#saw the entire museum and talked to all the staff on different topics before I finally found that one person

[throwing-roses-into-the-abyss]

I still think it's really funny how this afternoon I went to the offices in the museum 'for a bit' to check if our volunteers had arrived yet or no, and by the time my friend came to find me at least half an hour later I had somehow been caught up in a very heated discussion on object registration and some issues with a specific department and was writing an email to invite some people to a meeting about this.

[crazycat-88]

Male Lizardfolk Gulrez x Reader (NSFW) Part 2

Continuation of my previous story. Part 1 Here

Enjoy!

Wordcount: 3,467

Gulrez had been right, working together and dating wasn’t an issue at all. The two of you hadn’t advertised the fact that you were dating but you hadn’t hidden it either, and it didn’t take long for your colleagues to find out. You didn’t really mind, they were all really nice about it and aside from some filthy innuendo, mainly from Ayaan, it wasn’t really mentioned.

It had been three weeks since your first date and things were going really well. You saw each other everyday either at work or at Latham’s tea shop, and you went on dates in between. Gulrez seemed determined to show you the entire city; you’d been to art museums, history museums, gone stargazing at the science center, visited the zoo, gone to the beach and the park.

You got on so well and had gotten so close, he was constantly holding your hand and made any excuse to touch you. Just the night before when you were sitting in the park, he had pulled you close and tucked you into his side joking that you were so warm it was like having his own portable heater. Being cold blooded meant that he was almost always cold and you didn’t mind warming him up.

There was just one snag in your relationship, so far, and you were trying your best not to think about it. The problem was it seemed your friend and colleague Nathifa was determined to keep it at the forefront of your mind.

It was the end of your working shift and entering the staff room to collect your things you see Nathifa follow you in.

‘‘Come on! Share. I have no sex life of my own, so I need to live vicariously through you,’’ you hear the gnoll cackle behind you.

‘‘There’s nothing to share,’’ you respond looking around hoping that no one else was nearby to hear this.

‘‘Really? It’s been weeks, you’ve seriously not done anything?’’ She says skeptically, her furry ears twitching.

‘‘Nope,’’ you sigh.

‘‘Well you’re useless…’’ she says, cackling again.

Shaking your head, you say goodbye to Nathifa and head home, waving to Rowan at the bar as you pass. Outside the bar you wish a goodnight to one of the orc twins who’s working the door. You could never tell which one was which, Breckin and Broden were near identical, only one had a scar on his lip and the other a slightly chipped tusk. Problem was you couldn’t remember which one had what.

Walking home, you think on what you had told Nathifa, you had to admit that it wasn't the entire truth. You and Gulrez had done some stuff, but nothing worth mentioning. Some kissing, which wasn’t easy with his snout, and some over the clothes petting. You’d wanted to go further, but Gulrez always pulled back just when you thought things were going to progress to the next level.

You’d understand if he wanted to take things slow, but you honestly didn’t think that was the issue. Not that you knew what the issue was, of course, and it was making you worried. You couldn’t help thinking that maybe, while he found you attractive in theory, the reality was you were to different for him. Was it because your skin was smooth instead of bumpy or because you didn’t have a tail… You didn’t know and it was driving you crazy. You knew that the best solution was just to ask him, but honestly, you were scared of the answer.

Approaching your flat, you stop startled to see Gulrez waiting on you, sitting on the doorstep. While it wasn’t uncommon for you to meet him after you finished an early, on his nights off, it had always been arranged before. Feeling concerned, you smile tentatively and continue walking to your door.

‘‘Hey, how was work?’’ He asks, grinning slightly.

‘‘Good. Quiet night... I wasn’t expecting to see you tonight?’’ You ask questionly, feeling your heart pounding.

‘‘I know. I just wanted to see you.’’ His hand raises to scratch the back of his neck nervously. ‘‘I hope you don’t mind.’’

‘‘Of course not. You want to come in?’’ you ask nodding towards your door and putting the key in your door.

‘‘Please,’’ he says, following you in.

Hanging your jacket and bag up on the hook by the door, you turn around and are startled to find him right behind you. Catching your eyes in his, he leans over you to hang his jacket up, then he takes your hips in his claws. Leaning down he rubs his snout across your neck and you swallow nervously when his tongue flicks out tasting your skin.

‘‘I really missed you,’’ he whispers, and you feel his claws tightening slightly where they sit on your hips.

‘‘You saw me at work yesterday,’’ you respond breathlessly.

‘‘It’s not the same,’’ he groans, pulling away and taking a step back. ‘‘Have you had dinner?’’

‘‘Not yet,’’ you say, frowning at the sudden change in topic.

‘‘Want to order take-out and watch a movie then?’’ He says smiling and walking to the kitchen to find the menu.

‘‘Sure…’’ you reply.

He orders the food and goes to collect it, while you go shower and change. Once he returns you both settle on the couch getting comfortable with the food on your knees and watching the movie you’d stuck in the DVD player.

You pause the movie to take the empty boxes into the kitchen, and upon returning, you sit down only for Gulrez to smile and pull you over to him, putting his arm around you and tucking you in to his side. As your watching the movie, he runs his claws lightly over your arm and you stroke his upper arm enjoying the feel of his slightly rough and bumpy skin.

As the movie is nearing its end, your starting to feel a little bored. While it’s a good movie, you’ve seen it a dozen times and there is someone you find much more interesting sitting beside you. Turning your head to look at him, you see that his attention isn’t on the movie either. Meeting his gaze, you give a soft smile and stretch up to give him a kiss.

While kissing Gulrez isn’t easy, you make it work, and you always find it an enjoyable experience. Slipping your tongue in his mouth, you trace his sharp little teeth and let out a moan. Grabbing you by your hips he pulls you into his lap and with his tongue chasing yours, he slips it into your mouth. One clawed hand remains holding your hip, while his other tangles in your hair.

As you pull back to take a deep breath, Gulrez runs his tongue over your neck. Tipping your head back with a groan, you feel heat shoot straight to your groin. As his hand on your hip slips up under your top and he runs a claw over your nipple, you twist your hands in his top and start grinding into his lap letting out a moan. He grunts meeting your thrusts with one of his own.

Suddenly you find yourself on your butt on the other side of the couch and is Gulrez standing up breathing heavily and adjusting his clothes.

‘‘It’s getting late. I need to go.’’ He rasps.

‘‘Wha… but,’’ you stutter breathlessly.

‘‘I’ve got class in the morning…’’ he explains. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow night,’’ he says leaning down to lick your cheek in a lizardy kiss.

You watch very confused and still very aroused as he dashes out the door. Hearing the door close behind him, you look to the TV seeing that the movie isn’t even finished yet. ‘‘What the…’’ you say to yourself. Still feeling confused, a little annoyed and more than a little upset, you shut off the TV and get up to go to bed.

