough air getting in your lungs. Were you seriously having a panic attack just before your switch? You tried to calm yourself with the breathing exercises you had been taught, but there was little you could do, which only made your panic grow faster.

You had only seconds to spare, and the reality of the situation hit you with the force of a freight train. Keeping your eyes open, you took one deep breath to hope you wouldn't ruin everything on the spot.

Everything changed in an instant, the position of your body, the tension of your muscles, the temperature and smell of the room. And the last thing to hit you, the fact that your soulmate decided to switch while driving on a highway.

Internally, you felt a massive surge of panic, outweighing the mild anxiety you had been feeling by a landslide. Until you realized that the body you were in appeared to be functioning on its own.

It was common knowledge that during the switch, there was no change to the body's ability to understand and speak languages, though you wondered if you were among the first to find the same thing applied to driving skills.

Slowly, you brought your breathing back to a calm, knowing that a meltdown right now could spell things much worse than humiliation. Once you felt ready enough that you wouldn't cry the second anything moved a moment to fast, you looked up to the rearview mirror to take in the inhabitants of the car.

Seeing the body you were in -- your soulmate -- was jarring, but he didn't appear immediately scary in the mirror. He had slicked black hair, wide eyes the color of granite, and wore a black trench coat with white fur that was open to show his bare chest underneath. But your attention was quickly drawn from his reflection to the fact that there were others accompanying you in this car.

Sat next to you in the passenger's seat was a woman with bright pink hair and a stony face, staring straight ahead at the road, who didn't appear to have noticed that there was any difference in her driver's behavior. Taking up the back seats were three men, one blond with a babyish smile, another blonde much taller than the first with a toughened look about himself, and a man with long black hair tied back looking grumpily out of his side window. All of them gave off intimidating vibes, almost putting you off of speaking at all.

After a few moments of quiet driving, it became apparent to you that these people weren't going to notice you until you spoke up. You were grateful for the time to prepare your first words, but with the menacing energy all these people gave off, you had to put your minimal understanding of conversation to its maximum.

"Ah... This wasn't quite what I was expecting..." Not the best opening line, but at least you had begun to announce your presence.

It was the pink-haired woman next to you who first responded with a questioning hum.

"I'm not sure who this is, but whoever they are, I'm their soulmate." That seemed to incite a reaction from the entire car.

"Soulmate!?" The black haired man jumped from his position, his grumpy mood dissipated and replaced with confusion mixed with excitement. The two other men were looking between themselves, while the woman's face somehow got even tougher, glaring towards you with something that you assumed was suspicion.

"Hah... I'm about as surprised as you are!" You tried to add some joy to your tone, hoping that matching their excitement would somehow dispel the situation faster. However, they continued to glare at you, and you began to wish that you could sink away into the seat, though there was very little that would help with at this point.

It's almost deathly quiet in the car for just a few moments, before all hell breaks loose. The others in the car were yelling questions at you, and yelling in general at each other.

"Would you lot calm down!?" The woman seemed to be your ally here, "If you keep this act up, we're gonna scare his soulmate off before the switch is even over!"

"Why wouldn't the boss have told us about his switch? This isn't like him in the slightest!" The black-haired man was clearly upset, though you weren't sure if he was angry at 'the boss' or at you.

The woman hushed him by saying that 'the boss' likely meant this as a test, which only served to confuse your perception of these people further. After a few moments of whispering between themselves, they finally turned back to you.

"So, who are you?" The rougher looking blond asked, not exactly setting a good tone.

It took you a few moments to even notice that he had even spoken to you, as the realization that your soulmate made seemingly no preparations for your switch hit you hard. Even though the day he would switch with you was embedded on his body, he had let you wake up in some random moment of his life, while you had spent months working around this day to get the best outcome possible.

"My name is (Y/N)," you introduced yourself carefully, not quite sure if you wanted to give your full name away to these people, "And who might you be?"

The four looked between themselves, completely ignoring your question. "No-one we know by that name."

They went further into their suspicious act, but were kind enough to also give their own first names before continuing their own interrogation. It was the baby-faced boy in the backseat, Shalnark, who asked the majority of the questions, he seemed to be very pushy and tricked you into giving answers multiple times.

The conversation was very one-sided, as you tried every trick you had ever been taught for keeping interactions equal, only to eventually realize that all four of them were working against you, using tactics for talking that you had never thought of before.

You were quick to become frustrated with their incessant questions. There were no spaces for the others to talk, leaving you feel like bug under a microscope as they stared at you. Eventually, it seemed that they were happy with the information they had gotten from you, which was a lot, including the full name you hadn't wanted to give them earlier, your home nation and your line of work.

Whoever these people were, they were good at interrogation, Shalnark especially good at tricking you with simple questions that he insinuated much greater answers from, which worried you for what these people could do for a living. If your soulmate was their boss, could he be even better at this type of talk? You didn't think you could handle conversations with a man that potentially intelligent.

Now that they were being less interrogating, you tried to take the opportunity to add your own questions, but you could only glean a few things from the way they answered. For one thing, the highway that you were currently on was on the same continent that you lived on, but a few countries over. For another, there were many more members of this group that worked for your soulmate.

Asking questions about your soulmate got a strange reaction each time, all of the passengers of the car taking a moment to look between themselves before giving you vague answers. His name was Chrollo, and as their boss, they didn't feel it was right to tell you too much about him, or so they said. You found that he was well-read, though they still refused to tell you much about precisely what he read.

It felt useless to try and pursue the conversation further, as you were nowhere near their level of smarts in conversation. To try and alleviate some of the tension you were feeling, you attempted to bring up lighter topics, asking them for funny stories, which they somewhat complied with. Although their style of telling stories seemed odd to you, as they left out a lot of details without prompting, but you were at least happy that the focus was off of you.

They told you stories of traveling around the world, and how they saw some of the worlds most gorgeous sights and expensive luxuries nearly everyday. You had to assume that they were embellishing most of it, but they made their lives sound rather fun, and you wondered if your own friends were giving Chrollo anywhere near as good an impression back home.

It had to have been at least an hour before another fear hit you, one that plagued you nearly everyday. From your perspective, everything was going well, they were laughing and telling stories not just to you but with each other, which indicated that they were happy with how how you acted. However, the fear that plagued you from inside told you that they weren't happy, that you had done something wrong and now they were laughing at you. Looking back on every word you had spoken, you felt almost physically sick, seeing every flaw in your word choice and tone in hindsight.

The passengers were looking and laughing between themselves and talking, so they didn't notice right away that there were tears gathering in your eyes, for which you were grateful. Just as suddenly as you were sat there, surrounded by happy voices with tears in your eyes, you were back home, sat amongst your own friends, who laughed perhaps even louder.

Once you came to and realized that you were no longer driving, and in fact were sitting on your own couch with your own friends, the tears really started to run. The letter that you had spent so much time carefully writing was clutched hard in your hand, but not so much that it would crumple or bend.

You quickly stood while mumbling an excuse, rushing to your room as your friends called after you. It felt odd to be back in your own body, the smells and sounds of everything hitting you horribly clearly. There was very little you could do to keep yourself from getting overwhelmed.

Your friends had already been prepared for what to do if you were overwhelmed coming back from your switch, but that didn't stop their concern for the way you were acting.

"Hey, (Y/N)? You okay in there?" Jo's voice came through the door, and you were grateful that your closest friend was here for you. "The others are all gonna start heading home now, but I'm gonna stick around. I don't want you to feel alone at the moment."

With a quick confirmation from you from behind the door, Jo headed to get some rest in the living room. Practically falling into your bed, you pulled the weighted blanket you had gotten as a gift over yourself, staring up at the ceiling as all of the feelings of excitement and fear finally crashed down on you.

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Thanks for reading!

#hunter x hunter #hxh #chrollo #yandere #yandere hxh #yandere hunter x hunter #yandere chrollo #phantom troupe #machi komachine #phinks magcub #shalnark ryusei #nobunaga hazama #self insert #self ship #soulmate au #body swap #autistic reader #gender neutral y/n

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theuniversitychallengereview · 3 years

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UC 51.03 - London Business School vs Hertford, Oxford

Since it was introduced at the 1988 Olympics, every single Gold Medal in the Women’s Team event in the Archery has gone to South Korea. Including yesterday’s win that’s nine straight victories, and their period of unparalleled dominance continues. The men’s team have also won six of the nine they have contested, and a mixed team won the first staging of that event in Tokyo too. Adding their success in the individual events, South Korea have won 26 gold medals, and 42 in total, in the 43 archery events which have been thus far staged at the Olympic Games.

As Twitter’s own @tarequelaskar pointed out in the brilliant article which alerted me to this story, this is a perfect example of specialisation, an economic concept whereby countries or companies focus intensely on one particular aspect of a given industry and come to serve that niche in such a specialised fashion that they become the ultimate experts and nigh-on irreplaceable. This is done in government and business by providing companies with incentives to specialise, and supporting those who succeed at it.

With respect to Korean archery, similar forces are at play. There are a bunch of professional teams and leagues in the country, giving archers financial stability while they focus on their training, something not as common across the world. Said training involves such things as practicing in live baseball stadiums and replicas of the Olympic venues, to mimic first the atmosphere and then the conditions that will be present on the day of the actual tournament.

This philosophy of marginal gains - the same system used by Team Sky and Chris Froome to win multiple Tour De Frances on the trot - puts their preparation miles ahead of the competition, which goes some way to explaining their dominance. It is not the only reason. Before the fine-tuning of the elite shooters comes the discovery of the promising young ones, and the inspiring nature of past success (along with a historic national love of the sport) helps to create a virtuous cycle which give Korea a far larger number of archers to choose from than any other country. This greater choice means that there is a greater chance of finding the next Gold medallists.

Making the argument that professional footballers are at a higher level than other elite sportspeople, Michael Cox used this same argument in a recent article for The Athletic. To summarise, he stated that because there are a far higher number of people who wish to become professional footballers, that must mean that the ones who do make it are at a higher standard than those who make it in other sports. Initially, I was drawn in by the pure maths of this point, but having thought about it some more I’m no longer sure to what extent I agree.

Now, the fact that hundreds of millions more people play football than rugby, or basketball, will certainly confer some level of “eliteness”, but only up to a certain point. Because football has been so popular for so long, the general standard of the play, relative to what it used to be, has had longer to improve. In the same way that if you transplanted a 100m runner from the Olympic final in the early 20th century to now they probably wouldn’t even qualify for the games, a footballer from the 80s would stand less of a chance of making it were they playing today. Many other sports don’t have that level of natural progression, afforded by decades of technical and tactical advancement - at least not globally.

But the numbers argument only goes so far, as can be demonstrated by the Korean archers. Yes, there are more archers in Korea than anywhere else, relatively, giving them a higher chance of uncovering those with a natural aptitude, but the reason behind their bow and arrow dynasty is the specialisation. The hyper-detailed level of training and focus which allows them to be the best they can possible be.

Now, archery is unique in that there is a theoretical maximum score (I understand that this is to some extent arbitrary, and related to the rules of the game as defined by some human being, semi-randomly, but it works in terms of this argument, because it gives a percentage score of how good the archers are based on the agreed-upon parameters of the sport), which, at the Olympics, is 720. The Olympic record is 700 (held by Korean Kim Woo-jin, giving an implied “eliteness level” of 97.2%.

The best player in the history of football (don’t @ me) is Lionel Messi, and few would doubt that he operates at or above that level of perfection in his sport. But I also don’t think you could doubt that Novak Djokovic, or Serena Williams in her pomp, were similarly magnificent at tennis. Cyclists on the Tour De France put their bodies through more in three weeks than most people endure in a decade, and have every aspect of their training and diet strictly controlled so as to bring them as close to perfection as possible. There will certainly be a higher number of these elite performers in football, because there are a higher number of paying jobs for said elite performers, and because more people attempt to become elite performers, but I don’t think that it follows on from that that they are better at their sport than other elite athletes, all of whom have undergone years and years of specialised training to get them where they are.

Does any of this matter, in terms of how each sport should be enjoyed? Probably not, but its interesting to think about, and kind of awe-inspiring to try and appreciate just how good those at the top of their respective games are. And if there is some discrepancy in the level of eliteness between the different sports it doesn’t detract from the fact that they would handily dispatch any civilian challengers without breaking a sweat. The joy comes from watching people who are good at stuff doing that stuff - and, as evidenced by the crowds which gather for non-league football, it doesn’t matter whether or not they are at the absolute pinnacle of said stuff. They’re still going to be much better than the rest of us.

Competitive quizzing is different from the activities previously mentioned in that any normal person can have a guess at pretty much any question, with a chance that they’ll get it right. What sets the contestants apart on shows like University Challenge is the speed of their recall under pressure - the quickness of their knowledge as well as the knowledge itself. But there are plenty of armchair quizzers who think they could wipe the floor on the show, so just how good are the actual contestants? (Compared to an elite footballer or archer on an imaginary scale that accounts for relative skill in all disciplines?). I don’t know (and in case you hadn’t noticed by now I’m just fascinated by people who are really good at anything, and wanted to share some of that fascination with you all), but I’ll try and have a go at answering it anyway.

So, the World Quizzing Championships have been dominated by British and Irish quizzers since its inception in 2003, with 16 of the 18 winners coming from either Britain or the Republic of Ireland (who have four wins courtesy of The Egghead Pat Gibson). This, in my mind, makes this neck of the woods comparable to South Korean archery. It is a hotbed of talent, and the infrastructure is in place to encourage and aid talent maximalisation. Indeed, if you scroll down the list of highest ranking players at the WQC in any given year you can see a significant cohort of UC alums, so clearly there are a number of elite quizzers who have passed through the show.

This specialisation can be seen in microcosm with the preponderance of top-level quizzers produced by Oxford and Cambridge, who both have a long-standing culture of competitive quizzing far beyond other Universities. The debate is there to be had on the fairness of each institution having so many teams, but clearly they produce enough elite players to compete with far bigger Unis when entering as (sometimes tiny) colleges.

In conclusion, I think it is pretty obvious that UC is a breeding ground for world-class quizzers, and though no one has won a World title straight off the bat after appearing on the show, there are top-50 and top 100 finishes abound, which is still greatly impressive, and helps to give an idea of just how good these students really are.

Hoping to justify the 1000 words I’ve just written about their exceptional talents are two teams from the London Business School and Hertford College, Oxford. The Oxford side have never made it beyond the second round, but LBS reached the semi-finals in 2006, their only previous appearance on the show. Anyway, there is quite literally no time for me to recite the rules; here’s your first starter for ten...

Paxman mentions that LBS were in the show in 2006, but doesn’t mention that they reached the semi final, which is lazy imo. A bunch of them are studying for MBAs, which makes sense. He doesn’t mention Hertford’s previous appearances either, but that’s more understandable.

Hertford’s Hitchens takes the first starter with Kennedy, and the Oxonians added a full set of bonuses on words made up by authors - including a couple of educated guesses. LBS hit back with the next question, but can only manage one bonus on famous scientists. One of the two they miss is Rosalind Franklin, and Paxman teases them for not spotting an apparently obvious clue within the question.

The first picture round is on national emblems, and LBS are first to recognise that of Vietnam for the starter. They don’t know Laos or Belarus, but do know that Mozambique has a machine gun on its one. Butterworth then jumps the gun with argon on the next starter, giving his answer just as Paxman says it in the question. Butterworth makes up for it with the music starter, recognising Fat Boy Slim before anyone else, and LBS know Primal Scream and Wu Tang Clan too. They’re still fifty points behind though, and will need a big second half to turn things around.

This task gets more difficult for them, as Hitchens takes another starter. Lloyd adds a second in a row for Oxford and they are nearly one hundred points clear. LBS really need to get some points on the board, and Ruess duly obliges, knowing that there is a massive sculpture of a spider called Maman, which sounds needlessly scary, to the extent that I’m not even going to google it.

The comeback is ended before its even begun as Oswald takes a starter for Hertford, which gives them the picture bonuses - the starter having been dropped by both teams. Lloyd produces another excellent guess of Reuben, demonstrating how useful it is to have vague knowledge as well as specific knowledge. This is one of probably five questions he has answered in a throwaway manner, but which turned out to be correct.

By this point LBS seem to have accepted defeat. Ruess takes another starter, but there is little to no urgency on the bonus questions. They’re right, granted, to have none, they have no chance of winning, but if they gave it a go they might scrape a high scoring loser spot. Ruess is the only one who seems bothered, and bags himself ten more points. They have an amusing discussion about methods of poisoning in Agatha Christie novels (’it was used as a curry ingredient?’, Ruess wondered aloud, trying to figure out which spices could be poisonous, before Butterworth pointed out that it wasn’t something commonly used as a curry ingredient, prompting respectful mirth from the audience) on the bonuses, but still languish miles behind.

Lloyd grabs the last starter of the night for Hertford, who win by eighty at the gong.

Final Score: London Business School 100 - 180 Hertford, Oxford

At the end, Paxman mentions Hertford’s stellar guesswork, which means I wasn’t chatting nonsense (at least on that front, the jury is out on the rest of it), and says that they’ve done a really good job. Incredibly effusive praise for a score of 180. He really is going soft in his old age.

Phew, that was a long one. If you made it through the intro you deserve a prize. And that prize is that you get to come back next week for the next episode of this blog!! Woop woop!

And if this wasn’t quite enough UC content for you then you can subscribe for extra blogs on my Patreon, which features Retro Reviews from the 2015/16 series of the show. Ta x

#london business school #hertford #oxford #bbc2 #quizzy mondays #jeremy paxman

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simul16 · 3 years

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Low Effort in Their Own Way

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." - Leo Tolstoy, "Anna Karenina"

I've been watching a fair amount of D&D content on YouTube of late, for varying reasons, and if I may paraphrase Tolstoy's famous quote above, I've learned that all good D&D channels make high-effort content, while each bad D&D channel makes low-effort content in its own way.

