#that trainer card was made by the league organizer

[lord-shobby]

Somehow, against all odds, I won my first ever draft league! (The format was VGC Reg F) Long live The Estrogen Indeedees, the most Gender draft league team ever made

[crystalprofessor]

headcanon; rewriting an old one I lost in the purge. (It actually does still exist on my headcanon sideblog but it's old and stinky so we're replacing it anyway.) Battling! League Rules, Pokemon Moves, and Street Battling!

All battles fall into one of two categories: League, which is anything officially regulated by the League itself, and Street, what we as players of pokémon would refer to as random trainer encounters. At least, that's the surface level definition of it. In actuality, Street Battling is more of a subculture within pokémon trainers.

"Street Battling" as a term was coined around when the modern Pokémon League and Gym System was first established, but as it encompasses basically all battles prior to that point, it goes without saying that it had existed for about as long as people have been doing competitive pokémon battling. In fact, the League—or at least the Gym and Championship system, which we'll just assume is what I mean when I say 'League' from here on out—was sort of established in response to Street Battling.

As competitive battling became more and more popular among trainers and organized competition began to take off, the League was born out of a necessity to regulate it, mainly to mitigate possible damage and injuries to participants. These standards have changed a lot since the old days, but broadly, what they define are the limits of a battlefield, definitions of what constitutes a "legal" move, restrictions on how many pokémon could battle at a time, what counts as a pokémon being incapable of battle, and so forth. You know, sports stuff. A lot of that is self explanatory, so we're gonna focus on the one that sounds the most confusing: Moves.

"Abby, don't pokémon just Inherently Know Moves?" Well, yeah, sure, but that's abstraction for the sake of a video game. (Pokémon but with Nintendogs rules where you have to reinforce what you mean by "vine whip" by saying it into the crappy little speaker repeatedly and praying your bulbasaur understands would probably get old fast.) In reality, trainers have to... well, train their pokémon. They're all capable of doing those things, obviously, but the exact conditions and circumstances under which they use them are the matter of League regulation. Basically: you can use your bulbasaur's vines to whack the other guy's pokémon, and that's a legal move called Vine Whip, but you can't use them as a tripwire. Using Ice Beam to attack another pokémon directly is fine, but using it to create a slippery surface? Illegal until relatively recently. It also puts some limits on how intense certain moves are allowed to be, such as Earthquake, in the interest of making sure spectators and trainers don't come to any harm. (Fun fact! 'Dig' was not a legal move for a surprisingly long time. It was pretty controversial when it was finally added, but nowadays you wouldn't know as it's basically a staple.)

So, in short, the league defined a number of "legal" moves usable in official battles, mainly defined by the capabilities of pokémon native to whatever region they were regulating, so on and so forth. It was pretty rudimentary in the early days, honestly, and so it didn't really take off much at first. At least not until the League started cracking down a bit more on enforcing these regulations outside of official battles in order to normalize them. Trainers battling outside of League Facilities could be hit with strikes on their trainer cards or even fines and jail time depending on the "severity". You know, like how jaywalking was a made up crime to make cars the norm. There is something to be said for the reduction of injuries after these practices became standard, but most experts nowadays agree it was pretty excessive.

Anyway, moving on, the League Standard would eventually become the accepted norm and very rarely would you see trainers deviating from them. One vs. one battles, with a restricted selection of usable moves, limitations on how much you could alter the battlefield, and predetermined boundaries for battling within. Which, in turn, made the league way more popular, because—duh, everybody already knows the rules! It lowered the barrier to entry and made the Gym Battle a standard challenge.

But you know who hates being told what to do? That's right, punk-ass teens! Well, alright, the trainers who popularized the modern Street Battle format were not, in fact, all teens, but it was associated with that sort of counterculture in the same way skateboarding was for a long time. Trainers who were frustrated with the restrictive and oftentimes repetitive nature of League Battles would host unsanctioned tournaments with looser rules (in varying degrees), oftentimes hosted in "non-standard" battlefields, such as densely forested areas, steep cliffs, back streets, and other areas with more obstacles and challenges than the League Standard open battlefield. This counterculture of "Street Trainers," as they were called, became pretty popular, even as League regulations loosened somewhat with the advancement of research and technology.

Street Battling remains a pretty popular trainer subculture and has been able to make the move to be less "underground" in the years since it originated. While the image associated with it still tends to be reckless teens breaking the rules for fun, the Street Battle scene is actually most popular with very experienced trainers looking to shake the "meta" of what does and doesn't work in League Battles and get to test the limits of their pokémons' abilities and their own skills as a trainer. Formats like double, triple, and rotation battles were officially added to most leagues after being popularized by the Street Battling community, and several facilities, like the Battle Towers, were established by the league in an interest of catering to such trainers.