                                  ***************************************

Waking up in the morning, you feel awful, you had tossed and turned in bed all night hardly getting any sleep. While the temptation to stay in bed all day is great, you resign yourself to getting up remembering that you had promised Latham that you would take the box of books you had and didn’t want, into the shop today.

When you get to the tea shop, your shocked to find it closed. In all the time you’ve been coming to the shop, you have never once seen it closed at this time of day. Feeling concerned about Latham but knowing there’s nothing you can do, you turn around a return home. You spend your day cleaning the flat and thinking about Gulrez.

Your meant to be going his place tonight for a date. It had been planned for a couple of days, he wanted to cook for you, he said. You had been looking forward to it, but now all you can feel is worried. You knew that, after last night, that you were really going to have to have that conversation with him and you were terrified of the outcome.

Feeling tense as you knock on his door that evening, you take a deep breath as it opens. Gulrez grins widely upon seeing you and ushers you inside.

‘‘Dinners still cooking, make yourself comfortable while I’m finishing it off,’’ he tells you.

You see he’s set up a table in the living room, with flowers in a vase and candles lit, it looks very romantic. Wandering around the living room you browse the books on his shelves and scan the photographs he’s got dotted around. In one you can see a picture of him with three other lizardfolk that all look very similar. Those must be his sisters you think to yourself.

‘‘Here you are,’’ he says as he puts the plates down on the table. Joining him at the table, you make light conversation as your eating the pasta he’s made. It tastes good, but your stomach churns in worry, and you can’t eat it all. Clearing away the plates, he tells you to sit on the couch, while he gets the dessert.

Joining you on the couch he hands you a plate with a cake which looks like one from the tea shop. ‘‘When did you get this?’’ You ask, pointing to the cake.

‘‘Hmm? Oh earlier today. Just before Latham closed the shop. Why?’’

‘‘I went there this morning and the shop was closed. Did Latham look okay?’’ you ask, frowning.

‘‘That’s odd… but yeah he seemed fine,’’ he replies, licking the icing of his claws.

‘‘Hmm… Well that's good,’’ You say, putting your plate down still frowning.

‘‘Are you okay? You seem… out of sorts.’’ Gulrez asks you, taking your hand in his.

‘‘Yeah… I’m okay. Just I need to talk to you about something…’’ you start, swallowing.

‘‘Okay?’’ He asks, sitting straighter and turning to face you straight on.

‘‘It’s just…’’ you start, inhaling deeply. ‘‘I’m worried. We haven’t been intimate yet and every time I think we’re about to be, you pull away.’’ Stopping to take a breath, you watch him look away nervously, his other hand squeezing his knee. ‘‘I’d understand if your not ready yet… but I need to know if you even… want me?’’ You finish nervously.

Looking at you startled, he squeezes your hand. ‘‘I want you. I really want you,’’ he says. Opening your mouth to ask him what then is the problem, he shakes his head and puts a hand over your mouth stopping you. ‘‘It’s just... I’ve never been with a human before and I don’t want to hurt you.... And you’ve never been with a lizardfolk before, or any type of monster right?’’

As you nod your head in confirmation, he continues. ‘‘We aren’t… I mean I’m not built the same as human men. I’m not sure if… well you might be… you might not like…’’ he stutters, struggling to find the right words.

This time you cut him off, putting a hand on his snout, smiling gently you stroke his cheek. ‘‘I like you Gulrez… I really like you. What you have... or don’t have isn’t going to change that.’’ You say softly. It really didn’t matter to you, what he looked like or what he had. You were just giddy that he really did want you and had just been nervous about showing himself to you.

‘‘Do you promise?’’ He asks nuzzling your hand and swallowing, his big eyes looking into yours pleadingly.

‘‘I promise,’’ you whisper softly, pulling him down to meet your lips, giving him a soft kiss.

‘‘Will you stay tonight?’’ He asks, in between kissing you.

‘‘I didn’t bring any pajamas,’’ you smirk.

‘‘You won’t need them,’’ he chirrups, suddenly lifting you into his arms, showing off his strength. Wrapping your legs around his waist, you grin watching his tail wag as he carries you to, you assume, his bedroom. Practically tossing you on the bed, you watch as he strips out of his shirt and jeans.

His body is as lovely as you imagined, from his neck to the top of his legs, he is an incredibly pale white colour. His legs are mostly white with patches of pale yellow and a few scattered spots. As your gaze travels over his strong looking thick thighs and lean calves, it lands on his delicate looking feet. Mostly white, with a couple of spots and ending in five sharp looking claws.You smile when you see that one of his spots is shaped like a heart.

Leaving his boxers on, he joins you on the bed, and as he leans over you, you stroke a hand down his chest feeling that his skin is incredibly smooth and cool to the touch. Shuddering and chuckling nervously, he kisses you, pulling back and playing with the hem of your top, he looks at you in question. Giving him an approving nod, he starts removing your clothes. Once you’re fully undressed, you feel nervous, as he looks over your body.

‘’You're exquisite,’’ he swallows.

Shaking your head with a disbelieving laugh you pull him down into another kiss. Shivering as his colder chest meets yours, you hear him groan as he slips his tongue in your mouth.

‘‘Your so warm,’’ he sighs, pulling back slightly.

Watching your face carefully, he runs a hand over your chest, taking hold of one of your nipples he squeezes it gently between two claws. You cry out as he leans down and licks your other nipple and then puts it in his mouth sucking and pulling on the skin.

‘’Gulrez,’’ you moan, ‘‘Please.’’

Looking at your face he works his tongue down your body. You laugh suddenly as licks your belly button. ‘It’s so cute,’’ he says rising up and grinning at you. Your about to retort, when he takes your legs in his claws, pushing them up to your chest. He makes a strangled sound as he looks down at you and his tail arches, furiously wagging.

Feeling more than a little self conscious, you try to distract him by asking why his tail wags like that when he’s around you. Blinking, he looks at his tail as if he doesn’t understand what you mean. Chuckling breathlessly, he says shyly, ‘‘My kind do that when they want to mate with someone they desire.’’ He looks down as if embarrassed and you knew that if lizards could blush, he would be right now. Bringing his tail down to wrap the tip around your ankle. He looks back to you, and with his gaze traveling down your body, he whispers, ‘‘Beautiful.’’

Taking his hand of the leg that his tail now holds, he uses it to raise you slightly off the bed, and watching your face, uses his tongue to lick you front to back. You moan and throw your head back, as he licks at you a couple times before slowing working his tongue inside you. You cry out and look down at him, seeing him still watching you carefully.