Low-effort content tends to be:

Content that is or can be created quickly; it doesn't require a lot of prep time (and the presentation usually allows this limited prep time to show)

Content that copies current trends; while a certain amount of response to significant events in the gaming world is to be expected, low-effort channels regularly feature content that basically boils down to 'here's my reaction to whatever rumor or scandal is currently being talked about among the community'

Content that does not spark or contribute to a discussion; when such channels go beyond simply recapitulating a recent event, they frequently spend very little time explaining their own reaction and seldom spend any time at all explaining or exploring contrary opinions except to make jokes or elicit emotional reactions from an over-simplified or straw-man version of the contrary opinion

Now let's start off by saying that I'm not knocking low-effort content per se; anybody who knows anything about online marketing can tell you that low-effort content has a role to play in any marketing strategy. Ideally, though, your low-effort content, the stuff that you can get out the door quickly and easily and get in front of your potential customers, exists to guide those customers to your higher-quality content that convinces them to buy your product, order your service, or otherwise become someone who believes that you have something of value to say. Because it's cheap and easy to produce, low-effort content can be cast far and wide to serve as a net to capture many potential viewers and guide them to the gold mine of the really important stuff you have to say. Unfortunately, when your low-effort content is what you have to say, it very much begs the question of what exactly it is people should be coming to your channel for.

Here are a few but by no means an exhaustive list of the YouTube channels that to me seem to feature way too much low-effort content.

The Dungeon Dudes

The Dungeon Dudes are two guys (Kelly McLaughlin and Monty Martin) who mainly do scripted back-and-forth style discussions of D&D-related topics. I've talked about the Dungeon Dudes before, when taking apart one of their recent videos, but they also stream a D&D game they play in on Twitch (and frequently post recordings of those sessions on their channel), do product reviews, and generally do whatever they can to maintain a consistent pace of content output, generally a minimum of twice weekly. They've been around for nearly four years now, and have amassed about 273 thousand subscribers on their channel, with over 44 million views for their content, which seem like decent numbers for a niche content channel. (Contract with CinemaSins, which exists as a viral content manufacturer, and has amassed over 9 million subscribers and over 3.3 billion views. I'm not trying to say the Dungeon Dudes are the CinemaSins of D&D; if they were, their numbers would probably look a lot more like those of CinemaSins.)

The big problem with the Dudes as content creators is that, despite being a niche content channel, they are clearly in it to try to eke out some kind of income or living from the work they put into the channel: they've got a Patreon, they use affiliate links in the descriptions of their product review videos to gain some additional referrer income, and they do sponsored content when they can get a sponsor. They started back in the summer of 2017 with a very 2016-era plan on how to succeed at YouTube: put together a bunch of short (5-10 minutes, occasionally longer, but go over 15 minutes at your peril) videos and release them on an iron-clad schedule to get people used to coming back to your channel and looking over your new content, and to their credit, they've kept up their content production schedule very consistently over the past four years.

They've also learned a few things during that time and have adapted the channel in response: their videos explaining rules and reviewing new products tend to be more popular, so they work those topics in on a more regular basis. They've learned that the YouTube algorithm has subtly changed over the past few years to reward channels that can provide longer 'engagement' (which gives YouTube more opportunities to run ads), and have expanded their video length to an average of about a half-hour, with their re-broadcasts from Twitch being extra-long videos (between two and two-and-a-half hours) which, while drawing fewer total views, probably draw as much or more 'engagement' from the algorithm for the views they have.

But the need to spit out so much content on such a rigid, unforgiving schedule means that they have to aim for quick-creation and easy digestion: putting subclasses into a bog-standard tier ranking, making 'top five' and 'top ten' lists that seem like they're being cribbed from a more thoughtful resource, and generally getting stuff out the door (like their 'Powerful Spell Combos Using Teamwork' video) without spending too much time thinking about how valuable or even accurate their advice happens to be. More to the point, it seems to be taking its toll on the guys who serve as the hosts of the show: Kelly McLaughlin has a fairly dour expression in general, but lately he seems to have the countenance of a man who's about to post a 'very special episode' discussing the dangers of YouTuber burnout.

The Dungeon Dudes feature low-effort content because they have to in order to support the publishing frequency they've chosen; if they were to take the time to put together a truly high-effort piece regarding one of their traditional topics, their Patreon subscribers would likely be asking why their release schedule had slowed down before their work was even half-done.

Dungeon Craft

The Dungeon Craft channel is run by a fellow who refers to himself as 'Professor Dungeon Master'; I have not yet found any reference in his channel or elsewhere that identifies who he actually is, so I'll just refer to him as Prof. Prof has been on YouTube a bit longer than the Dungeon Dudes, having launched his channel in October of 2016, and has put out 185 'episodes' (as of the time of this writing), thus averaging between three and four episodes per month. Prof's own 'trailer' video explicitly states his channel's concept: "Some channels focus on running the game, others on building terrain, others on painting minis. I do it all!" You might think, then, that this would be a place to find quite high-quality content, especially related to terrain and miniatures painting tips, but it seems like the main effect of Prof making his channel be about multiple topics (and there are plenty of topics he discusses that don't fit into any of those three categories above) is that he can't successfully communicate what his channel is actually about, other than about his specific opinions. Maybe that's the reason he's sitting at about 65 thousand subscribers and just under 5 million views.

However, being at a slightly lower 'tier' of content production than the Dungeon Dudes is not itself any kind of crime or even indicative of poor quality -- after all, one of my favorite D&D lore channels on YouTube is RavenloftTravelAgent, and she's got just over a thousand subscribers and only about 50 thousand views on her videos. No, Prof could have a very high-quality, high-content channel with the subscriber numbers and views he has, but he doesn't.

Prof's issue is almost exactly the opposite of that of the Dungeon Dudes: instead of cranking out a rapid-fire, breakneck volume of content to keep up with an arbitrary content production schedule because that's how you make a living producing content for YouTube and you have to keep feeding the hungry algorithm, Prof cranks out content that's very easy for him to write because he's been involved in the game for a long time and already knows that the way he learned to play the game is the best way. Any topic that comes up related to D&D, he's got an opinion and can spit out a script explaining his opinion quickly because it's the same opinion he's held for decades. Classic D&D didn't have skills, so the next edition of D&D shouldn't have them either. Classic D&D had slow advancement, so slow advancement is better than fast advancement. This becomes even more obvious in the videos that have very little or nothing to do with running a D&D game, such as where Prof explains why he thought Avengers: Endgame sucked, or why he thought Season 8 of Game of Thrones was 'nearly perfect'.

Some of the oddest episodes of Dungeon Craft have to do when Prof makes admissions that make him out to be, well, the D&D channel for 'that kind' of old-school gamer: the ones who can make comments to each other that they can't make in front of their wives or significant others because the latter find the comments sexist, the kind of guys you can complain to about not being able to tell a Polack joke at work, the guys who treated D&D in the 1980s and 1990s the way that guys in the 1950s and 1960s treated golf where they could build a wall between the world as it existed and the world as they wanted to believe it was (and, if we're being honest, the way that they believed it should actually be). Nowhere is this more evident than in the video where Prof starts by discussing the hot, rich girlfriend he had once who tried but never got into D&D who he just had to break up with, and which by the 3 minute mark has him "calling bullshit" on the idea that relationships are built on compromise and negotiation. (I mean, you saw this coming, right? Right there at the end of the last paragraph about how the ending of Game of Thrones was so good? You knew that's where this was going, right?)

And, of course, he's not immune to just jumping on the latest bandwagon to contribute his drone to the chorus of voices talking about things just to be talking about things. It shouldn't be surprising that Prof jumped on the bandwagon of the lawsuit brought by Hickman and Weis against Wizards of the Coast over the upcoming Dragonlance trilogy, which turned out to be a nothing-burger. Even weirder is the tag in the description of that video which says "Analysis you can't get anywhere else", even though the video doesn't contain anything that hadn't already been discussed over the three weeks between the lawsuit and Prof's video other than Prof's own opinions about it. My favorite howler that Prof makes in this video is his assertion that, because Hickman and Weis got a lawyer to file a lawsuit, that means there's definitely fire under that smoke, because "big law firms do not accept cases they don't think they can win", which both ignores the existence of SLAPP suits as well as the existence of authors who seem to take perverse glee in suing rival authors just to drive them out of the industry. He's also responded with multiple videos in response to Cody at Taking20s controversial 'illusion of choice' essay, and his response to Ginny Di's essay on making online D&D suck less didn't include any of Ginny's solid advice on making online play more compatible with an in-person mentality (recognizing interruptive behavior, or using text chat to maintain side-conversations that would otherwise not be distracting in person), but instead gave these recommendations to players:

Keep your camera turned on

Mute yourself when not talking

Don't distract yourself with technology during the game

Nothing specific on recognizing how online play differs from tabletop play and suggesting ways to bring those two styles closer together, just commands because he's the DM and he says so. Or, in other words, low-effort, opinion-based content.

Nerd Immersion

Nerd Immersion, a channel by Ted that started in May of 2014 and has amassed over 70 thousand subscribers, starts his "channel trailer" video by leafing through a book, then looking up and saying, "Oh, hello" as if he'd just noticed that there was a camera on pointing at him while he's sitting in his orange-trimmed gaming chair. That, sadly, is roughly the level of thought that goes into the actual content contained on this long-tenured but seemingly still super-niche channel.

The weird thing is that at some point, it was obvious that Ted put some real effort into this channel. There are defined sections of the channel that focus on particular things, avoiding the Dungeon Craft problem of 'what topic is our channel about this week?' On Tuesdays, Ted posts a top-10 list. Ted comes up with an idea for a series, like 'Fixing 5E' or 'Reviewing Unearthed Arcana', posts regular articles until he's said what he means to say, then ends the series. (There hasn't been a new Fixing 5E video in roughly a year, meaning that Ted isn't wasting his own time and that of the viewer continually beating horses he's long since killed.) And he comes up with some great ideas for series, such as his series reviewing products on the DMs Guild; that particular series comes out somewhat irregluarly, but not so irregularly that you think he may have stopped doing the series without telling you.

Nerd Immersion's big problem can be summed up by simply looking at the list of videos on his channel and noticing that when he puts his own face on the thumbnail of the video, the startling frequency with which he's shrugging or has a puzzled face or just seems to be presenting himself as if he's not sure what's happening in his own video. I mean, I get it -- that's his image, the personality he wants to present to his audience. He doesn't have all the answers (a refreshing change from Dungeon Craft, honestly), but has some things to share if you're interested, so go ahead and take a peek. But then you take a look at those different sections we spoke about earlier and see that the 'Fixing' series all have the word Fixing at the top of the screen, the Nerd Immersion logo in the top left, two images underneath the text, one on the right side of the page and one on the left, separated right down the middle, and they all have Fix-It Felix on the far right. The Top 10 videos always have Top 10 at the top of the thumbnail. The Unearthed Arcana reviews all have 'Unearthed Arcana' at the top, then 'Review' in an odd off-set to the right beneath 'Unearthed Arcana'.

In other words, Ted has a formula, and he's damn well going to follow it.

Now it's not a bad thing to have a workflow -- if you're going to be cranking out videos at the volume that Ted does (not to mention the others on this list), you'd better have some kind of process for making the video, getting the thumbnail on it, etc.; otherwise each new video is a horrible nightmare of effort as you re-invent the wheel for every project. Nobody wants to do that, and the results would likely be unwatchable. Having a process is a good thing. But the Dungeon Dudes clearly also have a process -- they've put out at least two videos a week for three and a half years, so they damn well have a process or they wouldn't have been able to get out that much content. Looking at their channel, though, shows you that while they have a brand, and one that's evolving over time to boot, they're not just making the same video over and over again, or at least you wouldn't think that from looking at the thumbnails.

Ted's most interesting videos are where he's interviewing another person or even just having another person in the video, because having another person around clearly takes him at least a bit outside his rigid formulaic comfort zone. The problem is that those videos are few and far between -- the review of the infernal tiefling is about eight months separated from his interview with Celeste Conowitch about her Venture Maidens campaign guide. Also interesting are his unboxing videos, because Ted clearly likes minis and takes some degree of joy in cracking open and looking at new minis. His unboxing videos aren't as irregular as his interview videos, but they are fairly recent, with the first appearing just a few months ago, so it's still not clear if this is going to be a new regular part of the channel, or just another series that goes until he says what he wants to say about minis and then stops.

Most of the stuff on the site, though, is just, well, stuff, cranked out on a formula and thrown out into the digital void with the same soft-spoken volume regardless of whether it's major news or a press release. As an example, while pretty much everybody had an opinion on the Dragonlance lawsuit, Ted covered when the suit was announced, when it was dismissed by Weis and Hickman, when the actual trilogy that was the subject of the novels was announced, and the official release date of the first book in the new trilogy. When it came time to get ready to announce the newest campaign book, Ted was on the job, posting a video preparing for the announcement, another video later the same day when his original prediction of a Feywild adventure book seemed to be contradicted by other rumors that the book would be a Ravenloft book, then posted yet another video when the actual book was leaked on Amazon at 11:24pm later that same day confirming Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, posted the video discussing the official announcement of Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft the next day, and then the day after that followed up with more details on Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft revealed in Dragon+. That's five videos in three days, for a grand total of just over 100 thousand views combined. The intention seems like Ted wants to be the CNN of the D&D news scene, but with those kind of distribution numbers, the result is more like your local home town's shopping circular that occasionally also features stories about the latest project to fix the potholes on Main Street. Just like nobody's doing 24/7 news coverage of your local town council, nobody is (or probably should strive to) doing 24/7 coverage of the gaming industry and Wizards of the Coast. At some point it just becomes running a script, pressing a button to upload the next video, because it's news, and while you don't have to think about news to quite the same degree you have to think about more opinion-based topics, once you stop thinking about the process and what it is you're making, all you have left is executing the formula, over and over again, and both the input and the output becomes repetitive.

Repetitive videos, in repetitive formats, with repetitive text, to keep the monster fed for another day. I can admire the effort that goes into it, but the overwhelming presence of the formula involved in cranking out this content keeps me from feeling that it's worth engaging with. It's low-effort, because the effort has been meticulously removed from the process.

I could go on, but I think I'll stop here. There's not really any constructive criticism I could provide to these channels because, as I hope I've pointed out, it seems like low-effort content is pretty much the only thing these channels have to offer or in truth can offer, and anything that might cause their owners to re-consider their channels to improve their content would almost certainly lead to a very different if not wholly different channel. With things being as they are online, there's no guarantee that any new, higher-effort channel would be any more successful than the old low-effort one (remember the RavenloftTravelAgent channel with absolutely miniscule numbers; effort doesn't automatically equate with success). I can't even claim that being low-effort channels necessarily makes these channels bad (despite what I said in the intro); after all, they all have at least some good ideas, especially Nerd Immersion, and they each have subscribers and a following. I guess this is just my way of putting some small amount of effort into explaining why I don't feel like doing more to help these channels succeed, because I'd rather put my support toward channels making higher-quality, higher-effort content, especially because its not the content itself, but people engaging with that content that really drives a channel's success.

