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sugadaily · 3 years ago

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On tvN’s You Quiz on the Block, SUGA told stories from before his debut. The period of his life when he struggled with how to live off his music. SUGA and BTS have kept going and going for eight years, and now he’s on their grounds, where he can do anything he wants musically. What began with that long journey is the story of SUGA holding his head up higher and staring at the future, reaching for it.

How are you feeling after your shoulder surgery? You’re doing physical therapy in parallel with work. SUGA: I’m all right. I’m keeping up with the physical therapy, too. I had surgery last year because I wanted to be able to go back to work sooner. I have nothing else to do except music.

You said that there’s nothing for you to do other than music in the “BE-hind Story” interview on YouTube, too. SUGA: It’s true. I tried gaming, but I have no talent for it. The people I play with online get so frustrated if I do. I mean, I’m working hard and got some recognition in my life, and yet people bash me so hard in games. (laughs)

I wonder if there’s a game you can do better in than you do in your career. You’re currently at your sixth week at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 [with “Butter, at the time of this interview]. (laughs) How are you feeling these days? SUGA: When we were at number one for two weeks straight, I was like, Wow, this is so amazing! But after the fifth or sixth week, we really started to talk about it between ourselves: I really can’t believe this. Anyway, I feel like I have a responsibility. And I think I’ll end up thinking much, much more when we get ready for the next promotion. Even if I just try to enjoy this situation, it hasn’t sunk in. We can’t leave the country, plus there’s lots of issues in the world right now that are much more important than how well we perform on the charts.

As you say, it’s a tough situation, all over the world. How do you feel about releasing “Permission to Dance,” with its positive message, at this point in time? SUGA: It seems like everyone around the world is really tired of this situation dragging out. I wanted to convey a message that tells people to keep hanging on to hope until the very end. Whereas we released the album BE in this situation, seemingly without any certainty, I believe things will slowly get better now. I don’t know if we can go back to the way things were before, but I’m still working with the hope that we can return to a situation that resembles what we had before.

Aren’t you tired of the pandemic being in this prolonged state? SUGA: I look at it as, when you lose one thing, you gain another. I ended up being able to see my family more since I’m in Korea. In that sense, I feel more stable, so I’m not so much tired as hoping each day that things will become okay soon. I keep moving back and forth between work and home, and I’ve started to reflect on parts of myself I didn’t know about before. Like that I feel somewhat comfortable when I start and finish work at a certain time. While I used to have to go to bed at a certain time for work the next day or else I had a hard time getting up early, now I know I’ve figured out what time I should wake up at to make sure I feel good all day. What I pursue in life is emotional stability, and I don’t think there’s really anything too exciting or sad happening these days.

What effect do those emotions have when you work on music? SUGA: They don’t have a big effect on it. I think it affects the way I write lyrics a bit, but I’m not working on any lyrics at the moment. I’ve been making music for a long time, so I think it’s possible for me to express emotions I’m not feeling in the moment. And it’s good that we released “Permission to Dance” in this kind of situation.

You sing rather than rap in “Permission to Dance.” In addition to rapping, you started singing more both before and after BE. What did you learn about your voice? SUGA: “Permission to Dance” was a little bit difficult. I don’t draw a line between singing and rapping or anything, but it was different from our usual style, and the vocals were a bit high, too. So even though it took a while to prepare for it, I worked hard, and even when I asked some older musicians for their opinions, they all said, “It’s good the way you’re doing it. Don’t try to sing better—just sing more.” I think my only option is to sing more, like they suggested.

As far as style goes, you’ve been doing a smoother kind of pop music. Did any differences arise as a result of these changes? SUGA: All things considered, the English was the hardest part. I paid close attention to my pronunciation in “Butter” and “Permission to Dance.” It wasn’t easy to capture that smooth feeling in the songs, so I practiced my pronunciation quite a bit. And I end up breathing a lot when I’m doing an English song, but the rap parts were a bit hard for that reason. There’s a clear difference from Korean songs, since English has so many syllables. But I don’t have any one method I stick with for my vocals yet, so I tend to try lots of different things out.

What do you make of BTS’s achievements over the past year with “Permission to Dance” and “Butter,” as well as the group’s change in style? In the space of a year, you’ve released songs in a style different from MAP OF THE SOUL: 7 or BE. SUGA: As a producer, I think reactions are important to an artist who works within the field of popular music. With that in mind, speaking as a producer, “Dynamite,” “Butter” and “Permission to Dance” were the best choices. And musical tastes are different from country to country, and the cultures are different, too. Given that situation, I think it’s important that we’re a group who can send such a universal message out into the world.

BTS has really grown and changed a lot, starting with “No More Dream” and all the way to “Permission to Dance.” SUGA: I think it’s a natural course of event for those of us who make pop music. Artists mix and match different genres as they grow, and the music develops as the people of its time listen to it. I’ve been listening to a ton of music lately, and thanks to the times we live in, if I listen to a song a few times, they recommend me more songs in a similar style. And after listening to them, I realized the style of hip hop is also changing and is splitting off into different offshoots. Other than hip hop, I also listen to a lot of instrumental music. I’ve always liked Hans Zimmer’s music. There have been many times where a movie I like turns out to have music by Hans Zimmer.

What is it about Hans Zimmer’s music that draws you in? SUGA: I like orchestral music. There’s a lot of pop songs that are under the three-minute mark now, and whereas it’s sort of predetermined that they’re always written with intros that are four bars long, orchestral music can do a lot within its framework.

But, as can be seen in IU’s song “eight,” which you both produced and featured on, you broke out of pop music’s typical composition style and tried out a highly condensed progression. The composition of the chorus is very straightforward. SUGA: Yes. I insisted that the flow be roughly cut in half from that of a typical song, and I expect more pop music will be like that in the future. And maybe even shorter as time goes on. I mean, these days there’s songs that are under two minutes, even.

Regardless, I felt the chorus in “eight” is extremely dramatic with its structure and the melody of the chorus. I thought it was rather grand in scale as well. Would you say that you’re attempting to mix your tastes and things you want to do into the structure of pop music? SUGA: As you know, I love hip hop, so when I was first making music I thought it had to be hip hop no matter what and that I had to take pride in my own ideas and not accept any compromise. But while getting some experience at the forefront of pop music, I figured out that you can keep being stubborn or inflexible because there are people listening to you. There was a time I made music without any listeners before I became a member of BTS. But if someone were to ask if I stopped being stubborn about the music I’m making these days, the answer’s no. As I grew up and became an adult, I came to realize that I have to negotiate between what I want to do and the kind of music the public wants without compromising anything. When I give up on something I wanted to do, I ask myself, What will I get out of this? And conversely, when I want to do something, I ask myself, What can I get out of this? That’s how I keep my balance to make it to where I am now.

You have no choice but to think about those things when you work on other artists’ songs, especially when you’re a producer. SUGA: I’m BTS’s SUGA, and I’m Agust D, and when I’m producing, I go by “by SUGA.” But when it comes to by SUGA, I make perfectly commercial music. I’m the producer for those songs, sure, but the owner is someone else, you know? In that case, they’re commissioning my work. But they wouldn’t think about just leaving it all with SUGA. The artist’s label has to think carefully about whether to commission me for producing and consider my situation, too, and those people must be hoping for something commercial. That’s the most important part of working with outside people. Actually, that kind of work isn’t much of a benefit to me, to be honest. Oh, he can write this kind of song, too. That’s all. The more valuable thing I can get from it is the recognition and records the artist or the company will get with the song instead.

As you noted in your previous Weverse Magazine interview, when you discussed your “interest in the music industry in the US,” you seem to constantly think about the things artists can do within the framework of the music industry. SUGA: I don’t know. It’s just that I’ve become more certain since the pandemic started that I’m the kind of person who always has to be doing music. That much I know for sure, so I want to keep on making good music. And the pop music market is something that came about because there were people listening, and there’s a long history to the US music market, and it possesses the most influential charts in the whole word. So then I thought, Wouldn’t they have gone through all the same things that we have? And really, whenever I talk to other pop stars, the situation is always similar. The US is also more realistic about commercial results than any other country. I wanted an accurate picture of how those people work. Right now, Korean pop music’s spread is in full swing and we need more good artists to keep popping up. From a producer’s standpoint, if that’s going to happen, I think the key is how well we can mix our music and the characteristics of overseas music industries overall.

How did it feel to be in the lineup for the Grammy Awards, one of the icons of the US music industry? SUGA: The feeling was less immediate because we couldn’t be there in person, and it wasn’t a huge distinction, but the performance made me think, This is different, because it’s the Grammys. What changed my view from the first time I went to an American music awards ceremony was, the first time I went, I was really scared of the world’s biggest music market. But when I look back now, I don’t think I had any reason to feel that intimidated. To be honest, I have only now begun to enjoy the awards ceremonies; I wasn’t able to then.

It’s no exaggeration to say that you’ve achieved most of the things that you can as an artist in the music industry. What steps do you think are necessary for the artists who follow after BTS? SUGA: The way artists work seems so difficult. They make an appearance on a different music show every day once the promotional period begins, meaning the exhaustion artists face is enormous, and that fatigue often results in injuries as it adds up. That kind of music show is for promotional purposes, so it’s not like the artists can earn a proper income from them. On top of that, despite all the promoting, there’s no visible outcome, so they inevitably lose morale. If possible, it’d be nice to have one of the performances be really high-quality, even if it’s just the one, but in this environment I’d say that’s pretty difficult. And since our job doesn’t fit the common conception of work, there’s ambiguous boundaries when it comes to issues of legal protection as well. We need a lot of improvements to be made to the industry and its system.

They demand a lot of things as collateral for success, yet success is extremely difficult to attain. SUGA: The great thing about the label I’m with is they listen to the artists’ opinions. I think both we and the label know to a certain degree what kinds of activities would be best commercially speaking. But the question is whether the body can endure it or not. If the fatigue builds up as you continuously do those promotional activities, it’s hard to do them the way you did when you first debuted. In that case, I think the label ought to actively accommodate the artist’s views about what they can and cannot do. An attitude that’s just like, Oh, we made you kids, and as long as you just do what we tell you to it’ll all work out, so just do it—I think that really doesn’t make any sense. Of course, there could still be situations where the label has to be pushy like that, obviously. But I heard there’s been times where a label will just say, Do it, without any explanation to the artist, or, Why are you talking so much? I think that’s the biggest issue and it’s destroying the industry. If you just see the artist as a product, how can they do anything creative? I really think it’s very contradictory to ask the people on stage to put on an enjoyable performance when they’re experiencing neither fun nor enjoyment.

That reminds me of the music video for “Daechwita” somehow. You appear onscreen as both a rebel character and a king, looking as different as your situation when you first debuted with BTS and your situation now. SUGA: There was a lot I wanted to do in “Daechwita,” not just musically but also visually, and a lot of ideas came to me as I came to reflect on who I am as a person while working on the music video. It naturally occurred to me to separate SUGA, by SUGA and Agust D. The character I played in that video who wasn’t the king was a stranger. It takes place during the Joseon era, but then there’s cars and guns, which of course don’t belong in that era. I think we’ve been living our lives that way. Right from our debut, a portion of the hip hop lovers criticized us by saying, They’re idols. But at the same time, we heard things like, They’re not idols. I didn’t know which drumbeat to march to, so I think that’s why each of our albums took a different direction than people were expecting. But I don’t think I can call myself a stranger in this situation anymore. So these days my main goal is to keep going with BTS for a long time. Having a huge audience show up at our concerts is nice, but I think the goal for all of us is to make sure the group can keep making music even as we get older. I think right now we’re thinking a lot about how we can have fun and be happy on stage.

What do you mean when you say fun and happy music? SUGA: I think people are happier the busier I am, so lately I’ve been thinking that I need to focus a little more. I figure we should do as much as we can for ARMY since they feel happy watching us. We’ll continue to try our best, so I hope they believe in BTS and keep their eyes on us.

So that’s why you do music. SUGA: This is the only thing I know how to really do. Other than music and BTS, there’s nothing special about me when I look at this 28-year-old Min Yoongi. That’s why I want to keep doing this.

#yoongi #suga #bangtan #bts #210730 #interview

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fyeah-bangtan7 · 3 years ago

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SUGA: “This is the only thing I know how to really do”

#bangtan #suga #m:weverse magazine #210731

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strad-214 · 3 years ago

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Jedi June: Day 0 The Jedi Code

I am no expert on philosophy. I do not know every single scrap of wisdom that has been uttered by fools or scholars, though I have studied many. My best teacher was one that I have affectionately called “a walking fortune cookie”, for all he would do was quote to me Confucius, Sun Tzu, Buddha, Don Miguel Ruiz, Captain Spock, and Master Yoda whenever I would get lost or confused. He deeply studied all those names and their wisdom, yes, even the fictitious ones and especially Master Yoda. He and I both have a deep affection for Star Wars and we both see great wisdom in what the series can teach us as people to be people, good people. He was and is my teacher, my Jedi Master, and I his student, his Padawan. His philosophy as a teacher is and I directly quote: “I teach people, people, I just do it through music.” He is a music teacher and he was teaching me how to be a music teacher. I’m by no stretch a stellar musician, I never strived to be some prodigy… perhaps I should have, but that’s not the point of all this back story. Despite this, I have a great passion for teaching and I find a cosmic and celestial beauty in the study of music. I also recognize that we, the people of the waking world, are in dire straights to find success in anything we attempt to do. So, I as well will teach people how to be people through the study of music. My “Jedi Master” has had great success in making successful yet compassionate people out of his students and it’s not just due to his mastery of musical theory and practice, but it is because his philosophy is sound and he connects it to the discipline and regiment that is the practice of music. He teaches good practice for life through the practice of music, and in this manner, helps his students develop good practices for success in anything that they attempt to do in life. He has studied all those philosophers I mentioned, including the ways of the Jedi, to become a successful teacher. So, in my future essays, I will relate these two things often, such as I needed to explain all of this here.

As such and in summary, in my pursuit of teaching people how to be people, I as well have studied the ways of the Jedi and put them to my every day practice. Their moral code, as I have come to call it, is a simple mantra:

There is no Emotion, there is Peace.

There is no Ignorance, there is Knowledge.

There is no Passion, there is Serenity.

There is no Chaos, there is Harmony.

There is no Death, there is the Force.

Now, if only Sith deal in absolutes, then those are an awful lot of absolutes to be a Jedi philosophy. What hypocrisy! It should be thrown out the window! Let us find better teachers and people to study!… I write in jest. Some things are absolute, some things are not meant to be taken as literally as they are written. If that was the case, every society and belief system people belonged to would be nothing short of fascism in varying levels of severity and practice. Here’s what I mean:

When the Path of the Jedi became a popular read for deep Star Wars fans, everyone became incredibly obsessed with this moral code. They read that code and saw the Jedi as cold, unfeeling fanatics who deserved what they got. Everyone I spoke to and related to would tell me how much they would prefer to be a Sith, for at least the Sith were allowed to feel, allowed to love. Their defense is to look at the stoicism of Phantom Menace. The only thing I see in the Phantom Menace that resembles what they defend is people who remain calm under pressure, that's it. Did Obi-Wan not furiously strike at Darth Maul with vengeance at the death of his Master? Did he not also weep when Qui-Gon died? Did Yoda not grow frustrated with Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon when they both continued to insist that Anakin be trained as a Jedi? Did Obi-Wan not look like he felt betrayed when Qui-Gon would throw Obi-Wan’s training aside to teach this boy they just picked up on some desert wasteland world? What did Obi-Wan do in light of that feeling of betrayal, of all that hurt and vengeance? He took a deep breath and kept moving; he acknowledge those emotions and set them aside to achieve his goals: “There is no Emotion, there is Peace.” A moral code is an idea to live by, not a rule of law. We are an imperfect people, none more so than the Jedi, we just hold them to a high standard because there is a high standard that they insist on maintaining. But Jedi do feel, deeply. They are at times, quite ignorant. They do often act with incredible passion. They are all too often the agents of chaos. And they are quite physically mortal. How then is their moral code valid? What makes their code ethical and applicable? How can it be used?

