#that last point is also a very important life lesson with a lot of applications to much more serious matters

[the-real-maglev]

Note to OFF people: Toby isn't composing the whole soundtrack. He's mainly handling boss themes. Please don't act like the whole thing is Toby's doing. Never discredit a group's credit to prop up one individual.

[animezinglife]

He set the conditions that saved me from my previous situation. He’s consistently put people in my life who needed to be there at that precise moment. 

TL/DR: Tagging @indynerdgirl​!

To elaborate a bit without going into a novel-length version, my last job was destroying me. It was destroying me emotionally, psychologically, and was even negatively impacting my physical health. Keep in mind there was a lot else going on at the time, too, and it wasn’t long after the most heartbreaking family tragedy to date, followed by another devastating loss. There were tiers of the job that got progressively worse as time went on, but early on, He dropped someone into my life that gave me a reason to keep pushing through in that job...and frankly, taught me some other extremely important lessons I also absolutely needed, but that’s a different conversation. Had God not done that, timing for everything wouldn’t have aligned later on as it did.

When my situation progressively got worse at a far more rapid speed after he left--or maybe I just noticed it more--I sent out a pretty uncharacteristic, desperate cry for help. The whole time, I’d been praying like crazy that an opportunity would come up that would allow me to get myself out of there, and I was in the process of creating cushions for myself to fall back on. The therapist who just happened to intercept this email and read it called me into her office to talk to her in person (in confidence and in safety). We talked candidly, and we immediately connected. She told me about a job opening that had come up in an environment she knew was very different than what I was in, encouraged me to apply, and passed my number along to the hiring supervisor. She asked me at the time if I believed in happenstances--at the time, I was too beaten down to hope for a positive outcome. I have versatile degrees, but they wanted one in a very specific science and field of research.

Fast-forward to that night, the hiring supervisor calls me and I have a conversation with her. I can tell she’s different, and she tells me I’m the first candidate she’s talked to who sounds like “an actual adult.” She tells me she’s going to review my materials as soon as she got into the office the next morning, but to plan for a first round interview.

I remember in the short span of the few days that followed and think of the odd occurrences that couldn’t have been anything but God’s work that transpired. Feeling like a complete wreck, I’d gone to a local ice cream parlor for a small treat for myself, and a college student--a complete stranger--came over to me, asked if she could pray for me, and took my hands. We prayed together, and her prayer was unsettlingly applicable to my situation. Maybe I just looked like I’d been through it and she knew I needed help, but somehow, I don’t think that was it. 

I made it to the last round of interviews--something I now know my current employer didn’t want to have even bother doing because they’d already chosen me, but a process is a process and she was being met with a little skepticism over those pieces of paper. Note that the head honcho had not met me, nor did he know anything about me yet--I quickly erased any concerns he had there once he did. I was trying to work twelve hour workdays at my old job on no sleep, trying to prepare myself for that two hour interview (one hour lecture over something I again had no experience in, plus one hour of standard interview questions), and all the while was not able to work on any of it during the work day because we had a mandatory training. I had an annual doctor’s appointment for insurance scheduled in the middle of it, and my then-supe forbade me from going. I went anyway, and when the nurses saw my blood pressure, they panicked. I broke down to the point I couldn’t breathe: full-fledged gasping, sobbing, blubbering, mortifying disaster.

God sent those nurses, too: to completely random, third-party women who didn’t know me at all offered me more comfort and a better sense of hope than I’d had yet. By that point too, I at least had three new job offers on the table (I was interviewing through all of this in secret via Zoom), so if worst came to worst and I didn’t get the job I wanted, I at least had backups. The second nurse came in and I just word-vomited everything. She gave me a hug, told me she knew I was going to get the job, and that everything was going to be okay.

Jumping ahead, I’ve now been in that position I wanted--the one the therapist told me about--for over a year. I’ve come to find out my supervisor was praying hard for the right candidate to come along because she was so overwhelmed without having good backup in that role, and they needed someone reliable, who understood what their mission was about on a personal level, and who would fit perfectly within their team. 

The fact that therapist I will always credit to saving me had such a strong premonition and the fact we happened to connect at the exact right time isn’t coincidence. She’s not a Christian woman. We have very different beliefs, yet very similar dispositions and goals for the work world. But we both somehow knew we needed to meet at that exact moment and have since not only become friends, but have helped each other in a variety of ways.

The little ways God works are important too, because those get you through the day-to-day. I can pay my rent. I have food on my table. I have a great, reliable vehicle to drive. I now have a great job surrounded by wonderful people who each other up instead of trying everything within their power to tear others down. I had NO experience doing a job like this, but I excel at it. I settled into it quickly and easily, and even our head honcho’s thrilled that my supervisor took a gamble on me and fought for me. It’s even changed their entire hiring process and how they look at degree requirements. I’ve already caught up to a lot through certifications and continued education.

But when your faith’s been shaken more than a few times, it’s the big moves that humble you most and remind you there’s still a powerful good. I’m not an easy believer and never have been. I've always believed in something greater and more powerful than myself and all of us, but it's really hard for me to get onboard with the way it's often taught. I greatly dislike that about myself. I’m fairly pessimistic. I try hard not to be. So those reminders have been crucial to me--especially after so many consecutive hardships and tragedies--to reframe my perspective and keep trying. I try to focus on the good and the many blessings I have. I have wonderful parents who are still healthy. I have a good relationship with my cousins. I have great friends, and great co-workers. I have my health--that’s all a tremendous amount to be thankful for.

But that’s the more specific, recent glimpse. I’m leaving a lot out, but hopefully that gets enough of the point across to help someone else as well. God works in many different ways. When your faith gets shaken, keep going and pray anyway. You never know what will happen and it’s better to try.

Thank you for the tag!

I’m in the mood to celebrate God, so let’s start a reblog game!! Say something(s) that God has done for you and then tag your friends! It can be big or small, something that happened within two seconds this morning or something that has been lifelong. Legitimately anything.

For me, He sent His most beautiful souls to surround me to lead me ever deeper into the faith. I am in awe of each and every one of them and see God in them daily, and it blows me away with gratitude how He placed so many spectacular people in my life (probably because He knew I would be lost without them).

@bookdragon1811 @avatardoggo @silverpaintedstars @fairytale-lights @holbytlanna @tessathecaffeinatedbutterfly @distance-does-not-matter @kazoosandfannypacks @intothelionsden @babsbabbles @the-permanent-blur @i-am-a-freg

[baku-bowl]

broke 1,000 followers (the fuck? I don't even make content people), so decided to write up a list of some (but not all, I'll make other lists later) of my favorite Bakugou-centric fic recs. my tastes run towards hurt/comfort, as you'll probably figure from the list. if there are some Baku-centric fics that you've enjoyed that aren't on here, please add them - this is definitely not a complete list of the ones I've read and love, but I'm always up for some recs. <3

fair warning, most of these are wips.

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

Social Media 101 by WindsChild8178

Part 1: Survival Guide to Fucking Up

[Solely Bakugou’s point of view]

Katsuki Bakugou doesn’t have a gentle bone in his body. He’s aggressive in everything he does and does everything with 100% of his heart in it. After the Sport’s Festival, Katsuki starts to get harassed by strangers for his unheroic demeanor. It starts with letters but it doesn’t end there. The moment Katsuki realizes the harassment has entered dangerous territory and he needs to tell someone, it’s already too late.

Part 2: Post Traumatic Life Disorder

[Point of View opens up to Bakugou, teachers and classmates]

When the Dorms are finally built, everyone is settling in well, but things become tense as people begin to realize something isn’t right with the recently rescued Bakugou.

[Cannon compliant right up to after the License Exam]

hands down my favorite fic in the fandom right now. it’s the one that converted me into a Bakugou lover. if you have any fondness for Bakugou as a character then it’s likely you’ve read this one already, but if not, I can’t recommend it enough. incredibly depressing, but with the hope that comfort is coming soon in the next few chapters.

The Kids Will Be Alright, Eventually by NotWithThatAttitude

Bakugou is spiraling in the aftermath of Kamino and his friends are starting to notice. He's stubborn, aggressively independent, and less than willing to dig into his past, but after a breakdown that ends with a painful secret revealed, he starts to get help.

Whether he likes it or not.

Meanwhile, a new kind of villain threatens an uneasy peace following the loss of Allmight. Whispers build as a new narrative slowly takes shape:

Hero society needs to change.

Feat. Therapy, Dadzawa, best boy Kirishima, dysfunctional families, healing, growing up, and the mortifying ordeal of being known

guys.. the medical accuracy of this fic is just... *chef’s kiss*

I rarely see mental health genuinely handled well in fics, but this one goes above and beyond. kudos to the author for doing such excellent research into psychology, and making the application of it in here not-boring. also, while this one does have abusive!Mitsuki, it’s done in a way that feels realistic, and how I usually will see it occur in real life, rather than just for the hurt/comfort feels.

fair warning, the fic can be incredibly triggering (themes of severe depression, PTSD, panic attacks, rape survival, abuse survival, suicidal ideation/attempted suicide, among other things), so be safe and heed the tw’s if you decide to read. legitimately one of my Top Favorite fics in this fandom.

Lock and Key by autochorystalize

Bakugou made a choked, gravelly noise before croaking out a low, “You can’t be serious.” His fingers ached to blow up everything in the room.

“I’m sorry, young man, but you can’t change reality! This sometimes happens.” Recovery Girl clicked through his file, adding a new symbol in a previously empty slot.

- - -

A pair of eyes discreetly locked on to an explosive blond plowing his way forward, parting people in his path. He recognized the kid, of course. Anyone in the underbelly of society would recognize him, after the publicity of both UA’s Sports Festival and the events leading up to All Might’s fall. The uniform he was wearing cast away any doubts about the young man’s identity.

It was a bit of a surprise that the little firecracker presented as an omega.

- - - - - - - - -

Or: there are certain types of evil that seemed too distant, archaic violations and perversions that would never actually threaten bright-eyed heroes-in-training in the clean, modern world...but sometimes those evils aren't as distant as one might think.

remember when I said that I love a/b/o fics that are full of plot and world-building and gender-induced tension? that’s this one. the OC’s are fabulous and you love to hate ‘em. also, it’s the fic that made me fall head-over-heels for the TodoBaku dynamic, so it’s got a special place in my cold, dead heart. 

be warned, there are rather explicit non-con scenes between an adult (OC) and a minor (Bakugou) in this one, but the author warns for them in advance, and you could likely skip those parts without missing too much if you need to.

Never and Always, Eventually by Wawa_Boonliang

"Katsuki can remember the exact moment that he and Deku…that he and Midoriya Izuku became friends. He can also remember the moment he and Izuku became fierce rivals, a time when they were almost enemies.

However, what he remembers most clearly about their relationship is the moment that they moved passed rivals and became something more close than mere friends. Something more like brotherhood, something forged in fire and secured in the middle of a battlefield or in the midst of natural disaster where the number of the dead was climbing ever higher. And then it was torn from him."

Katsuki is given a second chance. A chance to save everyone. A chance to change everything.

But should he?

y’all. I’m a slutty, slutty whore for time travel fics. a time travel fic with autistic!coded Bakugou? it was love at first read.

Lessons Learned by Sif (Rosae)

Rather than the police station, Katsuki's friends bring him to a hospital after rescuing him from the villains. His wounds were minor, but it didn't make having them treated any less important. As it would so happen, Best Jeanist was also brought to this hospital after the attack.

Sometimes, small choices have a big impact on how a story plays out.

classic Bakugou hurt/comfort. this fic opened me up to the potential that could be a genuinely good Best Jeanist & Katsuki mentor-mentee relationship, and I kind of dig it and search ravenously for it in other fics now. I’m also a huge fan of the behind-the-scences Pro Hero Chat group.

Slope by sunfleurmoon

“I’m not a hero. Or a good person,” Katsuki says, giving Aizawa a pointed look, “So leave me alone. I don’t care about the League or UA, or you—” The two years he’s been away have been fine, more than fine, fucking fantastic actually if you ignore the bi-monthly near-death experiences. He doesn’t need this place. He doesn’t miss this place.

And yet, longing, a childish desire to tear up, or maybe blow something to bits, they all twist in his chest like a band of traitors regardless. “—I just want to go home.”

Or: the one where Katsuki and Izuku fail the first term exam, Aizawa discovers their pasts, and Katsuki is booted from UA. Featuring questionable descriptions of villain organizations, a slightly illegal moving shop, and your favorite emotionally constipated badass in distress with a newly discovered penchant for collecting strays.

paaaaaaiiiiiiiin. the hurt is ALIVE in this one. lots of tortured, angsty exploding child goodness. the OC’s are excellently crafted, and the Bakugou & Eri relationship? beautiful. definitely deserves a read.

Ground Zero by WindsChild8178

In the wake of Kamino, Katsuki is tested more than anyone could imagine. Bound by a villain’s quirk to keep his silence or die, he lives each day knowing it might very well be his last. He continues to work towards becoming a hero, keeping his secret from his classmates and teachers, focusing on making it through each day and trying not to allow the panic or depression to get the best of him. When the villain finally corners him with demands in exchange for his life, there is really only one answer Katsuki Bakugou can give.

honestly don't know which I want updated more - social media 101 or ground zero. this author's fics are amazing, and I really wasn't expecting the twist in this one. can't wait for windschild to come back to this fic some day.

The Defect by LadyGreenFrisbee

"Why do you want to win the Sports Festival so badly?" 

Because I want to see if the defect could usurp the masterpiece.

(In which Endeavor holds a terrible secret and Bakugo has to suffer since childhood for it.)

a great concept, and I adore the shouto and Katsuki sibling interaction here. hoping the author will come back to this one some day.

A Name That You'll Remember by Heronfem

Kirishima Eijirou is a Hero. Bakugou Katsuki... is not. Trapped in his toxic workplace and increasingly desperate to get out, Red Riot's days are only brightened by a new villain known as Caution, who's not exactly villainous and keeps accidentally doing good deeds. But when a real villain appears, a threat from the past that demands that Red Riot make the ultimate sacrifice to keep the public safe, Bakugou is forced into saving the day... and eventually, Red Riot himself.

sob story good guy villains are my weakness, this fic is a gem, and I'd kill for the sequel.

Our Hero by AnonymousTwit

He felt everything jerk to the side and throw his balance off before he saw anything, dust clouding his vision and irritating his lungs as the earth itself opened up to swallow them whole. For a single moment, in a millisecond's time, his wild eyes locked with Raccoon Eyes', hers alight with fear and adrenaline-fueled desperation. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he realized that it was the first time she'd looked at him with something other than long-deserved hatred in days.

And then he was free falling.

Or

After a particularly nasty encounter between childhood friends, the class learns about Bakugou and Midoriya's dark history and practically ostracizes Bakugou while trying to defend Midoriya. An earthquake during an outing has all sides regretting their decisions.

just fucking tear apart my self-sacrificing faves in every way imaginable while their loved ones watch on in terror. 💖🥰💖 this one is heavy on the Bakusquad and Class-1A feels, and VERY heavy on the Mina & Bakugou relationship (platonic).

Running back the tape, watching it replay by Faralyne

For someone ripped from their time, ripped from the few but strong relationships built by time and personal development, by self-reflection and swallowed pride, ripped from the one thing that made him feel worthwhile and needed and put-together, and forced to forge everything over again—Katsuki thinks he is handling it pretty fucking well.

Or

A villain’s quirk sends a 29-year-old Bakugou back in time to his middle school days.

am I a sucker for time travel? yes. am I a sucker for vigilante!bakugou? also yes. am I a sucker for this fic? literally refreshing the page in wait for an update as we speak.

Liability by sandelf

After All-Might dies rescuing Bakugou from the League, Bakugou is determined to prove it wasn't for nothing.

But the world is against him, his grief is overwhelming, and his stability is splitting at the edges.

very self-indulgent bakugou angst. tw for harassment, severe depression, and suicidality.