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uniformbravo · 3 years

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having a full on existential crisis over an episode of anime i watched tonight

it all started with big time rush

in 2009 a sitcom called big time rush aired for the first time on nickelodeon; it was about a group of four teenaged boys from minnesota who move to hollywood under a famous producer to become his next big boy band sensation. a simple premise, launched into unprecedented success, resulting in four seasons of musical shenanigans, three full music albums, and three big concert tours, including international shows. the band, both fictional and real life, featured four attractive young men by the names of kendall, james, carlos, and logan. they quickly gained a fan base of mostly teenage girls, which resulted in online spaces created for the purpose of sharing their passion, and as is common in such online communities, this certainly involved fanfiction- lots of it.

enter me, a teen in high school who loved to write fanfiction. my big time journey began the day my younger sister decided to put on the show big time rush in the living room, where i sat at the family computer typing away. the noise caught my attention, and i got sucked into the episode. there was a boy wearing a dress on the screen. i became interested.

i watched more of the show. i typed its name into the search bar on the website fanfiction dot net. i had a friend at school who shared my interest in fanfiction, particularly of the slash variety. i introduced her to this new show i had been watching. she shared a fanfic she had enjoyed immensely with me. we dragged each other into the world of big time rush fanfiction reading and writing.

it took over my life; i lived and breathed big time rush. i began posting my own stories to fanfiction dot net. i received positive feedback; i met people. i made friends- two people in particular who became very close friends. we communicated through ffn’s private messaging system, then through email. we talked every day, we wrote stories for and with each other, we exchanged phone numbers. it was one of these friends who introduced me to the website called tumblr, where fellow fans of our beloved big time rush gathered and talked about it- a community.

it was a slow start- this website was new and unfamiliar to me- but eventually i got the hang of things and settled into my niche. i had fun, gained followers, met even more people. tumblr was a place not only for sharing one singular interest, but for accumulating all of your various interests and celebrating them in one place. it was through this aspect that i first learned of the up and coming band known as one direction.

they had released their first smash hit single and everyone was talking about it. i was wary, far too loyal to my beloved big time rush- but eventually i started to feel left out and in an effort to feel included, i decided to take the plunge and see what this “1d” was all about. it was intimidating, though- there was so much information, and no apparent beginner’s guide to tell me where to start. this drove me to making a post calling for a “one direction buddy” to take this role, to introduce me to all the most important aspects of this band. and my call was answered.

enter my wonderful friend cam, a follower of mine at the time. they were into both big time rush and one direction and were eager to provide me with all the information needed to get into 1d. while ultimately this venture didn’t amount to anything, as i lost interest in becoming a fan, my friendship with cam persisted and we grew very close. even as time went on and big time rush faded into the background to be replaced with newer, fresher interests, and our paths as fellow fandom members split, we kept in contact and remained friends. years and years of fandoms, years and years of friendship.

in the midst of the tenth year, cam developed a new interest, in a sport called ice hockey. as is tradition, they shared their passion with me, showing me their favorite team, highlighting their favorite members. we watched a game together. personally, i’ve never been one for sports, but i am quite into anime, which consists of many genres, including the “sports” genre. one in particular that i’ve enjoyed immensely in the past is the volleyball anime, haikyuu!!. this anime devotes a lot of time to explaining and depicting the sport in a way that makes it easy for any viewer to understand the rules and inner workings of volleyball. it’s exciting. it’s the first time i’ve ever even adjacently been invested in a sport. one could even call it a gateway into the world of sports.

all this to say, when i watched that game of ice hockey with cam, the same parts of my brain that loved haikyuu!! lit up and in a classic display of my specific brand of interest, i found myself yearning for the epic highs and lows of ice hockey, but in an animated format. an animated format originating in japan. a japanese animation. an anime. my curiosity burned a hole in my brain that resulted in a combination of the google search bar and the words, “hockey anime”.

to my disappointment, i found nothing- at least, not to the degree i was hoping. there is an upcoming anime, slated to air in the fall 2021 anime season, about a group of girls who form an ice hockey team together- as it is an original project rather than an adaptation, it remains to be seen whether the anime will fall into the category of “sports anime,” or if indeed it will lean much more closely to the “moe” genre. the latter is not what i had in mind during that particular search.

adding the anime called “pride of orange” to my “plan to watch” list on myanimelist dot com, i moved onto the next result: an article about an early 2010’s anime i had never heard of before. while not about the sport i was looking for, it featured a character whose signature weapon was a field hockey stick. it wasn’t even the right sport. it was a weak, insignificant link, but all was not lost.

i happen to have an affinity for watching anime i happen upon completely by random and know little to nothing about; i found the movie “anthem of the heart” purely coincidentally, when i searched the name “jun” as part of some research for one of my original characters and discovered that it was the main character of said movie, which i then watched and ended up enjoying quite a lot. another time, when i was at best buy one day i happened upon a dvd on their dedicated anime shelf for a movie called “hana and alice”, which i had never heard of before. i liked the box art, so i took a picture of it to remember the title and watched it on my own later that week; it became one of my favorite movies.

with these and other similar experiences in mind, i saved the anime in my “plan to watch” list, and, later that same week, began my watch of “sket dance.”

it’s a school comedy anime, one of my favorite genres, so it’s no surprise that after overcoming the initial skepticism i carry into every new show i watch it quickly became my new fixation. not an obsession, but something i was pleasantly surprised to find consistently enjoyable. the characters are fun, the humor is tight and fresh, and the stories are unexpectedly touching at the right moments. everything i like to see.

which brings us to tonight. the culmination of this ten plus year string of events and occurrences. getting into big time rush. joining tumblr. meeting cam. watching anime. searching for hockey anime.

i put down my apple(TM) pencil. i set my ipad aside. i downsized the ebook window i’d been referencing. i stretched; i was hungry and tired. i’d been rereading passages of various animorphs books all day. i needed a break. i needed to sit back with some food and an episode of my latest comfort watch, sket dance. it’d be nice to set the dramatic, tragic world of animorphs aside for something lighthearted and fun in its place.

well.

i sat down with my bowl of strawberries and played the episode. it finished. i watched another. this one broke the formula a bit, played with the art style. i was into it. the preview for the next episode was mysteriously blank, and short, stating only the title. it was intriguing. i’m down for the show to get a bit more serious for an episode, i thought. i’m down for some potential backstory for one of the main three. i’m ready.

i was not ready.

bruh.

b r u h .

next two episodes proceeded to take me out back and beat me to within an inch of my life, slowly at first and then all at once. barely made it out alive. questioning everything. how can a show, so silly and goofy, do that, to me. how could i let my guard down like that. how could i be so tricked, and deceived, and blindsided like this. i don’t know who to trust. i don’t know if i can trust again. whiplash so damaging, permanent. i thought i wanted answers. i thought i wanted to know backstory. i didn’t want this. i never wanted this. emptiness

how did it come to this, these twelve years of my life. had i known back then, would i have posted that fanfiction? would i have joined tumblr? would i have sook out a “one direction buddy”? a hollow husk of a person, i am left with only my thoughts to ponder this small history of mine. the things i could have done differently. the things others could have done differently. all these butterfly effect moments, adding up to what? culminating in what? it’s 2:26 am and i’m writing an essay on how shook i am over that episode instead of going to sleep. but i can’t just say nothing, you know? i need to put something out there, reach deep enough within myself to find the thing that’s still there, broken and huddled and tiny as it is. i need to feel some semblance of the self again. the me from before i watched this episode. the innocent version of myself, blissful in ignorance. it’s too late now.

that episode…………..was fucked up. that was seriously fucked up. im not okay bro they really just came in left field and slapped that in my face expecting me to get up and walk away just fine afterwards like No that isn’t how this Works y’all need to bundle some therapy sessions with ur episodes pullin that shit come ON

exhaustion is taking over the shock, i am simply tired now. i will fall asleep and when i wake up sket dance will be a happy fun show again with NO fucked up backstories ever Or Else. i’m fucking serious right now i’m gonna count to 3 and that shit better be retconned when i turn around,

screams

thank you

#tldr sket dance has some really fucked up shit in it & i wasn’t expecting it & im having a crisis #it was supposed to be funnie clown show not ouchie oof show #how did it end up like this #fuck. christ. what the fuck #retag later #ani blogging #me watchin this show: yea this is fun like idk if i see myself getting /invested/ invested but i’m enjoying myself nonetheless!#gets to That Episode: …../oh./ oh i /see./ we’re doing That Shit huh #*sound of me getting /invested/ invested*#just a neat lil show about funy jokes :)#wheeeeeeee

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editorbigpants · 4 years

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good historical fiction: no monoliths allowed

Get ready for a load of Monty Python gifs today, my pretties, because I am getting on a PERSONAL SOAPBOX.

I primarily work with historical fiction writers. One of the easiest ways to write bad historical fiction? Simple! All you need to do is fail (or refuse) to understand that people in the past were not monolithic.

POINT ONE: Even among shared cultures, people have always had wild differences in opinion, worldview, lifestyle, and belief.

To write an immersive and credible setting in any century, you must present us with a world of believable conflict and diversity.

This doesn’t mean “peppering in” people who fill highly specific modern-day identity niches (though it is certainly important to write such characters, provided you’re not just checking off token boxes and calling it a day). What a good historical fiction writer must always do is provide us with ample, rich, living evidence that people in their story era have a wide array of convictions, goals, feelings, and thoughts about the general state of their world and their own role(s) in it.

Too many histfic or fantasy writers hold up (what they assume to be) the Official Christian Church-sanctioned opinion—or a popular lifestyle of whatever era they’re writing in—as their only polestar. And then they write every one of their characters’ beliefs to be perfectly or mostly in-line with that polestar opinion.

At a surface level, this shows a lack of foundational research, and that ain’t good. But on a deeper level, it shows a failure to understand history as part of a dynamic and evolving world. It reveals an ignorance to the basic truth that characters (and people) are not just props in some kind of historical tableau.

My dudes, here I return to my crux.

POINT TWO: If you want your story to feel lifelike and credible—if you want it to breathe!—you must SHOW this divergence of opinion taking place in both the foreground and the background of your world.

What is all this in the background? This is no good! Large groups of people unified by a common belief/purpose were (and still are) a thing, yes, sure. But surely one mob cannot comprise the whole of our fictional-historical society! Where is the conflict? Where is the uncertainty? Where are the people? Where is the SPICE?

Ah, there it is. Right in our foreground: a single character emerges to challenge the unified background cry.

For an example of how to foreground a character in dissent with the background (the ”lore,” if you please) of the world, let’s take the state of child labor in medieval Europe into consideration.

It’s “common knowledge” (and indeed factually verifiable in this case) that the majority of medieval people worked early in their lives—often as soon as they were physically big enough to do the jobs available to them. There’s your ideological background, a societal norm your story world is built upon.

But it is not true that everyone delighted in this reality or agreed that it was ideal.

We’ve got primary resources showing that plenty of people were raising longstanding debates about this one! Hell, even famous Church-affiliated medieval thinkers wondered if maybe youths should simply not be put to work until after their teenage years. New theories on childhood development were emerging all the time! (St. Augustine—how’s THAT for a foreground dissenter—even explicitly questioned the morality and usefulness of using physical punishment on children in his published works. You can run the research on this one quite easily, but in the interest of tumblr not eating my post, I’ve gotta leave this task to you.)

How can you find and choose characters to introduce conflict? Well, here’s my advice, and it’s simple.

POINT THREE: Don’t assume ANY character completely agrees with every law, belief, code, and social standard you introduce as the dominant position of your historical fiction world.

Private or unsuccessful dissent is still dissent! Uncertainty and ambivalence is still dissent! Agreeing to marry the rich suitor of your father’s choice but fantasizing about running off with the stableboy is still dissent, even if your bride never does it! And all that dissent is still enhancing the realism and diversity of your world.

Why is dissent so goddamn important for believably throughout history, anyway?

Because almost every meaningful social debate we’re having now has been playing out for a long time, accompanied by a variety of different and historically-influenced conclusions, argumentation, and beliefs. You can find it in official texts. You can find it in letters and diaries. You can find it in your own emotional intelligence as a human who experiences feelings. You can assume it based on contextual clues: wars, authority crackdowns, religious obsessions, rebellions. To ignore the vibrant history and consistency of people re-evaluating and disagreeing with each other is to ignore what it means to be human, and you can’t hope to believably bring us back in time if you are not faithful to that fundamental truth about people.

It’s vital to show us the historical status quo. It’s vital to help us get an understanding of what authority figures wanted (and forced) people to do. It’s vital to help us understand where the sanctioned power lived, and the immensity of its influence, and the costs of rebellion. But it’s equally vital to show us a wide range of people who, for a wide range of reasons, chafe under official order. Who question that order. Who don’t take it seriously. Who ignore it where they can. Who protest it. Who don’t like it.

After all, these discontented people are often the reason humanity has changed.

Yes, Brian. Even you.

#writeblr #writing advice #world building #historical fiction #my advice

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wallclockscrafts-blog · 4 years

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How to find calligraphic wooden-ware in Pakistan?

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They will add your home in no time and some chic appeal until you really have to admire the gorgeous calligraphy.These small hanging decorations can include some meaning and attention to your decoration easily and immediately. No matter how small your area you are able to add a certain je ne sais quoi and handmade loveliness.Special datesMore will be moreHand lettered scrap booking gift label accessoryThough using calligraphy gift tags as home décor is only a little touch, it will add effect, albeit in a subtle manner. Whether they are personalised with calligraphy of whimsical word your quote or a drawing that is quaint, their royal presence will probably be enough to make layers of significance and attention .We will recount a comparatively old but crucial aspect of wooden-ware artwork.For adding finishing touches filled with charm to your table configurations these calligraphy name tags perform wonders. They look lovely if you're hosting a formal dinner or afternoon tea party. They are guaranteed to please and could be taken home by your guests and valued as a reminder.I don't know about you, but I am a fan of faffing and making things look quite. Foraged and give me a few objects locates to arrange and I am happy - much more happy when a there is a label. Style it with your favorite paintings onto a shelf or tray on a desk. I can't resist tea cups, blossom hearts along with French glass vases folded from old novels. Indian Calligraphy Art India being an area of many languages has diversity of this artistic direction of writing. Sanskrit is among the most ancient languages. Of duplication of texts, it was used Within this language the craft of calligraphy has served many purposes because its starting in 2nd century BCE.Calligraphy novel mark with beautiful quotesInsert some fairly and functional organisation by minding these sweet and small tags to cloth storage bins using a safety pin or tying them onto wicker baskets functions as well. Whether it's storing bottles or pegs from the laundry area or makeup in the bedroom, you will know where things are without needing them. Sometimes a line of poetry or amusing words out of your favourite novel are worth watching regular in addition to making a thoughtful gift for a bookworm. Two of my favourite things and one wonderful combination AND fairly, practical.Roman wooden-ware CalligraphyWhy don't you blend a hand-lettered tag to some plant stem or around the grip of a jug of flowers to allow them to sing much more. A couple of words written on will probably be sufficient. Alternately, fill an empty jam jar with flowers cut from the garden, wind some many times around the rim and then add a gift label. It's the tiny changes which make the biggest differences here.Vases of flowersArabic Calligraphy wooden-ware ArtYou could use two or one of these gift tag thoughts or scatter the appearance around and decorate your living space. The best bit is, it's really easy to achieve, have the benefit of being timeless and will make daily beautiful. Japanese is one of popular language for tattoos nowadays. However, we can even use calligraphies composed by brush the place of honour of the house, in the niche Tokonoma. There are numerous choice calligraphy (Verses, Poetries, Sayings and Independent Kanji) for various seasons. In Indiait could be customized to alter calligraphy decorating as per our style suits. Calligraphy tags for storage in the laundry areaCalligraphy quotes make beautiful keepsakesQuote, candy-jar .

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scribblewriting65 · 5 years

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Top 5 YouTube Channels

Intro

Communication is a powerful and ever-changing force; especially with the rise of the Internet in recent decades. And no online service knows this better than YouTube. Hosting thousands of channels and millions of videos, no website has sucked away our free time quite like Big Red.

Today I would like to acknowledge 5 of the platform’s strongest creators, in my eyes. Whether it be for their intelligent content or the sheer fun they bring, to me, these guys are some of the best of the best; and proudly hold some of my greatest respect.

Quick disclaimers: This is my first writing like this, and as you know, opinions can change over time; so please lower your pitchforks and know that there are plenty of channels I love. Also, when writing this, I don’t have a particular order in mind (Except for #1). Whether you find your favorite on the bottom, top, or nowhere at all, know that these guys deserve a watch (if my digital mouth has any impact on your choices, that is).

Enough talk though. Onward, to appreciation!

#5: JT Music

Art is mankind’s most unique unifier, and no art brings people together quite like music. Whether it be country, funk, or rap in this pick’s case, you can look just about anywhere for a good time. And while rock star NateWantstoBattle is a close second in this regard, no musician really does it for me quite like JT.

While most would look at the genre “Video Game Rap” with an upturned nose, those that stick around won’t find anything quite like what Skull and Pat bring to the table. Their weekly tunes always bring a fire to my subscription feed, whether they’re putting me into the role of a badass superhero, or dragging me into the darkest abyss, I can just about always have a good time nodding my head to the beat.

Not only is their work consistently fun, but it’s also wide in diversity, and constant in quality. Hits like Follow Father, No Hero, and Hungry for Another One capture their source material perfectly within a musical context. Even their cameo appearances in tracks like DAGames’ We Want Out and Zack Boucher’s Ultimate Super Smash Bros. Rap steal the show with their wild energy. I always find myself smiling when I find their newest song; getting a small amount of enjoyment even in my less liked tracks.

Consistent fun and passion can be felt in the notes, and I can’t help but rock my skull out when JT Music starts playing.

#4: GameXplain

Games offer a wide variety no matter where you look. No matter if you’re looking for a deep insight into 30 second clips, latest updates on a title, or general thoughts on an event, you can always find something, or someone, explaining the perspective for you.

I’m a funny guy, aren’t I?

GameXplain has certainly explored over the years. From Cool Bits and Missing In Action in the past, to their famous modern Analyses and Discussions, Andre and friends have always hosted an approachable place with a variety of outlooks from its diverse crew, like Andre’s obsession with Stunt Race FX and Ash’s knowledge and love of Mega Man.

Even if you aren’t super into any of their interests, you’ll still find a laid-back but insightful pool of content. Their discussions are a personal favorite of mine, bringing fun, thoughtful ideas to events or ideas occurring in the gaming industry. I can’t help but get caught up in their hype, especially for Nintendo Directs or the annual E3 Show.

Even if I don’t quite understand the excitement that something is receiving, I can always go to these guys for a solid explanation and platform to join the hype train.

#3: Mithzan

It seems that no matter where you go, Minecraft can be found there. Games, books, plushies, animations, even an entire convention; those familiar blocks pervade some space of modern culture. While this space has hosted some incredible creations, simplicity also has its own beauty.

Mithzan uses this simplicity to great effect. With his buddies Ross, Pooki, Jerry and frequent guests, Max is always there to give me a laugh. And while Minecraft holds a variety of fun games like Would You Rather and Never Have I Ever, Mithzan also offers experiences outside of the blocks, like Uno and Dead by Daylight.

Along with the wide content, the experiences and humor are also varied, sometimes employing puns or old-fashioned smack talk, to name a few. Even with the different conversations and games, the fun and heart are always there. Whether he’s playing a wacky or horrifying game, Mithzan is approachable and honest with his style of play.

#2: Mother’s Basement

Appearances can be deceiving, no matter where you look. Assumed bullies are victims themselves, ‘loner’ people are simply introverted, and the most stubborn ones find themselves lost in an unexpected niche. All it takes is a little looking around, and you’ll find a new lesson or friend more often than not.

And what better place to look for insight than in a Mother’s Basement?

While not all people can see the artistry that anime brings to the table, Mother’s Basement brings its potential to the limelight. With weekly insights and discussions on things like how animation enhances an atmosphere or what makes a fight extraordinary in Animelee, the ideas and thought put into these discussions is top-notch.