Panting harshly and writhing on the bed, your hands clench the sheets as he starts working his tongue in and out of you at a quicker pace. As his tongue works its way into you as far it can go, you start seeing stars. Your so close, you can feel it building, and when he finds that special spot inside, you come crying out his name.

You feel him gentle lay you back down on the bed and releasing your legs, lays them down to. Moving to lie beside you, he strokes his hand down your arm, watching as you come down. Looking over at him, you give him a slow smile.

‘‘You good?’’ He asks, grinning smugly at you.

‘‘Very good,’’ you sigh, stretching. You can barely feel your legs but you manage to turn rolling over. ‘‘Your turn,’’ you say, kneeling over him.

You watch as Gulrez swallows nervously, but he turns fully onto his back, leaning back on the headboard to watch you. Trailing kisses down his neck and chest you can feel him take deep breaths, and as you reach the top of his boxer shorts you feel him tense. Sitting up slightly, you play with the band of his boxers, looking at him in question, you wait until he gives you a nod in approval.

Removing them, being careful with his clawed feet, your gaze falls to the spot between his legs. You see that he has a slit, which is slightly open and dripping with his arousal, with what looks like two bulges sitting just above it. Running a finger along his slit, you feel the tips of not one, but two cocks, surprised but pleased, you lean down to run your tongue along his slit.

Hearing him cry out, you look up at him to see that he’s staring up at the ceiling and is clutching the headboard tightly with his hands. Working your tongue into his slit, you catch the tip of one of his cocks, trying to coax them out. Suddenly he pushes your head away with a strangled shout and you watch as his cocks drop down.

You're really glad that he had the sense to move you, otherwise that would have hurt. His cocks are long, but thin enough you think you could take both at once. Dark pink at base, fading to a paler pink at the slightly flared tips, you think he looks stunning and tell him so. Taking one in your hand you give it a few pumps before moving to the other. Gripping one in your hand, you take his other one in your mouth and suck at the tip. Gulrez pants and moans, clutching at your head with his hands.

‘‘Oh god…’’ he cries. ‘‘Please… please don’t stop.’’

Working your mouth, you take him as deep as you can, before swallowing around him. You hear him grunt and pulling back you take both his cocks in one hand working them together. Hearing him moan and plead for your mouth, you smile and take both his tips into your mouth and suck.

Hearing him give a loud cry, you feel him his hands move down to clutch at your shoulders, claws scraping at the skin but not piercing it. ‘‘I’m.. I’m going to...’’ he warns, grunting. Looking up you meet his eyes and continue to suck, understanding your not going to stop, he screws his eyes shut and bucks his hips up, coming in your mouth with a shout. There’s far too much of it to swallow it all and some of it dribbles down your chin down on to your chest.  

Seeing him pant, struggling for breath, you move up the bed to lie beside him and stroke his chest. He wraps an arm around you but it is awhile before he is able to speak. Looking down, you see his cocks are slowing retreating back into his slit. Meeting his eyes you give him a slow smile.

Taking your face in his hand, he swipes his thumb across your chin wiping off the mess. ‘‘Not to weird for you then?’’ He asks, voice quivering slightly.

Shaking your head, you take his thumb in your mouth, cleaning it off. His breath hitches and he pulls you to him thoroughly kissing you.

‘‘We made a mess…’’ he says laughingly, pulling back to look down your body.

‘‘Shower?’’ you ask, questionly, following his gaze.

Nodding, he lifts you in his arms and carries you to the bathroom. Sucking at his neck, his step falters, and he looks down at you pointedly.

‘‘Carry on like that and we won’t ever be clean,’’ he says, grinning.

‘‘I could live with that,’’ you say, laughing, feeling happier than you ever have before.

                            **********************************************

Thanks for reading! As always, please reblog, like & comment if you like it.

Masterlist

[anytutor37-com]

The TDSB’s rollout of online learning was an unmitigated disaster

It’s easy to forget now, but back in early March, before “Covid-19,” “14-day post-travel self-quarantine” and “expanded family bubble” entered the lexicon, the hot topic of discussion among Toronto parents was the ongoing brawl between the teachers’ unions and the education ministry and the likelihood of a complete work stoppage. Teachers, furious over Premier Doug Ford’s attempts to rein in the budget and cut the number of educators by the thousands, had staged province-wide protests, filling the Queen’s Park lawn to the edges with kids, parents and educators toting angry signs and chanting even angrier epithets. On social media, there was an all-out assault on Education Minister Stephen Lecce. Smooth-talking, sharply dressed, private-school educated and with no kids and scant work experience outside of politics, the 33-year-old Lecce became the avatar for everything the unions saw as wrong with the Ford government. For months, protesters had called for Lecce’s resignation (and sometimes his head: at one point, a mob crowded his car menacingly after he’d delivered a speech on anti-bullying).

As Torontonians headed out for March Break, the widespread expectation was that upon return, the strikes would become longer and more frequent. Teachers braced. Kids rejoiced. Parents, who were for the most part sympathetic to teachers, sighed. Then, the unthinkable: school was cancelled for two weeks following March Break due to the pandemic.

To many union members, the smooth-talking Lecce was the avatar of everything that was wrong with the Ford government

If ever there were a time to put aside differences and work together, this was it, but the relationship between the unions and the ministry was so toxic, so consumed with politics and posturing, that there was little chance for constructive collaboration, even with the well-being of kids at stake.

While the pandemic was a logistical nightmare for the ministry, it was a blessing in terms of optics and leverage. There are four teachers’ unions in Ontario—OSSTF (high school), ETFO (elementary), OECTA (Catholic) and AEFO (French)—and in an instant, all of them lost any public relations advantage they held. If teachers no longer had to go to work every day, how could they reasonably demand a pay increase and rally support for their preferred class sizes? To the surprise of no one, and to the delight and relief of Lecce, the unions abandoned their battle-ready postures and settled. The Catholic board announced a tentative agreement on March 12, and the other boards reached agreements in the following weeks.

The agreements were settlements in both senses of the word: teachers took what they could get. “We were prepared to fight on,” says OSSTF president Harvey Bischof, a former high school English teacher known for his blunt, direct manner. “The pandemic took away our ability to do so. Withdrawing service during the pandemic would have been pretty offensive to the public sentiment.”

Members of the Toronto chapter of ETFO were likewise embittered by having their hand forced by the pandemic. Their president at the time, Joy Lachica, is a union heavy, someone who revels in a good, drawn-out fight. Backing down went against her nature. “If Covid hadn’t hit, we would have pressed on,” she told me. She was sickened by what she saw as the ministry’s opportunism, which she likened to disaster capitalism. “Governments can use social situations like the pandemic to their advantage and resume their original intentions,” she said.