Special Mentions:

How To Win The Sport Festival: A Step By Step Guide by mhwright

Short re-imagining of the Sports Festival Arc if Shinso had planned a little better and worked a little harder to win the Sports Festival and if the match-ups had been slightly different. Self-indulgent fic of watching him succeed.

this is completely Shinsou-centric, not Bakugou-centric, but I love and adore it and am dying for a sequel. Shinsou is Best Boy here and you'll be rooting for him the whole time.

[thenovelartist]

Burned Beginnings, chapter 1

Novel decided to do Adrienette April on a whim. Each post until the end of April (or such is the plan) will have 3 prompts in it.

She also discovered she’s very rusty. Bear with me here. XD

Next>>

1. AU

Marinette had thought she’d grown used to Chloe’s bullying, having to had endure it since they were little. However, with high school came a new name that became a regular part of Chloe’s vocabulary, alongside “hot” and “sexy” and “dreamboat”.

“And Marinette would never catch the eye of someone so perfect.”

Honestly, Marinette had thought she was over it, but on a particularly bad day, she’d snapped back at Chloe.

“Well, clearly he isn’t that perfect if he fawns over someone whose only redeeming quality is pretending to be pretty.”

That had led to a fire alarm getting pulled and Marinette left to blame for it. Anyone who tried to come to her defense was shut down, and Marinette had been suspended.

Which had started an all-out war.

After being stuck at home, wrongfully, for three solid days, Marinette had snapped. She’d decided that if Chloe was going to build a bonfire and poor on the gasoline that she would be there with a match. By senior year, Marinette’s record had taken a hit for it but Chloe’s reputation was in the toilet.

Marinette would take what she could get.

However, she supposed she hadn’t fully thought out the consequences. As much as she played with fire, she should have realized she’d get burned sooner or later.

And she did. Third degree.

We regret to inform you your application has been denied.

Those were words she grew tired of seeing yet came back from every school she applied to. With that in mind, she’d called up her girl friends to tell them what had happened.

“Hey, Marinette,” Alya had said upon seeing the letters. “Don’t get me wrong, I feel really bad for you. But… I did warn you—”

“I get it,” Marinette had surrendered, knowing that Alya was completely right. “You tried to warm me of the consequences, and now I’m paying for them.”

The girls had slipped into a moment of silence before Alix spoke up. “Hey, I can ask Max if he can do a little digging so you at least know why, yeah?”

Marinette had raised a brow but agreed. “Only if he’s not busy with his own college stuff.”

“Oh please, he’s too smart for college. He started up some robotics company in his free time and is already making bank on it.”

It took a week for Max to come back with a full report. Marinette had to give him props for working fast as he did.

“Hacking into the system was the first thing I could think of,” he’d explained. “In the side notes, there was mention of your attendance record and suspensions.”

“They were all wrongful suspensions,” Alix had countered.

“Doesn’t matter to the school,” Max had said with a shrug. “But even then, I thought there had to be more to this than just attendance. There were other students who had the same notes yet were accepted. So I shifted focus to digging up background on all the directors of the school. After hacking a few emails, I discovered Audrey Bourgeois happens to know a lot of directors or administration members in all the fashion schools of France. Considering the contents of most of those emails, it has become clear that Marinette was wrongfully barred from every school she’d applied to. And that there’s nothing that can be done about it because we only discovered such scandal through highly illegal means.”

“So…” Alya had begun, turning her attention to Marinette. “Where does that leave you, M?”

Marinette’s lips had pursed in thought. It was funny how things turned out, because despite her anger, she somehow had been peace with what she was faced with. “I think that the last place I want to be is in an industry full of liars and people who use their words to manipulate anyone they damn well please.”

That was how she ended up working full-time in her parents’ bakery. They never said a word about it, but she knew they were disappointed. Of course they weren’t mad about her still being here and working in the bakery with them, and she knew her parents still loved her more than anything.

But she knew that with as many dreams as she had and had shared with them, they were disappointed on her surrendering it all.

“Sorry, Maman, Papa,” she whispered into the empty kitchen as she plopped the baguettes she formed onto a baking tray. “Just give me a little time to figure things out. Seems like lofty dreams are a lot easier to crush than I realized.”

 2. Rebellion

A son can only bear the world of their parent’s expectations for so long. He wasn’t Atlas, but after a few years of acting like him, Adrien decided to dump the globe. To hell if it broke. He’d smirk in satisfaction at his father’s disappointment.

At the very least, the fact he no longer had the weight of the world of his shoulders made the far-too-common disappointment lecture easier to bear.

His strategic rebellion had started harmless enough. At sixteen with a rapidly growing forced modeling career, he’d given his father an ultimatum: he gets to grow out his hair, or it all goes. It had been shocking the amount of power the razor in his hand had given him. It was the perfect harmless threat. His father had been furious, throwing a fit about Adrien acting like a child, but after being gaslit for so long, Adrien had finally come to realize the abusive techniques for what they were. And he wasn’t going to roll over and take it any longer.

That day had ended with Adrien being grounded but ultimately the victor of their stand-off.

After that, he’d begun ditching certain events. He’d always liked fencing, so he never ditched those lessons, but attendance for his home-school lessons, mandarin lessons, and piano lessons had all been decided on a whim. His father had hardly been pleased by this, but to Adrien, that was the point. The lectures soon washed into one another so much that Adrien could practically recite the words that roll off his father’s tongue verbatim. He’d come to realize they were strategically meant to hurt. To humiliate. And as such, he’d stopped taking them personally.

Then came the fun part.

He got earrings. Honestly, Adrien hadn’t really cared for the piercings one way or another. In one way, there were a hassle, and caring for new piercings was a pain in the butt. However, they had been worth it to see his dad so royally pissed off.

Then came the ditching of certain photoshoots. There was a reason Adrien had held off on this one for so long: he cared about the people running the shoot. There was no reason they needed to be collateral in this battle between him and his father. After all, they were just employees doing their job; Adrien didn’t want them to suffer for his rebellion. With that in mind, Adrien had planned out his absences of these photoshoots. Again, he didn’t want to drag anyone else into his mess, so he had always organized a replacement model. Shoot would always go on, just not as planned.

And that was enough to drive his father mad.

It always put a smile on Adrien’s face.

The last touch was an unexpected one. He hadn’t even thought about going this far. Yet, a friend of his not only put the idea in his head, but gave him the art to go with it.

“Is that a tattoo?”

Oh, how he wished he would have taken a picture of his father’s face. The large black cat surrounded in a green, wispy smoke that wrapped around his forearm was truly a work of art. He’d had to think carefully about this decision, but in the end, he quite liked it.

“Yeah. I’m eighteen; I can ink myself if I want to. Why? Is that a problem?”

Adrien might be wearing a cat on his arm, but the grin on his lips was downright wolfish.

Eventually, it all had come to a head and blew up in his face. Adrien couldn’t say he’d been surprised. In fact, he had been fully expecting it. He’d already found an apartment to rent and had begun sneaking most of his important things over there before his father could kick him out. So when Adrien found himself kicked to the curb as soon as he was handed his general education certificate, Adrien had been prepared.

But mostly, he was free.

What a joyous day it was.

However, now that he was free, he knew he needed a job. Not because he needed the money, per se, but because it was time he started acting like the average adult. He never got to go to school, so now, it was time to pick up a mundane, first job that everyone hated but would “serve him well later in life”. Mostly, it would just be something normal.

The easy places to apply were food shops and retail stores. He’d work one for a while before deciding what his next life step would be. Chloe had been quick to offer him a job at her father’s hotel, but Adrien was vehemently against the idea. Over the span of his rebellion, Chloe’s behavior and attitude towards him had grown notably worse, and he had a feeling cutting ties with her would be his next step in life.

In the end, he’d scored a job he definitely was underqualified for. He’d applied partly out of spite and partly because ‘why not?’ He’d heard about this bakery enough times from Chloe to know the “cruel bitch who did nothing but mercilessly harass her” lived here, and that was enough to pique Adrien’s curiosity. At a bakery as popular as that, though, he hadn’t been sure he’d get a call. And when he did, he knew he would do everything he could to present himself as a reliable and respectable man eager to work, but he never thought he’d end up hitting it off with the owner.

Which somehow ended up with him agreeing to work at Tom and Sabine’s Patisserie.

Going into that job, he swore to himself he would do what he could to prove himself worthy. He knew there had to have been better applicants, so Adrien didn’t want to disappoint the very kind owners who dared give him a chance. Soon, his days were spent working hard while covered in flour and surrounded by bread all day. Well, bread and all the sharp and hot objects in your average kitchen.

He just didn’t think that would include a wicked sharp and smoking hot young lady that happened to be his bosses’ daughter.

 3. Game Night

“Mama, Papa, please go. You two hardly ever get out of the house.”

Marinette watched her maman put a hand over the mouthpiece of her phone while her papa turned to her. “But I’ll be busy that night. We have a massive order scheduled for the next day.”

“I can handle that,” Marinette quickly countered with a grin. “You know I’m a night owl, anyway. I’ll get it done, and you two can go enjoy game night with your friends.”

Her parents spared each other a glance. “Are you sure about that, Marinette?” Maman asked.

“Positive. Papa already talks to the bread too much, so he really should talk to people for a change. And while you have to deal with people all day, I know you want more than to just have short conversations filled with small talk. So please, go out and have a social life for once.”

With one last look, her parents relented. With a smile, her mother took her hand off the phone. “We’ll be there.”

Papa turned to her with a grin. “I was going to spend that time teaching Adrien how to handle those orders. I can leave teaching him in your hands, right?”

Her grin fell. Adrien Agreste. What the hell a washed-out model was doing working at her parents’ bakery was beyond her. Admittedly, over the last month she’d been working with him, the most she’d say is that maybe he wasn’t too bad a guy. Papa certainly sung his praises. But that still didn’t answer the question of why he was working here of all places. After all, he was Chloe’s friend and suspected lover.

“Don’t think I don’t see that look on your face, Marinette,” her maman chastised. She’d hung up and set her phone down already, fully giving her attention to her daughter. “No matter your personal feelings, you really should give him a chance.”

“He’s a good kid,” Papa said. “Maybe a little rough around the edges, but I can tell he really does want to learn and do his best.”

Marinette sighed. This wasn’t the first time this talk had happened. She remembered having a talk with her parents after his first interview. There were a few other people who were far more qualified for the job, but Papa said he liked Adrien’s personality and spirit the best. So in the end, all Marinette’s objections had fallen upon deaf ears.

She sighed. “Fine. I’ll give him a chance.”

With a smile that made Marinette loath to disappoint him, her papa patted her head affectionately. “Thank you, Marinette. I think you’d like him if you got to know him.”

Not likely. “I’ll do my best, Papa.”

“Really, Marinette,” her maman warned. “Unless you have a valid reason, you need to put aside your feelings for the sake of the bakery running smoothly. Can you manage that?”

Appropriately chastised, Marinette bowed her head in embarrassment. Maman brought up a good point: Marinette shouldn’t let her anger towards Adrien affect the bakery. Her parents didn’t deserve that. “Yes, Maman. I’m sorry.”

With a smile, her maman came up and wrapped her in a hug. “Thank you, Marinette.”

Marinette hugged her back. “No, thank you, Maman and Papa, for everything. I won’t let you down.”

Papa wrapped his arms around both her and Maman. “Thank you, sweetheart. We love you.”

“I love you, too.”

[kitkatopinions]

I feel the need to hear your opinion on this since this is something I've been thinking about recently, and it's how crwby handles complex relationships/abuse in their show... It's infuriating.

I can't tell if they genuinely think they are writing this in a good way or if they know they're half asss-ing it and don't care since the fandom will eat it up anyways. Two big examples that come to mind for me in the last volume are emerald & cinder and whitley & jacques. In both instances the the victim never gets a moment of closure or a moment of breaking away from their abuser, nor are either victims allowed to show any sort of 'hesitance' (for a lack of a better term) related to their abuse.

Emerald (despite being all over cinder before Midnight), just conveniently forgets about her for the finale. Same for whitley. He just completely forgets about jacques (the man who manipulated him from birth) the moment weiss hugs him. On a shallow level, watching a victim pay no mind to their abuser is satisfying, but it being so immediate is just unrealistic and takes away from the pain that we are supposed to think these characters have suffered.

One of the worst things about suffering from abuse is how is affects the victims even when they have left the abusive relationship, but crwby seems to want to erase that completely from characters who should experience that for plot convenience.

It seems like the lesson learned from this is "if you were abused, just get over it and be convenient to our heroes or else!" And it's pretty gross imo.

Thoughts?

I thought that I would put these two asks together and take this opportunity to talk about the abuse victims in RWBY and how they're handled. I've tried to think long and hard about what to say about this, because this is an important topic to me and something that's personal for me. I'm an abuse survivor, but I have a complicated relationship with that part of myself and I'm never really comfortable talking about it much. But despite the fact that I've experienced abuse, I recognize that I'm not a professional sensitivity editor, not a therapist, and not someone who's studied the effects of abuse.

I'm simply writing this based on my own feelings and what I've picked up witnessing other abuse victims discuss their own feelings about abused character. There will be RWBY criticism below the keep reading. Please keep in mind that I'm not speaking for all abuse survivors and am only trying to articulate my own feelings in regards to this issue.

The first thing to note is that there isn't one, correct, right way to write an abuse victim in my opinion. Lots of people have different reactions and responses to abuse, the way they were abused is often also different, causing different reactions.

In the first anon, it's noted that Emerald and Whitley both seem to move on from their abuse quickly and with very little effect on them or their stories. Many abuse victims put their experiences on the back burner or 'in a box' to deal with later, or mask and pretend that they're alright or that their abuse just didn't happen. Some of them let their feelings or their anger simmer over time. There are also abuse victims who do just... Move on with relative ease. I'd imagine that's very rare though. (again, I'm not not an expert or any sort of psychologist.)

In the same way, an abuse victim becoming an abuser in their own interactions is something that one hundred percent happens. Cinder, Salem, Adam, and even Blake and Winter have all acted in abusive ways towards the people around them (though obviously Blake and Winter acted much less abusive than any of the villains mentioned.) It might be very hard for abuse victims to not fall back into those patterns of abuse that they've suffered, especially if they go through it at an early age. I'm not very comfortable talking about my own experiences, but myself and my siblings have all had to fight down toxic, hurtful traits that we picked up either through emulating or through survival. And it's hard to do that. Portraying characters who have been abused that lost that fight and might have abusive tendencies or slip themselves is - to me at least - sometimes even helpful in working through my own feelings.

And there are definitely one hundred percent abuse victims who feel like the way they were treated is deserved, that they 'earned' it, that they must 'make up for it.' Oz is in this category. There's nothing wrong with the concept of a character who feels responsible for their abuser or the hurt their abuser has caused to others, there’s nothing wrong with a character who tends to act as though everything is their fault and who thinks very poorly of themselves.

In theory. But the problem is that in application, there are a lot of pitfalls and struggles that come with writing for abuse victims. Understanding, thoughtfulness, and care are not the RWBY writers’ strength, and any time you portray real life issues that strongly impact the real life people involved in them, you have to be aware and careful with the messages you’re sending. This is obviously very important when someone writes for any minority or oppressed group or the issues that they face, but it’s also important to remember when you write for abuse victims, because they do have stigmas around them and deal with stereotypes and harmful portrayals as well. Let’s look at what I consider some harmful or hurtful pitfalls when it comes to abused characters.