Along with this, Geoff (the host)’s voice is great support, staying calm but strong, adding great emphasis on major points. He even provides touches of comedy and actual life advice into his videos. I find myself especially entertained with his analyses on My Hero Academia and Fullmetal Alchemist, but Geoff also covers topics like best romantic partners and essential shows to watch (and avoid), and pointing out his reasons why. Even if anime isn’t your style, there are some videos dotted in discussing topics like the nuances of binge-watching in “Is Binge Watching Bad for Us? (Netflix vs. Disney+)” and other media like movies (“Spider-Verse: The Ultimate Spider-Man Movie”) and video games (“Insomniac’s Spider-Man is Truly Superior”).

While it took some time to grow on me, I’m glad to have been welcomed into Mother’s Basement. With plenty of insight and care put into each video, Geoff is just about always a good choice for fun education on how artistic Japanese animation can be.

#1:Fawful’s Minion

The world is full of stories; they’re simply part of human nature. Whether it be fantasy, drama, or comedy, all of us have the potential to weave tales that inspire. And none have inspired me on YouTube quite like Fawful’s Minion.

This mean bean gaming machine has the mouth of a divine artist. His videos always bring a bright smile and incredible awe to me for just how much quality and care goes into each video. Fawful’s Top 10’s have never let me down with their fun, reasons, and pure passion that is tangible in every project.

Not only are the videos fun, but they’re also inspiring too. Fawful’s linguistics is beyond captivating, even partially motivating how I speak and write. Along with constantly being a good time, I’m always inspired to write or gain a storytelling voice whenever I watch an FM video.

And the touches of insight into his personal life give Fawful an air of relatability. Now, I realize I may make him sound like some sort of Shakespearian poet, but he also dispels this through his more colorful language, bringing in modern terms (and curses) and joyful, nearly maniacal at times, laughter and emotion into his speech, making himself grounded and relatable.

Most of all, Fawful’s storytelling skills were, and still are, a big reason why I write and tell my own stories. I want to enrapture others with my words like Fawful does, so he gets a big thanks and respect in my book. Balancing fun, humor, emotion, and creativity, Fawful’s Minion has made a goon out of me, running towards the goal of becoming a true storyteller.

Outro

If you made it here, thanks for sticking around! I wanna maybe try these sorts of blog/list posts more often, so tell me what you think! If you like this and want to see more, feel free to check out my AO3 Page: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScribbleWriting65. I hope you enjoyed this little list, and I’ll see you next time!

#scribblewriting65 #top 5 #list #jt music #mithzan #gameXplain #opinion

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prevsapphism · 5 years

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An Extremely Detailed Guide to Writing A Character In DC

hey what’s up its ur gal queen morgaine comin atcha live with another Extremely Detailed Guide!

in the wake of shows like veep and house of cards, tons of political and adjacent characters have sprung up round the rpc, many of whom live in Our Nation’s Capital™. i’ve seen guides for how to write characters that live in nyc, la, san francisco and lots of other places, but not for how to write characters that live in dc. but Fear Not! i live here! i’ve been living here for well over five years! i can’t wait to leave!

so here is a LONG-- and i DO mean LONG-- list of Spicy DC Shibboleths you can use to make your character realistic, straight from the mouth of a grudging native. ready?

IF YOUR CHARACTER’S IN DC, THEY SHOULD....

use the metro. the metrorail, called ‘the metro’ by locals, is our version of the t ( boston, ) the tube ( london ) or the subway ( nyc, ) and most locals rely on it to get from point a to point b. much like the other commuter systems listed above, most people use a plastic card, called a SMARTRIP CARD, to pay for fare, which is anywhere from $2 to $6 depending on the time of day. ( the metro charges more for ‘peak hours,’ which is the afternoon / rush hour time period between four and eight pm. ) the metro has numerous stops all throughout washington dc proper, maryland and virginia, and we usually refer to the lines on it by their colour ( eg red, yellow, green. ) unless your character is the queen of sheba and gets carried by servants or has Nerves of Steel and drives everywhere, they probably use the metro to get where they need to go.

.....complain about the metro. this is a huge one. however much your character currently complains about the metro? it’s not enough. they need to complain more. for a system supposed to make travelling easier, the metro sure is awful at working consistently. the metro is a dumpster fire on wheels. and there is always some Bulled Shite going on with it, i promise you. your character’s train is late. your character’s train stopped for no reason on the way to a station. some drunk frat bros from au just got on and they’re being loud and drunk. it’s late and the trains are only running every twenty minutes. your character’s metro track might Literally catch fire. the train your character thought was their train dumped them out at a certain stop and now they have to wait fifteen minutes for another one. the metro SUCKS and we ALL hate it, but we’re STILL Beholden to get on it every Focking day to try to go to work or school because Deep In Our Heart of Hearts, we know that driving here is way worse. so yeah, we accept our fates to get on the HellRail9000 every day, but we’re gonna bitch about it the whole time.

probably not live in dc proper. ‘but queen morgaine, my character is a sexy rich 54-year-old illustrious powerlez politician! she has to have the Best Pad around for miles!!’ i hear ya ( also, is she single? ) but The Fact of The Matter Is, it’s really hard to find somewhere to live in dc proper for a multitude of reasons. for one thing, it’s WICKED expensive. ( though that also means, of course, if your character is loaded, don’t worry about this part. ) for another, dc has succumbed to a terrible gentrification problem, which means that more and more regions in the city are being forcibly transformed in order to make them ‘nicer’ for young up-and-comers, displacing longtime residents in the process. it’s Not Unheard Of for your character to live in dc proper, but it would be more realistic for them to live in its outskirts instead ; and people who live in surrounding areas all say they live in dc anyway. popular areas ( especially for politicians or other well-off characters ) include:

bethesda, maryland. the $8 Coffee Snob Epicentre of the dc metro area. LOTS of rich people here. expensive to live in. tons of Chic Fancy Restaurants, lots of cutesy expensive boutique shops ( like sugarfina, lululemon, anthropologie and sweetgreen ) lots of wealthy older ladies walking dogs in Athleisure. very expensive and prestigious private schools here too, like stone ridge and sidwell friends school, but also a few very large public ones, such as bethesda-chevy chase ( bcc. ) the national institute of health headquarters are also here. probably your top-tier best bet for a rich or otherwise Well-Off character. about fifteen minutes into dc proper via metro.

chevy chase, maryland. super nice, though a little on the Pricey side. people here tend to be more Modest about their money, so this area is pretty affluent, it’s not as hoity-toity as bethesda. awesome shopping-- right next to friendship heights in dc, which has lots of high-end stores like jimmy choo, bloomingdale’s, whole foods, etc. about five to ten minutes to friendship heights, fifteen to twenty minutes via metro into downtown dc. ( it’s also right next to the region with the same name in dc. )

kensington and garett park, maryland. i used to live here!! quiet and VERY cute. kensington has an adorable historic district down a hill, with a tea room and 'antique row,’ a block of vintage shops. east of bethesda, about ten minutes there by car. beautiful brightly-coloured victorian houses here. has a Small Town Feel and lots of kid-friendly Wholesome activities, so lots of older people and families with young kids live in these areas. huge beautiful art and music venue, strathmore, is here as well. about thirty-five to forty minutes into dc proper via metro.

arlington, virginia. i don’t go here very often so i can’t Vouch for it as hard but my dad used to work here so i’ll try. probably the most Work-Focused and Capital-G Government area outside dc. mid-tier expensive, but not a whole lot to do other than work or go to school from the Overwhelming Presence of federal buildings, colleges, and businesses here which makes it a less popular choice. big area, proximity to dc ranges depending on what part of arlington you’re in-- anywhere from five or ten minutes or half an hour away via metro.

alexandria, virginia. sort of like arlington, but prettier. i don’t go here much either, but it’s also a popular choice for those working in dc but wanting to stay in virginia. its Main Hangout, old town alexandria, sits right on the potomac waterfront, and supplies most of the area’s non-work activities. has lots of ~Small Town Charm~, cute bars and restaurants and a couple niche museums, like the apothecary musuem. lots of bakeries here as well. also mid-tier expensive. about forty minutes away from dc via metro.

if your character isn’t a rich politician or is otherwise just Dead-Set on living IN dc, here are some popular areas in the city itself, from most to least expensive.

georgetown. EASILY the Most Elite, Absolute Ritziest and overall Top-Tier Prestigious neighbourhood in the district. means most of its denizens are wealthy snobs, and the cost of living here is astronomical-- if bethesda has $8 coffee, georgetown’s are $8.50, before tax. georgetown is very hilly, full of townhouses and paved with cobblestones, so your character will probably do a lot of walking and stair-climbing. it’s always busy, and even though the snobby people irritate me every time i go, the shops ( lush!! sephora!! dr. martens!! ) and 700 bakeries with adorable treats ( sprinkles cupcakes!! baked and wired!! ) keep me from staying away completely.

jinx proof, a wicked good tattoo parlour, is here as well!!

downtown dc. probably what you think of when you think of ‘washington dc,’ because most of what makes dc dc is down here, as you might imagine. has the capitol building, most of the museums, chinatown, the white house and ford’s theatre. SUPER expensive because of this.

dupont circle. my personal favourite area of dc, just a few minutes down the block from downtown. lots of great food and shopping-- fantom comics, my favourite comic book store, beefsteak, a vegan restaurant are some of my Usual Haunts here. mid-tier expensive.

it’s also a historic Gaybourhood: one of the earliest lgbt protest marches and the first real dyke march Ever was held here in 1993! capital pride is also hosted here every year.

capitol hill. despite the name, not the austere, cutthroat Essence of DC Politics you’d probably think. pretty quiet, lots of row houses ( something dc is famous for, see the ‘bits and bobs’ section at the end here. ) lots of ~Indie~ businesses and coffee shops. was home to phase 1, the area’s oldest lesbian bar, till it closed in 2016 ( rip mama!!!! ) mid-to-lower-tier expensive.

u street / cardozo. ah, U Street, my Other Home. great food here, like sugar shack donuts and ben’s chilli bowl. but u street’s Star Attraction is most of dc’s music scene, most notably All Flavours of rock ( esp punk, ) indie and alternative--i spent almost all of my teenage years Cavorting About till the wee hours of the morning on school nights at concerts, parties and diy shows on u street. mid-to-lower-tier expensive.

adams morgan. also an Artsy Hangout in dc. lots of restaurants and bars, lots of Weird Shops, has the adam’s morgan festival every year. home to a gay bar, pitcher’s, and dc’s newest lesbian bar, a league of her own! mid-to-lower tier expensive.

georgia avenue / petworth. most of my friends who live in dc proper live here. not a Designated Gaybourhood but lots of gay people, there’s a lesbian party at a bar here every month. lots of animal shelters. good bar scene and ample public transport. right next to howard university, so quite student-heavy, but pretty quiet. lower-tier expensive.

takoma park. i also love it here. ~Technically~ just called takoma, but since it’s mixed with the super-close town in maryland, takoma park, locals tend to just. call it that. quiet and relaxed HippieTown, called ‘the berkeley of the east’ and ‘the people’s republic of takoma park’ with good reason-- lots of Greenie Boutique Places, lots of hybrid cars and ~Progressive~ ally lawn signs. adorable food co-op and tons of bookstores. pretty inexpensive.

none of these Jive with your character and you Really wanna get Spicy, they could could always live in baltimore and get the marc train ( another lightrail serving the dc, maryland and west virginia areas ) every day for a half-hour commute to dc.

have Opinions about food. greater dc has a very strong restaurant and food scene, made easily accessible by the metro. there’s ALWAYS something cool to eat in dc anywhere you go, and we love telling people about it.

said Food Opinions are often very divisive, and people argue their side with as much Fervour as those debating pineapple on pizza. for example, one thing people fight about here is mumbo sauce: ‘are you for or against,’ ‘what exactly is it and what do you put it on,’ etc. the one i get dragged into is ‘georgetown cupcake vs baked and wired.’ my dad’s staunchly pro-baked and wired and anti-georgetown cupcake, i love ‘em both, but every time we’re in georgetown we bicker.

never fall short of things to do. like i said, dc is ALWAYS bustling on any given day. sure, a lot of it’s expensive and very often alcohol-focused ( like nyc, we do a lot of wine and beer tastings, cocktail parties and galas ) or otherwise geared towards adults, but if you hop on the metro or a bus, you’re almost guaranteed to find something. see the ‘places of note’ bullet here for some ideas.

have gone to a museum at least once. the area surrounding the national mall and capitol building also has our museums, which are owned by the smithsonian institution. they’re the first place i reach for when i want something to do, and i’ve been going to them so frequently and for so long that james smithson is practically my third parent lol. they are free, which is what makes them so hugely popular, and the Big Three are the national museum of natural history, the national air and space museum, and the national gallery of art. everyone who comes to dc goes to at least one, even if they never go again, and if your character lives here, they’ll probably go to several. ( they also make great date spots, fyi. )

have Opinions about the national cherry blossom festival. dc has lots of cherry blossom trees along the tidal basin and potomac river, given to us as a token of friendship by japan in march of 1912. to celebrate, the national cherry blossom festival is held every spring from late march to early april when the trees are in peak bloom. it isn’t so much a Hard and Fast Festival but more of a fourteen-day period with various cherry blossom- and japanese-themed events, like kite-flying, marathons and sake-tasting with a Great Big Street Fair at the end. people flock to dc every spring just for the cherry blossoms, and most locals either love it, take five billion photos and celebrate with thematic cupcakes and cocktails, or Loudly hate it and call it an overhyped tourist trap ( while still sneaking their annual cherry blossom pic for facebook On The Sly. ) your character should probably be one or the other, i don’t know a lot of neutrals.

probably not call it ‘washington dc.’ if your character does call it that, it should be a defining trait and / or signify that they’re new or visiting. no one here calls it that, we either call it just ‘dc’ or ‘the district.’ it’s not Sacrilege, like calling boston ‘beantown’ ( yuck ) or san francisco ‘frisco,’ more like calling nyc ‘the big apple’-- we just think you sound like a dweeb.

complain a LOT. however much your character is complaining, it’s not enough. they need to complain more. dc locals are ALWAYS complaining about something, in a way similar to a cranky new yorker. i’ve never known a dc local, especially an office worker, who wasn’t complaining every five seconds about one thing or another, and this is largely attributed to its wealthy, ambitious and politically-driven population-- most of us here are Important Individuals, or think we are ; so unfortunately lots of people look down upon those who are not also doing Important People Things.......and end up acting like entitled brats as a result. the metro, like i said, is the biggest one, but other topics of District Annoyance include--

the president’s motorcade. not super common, but takes forever and holds up traffic.

the beltway. the interstate 495, typically just called the beltway, is a highway that makes a loop around dc, as well as the surrounding areas of maryland and virginia. almost always road construction, an accident or traffic no matter what time of day it is and it’s just Generally Terrible. if your character is driving, they’ll probably complain about the beltway.

interns. dc has TONS of interns, especially in the spring and summer. most of them are between the ages of twenty-two to twenty-five, and they come here to work in government buildings or for specific senators and representatives. the most popular place to intern is capitol hill, so ‘interning on the hill’ is something your character will hear or say a lot. most locals don’t like them because they’re super arrogant about what they’re doing and can’t go five seconds without bringing it up.

DC’S STREET SYSTEM AND THE QUADRANTS.

the city of dc is shaped like a broken diamond, and split into four sections, called quadrants: northeast, northwest, southeast and southwest, with the capitol building marking the middle.

maryland borders the north half of the quadrant, generally, and virginia the south.

dc streets run three ways: east-west, north-south, and diagonally, and the streets are named with numbers, letters ( excluding j, x, and z, ) states or a combination.

lettered streets go east-west, numbered streets go north-south, and diagonal streets have state names.

the national mall runs west and east, respectively, away from the capitol so all the east-west letter streets run next to or parallel to them.

starting with the capitol, the first east-west streets north and south of the capitol are called a st, the second east-west streets north and south of the capitol are called b st, the third is c st, etc.

because there are two of the same number or letter street, you should include the quadrant if you’re mailing something or giving an address. like ‘555 k street nw, washington dc 42069.’

if that sounds confusing, it is. here’s a diagram that might help.

now that i’m done with specific traits, here are some Places of Note in dc you can set your threads in and your character can frequent!!

the smithsonian museums. i can’t make this list without putting my Beloved smithsonian museums first, sorry! they’re all wicked sick, but i’m particularly fond of the natural history museum ( which recently got new ocean and fossil halls i’ve been obsessed with, ) all of the art galleries ( we have five ) and the brand new african-american museum!

politics and prose and kramerbooks. politics and prose is a dc-based bookstore with its Main Store in chevy chase, but has locations in a couple other parts of dc. it also has smaller satellite stores that are part of busboys and poets, a combination restaurant and spoken-word venue. kramerbooks is a single independent bookstore in dupont circle. it’s open super late and has a cafe, called afterwords, on top!!

georgetown cupcake. like i said, it’s a cupcake bakery headquartered in georgetown, with a bethesda location as well! known for its Cute Ass Pink Boxes.

the wharf. waterfront entertainment district in southwest, popular with rich people. awesome music venue, the anthem, where i’ve seen florence + the machine and kt tunstall but it’s primarily fancy restaurants, high-end shopping and cocktail bars, including a milk bar.

baked and wired. like i said, georgetown cupcake’s rival. REALLY BIG cupcakes, which it calls ‘cakecups,’ with flavours like ‘uniporn and rainhoes’ and ‘chocolate doom.’

the black cat. goth / punk music venue and entertainment space on u street. i went to my first ever Capital-G Goth Event here shortly after i turned fourteen!! i love this place a lot and i hung out here all the time in high school. lots of great diy or less-mainstream artists play here, like waxahatchee, ex hex and daughter, and i go to their smiths vs the cure and depeche mode-themed parties every year.

the 9.30 club. the black cat’s cleaner and slightly hipper older sister, just a few blocks away on u street. i also love this place dearly and saw most of the concerts i’ve been to here, including haim, kate nash, new politics, the vaccines and sleigh bells. this is where most big indie and alternative bands play when they come to dc. there’s a coffee bar on the topmost area!!