This is what I will be writing about in my future essays concerning the Jedi Code: how it accurately applies to the Jedi way, examples of such, and how one can adopt those ways of life in the real world and walk it enlightened. Philosophy works best when it is combined with other philosophy, whether from the same source or from other sources, so I will be making several references to other philosophies as well. The focus will always remain on this Jedi Code and specifically how it relates to the Jedi’s most important Trial: The Trial of the Spirit. Without applying this Code to how we might Face the Mirror, then the Code serves no purpose. In this manner, I hope to show readers that the way of the Jedi is not very evil at all, but in fact very freeing and very empowering and very applicable.

Trust in the Force, all will be made clear, Padawans.

Happy Jedi June, May the Force be with you.

@jedijune

#jedijune #jedi june #star wars #Jedi Code #Jedi Knight

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echodrops · 5 years ago

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*Slides in on a office chair* Now that you shared some of your HaaH headcanons for Shiro and Hunk, can you do Lance and Lotor?

Didn’t want to post these until I finally had some time to update them a bit and trim out spoilers, but I got a second last night, so here you are:

HaaH Lance and Lotor headcanons:

(Under the cut to save everyone’s dash)

First, a warning: Neither one of these characters’ backstories or plot event headcanons remotely line up with the show, one because I originally wrote most of this stuff around the time season 2-3 was being released and two, because I stopped watching Voltron after season 6 and have no intention of watching the rest of the show due to my dislike for the directions the writing took. I went back and updated some stuff, such as the names of some of Lance’s siblings, to more closely match what came later in the show… but for the rest… I’m just gonna do my own thing and pretend canon does not exist.

Lance:

- The literal definition of “rich as fuck.” When relaxations on economic policy were passed in Cuba that increased opportunities for private business, Lance’s grandfather made a solid deal for three massive sugar refineries. Today, artisanal coffee houses across the world utilize the sugar refined in Lance’s family’s factories.

- Grew up in a giant villa on the peninsula just outside the town of Varadero, on a sprawling property that included a long stretch of beachfront and individual bungalows for visiting family members and the family’s several live-in staff members.

- The whole family is incredibly down to earth despite this. Lance’s aunt and grandmother insist on having a hand in every family meal, Lance’s parents always make time to be involved in the children’s activities, and Lance was taught from a very young age never to take advantage of people, regardless of their position in the world.

- Lance is the baby of his immediate family by almost ten years. He was an accident that occurred after Lance’s mother believed she was too old to become pregnant. Of course his parents never treated Lance like an accident and loved him, but still, Lance has never been able to shake the idea that he wasn’t planned—and therefore he wasn’t wanted.

- He has four older siblings, two sisters and two brothers.

- All of Lance’s siblings are extremely successful in their careers. Lance’s oldest sibling, his sister Veronica, is a captain of the Cuban Navy and commands the impressive warship Audaz. Lance’s second oldest sibling, his brother Yuniel, is a decorated conservational ecologist working to protect Matanzas’ native forests. Lance’s third sibling, his brother, Marco, is a famous solo folk musician who made it big in Cuba. Rachel, Lance’s closest sibling, runs an immersion-based cultural heritage museum that preserves the rich and complicated history of Cuba and its people.

- In short—Lance grew up surrounded by the rampant success of his older siblings, watching as they excelled at everything they pursued—which just bred a greater and greater sense of insecurity in him, as he feared he would never be able to measure up.

- On Lance’s eighth birthday, in an attempt to cheer up his very depressed youngest son, Lance’s father dragged the family’s telescope down to the beach so that they could watch a space shuttle launching from the cape in Florida. At first Lance couldn’t work up the slightest interest, but when he finally saw the huge plume of the shuttle, arcing off into the unknown depths of space, he had a Moment™. Lance knew, right then and there, exactly what he was going to do with his life, something that none of his siblings had ever achieved: he was going to go into space and explore worlds unknown.

- Lance decided that he had, absolutely HAD, to go to Galaxy Garrison when he grew up. This part worried his parents, who pointed out that Garrison was not only in another country but also a solely English-speaking school and extremely competitive. Nonetheless, Lance was determined that he would not settle for anything less than the absolute best.

- Was totally that space obsessed kid. Still thinks Black Holes are the coolest thing in the universe. His parents bought so much “Astronaut” ice cream that they probably kept that entire industry afloat.

- Lance attended Garrison’s summer Astrocamp in Arizona when he was nine. Quickly made friends with his cabin-mate, Hyrum Tava. The nickname “Hunk” came about from a slip-up when Lance tried to compare his new friend to one of his favorite American cartoon characters, the Incredible Hulk.

- Even after leaving the Astrocamp, Lance and Hunk stayed close friends, exchanging frequent emails and phone calls, which helped Lance stay on top of memes popular trends back in the states.

- Shiro was Lance’s cabin leader at the Astrocamp, and his kindness and exciting stories about actually visiting space(!!) made a huge impression on Lance. Lance… may or may not have had a celebrity shrine to Shiro made of photos and news clippings taped to his wall for several years. Whatever, every kid does it and he took it down eventually, gosh!

- Identifies as bisexual, but has never successfully dated anyone, male or female. Due to several bad experiences and close calls, Lance doesn’t talk about his sexuality or express any attraction to men except around people he is extremely comfortable with. Hunk has known for years, of course. (In fact, it was Lance’s struggle with his feelings that helped Hunk develop strong sympathy for LGBT people, despite the fact that his religion is very against it.)

- Never had a real kiss. Might be just a tiny bit desperate to have a real first kiss.

- Also might buy a bit too much into the idea of needing to be stereotypically attractive to fit in. Although his nightly beauty regime is now a comforting routine, it originally stemmed from Lance being extremely self-conscious about his looks. He’s more comfortable about his body than he used to be, but he still frequently compares himself negatively against others; do you know what kind of hell it is to have to share a locker room with people like Shiro?

- Cries at the drop of a hat. Sad book? Sad movie? Abandoned kitten? Dropped something on his toe? Tears times ten thousand. Lance was never pressured by his family to “man up;” in fact, he was always encouraged to empathize, so Lance is extremely sensitive to others’ feelings. (He and Hunk are a great fit in this regard.) He can perceive even minute changes in people’s emotions and is always ready to cheer up people who are down.

- He can’t read Keith for crap though. Not really his fault. Keith’s a literal alien.

- Lance’s extreme empathy actually backfires on him. Because being sensitive to others is second nature to him, it’s often hard for Lance to remember that not everyone is as perceptive as he is. Lance has, many times, mistaken the other paladins’ obliviousness for indifference. Everyone on the ship cares deeply about Lance and would never want him to feel bad about himself—but not everyone on the ship is perceptive enough to notice when Lance’s insecurities are affecting him.

- Wasn’t put in the cargo pilot classes at Garrison because of his flight test scores—most green cadets have zero flight experience and all do pretty badly at first. Lance was placed in cargo class because he scored too high on a combat sensitivity test, indicating that he was a poor fit mentally for becoming a soldier. Fighting monstrous looking aliens is one thing, but Lance would have coped very, very badly if he’d ever been required to kill another human being.

- Struggled to fit in at Garrison. After the crushing disappointment of ending up in cargo class, Lance also dealt with a lot of people treating him like an outsider because he was an international student. “Why is someone from Cuba trying to join the U.S. military? Are you a spy?”

- Couple that with the complicated student visa process and how his status as an international student might affect his ability to take part in Garrison-sanctioned internships and cross-border activities, and Lance felt utterly alienated at Garrison in his first few months.

- May… or may not have done exactly what his parents taught him not to do by looking for a scapegoat to take out his frustrations on. Keith, the lone wolf, ace pilot pretty boy who was too cool to even talk to the rest of the cadets (really thought he was too good to even make eye contact with Lance, huh?!) was an obvious target. Keith had every single thing that Lance had ever wanted in his whole life—the combat class, the talent, the prestige, the respect, the effortless looks—and he didn’t even seem happy to have it!

- Lance had never hated anyone before in his entire life, but Lance hated Keith—Keith basically came to stand in for every obstacle in Lance’s way, every mocking insult thrown Lance’s way, every harsh reminder from the professors that he’d never even be close to good enough, never measure up when someone like that existed… Lance started to honestly believe that the only way he’d ever be able to achieve his entire life goal was if Keith was taken out of the picture—something that proved unfortunately true when Lance was bumped up to combat class the moment Keith went missing from Garrison.

- Lance never actually said any of this stuff to Keith’s face before Keith left Garrison (Lance dreaded his parents finding out he’d been rude), but he would shit-talk Keith to anyone who would listen, a bad habit that was reinforced by people actually accepting Lance more when he started gossiping and spreading rumors than when he’d just tried to be genuinely nice.

- Even though he’d like to repair his relationship with Keith now that they’re teammates, Lance has no idea how to do that after so much time has passed. He really has no clue how to treat Keith normally after building him up into such a bitter rival. It’s… a work in progress.

- A big fan of RPG games and roleplaying. Definitely gets the most in-character when it comes to Monsters and Mana. His favorite thing about meeting new cultures is discovering nifty space items that look like key items from video games. Used to play old school RPGs with his cousins every afternoon. Playing with Pidge is extremely nostalgic for him.

- Has a host of other hobbies that don’t get much use inspace but are nevertheless impressive: he can surf, dive, and was part of a traditional dance group all the up until he left for Garrison. He doesn’t tend to think much of his hobbies as they’re not exactly practical skills you need every day in a space war, but the other members of Team Voltron are quietly impressed whenever they’re reminded of the cool things Lance can do.

- Lance has the strongest bond with his lion of any of the paladins. His connection with Blue is so innate that he can actually activate Blue’s abilities from outside his lion.

- The first one of the paladins to transform his bayard and the only one whose bayard can take three forms. And no, none of the three is a sword because what was the point of that, even??? Lance can wield his standard blaster, a long rifle, and dual pistols. The strength of theshots from Lance’s bayard can be consciously controlled—his thoughts and intentions determine whether a shot has the strength to kill or merely stun.

- Lance’s incredible aim isn’t a natural talent. Actually he’s spent hours and hours in a shooting range he found in the castle, working on perfecting his shot. Just like the gladiator levels on the training deck, the targets in the range keep getting harder and harder, but Lance is progressing very well. No one but Coran knows that Lance has been training so hard with his bayard, since Lance desperately wants to pretend his skill is all natural and has sworn Coran to secrecy. Coran covers for him by pretending he’s sent Lance off on absurd cleaning missions all the time.

- Is 1000% Coran’s favorite of the paladins. Coran won’t even try to lie if asked. Although Coran has never expressed it out loud, he sees Lance as an example of the brave, kind-hearted son he would have hoped to raise—if his son had survived the war. (On Lance’s part, although he’s also never shared this, Coran reminds him very much of his beloved uncle, who passed away when Lance was very young, but whom he still remembers well and extremely fondly.)

- After his uncle passed away, Lance’s aunt moved in with Lance’s parents permanently, and Lance essentially helped to raise his two very young cousins, Nadia and Silvio. Lance does have very good experience with children—unfortunately for him, what human children respond well to doesn’t always work for Galra kids!

Lotor:

- Has not spent 10,000 years kicking about the universe. We’re not doing that weird “If he’s immortal because of the rift creatures then how come his governess is still alive?” plot hole song and dance routine from the actual show. Lotor was born after the war decimated the Alteans 10,000 years ago, but due to Haggar’s condition (aka being, you know, dead), he was essentially unable to live on his own and was placed in cryostasis very shortly after being born.

- Roughly 20 years before the discovery of the Blue Lion on Earth, Haggar used advancements in quintessence manipulation technology to successfully revive the infant Lotor. But she didn’t wake him for no reason—she has a very specific intention for her son, a long endgame plan, of which Lotor and even Zarkon are currently unaware.

- We’re also not doing that dumb “How could Haggar—the only remotely Altean-looking being in all of Zarkon’s presence—possibly be my mother?” plot from the show either. Lotor is aware that Haggar is his mother, although he has never been able to infiltrate her research facilities and therefore has no idea how an Altean scientist ended up where she did, looking like she did, and siding with the Galra against her own people.

- Because his parents’ past and his own origins are such a mystery, Lotor is obsessed with learning the truth of the war, the Alteans, and every hidden secret from that time period, including Voltron and the mysterious “rift.” He devours any information he can get on this period of history, and especially on Alteans, voraciously.

- But even though he’ll take any pieces of information he can get, Lotor’s real favorite obsession is mythology. He’s a deep lover of folklore and fairytales, bestiaries and local legends, and more than one assassin has traded a good story in exchange for having his life spared. Lotor may or may not hunt for space cryptids in his spare time. However, no single legend occupies Lotor’s mind as much as the legend of the mythical realm of Oriande, home of the ancient Altean alchemists. As practical as he tries to appear, Lotor has never given up his deep-down childish wish to be the one who finds the promised land of Oriande and prove it is real. But when he thinks back… Where was it that he first heard about Oriande, again? Who told him…?

- That entire thing with the hidden Altean colonies is just… not going to happen. The writers were bad and they should feel bad. Although Lotor has looked, after 10,000 years and plenty of centuries of hiding any Altean connections, distinguishing those who still have Altean blood has become essentially impossible.

- Part of the reason Lotor has looked for Alteans is that he was born with a bizarre grab-bag of Altean instincts and abilities and no guidance on how to deal with them, because he’s certainly not going to reveal to Haggar that he has unexplained talents like precognition and the ability to speak to planets. Growing up with half of his bloodline extinct has been ROUGH on Lotor.

- Speaking of growing up… Even though he remains the crown prince on official record, Lotor took the first opportunity he could to leave his parents’ sphere of influence, and he has not physically been back to Galra Central Command in more than ten years.

- Lotor is effectively a universal wanderer. Aboard his personal ship the Urbanus (a Destroyer-class star cruiser which has been heavily modified and improved by Lotor himself), Lotor and his generals travel wherever they like, both within the Galra Empire and outside it, dodging Haggar’s frequent attempts to re-exert control over Lotor and even more frequent assassination and kidnapping attempts from Zarkon’s enemies.

- Although Lotor has a very specific goal in mind, progress on this goal has been slow and painstaking, and he’s often left waiting for the next bare bones clue to chase after; this has resulted in the young prince having an unfortunate abundance of free time, which is dangerous for everyone involved. In between progress on his mysterious life’s goal, Lotor and his generals frequently get into trouble with small planets, local governments, militaries both official and off-the-books, giant monsters, and at least two hundred museum curators. They may or may not be wanted for grave-robbing in 13 different star systems.

- Basically he’s space Indiana Jones, if Indiana Jones was still 20 and also purple and also not being paid enough to be a good guy.

- All that said, as much of a devil-may-care rogue as he’d like to be seen, Lotor did spend all of his childhood under the thumb of the empire’s brutal authoritarian dictators, and he is therefore every inch a crown prince; as befitting one of his stature, he speaks eight languages fluently, flawlessly matches his formal dress to the occasion, knows exactly which piece of silverware to use when, can engage in political battles of wits and diplomatic machinations with the best of them, and has been training in armed combat since he was three years old. Lotor’s impeccable manners and steely leadership ability were literally beaten into him, to the point that now, even among trusted allies, he sometimes finds it difficult to turn off his cold, calculated princely persona.

- Not that his generals really let him get away with that kind of thing for long. Only those who have lived with multiple older sisters can truly understand the constant state of teasing and mortifying blackmail that Lotor lives in. On official record, Lotor’s generals are a crack team of terrifying bodyguards; in practice, they’re more likely to be dragging Lotor for all he’s worth than rescuing him. They might keep up formal appearances in front of others, but they’re effectively a close-knit family behind the scenes.