Are the abused characters treated as the victims they are? If the abuse a character faces is treated as comical, treated as unimportant, or treated as deserved, that’s an obvious major flaw. Sad to say, but RWBY does not pass this. On two separate occasions, a character is hit by someone close to them in a way that clearly causes them some pain, with Blake hitting Sun across the face for following her, and Winter hitting Weiss for answering a question incorrectly and again for failing in her training (I tend to be more sympathetic towards Blake’s situation, as it is more gray with her clearly thinking Sun had stalked her which is a clear trigger from her own abuse, but this is an explanation, not an excuse and the fact that it was framed as funny rather than something Blake shouldn’t have done and should apologize for is the problem.) They also do not treat Ozpin like the victim when Qrow punches him in the face, having no one call Qrow out for it and having him never express guilt or try to apologize for it. Yes, I know Ozpin had retreated, but they never showed Qrow even make an effort to get Ozpin to come back so he could apologize. . They also ‘redeem’ Hazel and give him a ‘partially right’ storyline despite his openly beating Ozpin, unfairly blaming him for the death of his sister, and insisting that Ozpin deserved to be tortured. On top of this, despite having been horribly abused by the SDC, Adam isn’t treated with even an ounce of sympathy or understanding and Jacques Schnee and the SDC is treated like a more comical-ish nuisance in season seven and eight. This is greatly flawed. Hitting someone because they lied to you or kept secrets from you is not okay, hitting someone because they said something you don’t like is not okay. This should not be treated as funny and it shouldn’t be treated as the fault of the person who was hit for not being a good enough friend.

Are the abused characters mostly villains, when the heroes have never faced it? The reason for this is obvious, although it’s valid to have a villain be an abuse victim, it’s never alright to villainize abuse victims. Making the majority of your bad guys abuse victims and your good guys have positive relationships is in my opinion, harmful. Point for RWBY, this is not the case for their show. Mercury, Salem, and Cinder on the bad side are all abuse victims with Raven being a possible, but unconfirmed abuse victim as well. While Weiss, Blake, Ozpin, and Whitley are also abuse victims, with Qrow and May both being possible, but unconfirmed abuse victims, and Winter and Emerald are both abuse victims who were on the side of a villain and then turned good.

Is the abuse more severe in the ‘bad’ characters and lighter in the ‘good’ characters? If the abuse that the good guys faced is mostly lighter things and the abuse that the villains suffered is worse and more severe, that might send some bad messages that people who suffer more are automatically worse people, or ‘unsalvageable’ or ‘too broken,’ as opposed to the people that ‘there’s still hope for.’ Unfortunately, I think RWBY is almost a tie? We’ve never seen Weiss or Emerald suffer more than a hit, we don’t know for sure that Whitley or Winter were ever victims of physical abuse. Ozpin and Blake’s abuse is worse, however, as they are hunted down by their abusers who attempt to murder them, make them suffer, and hurt their loved ones. They also were heavily emotionally manipulated and victim blamed by their abusers. And on the villain side, Mercury was beat by his father who hated him and stole his semblance (an extension of your soul, I believe, in canon,) and the abuse led to the loss of his limbs. Cinder was forced to work hard labor by her abusive employer and the ‘stepsisters’ treated her badly, and she was physically electrocuted. We see her abuse extend to Salem using her Grimm arm to hurt her, copying the effects of the necklace. Adam was also a child laborer who worked in terrible conditions who got his face branded by his employer, in the SDC, which had to have been anti-faunus charged due to his bull horns. We don’t see Salem ever physically abused, but know that she was mistreated, isolated, and neglected by her ‘cruel’ father. So it’s not quite a tie, there are more severely abused characters amongst the villains than the heroes, but this is close enough that I don’t consider this much of a strike against them.

In the villains, is the abuse they faced given as ‘reason’ for their villainy? As I said before, villainizing abuse victims isn’t the way to go. A good way to avoid this - I think - is not have abuse be the sole reason for someone’s fall into a life of crime or cruelty. This is something that RWBY... Fails at imo. When showing us Mercury’s backstory, we’re introduced to him through seeing that he had just killed his abuser who cost him his legs, and then gets recruited by Cinder who at the very least likely emotionally and physically abused him the same way she did with Emerald, leading to the conclusion that the only reason he’s there at all is due to abuse. However, he’s just a teen and it’s possible that (like Emerald) he’ll be redeemed. A much more condemning story to talk about is Cinder’s. After people had been clambering for a Cinder backstory since volume three, RWBY finally showed us one. But it doesn’t include Cinder meeting Salem, why she joined her, her proving herself, none of that. Instead, Cinder’s backstory was entirely focused on her abusive situation as a child, entirely focused on her suffering. Cinder killing her abusers and then killing the teacher who decided to arrest her for getting herself out of her abusive situation was portrayed as the only needed backstory, the explanation to why she’s a power hungry, abusive, cruel, selfish, and just plain evil person. ‘She was abused’ is the explanation for why Cinder is where she is and why she is who she is in RWBY. That’s highly problematic to me.

In the heroes, are they “the Perfect, Sanitized Abuse Victims?” As I said before, there is no one type of abuse victim, but if someone has several abuse victims and they’re all either submissive, sad, and self-doubting, but gentle and caring and soft or dropped their abuser like a hotcake and never looked back, never seem affected, never really talk about it after they left... That’s bothersome to me personally. Measuring how RWBY is in this particular subject is... A little harder than I thought it would be. Let’s start by looking at the most prevalent abuse victim, Blake. She’s one of the reasons why this is hard to gauge, because for the first five seasons, Blake was deeply flawed and clearly affected by her abuse in ways that made her ‘unappealing.’ Blake was cynical, stubborn, cold, hard to get to know, she didn’t trust easily, she lashed out at her friends regularly, ran from her problems, made choices for her friends, and had a very negative self image. This didn’t stop her from being a good character and friend with a lot of good sides, too, and she had real, important friendships. This was - to me - a really great portrayal of someone clearly affected by their trauma, with lots to work on, who was still a good person. Some of her faults and problems started to get resolved in a natural way through her journey with Sun in volumes four and five, but when season six came around, many of Blake’s other traits suddenly vanished. No longer stubborn, independent, or cynical, and no longer standing up for herself, or really displaying her temper or hardheadedness or her struggles with getting to know people... Blake became more submissive, sad, self-doubting, but gentle, caring, and soft. Sigh. As the first ask mentioned, Whitley and Emerald both seemed to drop their abusers quickly the second they were removed from their lives again. it’s also worth noting that Whitley was treated with nothing but coldness and contempt by Weiss until he ‘proved himself’ by doing something selfless. Weiss did more or less drop Jacques the moment she left her house in V4, only mentioning him or her experiences when she’s using it to talk about Blake, and when she confronted him again in V7, she did so as someone who is proving she no longer cares. Ozpin seems to be the only one still unable to move on from his abuse and the ‘unappealing’ abuse victim. The first anon is right, there’s something satisfying with seeing an abuse victim move on like their abuser didn’t matter. But when almost all your abuse victims do, and one of the only other ones is turned into a submissive and soft support based / romance based character, and the only really ‘unappealing’ abuse victim is someone we’re supposed to see as ‘gray’... There’s something off there, in my opinion.

Were the abuse victims treated respectfully and thoughtfully by their friends, and if not, were they portrayed as wrong? This probably isn’t something that really even needs an explanation. Abuse victims should be able to set their own boundaries and tell their stories only when they want, when they feel comfortable, Their friends should be understanding of this and not force anything from them. In the case of Blake and Weiss, this is handled really well! Their friends let them talk about their experiences in their own time, and they’re understanding and validate their feelings when it comes up (much more common with Blake than with Weiss, who like I said, seemed to move on from her dad quickly after she left.) However, when it comes to Oz... This is all wrecked. Although unintentional (no one knew how deeply tied up with Salem Ozpin was or how intimate the memories they were going to watch were,) our main characters still forced Ozpin’s deepest and most personal secrets out of him in a fit of upset while he was tearfully begging them not to. He was forced to relive his most traumatic experiences in hi-def with other people watching with him, all his secrets and all his abuse wrenched away from him in what was clearly a very painful way. And then no one showed Ozpin even the slightest bit of sympathy or understanding for what he’d gone through, and no one ever apologized for what they had forced him to relive. In fact, Team RWBY were clearly displayed as in the right, and Oz was displayed as completely wrong for not trusting them implicitly. He had to apologize to them, which they acted begrudgingly accepting of as if they hadn’t shouted at an abuse victim after forcing him to relive all his worst experiences.

Are some abuse victims portrayed as bad for things that other abuse victims aren’t portrayed as bad for? Like the second ask says, in RWBY, Cinder and Mercury are treated as villains for having killed their abusers and Cinder is almost arrested for it, it’s considered a step in the direction of their villainy. But Blake is (rightfully) treated as the victim who was forced, who had no choice, who just wanted the abuse to stop. This is hypocritical and fundamentally flawed. I think this is a reflection of the fact that Cinder and Mercury are meant to be ‘bad’ abuse victim, who had violent tendencies and anger issues, and were already featured as bad guys before their backstory’s dropped, whereas Blake was meant to be a better abuse victim who (by season six) was starting to get written as a soft girl who just wanted to help her friends.

All in all, although there’s some things that I think that RWBY did well enough, I definitely think that I would consider their portrayal of abuse victims to be lacking. This is just my opinion and the way I feel about the writing, but there are a lot of ways to look at it. I think overall, I just really wish that the RWBY writers had been a little more sensitive and spent a little longer focusing on the character arcs involved in abuse recovery. (There’s still a chance for Whitley, Weiss, and Emerald to get more focus in volume ten, though, so long as the writers don’t timeskip!)

[heyheydidjaknow]

What is this witchcraft? Me? Not posting after midnight? I’m shocked to my very core. Anyways, this is one of my longer chapters. If you have any feedback, do not hesitate. As always, previous chapter (and next when applicable) is at the bottom.

Chapter 5

“Dude, hear me out here.” You are vibrating like a kid on pixie sticks. You slide your hands apart as if to display written words. “Lightsaber.”

“What’s a—”

“Donnie.” You put your hand up before he can continue. “Imma stop you right there. I am going to take your hand and kindly ask you to tell me that you know of, or at least have heard of, Star Wars.”

“I do not.”

“That is a fucking crime.”

You have been sitting with him for approximately an hour, watching him dismantle a “Kraang bot” as you register for school and start ordering supplies. You are quickly starting to realize his knowledge of anything outside the bounds of science is limited to whatever he read by virtue of his father, which consisted of one book on Greek mythology, one on the Italian renaissance, one on ancient Japanese history, and one on Japanese folklore, or anything he learned via the interests of his brothers. Because of this, he seems to know exactly jack-shit about things you consider common knowledge, such as the concept of foreshadowing or Poptarts or Hitler outside of a general association with the name and emotion of some sort, leading to interactions like the one you’re having right now.

“It’s not a crime,” he defended. “It's just I was never really interested in that kinda stuff.”

“But it’s Star Wars!” You throw your hands up. “How do you not know of Star Wars, at least?”

“Look, you’re saying it’s really good, right?”

“Well, yeah.” Your voice lowered.

“Why would somebody throw out a good movie?”

You sigh. “Yeah, that’s fair. But!” You point at him. “But I need to watch it with you, if only out of principle. Besides,” you settle down, “it’s a very… traditionally plotted story. I still have to give you that lesson.”

“Yeah, but after I finish this.” He pushes his laptop to the side, picking up the soldering iron and moving back over to the pile of metal you know will become Metalhead.

You nod in agreement, leaning forward in your chair to watch him fuse wires. “You know what?” You smile. “I may give you shit, but it is really cool watching your whole process.”

“Hm?” He looks up at you from his lean forward.

“Well,” you shrug, folding your legs on the chair, “I just mean that it’s cool seeing how you go about building all this junk that is just… what’s the word?”

“Untraditional?”

“Revolutionary.”

He has a funny look on his face. “You think so?”

“Oh, totally.” You nod eagerly. “I told you that I thought you were one of fiction’s greatest minds, didn’t I?”

“No, you didn’t.” His face is turning red.

“Really? I swear I did the day I met you…” Your eyebrows furrow as you try to remember.

“You said something about inspiration.” He smiled softly, voice airy.

“Oh, then I—well, it kinda is the same thing.” You rub the back of your neck, feeling your own face heat up. “Must’ve—uh—misspoke. I do that,” you trail off, “kinda a lot.”

“I think it’s cute.”

You feel your heart skip a beat. ‘Oh come the fuck on. Really?’ “See,” you hear your voice rise a register, “that is so not fair.”

“Huh?” The color drains from his face as he tries to remember what sounds just came out of his mouth. “What did I say?”

“You’re not allowed to just say shit like that.” You cover your face with your hands, feeling your heart swell. “You’re not my boyfriend or anything.”

“Wait, what did I say?”

“Nope. Shut up.” You try to calm yourself down. “You didn’t mean it, whatever it was. It’s fine.”

He blinks, very confused. “You sure?”

“Totally.” Your voice is tight. “One hundred and ten percent sure.”

“You can’t be one hundred ten percent sure.” He looks back down at his project, writing your behavior off. “It’s mathematically impossible

“You wanna bet?” You start looking around the room, prior embarrassment now replaced with a desire to win this artificial conflict. “Got graph paper?”

He scoffs. “You can’t be serious.”

“Do I look like I’m kidding right now?” You lean across the table, tilting his head up to face you properly, determination burning in your eyes. Your voice lowers. “I am going to show you one hundred and ten present sure right here and now as a matter of principle.”

He swallowed, face going red again. “One moment, please.” He fumbles around for a piece of paper and hands it to you, along with a marker.

“Thank you.” You smile sweetly, acting as if nothing happened as you start to sketch. “Give me a bit of time and I will show you one hundred and ten percent sure.”

He rolls his eyes, a smile coming back to his face as he calms down. “Sure you will.”

You stick your tongue out at him. “Go back to your transformer while I blow your freakin mind, kay?”

“What’s—”

“Don’t even.”

“Gotcha.”

You chew on your tongue absentmindedly, remembering how much you love spacing out pixels when you hear a notification on your phone. You pull it out, read it, sigh, slide out of your chair. “I’ll be right back,” you promise, heading for the door. “I gotta make sure plot shit happens.”

“You know where to find me.”

“Always do.” You shoot him finger guns as you drag the door closed. You walk over to the brothers, currently engaged in their digital hockey match. You watch, waiting for Raphael’s inevitable victory— ‘Wow, my life is getting pretty damn predictable.’—before clearing your throat to catch their attention.

“So,” you smile, “what’s the game plan for tonight?”

They seem to not understand the question. “Yeah, Leo,” Raphael prompts, shooting a look at him, “what’s the game plan for tonight?”

He paused. “Is there some sort of sport thing happening?”

Your heart drops. “Leonardo,” you ask again, voice lowering, “you have a plan for the thing happening tonight, right?”

“What thing?”

You grab his shoulders. “The spill,” you clarify, voice quiet and sharp. “The mutagen spill. The spill I told you about three days ago?”

His eyes widen. “You said that was happening Friday!”

“Today is Friday!” You let go, throwing your hands in the air out of pure frustration. “That’s why I told you today is Friday! What, did you think I just liked talking about days of the week? That it’s my hobby to keep track of how many days I haven’t died?” ‘I mean, it is, but that’s not the point.’

“Well, it can’t be that important if you forgot about it.” Raphael leaned against the machine. “We’ll just go in and bust some heads. No problem.”

You groan. “Do you guys just have something against planning? I swear everything with you guys has to happen at the very last minute.”

“We don’t need the time to plan. I dunno if you noticed, Y/N, but our ‘plans’ aren’t exactly plan worthy.” He shrugged. “You just have to beat the Kraang out of them and that’s the end of it. It’d be like planning to raid a trailer home.”

You sigh. ‘They’re teenage boys. This is only episode six. Deep breaths.’ “Just… please try to heed my warnings in the future, alright? The last thing we need is for something to sneak up on us.”

“Alright, alright.” Leo focuses his eyes on you. “When is the mutagen getting spilled?”

“Tomorrow. The show wasn’t very specific on times, but some time tomorrow.”