Few parents, of course, were interested in the finer points of educational grudges or who held the public-relations high ground. They simply needed to know when their kids were going back to school. The resounding answer from every possible source of authority was: “We don’t know.” For the moment, anyway, it seemed teaching was to be web-based. The ministry provided a paltry webpage with links to a grab bag of ministry and third-party resources: the ROM, the Aga Khan Museum, the National Ballet, Mathify (an online math program created by TVO) and the Toronto Zoo. There were also resources labelled for teachers that included printable handouts that aligned with the curriculum. The ministry’s other major contribution: a video entitled “Learn Like a Champion,” in which Lecce interviews Raptors guard Norm Powell about self-discipline and the need to remain hopeful in the face of adversity, then learns to shoot a basketball backwards.

Parents were bewildered: were they expected to manage their jobs and teach their kids, too? What they wanted was something resembling the classroom but online, a live video feed of teachers teaching students who could interact with each other, which in industry speak is called synchronous learning.

The entire system seemed to be in a state of suspended animation. One middle-school teacher who works in midtown and spoke on condition of anonymity wrote to parents immediately after March Break with a baffling update: “I have lessons at the ready, but I have been directed to hold off.” A supply teacher at a midtown school received the same directive. “We got a notice from both our administrative team and the union that basically said, ‘Don’t do anything,’ ” she said. She’s looking for a permanent job and asked me to withhold her name for fear of retribution from the board.

In late March, as it became clear a return to the classroom wasn’t imminent, the ministry issued guidelines for teachers—they should provide five hours of work a week for K to Grade 6, 10 hours a week for Grades 7 and 8, three hours per week per course for semestered high school students, and one and a half hours a week per course for non-semestered students. It seemed like progress, but no one said anything about synchronous learning. When it came to delivering the assignments and tasks, one union rep for an east-end school told her teachers over Zoom to take special care to avoid anything resembling excellence. “Don’t go above and beyond,” she said. “It could set the bar too high. If you come out with your A game, and later the ministry has its own ideas to add on, it would pile on more work for everyone.”

At the TDSB, officials were dealing with a separate headache: technology, or rather, a lack of it. As a public entity, the TDSB is required to ensure equity—that is, equal access to resources—for all students. As it became clear they would need to transition to remote learning, they had to make sure that all 250,000 students in the TDSB would have a functional and up-to-date computer with Internet access. That massive job fell to Manon Gardner, a 20-year veteran of the TDSB. She was promoted in 2018 to associate director of school operations and service excellence to lead the board’s multi-year strategic plan, which included integrating technology and ensuring digital proficiency. She knew that speed was critical, as kids left out of contact with their teachers would soon tune out altogether.

Among many obstacles, the first was that she had no idea how many kids were already set up with computers. So on March 29, Gardner emailed a short survey to all TDSB families to find out how many needed a computer and how many needed Internet access. For the 10,000 families who had no email listed with the TDSB, Gardner’s team either called or sent the survey by mail. In the end, about half of the board’s families responded—some 177,444—and of those, 60,000 needed a computer and 9,000 needed Wi-Fi. Gardner reviewed the board’s inventory, then the ministry brokered deals with Apple and Google to buy or lease new devices, at a reduced cost, to bridge the gap. Rogers provided free wireless data until the end of June to families who needed it. A handful of school caretakers gathered the devices, and 100 staff volunteers, clad in PPE, collected and shipped them to a central distribution centre, where the computers were wiped and reprogrammed. Finally, they were packaged with an instruction sheet and delivered to households across the city. Staff worked eight-hour days, weekends included. It was a massive undertaking and an impressive outcome. But the entire process stretched into June, and by the time it was done, many kids and parents had given up on school altogether.

The issues with technology didn’t end there. Once the kids were finally set up with computers, it became apparent that a quarter of the board’s teachers didn’t know how to use the TDSB-supplied online teaching software or needed a refresher.

The ministry had for a long time positioned online learning as the way of the future. For many months, Lecce pushed for two online courses as part of a high school student’s graduation requirements. Under Ford’s model, however, that implied fewer teachers, and the union, especially the high school teachers’ union, saw online learning as an existential threat. Before the pandemic, the ministry had spent $18.6 million to license online teaching software called Brightspace to Ontario school boards. But teachers found it difficult to use. Many preferred Google Meet paired with Google Classroom, and it was ultimately up to them to choose. When the pandemic arrived, only a quarter of the board’s teachers participated in the software training courses, although many teachers told me the clinics were consistently full, which suggests the lack of tech know-how was far more widespread than we know. How many of the remaining 75 per cent were already up to date on Brightspace and Google Classroom? The board told me they didn’t have that information at the ready, but one teacher I spoke to estimated that up to 30 per cent of her colleagues were uncomfortable with technology in general.

Laura Friedmann is a filmmaker and producer and a single mother of two kids aged eight and 10. She had one computer in the house and she needed it for work. She applied for two devices and got a TDSB-issued iPad for her son and a laptop for her daughter. It wasn’t until the end of April that she received them and set up Google Classroom. Until then, there was no communication from her kids’ school unless she logged into Google Classroom on her own computer, which she squeezed in between work, preparing meals and getting the kids out for some exercise. The assignments were another headache, since she had to be involved from start to finish for both her kids. She had to find the posted assignment, print it out, explain it—teach it, effectively—then take a picture of the finished assignment and upload it. There was nothing like a class—nothing live, no phone calls. Just a few hours a week of assignments, which is what the ministry prescribed. After that, she’d guiltily plop her kids down in front of Netflix until she could take them out for some fresh air. She felt she wasn’t doing anything well—work, parenting, teaching. One Monday morning, after she’d spent several long days in a row catching up on work while the kids were at her ex-husband’s for the weekend, Friedmann woke up to a house full of laundry, dirty dishes and cleaning that needed to be done. She knew homeschooling would be next. When her kids woke up and turned on the TV, she was overwhelmed with a sense of guilt, frustration and also relief. She thought, Well, I guess they’ll just do that this morning. Then she went into the bathroom, closed the door, lay down on the floor and cried.

John Dewey is considered a founding father of modern education. He was a philosopher and education reformer around the turn of the 20th century, and his ideas about pedagogy are still taught at OISE today. One of his central tenets was that the relationship between the teacher and the student is at the heart of the learning experience, and that a teacher’s job is to engage students as opposed to simply treating them as receptacles of information.

It’s not a revolutionary idea. Today’s teachers know that children do best when kids and teachers interact directly, when there is a two-way flow of information. Were Dewey advising the TDSB during a lockdown, it’s safe to surmise he would have insisted on synchronous learning so kids could see their teachers, ask questions and interact with classmates.