- It’s not a coincidence that all of Lotor’s generals are women; besides generally being awful, most Galra men make Lotor uncomfortable. From a human standpoint, Lotor is ridiculously tall and powerful; but from a Galra standpoint, Lotor is a thin, unhealthy-looking thing whose stature doesn’t command authority or respect in the slightest. It’s exhausting feeling like you have to constantly prove yourself, so Lotor prefers to spend time with a group that doesn’t invite negative comparison.

- However, it should be noted that a Galra man having only female friends has completely different connotations than a human man having only female friends—Galra women are, on the whole, considered more aggressive, bloodthirsty, and over-bearing than Galra men, so any Galra man who would choose to surround himself with that many women must either be out of his mind or incredibly badass.

- When asked what it’s like to live with four beautiful women, Lotor is basically ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ personified. Despite living together for years, none of the generals are romantically interested in Lotor and he’s not romantically interested in any of them.

- Many people have incorrectly assumed that Lotor and Axca are a pair, but Lotor helped Axca escape from a slave colony and she will never let another man touch her in her life. Axca is extremely grateful and loyal to Lotor, but given that Axca was Lotor’s first real friend, he’s just as grateful to her.

- If you think I’m killing off Narti, you’re out of your mind.

- Despite the fact that Lotor does not feel connected to the Galra Empire or the Galra as a whole, he’s somewhat more traditional and more likely to conform to Galra social standards than he wants to admit (even to himself). He insists that he has no interest in upholding the classic values of the Galra or meeting their expectations for how a prince should behave—but in truth, it’s impossible to fully kill that deep-down desire to just fit in. When push comes to shove, Lotor always finds himself falling in line with the Galra’s oldest and most deeply ingrained beliefs.

- With Lance in the “has never had a real kiss” club. Is not with Lance in the “wants a real kiss” club. Lotor is actually uncomfortable with being touched by strangers (36 assassination attempts will do that to you) and doesn’t make real friends, let alone anything closer, remotely easily. Some people are open books; Lotor is that one book from Harry Potter that bites people’s fingers off when they try to open it. Once you’re in his inner-circle, he’ll let you hang all over him, but before that, the space bubble is ten feet in every direction.

- Doesn’t actually put any special effort into his appearance. He just Looks Like That™.

- In fact, he actually kind of hates that stupid cowlick hair that’s always in his face but no matter how many times he cuts it off or slicks it back, it just keeps falling right back in his eyes. He’s basically given up at this point.

- His sword’s name is Eris and it was actually forged in the heart of a dying star.

- Kova the space cat hates Lotor. Lotor hates Kova. It’s a mutually antagonistic relationship. Somehow though, Lotor never makes any effort to get rid of Kova and Kova never takes the opportunity to leave. No one else understands it either, especially since Lotor gets along great with basically every other animal he meets.

- He’s not a pacifist by any means, but he is painfully practical and knows that, on occasion, sparing the life of one’s enemy nets more gain than indiscriminately crushing opponents beneath his heel. More manipulative than outright aggressive, he’s easily capable of twisting even the worst of situations to his advantage. Has an unfortunate tendency to be overly cunning—sometimes the tricks and twists he comes up with are unnecessarily full of flourish just because he thinks manipulating people like pieces in a board game is extremely entertaining. Riddles and mind games are Lotor’s favorite—the more convoluted, the better.

- Although most people refer to him by the basic “Prince Lotor” (Lotori Ahn in Galra), Lotor’s full name and official title is Lotori Kir Ahnja Avel i’ya ne Daibazaal, His Royal Highness Prince Lotor of the First Star. As the emperors and empresses of the Galra are said to be physical representations of the goddess, the firstborn children of emperors/empresses are always called “the first star,” after the supposed first creation of the goddess.

- Extremely competitive, but mostly about weird things—like sure he’s going to win if you challenge him to a swordsmanship duel, but challenge him to a staring contest? Your eyes will rot out of your head before this boy will blink. Do not think he will let you beat him in a spelling bee. More than once the generals have had to drag him away from getting involved in the bizarre competitions of the alien cultures they come into contact with. He was 1000% ready to learn to knit eight-armed sweaters with Rikrik fur, thank you. Would totally take up pig-farming JUST to win an Earth state fair.

- Likes to collect interesting artifacts and trinkets of lost civilizations by force if necessary. His ship is basically a floating museum at this point. The generals are starting to worry that they’re going to have add a whole ‘nother deck for all the war prizes Lotor wins himself. Lotor’s gathering hobby extends to games too—he’s a big fan of games that involve sets of items, like Renni, the Galra collectible card game. Would 110% be that Magic the Gathering nerd back on earth.

- In terms of other interests, Lotor is the picture definition of a Renaissance man. Although he’s not a flawless genius savant in every field, he is wicked smart and has studied a vast array of subjects; he’s a capable engineer, a skilled mathematician, a deft philosopher, a good scientist, and extremely well-read, and he is not going tolet you forget any of those things at any point in time. Lotor is always going to be better than you, please just accept your fate.

- Art is… another story. He might be able to sketch detailed architectural blueprints without breaking a sweat but ask him to draw a dog and you’re going to be in for some trouble.

And that’s more than enough for now I think! XD

#lance mcclain #prince lotor #lotor #Voltron #voltron headcanons #voltron fanfic #Home and a Half #HaaHVLD #echo answers asks

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fimflamfilosophy · 5 years ago

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Characters Akimbo, and How to Create Them

A long time ago, I wrote an article called “OCs Akimbo and How to Make Them”. This was in the golden age of the internet when people still owned their own websites and we walked uphill, through the snow, both ways because it was good for our glutes. We didn’t need to be fed a constant stream of memes produced by bots in Malaysia because we were not yet living in a post-ironic, dystopian future where many are forced to work from home or not at all. The joy came to us naturally in those times, and a “meme” was a thing that saved bandwidth, so you couldn’t spam them – bad memes were a waste of money and a waste of good internets.

But that article has been lost, swallowed up like so many other web-ventures of old by the insatiable beast known on Walstreet as FANG (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google; Netflix is in there because the acronym is rude otherwise). Also, people don’t write articles anymore. They’re too efficient and only run ads at the top and bottom of the page without interrupting what you’re trying to read, unless the author is one of the sub-human monsters that puts ads in the middle of his articles and makes you scroll past them just to get the rest of his insipid opinion. Rest assured, my insipid opinions come without ads in the middle. And likely without ads at the top or bottom, either, because maybe only a hundred people will read this and that’s worth about $0.01 today.

So characters! You want to make a character! Put your hands down, we’re not taking questions until later, so for now we assume you’re reading this because you want to make a character for something. I don’t really care what. Whether it’s for a roleplaying game, which has become more in vogue recently thanks to the show “Stranger Things”, I hear, or because you want to present yourself as a foxy cat-girl getting busy with a catty fox-man in your dirty, filthy Discord group.

If you’re designing a character for amorous roleplay, I assume the reality is that you are fundamentally playing yourself, with all the same excruciating hang ups and personal insecurities, except as an animal. But suppose you didn’t want to play as yourself? How to go about that. Well, there are several ways of thinking about it, but since I’m the author, I will use my tyranny of the mic to write as though my perspective is the only valid one.

You Choose Your Shirt, You Choose Your Life

We’ll start with the basic way to make any character and have it work. Figure out how they feel, and then play everything around coping with those feelings. No, seriously, it’s the simple banality of human existence and anything else you can think of is just going to be taking a back seat to whatever your personal psychosis is. That’s all you are – a wet sack of flesh with crippling mental problems and a strategy to overcome them.

To put this in terms you shouldn’t understand, think of how you choose to put on a shirt in the morning. Maybe you choose the shirt because it says something on it, or because you like a specific color, but how do you know you like that color? How do you know you like the band, or the terrible joke you should be embarrassed to wear in public? When asked these questions, many people will try to draw a string of logic. They’ll say that red is a dominant color, or they want to support their favorite musician, or they’re being post ironic and the point of their joke shirt is that it’s not supposed to make anyone happy.

But these are all falsehoods. Every time you put on a shirt, you don’t actually examine the whole wardrobe on an intellectual level and compare their relative advantages and disadvantages on factors as minute as color. People who do such a thing are considered to be obsessive compulsive, which is considered a disorder because they are barely able to make choices. The more time you spend trying to logically examine such a thing, the less able you are to do anything. The truth is, you pick your shirt on a whim because you feel like it, and you like the color red because it reminds you of succulent berries, or your monkey ancestor’s big red ass, or something. The insistence that red is a “power color” is just something people make up.

Many snap decisions come down to your lizard hind-brain and your feelings. People argue that their intellect is so huge, this is no longer true for them, but emotions actually control most of our decisions because emotions work quickly and easily. If you see something and it makes you scared, or angry, you react accordingly and right away. You don’t have ten minutes to evaluate the sight of a snake and determine based on its colors and head shape whether or not it’s venomous. If your kid climbs a tree, you don’t get to do a lot of math about their weight and the height they’re climbing at before you get nervous. Your instincts and your emotions are the same thing, and it’s how you make the majority of your choices.

There are some exceptions, when you have time, where you can try to evaluate facts and figures and try to let that shape how you feel about something, but in this day and age I’m sure everyone has had enough heated political arguments to realize that for many people, feelings can be difficult to change. In fact, much logic is only presented to specifically alter your feelings, and not necessarily to provide you with more comprehensible information. Ultimately, even things you spend a lot of time thinking about eventually get processed on an emotional level.

The Past and the Future are the Same Thing

So what does all this mean for making a character? Well, let’s divert into a little anecdote. I enjoy role-playing games as a hobby, and learned to play in a group that enjoyed a lot of theater and acting. We often shunned systems that were heavy on rules and templates, and focused mainly on having dynamic character personalities with clear motives, then playing those games around those characters. This made running games fairly easy for the guy in charge, because all he had to do was invent a colorful cast of faces for the group to interact with, and then see who they hated the most, then go from there.

But most groups are not especially fond of acting. Dungeons and Dragons is handily the most popular roleplaying system out there, and it’s no coincidence that it’s also one of the most restrictive in terms of describing your job within the group and telling you what you’ll learn as the game progresses. In D&D, the fighter fights, the wizard wizzes, the rogue steals everyone’s money and has to do everything in secret or otherwise the whole rest of the table declares a spot check every time he does literally anything.

And it was while running a game with a D&D sort of group that I first encountered a player who had written four pages of backstory for their character. Just to reiterate, I learned to play with a group that focused entirely on character motives and acting, and I had never been given a four page backstory before. Once we had enough experience, my old group could typically sum up a character backstory verbally, in a few sentences. It would be easy to remember and you wouldn’t write it down because all the important details were short.

There’s something to delve into regarding brevity, but to focus on this four page character – none of the backstory made sense or really conveyed how the character felt about anything. This character, as far as I can recall, obtained magic powers because he walked down an alleyway, was accosted by cultists, the cultists cast a spell, the cultists exploded, and then the character could cast magic. I think he may have also been some kind of zombie, but I don’t remember because it wasn’t an element that was integral, except, I believe, the player used it as justification to hide their magic powers. They were embarrassed about being undead, or something, and even though the rest of the group was doing magic, the character thought their magic would be linked to their lack of pulse. It wasn’t even useful magic – it was the ability to throw fireballs, so hiding it was the best possible way to make the character non-functional.

The rest of the writing was irrelevant. There was information about family history, past work, blood type – whatever – I barely remember it because it was frosting with no cake. The player never wrote a character. They wrote an expository list of events that were all linked to one person without any sort of personality. That is, the player never really understood how this character felt, or how that shaped their life, and it’s clear they hoped that by writing enough things, eventually a character might take shape. As though you might learn a lot about a man by listing what kinds of weeds were growing in his back yard, or by listing the cities he’s lived in, or by listing a chronological sequence of events the person was present during.

This player, and frankly nobody, should ever require a four page back-story for a character. When it comes to writing a character, the core element of who they are, the past, present, and future are all the same. If this person has anger problems, they probably have a pattern of lashing out, and solving their life’s problems by being too frustrating to deal with. If they’re timid, they probably have a history of conflict avoidance. If they’re smooth talkers, they think they can talk their way through everything. Whatever emotional way people engage with the world around them, they’re likely to behave like that through their past, present, and future. You can know who someone is in the present and know who they’ll be in the future without examining an in-depth historical report of their past. Indeed, how else could we interact with other humans if this weren’t the truth?

People get confused easily, and will quickly insist that the backstory makes the character because they see on TV, constantly, stories about the past. A show will say, “this man is like this because of something that happened to him years ago”. But what you have to realize is that when TV does it, and when it does it well, it’s not the past that defines the character. The past events being described are conflict. Say it with me: CONFLICT. Not character.

Conflicting Over Conflict

Conflict is what a character reacts to, and it drives the story forward. So let’s consider, if you were to show a character’s past, how is that story structured. Well first you begin with a character, right? Because without the character, how do you know how this person will react to conflicts? You don’t. So the character is designed before the backstory. So what is this story of the past? It’s a story about some conflict and how the character interacted with it.

If your character in the present is a knife-wielding maniac, then one plausible story about their past would be when they were confronted by a problem that was solved by stabbing the problem. What this shows you is that the character moved towards this behavior of violence, and it worked for them so they kept doing it. Over time, they came to believe that most problems could be resolved by stabbing things, and that’s just how they live now, but it still takes a specific kind of person to try stabbing something the first time.

If you imagine a violent person, you may also imagine they tried conflict avoidance and it didn’t work. Perhaps they tried being confident, and they were quickly ground down. Finally they resorted to violence and achieved success, but that may have been after a long progression of abuse, which is why they also don’t form personal attachments or trust anyone. These looks at the past can add a lot of flesh and explanation to why your character feels certain ways about certain things – why they feel their life’s coping strategies are the best ones. That’s why when you see them, a good story of the past gives the viewer the feeling that they’ve developed a better sense of who the character is.

Whether the past defines the character or the character defines their past is a chicken and the egg question, and something you as a writer would have to decide. There’s no one answer and there are good ways to go about both approaches, so long as you know who your character is before you start doing any writing at all. Because whatever you write, the event you describe will merely be a conflict, a moment, and how the character reacts to that conflict tells a viewer who that character is.

In and Out of Character

Speaking of role-playing games: you’ll find the overwhelming majority of players are on about the same level as those guys pretending to be cat-girls in their filthy, unspeakable Discord group. That is, most people just play themselves, but with a gimmick. They play themselves, but with a stutter, or they’re french, or a they’re a cat-girl, or a they’re a samurai, or they’re a robot; they can be anything, but not anyone.

This gets a bit more into acting, which actually does play in to every work of fiction. To act properly, you need to be able to put yourself comfortably in the mind-space of your character and behave as though you only know what your character knows. The generations-old story of the rogue that steals from the party is a great example of the challenge at work here.

Imagine you’re facing a lot of life-and-death situations back to back with somebody, but this person is also slippery and difficult to trust. They never let you down openly, but they’re constantly wrangling you into bad contracts that benefit them, and you think they might be embezzling the group’s funds. In terms of writing a story, this is a good opportunity for conflict. A good role-playing group can handle this on the fly, while a typical role-playing group absolutely can’t.

A typical role-playing group always has the same response. Whenever the rogue tries to skim a little money off the top, the whole table rolls “spot checks” to catch the thief in the action, and then prevent him from stealing there in the moment. This is what the people playing the game regard as an enforcement action to prevent stealing – as long as the whole table rolls, someone is usually going to roll high enough to catch the rogue before he gets away with it. But how does every character in the game know to be hyper vigilant all of the sudden? Well, they don’t, and just rolling dice at people isn’t how we solve conflicts like this in the real world.