Now, most Street Battle rules are completely determined by the individuals organizing tournaments, preferences of the trainers involved, the actual limitations of where they are, etc.—but there are two pretty universally accepted rules that the community abides by.

First—don't do anything that'll get you arrested and/or killed, stupid. You'd think it would go without saying, but some people need reminding. Causing any major property damage (that you'll get caught for), trespassing in actively dangerous locations (such as active construction sites), and doing any permanent harm to the other party are all examples of taboos that most seasoned street trainers will give you the boot for. (Trespassing on the whole can be a bit controversial, but most will ignore it as long as the location is confirmed to be safe. Nobody's really going to get mad for hosting your tournament in the empty husk of an old shopping mall or something as long as you keep it subtle enough that nobody's getting caught.)

Second—the only League regulation that is universally abided by is the definition of a "faint," the point at which a pokémon is no longer fit to battle. This is because the League Standard is, 100%, a pretty thoroughly-researched safety regulation. While most pokémon can, in theory, continue battling beyond the point of a faint, they absolutely should not as it risks severe and permanent harm. This is one that, if you break, you will almost certainly immediately be ejected from the group and not welcomed back. Trainers who do this are more or less blacklisted from local Street Battling communities.

[gale-gentlepenguin]

Gale’s Top 8 Gym Leaders

Rules:

1. One per Region. For the sake of Alola, I will be picking between a Trial Captain or a Kahuna (I can pick a Kahuna as long as they are not an Elite 4 member)

2. If the gym leader was a champion or an Elite 4 member at any point, they don't count. So Iris, Wallace and Blue are not eligible for the list, as well as Koga.

3. This is my Personal opinion, and I have a bias.

4. I will be ranking the Gym Leaders based on their Game appearances only. Anime and Manga do not count.

______________________________________________________________________

8. Kiawe (Alola)

The second trial captain on Akala island.

Honestly, while I love the change of pace with Trial captains instead of Gym leaders... it did feel like a huge piece was missing when playing through Sun and Moon. Kiawe provided a hilarious trial as well as what I found to be the most amusing Trial challenge. 

He also just has the second coolest design.

(If not for my self imposed rules I would have picked Olivia but she is sadly an elite 4 member so I will pick one of her trial captains instead)

7. Clemont (Kalos)

The electric Gym leader in the biggest city in Kalos. Lumiose City.

His gym has the most interesting gimmick, with a quiz show that made nostalgic for another genius Gym leader, but what set him apart and put him on this list was his dynamic with his little sister bonnie. The two are a delight when playing off each other and Clemont is actually a decent fight in the game, unless you have been spamming mega evolutions. 

He also has a unique design with the backpack, and he is one of the few on this list hurt by the fact I am not putting anime appearances on here, since he is my third favorite companion for Ash.

6. Volkner (Sinnoh)

The final step before the elite four.

Volkner is the Electric Gym leader of Sunyshore.

He is said to be strong enough to challenge the elite four. His personal Rival, Flint is a member of the Elite four.

At the time the trainer arrives, he has been on a winning streak where no one has been able to best him for a while and he found it super boring, when you talk to him he says that if he wins one more battle, he will go an challenge the Elite four.

His fight is also quite a tough bout regardless of which version you pick, his team is fast and has a lot of super effective moves, so if you think a few earthquakes will be enough to take him down, you best be packing some durable Pokemon.

He also just looks like a serious rival in an anime so its all the more fun to crush him. 

5. Elesa (Unova)

I have a crush on Elesa, Fight me.

Yes I know another Electric type Gym leader, but damn it they are the more interesting ones.

This model/ Gym leader of Nimbasa is a hella badass strong woman that will call out injustice anywhere she sees it.

She helps Bianca escape her a**hole father, Her first Gym is a roller coaster, then a Walk way!

She also Loves Puns! (Yes I am a simple man okay. Don't @ me)

She even goes through multiple costumes which is always a plus. Out of the rather mediocre line up of gym leaders in Unova, Elesa is a shocking change of pace. 

4. Raihan (Galar)

The dragon gym leader of Galar, and the undisputed Strongest Gym Leader in the region.

The guy exudes a swagger that gives off that he is hot s*** and he knows it.

He is considered by Leon himself to be his rival.

Even his trainer card says that if he wanted to he could easily be a champion of another region but stays in Galar so to one day best Leon.

Having battled his team, I can say that this isn't a BS statement. He uses weather teams.