“Then let’s air on the side of caution and assume they mean midnight. What’s the time?”

You pull out your phone. “Seven forty-five.”

“That should be enough time to get there, scope out the place, and be home before dinner.”

You feel the ground shake under you as a metallic clang pierces the air.

That is your cue to leave for fear of getting hit with a laser. “You can’t beat Metalhead. Also, Mikey calls him Metalhead.” You start heading out. “I’d stay and watch you guys waste time trying, but I haven’t eaten today, so I’m gonna grab food and meet you there.” You run out before they can ask any more questions.

If nothing else, all the running has been helping you get in shape. You are not typically the type to take runs, but you also are not typically the type to be pressed to see people. Loneliness is one hell of a motivator, as it turns out, and you were starving in more ways than one. You stop by the first place you see, grabbing some food item with a name you already forget—some sort of burrito, you think—and climb a fire escape belonging to a building overlooking the warehouse in question. You sit on the edge of the building, dangling your legs over the side as you wait for them to get here.

‘Do I like him?’ You pause at your question, mid-bite. ‘I mean, I had a crush on him when I watched the show, but this attachment isn’t romantic affection, is it? I’ve had crushes before, and I’m acting too suave for this to be that.’ You swallow, taking a drink out from your nameless cup. ‘Considering my emotional state? It’s highly likely I’m just latching onto him for lack of anyone or anything truly familiar in my life right now.’ You sigh. ‘But, then again, if that were the case, this feeling what be more familial, wouldn’t it?’ You conclude, whether you are attracted to him romantically or not, it is entirely unfair to both of you to pursue a romantic relationship with him unless he makes the first move. You have more faith in his critical thinking skills than in your own, anyhow. Besides, he acted irrationally enough around April as is; introducing a proper romantic relationship into the mix sounds a bit too risky, especially at such a vulnerable time in his development.

You hear the distant sounds of mechanical joints approaching. ‘Already liking this better than ninja silence.’ You spin around, hopping off the ledge and onto the roof proper as you go to properly admire the metal wonder.

It looks infinitely cooler than the show would have you believe, if possible. Each piece of its hull has a past and you can see it in every scratch, every dent. It wasn’t anywhere near perfect; you can easily see where Donatello had hammered out the shell of the artificial terrapin, where he had had to settle for using concrete, even the faintest ghosts of the pennies making up its chest piece. It was a glorious collage.

You run over, going down on your knees to look it over. “This thing is so fucking cool,” you gush, shuffling around it. “Like, totally fucking awesome!”

You can hear the pride in his voice, the excitement. “I know, right?”

You hop back to your feet, keeping yourself from jumping up and down for the sake of pride. “That is the coolest shit ever!” You grin, sitting back down and taking a drink from your soda. “You never cease to amaze, Hamato.”

“You think?” He sounds almost like a puppy, excited as he is.

“Dude, totally.” You sigh, feeling yourself mellow out a little. “But, more importantly,” you continue, clapping your hands together once, “we should be properly watching the warehouse in case they need backup.”

“Oh, right!” The robot stomped over to you, standing slightly behind you as you dangle your feet over the edge.

You take another drink of soda, feeling the excitement in the air dying down as you look out over the buildings. ‘It’s oddly peaceful up here. Must not have started the attack yet.’ You swing your legs back and forth as silence settled between you two.

After a moment, he cleared his throat. “I meant to ask you before,” he said stiffly, “but how did you know this was happening today? You never explained it.”

You silently thank him for cutting the tension, turning around to face him properly. “Well,” you start, lacing your fingers together around your cup, “remember when I said that the show Leo watches shows up a lot in episodes?”

“Yeah.” You are not exactly sure why he sounds so interested in a detail like this.

“And you know how you watch on cable?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, as it turns out,” you dig into your jacket pocket, “they release television guides, telling people when certain shows are playing, what times they’re playing, shit like that. So,” you conclude, admittedly smug that you had reasoned this part out, “as long as I know what episode is playing during that episode, I can accurately predict any actions that happen during the periods in which you guys have cable access.”

“So, you map out what episodes are scheduled to play on what days and create a timeline around that?”

“Exactly. Not a bad plan.” You pull up a document, showing him the timeline you’ve created with this information. “As long as you guys are on the grid, and as long as Leo sticks to watching that specific channel, I’ll be able to predict the movements of every major player in the series, which means I’ll be able to determine who we can and can’t fuck with based off how they act later down the line, and I’ll be able to give you proper foresight when the situation—”

Your plan is interrupted by a section of the ledge directly next to you to gain a new hole. You leap to your feet, quickly backing up and almost tripping on Metalhead as you regain your senses and hear Mikey’s panicked yelling.

“That doesn’t look good.” You watch the machine starts backing up. “I’m gonna go in and help.”

Something strikes you. “Donnie, real quick, be careful not to run into anything. The technology you’re using is susceptible to Kraang influence.”

“Relax. I got this.” Metalhead gives you a thumbs up before running and leaping off the building, crashing through the glass roof feet first.

You sigh, getting to your feet. ‘Theme of today’s episode is not to rely on technology. Granted,’ you muse, starting to climb down the fire escape, ‘this probably could’ve been solved by adopting a more intuitive controller and having a bit more experience, but I digress.’ You hop the last few feet down. ‘In any case, I’ve done all I can. If that isn’t enough, so be it.’

You hear the explosion as you start walking back to your apartment. ‘He should be coming here in about three or so minutes.’

If you did not know how this would end, you would be much more concerned. As it stands? You know the score before the game is even played.

You wave hello to the doorman as you walk to the elevator. You tap your foot absentmindedly to the elevator music, walk to your apartment, unlock the door, and step inside, picking a large box off the ground in front of it before locking the door.

You walk over and set the box down on your bed, walking back to the kitchen. You pull a Tupperware box from on top of it, pulling a red velvet cupcake from the container and setting it on the counter.

You had died the first time you had made cupcakes. When you had tried making them again from your mother’s recipe, you had found yourself surprisingly unintimidated as you slid them into the oven. Of course, you had sat directly in front of the oven and stared at it during the entirety of the baking process, but you were hardly going to let the worst experience of your life separate you and the most nostalgic, joy-inducing feeling there was. Who else was going to make cupcakes?

You dry your hands, not realizing you had washed them as you pick the confection off the counter. You peel off a portion of the wrapper, biting into the savory and sweet bundle of joy in your mouth. You moan softly in satisfaction, licking the icing off your lips as you walk back over to your bed, sitting down and reaching for the knife under your pillow. You slice the tape, sliding your baby out of its packaging with a soft smile. You reach back in, taking another bite as you pull out a smaller bag. You set the box on the ground, tossing the now-empty wrapper into it and wiping the excess frosting on your jeans, pulling the instrument from its packaging.

Your father had taught you how to play a couple of years back. You never thought you would get weepy over a musical instrument, and yet, here you are, cradling a hunk of wood costing a little more than one day’s allowance. You purse your lips, running your fingers along the neck as you check for any defects in its construction. You crack open the bag and, after about half an hour of fiddling and research, manage to get the strings onto the violin bass without snapping it. It wasn’t an exact replica, but it was close enough that you feel comfortable holding it, feel joy hearing it come in tune.

You play a scale. It sounds like heaven to you.

You put the rest of the trash in the box, laying down next to the first item you have bought. A stand for it would be arriving tomorrow. That makes you smile.

This is the start of something healthy for you. Ironically, it has started with you eating a cupcake, but, still, you have begun to come to terms with your situation. Granted, you have a long way to go; you still have not deleted your social media, wanting to look out for photographs and clips from the funeral, but this is a step in the right direction. You have to believe that.

One small accomplishment: you have kept your apartment sparklingly clean. It is not as if you have much to do, but none the less.

You find your fingers playing an almost lullaby. You stop yourself, not wanting to fall asleep before getting yourself situated. You set your instrument to the side, getting up to close and shelve your cupcake box for future use. You wash your hands again.

You slide your jacket off and throw it onto a seat, knowing you will likely need it tomorrow. You make it a habit to at least get outside once per day, now. You understand that, even if it is not vital, you need to establish a routine. You must keep moving, if only for your sake of mind.

You check to see the curtains are closed, strip, put your clothes in a hamper. You take a shower, comb out your hair, brush your teeth. You do these things consciously, now. You change into a shirt for sleeping, crawling into bed and turning off the light. Tomorrow, you will have to go down to the laundromat to wash your few changes of clothes. You will eat three meals. You will drink eight glasses of water.

You set your phone on the nightstand, plugging it in. You reach over, fingers curling around the handle of the kitchen knife as you slide it under your pillow.

You close your eyes, feeling your heart pang again tonight.

“Goodnight,” you call to no one. “Love you.”

Silence.

It is better than it was. You do not cry tonight, wrapping your arms around your pillow.

“Goodnight, Y/N,” you mumble, feeling yourself drift into unconsciousness. “Love you too.”

Table of Contents

Chapter 4 Chapter 6 part 1

[sayuricorner]

ML x Batman: Arkham’s princess AU headcanons part 3

Part 2        Part 4

Welcome to the part 3 of my Arkham’s princess AU headcanons! :)

This part will focus Bridgette Cheng! Hope you will like it! ^^

Warning: English is not my first language so sorry if it’s confusing.

Warning 2: This AU content salt don’t like don’t read!

-Since in this AU Bridgette is Sabine’s sister she got grey eyes instead of blue.   

-So in this AU Bridgette Cheng is Marinette’s aunt, she is Arkham’s warden and changed the Asylum’s method which lead to actual good progress with the patients.

-When she become the Asylum’s new warden, she completly changed the staff: she replaced all the doctors, nurses and guards who were abusing of the patients or were complicit in the abuse and put special protocols in job interviews which cinsist to make the applicants pass a psychological exam to be sure they are psychologically capable to work at Arkham.

-She changed the therapies methods for more ethical ones.

-One of the things she consider the most important in therapy is doctor/patient trust so one of the steps of her treatement is to begening by etablish a trust bond with the patients so they will be more cooperative in the treatement.

-She put a “neutral” rule in which the doctors and others members of the staff must had a neutral behavior toward the patients since reactions and behaviors showing to the patients that they had a sort of power on others only feed their crazyness.

-With this “neutral rule” she put instructions like “not calling the patients by their villains name unless their insist”.

-She also made sure to make the patients’s life conditions better.

-All those changes bring the patients to developpe a kind of respect for Bridgette after months of suspicions toward her and trying to mess with her.

-The Rogues in this AU, except for some like Killer Croc, are the “batman the animated serie” version.

-She even gain more respect from them when one day she was forced to use her self defense skills against Lyle Bolton when he was attacking other inmates and had even trying to hurt her but Bridgette was able to owerpower him.

-She become know amount the inmates as the “White Queen of Arkham”. (see headcanons part 2)

-During her first times as the new Arkham’s warden, the public opinion was rather sceptic toward Bridgette’s abilities to manage the asylum, the media even potray her as a future “Harley Quinn 2.0″.

-She didn’t mind and focus on Arkham.

-Some times later her new methods bring good results, some inmates were healed and even some Rogues become saner.

-With those results the public opinion about Bridgette changed, seeing her now as a benediction for Gotham.

-Batman and her have mutual respect for each other: Bridgette is grateful for what the caped crusader do for the town and Batman respect her for actually helping the inmates from the asylum to heal.

-Regarding shipping: I have three possible love interest for Bridgette who are Rogues but you can decide to ship her with another character or not ship her at all. If the love interest is a rogue they will get together only if the rogue is mentally healed and give up any criminal activity, Bridgette will not even consider the possibility of a relationship when the rogue is still a criminal and her patient.

-When she visited Paris for the first time with Sabine she tried the soulmate ice cream from Andre Glacier, you can decide the combination you want if you ship Bridgette but for my three possible her ice cream combinasion goes by:

1)blueberry(his eyes)-vanilla bean(his hair)-earl grey tea(his favorite taste)

Or

2)Milk chocolate(his hair)-dark chocolate(his eyes)-pumpkin spice(his theme)

Or

3)Mint chocolate(his attire)-orange(his hair)-green apple(his eyes)

-If Bridgette got a love interest and they get together the love interest’s ice cream will be blackberry/blueberry(her hair)-licorice(her eyes)-coconut(her attire)

-Bridgette is rather protective toward Marinette so when Sabine and Tom will explain the situation she will accept right away to had Marinette living with her in Gotham while Marinette’s parents try to see what to do about the school.

-When Harley and Ivy warn her, when they were still in Arkham before they escape, that they will “kidnap” sometimes Marinette to give her tutoring lessons with the others Rogues/Godparents Bridgette was not sure about this, sure, they are Marinette’s godparents and would not harm her but they’re still mentally instable criminals and was more reassured when learning that Batman and his birds were welcomed to keep an eye on the lessons.

-When Marinette became closer with the Waynes and that it’s become know on the social medias, Lila being jalous told another lie to her classmates in fake tears how one of the Wayne boys was supposed to be her fiancé and that Marinette stole him from her, which made Alya enraged and posted an article on the Ladyblog in which she call Marinette a lot of horrible names and accuse her of many things.

-But the article got a big backclash since, surprise surprise, Alya has not proof for her claims and somebody send the article to the Waynes.

-When Marinette, the Wayne and Bridgette saw the article they were not happy at all and for a furious Bridgette it was the last straw, she contacted Marinette’s parents and they agree to sue the school, Lila and Alya, yeah the latters are both teens but being young doesn’t excuse you having a criminal behavior.

-They made sure that the Rogues don’t see the article because otherwise there’s going to had murders and as angry they are they want to avoid that.

-Bruce Wayne agree with the three other adults to pay for them a good lawyerand Bridgette, after leaving Marinette with Wayne, take the first plane for Paris to make official the procesussion with Sabine and Tom.

-The three adults go to the school to had a meeting with Damocles and Bustier, during the meeting the two teachers tried to spill BS excuses to not be, and to not have Lila and Alya, in trouble which make Bridgette very angry to the point of attracting an akuma.

-Hawkmoth tried to akumatised Bridgette but she told him in a cold angry voice that if she become a akume he will be the one she will track down.

-”Red Queen? I am Hawkmoth and I-” “Listen to me very well you Killer Moth wannabe I’m may be very angry at those idiots in the moment but you trying to use my niece stuggles to try to akumatise her multiple times make me even more pissed off at you so this is how it will goes: you will stop trying to akumatise me right now! or else the one who I will track down, chasing for their miraculous and who will be off with their head aren’t going to be Ladybug and Chat Noire but you!”.

-Not wanting to take any chance Hawkmoth undo the akumatisation leaving a rather tired Bridgette.

-Damocles tried to use Bridgette’s nearly akumatisation to end the meeting but she, Sabine and Tom were having none of it and since that meeting was getting them nowhere they deliver the procecussion papers to officialy sue them before leaving the school.

-After the meeting the three adults got to Lila’s and Alya’s houses to give to their shocked parents the paper anouncing that the girls were sued before going back to the bakery. And the next day Bridgette go back to Gotham to her niece.

TAG LIST :( a reblog will get you a place in the tag list! ^^)

@maribat-is-lifeblood

@moonystars14

@Dragon-of-leaving

[addierose444]

A Typical Week: Spring 2021

Before getting into the actual content, I thought I would just point out that this is my 100th blog post! You can check out the full list here. 

As noted in my fall 2020 version of this post, my week is primarily dictated by my current course schedule. (To check out all of my past courses, click here). Furthermore, the way I write these posts is to focus on academics as they're a big part of my life, but also the most natural thing to write about publicly. This post should give you a realistic sense of the structure of my week and courses. I thought it may be useful to contrast expectations and reality when it comes to productivity. Early in the semester, I mapped out my idealized homework schedule around my meetings and assignment deadlines. The first row lists deadlines. The other rows are split by my meals (lunch and dinner). Even if I don’t strictly follow the schedule, spending the time to map things out is quite useful. To write about my real schedule, I actually looked back through data from my time tracking application, Toggl Track. I know this is a very long post, but it wasn’t really interesting enough to become a two-parter. 