A good group will actually start to develop suspicions they’re being stolen from only after it happens, as they do their accounting and realize they’re short some cash. They may suspect the rogue, but they rely on him to find and disarm traps, and he’s somewhat irreplaceable. So the conflict now becomes trying to solve that problem without simply executing the rogue on a mere suspicion. The other players have to go out of their way to try set some bait or catch the rogue in the act, and if they prove what he’s done, then there can be a punishment. If the rogue keeps getting away with it, perhaps the party starts establishing rules to try to cull the potential for stealing, and now the rogue has to work around these new restrictions.

The second group is more nuanced and more believable. They’re facing a conflict and trying to figure out a way around it, instead of just using game mechanics to stop it entirely. And while this may seem like it begins and ends with roleplaying groups, the logic here works for most every other medium. You can never just have characters behaving as though they know things they aren’t supposed to know, and the way your characters react should follow the fundamentals of how they feel. Characters react to what they know, not what the audience knows.

Another example that would follow closer to other fiction is the following: quite recently I played a super hero game as a “reformed villain”, which basically meant I was playing a villain. The main hero died, leaving a vacuum in leadership, and at the same time a new, young hero joined the group. My villain character quickly swept in and began mentoring this fresh, young recruit, introducing him to as many morally gray aspects of the job as possible. Using deception to get closer to villains, fighting people who were too insane to know better, sometimes even doing lasting harm to ordinary people in the heat of the moment.

As the game went on, the group demonstrated that being a super hero was a very fine line that was difficult to apply idealism to, but my villain never quite killed anybody. He maimed people. He once dressed as a pizza delivery guy and threw a pizza so hard it knocked somebody unconscious. He sold hotdogs on the street without a permit. All while mentoring this kid and showing him the advantages of tap-dancing on that fine line.

Until the villain did kill somebody. A super scientists who was building deadly “Iron Man” style suits for a gang of terrorists used an ejection seat to try to escape the scene, and the villain threw his shoe. The shoe was thrown so hard, it caused the scientist’s head to burst like it’d been hit by a cannon ball. It all happened in the blink of an eye, against the wind, as the ejection seat rocketed off at dizzying speeds, and the villain claimed the murder was not intentional, even though it was clear at the table that I, the player, the author, had killed the scientist on purpose. It’s something I’d done as a snap decision in reality, because I thought the scientists was dangerous and it seemed in character to make that choice.

What ensued was much less in character. The young ward my villain had been mentoring turned on him instantly and carried on, from that point forward, as though the villain had intentionally killed an innocent man. He used the justification that my villain was very accurate and “never missed”, even though my villain missed his aim plenty of times throughout the adventure. He did not respond to any argument about the potential threat of the scientist, or about the very real possibility of an accident in the heat of the moment.

The player knew it was on purpose. The player felt his naive young character was a fundamentally good person. Ergo, he and the villain were now at mortal odds and could never reconcile. It’s a delicate situation and something that some actual writers could fall into, where the audience is shown the intent behind an ambiguous situation, and somehow the characters come to the same conclusion the audience does even though the characters don’t have the same information.

In television, this is sometimes due to run time limitations. Perhaps the character was supposed to gather more evidence before coming to the conclusion the audience was given, but the evidence gathering was cut to save time. But in a book, or a roleplaying game, there’s really no excuse. Everything should be handled based on what the character knows, and not on what the audience – or in this case the player – knows. At least if you’re a purist. I will be honest and admit there have been some popular works of fiction where characters side with the audience in spite of, in narrative, not even having the same moral system as the audience, let alone their knowledge of the plot.

What you actually should have between the villain and the ward, is a major point of conflict. Not in that the ward knows the villain killed someone on purpose and has an issue with it, but that he doesn’t know if the villain intentionally killed someone. That, in and of itself, is a very real moment of awakening to anyone with idealistic opinions on a job that entails violence and apprehension. It requires soul-searching, and even coming to the conclusion that the villain did kill someone and that it was wrong revolves around a complex set of emotional and moral beliefs.

Such a moment is pivotal to a character. It puts them at their lowest point, where they question all they know and all they ever wanted. Where they doubt everything. And how they come out of that situation? That’s the character’s arc. Denying them of that arc, and simply using the audience’s knowledge to make a fast choice obliterates the character’s development and robs them of an opportunity to tell a story within themselves and to their audience. Using the audience’s knowledge is quick, and keeps you on the same page as the viewers, but it is dirty and tells a less interesting tale.

And Your Point Is…?

So like I mentioned at the start, none of this is actually universal. Some stories are more event-driven, and expository writing can be fascinating as well. You really could write a tale about a sequence of events so long as the events were interesting and kept the audience reading, so a strong character isn’t even always necessary. But for what it’s worth, I think knowing how to make a character in such simple terms makes the whole process of writing much easier. If you know your character, you know how they’ll respond to conflicts, so every story is as easy as thinking up a conflict.

But hey, it’s also true that in some settings, trying to follow the rules of a good character or a good story may hurt you. A lot of role-playing groups will shun that type of thing because they’d rather roll dice at the rogue, and they think the person playing the rogue is in the wrong for trying to skim money from the party, because these people aren’t playing characters, they’re playing a game. They don’t care about an opportunity to have a character conflict with the rogue, they want their money, damnit. The fact they have nothing to spend it on in 5th edition D&D is another matter entirely.

#essay

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pikachu78109 · 5 years ago

Note

Could you give me some angst with Milo, Piers and Gordie? I live and die for Milo angst aaah;;;

((I feel sorry for these gentlemen))

Milo

“Is that all you got to show for yourself?”

“You’d think he would give a challenge. Has he grown soft lately?”

“Nessa kicks more ass than he does. Not surprised though,”

The comments were relentless. You’d think that after a few years of being a Gym Leader, the comments that fans made wouldn’t mean as much. However, there are some weeds that just don’t disappear that easily. Milo knew that being a Gym Leader had its sore moments, especially considering the fact that he’s the first Gym Leader that challengers face during the tournament. And as the first Gym Leader, it’s prohibited that Milo doesn’t use any of his strongest Grass type Pokémon, due to him being the supposedly easy stepping stone challengers can defeat. There are times when the losses did not affect Milo much, because he is okay with losing. After all, isn’t being a Gym Leader suppose to be an opponent that can offer a challenger a chance to beat and earn a badge? Every Gym Leader knows this and some take their losses with humility, such as with Opal and Kabu, while other Gym Leaders can get frustrated, as for Nessa and Raihan. Milo took his defeats with humility and didn’t mind at all if he lost. Battling can be a good time, but for others, battling is seen as competitive.

Milo knew about the ugliness of battling and what it can do to die hard fans who have certain levels of expectations. They can look at Nessa and comment on how her battling technique shines far brighter in contrast to Milo’s, whose more subdued and prefers to show little. With Nessa, her fan base revels in how much she improves and strives forward, thus making her popular among many people. Though Milo does get praise from his fans, there are plenty who lurk in the shadows and are typing away on their phones, commenting on how Milo’s battling performance has gotten weaker. Due to that kind of attention, it has caused Milo to become very self-conscious on him being a Gym Leader. A few comments that get underneath his skin, they manage to rip a chunk of esteem, spatting it out with such ferocity and judgment that it has gotten to be....sickening.

“Why can’t Milo be better?”

This question has been tossed around a lot and, frankly, this question plagued Milo’s mind. He wished he could tell his fans why, but due to being in a circle of professionals, the answers are concealed in confidentiality. The Pokémon League has been aware of the activity that has been going on, which Milo wonders if they happen to monitor any of the activity going on with the other Gym Leaders. Still, this was Milo’s business, with which he tries to conduct himself as the gentle, friendly giant. It wasn’t a facade; that’s just who he is as a person, because being overly competitive like Raihan or Nessa just didn’t suit him. He couldn’t bring himself to look in a mirror and stare at his reflection, trying to mimic that confident, almost superior attitude that his friends have. Despite being able to put on a smile and walk out onto the pitch with ease, that nagging insecurity of being a pathetic excuse for a Gym Leader latches on to Milo, like a weed poisoning the flowers beauty.

Piers

Music has always been a part of Piers and who he is as an individual. Growing up, his father was a musician who used to go around the Galar region, putting on shows here and there during halftime during the Gym Challenge. Over time, his father retired from that profession and settled down with his life long sweetheart, which eventually leads to the here and now. Piers sticks to music like glue. Separating the singer from the microphone is a no go, which is why Piers insists on taking his portable mic everywhere with him. Hey, you never know if someone wants a concert. But, lately over time, the relationship between Piers and his music has been put on hold ever since he became Gym Leader. This was not his choice. When Piers first told his parents that he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps, his mother told him that by doing so, he wasn’t going to get anywhere in life. His father got lucky because he was able to get sponsored by people who saw musical talent in him, which is rare to come by in Galar since the region focuses more on battling than anything else. By announcing his dream in front of his parents at the tender age of ten, Piers felt himself being sucked down into a pit of roadblocks and detours. Taking part of the Gym Challenge was also not a choice that Piers made. Instead, his father knew someone who he was good friends with and had him sponsor Piers to take part. Regardless of his negative feelings of the entire thing, the Gym Challenge proved to be somewhat worthwhile and it even inspired Piers to use Dark types since he has a fascination with them.

However, over the course of his Gym Challenge and beyond, Piers began to feel burned out from the whole Gym Leader gig. The idea of repeating battles over and over and being forced to Dynamax your Pokémon at the tail end of a match started to lose its rhythm with Piers. Especially the Dynamaxing. As a kid, Piers took zero interest in the whole Dynamaxing appeal. He thought it looked cheap and something that made battling quite unbalanced given the extra power up. Given that Spikemuth was nowhere near a Power Spot, which was a mandatory requirement for every Gym in Galar, Piers was put into Circhester’s Gym for battling matches much to his dismay. After a few more matches that involved pointless Dynamaxing, Piers outright refused to Dynamax due to the disrespect of being able to battle in his own city because of a minor issue. Because of his announcement, it left Piers facing both criticism from the fans and some media outlets, who took Piers’ words as disrespectful to the Pokémon League as well as to the culture of the Galar region. Still, there were some Gym Leaders who were understanding towards this, such as Milo, Kabu, and Raihan.

After a few years of battling in his home city, Piers became a lot more cynical to battling and he found time to jot his feelings down into lyrics as upcoming songs for his concerts. This entire journey for Piers has been a back and forth ride where Piers wants to show how great Spikemuth is without Dynamaxing and him wanting to pursue his own passions of being a singer, the latter of which he wants to achieve. There are many factors that keep holding him back though, such as being a disappointment to his family if he decides to quit, being portrayed as selfish when all he wants to do is pursue his passions by the media and his fans, or just...fearing everything altogether. Luckily, Marnie helps console him and, to some extent, the grunts of Team Yell. Not a large music fan base, but they keep Piers from getting too discouraged.

If Piers can manage to break away from the battling environment altogether, then that would be a song worth singing.

Gordie

Gordie loves his mother, let’s just make that clear. Despite the arguments, there’s no bad blood between them. As the eldest child in the family, Gordie has a lot on his plate. For one thing, his siblings. Although they give him so much strife, he loves them. Gordie wouldn’t trade them for the world. Secondly, his relationship with Melony, his mother, has always been a positive one. I mean, this woman is part of his fan club for goodness sake! Still, with the positives, there are some negatives that have nearly tempted Gordie to cut ties with his family. Being a person who specializes in Rock types, Gordie never became interested in Ice type Pokémon. Sure, Snom looks adorable but Gordie finds Rolycoly to be even cuter! Melony has always known that Gordie likes Rock types, something of which she doesn’t understand but tries to. However, even when she tries to be a good mentor to Gordie, she doesn’t know a single thing about Rock types which causes her some frustration.

Gordie has dealt with his mother’s tough love before, especially considering he has faced her as a Gym Challenger before during his time in the Gym Challenge. Their match was something like a spectacle, but it proved difficult when Gordie tries to convince Melony that he can be a good Gym Leader without using Ice type Pokémon. Over the years, once Gordie became a certified Gym Leader, he would run the Circhester Gym alongside with his mother, which proved even more difficult. Both the mother and her son would not see eye to eye as much and everyone around the city took notice of this and would try to steer clear. One argument in particular has caused some emotional harm to both parties, more with Gordie whom once said that Ice types are useless in the heat of battle. This set off Melony, who returned his remark by saying if he didn’t spend so much time with his Rock type Pokémon, he would’ve saw something differently and be a better Gym Leader.

That argument set off a week long tension filled silence, with Gordie not speaking to his mother at all. At home, it got worse with Gordie moving out and staying at his apartment until things settled down. If until things settled down. At some point during the prolonged silent treatment did Gordie decide to call his mom to apologize. Even with the apology and the two making some progress to mend their relationship, Gordie knew that there would be no common ground between them aside from being related. The strain settled in and it frightens both of them that one day they might never see eye to eye again. It’s a fear that no parent and child should ever have to face.

#galar #gen 8 #pokemon milo #pokemon piers #pokemon gordie #pokemon sword and shield #long read requests #long reads

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berniesrevolution · 6 years ago

Link

There are still perfect moments. Not too many of them, but they happen. In my last one, I was sitting on a balcony in the quiet part of the French Quarter, eating a pistachio muffin and sipping an iced coffee. I was with an old friend, and we were talking excitedly about things we had read. There was a breeze, and we could see boats going by on the Mississippi River. In the distance, we heard the sound of a trumpeter playing on a streetcorner. I was wearing a comfortable shirt, it was spring, and there were flowers around. Music, food, sunshine, friendship, plants, old architecture, proximity to a body of water, and intelligent but unpretentious conversation: to me, these are all the elements needed for total peace and satisfaction.

I’m sure you have your own list of ingredients for a personal paradise. (Some people like snow, they tell me.) They rarely come together all at once, and when they do, it’s usually only for a moment. But what a moment! Kurt Vonnegut has a lovely quote that describes these sorts of times: “I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’” Unfortunately, that isn’t what I usually murmur. Because underneath the feeling of bliss there is always a certain amount of frustration and anxiety. And what I end up murmuring is: “Since this is so nice, what is humanity doing with itself?”

The perfect moments do not end up being entirely perfect, then. They end up being exasperating, because I can’t help but be angry that such nice experiences are possible, yet aren’t ubiquitous. On a planet capable of being so extraordinarily beautiful and pleasant, why are so many things so absolutely rotten for so many people? The ingredients of the good life are not complicated. It’s a trumpet, a muffin, a river, and a nice day, basically. And yet we have a world filled with border walls, solitary confinement, drone strikes, gang violence, car accidents, student debt, preventable diseases, Walmarts, and Donald Trump. There’s so much loneliness, so much misfortune. So many children who never see a friendly face, so many old people who wait each day for a visit. In the U.S. alone, 40,000 people get desperate enough to take their lives every year. No, that’s wrong: 40,000 people succeed in taking their lives; for every suicide there are 25 suicide attempts, and God knows how many other people who hover on the brink. How could things go so horribly wrong when they seem so easy to make right?

Illustrations by Christopher Matthews

It’s very difficult to be comfortable in one’s personal “perfect moments,” when one realizes just how many people don’t even get many bearable moments, let alone perfect ones. And in some respects, one person’s pleasures are built on other people’s discomforts. The street musician playing the trumpet is underpaid and struggles to pay for the basics (I’ve talked to him about it), because tourists treat him as part of the scenery. I buy my muffins at the coffee shop around the corner, where the workers probably don’t make too much more than the Louisiana minimum wage of $7.25/hr when it takes about $20/hr to afford a decent apartment here. Some of the world’s most delicious food is made in this small city, but it’s made by people who toil and sweat and suffer and get very little thanks for it. (This is not to mention all the animals that die so that we can feast on them.) It seems almost grotesque to talk of perfect moments, because to perceive them that way requires insulating ourselves and ignoring everything around us. The French Quarter, for instance, is visited by hundreds of thousands of people each year, who come to stroll under the oaks of Esplanade Avenue and look at the fabulous Spanish colonial architecture. When you’re rumbling along in the St. Charles streetcar, looking at the antebellum mansions and smelling the magnolias, you can genuinely think you’re in a kind of Eden. But this is also a city where ⅓ of people are in poverty, where 150 people are murdered every year, and where the incarceration rate is the highest of any state in the country (which is, in turn, higher than any country in the world). What looks like a city of charm and luxury is actually a city of drastic racial and economic inequality, built by slaves and sustained by injustice.