the satellite room. 1960s-themed diner right behind the 9.30 club. open really late, awesome food especially vegan milkshakes and really cool arcade games in the back!! been here after many a concert In My Day.

nellie’s sports bar. gay sports bar across the street from the 9.30 club. great food and awesome drag brunch!! can be really crowded on weekend evenings though, so proceed with caution.

pitchers / a league of her own. gay bar and lesbian bar in the basement of said gay bar respectively in adams morgan. i’ve not been yet, but i’ve heard it’s fantastic!

strathmore. art and music venue in bethesda / kensington. has a mansion, for small concerts and a tea room, and a huge beautiful concert hall that seats over a thousand people for symphonic and other bigger concerts.

eastern market. craft fair in capitol hill that sells handmade goods, artisan food and fresh produce from may to october, roughly. great Wares, but hot and miserable unless you go early.

fantom comics. adorable comic book store in dupont circle. i’ve also been coming here for ages!! it has mainstream comics and indie ones, and it hosts events as well!

bits and bobs / miscellaneous info--

montgomery county in maryland, where i live, has a five-cent charge for plastic bags in grocery stores. it’s really annoying and your character will probably lie to the self-checkout machines when they buy stuff or complain about it to cashiers.

the grocery stores here are giant ( litcherally just stop and shop with a different name, ) safeway, and wegmans. we also have smaller region-specific ones like mom’s organic market, magruders and yes!

ocean city in maryland, virginia beach in, Well, Virginia, and rehoboth, dewey, lewes and bethany beaches, which are all in delaware, are where most locals go for summer vacations.

almost everyone who says they live in dc, doesn’t actually live in dc. they usually live in a surrounding area, like bethesda or silver spring, and say ‘dc’ for brevity’s sake.

you can’t buy alcohol at a grocery store in maryland, but you can in dc and virginia.

sometimes metro stops will Randomly shut down for maintenance, which means that sometimes you have to get off at that stop and wait for a ‘shuttle’ ( aka a free bus ) to take you to the next one. it’s the worst thing ever.

most of the houses in dc proper are row houses, which more closely resemble nyc’s brownstones than row houses elsewhere. maryland and virginia tend to have more Real Live Houses, townhouses and apartments.

marylanders LOVE their state flag for some reason, and because so many of them live and work in dc, you’re bound to see it there too. the maryland flag is absolutely FUCK-UGLY and they plaster it on EVERYTHING. bumper stickers, keychains, phone cases, you name it, even board shorts and tank tops.

those cameras on traffic lights that take pix of you when you speed? everywhere. you WILL end up with a ticket from one eventually.

we have three international airports, reagan international, dulles international and bwi. dulles and reagan are metro accessible, but bwi is in baltimore, so it’s not.

so there you have it!! a Comprehensive List of DC Shibboleths from a dc local!! have fun, and feel free to tag me in or tell me about your headcanons you use this post for, i’d love to see them!!

#⚢ ♡ mondo mama brains!! ( ooc. )#i worked rlly hard on this and if it flops im gna b pissed lmfao.#okay now tags for static -#halechief #caustis #political rp #house of cards rp #veep rp #political animals rp #rph #roleplay help #dearindies #thewelshbitchrph #washington dc #dc #dmv #maryland #virginia #dc rp

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csnews · 5 years

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In Japan, the business of watching whales is far larger than hunting them

Elaine Lies - July 9, 2019

People packed the decks of the Japanese whale-watching boat, screaming in joy as a pod of orcas put on a show: splashing tails at each other, rolling over, and leaping out of the water. In Kushiro, just 160 kilometres south of Rausu, where the four dozen people laughed and cheered, boats were setting off on Japan’s first commercial whale hunt in 31 years.

Killed that day were two minke whales, which the boats in Rausu also search for glimpses of – a situation that whale-watching boat captain Masato Hasegawa confessed had him worried.

“They won’t come into this area – it’s a national park – or there’d be big trouble,” the 57-year-old former pollock fisherman said. “And the whales we saw today, the sperm whales and orcas, aren’t things they hunt.”

“But we also watch minkes,” he added. “If they take a lot in the (nearby) Sea of Okhotsk, we could well see a change, and that would be too bad for whale watching.”

Whale-watching is a growing business around Japan, with popular spots from the southern Okinawa islands up to Rausu, a fishing village on the island of Hokkaido, so far north that it’s closer to Russia than to Tokyo. The number of whale watchers around Japan has more than doubled between 1998 and 2015, the latest year for which national data is available. One company in Okinawa had 18,000 customers between January and March this year.

In Rausu, 33,451 people packed tour boats last year for whale and bird watching, up 2,000 from 2017 and more than 9,000 higher than 2016. Many stay in local hotels, eat in local restaurants, and buy local products such as sea urchins and seaweed.

“Of the tourist boat business, 65 percent is whale watching,” said Ikuyo Wakabayashi, executive director of the Shiretoko Rausu Tourism Association, who says the numbers grow substantially each year.

“You don’t just see one type of whale here, you see lots of them,” she said. “Whale-watching is a huge tourist resource for Rausu and this will continue, I hope.”

Wakabayashi was drawn to Rausu by whale-watching; a native of the western city of Osaka, she fell in love with the area after three trips there to see orcas.

“I thought this was an incredible place,” she said. “Winters are tough, but it’s so beautiful.”

Hasegawa, who says he has a waiting list of customers in high season, has ordered a second boat.

“Right now, the lifestyle we have is good,” Hasegawa said. “Better than it would have been with fishing.”

SMALLINDUSTRY

The five whaling vessels moored at Kushiro port on Sunday, the night before the hunt resumed, were well-used and well-maintained. Crew members came and went, carrying groceries or towels, heading for a public bath.

Barely 300 people are directly involved with whaling around Japan, and though the government maintains whale meat is an important part of food culture, the amount consumed annually has fallen to only 0.1 percent of total meat consumption.

Yet Japan, under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe – himself from a whaling district – left the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and returned to commercial whaling on July 1.

Whaling advocates, such as Yoshifumi Kai, head of the Japan Small-type Whaling Association, celebrated the hunt.

“We endured for 31 years, but now it’s all worth it,” he said in Kushiro on Monday night after the first minkes were brought in to be butchered. “They’ll be whaling for a week here, we may have more.”

Everybody acknowledges that rebuilding demand could be tough after decades of whale being a pricey, hard-to-find food. Consumption was widespread after World War Two, when an impoverished Japan needed cheap protein, but fell off after the early 1960s as other meat grew cheaper.

“Japan has so much to eat now that food is thrown out, so we don’t expect demand for whale will rise that fast,” said Kazuo Yamamura, president of the Japan Whaling Association.

“But looking to the future, if you don’t eat whale, you forget that it’s a food,” he said. “If you eat it in school lunches, you’ll remember that, you’ll remember that it’s good.”

Pro-whaling lawmaker Kiyoshi Ejima said that subsidies were unlikely, but that the government should be careful not to let the industry founder. About 5.1 billion yen ($47.31 million) was budgeted for whaling in 2019.

“If we pull away our hands too soon, a lot of companies will fail,” he added.

The goal of selling whale throughout Japan may be impractical, said Joji Morishita, Japan’s former IWCcommissioner.

“The alternative … is to just limit the supply of whale meat to some of the major places in Japan that have a good tradition of whale eating,” Morishita said, adding that the meat is difficult to thaw and cook.

In areas for which whaling is a tradition, this niche market could promote tourism, which Abe has made a pillar of his economic plan.

“Whale eating in a sense is ideal – it’s different, it’s well-known, and for better or worse, it’s very famous,” Morishita said. “Taking advantage of this IWC withdrawal, I think there are business chances that are viable.”

WHALES UP CLOSE

For Rausu, on Hokkaido’s remote Shiretoko Peninsula, the viable business is whale watching.

Foxes run through the streets of the city’s downtown, which clings to a narrow strip of land below mountains and faces the Nemuro Strait. Summer often brings thick fog, while winter storms can leave waist-high drifts.

Though fishing was long Rausu’s economic backbone, the industry has taken a hit from declining fish stocks, which locals blame on Russian trawlers and falling prices. The population has dropped by several hundred annually, slipping below 5,000 this year.

Hasegawa, a fourth-generation fisherman, began his tour boat business in 2006. Though the first few years were a struggle, he is now happy with his choice as Rausu’s reputation grows globally.

On a recent weekday, customers packed the parking lot at a wharf lined with squid-fishing boats, waiting to board Hasegawa’s boat and those of three other companies. Hasegawa’s customers came from all over Japan and several foreign countries.

“Today there were more (whale) jumps than usual; it was fantastic,” said Kiyoko Ogi, a 47-year-old Tokyo bus driver who’s been whale-watching in Rausu three times. “I’m really opposed to commercial whaling; seeing whales close is so exciting.”

Whale hunting was never big in Rausu, and though Hasegawa said there once was “trouble” with people hunting small Baird’s beaked whales nearby, those fishermen now stay far from the tours and will tell him where to find orcas and sperm whales.

But he’s dubious about whether demand for whale meat will ever pick up. Restaurants and hotels in Rausu avoid serving it.

“We get a lot of kids in summer vacations. If you tell them on the boat that ‘this is the whale we ate last night,’ they’d cry,” he said.

“If they serve whale, nobody from overseas will come, especially Europeans,” he added. “Given that the national government is trying to woo overseas tourists so much, its thinking (on whaling) seems a bit wrong.”

#news #wild #cetacean #whale #dolphin #japan #whaling #whale watching

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radiojamming · 6 years

Text

lil fic for my own indulgence of josie and javier’s first kiss hell ye

also hi my name is DJ and i use the same made up town for every fic and i feel no shame! aaaand this takes place ~1896 ish, so javier’s been with the gang for about a year.

- - -

The lawmen of Copperbell must have boring lives, as apparently they’re hawkeyed enough to see trouble before it even happens. For a tiny, exhausted mining town, it’s not so much surprising as it is frustrating. Scoping for jobs and planning heists doesn’t work quite as well when those oh-so fine gentlemen of the law are hovering only a few feet away.

For Josie and Javier, it means several miserably boring days in the Peacock Hotel, waiting for the opportune moment to do something other than trying to make sense of the gaudy decorations around the hotel room and wiping the floor with drunk folks at the poker table downstairs. Copperbell’s distinctly lacking in an entertainment district (they did have a lovely travelling show come through on Thursday, advertising chickens who could jump through hoops and a goat that could eat and spit up jewelry), so Josie and Javier are mostly left to their own devices. This, decidedly, isn’t for the best.

For nearly twenty miles in each cardinal direction, there’s nothing but scrublands and washes. A train comes through twice a day, carrying the mail and a few passengers who have sought work in other, more fruitful places. Around three in the afternoon, the winds have a tendency to pick up and cause small dust storms that whip up ruddy dust devils on the main thoroughfare, rendering promenades impossible. At night, the sun dips below the violet ridge of mountains to the west and the nightlife that follows is about as lively as a boneyard. The most exciting thing is when a coyote paws through someone’s garbage.

On the late afternoon of their fifth day in Copperbell, Josie worries about the damage that Javier’s done to the left side of the door frame. It’s riddled in knife-shaped pockmarks from practicing his throws. Hours are filled with fhwip-thunk! and his footsteps, then the creak of the wicker chair in their room.

Josie sprawls on the bed and tries to read from the hotel’s limited library. She gets about a quarter of the way through a book about the flora and fauna of the wash before she realizes that she hasn’t retained a single word. After another fhwip-thunk! thump, thump, creaaaaaaak, she decides that she’s about had enough.

“Either we need to try another town, or we do something,” she says, rubbing at her good eye which feels like it’s full of Copperbell’s famous omnipresent dust.

Javier shrugs and thumbs the tip of his knife. “Don’t know what we can do,” he says slowly, still mindful of his developing English. It’s gotten significantly better in the year that he’s been running with them. “Law’s everywhere.”

Josie grimaces and sinks back against the pillows. They’ve tried to play the newly married couple card, opting for enterprising tourists in the glorious locale of Copperbell. As far as a ruse goes, it’s a poor one. No one comes to Copperbell unless they have to, which means the law is probably right to be suspicious. That, and Javier acts like a startled rabbit whenever she introduces him as her husband.

It also doesn’t help their case that she’s apparently a new, blushing bride with an eyepatch and a limp like a pirate, and he looks like a desperado straight from a penny novel.

He throws the knife again--fhwip-th-thunk as it misses the door frame and lands blade down on the boards--and Josie rolls onto her side, staring out the window thoughtfully. Outside, the evening has gone from burning orange to inky blue. The coyotes are probably already yipping a symphony in the distance with only the stars as their audience. It’s a waning moon tonight, so--

She sits up, startling Javier again who almost drops the knife on his foot. He stares at her, and she stares at him, a smile starting to spread across her face.

“I say we do it tonight anyway.”

“What?”

“We do the heist. That big copper magnate fella’s house that Hosea was talking about.”

Javier looks confused, and for a moment, she thinks that he didn’t understand her. Then, he shrugs. “We’ll get caught,” he says.

“Not if we’re smart. Keep to the shadows, don’t use the whole married couple bit, and do a good old fashioned house robbery before the sun comes up.”

He squints at her. “And if the law comes?”

“Then we run.” She cocks her grin like a pistol. “What are they gonna do? Chase us into the wash?”

That’d be ruination for multiple parties, and the officers would probably figure them for dead between the distance and the rattlesnakes. Fortunately, she and Javier are a little better adjusted to great swatches of wilderness than most people.

Slowly, like the crawl of the sunrise, Javier grins at her and slides his knife back into its sheath. “Okay,” he says at last. “What can it hurt?”

- - -

Plenty, apparently.

First of all, the wealthy people of Copperbell are few and far between, and apparently very defensive of every last bit of finery in their houses. So much as an embroidered napkin goes missing and suddenly every dog in Copperbell is up and barking, and every lawman finds liberal use for his whistle.

Secondly, there are only a handful of places to hide in the town. The church is an option, but that’s just asking for a standoff with the law. There’s the aforementioned wash, but unless there’s a big enough sagebrush bush to hide both of them, it’s not something that can be done in under ten minutes. With men shouting, whistles being blown, and mutts braying like bloodhounds, their options are fewer and fewer.

At the very least, Josie’s gotten away with a pocket watch, a solid gold letter opener (with a very charming naked cherub on the top), and a lovely silver necklace. Javier hasn’t had time to list off what little he managed to grab before the shouting started. He’s a little more concerned with navigating through the shadows, as they had planned, trying to find some obscure nook that no one’s found yet. Mostly, he’s performing impressive, long-winded strings of curses in Spanish, hardly pausing to take a breath as he does it. Josie would be even more impressed if they weren’t running for their lives.

They skid around a corner, and even in the dark, Josie recognizes the back wall of the Peacock Hotel. They can’t very well burst into the lobby, covered in dust and sweat, panting like they’ve run a mile (she thinks by now, they probably have). It’s as good as a dead end, and Josie can only hope that Copperbell’s jail cells aren’t as dusty as everything else, and that they’re not fond of the noose as a primary source of entertainment.

Then, Javier yanks them back into the shadows by a pile of crates and unmarked barrels. He’s breathing hard, glancing back and forth like a pendulum in quick step. Finally, he catches his breath and nods to her.

“I have an idea,” he says. At the same time, they hear more shouting.

“Can’t hurt, what ever it is.”

“Can’t hurt,” he agrees.

Pauses.

Looks at her with his eyes just pale flickers of light.

And kisses her like their lives depend on it. (They do.)

Josie staggers back against the wall in surprise. Javier presses her against it, his right hand rising up to her jaw, the other hand pressed against the wall beside her waist. It takes Josie a moment to realize what he’s attempting to do, and she has to give him credit for it-- It’s very clever.

She responds by hooking one arm around the back of his shoulders, and the other hand finds a spot under his coat, right at his waist. If she needs to, she can slide that hand down and grab his revolver, provided either of them stand a chance at surviving a firefight. She inches her legs apart just enough for him to slot one of his between them. As an added thought, she quickly reaches up from his shoulders to knock his hat off and ruffle his hair to make it look like they’ve been at this for awhile. She almost laughs outright when he makes an interested ‘hmm’ sound against her lips (which feels very pleasant) and returns the favor, tugging her braid loose.

There are a few things that she realizes at that moment. One of them is that Javier is far more clever than anyone’s given him credit for. It’s been a little less than a year since Dutch picked him up, and that time has been full of lessons, small missions, and him attempting to find his niche in a gang of strangers. He hasn’t exactly been shy, per se, but he also hasn’t been given much opportunity yet to really let his skills be used to their advantage. He’s a quick thinker, and Josie makes a mental note to pass that along to Dutch and Hosea when she gets the chance.

The second realization is that he is one hell of a good kisser. She doesn’t have much to compare to, but even she knows that this is a good thing. He tilts his head just so, and his lips are warmer and softer than they look. When they finally hear the lawmen start to approach, he takes the opportunity to slide his tongue into her mouth, which technically isn’t necessary, but is a pretty good touch considering the illusion they’re trying to keep up. She responds in turn, a little happier to oblige than she probably should be.

Someone kicks up gravel near them, and all Josie hears is, “You there! Stop-- ...Oh.”

She doesn’t look up. Javier’s not giving her much of a reason to.

The officer makes a strangled sound in the back of his throat. “I-- Uh-- P-pardon me, sir and uh-- miss.”

Josie tilts her head back just enough to speak, but Javier just occupies himself by kissing a trail down her jaw to her neck. “Missus,” she corrects. “Just married.”

She gets about three seconds to look at the stunned lawman before Javier’s kissing her properly again, and Josie’s so far from complaining that she might as well be standing on another continent.