That’s exactly what happened in the private school system, where there was widespread adoption of synchronous learning, and, despite a few reported hiccups, the transition was quick. Of course, that system was working from several advantages: with a higher average household income, private-school kids are often already equipped with home computers and Wi-Fi. The schools have fewer students and smaller classes. They have a more favourable ratio of support staff. That’s not to say online learning went perfectly in the private system. Teachers had to come to terms with having a live feed into their homes. Of course, several hours a day of synchronous classes was too much for some kids, and their parents pulled them out. But the teachers’ focus was on keeping students engaged in learning—real, live learning, face-to-face with their teachers and classmates, right from the start of lockdown. Even if students didn’t show up, their teachers were there. They took attendance, they followed up if a student missed class. School was never treated as optional. In the public system, by contrast, synchronous learning was considered an extreme proposition. One public-school teacher told me he couldn’t be online for synchronous lessons because that would require him to “be at the same place at the same time every day.” When I asked him how that differed from working in a classroom, he said he might have to help his own child with schoolwork or drive his wife to the grocery store.

Privacy was another widely espoused concern. Union leaders claimed their members were worried that having a running camera in their home exposed them to meme-making, ridicule and more. One scenario put forward by a teacher with a toddler at home: “What if my son walked into the frame while I was broadcasting and pulled his pants down?” Bischof, the president of OSSTF, told me about a synchronous high school class being Zoom-bombed with pornographic images and “absolutely vile, racist and misogynistic comments.” As if to drive the point home, one union rep cautioned her members that if they went ahead with synchronous learning and some parent complained to the Ontario College of Teachers, ETFO wouldn’t support them.

Bischof warned against live, online classes because they could be Zoom-bombed with pornographic and racist images

Jill Haythornthwaite is a supply teacher who works part time at several schools during normal times; during the pandemic, she was unemployed, and she got sick of hearing excuses from her full-time colleagues. “I can’t believe the union is screaming about privacy issues in the middle of a pandemic. Teachers are being paid to teach. They need to teach. We’ve got 30 per cent of the general population unemployed.”

A Grade 1 teacher in the east end followed her union’s advice, which was to not do synchronous lessons, because it was the only advice she had from the union regarding live lessons. “Everyone is afraid to take a step forward,” she told me, “because what if it’s the wrong step?” She tried emailing her students homework, recorded lessons and links to web resources. She also tried teaching students some French by conversing with them over the phone. Engagement was a disaster. “They’re six-year-olds,” she said. “They can’t read instructions on a website. They’re not great on the phone.” During that time, only five students submitted work regularly, and they were the kids who were already doing well in her class.

Karen Brackley has two kids, aged six and nine, at an elementary school in midtown. Both are in French immersion. Her daughter’s Grade 1 teacher loaded snippets of PowerPoint presentations, weekly, onto Google Classroom. French immersion is designed for families whose parents don’t necessarily know French. Brackley didn’t read or speak it, and her six-year-old wasn’t reading yet. Neither could understand the presentations. Brackley told the teacher as much and received a curt reply: “We do this type of thing in class, your daughter should be able to do it.” Over the course of two months, Brackley’s son’s teacher called three times for phone conversations.

“John Dewey is rolling in his grave,” says Richard Messina. He is principal of the Lab School, a private school within the University of Toronto that serves as a laboratory for learning about child development. “In our survival mode, many teachers have needed to go backwards. Giving children the opportunity to make discoveries for themselves is so different than just telling them what the right answer is,” says Messina. “I totally understand that unions and teachers are concerned about teacher vulnerability online. But if you’re not engaged in synchronous learning experiences, then you can only be transmitting.”

The TDSB teachers who wanted to start synchronous learning on their own did so at their peril. One French-immersion teacher at an east-end school switched to synchronous right away and made herself available to chat anytime within a 12-hour window via FaceTime. She faced resentment from her colleagues and received a “cool it” message from her school’s administration, who said the teachers needed to establish a norm to avoid having one teacher go all-out when another is doing the bare minimum.

Stephanie Hammond is a teacher at Fraser Mustard Early Learning Academy, an all-kindergarten school of 600 in Thorncliffe Park. The thought of not being able to connect with her students weighed heavily on her. She wanted to create an interactive website full of videos of her reading stories or discussing seasonal plants and animals; to do that, she knew she’d need to collaborate with colleagues and the school’s administration. But union rules stipulated that staff meetings are allowed only once a month and no more, and that all staff must attend. “We couldn’t wait,” says Hammond. So she and her colleagues created what they called “check-ins,” which freed them up to hold more frequent and smaller meetings. Immediately after March Break, and before receiving any direction from the ministry, they learned how to construct a website. The next week, they built it. By April 6, it was up and running. It contains links to Hammond and other teachers leading classes and activities, read-along stories in English and Farsi, and the main page displays information for income assistance and technical support. Hammond tried to make it as user-friendly as possible for five-year-olds: she put up a photo of herself so her students knew where to click without having to read her name, and she made a “Talk to Ms. Hammond” button that a child could click to easily get in touch via email. Students who could access a smartphone or a computer could begin learning right after the break. For those without access to either, Hammond called families on the phone. For families who couldn’t speak English, Hammond and her colleagues used a translation device that’s free to TDSB schools and helped the families navigate the board’s process of getting a computer.

Across the city, other teachers like Hammond developed innovative ways to engage with their students, and eventually, word of that type of behaviour reached the union bosses, two of whom were still hammering out the details of their collective agreements. On March 26, the high school teachers’ union, OSSTF, made a confounding announcement: “The individual measures some of our members have taken over the past few weeks to ensure students have the materials and resources they need is a testament to their commitment to our students. But we have asked in light of developing a province-wide plan…that they be mindful not to implement anything that could run contrary to direction from their school board or forthcoming from our work with the ministry.” When I asked Bischof why they didn’t put politics aside and greenlight synchronous learning as soon as possible, he denied that politics played any role and then blamed the ministry for the delays.

After a month and a half of leaving the teaching mostly to parents, finally, on May 1, the TDSB sought feedback via an online survey to parents. What was working and what wasn’t? What kind of support did parents need? The results were no surprise. Some 53 per cent of the 39,000 respondents expressed a desire for more direct contact or instruction from teachers, either by phone or online.

School trustees then unanimously passed a motion for more synchronous learning. But it would be another three weeks—May 27, a full two months after schools closed—before the TDSB made it official. “Refined Expectations for Remote Learning: A Guide for Teachers and Designated Early Childhood Educators” was a nine-page document that recommended educators meet synchronously with their students online or on the phone for a minimum of two 15-minute periods per week.