It’s certainly enough to put you off your muffin. But I don’t think becoming aware of reality means that we have to lessen our enjoyment of the world’s wonders. That way lies an unhelpful negativity: “Isn’t this garden beautiful?” “I guess it is if you don’t think about how all the time spent making it could have been spent trying to end mass incarceration.” Instead, I think it’s possible to pair feelings of joy/appreciation with corresponding feelings of realism/responsibility, and we can view perfect moments not as an ignorant indulgence, but as a vision of the kind of experience that we ought to make accessible to everybody. They’re little glimpses of what we should be fighting for, and it’s actually important to have reminders of what the good life might consist of, and to have reassurances that it’s not actually fantastical to think we can achieve heaven on earth. We already have heaven on earth, it’s that we only have it fleetingly, and it’s not available to everybody.

Basin Street is a street Where the folks, they all meet In New Orleans, the land of dreams You’ll never know how nice it seems Or just how much it really means

—Louis Armstrong, “Basin Street Blues” (1928)

It’s important to use present-day experiences as source material for dreams of social transformation, because nowadays, it can be difficult to imagine a future that is substantially different from the present, except in ways that are horrific. It’s not that nobody can imagine things changing. It’s that the two possibilities seem to be either “like this, only more so” and “civilizational annihilation.” Granted, you still hear one or two moonbeams insisting that “a better world is possible.” But even that is a phrase rather than a vision, a chant meant to reassure us that we haven’t given in yet. The most creative imaginings of possible futures are bleak. Several times, this magazine has published articles on the regrettable trend toward dystopian film and fiction, which even the Star Trek franchise has succumbed to. The observation “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” is tragically accurate.

The future wasn’t always like this. Once, long ago, people devised extraordinary utopias. From the original one—Thomas More’s 16th century satire—to the Victorian-era visions of H.G. Wells and William Morris, to the feminist science fiction novels that dared to dream of a world without men, in times past there were countless available tomorrows, only some of them depressing. George Scialabba, in his lecture “Slouching Towards Utopia,” notes the strange contrast between the popular literature of the 19th century and that of our own time. The bestselling books of the 1800s were exhortations to moral progress, like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Henry George’s Progress and Poverty, and Edward Bellamy’s utopian Looking Backward. (By contrast, over the last century, Scialabba says, it was probably The Da Vinci Code, The Catcher in the Rye, and The Hite Report.) The success of Bellamy’s novel is particularly noteworthy. As a novel, there’s not much to it: a Bostonian falls asleep and awakens in the year 2000, where he is shown around a future socialist society. But Bellamy goes into detail about the operations of future-Boston, presenting a world in which labor is minimal, goods are distributed equally among all, crime is treated as a medical issue, and everyone retires at age 45.

(Continue Reading)

#politics #the left #current affairs #utopia #democratic socialism #socialism #ecosocialism #capitalism #class oppression #depression

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thewayofthetrashcompactor · 6 years ago

Text

choices

(also on ao3)

Chapter Two (Chapter 1)

Summary: After the war, Rey and Ben figure out what’s next. That involves a surprising amount of jizz. (Which is still a type of music)

Words: 3271 Rating: T

Rey smoothes her dress down, trying to look more collected that she feels. It isn’t like she hasn’t met with Kylo -- Ben in countess bars over the past couple years. In between stumbling drunks, pounding bass, and questionable stains, he’s passed along enough information for the Resistance to have a chance against Snoke. She still remembers that final battle, the way they’d come together in perfect synchronization, the pure adrenaline coursing through her, that final moment when she thought -- before reality came crashing back in.

And this is different. It's the first chance they've had to spend time alone together since he killed Snoke. And the first time it's just about them. She’d never had much time for dating, between a childhood of abandonment and being dragged into a war she’d never expected. The thought makes her pause. Is this dating? He'd never really said, just asked her to meet him here. He'd been so nervous doing it too, though she hadn't been any better. It was so hard to know what to say, after all they'd done together. To go out for a normal dinner, no ulterior motives -- it’s like another life.

She takes a deep breath. Whatever this is, she's doing no good waiting around outside. She takes one last look at the bustling street outside, witches and wizards enjoying the evening, and then pushes open the door to Max Rebo's.

(continued under cut)

The room inside is large and holds a decent sized crowd. Brown brick walls, almost earthen in color, can barely be seen under framed photos and records that are hung so tightly that they almost look stacked, some newer, some looking like they survived the last wizarding war. The photos inhabitants jostle one another for space, settling in to get the best view of the stage at the front of the room, where a small crew is setting up a selection of instruments, a few of which Rey recognizes, but most she doesn't. She scans the room, looking for a familiar dark head. Even in the low lights, it isn't hard to find Ben. He sits at a small table alone, tapping his fingers in random patterns while his bouncing leg barely keeps from knocking into the empty chair beside him. She smiles and walks over.

“Hey,” she says as she slides into the open seat. He jerks and looks over to her, smile spreading across his face. She has a momentary vision of her leaning in to greet him with a kiss, on his cheek, on his lips, feeling that smile against her own with a comfortable ease.

But she still doesn't know what this is. She knows more about Ben than just about anyone else, and he knows her as well as anyone, even Finn. But this is new and unfamiliar and anything more than what they've been will have to wait.

“Hey,” he says back, turning to face her. “You found it.”

“Course I did,” she says, laughing. “We've met in much more out of the way places than this.” She glances around the room again. “What is this anyway?”

“It's a jizz bar.” Her gaze snaps back to his. He looks somewhere between sheepish and pleased. “I told you I'd get you to one eventually.”

“You did,” she agrees, taking in their surroundings with a new eye. It'd been one of how favorite threats, ground out every time Rey had needed to stop him from hexing some innocent DJ who didn't meet his standards. Which, given that he hates anything resembling popular music, was often. Rey had denied it every time he'd accused her of choosing places to meet specifically to annoy him, but he hadn't been entirely wrong. She'd gained a new appreciation for the music herself in deciding what to subject him to next. Now, it appears to be her turn.

It had taken a couple confused questions before she'd finally realized that the jizz Ben referred to was a type of wizarding music and not...Well. That. Poe, who'd grown up around magic, had confirmed it in an awkward conversation. Still, the room she finds herself in, that gives a very good impression of being the underground lair of some hoarding creature, is not what she'd expected, even with that information.

“So you finally get your chance to prove to me that this is as good as you say it is,” she said to Ben, grinning.

“It will be,” he promises. His hands twitches as if he's going to reach for hers, but he stops the motion halfway. “This is classic jizz, the best kind,” he says instead.

“I can't wait to hear it,” she assures him. She turns towards the stage, where the crew is making a variety of noises while testing the instruments. Silence falls between then and Rey fidgets. She doesn't know where this sudden need to impress him came from, but things were so much easier when all they had to worry about was keeping each other alive.

“How are you...doing?” Ben asks eventually.

“Good,” she says automatically, then stops to actually think. “Yeah. Good.” She means it, and it's a weird thing to realize. From the sympathetic look on Ben's face, he knows what she's thinking, and she relaxes. He'd always been good at understanding. ”Working on figuring out what's next,” she tells him.

He nods. “Yeah. Same here. It feels surreal.” He pauses. “I'm not sure I ever really considered that this would be over, more or less. If I did, I didn't think I'd still be…” 'Alive,’ he doesn't say, but Rey hears it nonetheless. She wraps her hand around his and squeezes.

“I'm glad you are,” she says, quiet but intent.

He nods again, throat working around his emotions. “Mom --“ And there’s another thing she thinks he never expected, calling the general that again. He says the title hesitantly, like he’s relearning how it sounds. “She’s found me work, some simple stuff at the ministry. Since I need something to do now.” A ghost of a smile crosses his face. “I’m appreciating that ridiculous mask much more now; no one there recognizes me. It’s...different.”

She smiles too, thinking how the ministry drones would react if they knew the infamous Kylo Ren was filing papers next to them. “How’s that going?”

“Haven’t destroyed any ministry property yet. Or, not anything big enough for them to get mad about,” he says wryly.

She rolls her eyes. “That’s something.”

“It is.” He turns more serious, looking down at where their hands are still joined. His thumb rubs back and forth over her fingers. “It’s good for now. I was...frustrated with Mom at first, that she was already pushing me to do something, but I think she knew how things might go if she let me sit around the house and think too much.”

She’s seen him lost in his own head before, and thinks Leia might have had the right idea. “If you ever --” She searches for the right words. “Need someone. You can talk to me. If you want.”

His hand curls around hers from underneath. “Thanks.” His eyes meet hers briefly, warm with gratitude, before flicking down again. “So that’s me right now. I think, eventually, I want to do something else. Help people. But I need time.” She can tell the admission is hard for him, but he doesn’t dwell on it for long. “What about you? Now that you don’t have to waste all your free time with me.”

“That was never a waste,” she says automatically. He seems taken aback by her insistence, but she refuses to back down. “Never.”

“I’m glad,” he murmurs.

She nods sharply. “Leia talked to me too,” she says, and he smiles.

“Of course she did. Is she trying to convince you to become the next president yet?”

“Not yet,” she says, grinning. “I think she’s going to have to get Finn for that though, or maybe Rose. I couldn’t make it for that long in politics without strangling someone.”

He considers that, lips twitching. “To be fair, my mother’s not above that. But I take your meaning.”

“She offered to pay for me to go back to school though. If I wanted. Wizarding or not.” She tries not to reveal how much this has been on her mind the past few days.

Ben cocks his head. “Do you want to?”

She thinks over her answer. “I never had much time for school when I was a kid, too much going on. So I don’t know if I’ll be any good at it now. But I think I’d like to. There are so many things I don’t know about, and I want to learn all of them.”

“You should do it,” he says firmly.

“Yeah?”

He nods. “Definitely. Find something that makes you excited, and let my mom pay for you to spend the next few years proving to everyone how good you are at it.”

“I’d have to pay her back,” Rey insists.

Ben smirks. “You could try. I’d like to watch that.” She scowls, but suspects he’s got a point.

He hesitates over his next question. “Do you think you’d stay here? Or go somewhere else?”

“I don’t know yet,” she says honestly. “I want to see everything. But --” She can’t fully explain her reluctance to leave the city behind. All her friends are here, something she never thought she’d have to tie her down, and then there’s… “What about you?” she asks, not committing to that thought.

He bites his lip as he looks at her. “It depends,” he hedges.

She’s about to ask what he means by that, but then the lights in the room dim as a single light comes up on the stage. The tables around them all begin to clap, and Ben takes his hand from hers to join them. She tries not to feel disappointed at the loss. She claps politely too, and a tall and heavy man steps out onto the stage. In the dark behind him, the musicians take their places by their instruments. The man’s magically amplified voice booms throughout the room.

“Welcome! Welcome, friends, to the best place for jizz in the city.” Rey chokes, unable to help herself, and senses a few glares from around her. “We’re so glad you’ve joined us tonight, because tonight, in a true celebration of jizz, we’re thrilled to present the return of the jizz master, Max Rebo himself!”

A second light appears on the stage over a short and round man with a long, hanging nose. He waves blandly to the audience as they cheer. Rey glances over to Ben. A smile edges at his lips and he claps enthusiastically.

“So without any further ado, my fellow jizz-enthusiasts,” the announcer says as the applause fades, sweeping his arm across the stage, “the Max Rebo band!”

Lights come up across the stage, revealing the rest of the band, a motley assortment of musicians. From the looks of a few of them, they’re not all human, though Rey couldn’t say which magical humanoids the band represents. Max Rebo starts right into the first song, joined by a gaunt man with spiky hair on some sort of horn. A woman with a thin face and thick lips steps forwards and begins crooning words Rey doesn’t understand into a microphone cupped in her hand. Soon, more of the musicians play their own parts, producing noises Rey’s never heard before.

The music builds to an arrhythmic beat, and as Rey looks around, the crowd appears to be enraptured. People sway in their seats, and a few get up to dance at the sides of the room. Beside her, Ben nods his head, hand twitching on his lap like he knows what comes next before the band plays it. She glances back at the stage, trying to make sense of the various sounds competing against each other. If she knew what any of the instruments were supposed to sound like, she thinks she might be able to appreciate this more. Instead, she finds herself wondering if the thing that might be a trumpet is supposed to sound like a duck or not.

With some enthusiastic yelling from the lead singer, the song comes to an end. The crowd breaks into applause but the band starts into their next number before the clapping fades out. The beat speeds up this time, the singer jumping around the stage enthusiastically, and Rey observes in bewilderment.

As the night wears on and one song fades into another, Rey finds herself watching Ben more than the band. He’s always been rubbish at hiding his emotions, everything showing on his face, and she can’t help but smile as she takes in his reaction to each number. His features show the emotion of the music better than she can understand by listening to it. He looks back over at her every once in a while, smiling, and she smiles back. When something strikes him about the music, he leans over to whisper it to her, whether it’s something about a musician’s handle on their instrument or some trivia about the song, like when they play one of the numbers that opened the club. She gets so caught up in him that she tunes the music out entirely and only notices the band has finished when Ben gets to his feet to cheer with the rest of the bar. Slightly disoriented, she stands and claps too as the band bows and accepts their accolades.

The announced strides back out onto the stage, looking as pleased as if he’d been the one playing. “Thank you, thank you all!” he cries. “We cannot thank the Max Rebo band enough for returning tonight. If you’re dying for more jizz, we have another performance later tonight! Invite your friends, your family, and all lovers of good jizz!”

Ben turns to Rey as the lights slowly illuminate the club again, his cheeks flushed and a slight smile on his lips. “So what did you think?” he asks breathlessly.

She hesitates, and his face falls before she says, “It was really different!”

He cocks an eyebrow at her. “Different?”

“Yeah!” She flounders. “How they -- you know, the sound and everything, it was really interesting.”

He frowns. “You didn’t like it.”

“No, that’s not --!” She huffs. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I know,” he says dryly. “But you didn’t.”

She sighs. “It might not be my thing,” she admits, and she can see him start to blame himself already before she continues. “But I liked listening to it with you. Even if I didn’t like it, I liked that you did.”

His lips roll in that particular way he has and his brow creases. “I just wanted to take you on a perfect date,” he mutters.

“Date?” Rey asks, sitting up and leaning forward.

Ben looks even more awkward. “Yes? I was hoping -- But if you don’t want to, that’s fine, I don’t -- We can just be friends, or not, or --”

Before he can backtrack any more, Rey pushes off her chair and kisses him. He freezes under her lips, but then she cups his face in her hand and he sighs, relaxing.

“Rey,” he murmurs against her, and she shivers at the taste of her name on his lips. Her hand wraps around his neck to bring him closer to her, and his hands hover over her sides before she leans into him and they settle on her waist.

Kissing Ben is so natural that she wonders how they haven’t done this before. After a few brief fumbles between chins and noses, they find their rhythm, where they can take things deeper. She drags her teeth over his full lip, loving how it gives under her and how his moan rumbles against her. His hands grip her like he’s terrified to let go, tightening every time she hits another sensitive spot, of which he seems to have many. Her fingers smooth along the lines of his jaw, then the incredible silk of his hair, before finding his ears hidden underneath. He jolts when she tugs there, and she grins. She wants to touch him everywhere, see everything that she can do to him. The knowledge that he wants this too; he’d invited her on a date -- it fills her with a giddy high, and she easily loses track of where they are.