“I... W-well, congratulations! That’s--” He clears his throat again. “Yes. Well. Carry on.”

He doesn’t linger long after that, and after another minute or so (a very, very blissful minute), the shouts and barking gets further away. Then, it’s almost completely quiet save for the soft, wet sounds of their kisses and the whipping of the wind in the eaves above them. Finally, Javier leans back and grins at her. She does the same, until both of them finally crack and laugh with relief.

“Mierda,” Javier breathes, wiping at his eyes. “That was a miracle.”

“That was brilliant, Mister Escuella,” Josie corrects. She hasn’t moved her arm from his shoulders yet, and that’s yet to bother her.

And then she sees that little bit of Javier that she’s coming to understand is the real him. That clever fox look on his face that she’s hoping to see a lot more of. “Señora Escuella, it’s been a pleasure,” he says.

They laugh again, at the absurdity of it all, at just about everything about this damn trip. Then, Josie kisses him on the cheek, and can’t ignore how Javier just seems to lean into it. “Come on,” she says. “I’m exhausted, and I don’t think they’re gonna bother us now.”

They stumble into the lobby of the Peacock, arms around each other, dizzy and grinning. For the first time, Josie thinks they probably actually look like the newlyweds they’ve been claiming to be, and that thought makes her laugh again as the receptionist gives them a polite smile.

And honestly, the sleep that follows is probably the best Josie has ever had.

#rdr2 #red dead redemption 2 #javier escuella #oc: josie bishop #javier/oc #this was so fun #they're just miguel and tulio tbh

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stuckinadreamaboutyou-blog · 5 years

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Thumbnail Blaster Review and Bonus

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didanawisgi · 5 years

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Simon Turney explores the surprising history of the female Knights Templar.

“The Knights Templar are without a doubt one of the most well-known groups of the medieval world – studied endlessly, depicted in numerous novels and movies as both good guys and bad, their bravery and piety vaunted, their secretive nature explored, their morals questioned, their godly purpose stacked up against their worldly wealth. It would seem that every aspect of Templar life and history has been covered in fiction. And that was what I thought when I first considered writing about them. How could I do something that’s not simply rehashing ground already covered extensively? I found the answer in not one unexplored niche, but in two that were closely tied together by two historical figures.

The first is 12th to 13th century Reconquista Spain. Oddly, despite the great span of that land and its troubled history, in English literature, at least, it is sparsely touched upon. I suspect that the lure of the great crusades in the Holy Land somewhat overshadow what was simultaneously happening on the Iberian peninsula, especially where the Templars are concerned, given that they were formed in Jerusalem as a direct consequence of the ongoing struggle in the Middle East.

But it is worth remembering that the Templars were an international organisation, for all their initial focus on the Holy Land. Their political and administrative heart shifted and focused, at times, more in France than anywhere else. And while Richard of England and Philip of France were securing their place in history at Acre, and the Templars there shared in the disaster that was the battle of Hattin, their order was also at work in Iberia.

It is misleading, of course, to speak of Spain. In the late 12th century, there was no such thing as Spain. What there was was a collection of Christian and Arabic states that sporadically jostled and engaged in war. The Reconquista was never a continual push south by combined Christian forces, but more reminiscent of what was happening in the Holy Land. While France and England, along with other nations and orders, engaged in no less than nine crusades there over two centuries, in Iberia, rival Christian kings would launch campaigns, occasionally gaining new territory and forcing back the line of Arabic control, sometimes with disastrous results. The Christian kingdoms of Portugal, Leon, Castile, Navarre and Aragon were as often at loggerheads with one another as they were busy fighting the Moors. What had once been a collection of individual Moorish taifas, however, each led by an emir, had been subsumed by a tide of new zealous moors from Africa, the Almohad Caliphate. Only one independent taifa remained on the Balearic islands. The rest of Islamic Iberia was united and focused against a fragmented Christian world. As such it is no surprise that the reconquest of Iberia was a slow and painful process that took more than seven centuries in total.

But here we find a niche for the Knights Templar. In that famous order we have a force of purposeful ready-made crusaders whose allegiance was to God and the pope and no individual nation. As such they were a useful tool for the Iberian kings to employ in the Reconquista. In return for grants of land and power, they would lend their lances and muscle to the fight against the Almohads. Thus the Templars spread across the Christian lands of Iberia, sometimes achieving great influence, such as in the striking will of Alfonso I of Aragon, who left everything to the Templars, the Hospitallers and the Order of the Holy Sepulchre.

Thus the Templars had their niche. But Iberia in the late 12th century was a hard land for them. In other countries, their order gathered manpower and land and wealth in donatives at a surprising rate – enough to eventually make kings jealous and cause their downfall. Iberia was different, though. Centuries of war against the moors, as well as internecine conflicts in the north, had left a land that was considerably poorer in both resources and manpower than it should have been. Moreover, a significant proportion of the workforce in the Christian lands were moors who had either converted or were in effect slaves. We should not forget the significant Jewish population, also. So, in Iberia often we find that the houses of the Templars are somewhat different from those in other countries.

There are records in Spain of Templar lands being administered and worked by moors and Jews. The Order had Moorish slaves, for certain, but there are surprising documents that tell of transactions between the Templars and groups against whom they would be seemingly naturally opposed. This is the interesting world I discovered when I began to look into Templar Spain. A world where the Order’s rules were perhaps bent considerably more than in other lands by simple necessity.

And therein lies my hook and the two figures I mentioned above that tied together my two niches: Templar Spain and Templar women. It will surprise many to know that there were women in the Order of the Temple. After all, they were the Knights Templar. Their remit was to be a sword-arm of the Church to protect pilgrims from heathen raiders. What place then did women have in the Order? The answer is officially none. Indeed the Order’s Rule, laid down by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, specifically forbade women, and went so far as to set rules that kept the members of the Order as far from the temptation of women as possible. There could be no female Templars.

And yet at Mühlen in Austria we find a Templar nunnery, and officially labelled as such. And in the cartularies of the Templar houses there are many, many records of female members of the order, at least at the associate level of Consoror or Donat (lay sisters or women tied to the order through donations). This in itself is interesting enough to consider as the heart of a novel, but in further investigation into the role of woman in the military orders, I found my two figures, and their existence simply flabbergasted me.

Ermengarda of Oluja, along with her husband Gombau joined the Order of the Temple and donated land. They were clearly shuffled off into separate houses, and Gombau disappears from the record a few years later. Ermengarda, though, is unique. She is noted in documents as a Sister of the Order. Not a lay sister, consoror or donat, but as a sister, the presumed equivalent of a full brother. This again is astonishing to me, but there was more to come, and it blew apart all my preconceptions of the Templars, for in the historical record, Ermengarda is referred to as a preceptrix, commanding the house of Rourell in Catalunya. So not only do we have a female Templar which is forbidden in the rule, but she is no peripheral figure. She is a mover and shaker in the Order of that region and even commands a small Templar monastery. This is the sort of figure about whom legends arise. Moreover, there is a further record of Ermengarda admitting a woman by the name of Titborga into the Order as a sister at Rourell.

Daughter of War was born from this discovery. I had set out to create a tale of the Knights Templar, but I did not want to rehash the crusades or the supposed esoteric nature of the Order. I wanted it to be real and historic and yet to cover new ground in a well-trodden area. I found that virgin ground in the form of two women who did what could not be done. Two female Templars in a land where nothing was simple. The discovery that gave rise to the book only goes to show that history is never simple and a little digging will always turn up surprises.

I tip my hat to the impressive Ermengarda d’Oluja.

A daughter of war.”

Simon Turney has published more than 25 novels, including the bestselling Marius’ Mules series. Daughter of War, published under the name S.J.A. Turney, is the first in an epic new series about the Knights Templar and is out now.

#Ermengarda d’Oluja #Knights Templar #Cistercian #Titborga #preceptrix #books #fiction #Simon Turney

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vacantgestures · 5 years

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Ascendant Recollection :CH 04:

KH - Ascendant Recollection : Chapter 04 :

Franchise: Kingdom Hearts

Genre: Action, Adventure, Drama

Love Interest: Riku

Rating: Teen

Concerned with the events of what had happened to Alice, but intrigued by the burdened with the intel of a new impending threat, Yukari resolves to inform her team mates about the shrouded figures in her dream. But the conversation is cut short when they land in a new world that demands more than brazen strength.

My team and I sat in the briefing room after heading back to the ship and setting it to auto-pilot. Joined by the very concerned slash suspicious expression of my peers, I could feel this weird tension wavering in the air as I discussed with them, the dreams, the people in the dark and how they were apparently after us.

"Huh..." Goofy scratched his temple, thoughtfully. "So you're saying you have a kind of power that lets ya see things... that are happening or might have already happened?"

"Seems fishy." Donald crossed his arms over his chest, closing an eye. "Also, inconvenient. Why can't you see the future??"

I shrugged, as I held my head in my hands. I was still really drained from that overuse of magic on the Wonderland Heartless boss.

"Yukari, how long... have you been having these dreams?" Sora asked, joining into the group discussion. "Is that why...?"

"I don't know about that one." I stopped him, knowing he was about to mention the crying. I didn't want Donald and Goofy more concerned than they needed to be. "As for how long... maybe around a year and a half ago?"

"Why didn't you say anything, to me?" He asked, sounding understandably hurt.

"I mean, I just thought they were really bad dreams is all. Besides... There was... nothing you could do about it..."

My refusal to look into his eyes as I said that, prompted a great, uncomfortable silence. Admittedly, I was still leaving out a lot of information. Like the Ladies of Light and Dark, my awakening powers, and what I had seen with Riku both on the island, and in whatever world he'd end up. I don't know why I was still holding back.

"Okay... well..." Goofy decided to reawaken the conversation. "You said that we've got some baddies watchin' our moves, right? I mean... that sounds pretty bad..."

"Not as bad as them sending Heartless after us!!" Donald screeched. "They're making us work harder than we need to!"

"They're trying to kill us..." I clarified. "More importantly... they're trying to get rid of Sora."

"Just me?" He asked. "What about you?"

"They said something about... using me..." I responded, leaning my cheek into my palm. It was something that I'd completely ignored before, due Riku's appearance following the sequence but, my curiosity was renewed when the Lady of Light spoke to me.

"Fine... We'll cross that bridge when we get there." Goofy supplied. "What's important is that we now know where that there Heartless came from in Traverse Town--"

"And Wonderland!" Donald input.

"But why are they trying to slow us down?" Sora asked. "They're obviously up to something."

We all sat together, pondering silently for any possibilities. I recounted what happened in the dark void and my conversation with Lady Light. I suppose it was fine to tell them this bit of intel.

"Maybe it has something to do with Alice's disappearance." I voiced.

All the boys looked up at me with big eyes. Half ajar mouths, expressed more words than were being voiced in that moment.

"When I was trapped in that cage... this sort of Dark pool formed at the bottom. It sucked both of us in... I managed to break free... somehow, I can't recall..." I lied a bit.

"But Alice didn't." Sora noted.

"You think, maybe it's got somethin' to do with that there Keyhole we found."

"Or maybe... It's both!" I exclaimed, popping up from my seat.

"That's an idea..." Donald said. "Have you had any dreams to confirm it?"

I shook my head. "I told you everything I've seen for the time being."

A break in the conversation with permeated by the intercom buzzing to live as Chip’s voice squeaked through with an announcement. "Looks like there's another world up ahead guys."

"I guess, we're gonna have to cut this meeting short." Donald sighed. "Maybe after we get through this one, and we see what we see, we could try heading back to Traverse Town and talk about it with Leon." Then Donald looked at me. "You won't mind telling him what you told us, right?"

I shook my head, wordlessly.

"Good. Then, let's check out the new world."

Kingdom Hearts: Ascendant Recollection

Chapter 04

The True Heroes' Circuit

Going to new worlds was far more mind boggling than I would have been able to assume. With only two new worlds under my belt, I realized just how... plain, my view of the outside worlds was, when I was back home. Each one was so different, and with almost nothing to compare to, having their own quirks and niches. They were all pretty unique in their own way.

So when I mention the incredible culture shock I go through when I visit a new world, I wonder if I'll ever not feel this sensation with every new encounter.

So far, this new world seemed a bit sparse. Our little party stood in the center of what looked to be a sort of court yard that caged us in with surrounding, marble columns towering high above our heads. The sky washed the area is beautiful blues against the whites and gold of the scenery. Everywhere, spotting the place about us, were lit braziers that accented the opposing, towering structures.

The main attraction to the area were the two, enormous statues, what towered high above our heads. Two men, dressed in armor, stood for battle, against each other. Their swords crossed as they stood frozen in an eternal clash.

"Awesome gate!!" Sora exclaimed.

"Ahem--" I heard a little voice clear it's throat, and out of Sora's hoodie came Jiminy.

It was terribly easy to forget he was around.

"This here is, the Coliseum of Olympus." He went on. "Famous warriors from all over the multiverse come to gather at this stadium, regularly to pit themselves against each other in mixed martial arts tournaments."

"Sounds like a lot of destruction of that precious world order..." I mumbled, clear enough for Donald to hear.

He grumbled, rolling his eyes in my direction and I couldn't help but grin. I thought it was funny, but that rule was bound to hold some inconsistencies, right?

"Forget that!" Sora said, stopping in his tracks. His eyes lit up as they locked with mine. A bright smile rocketed across his face. "Jiminy mentioned tournaments! We gotta Check it out!"

"Wait a second- We don't have time to— Sora!!" Donald squawked as he chased after him, as Sora had already gone barreling his way past the gargantuan statues and into the enormous double doors.

"We better go..." I sighed, as Goofy and I followed the two impulsive characters, in our midst inside.

The interior, was just as golden, if not ten times more. It was more like a small lobby that was only the entrance to something greater. Flames in each corner of the room, lit up the place. And in one of those corners was a small... brown hair-legged, red headed goat... man, at work as he was putting up a plaque.

He was the only one around so, Sora approached him.

"Um..." Sora started. But the goat guy stopped him before he could get much of a real word in.

"Great timing. Give me a hand and move that pedestal over there for me, will ya?"

The four of us, turned to find said pedestal, sitting across the room. Its size was comparable to that of a large boulder you'd find blocking a cave entrance. With that being said-- it was huge. Sora would not be able to move it.

My gaze slowly drifted in his direction, and I couldn't help be let go a soft, "Ahhhh... Sora?"

"I got this!" He quickly cut me off.

Eagerly, he jogged over to the enormous block of solidified clay and threw his entire weight against it. Nothing happened, as he let go a couple of dignified strains before giving up just as quickly as he'd volunteered.

"There's no way I could move this thing!" Sora blurted out. "It's way too heavy!"

"What's that Herc?!" The goat guy bleated angrily, turning on us. His face had gone hot red with something that was a mix between rage and mystification. But it was in those couple of seconds where, his eyes quickly registered that one person had instead been a group of people, that his temper dissipated.

"Oh..." He managed. "Wrong guy. Thought you's was someone else. Anyway, we're closed right now, so you'll have to come back during business hours." He turned on our party and made a shoeing gesture with his hand, getting back to his previous task.

"Uh... I'm sorry, but..." Sora wasn't about to quit though. His heart was already in it. "I'm actually interested in entering the tournament."

To this, goat dude burst out into a fit of laughter. He swiveled back around on his little goat legs, just as a tear of could be squeezed out of his eye. "You!! Wanna enter the tournament?! Hahahaha!! That's the funniest thing I ever heard!!"

He proceeded to leap down off the stool he'd been standing on, and strutted over towards the hunk of rock. "Can't even move a lousy..." And then he proceeded to attempt the move it. "Pedestal!!!"

I nodded, pursing my lips, a bit tired of watch enough people struggle over pushing a rock across the room. "In any case..." I began. "You think, maybe there’s a way we could enter?"

"Yukari!" Donald, snapped.

"What? It could be good practice for us to learn to work together better and use our Keys." I retorted, whispered harshly back at him.

"This ain’t no practice run circuit!" The goat man, breathlessly bleated as he came away from the stone. "Hero's only! You wanna compete? Show me your ticket or beat it!"

The four of us, exchanged defeated glances, knowing none of us had, at any point before this, acquired any sort of ticket. So, we left, clunking back through the door we'd come.

"Quite the hospitality, he had." I shrugged, stuffing my hands into my back pockets.

"Stupid ole Goat-Man..." Sora pouted.

"Yeah!" Donald added. "Heros only..." he let go a mocking grumble as he stomped along. "We've got two of your so-called Heroes, right here! Keyblade chosen and everything!! That's gotta be something!"

"And something, that is indeed!" A low voice, slithered in through the boy's complaints.

Our little party stopped and turned towards the enormous double doors, we'd come from. Within the shadows, a very tall blue skinned man swathed in black robes looked us over from within the shadows. His yellow eyes almost glowed as bright as the stark blue flame that sat on his head.

"Mmm... I don't like this guy..." I said under my breath as he slowly began to approached. I watched carefully not allowing my eyes to leave him as he appeared to be gliding across the ground, black smoke trailing behind him.

"Honestly, the old goat's gettin' stiffer by the year." The man continued. His black lips hid behind them, small sharp teeth that made me want to distrust the guy even more. "But it would be a shame if we allowed him to ignore young talent, like yourselves."

"And... who are you, exactly?" I asked, as, being in the rear, I was closest to him.

The blue man, scoffed a bit. His lips twitched just so, as though he'd suddenly felt offended. To which he quickly shrugged off, attempting to switch gears. "Meh... Details." He said, reaching his spindly fingers around my shoulder and turned me to face the boys.

I groaned audibly to express my extreme discomfort.

"I see you four are tryin' to apply as rookies. I'm thinkin’ I can probably help with that, seeing how you're little band of 'heroes' tickles my interests." The guy leaned in, now his flaming head close to mine. The boys all having been, at this point captivated by his presence. Slowly he lifted his hand up before my face and snapped. That was all it took a for a glistening, golden to ticket appear from nothing.