A typical school day starts off with my 9:00 (or 9:10) alarm. I also often have a second alarm set for 9:15 as a backup. Here at college, I simply use the default clock app on my phone and have it play from my favorites playlist on Spotify. I very occasionally need to wake up earlier to finish up an assignment as midnight is my strict cutoff for doing work. I know a consistent sleep schedule is very important, but it’s definitely something I struggle with.

Monday:

My week begins with a 9:20 math class. The specific course is math methods which as previously explained is an applied math course from the physics department that is required for physics and engineering majors. We usually start off by going over the pre-class check in (PCCI) and/or other questions students have. This review is followed by a lecture on new material. Throughout the class, we work through example problems in breakout rooms (on Zoom whiteboards) and answer multiple-choice questions using the poll feature. (The poll questions are anonymous and ungraded). Partway through the class, we get a 4-minute break. One nice thing about this class is that we actually thoroughly go through the example problems when we regroup as an entire class. This is important because, without feedback, practice is of limited utility. Furthermore, going over the problem gives me a chance to get everything into my notes. The integration of lectures with practice is something I really appreciate about this course. In past math classes, the format has been a lecture followed by a worksheet of practice problems. While that model sometimes makes sense, I much prefer this integrated approach.  One issue with leaving practice until the end is that you sometimes run out of time and don’t catch knowledge gaps until the end of class. After math methods, I get a 20-minute break during which I often listen to the latest episode of The Daily (a short new podcast from the New York Times). 

Next up is my philosophy of logic class which starts with a few minutes of breathing and stretching. On the first day of class, I thought this was a really strange thing, but have come to appreciate it. Afterward, we go over any relevant announcements and sometimes debrief the previous class. This class is different from my other classes in that it is reading and discussion-based. We spend most of the class in the main room strengthening our understanding of the reading through full class discussions and mini-lectures. Even though the class is already very small (13 students), we also make use of breakout rooms to work through study questions. Our tests are pyramid style which means we spend one class period working independently and another class on the same questions in a small group. We also have short quizzes, called mini check-ins,  every few weeks. Next up is lunch during which I sometimes listen to a podcast or audiobook. You can check out some of my favorite podcasts and books of 2020 at the associated links.

After lunch, I have my computer systems lab. The teaching assistant of my lab section starts off with a quick introduction to the assignment. We then work independently and ask questions as they come up. Even though we don’t really work collaboratively the lab is sort of fun because it’s less formal than a regular class. For the first part of the semester, the lab assignments often took way longer than the allotted time (and sometimes longer than our projects) so I often spent more of the afternoon finishing up the assignment. Fortunately, the course staff was made aware of this issue and adjusted accordingly. Just for some context, this course is a UMass class which is why there is a whole course team and teaching assistants. To read more about Five College course registration click here. At Smith, while some classes have teaching assistants who help out during class, all of the classes are taught and run by our actual professors. We also have student tutors as an academic resource outside of class. To read more about academic support systems at Smith, click here. 

After finishing up my lab assignment, I start in on my math methods PCCI. A typical PCCI consists of reading a section or two of the textbook (written by our professor) and completing a short practice problem or so-called discovery exercise. Depending on the week, I either start in on my reading assignment for my computer systems class or logic class. At 4:00, I have my weekly one-on-one meeting with my supervisor for my ResLife job. Following the meeting, I relax by listening to music or an audiobook. At 5:00, I order, pick up, and eat my dinner. After dinner, I complete any remaining readings for my computer systems and logic classes. If I haven’t yet completed my lab assignment or have an exam the following day, I devote some of the night to circuits. Otherwise, I may work on a computer systems project or theory of computation assignment. 

Tuesday:

Tuesday’s are my busiest day of the week in terms of class hours. With that said, it’s nothing compared to my Thursdays last fall. I start Tuesdays off with my circuits class. During class, we learn new circuit theory and circuit analysis techniques. We also go through example problems. While we often run out of time to fully work through the extra practice problems in breakout rooms, fortunately, my professor posts videos going over those problems. After taking our feedback into account, we now get a break partway through the class. Each lecture covers a lot of material, so the brain/screen break is much appreciated. To check in on how the class is feeling about various concepts, our professor has us use the annotation feature on a scale from totally get it to totally lost. 

After circuits is my 20-minute break followed by my theory of computation lecture. The theoretical nature of the material means that it really is a lecture. While we obviously go through examples, there aren’t really practice problems as there would be in a math class. We use the chat to some extent in all of my classes, but to a greater degree in this course. Next up is lunch and a COVID test. At 1:40 I am back to circuits for the lab. Most of the labs are virtual with physical lab equipment, but a few have been in-person so that we could use special equipment. Ironically, one of our in-person labs was actually fully virtual in terms of lab equipment. (We were sitting on the lawn outside of Ford together and running circuit simulators on our laptops). Fortunately, we don’t usually need to stay until 4:30. I tend to just collect my data, ask some questions about the material, and then finish up the write-up at a later point in time. This time block is also the one used whenever we have an exam. 

I always start by doing the textbook reading for circuits. I don’t read super closely, but it’s still a good primer for the next class. In terms of other work, Tuesdays are a bit more unpredictable and really depend on how much I got done over the weekend. Specifically, while I usually finish my math methods assignment over the weekend, occasionally I need to finish it up on Tuesday evenings. Likewise, for circuits, I sometimes finish the last few problems on a Tuesday evening. At 7:00, I have a staff meeting with the other community advisors in my neighborhood and our supervisor. Our meetings usually take place over Zoom, but our most recent one was in-person with ice cream from Herrell’s which was a lot of fun. You can read about some other Northampton food locations (restaurants, cafes, and more) here. In weeks where I haven’t yet started my computer systems work, I do what I would usually have done on a Monday on a Tuesday. 

Wednesday:

Wednesdays are similar to Mondays without the computer systems lab and ResLife meeting. In the afternoon I often attend office hours for my theory of computation class to ask questions about the weekly assignment. Even though I don’t have my logic class until the following Monday, I usually just do the reading on Wednesday afternoon. On Wednesday evenings, I typically work through my circuits revisions. I also tend to do a good chunk of my computer systems coursework. This consists of watching lecture videos, taking notes, and taking lesson quizzes. Furthermore, I have definitely spent some Wednesday evenings working through computer systems projects. 

Thursday:

Thursdays are like Tuesdays without the circuits lab. Even though I have the whole afternoon free, unfortunately, I am sometimes having to finish up my theory of computation assignment. It’s also common for me to start working on the new math methods problem set. In the case of this Thursday, I played some guitar and then started writing this post. I also do my circuits reading for Tuesday and take the quick lab quiz. If I have any remaining computer systems coursework, I do that as well.  

Friday:

This semester I only have one class on Fridays, math methods. After class, I get a COVID test and an early lunch. I know it seems crazy how many free afternoons I have given that I am taking 22 credits and am a double STEM major. However, part of this is explained by my UMass computer systems course being asynchronous and the fact that I completed the one-credit companion course in C programming before my Smith semester started. My computer systems class was originally scheduled to meet Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons. Even though I wish the class was synchronous, the flexibility of an asynchronous class has been much appreciated. Furthermore, the class was in a terrible time block that would have caused me to miss most of house tea. Back to what a Friday afternoon looks like! After completing my PCCI for math methods, I often rewatch the lecture videos for computer systems (on double speed) and then take the weekly quiz. I next pick up tea snacks from Cutter-Z and attend house tea at 4:30. After tea, I order dinner and often eat it in the living room with housemates. Fridays are definitely my least productive day and I have definitely taken a few weekly quizzes on Saturday after having planned to take them on Friday. Instead of doing real work, I often spend Friday afternoons writing blog posts. As for this post, I wrote most of it yesterday but spent a good chunk of Friday afternoon on it as well. 

Saturday:

Despite my best efforts to have a consistent sleep schedule, I often sleep in on Saturdays until 10:00. I then have a leisurely hour or so of listening to an audiobook. At 11:00, I get an early lunch. As mentioned in the Friday description, I sometimes end up taking my weekly quiz for computer systems on Saturday. When I have tests in math methods, I typically take them on Saturday night. (The tests are timed but are self-scheduled over the given weekend which includes Friday). When there is not a math test, I often work on my math problem set in the afternoon. Every few weeks, I host POCheese at 4:00. This week we are actually going to be meeting at 5:00 for a ramen night! At 6:00 I have a uke club meeting over Zoom. In weeks where I have already finished my math problem set and don’t have a test, I start in on my circuits problem set.

Sunday:

Sundays start like Saturdays in that I often have a leisurely morning. At 11:00 I get a COVID test and an early lunch. Sundays are almost always devoted to my circuits. This includes working through the problems set, the lab writeup, or studying for an upcoming exam. If my Saturday wasn’t as productive as intended, I do the homework described in that section. At 6:00 I have a Society of Women Engineers (SWE) board meeting. At 7:00, I either lead a community meeting (part of my ResLife job) or attend house council. Afterward, I fill out my weekly report (also part of my ResLife job).

[chibisquirt]

You don't have to answer, but if you wouldn't mind. What are some things you've learned about ADHD from Tumblr that are applicable to you, or others you may now? I've been reading more on it and how it manifests in girls/women and was curious when I read your rb on that post about Grammarly

I don’t mind at all!  Fair warning:  this is gonna be LONG.

I’m going to start by repeating something I mentioned in that post:  I was diagnosed in third grade, which was over two decades ago.  I had my diagnosis halfway through elementary school, much less high school and two rounds of college.  So a lot of the old information about ADHD I learned as a young person, and those things are worth exploring, too.  

Example:  It’s not that I’m not listening, Mrs. Nock, it’s just that if I try to keep my hands still, then the only thing I will retain from the lesson will be keep your hands still and not the things you trying to teach, which are supposedly important! 

(Mrs. Nock was the one who said to me, “I believe you believe you’re paying attention.”  Yes, it’s been fifteen years.  Yes, I’m still mad.  If you can’t have basic respect for your students, don’t teach.)

I figured out half on my own, half because of the counselling that if I had a fidget tool that didn’t require words I would pay better attention than if I tried to sit still.  (I still remember being mocked by my dad for fidgeting well after making that discovery, though.  Apparently diagnoses should only inform compassion when they’re his.)  On the same lines, I also figured out that music in the background wouldn’t work for me if it had words, and television is too distracting for me to use at all.  (I have a friend, though, whose ADHD works the opposite way:  he has difficulty focusing if there isn’t a television in the background.  Yes, both are valid.)

So, the Classics:  

I always had trouble with organization and cleaning, had trouble with schedules and calendars and managing my time.  Those are the things they’ll warn you about, the things they’ll tell you in counselling are natural and normal things for people with ADHD to have trouble with.  Trouble paying attention, sure.  Trouble sitting still.  Procrastination.  Got it.

But if you turn those traits around and re-frame them, they become a new set of symptoms.  Adaptations for these new symptoms are more personal and universally applicable in my life, and therefore, to my mind, more useful.

Take Procrastination.  (No really: please take it.)  That just means “putting it off until tomorrow,” and there are lots of reasons to do it:  “don’t have the tool I need” is one of the biggies, “want to conserve steps” trips me up a lot, “I still have time to get to it” is HUGE for me...  But a lot of times, these are just superficial reasons.  The re-framed symptom is, Trouble making yourself do things you don’t want to do.  

ADHD is an executive function disorder.  That’s a phrase I first learned on Tumblr, by the way; it may have been mentioned by one of my earlier counsellors, but it definitely wasn’t taught.  

This is why soooo many of us have struggled with the perception (including self-perception) that we’re lazy!  But no one tells the kid in the wheelchair he’s just lazy for not playing basketball.  (Okay, they totally do.  People are terrible.  Ignore that, stick to the point.)  I reframe this the way I do because acknowledging this as a symptom, taking the blame out of it, makes it easier to find adaptation.

Now, this is a personal post.  YMMV.  But I have an easier time managing my conduct if, instead of calling myself lazy a procrastinator, I say, “I keep not doing that --> oh it’s because I Don’t Wanna --> how can I con myself into doing it?”  (Strategies include bargaining, making it easier, powering through but then allowing yourself to stop afterwards, just acknowledging that I Don’t Wanna and allowing that to be valid...)  Procrastination is an action, but “executive function disorder” is a disease and “I Don’t Wanna” is its trigger, just as much as an allergy and a clump of ragweed are.  “Procrastination” is a powerful sphynx against which I’m helpless, but “I Don’t Wanna Disease” lets me start cultivating my metaphorical catnip and researching the answers to common riddles.

And while we’re talking about procrastination--and trouble with deadlines, and schedules in general--let’s talk about Time Insensitivity.  Missed deadlines and perpetual lateness (perpetual) are external actions, just like procrastination, and they can have all sorts of explanations.  

(Shoutout to Mrs. Pollack, who looked around a classroom containing thirteen-year-old me, and, knowing full well that I was chronically tardy, declared that “anybody who’s always running late, deep down, they just doesn’t care about anybody else’s time.”  Great job with calling the thirteen-year-old a heartless bitch, Mrs. Pollack!  As you can tell, I definitely forgot it very quickly, and didn’t at all have a self-critical breakdown about it, periodically revisiting the question of my own inherent selfishness for years!!!)

But ignoring the external actions, let’s take a compassionate look inside the head again.  Executive function includes regulation of, and awareness of the passing of, time.  Again: you can’t play the basketball with no legs.  We literally do not realize what time is doing.  Sometimes we do--if we devote enough of our attention to it, which may be a large amount for some, a small amount for others, or a variable amount for the same person.  But our brains literally don’t process it the same way.  

But hold on a minute--let’s go back to that analogy.  Because actually, people with no legs can play basketball!  It’s just that you have to use the adaptation of wheelchairs to do it--and that’s an adaptation for the game and for the players.  

I use alarms.  I’ve recently seen a post about audio memos as alarms.  There are people who just slap clocks everywhere.  When I was forced to work in a kitchen with no clocks, I used the multi-setting timer and set it for like four hours so I would know if I was keeping on schedule.  I also chose a job environment where much of my shift is the same as itself, and rigid punctuality isn’t enforced--that’s adapting my environment, instead of myself.  There’s all kinds of adaptations.  But you have to know you have the condition before you can compensate for it.

Here’s a fun little story:  when I was... oh, eleven?  Twelve?  My Quaker Meeting’s youth group (#7 whitest phrase I’ve ever written) went to the museum together.  One of the stops was in the children’s section, there was a... a pegboard, I think?  With some kind of problem on it.  A puzzle.  Me and a couple others sat down at it, and it took me a while, but eventually I solved it, and I looked up.  

I blinked.  “Where is everybody?” I said.

“They left,” said my mom.  “Half an hour ago.”  

I was stunned.  “Half an hour ago?!  But I couldn’t’ve spent more than ten minutes on this!”

“I promise you, it was half an hour.”

“Why didn’t you call me??  Why didn’t you say my name?”

“We did.  Several times.”

To this day, I will swear myself blind that I never heard a thing.

Hyperfocusing.  They’ll tell you about the problems focusing; oh yes.  They’ll tell you allll about that one.  But they won’t tell you about the flip side of it.  They won’t tell you about the times when the rest of the world falls away, and the only two things in the world are you and whatever problem you’re trying to solve.  

D’y’know what, I bet that’s the reason I test well.  I just realized this now, phrasing it like that, but--I’ve always tested well, even when my actual practical applications of things are mediocre I do well with the classroom testing on it.  I scored a 39 on the MCAT, back when it was out of 45 and not whatever it is now.  (To those with the plain good sense not to want to be doctors:  that’s pretty good.)  And I just bet it’s because, once I get focused on solving the problems, the other problems--nerves, intrusive thoughts, anxiety--just don’t have room to get in.  Hyperfocusing can be a superpower, if you can harness it.  