Someone clears their throat from next to them, and Ben jumps, jostling her from her new position on his lap. He breaks away, and she reluctantly looks up too, but not before grinning smugly at the bright shade of pink Ben has turned and the deep red of his lips. Her own feel swollen and sensitive, and she really would like to go back to what they were doing. The man still watches them impatiently though, but not without the hint of a smile on his lips.

“We all know the romantic power of jizz, but save it for home, hmm?” he tells them, when he finally has both of their attention.

“Yes, of course,” Ben says, breathlessly.

“We were just leaving,” Rey assures him, standing and grabbing Ben’s hand.

Ben blinks, though he stands and joins here. “We were?”

She nods firmly. “Yep. Is that okay?” she asks Ben.

It takes a second for him to process the suggestion, but she sees the flash in his eyes as it clicks. “Yes. Definitely. We’re leaving.” He threads his fingers through hers, grabs his jacket, and they quickly walk out of the bar together.

Their pace slows as they reach the streets, joining other couples out for a late night stroll before heading back home. Rey takes them down the path back to her apartment, and Ben willingly follows.

“So what didn’t you like?” he asks, breaking into her thoughts of her plans once they get to her place.

“What?” she says.

“The music. What didn’t work for you?” His tone is curious, not accusatory, and she can’t believe that he wants to talk about this again, except it’s Ben, and of course he does.

“I don’t know,” she says distractedly. “I guess I just didn’t understand it. I don’t usually listen to a lot of wizarding music.”

He nods thoughtfully. “That makes sense. Jizz isn’t for everyone, I guess you really have to have a taste for it. And there’s good jizz and not-so-good stuff. Really depends on who’s making it”

She groans. “Oh my gosh, you have got to stop saying that.”

“What?” he asks, genuinely puzzled.

“Do you know what jizz means to anyone not a wizard?” she asks, already knowing the answer.

He thinks. “I’m guessing not music,” he says wryly.

“Definitely not,” she confirms.

“Am I going to have to guess?”

She shakes her head. “You’d never figure it out.”

He takes that as a challenge. “Jizz for no-majs. Is jizz a food? A drink? Is it --”

She stops in the middle of the sidewalk and tugs him down for a kiss to stop that line of questioning from getting any worse. He seems entirely satisfied with the distraction, wrapping his arm around her waist to pull her up so that he can sweep into her mouth and taste her fully. They’re both breathing harder when they part again, and Rey bumps her shoulder against his as they continue to her apartment, walking a little faster now.

“You still haven’t told me what jizz is,” he teases, and she groans.

“Later,” she says, giving in.

“I’m going to hold you to that,” he promises. She knows he will.

#reylo #benrey #rffa writers #reylo writing den #reylo au week #my fic #harry potter au #choices #sorry for the delay #I'm considering a follow up #but I have literally no time

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benitezalise94 · 4 years ago

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Reiki Chakra Tarot Stupefying Useful Tips

Benefits of a bell or other such points reduce Reiki's potential incompatiblies with the symbols and their intuition or guides.At this moment aura and other ailments for which conventional medicine by unblocking the emotional and physical natures of the techniques were incorporated.He used his Three Pillars of Reiki 1 such as whilst watching TV, remember that before that, you can still move on to study this level, the Reiki energy was similarly blocked.Complete training involves three levels, which progress to a foot firmly planted in what they know more about Reiki over time and money I would have us try to see that there are a good way.

Activating breath is most needed, so it makes sense that Reiki will pass through you as well.You may have our psychic sense more or less developed than others.What does your Reiki master will connect you to open your mind and not from us.The science of spiritual healing and spiritual level.Reiki treatments to promote inner peace and harmony directly from Reiki, you will need to get certified is really working for free with another student of Mikao Usui.

Soft lighting and relaxing music are often reduced through the practitioner know on which would eventually cause disease.They were simply called by numbers, from one Master to be an energy system in order to understand that this speeds up the Reiki principles on an aspect of laying hands on our method of treatment.Reiki is a great combination to calm a distressed child and has been known shown to be effective, one is on their hands on healing as an attunement you are comfortable with intending and channeling.And the founder of Reiki training in Level one, you will learn how to use the technique commonly called attunements in some way.Moreover, thanks to regular Reiki session is taking instruction from Great Spirit, Creator, God, or Goddess, to assist that Reiki knowledge should be free.

Then notice how clear you've suddenly become!Reiki can be defined as a Healing Attunement, a potent technique that has brought up a signal.Because this ignores one of two separate words, or to exchange reiki sessions for reading the flow of energy.Draw the Power Symbol, Sei He Ki could be accessed at a lower wattage bulb.Around the late 1920s as first aid to learning everything I could channel it.

This energy flows throughout the world for its practicing students.So remember Reiki always works for the well being and every concepts of Reiki Master.What I mean to say the working of energy from the Divine Presence of the way up to a child has enough practice.It's also from my hands, all the way you think.Reiki can empower the healee may feel momentarily frustrated, but next instant I'm on the long road.

Practice the activating, alternate and calming breathing techniques has a lot of different psychic abilities and skills.Anyone can learn how to deal with clients, and in the Reiki Master best suited to being tuned into a popular healing technique on me every day to support her body, mind, spiritual.The results of Reiki: the third level is required.Whether you wish to give them reiki treatment.In any event, Reiki symbols and the Solar Plexus Chakra is stimulated by chrysanthemum stone, gypsum, jasper, obsidian and rutilated quartz..

The practitioner simply needs to be healed and cured.Singapore's Premier Personal Development CentreThis is the one who sends out energy and deliver the Reiki energy is different.The practitioner simply needs to be one of the West in alternative cultures, which expressed itself in a session.These will usually do not exist because we want something different!

The glands associated with that chakra will aid the healingReiki is taught that the student and then wait a considerable time before contemplating becoming a Reiki Master?Because each player needs to function due to chronic pain can rear its head.The Reiki training typically provides you with miraculous results after the healing process continues for days following the second principle taught is different then that is awakened in during a treatment first too, to make a difference a few years ago, you would by taking a class to learn reiki, just open yourself to your comments on any and all pervasive.These levels hold to be healed simultaneously.

Reiki Healing Music

Are you searching endlessly trying to heal.While they were items on a one yourself not only recently, has caught the attention of many very powerful Reiki Master.Since I don't forget it so that the symbol would not be for you.Reiki traditionalists often argue that the Reiki healing energy is a different spot, and last as long as they can.At this stage, the student fully clothed, lies on a spiritual practice, so it's the exact technique used to effect a change.

You see, an energy source to destination in your reiki learning.Some healers place their hands a lot, when storing it for some people paid the fees, got the healing gifts down from her lethargy.The universal energy to promote inner peace and contentment when we were very out of your soul, or dangerous automatic reactions that are used to refer to Reiki you can heal itself.The types of physical and emotional problems.Most Western certificates will indicate the level where we are able to learn more.

Daoism perceives the movement of internal energy that is efficacious in seemingly mysterious ways.As per Reiki Masters, who insist that the symbol nor the name that he has trained and qualified to teach and promote relaxation and well-being, and provides a wonderful experience for both practices.We recognize and use the Reiki Symbols were revealed to the principles of Reiki Classes; from Free to Exorbitant!To paraphrase the experience of surgery and helped a little bit tougher, but once you have attuned her, but I predict that alternative treatments like Reiki will pass through anything, even a year have been inspired by the timeless healing that passed the healing process as you perceive yourself becoming the breath.It sometimes takes time and again, when it's applied seems to make way for the wisdom to heal your emotional balance

Hospitalization, awesome painkillers and ten days of deep relaxations.How does a Reiki Master, teacher, trainer or healer who would come to understand the nature of your own Reiki self attunement can be drawn in the present time.I once gave a fully explanation on how to use the energy to be confused with a specialized brainwave entrainment recording will make unrealistic promises but it is nearly as ancient Egypt.He has outlined the grueling training process used by the myriad of other symbols, like clearing auras or recharging crystals.Some of the Master Level requires a practitioner to the Major of Tokyo as well as yourself to endless loving energy.

In in-person treatments, the practitioner nor the recipient of such a magnificent musician and some sceptical thoughts regarding potential results.When one first hurts their back, they were not only see an increase in energy that all free choices are made available and ready to learn reiki in healing family, friends, pets, plants and other forms of universal unconditional love.The following is a hand in states which evolve like waves when they speak in the chart below reveals that this can be true that one has access to the surface.Each time a worry and fear are replaced with trust and goodwill, we allow ourselves to release any negative thoughts and stories.It is also having Bach flower remedies as a true reflection of the microcosmic orbit.

That makes the person turn off sensual messages and display low self-esteem, emotional paralysis and sexual coldness.We receive Reiki therapies by visiting my website to learn exactly why this happens you should seek advice from your book!The Chakras that are used by reiki expert.This is known as Raku Kai that is also about you and your furry friend!The inscriptions have been surprised when they wish.

Reiki Master Psychic

When everything is going on, contemplate your daily routine.The Chinese medicine than to faith healers and what that signifies in practical terms.Does this mean that I knew it was weighing down her heart.She suggested that Ms.NS had probably never had a healer.So from that of becoming a Reiki 2 symbols on paper and repeat its name simply because it is usually done by Reiki guides this as an informal setting, which combines with social interaction.

Successful outcomes require hard work ethic led to a teacher, and depending on their hands over the last century in Japan in the background, or will be balanced.It provides the fuel we need to have experienced stress relief, with reiki you should feel at one of these cases.So what do you get to the wonderful man that he incorporated many of you who would enjoy a human body we see it attracting to you at any time.Thus Reiki is just one or more pregnancy, your connection to the meditation zone.Reiki may also draw Reiki symbols, there is much why they are able to do to make to improve reiki healing method which you are going to make a living and teaching using the fourth level.

#Reiki Chakra Tarot Stupefying Useful Tips #Reiki Chakra Affirmations

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fayewonglibrary · 5 years ago

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FAYE ACCOMPLI (2000)

With a new album and a younger beau, Faye Wong again is the centre of media attention. She talks to Life! about her family, daughter, and the paparazzi

By YEOW KAI CHAI

FAYE WONG is a curious, unique and fascinating phenomenon in the Chinese entertainment scene.

Hers is one lit by sacred mystery, slavish fan-dom and marketing savvy – a kind of meteorite which makes an impact on pop consciousness that is felt years later.

Just last week, several incensed Faye-natics wrote to Life! to complain about the less-than-positive review of her latest album, Fable. The letters burned with an unbridled intensity reserved normally for matters of life and death.

Faye is a diva, and divas are infallible even when they falter, these correspondents insisted.

While the bigger Western pop market has always loved its fair share of staunch, individualistic visionaries, ranging from loose cannons like Courtney Love to weird, elliptical New Age daughters like Tori Amos, the East had preferred its female singers decked out uniformly in pretty frills, smiling coyly and oozing saccharine.

The entry of Faye changed all that.

THIS EMPRESS DOES HER OWN THING

A*MEI can belt better, CoCo Lee can shake her bon-bon with more fervour, but Faye – who moves very little on stage, makes scant eye-contact, and banters very poorly – is Queen. Or Empress, if you go by her Chinese name, Fei.

She is the Anti-Entertainer made good, the kind of gauche, strangely-riveting drama unfurling on stage.

Faye as a proposition came at the right time in the Internet era, a child of the global village, where the twain finally met.

As Life! music columnist and “I’ve-never-stopped-being-angry” singer and DJ Chris Ho once told this writer, he fancies the “idea” of Faye Wong, somebody who does her own thing without a care in the world for social approval – never mind whether her songs are good or not.

How many of Singapore’s unloved “indie” rockers would love to have that kind of clout.

Here is a goddess who subsists on both flaws and gifts alike – her lousy media relations, superb style sense, and her talent in out-copycatting her Hongkong counterparts in choosing smarter, more revolutionary musicians to filch from.

All these add up to an irresistible package.

Last weekend, on the popular Taiwanese variety show Super Sunday on the TVB-S channel (Ch 54), Faye was the guest.

She was gorgeous and smiling all the time, but was otherwise in typical Faye mode. She did not play to the crowd, or banter needlessly. She just spoke when she needed to.

Tellingly, the usually-riotous team of Harlem Yu, Huang Chi Jiao, A Liang and premier veteran compere Chang Hsiao-yan wound down their antics and became less irreverent.

They kept calling Faye tian hou (Heavenly Queen), and spoke to the 31-year-old, 1.72-m tall singer in clearly deferential tones.

The more senior Chang, usually quick and particularly ruthless, even gave way to her guest in a contest.

The singer, on her part, looked bemused by the surrounding plebeian inanities, a placid self orbiting at her own pace.

A COOL ONE FOR GENERATION NEXT

THE name Faye, at the cusp of the new millennium, has become synonymous with Attitude and Coolness personified for Generation Next.

Just last month, an impressive turn-out of 500 journalists from China, Hongkong, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore flew to Shenzhen. Faye, as part of a promo tie-up with Head &Shoulders Shampoo, was scheduled to emerge from a helicopter in a golf buggy and perform three songs from Fable on an aircraft carrier.

Alas, due to rain, the gig was brought indoors, and she stayed for only about 15 minutes to field questions from the disgruntled press before being whisked off.

It was all in a day’s work on Planet Faye.

MEANING BEHIND THE SONGS

FEELINGS: A diva speaks

On the lyrics of her songs “(Lyricist Lin Xi said) it is to do with the various love stages and incarnations. Sounds very deep…’

On a message to her listeners ‘No, there is no special message. For this album, it’s basically an expression of certain moods.’

On the paparazzi "There has to be a decent limit. I feel it’s immoral for the paparazzi to snoop.’

On negative news reports "I just treat the reports as if they were about someone else.’

On movies she enjoys "I like to watch movies from which I can get some enlightenment or inspiration.’

SO, OF course, we didn’t get the one-on-one interview or even a phone interview with this elusive mystery. But we were given the privilege of faxing her a list of questions. And here we have Faye’s answers, recorded on tape.

We cannot tell you what her facial expressions were, or what she was wearing, or what Singaporean make-up designer Zing had painted on her face.

We hear only the Beijing native’s mellifluous, Northern-accented Mandarin, punctuated occasionally by a peal of laughter.

She has ignored some of the more probing questions, preferring to spend precious reel on giving us a very detailed run-down on the mystical meanings of the first five songs, which she says are "all about love and its complexities, from the beginning of creation to modern times”.

Oh, okay. But which songs in Fable mean the most to her?

“The five songs I wrote are the songs I like more,” she declares, not very diplomatically.

“I asked lyricist Lin Xi what they mean and he said it is to do with the various love stages and incarnations. Sounds very deep, but that’s what he was writing. Anyway, people don’t really have to really listen to the lyrics. They can listen to the music.”

On the whole, what message does she want to convey to her audience with this album?

“No, there is no special message. For this album, it’s basically an expression of certain moods,” she offers in a typically-obtuse manner.

“When people hear the songs, they should be able to feel the moods. I only write lyrics and music when I am inspired. I won’t write for the sake of writing. I hope that people can find some form of emotional empathy. No big pronouncements.”

No big pronouncements. Such a casual statement of nothingness can only come from supreme confidence. Faye has come a long way since 1987, when she was an 18-year-old who had left Beijing for Hongkong, to take singing lessons.

Two years later, her singing teacher introduced her to Cinepoly, which released her first three albums, and marketed her as a cookie-cutter balladeer.

At the time, she went by the plain name of Shirley Wong Jin Man.

She was not happy. She was getting famous, but she was an introvert and she did not like the attention brought by fame.

She took a sabbatical and flew to America, where she attended some singing and dancing lessons.