"A pass!" Sora shouted with delight. I could see in his eyes as he was itching to grab it up.

"Go on, kid." The blue dude, ushered. "Take it. It should be enough to get you in, to the torny."

"...Mmm.... What's the catch?" I asked, looking distrustfully into his eyes.

"Catch? There isn't any." The guy said, getting suspiciously closer as his elbow locked around my neck. I felt like if I made the wrong move, this would very much go from a chummy embrace, to vice grip. "I just know potential when I see it. And I can definitely tell from just lookin at you, that ya'll've got the eyes of true heroes."

My eyes carefully shifted back towards the ticket, he'd still been holding between his index finger and thumb. My eyes darted around at my team before slowly reaching for the slip of shiny paper. The second I'd had a firm grip on it, the blue guy disappeared and a cloud of glittering black smoke. But of course, not before a an elongated smile slowly stretched across his long face.

I coughed and sputtered, clearing the dust from my eyes, that smelt vaguely of pomegranates and ash.

"Who was that guy?" Goofy questioned aloud.

But no one here would be able to answer his question. I gazed down at the golden ticket which had been gifted to us. Obviously something wasn't right about this guy. It was even more obvious that he had less than good intentions. The way he'd seem to know exactly what we'd wanted and even hinted at how he knew who we might have been, made me wonder if he had anything to do with those less than savory characters from my dream.

"Why don't..." I began to say, my eyes tracing the bright golden trim of our new entry ticket. "we go back and talk to the goat dude again."

* * * * *

"What the heck!?" The goat man, bleated incredulously. "How in holy Hera's name, did guys get one of these??"

The four of us watched on as he inspected the small piece of paper that confirmed our registration in the tournament to come. No one said anything as to how we'd obtained it, as if we'd come to some sort of silent agreement on the matter. But Sora did step forth eagerly to press the goat once again.

"So this means you're gonna let us compete now, right?"

"Well... I mean... It don't look like I got much a choice with this." The goat dude hummed, putting the ticket away. "But first, I'm thinkin' of puttin you guys through a crash course. Fish tail, over here mentioned how you's four may need to improve your team work, earlier. If that's true, who knows what else, you guys need help with."

"Fish tail?" I narrowed my eyes at him. Was he referring to my hair style??

"Follow me, right through here." He led us through the only door in the room, through to a dark passage. The sound of our clamoring footsteps slapped against the close quarters as we walked. "Oh, and by the way... the name's Phil. Whatchya rookies, call yourselves?"

"I'm Sora"

"Donald"

"Yukari"

"Goofy!"

The four of us introduced one after the other.

"Alright." Phil's grin could be seen faintly in dim light of sconces that lit the corridor. "You four seem pretty eager to go at it. Show me what you've got."

The dark path had finally ended whence we were led into a much more spacious tunnel that broke off into a multitude of exits. Phil led us through one of them. On the other side was what had clearly been an arena set against the stark blue mid-day sky. The stadium itself was empty, indicating that the tournament wouldn’t seem to be starting for a while.

I suppose this would get our party a little bit of time to get some practice in.

"Alright, rookies." Phil announced. "Let's go! Show me what you've got so far!"

For a moment, our team kind of just stood speechless, together as we stared Phil down, completely unsure of what to do.

"Uh..." Sora vocalized. "What... What do you want us to do?"

"Fight, of course." Phil said it like it had been obvious.

"Who..?" I questioned, looking around for enemies and or opponents.

"Each other! Last one standing is the winner!" Phil bleated, excitedly. Shooting his tiny fist in the air as he shouted at the top of his lungs, "Fight!!"

The four of us scrambled around a bit once we all realized what was happening. But it seemed this would display who was the most competitive, and who was the most passive as both Donald and Sora simultaneously made the first moves.

"Waak!!" Donald rose his staff into the air. Small bolts of lightning rained down around us, but none of them seemed to hit anyone. Instead, they appeared to serve more as a distraction than anything. I watched as Goofy rose his shield over his head to protect himself, whilst Sora dove in, straight for Donald.

"What are you doing!?!" Donald shouted, bouncing to and for on his feet. Panic was in his eyes as he tried to read Sora's moves.

"Sorry Donald!" Sora shouted, raising his blade overhead.

I watched as Sora was about to strike Donald down, whilst Donald attempt to smack him away with his staff. As I'd expected, Goofy butted in and broke Sora's attack. Sora, leapt back right as Goofy went in for a counter.

"Thanks for the save!" Donald called out.

"You're welcome!" Goofy grinned, but then his expression quickly reverted back to that of something like determination as he readied his shield. "But now I've gotta take you down!"

He charged Donald who was now running for his life, spamming flame magic at Goofy who'd blocked each attack with his shield. I realized how absorbed I'd been in watching the boys when the sound of footsteps came clunking in my direction.

Almost too late, I summoned my Keyblade as Sora slammed his down onto my own. But something wasn't right. Where once my Keyblade was a bright, silvery double shafted weapon, in my left hand was now a blade, far more reminiscent of a key-- black and gothic in appearance with a heavy chain running through the center of the shaft's designs. From the bat winged hand guard encrusted with a deep violet gem, that encircled the handle, dangled a keychain with a black crown.

"Wh-- Augh!" I cried out, shoving Sora back.

If he'd notice anything different, he didn't bother mentioning it. But that was fine, all the same as I dove behind him and ran in the direction of Donald and Goofy.

"Don't run away!" Sora shouted after me playfully.

I grinned back at him, satisfied that his full attention was on me. I turned to face our remaining party members who'd been locked in an intense brawl- Donald continuously casting spells with Goofy blocking every, one.

"Incoming!!" I shouted as I neared them.

Startled, the two stopped what they'd been doing to scream their heads off as I'd coming bounding my way towards them. So much so, they had no way to anticipate just what I'd do.

Probably thinking I'd tackle either one of them, Goofy directed his shield towards me. Donald, threw his staff in my direction and shouted, "Freeze!!" Narrowly missing him by a hair, I ducked and slipped between the two's feet. All that was left now, was for Sora to realize what was coming to him.

I turned in time to watch a frozen Sora slip and slide into the other two. Donald and Goofy were knocked out of the way but, shivering, hoodie boy was still coming at me.

I blocked as he rammed his blade down on mine. Catching the look on Sora’s chilled features, I caught a glimpse of bold determination. Maybe he thought he had this in the bag? I smirked, shoving my forehead straight into his, instantly catching him off guard and forcing him to lose a bit of his balance. Taking this chance, I threw up his guard, snatching his Key out of his grip and swiped at his feet, for good measure. I watched as Sora was flung onto his back, hitting the stone beneath our feet hard.

"We're not done yet!!" Donald Squawked.

I looked up to find him and Goofy come charging at me from short distance away.

Two to one, huh? Or maybe...

I glanced back at Sora who was officially down for the count. He lay sprawled out on the ground, completely unconcerned of the playing field for the rest of us. Using that to my advantaged, I shut my eyes, and concentrated, calling on the power of magic. The last time, I did it, I completely just wasted all of my energy by carelessly flinging out all of my magic at once.

Aiming at the two’s feet, I shot a blast of ice that turned the ground beneath them into a thin slippery sheet. It didn't take much for the two's running to turn into a slipping and sliding as they slid right into Sora, and went careening over his body and into the dirt.

"And it looks like we've got ourselves a winner!!" Phil cheered, prancing into the arena, where he hopped around the four of us.

Sora sat up, massaging his head. "No way... I want a... a rematch.." He said between breaths.

"Nope." Phil denied him. "I've seen enough. The little lady right here, trumped you all. And I think I see why. You've all got your short comings and I know just the thing to put you guys on track before the tournament starts. Scrape yourselves up off the ground and follow me."

Obviously, we did just that as we shuffled after the goat dude to what appeared to be a sort of outdoor training grounds slash gymnasium. Clearly this guy was a seasoned coach, having everything from the dumbbells to the "save the rag-doll in distress" obstacle course. I gaped about the place for what little time I was able before Phil broke us up and got us busy with our individual training exercises.

Phil put the boys to work doing various things that seemed to build on their reflexes. He actually set them in the course were they were tasked with saving rag doll civilians as they fought off wooden monster targets. Meanwhile, he kept his focus on me as he had me attacking a poor, sad looking, defenseless dummy. He was giving me tips on how to hit hard and where.

"Don't just throw the your weapon around." He said. "It's an extension of yourself-- Like a longer arm. Use it to connect your attacks with your target, not just whack ‘em to and fro. Hit em' hard, hit em' right and they'll go down quickly and more effectively."

I drew back my black key, my forehead drenched with sweat. I was exhausted. We'd burned through literally two worlds before this one with zero rest in between. I thought about how we were preparing for the tournament and how I wasn’t as ready as I'd like to be. Sure it was kind of exciting, but I was nervous about how I'd preform.

"You got a teacher?" Phil inquired, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

"Hmm, why do you ask?" I lowered my stance.

"During that little buddy brawl, the very first thing you did was stand there and watch to see what your team mates would do-- see how they'd move, who'd attack first. After that, it was like you used their trepidations or short comings against them. Ya didn't land any solidifying hits though. You played really defensively. You seem to know a thing or two about a fight... I think I'd be pretty scared to see you actually start fighting back."

I blushed a little bit. The only things I knew were what Riku taught me. Sure I'd watched a lot of beach brawls between most of the boys back on the Islands. Riku tended to toss me around a lot, just because I was always looking for tips on how to go against different opponents. Sora was fun to spar with, but I didn't think he took it as seriously with me as he did with Riku. But then again, it was all fun and games before. The stakes were a bit higher now. All in all, I found myself relying on my team mates to come through where I knew I couldn't.

"In any case... let's take a break." Phil finished, trotting over towards the boys. "The tournament should start soon. I want all four of ya's to rest up and mentally prepare."

Extending his generosity even further, Phil loaded us up with tons of apples, plenty of water, and lots of pep talk. A couple hours of training and a bit of recuperating was fine by me. It was a nice cherry on top to have the guy give us one more good confidence boost. It was evident he had a lot of faith in us.

"You guys worked pretty hard." He noted, wrapping some measuring tape around Sora's bicep. I grinned, not once considering that Sora would ever grow out of his scrawny boy look. "You're efforts are sure to pay off... errm eventually. But for now, just take everything I put you though in the last two and a half hours and get out there and kick some booty!"

"But wait..." I said thoughtfully. "You said earlier that this tournament was for heroes only. All we did was work out... How does that make us qualified, again?"

"It doesn't." Phil agreed. "But it's not to say that your potential hasn't showed me something spectacular. It's not about how much you buff up your brawn, but your spirit. For example, let's use your heart. You'd want to have a strong, heart before anything else."

"How would I buff up my spirit, then?" Sora asked, after taking a long drink of water.

"Well, that all depends on you." A new voice spoke out. "You'll have to find out for yourselves, just the way that I did."

Our party looked up to find a very tall, and very brawny looking man standing over us. His bright smile radiated in our darkened spot near our gate, where we'd be let out once the tournament began and we were called forth. His skin was a nice sun bathed bronze. Bright blue eyes glistened against a his curly red hair which was held up in a sweat band. He'd been dressed in a short, brown tunic that stopped dead mid-thigh. I was feeling a little jealous about his insane calf muscles that were wrapped up in his leather sandals.

"Herc!" Phil bleated excitedly as he leapt from his spot. "Let me introduce ya kiddies!! This here is my protégé! The man I trained to become a true hero! Hercules."

"Just guessing from the looks of your sun beat faces and the fact that you all seem to have been worked to Hades, I'm gonna say you guys are some new trainees Phil took on?"

I looked back over at Sora who was gawping at Hercules's muscles and laughed. "Sorta." I giggled. "We're here for the tournament, so he wrung us out a bit."

"Ahhh I see." Hercules's eyes slowly drifted across each of us. But he didn't seem impressed. More worried than anything, which was a bit discouraging. "Well, you guys had best be careful. I'd been checking over the roster for the tournament and by the looks of it, there are no shortage of shady characters amongst the applications, the year."

"You think someone is leakin' the qualification tickets?" Phil asked, his voice now hushed.

Me and the boys immediately started to catch others eyes. I think at that moment, we all felt the same thing-- the blue dude from before was definitely on the list of suspects. I mean, it could have been him, but really who's to say there weren't others.

* * * * *

The tournament had finally kicked off and our party was doing well to barrel our way through the preliminaries. We'd gone up against many of interesting characters, to say the least but, the oddity in the situation was that there had been quite a bit of Heartless taking up the brackets. Seeing as this was the case, we did well to plow them down. Once we'd finished up our seed, we were sent back to the waiting area, to prepare for the next opponent.

We had been met by Phil on the way in, who'd congratulated our hard work, but that had been the last thing on our minds.

"How are the Heartless even competing??" Sora asked, his voice low as we whispered to each other.

"Yeah," Donald spat. "They don't have the brains to apply for anything."

"Maybe... it's got something to do with those people from the dreams..." I offered, refusing to meet the eyes of my party. That alone brought an odd discomfort to the atmosphere.

"Alright, alright." Phil pulled us apart, cutting the conversation short. "Enough huddle, kids! You're next match is comin’ up. Time to head out."

"Who's our next opponent, more Heartless?" Donald grumbled.

I actually caught a glimpse at the brackets and saw that instead of fighting Heartless of any kind, we were going up against what seemed would be a single person. "Well... the board says, Cloud." I noted. "Kind of unassuming, but we'll just have to find out."

And find out we did.

When we stepped out onto the arena, we were met with the most edgy looking guy I'd ever had the pleasure of gracing my eyeballs with. This... Cloud character was swathed in a shroud of a tattered red scarf that practically hid a little more than half of his face away. Bright blue eyes and blond hair flashed against his crimson rags that hid beneath it, a sort of uniform of a dark sleeveless sweater and worn out, fatigues. He had a shoulder armor and a golden clawed gauntlet on one arm, and an enormous sword wrapped in bandages in his other. Also... the guy had one tons more belts than Leon, and I wasn't even about to bother counting.

The boys and I stood close together, our weapons out. Sora stood front and center with me off to his left. Goofy took his right, with Donald holding up the rear so he could comfortably cast his magic as we protected him as best as possible.

The first move was made by Donald, who threw out a quick, and small thunder spell. For a second the temperature rose as bolt of yellow lightning zipped down towards our opponent. To all of our surprise, the guy full on deflected the attack with his giant sword.

The expression on his face was just as dead as when he'd approached. Keeping his unphased eyes locked with our party, he hefted his sword, once. Just barely could I see his eye brows scrunch together when his eyes made contact with mine.

"G-guys!! Scatter!" I shouted.

I had no idea what he was planning, but I didn't like.

Sadly, this effort was waisted when he'd sliced through the air and a blast of stinging wind came surging at our party. I braced myself as best as possible, ramming my Key into the ground. Sora was almost swept away but, somehow managed to keep himself rooted when he slipped onto his hands and knees-- his fingers painfully gripping the tile in ground.

Donald and Goofy were least fortunate as they were sent blasting out of the arena. I let forth a mild curse but continued to hold on as the winds whipped and snapped, painfully at me on all sides. It only took a mere few seconds for them to die down before the sound of clunking boots, bolting in my direction, captured my attention. I could barely blink as I watched the... Cloud dude, come barreling directly at me. I stumbled a bit, unable to think fast enough as the palm of Cloud's hand, made painful contact with my throat, gripping it tightly to the point where I couldn't even scream out.

"Yukari!!" Sora shouted.

But I couldn't even tell where he was anymore. Cloud continued to run with me in his vice grip a little ways before shoving me straight into the ground. I just barely managed to choke out a stifled scream, the pain was so intense. The wind was full on stripped out of me. To make matters worse, it felt like I definitely cracked something.

With wide eyes, I stared up into the blond man's single visible one, trying to control my breathing, as his hold on my throat only tightened. I tried my hardest to pull his hand away, but it was literally impossible.

"Take this!!" Sora shouted, which was a pretty dumb move on his part. But it did cause the man's grip on my esophagus to ease up.

The guy didn't even turn to look at Sora. He only rose, still latching onto my larynx before flinging me right into him. The sound of our bodies slamming together as we'd painfully collided was enough to make any mother worry. In unison, we both released adolescent squeals of pain when the sides of our faces smashed into each other.

I lay on top of Sora, my head completely spinning from the prior lack of oxygen during my time being stuck in a choke hold. I tried to level out my breathing, but I... couldn't. I was having trouble somehow. Was it because this guy was way out of our league? Dude was fast, I couldn't read what he'd do at all. Even giant Heartless were easier than this. They were slow, and dumb. But this was different. This was terrifying.

"Yukari, a-are you okay?" Sora asked, trying to sit up

I would have moved off of his chest had it not been for the looming shadow that emerged before us. Cloud stood at the ready. His enormous sword hung just a few inches from my back. He had us pinned down, completely rendered spent. I tried to control my breathing as I looked him right in his bright blue eye. Met with a seasoned scowl, I could feel the disappointment coming off of him.

"This fight was over before it started." Cloud said, his voice was low as he spoke. "You guys are just some random kids. What was Hades so afraid of?" But then the look in his eye changed when I noticed him gazing over at the Keyblade in my hand.

Did he know about it? And who was Hades?

A thunderous boom, cut through the air and shook the world around us. Almost instantly, it grew increasingly dark as some enormous creature leapt over the coliseum walls, slamming right down into the arena and completely blotted out the sun that hung high above our heads. Reaching near the size of whole stadium, was an enormous three headed rottweiler, which growled and drooled as it stood glaring down at us with it's enormous, glowing red eyes. It's three heads were trained on cloud, but I felt some serious anger and hatred brewing in the big hound that could be preserved for Sora and myself as well.