But it can also blind you to everything else.  And it works in smaller ways, too:  once I think I understand something, it is very difficult for me to perceive information that contradicts that understanding.  I still get the map of the Elflands backwards every time I read The Goblin Emperor, just because I pictured it one way, and every indication in the text that it was the other way just fell on deaf ears.  

And this one leads right into the next, which is Rejection Sensitivity Disorder.  RSD is hyperfocus, but it’s hyperfocus on how everyone must hate you.  It’s delightful!  I’ve been diagnosed with anxiety and depression, as well, and I do have both of those things, but for my money, I think that this one symptom of ADHD--which no doctor has ever even mentioned to me--has hurt me more than both of those conditions combined.  

The last one I’m going to bring up is Auditory Processing Disorder.  Now, I’ve gone and gotten re-diagnosed twice in my life, and the last time was just a few years ago, so they actually used this one in the test.  The psychologist told me about it, she just didn’t use the phrase Auditory Processing Disorder, and she didn’t tell me that it was its own symptom--she just used it for the test.  

What she did was, she gave me two hearing tests, one to test whether or not I could hear, and then the other a list of words that all sounded alike, and I had to mark which one I was hearing.  The second part of that was very long, and very boring, and despite scoring perfectly on the first test, I got several wrong on the second.  I was actually surprised by that; I at no point suspected I had heard any of them wrong.  When she gave me the test, told me this was proof by contradiction, that we were ruling out hearing loss as an alternative explanation for my difficulties.  It was only after the test was done that she explained that the pattern I showed was actually part of the diagnosis of ADHD; that we get bored, and stop really paying attention, and that we don’t even know we’re doing it.

...Okay, but you couldn’t have mentioned the part where I also do that every day in real life, lady?!?!  It’s not just when we’re bored, it’s not just for long processes.  I do this all the time.  I actually tell people now that “I actually have a neurological condition that makes it hard for me to hear; I can tell that you’re speaking, but I can’t tell what you’re saying.”  

This is 100% true.  It is a neurological condition.  

We label this a condition, but as a society, we don’t treat it that way.  Society treats it as yet another excuse.  It’s not.  You’re not lazy, stupid or crazy.  Neither am I.  

I have a condition.  Acknowledging that is the first step of treatment.  Not five thousand sticky notes, not binders or filing systems or even taking all the doors off the cupboards (although I definitely plan to do that one as soon as I possibly can).  Not counselling sessions with so many different people I can’t even name them all, for the love of god please understand that you can’t just fix it with pills.  

(Although mad props to the people who thought Concerta would magically solve me at the age of nine!  Spoiler alert:  it did not do that!  But it did mean that my parents felt comfortable blaming me for all my failures again, so it did at least some of what it was designed for, I guess. :) )   

I have spent the last few years re-understanding my ADHD it as is:  a neurological condition, a disability, and a simple fact of life.  A starting place, instead of yet more proof of my own inherent insufficiency.  And you know what?  When you take the blame and self-hatred out of the diagnosis--when you stop cursing it as the cause of all your problems and start trying to work with it, instead--it gets a lot easier to manage. 

[divingtotheunknown]

Living In Uncertainties

To anyone who continues to resist like me, you may not realize it now but you are ever so lucky to not have experienced the COVID-19 pandemic. A huge part of people’s lives was swiftly taken from them as the virus raged across the country. Who would have thought that the one week suspension we heard on the news last year would last until now.

Most of the time, it felt unreal how the entire thing was. It was as if my world stopped and I was confined to one of its corners. I can’t say for myself how terrible the experience was, just that it was. It brought out the worst in the society, in men; selfishness, greed, indifference and above all, fear. Fear was the biggest of the four. It influenced all the others to terrorize the hearts and minds of people.

The virus was very unpredictable for a long time. It is actually testing the technology to stave off the virus. It could appear anywhere, anytime without us knowing and it could’ve meant life or death.

Which means to say that the possibility of anyone we loved or us ourselves getting the virus was high and that could very well be the end of the line. I can’t stress enough how badly that fear affected the mental and emotional well-being of a lot of the people I knew. Personally, I never expected this pandemic would let social media affect my own thinking. The same goes with the mindset of the public with what and how they consume information online. The fact the fake news is everywhere, undeniably a lot of people became victims of it, even some members of my family - which is why it is really important how important it is to be a responsible user nowadays. It was evident that during the first few days, we were vigorously trying to find ways to take off the looming dread from that thought but it seems that no matter how far we ran, that thought kept close on our tails.

People spoke up about the stress this entire thing would cause on society. In particular, the working class and the poor were the most affected. A lot of them needed to work daily just to get paid and earn a living. They had to stop so that they could be safe and also to stop the number of infected people from increasing. There was nothing they could do. When they left, it seemed as if society had stopped as well. To be honest, our business was affected as well. Luckily, I was able to help my parents continue the business through the use of e-commerce using different platforms online but I know and it is sad that not everyone has the access and ability to move forward using the same resources we had. Only a few workers were allowed to be outside of their homes, they were the medical workers and frontliners like those who worked in groceries. A lot of medical workers lost their lives to the virus. How painful it must have been for their colleagues to watch as the people beside them fell ill and succumbed to death. A friend of mine shared to me how hard it was for them not to see her father personally after dying due to a virus. He ended his life fulfilling his duty as a Doctor. Saying the last words for her Dad through video call is different from the usual but again, what can we do? I can only imagine all the pain they carried during those days. How brave they all were, risking their own safety for the sake of others. They did not want to be part of that front and yet there they were.

This stress was also put on students. Universities decided to conduct online classes completely. I did not see the fairness in that. While it’s true that we students should give value to our time by spending it on education, we too felt the weight of the situation. A lot of us were still coping with the madness that seemed to take on the world. But what could we do? Over a year, we have been so hopeful that one day, we can still go back to the campus but despite all that, I am still grateful for the power of media and technology. Applications like Facebook allows us to keep in touch, Twitter and Instagram reminds us to be updated, Blackboard, Zoom, Discord and other articulations of social media allows us to continue pursuing our dreams despite all the limitations and challenges brought by the pandemic. We had no choice but to resign to our fate of finishing the academic year against our wishes.

During these days, the government seemed to be at its worst. It turned out that hospitals all over the country were underprepared because they were not funded properly. What’s worse was that the government deployed the police and troops to “ensure public safety”. Just like what we always see in different social media applications, police do not protect the public, instead the people behind all the shortcomings in the country. How ironic it was to see the military well-armed. It added nothing more than fear to the people. There were several incidents where the military unjustly shot people down for being suspicious or unruly. They did not even hesitate to point their guns! Good thing is, with the continuous innovation in terms of technology, there was much evidence online that would prove the blasphemy of the abusers of power.

It did not take long for people to realize that they would be stuck at home for so long. Everyone needed to stay home and so they needed as many supplies as possible. However, it came to a point where people got greedy and all they could think of was themselves. People tend to hoard whenever they see news about the possible shift of quarantine and this is actually a situation I can connect with the lesson about substantivism wherein technology has a capability to affect or mold the people and even the society. I understand the need to look for one’s own welfare, I understand the need to care for our loved ones but what I did not understand was why people had to cross the line towards being greedy and hoarding far more than they needed.

As far as man has evolved, its progress is still so little. In the midst of a global crisis, they found time to claw at each other’s throats by pointing fingers to pass the blame. It came to a point where Asian people were discriminated against as carriers of the disease. Perhaps the worst case was that of the American president calling COVID-19 the Chinese virus. I felt ashamed of these people. There were a lot of others trying to help build more unity and yet these people were insensitive enough to cause more divisions. I dream that such connectivity has been brought to us by the media, hopefully time will come it will also apply to the society, country even as one nation.

It was truly a terrible time. Imagine the reality of a global scale crisis paired dawning on you from behind and before you are the immoral choices made by the society you live in. It was one of the most vulnerable moments of my life. I felt crushed by the immense weight of the situation we were all in.

I missed the outdoors, I missed my friends, I missed school. I missed the joys that I could only experience outside of my home, I missed the fresh air, I missed the sunlight. realized that I took a lot of these for granted. We can only see our loved ones on our screens and it is heartbreaking that we can no longer do the things we are used to. It’s true what they say: you only realize the value of some things once they are gone or taken away from you.

All I could wonder then, was if life would ever be back to the way things were.

They say that during the direst of situations, the worst and best in man shows. I’ve had my fair share of seeing just how bad a man can get. Yet, there were times when man’s goodness prevailed. In fact, you’d be surprised just how many of them there are.

A lot of people held volunteer work that reached out to poor communities so that they could be given food and supplies. Some people hosted online charity events from their homes to raise funds to donate to the medical effort, online donations drive and they even use media as their means of communication for community pantry. It was those moments that gave me hope and reminded me of how morally good people can be. During those moments it felt like not everything was wrong with the world.

Those days really made me realize how difficult it was to really put a finger on what morality is. Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that we may never really be completely good or bad. Sometimes, we’re a little bit of each other. Indeed, people are constantly changing, even technology and society. It’s unbelievable how new media changes our lives, our way of living and how we use these innovations although there’s always pros and cons. It’s hard to juggle that thought because we are so limited, so small compared to the universe we live in.

The message I leave with you now, dear reader, is to live. To live means to learn. To live means to see. To live means to understand, to appreciate, to feel, to live is everything. Get rid of the distractions caused by these changes. Concern yourself with the world so as not to be selfish but also devote time to yourself when you need it.

REFERENCES:

Soriano, P. N. (2021, August 31). Nueva Ecija records 14 new COVID-19 Delta variant cases. Rappler. https://www.rappler.com/nation/covid-19-delta-variant-cases-nueva-ecija-august-27-2021?utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR20YsXyEhuxFMu7Y4P5uWon2xRnYZ7tqpQWSCJxxaaCdpFsTKtasfe5zI8#Echobox=1630055399

Pangue, J. (2021, January 9). In 2021, communities can prove that fighting disinformation isn’t just media’s role. Rappler. https://www.rappler.com/moveph/communities-prove-fighting-disinformation-not-just-media-role

[slliest-clownmari]

Hello again! For the month of June we decided to don our best Icarus costumes because we flew directly into the sun on this one! Extra long disclaimer this time. If you're interested in the technical side what we did and how it went wrong, or want to see the raw numbers, that'll be at the bottom of this post!

Disclaimer: There were two major errors during collection. The first one resulted in five people's views not being collected for the first half hour of the event.  These people were SMajor/Noxcrew, ItsFunneh, Squaishey, ASFJerome, and Mefs, amounting to about 56k views when added back. The second error left a 45 minute gap in the data where nothing is collected. While these are major errors general trends are still visible and neat to look at!

TL;DR: MCCP21 peaked with 627.4k viewers a little more than thirty minutes into the event. 65.4% of those viewers were watching the Pink Parrots, and 87.9% of those were watching Technoblade. The second most watched team was the Lime Llamas at 16.9% of viewership, 77.6% of that coming from Wisp.

For easier viewing of the graphs, check out the Google Slides version! Total Viewership Over Time

The event peaked with 627,421 viewers at 8:33PM which was during Sky Battle. Looking at the trend of the data, this statistic is unlikely to have changed if the missing 45 minutes had been counted, especially seeing how the peak of MCC14 was also easily in the first hour.  Data collection began about an hour before the event's official start at 8:00PM and ended an hour after the event's end at 11:08PM.

Viewership by Individual Over Time

A fun game you can play with this graph, sans the labels, is guess which one's Technoblade! So far everyone I've shown the unlabelled graph to has guessed correct.

Three people went live after the official start time of the event at 8:00PM, those being Technoblade, Grian, and AyChristeneGames. Four streamers had gone offline prior to the end of 20vs20 Dodgebolt at 11:08PM. Twenty of the 24 participants had gone offline within 5 minutes of the event end. This is in sharp contrast to MCC14 where it took 15 minutes to have half of the 36 participants to go offline. MCC14 participants were also more likely to start streaming well in advance of the event. (For context, only Twitch data was collected for MCC14.) This is probably a cultural difference between Youtube and Twitch.

Viewership by Team Over Time

The viewership drop off after a team fails to reach Dodgebolt is a lot more severe this time, and you don't really see the two teams who did get to Dodgebolt get a boost either. Best guess is this is because MCCP21 was non-canon so nobody really cared who won the whole thing if their favorites didn't make it. Another observation: Pink Parrots has a much more severe dropoff during the Bird App Poll than everyone else. Unseen here is the viewership increase when Wilbur's fire alarm went off :(

Viewership Breakdown at Peak by Individual

So, not the most diverse viewership. The most watched person at peak in MCC14, Tommyinnit, only had 21.1% of total viewership. Even if you combine that percentage with the runner-up Dream's numbers, you only get 38.4% of viewership going to them. There is not a single team from MCC14 who captured nearly 57.5% of the viewership. The most they could do was 39.9% (Green Guardians). Absolutely insane degree of domination.

Top Five (Unrouned) 1. Technoblade (360.8k) 2. Wisp (82.2k) 3. Grian (45.5k) 4. ItsFunneh (44.9k) 5. Joey Graceffa (23.5k)

Bottom Five 26. Burren (78) 25. SeaPeeKay (333) 24. Spifey (403) 25. AyChristeneGames (498) 26. InTheLittleWood (521)

Wisp's numbers were so hugely different from last time (0.1% to 13.1%) that I actually sought out people who watched him to confirm he really had over 70k viewers. He did. This probably has to do with having fewer big names to compete with and being on a team with Tommy and Tubbo. Plus, he’s more familiar to the Minecraft community than Joey Graceffa, so fans of Tommy and Tubbo would be more likely to watch Wisp to see their faves. This isn't meant to belittle Wisp or to attribute his viewership entirely to Tommy or Tubbo; MCC is an unfair measurement of the usual popularity of a creator.

Viewership Breakdown at Peak by Team vs Survey Data

The predicted viewership graph was generated using data from a poll I ran on Tumblr and a poll run by u/Epic_Ninja_Dude123 on r/MinecraftChampionship.

Difference from predicted counts (Pred. % vs Actu. %) Lime Llamas: +9.1% (7.8% vs 16.9%) Green Guardians: +6.3% (0.9% vs 7.2%) Purple Pandas: -6.3% (6.7% vs 0.4%) Orange Ocelots: -5.1% (5.5% vs 0.4%) Red Rabbits: -4.1% (6.2% vs 2.1%) Blue Bats: -1.9% (2.5% vs 0.6%) Aqua Axolotls: +1.3% (2.5% vs 3.8%) Pink Parrots: +0.9% (64.5% vs 65.4%) Yellow Yaks: +0.5% (0.0% vs 0.5%) Cyan Creepers: -0.3% (3.2% vs 2.9%)

Standard Dev. for MCC14: 10.22 Standard Dev. for MCCP21: 2.89

Thrilled by these statistics!! The MCC14 survey had nearly triple the sample size (862) as this combined survey, but still ended up closer to actual counts. Real life proof of what they tell you in stats classes! A representative sample is the best kind of sample to have. Something I did not consider when using the survey for MCC14 is its source, a blog on Tumblr that talks heavily about Technoblade and Philza, which obviously biased the audience who took it towards the Pink Parrots (Philza, Fundy, Wilbur, JackManifold). Not a surprise we did better this time but really neat to see logic in action! lol

Another interesting thing about the survey: Reddit and Tumblr do vary a little in taste. It's easier to just show you:

What's missing? I chose not to calculate average/median viewership for the creators involved due to the large gap in data. It wouldn't be correct most likely.

So, how did you do this and how did you mess it up?