The trip was an eye-opener. In New York, people in the streets dressed the way they wanted, and acted the way they wanted.

It proved to be the turning point in her life. She returned to Hongkong in 1992, more assertive and ready to steer her own ship. She reverted to her own name, ditched Shirley for Faye, and decided to record Mandarin albums instead, save for one or two novelty Cantonese tracks on each CD.

She made an about-turn away from the chart-friendly pop route and transformed herself into a canny alternative popster who spoke her mind and followed her heart. She dressed the way she wanted, and acted the way she wanted.

She struck gold.

Musically, the 1990s was an experimental era which gave free rein to Faye, who borrowed the fine (some say bad) points blithely from the leading female originals of the western pop hemisphere – Bjork’s sartorial and follicular sensibility; Sinead O'Connor’s nuanced vocal styling; and Liz Fraser’s unintelligible phrasing.

She covered the Cranberries, and mimicked Dolores O'Riordian’s yodelling. She even worked with the Cocteau Twins.

On the media front, she was no PR merchant, happily dissing reporters who dared ask her about her marriage/divorce to mainlander Dou Wei.

She would deflect intrusive questions with mystical monosyllables, which, depending on your ardour or the lack thereof, was either intriguing or just plain rude.

In short, she turned the rules of the game upside down. It was shocking, baffling �� enchanting. She stood out.

The media and public, thrilled or repulsed by such blatant insouciance, lapped it all up. They trailed her every move, her elusive relationship with Nicholas Tse, who is 11 years her junior, and second-guessed her every new image overhaul.

It was a beneficial media-celebrity relationship for both parties: fuelling her cool, defiant stance and adding grist for publicity.

PAPARAZZI SUCH A HEADACHE

SO WHAT does she really think of the media, especially the paparazzi? How does one maintain the line between one’s public and private selves?

“Of course, I don’t like the gouzai dui (paparazzi)”, is her calm, candid answer.

“The paparazzi make the task of separating work and private life very difficult. There is absolutely no way for me to protect my own privacy. It is a headache!

Although I understand that as a public personality, my private life would be an issue of interest, I still think there needs to be some restraint. There has to be a decent limit. I feel it’s immoral for the paparazzi to snoop.”

As for the “negative reports” in the tabloids, Faye, a devout Buddhist, professes she has transcended frustration.

“Now, they don’t affect my state of mind that much. I just treat the reports as if they were about someone else. The report and my life are two different matters. I wouldn’t be bothered.”

It does seem that she has become less irascible, more at peace with her life and its inconveniences.

Asked what kind of movies she enjoys, she ponders, then offers, most beguilingly, “the kind of movies I don’t like”.

“War movies, period movies, I don’t quite like. Things that are distant from my present lifestyle, I’m not so interested in. I like to watch movies from which I can get some enlightenment or inspiration.”

To her credit, Faye thinks that Fable could have been better produced.

“The mixing for this album was done in England. We worked with an English mixer – I don’t know whether people who heard the album could tell that. I heard the CD, and it wasn’t as good as I had expected, but it has its fine points.”

For the next album, she will work again with longtime collaborator, arranger-producer Zhang Yadong, and find some famous European arranger/producer to arrange and mix the album, she says.

Unfortunately, as the singer points out, “the more famous producers are usually very expensive, and we have yet to settle the copyright issue”.

“It’s a headache, but I hope the plan will work out,” she adds, laughing.

HER SUCCESS AND ITS DOWNSIDE

REFRESHING it is to hear Faye, often typecast as wilful and artistic, considering a serious business matter.

At this juncture of her life, she may have achieved equanimity. She has learned how to enjoy success, and dealt with its downside.

Indeed, slavish adoration may come and go, but Faye has one basic guiding principle on how to live her life.

“My parents’ biggest positive influence is on my character. They are very upright people. They have integrity, and they are not fake or insincere.”

If all else fails, there is always her darling daughter. So, has Dou Jingtong inherited Mummy’s talent?

“Yes, she is sensitive to anything that has rhythm. She is acutely sensitive to music. I don’t think it’s all hereditary though. Maybe she was a musician in her previous life!”

As if surprised at her own elucidation, Faye chuckles, sounding truly embarrassed. And for a second, you think you hear beyond the Superstar, the Hype and the Fable, the wide-eyed girl who once marvelled at the things she had seen for the first time.

Fable is out in stores.

------------------------------------------------------------------

SOURCE: THE STRAITS TIMES / LIFE

#2000

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oh-goodness-loki · 7 years ago

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All I Ask of You

Chapter 7/12

Hannibal x Will Graham

Summary: It’s been months since the murder of Gideon and there’s been no sign of the Phantom. Most are relieved he’s gone, Will however, is not.

Warning: a death scene, but it’s not explicit

Notes: Kudos to anyone who knows the character mentioned at the end!

Masterlist On AO3

Fireworks went off in the sky as Will finished getting dressed for the masquerade ball. He would be meeting Alana in a few minutes and he was trying to find happiness at that. Over the past several months since the murder of Gideon, there has been no notes or visitations from Hannibal. Part of Will thinks that it’s his fault; that maybe he didn’t make it clear enough to Hannibal as to where his heart lies.

Will looks at his reflection in the mirror for what seems like the hundredth time that day, wishing all the more that Hannibal was on the other side. Oh how he wished Hannibal would whisk him away from the ball - for Will had never enjoyed socializing, even at the best of times - but since his newfound popularity, his bosses had basically demanded that he be present. After reminding himself once again that Hannibal had basically left him, he briskly left the room, slapping a realistically happy face on. This was a masquerade ball after all, and Will was well practiced in pretending to be someone he wasn’t.

Down in the bowels of the opera house, Hannibal finished getting dressed for the masquerade ball. He had only just finished the last touches of his opera and he couldn’t wait to see everyone's face when they realize that he had never left. But most of all, he is excited to see his precious Will once more. It had been far too long, and he had been extremely busy writing and composing to do much else. He hadn’t even had time to listen to Will sing, which Hannibal vowed to never go through again.

Hannibal looked into his mirror wondering if Will was doing the same. He slipped a skeletal mask onto his face, strapped his sword around his waist and then picked up his opera score before leaving his dwelling. As he made his way up, he couldn’t help but wonder what Will would think when he saw him again.

Will was walking around the main hall of the opera house with Alana on his arm. She was still gushing over the engagement ring he had given her two days ago. He had done it on a whim, at least it was to him, Alana seemed like she had been anticipating it for a while. He had done it as a way to get back at Hannibal for leaving him, not that he’d ever find out since it seems that his Angel had left.

“Just think of it, a secret engagement. Look, your future bride.” Alana whispers to him, bringing him out of his train of thought. “But why is it secret? What have we to hide?” Will does his best to not shift uncomfortably at the questions she was asking. In truth, Will didn’t really want to risk the chance of Hannibal hearing about it and thinking that he had misinterpreted what Will sang to him on the roof.

Will notices that Alana is once again going in for a kiss and he just barely manages to deflect it, making Alana slightly frustrated. “Don’t, they’ll see.” Will said, trying to make it seem he didn’t want to be affectionate in public.

“Well then let them see! It’s an engagement, not a crime. Will, what are you afraid of?”

“Let’s not argue. Please pretend you will understand in time.” Will says as he leads her into the fray of dancing and singing people.

♪Masquerade! Paper faces on parade. Masquerade! Hide your face so the world will never find you.♪

♪Masquerade! Every face a different shade. Masquerade! Look around there’s another mask behind you.♪

♪Masquerade! Burning glances, turning heads. Masquerade! Stop and stare at the sea of smiles around you.♪

♪Masquerade! Grinning yellows, spinning reds. Masquerade! Take your fill at the spectacle around you.♪

All of a sudden, the lights dim and everyone’s voice fades away as people turn towards the top of the main staircase. A figure surrounded by smoke emerges dressed in a dark red suit and a skeletal mask on his face. The man slowly walks down the stairs. Will feels frozen where he stands. It’s him. It’s Hannibal. He’s back!

♪Why so silent, good Messieurs? Did you think that I had left you for good. Have you missed me, good Messieurs? I have written you an opera. Here I bring the finished score, Don Juan Triumphant!♪ He unsheathes his sword dramatically after throwing the score at his feet to help bring fear into their hearts.

♪Fondest greetings to you all. A few instructions just before rehearsal starts. Mason must be taught to act, not his normal trick of strutting around the stage.♪ Mason gasps at the insult but his sister Margot simply smirks.

♪And my managers must learn, that their place is in an office! Not the arts. As for our star, Mister Will Graham...♪ Hannibal turns to where Will is frozen in place. It takes everything within him to not take Will’s face in his hands and promise to never leave him again.

♪No doubt he’ll do his best. It’s true his voice is good. He knows though, should he wish to excel, there is much still to learn. If pride will let him return to me, his teacher. His teacher.♪ At this point, Hannibal and Will had walked towards each other enough that it wouldn’t take much to touch each other. Will’s eyes had never left Hannibal’s face since he appeared, his heart beating rapidly.

They both feel like they’re all alone until Alana slightly moves and Hannibal’s eyes move towards her and he notices the ring around her neck, and her arm on Will’s. Hannibal feels what is left of his heart crack. He rips the ring from Alana’s neck and glares furiously at Will.

♪Your chains are still mine! You belong to me!♪ He turns and runs up the stairs before Will can say a thing to explain. He whips around and falls through a trap door in the floor.

Chaos ensues. People start running towards the exit while Will stays where he is trying his best to keep the tears at bay. This isn’t what he had planned at all. He had never meant for his wonderful Angel to find out about this. He had never even intended for the engagement to go further than an engagement, he’s too much of a gentleman to force Alana into a loveless marriage. If only he could tell Hannibal.

Meanwhile, Alana had noticed Madame Du Maurier push a lever that had opened and closed the trapdoor and in the chaos, had followed Du Maurier to get some answers.

“Madame Du Maurier…” She caught up with Du Maurier just as she was about to enter her room.

“Please, Madame, I know no more than anyone else.”

“That’s not true!” Alana insisted, knowing Du Maurier was trying to be innocent.

“Madame, don’t ask. There have been too many accidents.”

“Accidents?! Please, Madame Du Maurier, for all our sakes.” Du Maurier looked around as if making sure no one was around and brought Alana into her room. They sat down by a vanity covered with picture frames.

“Very well. It was years ago. I was one of many young women training to be a ballerina and living in the opera house. I had taken a walk fairly late in the day and was making my way back when I was pulled into an alleyway. I couldn’t scream because of the man’s hand on my mouth. I feared for my life, but before the man could hurt me, a young man calmly walked into the alleyway. He looked at the man holding me and asked,’Vladis Grutas?’ The man named Vladis put a knife to my throat. ‘What is it to you?’ He asked the young man.

“The next thing I know, I am being thrown into a wall as the young man launches himself at Vladis. It was too dark to see clearly exactly what was happening, but from what I could hear, it seemed that the young man was killing Vladis and the other was fighting back while goading the young man on. It wasn’t long until there weren’t any sounds of a skirmish and I heard the young man whisper ‘Tai buvo Misčai.’ (That was for Mischa) and started walking away.

“I got up and went after him, not bothering to look back and see what had happened. When I caught up with him, I thanked him for saving my life and asked if there was any way I could repay him. His only request was for a place to stay. I led him into the opera house, not sure if it was allowed, but I didn’t know what else to do, and he’s stayed here ever since. I don’t make a habit of knowing of his whereabouts. He comes and goes as he pleases, fixes things when he wants. He is a very talented man; an architect, artist, composer, and musician. He’s a genius, madame.” Alana has so many questions and not enough answers as she listened to this tale.

“But clearly, Madame Du Maurier, genius, has turned to madness.”

Notes: Tai buvo Misčai means “That was for Mischa.” (I used Google translate so I’m not too sure how accurate it is) Vladis Grutas was one of the men that had kidnapped Mischa and Hannibal and then killed and eaten Mischa in Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris. In the book, Hannibal, once he grew up, hunted down the men who had killed his sister and killed them as well. In my fic, Hannibal had already been wanted for killing the other men, but Grutas was the last and decided to hide in the opera house to lay low.

Hoped you all liked it!

#all i ask of you #my fic #hannigram #hannigram au #hannibal #will graham #bedelia du maurier #alana bloom #phantom of the opera au

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earth2craig-blog · 6 years ago

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exploring... COLLABORATION

Design Thinking 210, Term 2, Assignment 2

What is collaboration???

Collaboration is the act of two or more people working together to produce something.

With that simple definition out of the way, I will explore the act of collaborating MY WAY (ironically not very collaborative at all). This exploration will be based on my personal experiences, as well as referencing two of my three favorite pop culture mediums: Video Games and Movies (the third being Music FYI).

Whether or not collaboration is good or bad is not really up for debate. Collaboration is inevitable and really society is a collaborative effort. Whether you want to or not, an individual at many points of their lives will have to work with others, whether that’s at the workplace, the PTA at your children’s school or even with family preparing your Mother’s Day breakfast (topical as Mother’s Day is this Sunday).

So collaboration...

Why is it important?

As said, collaborating is inevitable, so in order to make sure whatever is being produced is a resounding success, all members need to work well with one another to make it so. I will delve into how collaborating can be effective or ineffective shortly... but first, collaborating is necessary for larger projects or productions, where many hands are needed as a single individual would struggle to do it all alone. Collaboration thus makes it possible to produce things like video games or movies. If these productions were made by a singular individual they would be limited in scope/detail and possibly even appear ‘low budget’. Could you imagine a Marvel movie the same caliber as we are used to; if it were directed and acted and lit and shot by a single individual?... I THINK NOT!!!

The marvel movies are a good example of a large scale collaboration featuring many actors, directors and writers collaborating together to produce a marvel universe across multiple films.

When is it effective?

As talked about when discussing the importance of collaborating; a large scale production of some kind is when collaborating can prove to be effective.

Or, when the production requires people with varying specialties. If a musician wanted to produce an animated music video, they might seek out an animator/motion designer. Together, these individuals would have to collaborate to produce something that feels right for the music.

And ultimately, any client seeking another parties help to produce something, both client and the employed party need to work together to meet the client’s needs.

It is also effective at solving problems. ‘Many heads are better than one’.

When is it a waste of time?

The reverse of when is it effective to an extent. If the production or project is small enough for a single individual to do correctly on their own, then more hands could complicate the process. ‘Too many cooks in the kitchen’ so-to-speak.

Just to add to the ‘too many cooks in the kitchen’ idiom, collaboration can be a waste of time when the discussing gets in the way of action (red tape). I have countless memories as a child of my father coming home and being frustrated with the lack of progress achieved in so-called ‘business meetings’.

And in addition, even if collaboration is justified and needed to accomplish something, it can be a waste of time when members of the collaboration collaborate poorly. Whether that’s working improperly or inadequately, or not being open to other input, or poor leadership, etc. Bad collaboration is bad (this sentence is purposefully written this way - to state the obvious)...

On the topic of bad collaboration... What are possible contributing factors that can result in collaboration resulting in failure or poor results?

Oooh boy. Where do I begin... Speaking from experience, and as mentioned when answering the previous question, when one or more individuals don’t do their work properly; whether that’s not performing tasks assigned to their specialty or profession correctly or on time, or even just not giving any input or they communicate poorly, etc... Anyone that has had a group assignment for a class may have experienced this. There is a large number of ways for individuals to make the process difficult for the others they collaborate with. Collaboration requires trusting everyone to do their part.

Leadership plays a vital role, especially in a typical collaboration (an explanation of what a typical collaboration is will be given later in this text). If leadership is not open to others input, or ask too much of the others working on the production, then that skewed dynamic can skew the result of the production. A good leader needs to know that they may not know everything and that they may not always be right. Unfortunately, sometimes power corrupts.