Karen Brackley was relieved, happy that her son would be able to engage with his teacher. And that did happen—two 15-minute sessions per week, almost to the second. “The bare minimum,” Brackley said. She and her husband ended up hiring private tutors. The experience made her want to pull her kids out of the TDSB altogether, and it worsened her impression of the education system in general. She says she wasn’t alone. “I spoke to a few parents who came from other countries—Bulgaria, Turkey, Italy, France, Russia, Japan. They said our public schooling is very weak.”

The TDSB is weak, stretched thin after decades of underfunding. Over half its schools are more than 60 years old, with a $4-billion maintenance backlog—roofing issues, heating and cooling problems, foundation problems. Schools are also dealing with an insufficient supply of computers, bathrooms with ancient, unusable soap dispensers, and primary classrooms without sinks. Classrooms are crowded. And the board is constantly pleading for more money. Those problems have existed since at least 1997, when former premier Mike Harris, in an attempt to slay a massive provincial debt, legislated changes that placed education-related revenue under control of the province rather than the individual boards, who can no longer directly levy taxpayers—via property tax—to raise the money they need. As a result, the TDSB is beholden to the ministry for its funding, which it receives in grants, and the ministry leverages that power to extract what it wants from the board. Harris knew there could be an accountability problem with his model, so he pledged a public review of the formula every five years. The last one was 18 years ago. The formula is decades out of date and shortchanges the TDSB by $228 annually per high school student and $174 per elementary student. No government has fixed it. The revenue stream is too good to give up.

One teacher told me he couldn’t teach online because it required him to be at the same place at the same time every day

It took nearly two months for teachers to start synchronous learning en masse. But by that time, many students had given up on school entirely. How many is hard to tell. There was no directive from the ministry or the board or various administrations to keep track of, well, anything: how much time teachers spent teaching, or which kids were participating and for how long.

John Malloy, the TDSB’s outgoing director of education, told me it would be “very inappropriate” to keep track of how much time teachers were spending with students on synchronous learning because it would demonstrate a lack of confidence in them. “I trust our teachers,” Malloy told me. “I believe they care about kids and want to do a good job.” The board expected teachers to connect with students twice a week and respond to parents’ inquiries in a timely way, but Malloy felt it wasn’t the board’s job to enforce those expectations. “Monitoring is more effective when parent, teacher and principal connect and they work through it. Not because we set up a dynamic where we can say, ‘Teacher, you haven’t been online enough this week.’ That’s not what we would do in a classroom.”

The unions did try to figure out engagement rates: at the end of March, during a call between the OSSTF and the ministry, the OSSTF requested data about the number of students who engaged in remote learning versus students who didn’t. Effectively, they wanted the dropout rate. Nancy Naylor, the deputy minister, agreed to “take it back” to Lecce. The ministry claims it did ask school boards to gather information, but as of August, no one seemed to have that information on hand. Harvey Bischof, president of OSSTF, suspects they didn’t gather it. “If true, that’s absolutely negligent,” he says.”

And as kids were opting out, many school boards decreed that any work turned in during the lockdown couldn’t lower a student’s grades, which sapped teachers of much of their authority. One Grade 8 teacher told me that pandemic or not, his students understood their marks “didn’t really count until they were older,” which left room for those who were happy with their marks to essentially tune out. At another midtown school, an eighth-grader said “hardly any” of her classmates were turning in work. By June, in a Grade 1 French-immersion class near the Danforth, only five out of 19 students submitted work. By the end of the semester, five out of 25 Grade 11 kids in one class at an east-end school were handing in half-hearted assignments, and even fewer were attending the 15-minute Google Meet sessions, when the teachers bothered to hold them.

With no accountability to the board for what was the closest thing to attendance during remote learning, with overwhelmed parents unable to effectively monitor their kids’ schoolwork, and students guaranteed to get no worse than their pre–­March Break grades, there was no incentive to do school work. Students could disappear from lessons altogether. Also, teachers lost out on crucial information—which schools had more engagement, and what they did to get it—that could help them develop best practices for the fall. Halfway through July, teachers I spoke to reported no follow-up from the ministry or the TDSB and no opportunity to provide feedback to inform their plans for September.

The response to pandemic schooling was, in a word, disastrous—for kids, for parents, for the thousands of businesses that suffered when parents had to devote their working hours to teaching rather than working. Some families were forced to choose between staying employed and tending to their kids, and many chose the latter. And often, in households with a mom and a dad, the one to stop working was mom. As we head into the fall, many moms are postponing their return to work. According to a study published in July, 32 per cent of Canadian women who lost their jobs between February and June were not actively seeking work.

Kids, of course, were affected most of all, detached from daily interaction, from advancing their skills in reading, writing and math, from developing social skills, and so much more. The impact hurts some kids more than others. Laura Friedmann, the single mom who was reduced to tears when faced with the choice of either teaching her kids or doing her day job, was never contacted by her kids’ teachers to arrange synchronous learning. She marvelled at what some double-income households were doing to fill the education gap. “I was left flying by the seat of my pants and watching what other amazing families were doing on Instagram,” she recalls. When faced with a choice between making the rent or homeschooling, the latter eventually lost out.

Sign up for our newsletter Thanks for signing up!

For the latest on Toronto during the reopening, subscribe to This City Now, check your inbox to complete your subscription

We won’t ever use your email address for anything else

Want even more Toronto Life? Follow us on social media.

“A lot of families just gave up on online learning,” says Ingrid Palmer, who works at a child development centre. Palmer also co-chairs the Inner City Community Advisory Committee, which advises the TDSB on high-need schools that receive extra funding so they can provide free meals to students, additional staff and training, and on-site medical services. Through work, she meets many families with children who are struggling with some stark realities—including kids with special needs who have lost their school-issued supports. Palmer, a single mother of three, experienced that struggle firsthand. Her 13-year-old son is on the autism spectrum, and during normal times, the TDSB assigns him a Chromebook to facilitate his in-class learning. Early in the lockdown, his teacher called to say the family would receive that computer, but it never arrived. It’s likely it was scooped up when the board collected school computers for redistribution. Palmer’s son normally gets good grades. She gave him the family PC when she wasn’t working remotely, but without his own computer or the routine of school, he lost motivation. He soon disengaged from school completely.

In her professional role, during the height of the lockdown, Palmer advised families who couldn’t juggle it all to opt out of school altogether. It was only a few months of school, and their mental health was more important than the three Rs. But in the event that there’s a second wave in the fall, she doesn’t see opting out as a viable strategy. “We need to have a better plan or these kids will be left behind. We can’t drop the ball again,” she says.