(I, the writer of this post, mostly do the analysis part of this project, not the programming. Apologies if any programmers are reading this and it doesn't make sense. :[ )

Our initial plan was do do just what we did to collect the MCC14 data but for YouTube instead of Twtich. (For MCC14 we used a Python program to request the viewership data directly from Twitch using their API.) This was much easier said than done. Unlike the Twitch API, which allows you to get stream information very easily just using a streamer's name, YouTube API doesn't have a "front door" way of getting this stuff. So, we went in the "back door."

First thing we had to do was manually collect the user ID for each participant. The next step is where the first error occurred: we needed to get our program to recognize the user ID as a user ID, which was done by writing a rule. This was stuff like how long the IDs were and what symbols were included in the IDs. We failed to include a symbol that was present in five of the participant's user IDs, so the program didn't recognize them as IDs and didn't run them through the part of the program which found the stream ID and collected viewer numbers. This is why that data was missing for SMajor/Noxcrew, ItsFunneh, Squaishey, ASFJerome, and Mefs in the first 30 minutes.

Another big way in which the YouTube API differs from the Twitch API is that YouTube has a quota system. Every action you can take with the API has a certain number of points connected to it, and you're only given so many points to spend a day per application. We thought we were only making one call to get viewer data for every streamer, but instead we were making a separate call for each streamer. That destroyed our quota pretty quick, resulting in the 45 minute gap in data collection. This problem was solved by moving our code into another application which granted us more quota.

This is an important lesson in testing your programs thoroughly before use!

On the bright side, the YouTube API is much more active than the Twitch API, which would update streamer numbers seemingly at random and not all at once. The YouTube API updated numbers roughly every 15 seconds and updated for all streamers, not just a few. That's why our graphs are higher resolution this time!

Here is the raw numbers: Click me!

Let's talk about next time

SO. Obviously this time around was not super ideal, which is partially on us for not testing more. (At least this was not the only scuffed thing about MCCP21. We were just being on brand, if you think about it.) However! Good news! The quota won't be a problem next time as MCC15 won't be Youtube exclusive.   We have already fixed the YouTube program we used this time around and have begun to merge the two. We might even be able to collect YouTube subscribers and Twitch followers by next time but we're focusing on making sure we get all the data next time.

Thank you all so much for reading! Again, any and all critique and questions are welcome! :]

[sluttyopinions]

The Blunt Reality of Attack on Titan

August 4, 2020

Written by Samantha, Slutty Opinions

OPENING

People usually tend to associate anime and manga with being crazy over the top action packed experiences. Attack on Titan is a series full of exactly that. It’s a hugely popular franchise known for having insanely cool action and bombastic music. People flying around doing impossible feats and fighting fantastical enemies that are larger than life are common. Despite all this flash and excitement, the series never lets you forget the harsh reality of the world itself in a unique way, effectively separating it from many of its peers.

This grim reality is basically used to beat the audience over the head over and over, at times too liberally and too often as some would argue. I personally think how the original author of the manga that started it all, Hajime Isayama, entwines every aspect of his story with cynicism and grimness is one of the major reasons why I love the series, and I’m willing to bet it’s a big reason for a lot of fans whether they know it or not. Before I get into the details, I will say that I won’t be putting in any real spoilers of either the manga or the anime so if you’re just curious about what I may have to say, you can keep going. I’d also like to mention that I am more of a recent fan, but still a big one. I’ve seen the entire anime and have been trying to catch up on the source material, so my knowledge and opinions will be limited to that amount of content.

THE TITANS

For anyone unaware of the basic premise of Attack on Titan, the last remnant of the human race has been trapped by huge humanoid beasts in an expansive settlement surrounded by walls. It is humanity’s job to fight off these mindless monsters and survive behind the walls. The titans are a large part of what creates the identity of the series. Seems kind of obvious since it’s literally the title and all. The way these titans are integrated into the action and the story of the show is a large part of what prevents Attack on Titan from simply being another generic action series that ends up forgotten as a flavor of the month. It seems like I’m not giving the series enough credit because there is a LOT it does right otherwise such as pacing, story structure, characters, and so on that combine to make an incredible experience that has captivated many. However, I still stand by the idea that the titans help make the franchise feel truly one of a kind.

Everyone who’s ever seen the titans has probably noticed how grotesquely and uncannily they are designed. In the manga, the whole world and the way many things and people are drawn especially all have very creepy vibes to it all. While it would be a huge stretch to claim Attack on Titan is a horror manga, it’s common sense to acknowledge it’s strongly influenced by horror. The absolute sense of uncertainty and powerlessness these monsters present nearly every time they’re on screen is overpowering to both the characters that must deal with them and the audience as well. 

Isayama creates a feeling of dread involving these beasts insanely effectively. Any encounter with them even if it is merely 1 or 2 of them can always lead to sudden death. There is never safety in the presence of the titans even for the most skilled. Their pure size and physical ability is nearly never downplayed. While the humans have their own special weapons and crazy abilities, the titans are hardly ever presented as mere battle fodder or mulch. Titans happen to be very good at killing people and the delivery of it all makes it feel believable. Keeping the antagonists intimidating and serious is very important for the overall feeling of Attack on Titan. 

At times it can even feel like too much. The idea of any character dropping dead at any time can be very discouraging when you’re trying to get invested in a cast or just getting started. Sure that amount of pure “edge” in itself is appealing to a lot of people, but edge without purpose or substance makes for very bad entertainment in my eyes. It’s honestly in fact one of my pet peeves. I did not expect to like Attack on Titan for a long time due to this reputation it had for being brutal and random. Just not my style. When I actually gave it a shot however, I realized the writing is a lot more purposeful and I’d even say forgiving than I expected. While at times being an emotionally exhausting experience and definitely pessimistic in many ways, this series treats the terrible events that occur left and right with proper gravity and maturity.

THE NATURE OF WAR

Attack on Titan has a lot to say about a variety of subjects. It’s honestly much more subtle and intelligent than I even thought with my initial blind viewing of the anime. Reading the manga through the same events really gave me an appreciation for the thought and detail that goes into Isayama’s writing. The most obvious subject he focuses on is something that is probably less than subtle however and can be spotted quickly by anyone who has seen or read even a bit of the series. 

That subject happens to be the horrors of war. On the surface the story seems to be just a simple story of man vs beast and it wouldn’t make much sense for it to have anything to say about war. While the circumstances involved are very fantasy-themed and at times ridiculous, it still at its heart is a narrative about war and how humans cope with it, both those on the front lines and those who watch from afar. 

The grim and serious nature of the series is the way it is directly thanks to that theme. If life wasn’t always at risk, if it wasn’t treated as fragile, if death wasn’t respected and dwelled on and treated with the utmost permanence and seriousness, this theme would not work the way it does. Anything less runs the risk of just looking like glorification while merely saying the opposite. Admittedly there’s a lot of people who still somehow think Attack on Titan glorifies war but that’s a whole other subject. A very impactful and relevant part of the story is one early on where humanity wins a huge battle, yet no one bothers to celebrate merely because the overwhelming weight of the dead hangs heavier than any related relief ever could. This kind of grim and depressing, yet honest storytelling about war is very common throughout the plot.

What it means to be a soldier, the intricate overlap of society, media, government, and economics on war, the will and the reason to fight, the sanctity of human life and the nature of sacrifice and finding meaning in meaningless and constant death are all discussed often and in detail in Attack on Titan and the grim realness of everything that happens in the story and the overall feeling of being unsafe it conveys are deeply important to allowing these themes and discussions to work as well as they do.

PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY

The last major aspect of the story that I think benefits greatly from the unrestrained reality and brutality of the series is the very unique philosophy and psychology that Isayama presents. Most of the points and lessons the characters learn through the story are not pleasant ones. Everything the characters go through and the utter bleakness of Attack on Titan’s world shapes everyone’s worldviews. People take small steps and make concessions to have hope in this world. Optimism is present plenty, but the way the characters experience optimism is still rife with sacrifice and harsh undeniable truths. 

This very unique perspective compared to a lot of similar media is refreshing in its own way and kept me questioning what I knew. You couldn’t often easily predict the conclusions characters would come to because they are not what you may have come to expect from other media. One major character, Erwin Smith, is a great example of the kind of ideas Attack on Titan will throw around. His character is labeled as a demon by some, but a hero by the same people as well. The necessity of pain and sacrifice underlies all progress and achievement and he knows it and so do many others, even if it’s hard to accept. Having to create guidelines bound by the rules and expectations of reality only makes them that much more applicable to real life and real war. 

Despite all this, the series never feels outright preachy. Characters dwelling on the meaning of what’s happening to them is specific to which character and which circumstances. It doesn’t feel nearly like the author is writing an essay about the way things are or should be while using characters as mouthpieces and more just people in a hard situation trying to make meaning out of the meaningless suffering around them. Agreeing or disagreeing with any point as a reader or viewer isn’t portrayed as wrong in any case it’s more a vehicle for thought as well as phenomenal character building.�� Like real war, none of the questions presented have a genuine correct answer. The character Levi himself at some point in the story even admits that as a veteran in battle, he can never be truly sure of his choices.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

The amount of respect and purpose Attack on Titan treats its frequent suffering with is key to the experience as a whole. While a series with just good writing all around and good reasons for its fame, something that in my opinion makes it feel like something special and something that captivated me is the overall gravity of the story. Without being effective at intensity and discomfort as well as in dealing with said discomfort, the story just wouldn’t feel real. And if it doesn’t feel real, it won’t feel like it matters. This series matters quite a lot to myself and many others and I hope this is at least a glimpse as to why.

[talktruebusiness]

My grand adventure with Trade Marks and why they are a dangerous thing...

My adventures in ecommerce have taught me many important lessons. One of these lessons was about trademarks. Yeah you know the major brands are all registered in various countries around the world the likes of Nike, Coca Cola and McDonalds etc. This gives them certain protections like who can use their brand name on their products. So if you try to sell knock of Nike shoes you can expect to get a knock on the door at some point as you didn’t get the brand owners permission to put it on your stuff. Great right? 

I had started selling on Amazon and decided it would be really cool to have my own product and own brand on it. Only problem was I didn’t want anyone to copy me so I had a bright idea why not trademark my brand. Turns out it doesn’t cost a whole lot and takes a couple of months. So after painstakingly designing the spanking brand new log I decide to go ahead meanwhile I have now paid out a ton of cash on a product that was now being made. Then I get an email from someone claiming to be the lawyer of a large multinational company asking me to withdraw my trademark application or else. At first I am convinced it is some sort of joke and a scam. The I am horrified and scared to discover that it actually was the real deal. It was too late to change the brand name as it was already in production. I had visions of me sitting in a sea of boxes unable to shift any of it. What on earth could I do?

And before you ask yes I did search for the brand name I was using to check if it wasn’t already taken. But I didn’t realise that using even part of a name in your brand name can cause problems for example if you used the brand name ‘Blingtastic’ but someone had trademarked the word ‘Bling’ they can then challenge your brand name saying that it will cause confusion with their customers and infringes on their trademark.  My first reaction was to want to scream and just give up after all who am I to dare to go up against a multinational company capable of squashing me after two minutes? But then my inner fighter came out in me so I then did a quick search of lawyers who deal in trademarks to see what my options were. Turns out there are several options for when you are challenged. Namely speak to the company concerned and see if you can reach an agreement, challenge them back and in the case above say actually you use your ‘Bling’ trademark for household cleaning products and I will be selling jewellery as ‘Blingtastic’ so very unlikely to cause confusion amongst your customer base. Another strategy is to suggest that there are 10,000 companies using the word ‘Bling’ in one form or another so again the word is so common that they cannot have sole ownership over it.   I hired a lawyer and they went back and forth with the other company and eventually we hit on an agreement. BUT a warning I spent ALOT of money on fancy lawyers to get my agreement and my mark trademarked. ALSO my agreement was in one country and if I try to register the same mark in other countries I had the possibility of going through the whole sorry process again with the same company. 

The moral of this story is RESEARCH, RESEARCH and RESEARCH some more before registering your brand name as a trademark!! Don’t just look for exact matches look for similar names and part of names. Most likely you will find nothing but if you find a name that is similar then be warned that you could face problems if you register it. At this point my advice would be how deep are your pockets and are you willing to lose it all if it goes wrong! The happy ending to my story at least is that the product is a small success and me and the international company happily came to an agreement. My trademark is now registered and I can at last breath a albeit small sigh of relief. Has it scarred me for life though? DEFINITELY.  

[mywalkintofreedom]

Life at West Main Street - part 1

We’ve been doing some work around the house lately. We painted some walls, and hung some new pictures, got a new light fixture... stuff like that. I’ve always found it very important to make our home my sanctuary. I have to change things around every now and then too, just to change the scenery. As a stay at home mom it’s important to me that I feel comfortable in the space I’m in.

I can’t help but think back to the first place we ever moved into together back in 2014. It was a small one bedroom apartment, it smelled like cigarette smoke, it had no central heat or air and was a shared building with 3 other apartments. It was what we could afford at that time, and I say that with a wink, because we moved into this place using our last money to pay for the down payment not knowing where the rent was going to come from, as Micah did not have a permanent job yet. We also couldn’t afford to turn on the water or power yet, but we chose to be grateful that we found a place to live and trusted God to work out the rest. It was nothing like I had pictured in my mind as we were dreaming up our life. BUT, let me tell you this, it was the most life changing season of my life living there. This little apartment became my sanctuary, and the many months that we lived here became some of our most treasured memories as a newly wed couple. It became the foundation of our marriage, the foundation of how we decided to raise our kids and really just the foundation of our journey together. We learned lessons and foundational things there that we will bring with us for the rest of our life.

We had plans to move out as soon as we could, but reality pretty soon showed that this was going to be home for awhile and that this would be the home that we would have our first baby in.

You would think that the environment was the hardest part of living here, but it wasn’t. While it was certainly a struggle the smell, the dysfunctions and interesting neighbors, the greatest struggle presented itself as how I like to recall it “being stripped of every comfort I’d ever known”. This meant, not having internet, not having a tv and not having a phone and not having people to contact or call.

The first day Micah went to work a full day, I remember clear as day, sitting on a desk chair that someone had given us, in an empty apartment, in the dark (it was a cloudy day and the place had very little natural light). I had no idea what time he would come home, because we had no way of contacting each other. All we had was this desk chair and our suitcases with clothes (which half of mine didn’t fit me because I was pregnant) and an air mattress that we slept on. I sat there probably for an hour that first day, with my hand on my belly feeling our baby move, tears dripping down my face, thinking about what I could possibly do with myself for the entire day. This continued to be the biggest struggle I woke up with every day, what am I going to do today? The first months, all I could think about was moving out. But as the weeks went by there was no way we would be able to move on to something else. It felt like being dropped off on a deserted island. In a way it was similar. I had no way of contacting people, and I was in a country that was not my own. Every day I counted down the minutes until Micah would come home, which were a lot of minutes when you start counting in the morning. Any time he came home all was well. We would light candles and play card games all night. This was after he would have made us dinner on our one pit burner, which would take more than an hour usually, because you could only heat one thing at a time. It really didn’t take long until our apartment was furnished. We had different people donate things to us, a lot of items are still part of our home and in a way sentimental to me.

For the first while we didn’t have a fridge. This was challenging, but it was winter so this helped a little. We had a box that we would put our milk in, and maybe two or three other items we had, and we would put this outside between our front door and screen door. I remember some days being out and about and we would be watching the temperature, because what if our meat would get too warm!? (I also had some fear that our neighbors would steal the box😂) We did have some precious meat spoil one time and it was hard, I mean I think I cried. Eventually someone asked us if we could use a mini fridge, which remained our fridge for the entire time we lived there. The only down side to this fridge was that it didn’t fit an ice cream container in the tiny freezer section at the top😭 (the freezer section also didn’t have a way of closing so we closed it with a piece of cardboard😂). But in the end that was okay, because we really couldn’t afford ice cream anyways.