Delayed, but I suppose it was from the shock, screaming erupted all around from the audience. People were running and fighting to get out of the of the stadium.

As I gazed up at the creature, I felt my heart crawl into my gut. The hot breath that streamed out of the thing's nostrils smelt of brimstone and foul scented ashes. If I wasn't frozen from the fear of being stabbed by Cloud’s giant knife before, I was definitely paralyzed at the sight of the evil looking mutt.

The thing let go a thunderous roar that shook the entire area. I could just barely hear Donald and Goofy screaming for Sora and I to get up, from where they stood nearing the exits.

"C'mon, Yukari!" Sora grunted, pushing me up with him.

"I... I can't! My back, it's-- Augh!" My screaming had come from Sora taking action, and pulling one of my arms around his neck. I yelped in pain, as he held my tight, where the rib in my back had to have cracked from Cloud's earlier attack.

"Sorry..." He apologized. "But we've got to move!"

Another roar, exploded across the arena. Sora and I looked back at Cloud who was now, down on the ground, clearly unconscious.

"We gotta help him!" I winced.

But it was clear that my priorities were not in order.

"Move! Move! Move!!" Sora shouted, trying to pull me along as fast as possible, as one of Cerberus's claws was zipping right at us. But there was no way we'd avoid it. Even at incredible limping speed, nothing but a true miracle would be able to save us.

I like to think I have a gift for calling things as I see'em.

The strike from the big gargantuan puppy, never came.

Instead, Hercules took up the spotlight, dashing in to save us, having caught the thing by its claws. Throwing back the creature, he tossed it through the air, causing it to land on its back. But the thing quickly recovered and dashed back in our direction.

"Get out of here!" Hercules ordered us, bracing for impact.

"Let's go, kids!!" I could hear Phil’s voice over the angry barks of the dog.

It pounced and landed right on top of Hercules, shaking the ground beneath our feat and burying the hero under a mountain of drool and fur.

My eyes went wide as I watched. Sora yanked me along, struggling to get us back into the vestibule. We'd barely made it inside in one piece but, we were all together and safe at least.

"What's... going on?" Sora asked, as he set me carefully against the wall.

He didn't really look any better than myself. The spot on his face where the two of us had crashed into each other began to bruise and swell pretty badly, and he had a bit of a limp. "What was that??"

Phil let go a few nervous bleats. We watched as he paced around anxiously while chewing on his nails. I could see the beads of sweat pouring down his face. "That was freakin' Cerberus, the guardian of the Underworld! I can't even begin to imagine why he could be here." He rattle on. "Herc should be fine. He can handle it! But... but maybe not!! This just ain't good..."

I sighed painfully as I clasped my arm tightly across my ribs. I was still having trouble breathing, but it'd gotten better. I knew I was freaking out, but this just wasn't the time.

"What happened?" Donald asked kneeling next to me. He was no doctor, but I think it wasn't normal for a teenaged girl to by hyperventilating the way I was.

"I think she might have broken a rib." Sora said. "She said her back hurt too much to move. That guy must of really did a number on her."

"I see." Donald reached into one of his pockets, pulled out a special looking potion bottle. It was far more extravagant than the potion bottles I was used to. "Take this. It's an elixir. I don't have enough magic to heal bones, but this should help."

I slowly, and shakily moved my arm to reach for the bottle. But, Sora noticed my struggling and knelt next to me, taking up the bottle in his hands. He'd opened it up and a sickeningly sweet aroma filled the air.

I lifted my head as the elixir neared my lips. I closed my eyes tight when extremely bitter taste met my tongue but, gulped it down no less. "Elllgghh...." I voiced my very clear opinions on how that tasted. Despite that, I was already feeling better and calmer.

"That should tide you over for now." Donald grinned. I could have been going blind form the awful taste of the potion but it looked like Donald was smirking.

"We've gotta get back out there and help Hercules." I said.

"Yeah." Sora nodded. The look in his eye was resolute. I was glad that he agreed and wasn't calling for me to stay back and rest at least. Holding out his hand, he helped me up and led the way back out into the arena.

"Whoa, whoa!!" Phil jumped in front of us, his arms spread to stop us, try as he might. "I appreciate the sentiment you two, but this ain't no game! This is for real!"

"We're not afraid." Sora said, standing tall, despite him looking worse for wear just moments ago. "Besides, we've fought bigger monsters than this."

While it was true, this Cerberus wasn't as dumb and clumsy lookin' like the others. This definitely wasn't going to be a risk free fight. None the less I followed Sora past Phil and out into the area, where we were once again greeted by the big dog looming angrily over Hercules. As we barreled our way in, I'd spotted him right away against the enormous blotch of black fur, holding Cloud in his arms.

The very first thing Sora did was immediately summon his Keyblade, reel back his arm and flung it through the air. The blade went spinning violently towards Cerberus in the most impressive arc I'd ever seen, before thwanking him in the eye.

The mad dog shrunk back angrily, thrashing belting forth a gut quaking roar as it stomped about. Me and the boys ran past Hercules with our weapons, out.

"Firaga!" Donald shouted, blasting a fire ball at the dog. It howled in pain at the attack.

"Get out of here, Hercules!" I shouted, as Goofy and I stopped before him, ready to ward off any attack.

Thankfully, and surprisingly... he obeyed, nodding as he ran back to the lobby with the unconscious Cloud plopped over his shoulder.

Sora caught his Key when it circled back towards him. This was all just in time for the four of us to scatter under the mighty stomping of the big dog.

For a while, we ran around under foot, taking whacks were possible when the thing stopped thrashing enough for us not to die. I watched as Sora dove in, conking the thing on the nose. Agitated, Cerberus snapped back with its wicked sharp teeth, as though we were the perfect dinner. I whipped my dark blade against one of its legs, and was met with an attack of his whip like tail.

I went zipping through the air, at such an alarming speed, I thought the little broken rib I got earlier was about to be upstaged by a full on shattered spine.

"Aero!" Donald quacked.

On que, I was suddenly swept up by a gentle gust of wind. It carried me slowly through the air, to safely decrease my flying speed so I wouldn't snap my neck, most likely, before floating me down to the ground.

Donald was at my side, grinning at me.

"Thanks..." I said, sweating bullets at the prospect that I was mostly likely dang near about to die.

Another roar drew our attention back to the fight as we watched Cerberus rear back on its hind legs. At its gut, I could see what seemed to be a fierce quaking before an enormous knot of something traveled up its throat.

"I don't like that!" I called, backing away.

"Be ready..." Donald suggested, holding up his staff.

But that would do little to prepare us for what would happen next.

Darkness, like inky wet tendrils mixed with hot fire, spewed out of the jaws of Cerberus as he came down on our party. Instantly I got flash backs from the cage with Alice, and I almost panicked.

Would this stuff suck us in too?

Our fate's would be much worse as we were all quickly overtaken but the endless downpour of dark waves, that crashed over us and swallowed us up. Imagine fighting against a tsunami of black water. This was a good equivalent. I could hear the boys crying out as they tried to untangle themselves from the grip, but it would mean nothing as the dark stuff kept coming. The tendrils slipped around my body and tightly squeezed me beyond the point of simply hurting. I was suffocating now, the stuff drifting into my eyes and nostrils. I clamped my teeth together and only accidently opened them when I was forced to draw in a breath.

It was like I was being eaten alive by... well darkness.

I looked around at my companions. Donald and Goofy were nowhere to be seen, but I could just barely catch Sora out of the corner of my eye. He was struggling just as much as I. And I knew in the moment where our eyes met, all I could see was a similar panic and hopelessness we'd shared, back when our Island got swallowed up.

I watched him sink, his head slowly being pulled beneath as tendrils ripped his neck violently black into the dark stuff.

"S-sora!!" I cried out.

But within seconds I was sucked under as well.

With the light immediately consumed, I at first thought that I had died. But in a mere chance of fate, I was lucky to even be left unconscious enough to be encompassed in what felt like a dream.

I drifted through inky black darkness, descending slowly into the darker depths. I fought the urge to close my eyes for, I felt if I did none of us would able to make it out of this. I blinked rapidly, as I tried to focus on what was ahead of me and noticed my dark Keyblade still clutched in my left hand.

"Oblivion..." I let the word fall from my lips. But it was as though my words weren't my own as another voice spoke along with it-- one that sounded sinister.

Blinking again, I was met with that... Screecher, the Lady of Darkness. I was hardly surprised at this point. The low rattling of hisses flooded my ears, and wrapped around me like a safety blanket. Her black silhouette of a body moved like ink in water, slowly but surely slipping around my form.

"You..." I said weekly, my eyes threatening to shut.

"Me indeed." Came a gentle hiss from the creature. "It would seem that you've found yourself in a bit of a situation. I think that I may be able to help you..."

"Help me...?" I let go a lethargic groan. "Why would you want to help me? You only want... to eat me."

The thing threw her head back as she erupted into a fit of laughter. Her red mangled demon death and yellow, unblinking eyes seemed to enlarged when she'd calmed enough to shove them into my face. "Noooo... I don't want to eat you, silly." She chuckled. "You and I are a part of each other. Why… if I ate you, where would I go?"

Obviously that was some real bull. But due to the fact that I could barely move through this dark space, I let her talk.

"No... I just want to be of better service to you." She said, giddily. "Let me lend you my power."

I wasn’t sure why, but her words didn’t immediately register as I was trying to focus about ninety percent of my attention on staying conscious. "The catch..." I blinked hard this time. I knew I was fading. "What is it?"

"Catch???" She looked a bit hurt, but it seemed more like she was faking it really. "Why… there is none. It's either let me help you... Or you and your little band of kiddie heroes die here together-- become consumed by the darkness and turn in to Heartless as you wait for a new set of Keyblade wielders to come trotting along and destroy you for good."

Somehow... that really woke me up. A fate like that would be one to scare any teen straight. I gazed about myself and realized only now that, I wasn't alone. I saw Sora, Donald and Goofy, all floating around me, looking pale and lifeless as they gently hung in the space of deep violets and blacks. Tendrils and inky stuff spilled out of them-- out of their eyes and mouths, which were pried open in fear and pain. Their entire eyes had turned completely black.

"So what shall it be?" The Screecher, called for my attention again. "Stay here and die? Or take my offer to help you?"

I watched as her dark claws crept up to my chest, sinking into my shirt and gently breaking the skin. Surprisingly there was no pain, but the alarming thing about this was that black ink began to flood out of the wounds she created.

It seemed more like she was trying to scare me more than get me to trust her but, either way, my choices were quite limited.

"I'll take your help." I decided. "But only this once."

The Screecher narrowed her eyes. The grin on her face stretched wider than what was normal and I knew I would come to regret my decision. If not immediately, then surely so. She let go a few hefty giggles before raising her voice. "Only this once?" She sounded increasingly amused. "Silly child. Once this deal is made, this won't be the only time you call forth my power! This contract is binding. Without me, you are weak and it shan't take much for you to see that!!"

As she blabbed on about her claim, she swirled around me at dizzying speeds. Before I could even blink she'd pushed her inky body into my own, melting through my pours and squirming into my eyes and mouth before white hot pain flared up inside of my chest and head.

I screamed at the tip of my lung as it felt like I’d been suddenly set on fire. My body felt as though it had begun to move on its own-- the Key in my left hand shot forward and I went rocketing upwards. My body zipped through the sludge and smoke around me, until I was suddenly met with the blinding sun. Cerberus was still attacking, spewing orbs of darkness into the sky with two of its heads while the center one continued to flood the arena with the waves of Darkness.

Levitating before his great size, what seemed to be Darkness of my own, spewed forth, attacking the giant mutt with tendrils the lashed and writhed. It fought back the currents of Cerberus's attack with no effort, consuming him in a sphere of light and darkness that rose and swelled, throbbing like a pounding heart, into the sky.

"Stop!" A voice shouted in my head. "Stop this at once!! Don't let her take a hold of you!!"

But that was just it-- I had already lost whatever control I had. My body was thrumming with pain now as the sphere began to grow and sprout tendrils of its own. It shot down towards the ground and began to rip through the stadium. The black waves drained through the cracks below, and hungrily began to tangle themselves into the foundation.

"Y-Yukari!!" I heard Sora’s voice over the sounds of destruction. "Yukari, stop! It's over!!"

I strained as I pulled my neck in the direction of his voice. My party members knelt on the ground, trying to keep hold of the quacking world beneath their feet. Each of them looked, understandably terrified.

"Sleeeeeeeepp!!" The Screecher's voice rung through my head.

This was met with a fierce pain that literally almost made me pass out. Only now had I realized I'd been deceived, but really what could I do?

"Fight it, child!!" The voice from before came back. "Don't let her take you!! Fight back!!"

The voice of the Lady of light, pierced through the Darkness. And in an instant the world around me quieted and the only thing I could see was her.

"The Keyblade..." She said, her hand now on mine. "Let it go..."

"I..." I protested. But why?

"Yukari... Let it go. Yukari..."

"Yukari!!" Sora voice ripped through my ears.

A explosion of light burst from my chest and the dark Keyblade shattered to pieces like glass in my hand. My right hand flung forth and summoned the Oathkeeper where light, glared from the tip and bathed the whole arena a tingling warmth.

Spent to nothing, I found my body falling whence the light died away. The air whipped around me, howling in my ears, carrying with it a gentle voice that was unmistakably the Screecher's. "You are miiinne..."

My body plopped with a soft thud onto the deconstructed ground below as an air spell cushioned my fall enough to keep my face becoming a jelly mess.

"Yukari!" Sora cried out as he and the boys came running over to me. "Yukari, are you okay?!"

Cradled in his arms, I groaned, as I blinked to clear away the black dots. The boy's faces were blurred to heck but, for the most part I think I was pretty okay. Just completely exhausted.

"I'm... I'm good." I mumbled, weekly lifting up my hand to give them all a thumbs up. If my cheesy, not-so-assuring grin wasn't enough to convince them, surely that would.

"What was... all that?" Goofy asked.

I hummed in thought as Sora, for the second this in the last hour, supported my weight, with my arm slung around his shoulder as he helped me to my feet and back to the lobby. Goofy took my other arm when he saw I was a complete wobbling mess. "Honestly... I have no clue." I answered, letting go a week laugh.

And I think for that moment, I was okay with my response. I didn't let it swim in a stirring pot of mixed thoughts and emotions. I made a bad decision and it probably nearly cost me. That Screecher had greatly defined what was holding me back-- fear. Ever since learning of what fate falls upon those who become consumed by the Darkness I've been very afraid of the possible fate in this unchosen line of work as a Keyblade wielder. I didn't want to slip up and lose my heart to Darkness. I didn't want to become a Heartless, slithering through the void searching for my next victim. I wanted to remain myself.

I wasn't afraid to fight, and I wasn't afraid to lose. But I was afraid of the darker fates we couldn't control. And the Screecher somehow knew that, outlining that fear and using it in her favor. She'd tricked me with what I could only assume was a vision... dream... thing that showed me a false fate of my friends so that she could take advantage of me. For what? I couldn't be sure, but I knew that it worked.

In the end, I was just so relieved that... my friends and I turned out okay.

"Well, I think it was some sort of magic." Donald offered, but he didn't really sound convinced. "I'm gonna give you some tips on how to properly manage it."

* * * * *

"Man!! I knew I was right about you. Crazy scary when you hit back. A little reckless though, but boy!! That messed Cerberus up so bad he complete vanished!" Phil excitedly greeted us when we'd came sifting back into the vestibule. "Just remember, rule no. 51: Don't get carless. Keep that up and you'll end up turning to dust."

"Noted." I responded without hesitation.

"In any case, you guys rocked that arena. Literally. Takes a ton o' courage to go at it against Cerberus. I'd say you guys have been promoted to junior heroes. But none the less still rookies."

"Whakk!!" Donald was about to go, off. But stopped against his better judgement when he caught a teasing look I'd been shooting him.

Even so, someone seemed at least a little pleased with the new title.

"Heh heh." Sora smiled as he, not so covertly let me go and shuffled over towards the block of stone he'd gone up against when he got here. "Well after taking on some pretty big foes today, I'd say I'm just about ready to try this pedestal again."

Phil let go a laughed. "You really think you’re ready for it?" He questioned, completely unconvinced.

"Why don't you guys all try moving it." Hercules suggested.

"Count me out." I said, tiredly as I took a spot on stool near the back wall. "I'm tuckered."

"Alright." Sora nodded. "You guys gonna try?" He looked to Donald and Goofy who were already making their way over to him.

On three, the boys pressed all of their weight into the stone pedestal as they slowly moved the thing inch by inch across the floor. I grinned, pretty proud they managed to achieve victory against the big ole' rock. But, once they'd fully moved the thing clear out of its old spot, there beneath it was yet, "Another Keyhole." I voiced.

Sora nodded and got to work, whipping out his blade, and leveled it with the floor. Like before a beam out light trailed from the Key and into the hole, locking it for good.

"That's the second one..." I said, as the boys huddled back around me.

"We really should get back to Leon about this." Donald suggested. "It could actually be something pretty big."

"Wait, you rookies are leavin'?" Phil inquired.

"Yeah." Sora nodded. "We've gotta get going."

"Sorry to leave so abruptly." I apologized. "What with that giant mess and the whole tournament situation."

"Ehhh, don't worry about that." Phil waved it off. "That's a normal thing. Nothing we can't fix. I mean it does mean the tournament’s over for now but what matters is that everyone's safe. You guys just make it a point to swing by every now and then. I'll give ya another good trainin' session, for sure."

"Annndd, the next time you see us, we're gonna be true heroes." Donald grinned, pointing at Phil as though to solidify a promise.

"I'm sure lookin' forward to that." Phil laughed.

To Be Continued

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#Kingdom Hearts #AR #kingdom hearts fic #KHAR

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