Educating kids during a pandemic—in class or online—is a challenge unlike any other. To make TDSB classrooms safe will require creativity and nimbleness. Sudden outbreaks of Covid-19 or a second wave might force kids back home. If that happens, teachers need to be empowered to teach remotely, supported with the resources to be effective, and the whole thing should be monitored carefully by the board and the ministry. That kind of success is built on trust, goodwill, innovation, flexibility and great communication—none of which were on display during the spring. It will also require increased autonomy for the boards, which remain financially beholden to the ministry. Unfortunately, the squabbling has continued over the return-to-school plan, suggesting that the chaos the TDSB experienced in spring will persist into the fall. For students, that could mean substandard education, or even no education at all.

This story appears in the September 2020 issue of Toronto Life magazine. To subscribe, for just $29.95 a year, click here.

This content was originally published here.

[recentanimenews]

Fate/Grand Order Voice Actresses Unleash Their Thirst at USA Tour Finale

The Fate/Grand Order USA Tour 2019 came to a close in front of hundreds of fans Saturday, concluding the four-stop tour at its final destination: Anime NYC. Donned in cardboard hats resembling the massively popular game’s mascot character Fou, fans were joined by English Fate/Grand Order Producer Albert Kao as well as special guests Aoi Yuki and Rumi Okubo, who voice several of the game’s characters, for a celebration of Fate Grand/Order complete with big announcements and a rather revealing Q&A, to say the least!

  The guests were each “summoned” on stage as their heroic spirits from the game. Rumi Okubo was introduced as the voice of Astolfo and Elizabeth Bathory’s many different incarnations. Aoi Yuki followed and was introduced as the voice behind Shuten Doji and the many incarnations of Okita Soji. Okubo greeted everyone and said that despite it being her first time in New York, she already felt like a New Yorker. Yuki stated she was happy to be in New York because she’s a fan of the New York Rangers hockey team, and that despite it being her first time in New York, “I already feel like a Ranger.”

    Kao led the Q&A by asking if they’d had a chance to sight-see yet. Okubo had seen a few attractions, while Yuki hadn’t had a chance yet. She added that she wanted to go to the Metropolitan museum “where all the catalysts of the servants are,” and Okubo agreed.

  While they hadn’t had much time to spend across the city, they had been on the convention floor checking out everyone’s F/GO cosplays. Okubo revealed she had been seeking out all the Astolfo and Elizabeth cosplayers and taking their pictures “without telling them I voice [the characters].” Yuki said she had taken pictures of an Okita and a “very beautiful Jeanne Alter,” causing Okubo to exclaim that she wasn’t one of her characters.

  The subject was directed to the F/GO USA Tour booth set up in the Exhibitor’s Hall and the various features they set up for fans to interact with, including a replica of Kintoki’s bike from the game. Kao said that when planning the tour they had considered incorporating some features from the Japanese F/GO festivals, but ultimately decided to build entirely new things specially for the American audience. When asked if they’d interacted with the booth at all, Yuki said that because her character Shuten has “a very deep relationship with Kintoki,” as soon as she saw his bike she “immediately knew” she had to ride it.

    It was pointed out that on one of the large Shuten Douji images featured at the booth Yuki had taken the time to specifically autograph her thigh. Yuki sheepishly admitted that she wasn’t sure where to sign at first and the most lit up area of the picture happened to be her thigh.

  A trailer was shown for the recent Seven Duels of Swordmasters event, and the two were asked what memorable things they remembered from it, since they both actively play F/GO in addition to their voice contributions. Okubo said that the Hidden True Name system stood out the most to her. Yuki noted that “not a lot of good things happen” in the Japanese history version of the events, so seeing them retold the way they were in F/GO left her “excited and warm-hearted.”

  Okubo added that she’s sure a lot of players were surprised by the ending and that she hopes the story being set around so many Japanese servants sparked some interest in learning Japanese history. 

    The question of when Muramasa will be released as a servant is brought up ― a question that’s become a bit of an in-joke among fans for some time now. Yuki replies that she honestly doesn’t know. “Every time I meet [the developers] I ask the same question, but they never tell us... I’m sure one of these days Muramasa will come out... Until then continue to support F/GO please.”

  Kao then introduces the audience to the current Christmas-themed event: the Little Santa Alter, a rerun of last year’s Christmas event wherein users can gain Jeanne d’Arc (Alter Santa Lily) as a limited servant (a name everyone on stage inevitably struggled to say correctly). When asked what their memories of the event were, Yuki admitted that she’s a relatively newer player and missed the event’s Japanese run. 

  What stuck out the most to Okubo was the ascension material being a Gilles de Rai doll, which she wishes would be made and sold as merchandise. She also really liked the prize roulette system and would like to see it in more events. Unfortunately, she said, “when I asked our staff why we don’t do that, they kind of looked at me with forlorn, sad eyes, so I’ll never ask that question again.”

    They all joked that those were the eyes of a gacha player. “A servant will definitely come to you [if] you continue to roll the gacha,” Yuki went on to say. “That’s what gacha is all about.” Both actresses offered some emotional support to a very dejected-looking Kao.

  The topic then shifts to the different characters Okubo plays; Kao asks how she distinguishes between all the different versions of Elizabeth Bathory she voices. Okubo admitted that most of them are pretty similar so she doesn’t change things up at all before adding “The problem is the mechas... when I first received the description, I read it and thought, ‘Mech? Mecha? Seriously?!” For Mecha Eli-Chan she decided to go with a somewhat more childish performance than usual. 

  With the topic of the limited Christmas in mind, she added that she was first surprised to find out how many people missed out on Caster Elizabeth for one of the Halloween-themed events, which taught her the importance of playing the events. Yuki agreed, saying she never realized the regret she’d have as a new player who only owns Astolfo and base Elizabeth and has already missed out on getting Okubo’s other characters. Okubo jokingly asks the developers to give her some Elizabeths. On the side, Yuki adds that her Astolfo and Elizabeth are NP-level 5 and begins petting a tiny Astolfo plush that Okubo had brought on stage with her, causing Okubo to start shouting “Ah, ah, thank you. Thank you. That feels good,” in her Astolfo voice.

  It only got weirder from there!

    Kao asks Okubo about her process creating the voice for Astolfo, but she interrupts herself while answering to start making more suggestive Astolfo noises as Yuki continues to pet the plush. Regaining her composure, she answers, “He’s cute, and he’s a boy, but... He doesn’t care about being cool or boyish. He doesn’t care about gender that much. That’s what I had in mind when I voiced Astolfo.” Kao then asks what she had in mind when voicing him in the spinoff gag anime Learning With Manga! F/GO, to which her voice trails off in a simple “Ehhhh…” before moving on.

  When asked about how her performance differed between F/GO and the Fate/Apocrypha anime, Okubo said that for Apocrypha she “started from scratch again” and looked inside herself to channel her own cute and masculine sides. “Honestly, it was very hard for me.” Yuki said she originally watched Apocrypha because Karna, her favorite servant, was in it, “but then watching Astolfo in it I thought, ‘Wow, he’s cool.’”