Since I’m talking about food, this is also what I meant with “being stripped of every comfort you’ve ever known”. We had a $20 food budget a week in this season. Going and buying whatever you feel like eating really wasn’t an option. I remember one night sitting on the floor in front of our tiny little pantry, crying, because I just wanted to eat some chocolate so bad. I know that sounds crazy, (do keep it mind I was also pregnant😉) but when you can always buy whatever you feel like buying you don’t know what it’s like when you can’t.

Our biggest arguments we ever had in our early marriage days were about... food... and what to buy. We were total opposites, my brain told me we should be buying the cheapest of the cheapest, well mister Huff wanted to buy organic chicken with our $20 food budget. I honestly could kill him for it and thought he was insane. Then we’d have an argument about me being too loud protesting in the store. His intentions were honest and pure, he wanted the very best for me and our unborn child. We eventually met in the middle, and I’ve learned not to loudly start arguments in the meat aisle. While we had very little to spend, we never felt poor. We calculated everything to a T before we went shopping and eventually knew the prices by heart, and became pretty smart in our shopping. We made the best meals with what we had. We ate meat maybe 2-3 times a week and did beans on the other days. We didn’t really eat snacks, just an apple at some point of the day. We paid everything with cash (which we have done up until just a few months ago! But we still don’t own a credit card). Any change we’d get, we would save up and buy an ice cream cone with at the end of the week at Dairy Queen. If we had a really good week, we’d be able to buy a blizzard, which felt like a celebration.

While going through the literal purification of my life, we also had a lot of unknowns. How were we going to bring a baby into the world? The hospital wasn’t an option because I wasn’t eligible for health insurance, because I didn’t have my green card yet. Speaking of which, I also feared the green card police would knock on my door and deport me, for real, which was probably a little dramatic. We saved every little bit of money we could to pay for a midwife, and pay for the green card application.

Through all of these changes, I was getting used to living in a very different country than my own. They call immigrants, aliens, and that’s often how I felt. I had visited the United States often before I officially moved there, and I loved the country, but living here proved to be more of a culture shock than I knew it would be. There were so many small details I had to learn about the culture, the language and the country. There were times that it caused anxiety.

I remember one particular time our church was doing “family fun Saturdays”. It was just a way of fellowshipping together. I was actually quite excited about this, because I didn’t have any fellowship throughout the week and missed my family a lot. Micah worked Saturday morning and after he was done we left. When we got there and we walked into a room full of people anxiety hit me, but I was okay, because Micah was right next to me. Well next thing I knew, the guys were going to do a sports game outside, Micah left and I was left alone in a room full of people. This really wouldn’t be a big deal, but anxiety overtook and I got immensely afraid and panicked. I left as quick as I could and went to our little car. We were parked in kind of an open spot where other cars were arriving, I was so afraid of seeing people and having to converse that I sat down curled up on the floor of the car in front of the front seat. I couldnt help but cry uncontrollably because I just was so afraid of conversing with people and that someone would see me and I was thinking to myself “what have I become”? Social anxiety was something I had struggled with before, but never ever in my life to the extent I was experiencing that day.

Speaking of cars, I do feel like I should probably tell you about our 1997 Toyota Corolla. How did we ever end up with a car when we had no money? That’s a good question. It was presented to us to buy the car for $600 at the very beginning of our journey, but we denied, because we didn’t have any money. The car was given to us. Before we had this car we were walking everywhere.

When I was 27 weeks pregnant we prayed and reached out to a midwife that was willing to accept us and decided that the only way we were going to be able to receive prenatal care was to have a home birth with a midwife. During our first meeting with her we went over the cost and when we left we discussed it and we really had no idea how we were going to pay her. It was going to be about $3000. After a lot of praying we both came to the conclusion that the only way we’d be able to pay her was if we could take out a loan. We didn’t like having to do this, but we also couldn’t go without the proper care for me and our baby.

We decided to go to the bank, and that’s where we met Frank. We sat down in front of Frank and we explained what we needed the loan for. He asked us if we had any collateral. Micah and I looked at each other, I whispered “what is collateral?” and then we looked at Frank. Micah answered, well, we have a 1997 Toyota Corolla. Frank said, “okay let’s see it”. We had parked it right in front of the bank. The two front fenders and the hood of the car were black, as it had never been painted white after a replacement like the rest of the car. The grill and the Toyota logo in the front were missing. Micah and I joked constantly that it looked like a car with a toothless smile. When we walked out, “corey” as we named him, was right in front of Frank, but Frank was looking right over it looking for our car. Then Micah said “this is him, pointing at our car, this is the toothless wonder”. Frank looked at it and made some notes on a note pad, we went back inside (meanwhile Micah and I really had to hold our laughs because it was hysterical). After Frank got done writing some things down and asking some questions he said “well, I can give you about $1200 for a loan”. It wasn’t the amount that we needed, but it was something so we took it. We left the bank and laughed often about the story of Frank and the “toothless wonder”. We were able to give our midwife $1200 up front, and paid her and the bank off as soon as we could possibly could.

It is around the same time that we realized that we were definitely not going to be able to move anywhere else until we had paid off this loan, the rest of the cost of the midwife, and gotten everything paid to get me a green card. I made a decision to stop thinking about “the next step”. Often we live with the mentality, “if I can just reach this or that, then I will be happy”. Always thinking about the “best best thing”. My mentality had been “if I can just move somewhere else I can start to be happy”. I learned a huge lesson in contentment in this season, and the scripture that Micah and I were often reminded of was “if you can be faithful in the small things, God can entrust you with the bigger things”. (And boy if I had known what God would do later in life I would’ve started this much sooner). I started by praying that God would either take the smoke smell away, or help me not to smell it, because I couldn’t stand it. He did, I stopped smelling it. I declared this small apartment my sanctuary. I decided to make it my home, and asked God to help me make it home. When you always have distractions at your fingertips it’s easy not to deal with feelings, I was faced with my feelings every day and had no way of numbing them with distractions. There were no distractions. None. It was just me and God, every day. There was no way for me to “numb” the time away by watching tv, scrolling on a phone or asking someone to come over.

You would probably think after reading all that that I regretted moving and that I regretted getting married. I truly didn’t. I knew with everything within me that this was where we were supposed to be and that I was with who I was supposed to be with.

There is so much to say about the season that we lived here. What I forgot to mention earlier is that someone came to us when we had just moved into our apartment and gave us, I believe it was $250. However much it was, it was the exact amount we needed to turn on the water and power for the apartment. They said that God had laid it on their heart to give this to us, and we knew it was Him because of the amount they gave us. They had no idea of our situation. There are so many miraculous things that happened while we lived here, and I plan on writing more about it because I’ve always wanted to, it is an extremely important part of my journey, and our journey, and so many valuable things were learned. I am forever grateful for the “stripping down and away”, because it prepared me for motherhood and life as a mom and it made us make important decisions for our family that I believe will truly change the lives of our children and have changed our own lives. God became real, and the Word of God exploded as we read together each day. I have never been the same and I never will be. More stories to come about the many experiences at west Main Street.

[louisishj334]

How to lose $1 million and risk it all again

When Abbas Dayekh was 18 several years aged, he walked confidently to the reception of Sussex Location, London Enterprise University’s primary campus, and asked: “Where can I enrol?” Safety advised him he would have to wait a several years. Dayekh was in the wrong spot. He was in search of Regent’s University London, exactly where his parents experienced sent him to check a BA (Hons) in Worldwide Enterprise with French. Dayekh, ethnically Lebanese, is from Nigeria, the grandson of the textiles’ industrialist. He was sent to the united kingdom to achieve knowledge, then return and insert benefit inside the loved ones business.

Dayekh, CEO and founder of OyaNow, an application-primarily based shipping and delivery service in Nigeria, chuckles within the memory. It’s not the first time he has taken a detour in his life, and it possibly was one of many additional pleasant – and less expensive - events. With no doubt, one of the most tricky was having to notify his mom he experienced shed all her price savings – about $600,000 – that she invested in him to put in place a Beirut branch of distinctive Parisian couture model CLVII in 2012. “It absolutely was a buddy’s store. The purchasers are certainly top quality; elite footballers and these kinds of. It’s obtained a particular image.

“I ran CLVII notion capital for about a year, and afterwards the Syrian civil war escalated. Bombs started heading off in Beirut. The Saudis and Emirati holidaymakers – my buyers – they went household and didn’t return. I used to be trapped with a great deal of expensive couture and no funds”

I ran CLVII for around a year, and afterwards the Syrian civil war escalated. Bombs started off going off in Beirut. The Saudis and Emirati travellers – my prospects – they went residence and didn’t come back. I was stuck which has a large amount of pricey couture and no dollars. Involving my mom’s price savings, a buddy’s financial commitment of about $two hundred,000 and the money I’d expended in that two-year period, I’d managed to lose $one million.

‘Not a tech dude’

While Dayekh, from Kano in Nigeria’s northern province, felt upset that he’d Enable down his mom, his initial – and biggest – entrepreneurial flop did nothing at all to dampen his enthusiasm for the entrepreneurial route and his zeal to triumph. In actual fact, he reflects that it spurred him on to at some point found OyaNow, an application-primarily based logistics enterprise aiding enterprises to achieve Nigeria’s progressively related populace of just about 200 million by trustworthy and rapidly previous-mile shipping and delivery.

This Regardless of the simple fact Dayekh promises to generally be “by no means a tech man”. He laughs: “I'm able to’t code.” Dayekh has gained the Persons’s Decision Award while in the George Bernard Shaw Unreasonable Individual category at this calendar year’s Serious Innovation Awards (RIA) in recognition of his dogged perseverance to succeed Even with there becoming no fantastic rationale that he should really.

When he had The theory for OyaNow, he was pretty much broke, acquiring returned from Shanghai the place for 9 months he had been performing being an outsourcing broker for just a number of Nigerian clientele he’d managed to secure. “They had been tiny contracts and Therefore the Fee was little,” he claims. “I had return to Abuja for being with my mom and determine what I had been gonna do with my life. I barely experienced any revenue, but I nonetheless realized I used to be about to do my own factor.”

It transpired to him that buyer self esteem in Nigeria was zero. “There was no rely on in the market in Nigeria and not Considerably purchaser treatment possibly. I thought of the accomplishment of foods shipping expert services in Europe and The us like Deliveroo and Uber Eats. Nigeria is probably one of many final nations around the world on this planet with such a big inhabitants that remains so underdeveloped. I observed that hole as a huge possibility.”

But who was about to buy the coders? And to the bikes? In fact – this was Africa, not Europe. Banks don’t give financial loans to people with no property. Dayekh was fortuitous to have a network of Intercontinental experts and traders he cultivated from having long gone to one of the better boarding schools in the world in Switzerland. A friend came by with a few seed income Which paid out for creating the app and the main motorbikes.

Ideal time, right solution, proper place

“I realized This may be a really diverse proposition from Deliveroo and Uber Eats. For 1, we would want to supply total pastoral care to our riders – whom we contact Entrepreneurs – mainly because they could be coming from all around the country. We would have to give them a destination to Are living. They would be the brand. I needed to be sure that I did all the things I could to empower them for being entirely engaged in OyaNow and assist the manufacturer to accomplish its key performance indicators of reliability, usefulness and high quality of assistance usually.

“My uncles felt I were born which has a silver spoon in my mouth Which I'd volume to nothing exterior the relatives small business. I'd a burning desire to establish them Improper and clearly show the entire world I could allow it to be by myself”

OyaNow is definitely an abbreviation of the phrase indicating “we've been coming” in Nigerian slang English. It really is widely recognized throughout ethnic teams and tribes and was a great match with the operating product and to the cultural context. It soft released in Abuja, in advance of launching in Kano after which Lagos.

Starting up off to be a foods shipping service about 3 many years ago, OyaNow obtained an sudden fillip within the Covid-19 pandemic which noticed desire for its very last-mile supply provider go with the roof. Now, it delivers Pretty much anything at all that may be shipped and OyaNow has business associations with lots of factories across the country.

The organization now has about eighty five bikes and vans as well as other vehicles, microinvestors which is eyeing the subsequent stage of enlargement in other nations in Africa, but Dayekh can’t say too a great deal more at this time. The serial innovator also has enterprise passions in medical marijuana and hemp in Malawi by way of a Swiss-based startup called House Africa. Previously this yr, Malawi legalised the expanding, promoting and exporting of cannabis for professional medical use.

“Winning this award – the George Bernard Shaw Unreasonable Individual Award – I love it! It pleases me in excess of if I had been to generally be manufactured President of America! It appears that evidently I do new points on a regular basis. But, the truth is, there is a pattern. Africa is often a tough area to know if You aren't from listed here. Western organizations see likely during the economies here but are nervous to generate a transfer due to perception of danger and a lack of certainty.

I've realised that I may be that bridge that inbound links Africa With all the West. It is a fairly distinctive situation to be in and I am just getting started.”

six tips about entrepreneurship from OyaNow founder Abbas Dayekh

Being an entrepreneur seriously isn’t straightforward. You require conviction and dedication. It’s probably a cliche but You can not succeed devoid of it. It’s a lonely highway. You may get dangers. You will upset the established order, and people don’t like that. Men and women like it any time you fall short. Personally, when I turn into devoted to a thing, no one can cease me.

The most important enterprise lesson I've discovered was the four Ps: value, products, promotion and spot. They're the key elements for achievement. OyaNow delivers all 4 together beautifully.

Failure is Studying and almost nothing to become ashamed of. Be honest with your self about what went Mistaken and go forward, striving not to generate precisely the same mistakes once more.

Entrepreneurship can be difficult on your own mental health and fitness. You can find every day considerations about cashflow, and regardless of whether you'll have enough funds to pay your charges; to pay your employees. Even now, I put up with panic assaults. It might be very difficult to repeatedly need to project a façade of strength for your personnel, buyers and the market when deep down you don’t know wherever your following tranche of cash will originate from to maintain heading. Be sincere with oneself about whether or not you can handle this strain.

Any time you expand, empower your personnel. They can be your small business. They will be the distinction between accomplishment and failure ultimately. Be humble as a pacesetter and hear your staff. Apologise for the mistakes. They must invest in into your eyesight. Empower them to co-create that eyesight mainly because it evolves.

Use a disproportionate number of Gals in the management staff. Females tend to be a lot less self-centred and aggressive. Coming from the patriarchal household business enterprise dominated by warring factions, I wish to be surrounded by Girls, who often carry balance and direct for your greater great rather then individual acquire.

The Real Innovation Awards is undoubtedly an once-a-year ceremony celebrating business innovation all over the world, hosted via the London Business Faculty’s Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (IIE). To determine this year’s celebration occurring on ten December 2020 and hear insights on ‘Innovating in Adversity’ sign up below.

[gratefully647]

Easy Animation Maker Video Methods - Insights

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Would not it be more effective for the animation to flow the object? You can do this using the wheel animation. Of course, the simple method is to place a circle and utilize the input animation View or Fade.

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You can perfectly use aesthetically developed expert templates for developing abundant, attractive video animations. In other animation software application and tools, you might have stumbled in the workflow to develop an appealing video. You have the liberty to pick excellent-quality animation from a prolific library that Viddyoze provides.

In case you require an additional piece of furnishings for a new employee, you can use one from other departments. Today, you can find chairs made up of wood, metal, plastic, and a mix of different products. For offices and other commercial requirements, it is necessary to acquiring durable furniture products.

Fun fact: They have an unique name for their Demo Videos ... This video animation company creates three types of content: explainer videos, interactive videos, and screen-recorded videos! They've been on the market given that 2011, and since then, they've ended up being one of the leading animation studios, making hundreds of animated videos for businesses all the way from their workplace in England. They put their focus on modifications: they use limitless modifications in every phase of the animation production procedure, and they use set prices for every type of client, to make sure that each of their company animated videos gets the exact same quality.

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