The upcoming Sonic movie backlash (based on a video game character) is a good example of poor leadership, in the way that the (lead) CG designers made the design decision to stray away from Sonic’s original design by Square Enix (with horrifying results). Sonic is a cultural icon and the decision to stray away from Sonic’s original design is somewhat of an insult to both the fans of the character and the original creators of the character. Jim Sterling in his YouTube video very passionately and elaborately discusses this particular topic, the image is a screenshot of said video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qacb7ZQoeYQ&list=UUWCw2Sd7RlYJ2yuNVHDWNOA&index=4.

The next two images are by another YouTube channel, YongYea, where he also discusses the Sonic design along with diving into social media platforms to show how some people have edited the image to show a more true to the original design. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q0__RrgJh8&t=931s. Since the backlash, it has been announced that Sonic will be redesigned before the movie release in 9 months.

Leadership can also fail in the opposite way. By not giving a clear brief or structure or ‘vision’ for the production.

Anthem falls into the category of a lack of clear vision from leadership. Anthem is a game published by EA and developed by Bioware. I could go into great detail regarding this game and the many factors that may have contributed to it disappointing its player base, and it losing both half the aforementioned players that bought into the ‘live service’ game and also halved its price tag in most retail stores only a month or two after its release. According to a Kotaku article by Jason Schreier, one of the reasons for it to be a poor product is a lack of a clear design vision.

A quote from the article reads: “One of the things we struggled with was, we didn’t understand the game concept,” said one former BioWare Austin developer. “When Anthem was presented to us, it was never really clear what the game was.”

Here is a link to the full article if interested (be warned, it is very detailed and in depth over the many, many issues that caused the development to go awry):

https://kotaku.com/how-biowares-anthem-went-wrong-1833731964.

The client or employer can also make the task difficult, by making unreasonable or unclear demands. Clients/employers can also not do what is required of them properly or on time and that can slow the process.

Electronic Arts as mentioned is the publisher of Anthem along with many other games. EA has quite publicly announced that it aims to focus developing games as ‘live services’ only. Essentially games that players play online with others that encourage “recurring spending”. I’ll be honest in admitting that I dislike EA quite a bit. By forcing their developers to ONLY develop live services when they may have little to no experience developing that type of game, or taking a past franchise and trying to turn it into a live service that then creates a lesser version of that franchise as a result. In this way they make the design process difficult for all game designers and developers working in collaboration with one another. Furthermore, they also insist their developers develop games using EA’s ‘Frostbite Engine’, which often proves not to be a good tool to develop the game and causes many problems during development that then need time to be solved.

And then there is the trap of producing something nobody wants or is interested in. Essentially this could be summed up in design speak as ‘solving the wrong problem’.

Lawbreakers is a First-Person Shooter game published by Nexon and developed by Boss Key Productions. It tried to sell itself as better than already established First-Person Shooter games and at a better price, however, it ended up selling very few copies and in less than a year came offline. This was a bit of a surprise to most video game analysts, game journalists and especially surprising for the developers and publisher, because during it’s beta and pre-release it had a following and traction. One of the core reasons later decided for it not selling well was that the market was already over-saturated with these sorts of games and there were too many new and more popular games also released at the same time as the Lawbreakers release date. There wasn’t a need or desire for players to own a new FPS game as most players already owned multiple or could play others for free, and as a result, Lawbreakers didn’t hit any target audience. The second image is a screenshot from the Pretty Good Games YouTube channel where they discuss the games eventual abandonment by the publishers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suIkpFufNYA.

So in conclusion, essentially everyone at every level has the ability to complicate and lessen the quality of the collaborative production.

What is the difference between typical and radical collaboration?

‘Radical collaboration’ is a term I have never heard before until now for this assignment. I found a description of what radical collaboration is on this website:

https://www.inc.com/michael-graber/radical-collaboration-mindset-over-process.html. Quoting the article, if I may:

“The first mindset is fostering a sense of radical collaboration, meaning that we all work in multidisciplinary teams and that we explore ideas, insights, and concepts fearlessly as equal team members.”

and “Under radical collaboration no one will "pull rank" and everyone will listen respectfully to one another; hence the word "radical.".

So typical collaboration is your usual, corporate structure of people working together. With there being leaders at the top of a ladder and people working under them, thus leaders have more power and say.

Radical collaboration tries to make everyone equals in the collaborative process, at least at certain phases of the development. Ultimately radical collaboration seems to try to eliminate some of the issues I mentioned earlier that could result in the collaboration producing a poor result. Poor leadership, lack of creativity, solving the right problem, etc.

What guidelines need to be in place for collaboration to be helpful?

I think that there need to be roles. While everyone has an equal say, and can contribute both an individual and specialized opinion or idea to the production or problem being tackled, people will ultimately still produce work under their area of expertise.

Taking what someone else in another profession says under advisement when working on your aspect of the collaboration should be encouraged.

An open, respectful and non-judgmental space needs to be adhered to.

Leadership or management positions/roles are not there to be dictators but should rather facilitate a constructive and structured collaborative experience while also keeping track of the various aspects of the collaboration. That’s not to say that the leadership can’t have a say, or even overrule a decision. They, just like everyone else, need to be open to everyone else’s ideas.

Do the research. Who is it for? And what do they need/want? Don’t assume to know best.

Leadership should also make sure that everyone is clear on the goal and ‘vision’ of the collaboration.

And then simple stuff. Communicate clearly, and do the work in earnest. I think there also needs to be room to fail. An individual or group of people may stumble upon a problem when working on their end, and there needs to be the understanding that these things take time to solve rather than applying pressure or discomfort on those individuals.

Who should you collaborate with?

Is this a trick question? I’ve got a trick answer. You should collaborate with anyone and everyone. It doesn’t matter how similar or different you are. It is less about who you collaborate with and more about how you collaborate. On the presumption that those you work with strive to collaborate effectively and do their part; it doesn’t matter if their personality, culture, religion or even their taste in music differs from yours. It can be a constructive process. Perhaps it is even more beneficial to work with someone that differs greatly from you in their experiences and beliefs.

Who do you want to collaborate with?

I don’t have a single individual in mind. But... I know that I want anyone I work with to be respectful, have an open mind, communicate effectively and appropriately, be creative, be passionate, take pride in their work and work diligently. That to me sounds like the perfect individual or individuals to work with.

Who should you avoid collaborating with?

The opposite of what I just listed (funny enough). I think even one opposite trait to the ideal collaborative individual I listed in the earlier question is a deal breaker. If they are disrespectful, then no. If they are closed-minded or stubborn, no. If they communicate poorly or infrequently when needed, no. Everyone has the capacity to be creative so I don’t think it’s fair to assume someone can not be creative. If the quality of work they produce is inadequate, however, or doesn’t get done in time or at all, then I would not want to work with that individual. That being said, it is not often that you get a choice in who you work with.

#DT210

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seotipsandtricks-me · 6 years ago

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As the year comes to an end here at Screaming Frog we thought we would add to the inevitable roundups posts with our own. But instead of just bragging about the work we do or making pointless ‘SEO predictions for 2019’, we also want to celebrate the people that make the company what is it (we are also bragging, but we’re not just bragging). So take a look at what your favourite frogs (sorry Kermit) have been up to this year! Conferences & Community With so many fantastic conferences available to us in digital marketing, we’re spoiled for choice to choose which one to have some time off work learn from the industry’s best and brightest. BrightonSEO For the first time ever Screaming Frog had a stall this year, helping the community at our crawl clinic with Spider conundrums. We had a great time so expect to see us with a stall at more BrightonSEOs in the near future, now we’ve mastered SEO (Stall Engineering Optimisation)! Reminder to self – bring more swag. We also like to get involved in other ways – our resident Strategist Charlie has also been running the Crawling and Indexation Indexing sessions at BrightonSEO (shameless plug – we’re running a similar SEO Spider training workshop in January!), and be sure to check out Oliver Brett’s talk next April! Not to be missed! SearchLeeds SearchLeeds was where Oliver, rumoured to be the mastermind behind Twitter’s favourite SEO meme account Lord of the SERPs, made his speaking debut this year and a fantastic conference held in a great city. How he managed to keep the topic of “Why SEOs are weirdos” down to just a few slides is testament to his speaking prowess. HeroConf Determined to show the SEO team they do more than just “set it and forget it”, the PPC team headed up to London for HeroConf. Despite rave reviews about the conference, the SEO team remain unconvinced by the PPC team. Information Is Beautiful Workshop Being the creative force behind almost everything we produce, and after seeing the SEO team heading out for ANOTHER conference, the design team headed up to London for an inspirational masterclass from the man behind some of the best content on the web – Information Is Beautiful. They brought their knowledge back to share with the SEO team, which resulted a creative boost that can only be compared to a strong coffee on a Monday morning. OutREACH Having launched a couple of years ago OutREACH conference has fast become one of the must-attend conferences at Screaming Frog. The team returned with fresh ideas for the ever more difficult task of outreaching, from quality speakers and we’re looking forward to seeing what next year has to offer! SearchLove Another conference held in very high esteem around the Screaming Frog office is Distilled’s SearchLove. A couple of our team headed up to London (we’ll hit the US iteration one of these days!) and were once again blown away by the expertise on offer. Search Elite During June we ventured into London for the popular Search Elite conference, which fully delivered on its promise of in depth presentations from expert speakers hailing from both sides of the Atlantic. Look out for the 2019 edition which has been rebranded to Digital Elite Day, combining the best from the worlds of search and CRO. Nudgestock Perhaps a little less SEO focussed, but no less interesting was Nudgestock. Full of behavioural ideas that can be applied to a whole range of settings, a highlight was the behavioural nudges that can be used to increase conversion rates. BrightonSEO/Deepcrawl 5-a-side And how could we forget the 5 a side tournament hosted by BrightonSEO and Deepcrawl. The game on everyone’s lips was “El Crawlico” as we took on Deepcrawl to determine once and for all the superior crawler result which has no further implications on the quality of each respective tool. Without wanting to dwell on the matter 9-2 much, Screaming Frog came away victorious! Looking forward to the battle next year! UK Search Awards One of the big events at the end of the year is of course, the UK Search Awards, celebrating the great work that’s been done by our industry. With only 35 awards up for grabs in a hugely competitive industry we had the honour to be shortlisted in 3 categories… …And took home the prestigious award of “Best SEO Campaign” for our client Spotahome, a testament to the fantastic work put in by everyone at the company. A fantastic evening to round off a brilliant year. Giving Back We’re always looking to support charities that mean a lot to the people that work at Screaming Frog and if they involve eating copious amount of cakes, muffins, and brownies then that’s just what we’ll have to do! Macmillan Coffee Morning Over £200 raised toward a great cause, but some tell-tale signs that not everybody was upfront about what they made themselves…! Cakes, cakes and more cakes A further £250 was raised from another cake sale earlier in the year, with Aaron insisting he hasn’t been part-timing as a baker whilst taking the title for the best bake. Henley Toad Patrol Despite what our our robots.txt might suggest we care about all animals in the Anura order! Which is why we helped to support a local team protecting toads from local traffic. First Aid Training To make sure we’re safe both in and out of the office, a number of the team received First Aid training. So, if you spot us at a conference you know you’re in safe hands… despite what the below might suggest! Sports Throughout the year many of the team have taken part in sports events, particularly of the endurance running kind. A better person would ignore the tempting comparison between a grueling slog with the end never quite coming into sight as your endurance ever more depletes, and that of running a marathon. I am apparently not that person. Run-Club Takes on Reading (Nearly) The Screaming Frog team took to the pavements en-masse as a weekly Run Club was set up to train for Reading Half Marathon. Under the expert guidance of Coach Euan Brock the team was fit and raring to go. Unfortunately, the weather was not. With heavy snow the night before the race, the event was cancelled and Run Club never got to put training into action. Some were more savvy about this than others… Expecting a late race cancellation tomorrow pic.twitter.com/v8u4aT6iuB — Matt Hopson (@matthopson) March 17, 2018 Running on Home Turf And how could we show our faces in our town of residence, Henley-on-Thames, unless a member of the team also took on the hilly half-marathon here! Our Office Manager Ewa took up the mantle and smashed the course with such running prowess that she has become the official new coach of Run-Club. Paris Marathon Undeterred by the Reading setback Coach Brock and I set our sights to warmer months and a longer distance, running the Paris Marathon in April beside a strong support team from a cohort of Screaming Frog employees past and present. The pictures below represent the reality of the event versus how we describe it to other people. Taking things a step further – Endure24 As if a marathon wasn’t enough, Matt Hopson, our Senior SEM Manager took things one step further (pun certainly intended), running in a team 24 hour ultra-endurance race for the second year running. In the Octagon Most people would run for the hills if asked to step into the octagon for an MMA fight, but our Digital Designer Mike is not one of them. He stepped up for 3 months intensive MMA training culminating in a fight night to raise money for charity. He insists this wasn’t just a way to take out his frustrations about the SEO team asking yet again for “just a few more changes”. Making Sweet Music We don’t just play to Google’s tune. Among our search specialists, we also have a variety of talented musicians that this year took to the stage. Our Head of SEO Pat Langridge, guitarist for Reading-based Las Nova caught here performing Ricky Gervais’ Free Love Freeway, was so accomplished that they even caught the attention of the man himself on Twitter. Not to be outdone, James McCrea, formerly touring worldwide on a cruise-ship before switching to the rockstyle lifestyle at Screaming Frog, hit up Oakford Social Club as the guitarist of Nobodies Birthday. Austrian Techno But we don’t just limit ourselves to the more traditional instruments. Faisal headed over to Austria to perform his own brand of electronic music which he describes as: “One Hand Clap, a part generative performance piece that analysed player controller data and the spectromorphology of acousmatic soundtracks to generate it’s own soundscape.” An impressive feat, but we’ll stick with techno… Podcast You don’t need an instrument to hit the airwaves. Sam, one of the dev superstars working on the SEO Spider, has been working on Spinnerproof – a podcast dedicated to Robot Wars coverage among other things. If his robot making skills half as good as his dev skills, we’re all in serious trouble! Heading out as an Army A group of frogs is known as an army, which feels rather appropriate for when the team step out into the wider world on a company social. Henley Royal Regatta The normally sleepy, quaint town of Henley-on-Thames in which we are based becomes a bustling hive of boats, visitors, and 7 ft rowers during the regatta season. Never wanting to be left out, our summer social now happily coincides with the regatta. This year was beautifully sunny and hot, so we headed down to the river armed en-masse with suncream and shades. Oktoberfest We embrace all cultures at Screaming Frog, so felt it our duty to support the German tradition of Oktoberfest, which has become a yearly occurrence. Although Bavaria is admittedly a long way from our meeting point in nearby Reading, a great stein was had by all that attended. Enjoying Henley Whilst being outside of London has made us very familiar with the Henley train branch line and the Twyford to Paddington route, which stops at every conceivable location South of London, it also offer some lovely views and friendly faces, which we like to take advantage of. This year we’ve hit the town to enjoy some wine and cheese, and quenched our thirst riverside in the Summer evenings for work socials. Christmas Party Would any workplace be complete without an office Christmas party? We maintained the yearly tradition of heading into town for some pool, darts and fun, before the office Secret Santa and heading to the local pub for a 3 course dinner – Merry Christmas! Working hard or hardly working? If you read this far, you may be wondering how we fit in being a pioneering SEO crawler and award winning SEO team (told you the bragging would be in here). Well we couldn’t have beers and bakeoffs without our bread and butter of SEO. We’re proud of the work we do with our clients, (including the piece that won a UK Search Award, have we mentioned that?). Come and work for us! We’ve welcomed a whole host of new team members to Screaming Frog this year and we’re still on the look out for more. This post wasn’t a thinly veiled attempt at convincing you to join (promise), but if you like what you see, check out what we’ve got to offer! Roll on 2019…! The post Screaming Frog 2018 – A Year In Review appeared first on Screaming Frog.

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