  The conversation moved to Yuki’s role as Okita Souji and what she had to keep in mind for her performance. According to her, the staff had made it apparent that there needs to be a differentiation between her coolness in battle and her loving side when interacting with her master. “It was very easy to built the character based off that.”

    Okubo then made some suggestive comments about Okita generating and sucking up Critical Stars that the translator thought best not to translate entirely.

  Kao pointed out that Okita was first introduced in the GUDAGUDA Honnouji event which is known for its fast-paced, comedic dialogue. Yuki noted that she had been told to play it rhythmically “in a staccato.”

  When it came to voicing the role of Shuten Doji, Yuki said “I kept in mind [that] she’s small but sexy. She’s not big, but she has the sweet-scented musical voice I wanted to convey when voicing her.” Okubo admitted that when she uses Shuten in her party she honestly gets “really excited” and tries to get her damaged so she can hear those voice lines. Kao said he had never thought about playing the game that way, to which Okubo replied, “Don’t you do that with Gilgamesh? I thought you liked Gilgamesh.”

    The conversation then devolves (or evolves, depending on how you look at it) into a rapidfire Gilgamesh thirst-fest: 

  “I like it when his hair is down.”

  “His bangs are awesome.”

  “So awesome.”

  “Caster Gilgamesh in Babylonia, you have to love him,” Okubo says at some point.

  “Caster Gilgamesh is one of the characters you definitely want to have as a boss. As your work boss,” Yuki adds.

  “I want to offer my services to him,” Okubo replies. The entire crowd erupts in laughter, and Okubo attempt to clarify with “That’s spending money, right? That’s what it means,” and Kao to ask what the panel’s supposed to be about again.

  Yuki reminds the panel they were talking about Shuten Doji and finishes answering the original question by pointing out that even as a native Japanese speaker, learning to speak with a Kyoto dialect for Shuten was so challenging that she required special training for it. 

    Kao then says he was given info that they’re both in a LINE group with a few other F/GO voice actors called “FGOtaku” and asks what kind of things they talk about there, opening up a whole new can of worms.

  Yuki asks, “Can I really say that?” to which Okubo responds, “Honestly, there’s a lot of conversations that shouldn’t be recorded or archived.”

  “I love Karna, so when my love for Karna is at its full peak, FGOtaku is where I go to let out all my passion for Karna,” Yuki admits.

  “Every time she prefaces her chat with ‘This is unbelievable!’ we’re like ‘Oh no, not again,’” Okubo jokes. “Then whenever we open it we go ‘Oh that’s pretty cute,’ so that’s how those conversations go.”

  “That kind of banter happens with every favorite servant in the LINE chat group.”

  “Especially when new costumes or Saint Graph images come out of our favs. We all get excited,” Okubo confessed. “I look at the backsides of the servants. I personally love to look at the hands of men.”

  “This has kind of gotten sexual. We should probably stop.”

  Kao says he always thought he was the crazy one, to which Yuki and Okubo both reply “Same, same.”

    Trying to get back on topic, he asks which Noble Phantasm in the game is their favorite. Yuki says that her favorite would have to be Ruler Jeanne’s because of how helpful it is, and that as long as you have Merlin and Ruler Jeanne you can pretty much go endlessly during turns. “Any time there’s a battle I can’t beat, my lineup would be Mash, Jeanne, Ruler Jeanne, and Merlin. You can easily go 70 turns with that. My maximum is 158 turns.”

  Okubo answers that her favorite right now is Mecha Eli-Chan’s because of how hard it hits, and that her other favorite is Paul Bunyan’s “because it’s fast.” Yuki adds that on that note she likes Arash’s Noble Phantasm and the two perform it together. Okubo says that his voice actor told her to actually try playing with him to hear his victory lines. Yuki says that she likes how cute Paul Bunyan is, but that Arashi has nice muscles. “I like the underarm. I like the armpits.”

    Bracing himself for what would inevitably come next, Kao had one final question for them, “Who’s your favorite servant?” 

  Keeping it short and easy, Yuki simply shouted “Karna!” Okubo retorted, “You like Karna because you love Karna. I like Gilgamesh, but what I actually want to do is just watch him from afar. Trying to become friends with him is probably super hard. If you do, you’ll probably be really stressed out.”

  Yuki said that if she could summon a servant in real life it would be Karna so she could make him her husband. Okubo said she’s simply a fan of Gilgamesh’s, but if she could really go out with a servant it’d be Archer Emiya. Yuki asked if the question had changed to which servant do you want as a boyfriend, then said for her Robin Hood would be good for her because he takes care of people and she needs to be taken care of. 

    She then asked Okubo to explain in her words why she’d choose Emiya, to which she replied that he takes good care of his friends, he’s a good cook, and he’ll scold you when he needs to.

  “By the way,” she added, “If Gilgamesh was here I wanna be his chair. Please sit on me.”

  With the somewhat risque Q&A out of the way, it was finally time for announcements, beginning with details of this year’s Fate/Grand Order Thanksgiving Special running from November 20th until December 1st. In addition to seven days of extra login bonuses, the event will feature limited time missions, ½ AP cost for all daily quests, daily pickup summons, and a new Spiritron Dress for Astolfo.

  A trailer was then shown announcing that Pseudosingularity IV: Heretical Salem would be coming soon to F/GO and be the final chapter of Arc 1.5. 

  It was also announced that Noble Phantasm subtitles would be released in a same-day update across all versions, and that to celebrate the conclusion of the Fate/Grand Order USA Tour all English F/GO players would be receiving 30 Saint Quartz. 

    As the panel came to a close, both actresses offered their final words of thanks to the audience. 

  “Thank you all for coming again," Okubo led. “I was supposed to be here as a voice actress guest, but for some reason I decided to talk about being Gilgamesh’s chair. I hope when you leave this panel you forget about all that… Seeing everyone enjoying F/GO makes me happy as a voice actress and a player... Thank you all again for coming.”

  “Thank you all for coming,” Yuki added graciously. “Seeing all these American masters, I saw everyone was kind and warm-hearted. I learned that today and was very happy... The love of my life, Karna, the singularity he shines most in is five in America. I know that because he shines there America the country is my holy site. I’d like to come to America to see and meet everyone again. Thank you all for coming.”

    Are you excited for the upcoming Fate/Grand Order events? Do you want Gilgamesh to use you as a chair and sit on you too? Let us know in the comments below!

    -----

Danni Wilmoth is a Features writer for Crunchyroll and co-host of the video game podcast Indiecent. You can find more words from her on Twitter @NanamisEgg.

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com