The guy knows how to change up the weather and capitalize on a situation. His gym challenge is the hardest out off all of them because he knows how to use his Pokemon well.

He is an amazing final challenge before going to face off against the league challenge and the best battle before fighting Leon.

This was a VERY hard spot to pick, since I also adore Opal and Nessa (If I allowed Anime appearances, Nessa would be here instead of him because Nessa is amazing and deserves all the love )

But when it comes to strength, no one can top the strongest gym leader of Galar.

3. Jasmine (Johto)

The Steel Type Gym Leader of Olivine city.

The term Don't judge a book by its cover is the best example to  describe her.

Jasmine is a kind hearted soul that was nursing a Pokemon back to health at her first introduction.

She asks you to get the medicine and won't battle until the Pokemon in the light house is 100% 

And its a good thing she does, because if you tried fighting her first, I doubt you would win. Her Steelix is a MASSIVE tank and you will need a strong water type if you want to stand a chance against it. She is also cute and she was my childhood self’s first Pokemon crush.

I still find her the most fun gym leader to meet. While not a difficulty spike like Whitney or an unfair cheat Like Clair.

Jasmine is a tough yet fair gym leader.

2. Norman

The petalburg city gym leader, and most importantly. He is your in game Dad.

He is the fifth Gym leader in the game and you cant battle him until you have four gym badges. He is also arguably the toughest gym leader in the game at this point since his two Slakings could one shot most Pokemon unless you grinded like hell.

The emotional weight of the battle is what really brings it home. It is a clash, a father vs child moment in which you have to show your dad that you have surpassed him, that you are ready to be the best. That you are a true trainer.

He really does test everything you've learned up to this point, and thats what makes him so memorable.

1. Giovanni

The leader of team Rocket, and the Viridian city Gym Leader.

The two sided man that tried to conquer the region.

Ground Giovanni.

By Games alone he is the most competent Villain, considering he created team Rainbow Rocket, which consisted of ALL the criminal organizations and their respective leaders who had succeeded in their respective universes.

Giovanni also stands as the final gym leader of your journey, your time in Kanto you always seemed to barely stop him, but he still is powerful and you always got the feeling he wasn't trying.

But then, when you get to the 8th gym, fighting the toughest gym trainers do you see, the boss of team Rocket, glaring at you.

The real final battle with him begins.

And that victory, which is your key to the indigo league, the defeat of his criminal empire, and your conclusive win.

Thats what makes Giovanni so powerful.

He was your real final test.

(Plus if we counted the manga, geez he is like 100x more epic. Seriously, if you have not read the Pokemon manga, READ IT. Its like Stand battles with Pokemon. Anything goes. It is nuts!)

[csykora]

[A tabby cat curled up in the middle of a bubble hockey board. Or you, being comfortable in an athletic community that’s good enough for you]

Hiiiiii! I’ve been looking at ice hockey and it seems a cool sport and something that I might want to do as a hobby. Only Im disabled. Do you think I could still do the thing? Do you have ideas on how to start doing the thing? Ive often found it hard to do sports because coaches or trainers don’t know shit about disability and so have no clue how to teach you things or what you may or may not be capable of and telling them is useless because they make assumptions about your body and gah. Cheers

Hey—

Yes. Do the thing. Please go do it! I am not your coach, not your trainer, only friendly local bone witch—which I am very annoyed to have to say because you are a great athlete to work with.

Can I point out a couple things you just said?

You’re offering to do a trainer’s homework for them.

The early game didn’t have coaches. People milled on and off in whatever situations they felt like. Coaches and trainers came onto the scene so that someone was keeping track of who was actually good at what, when they needed support, and how to use them to best effect. That’s their whole gig.

Talking to folks on this blog, I’ve learned lots of people have this impression that capital-A Athletes have some factory-settings-standard body, any deviation a disaster (and they themselves can’t be athletes because they don’t.)

I think it’s very useful to smash this idea. Every athlete is a grab bag of weaknesses and weirdnesses, from old injuries down to handedness. Every coach longs to have three right-shot defensemen, and has made peace with the fact they’re not going to get them. Their job is to play with all the mismatched pieces they do have until they fit into a team.

If you present a coach or trainer with information about your abilities, and they don’t want to use that information, the problem you got right there is a shit coach.

Despite what the National League believes, there are more than 32 coaches in the world. 

Throw a stick up here and you’ll hit another amateur coach. When we’re little, if we get a shit coach or PE teacher, we get stuck. That does real and lasting harm, which I am happy to go on at length about, but to flip it around:

Now, you are a big Zee, who wants to learn to play as a hobby, with the goal of having fun. That’s a powerful place to be.

I won’t say there aren’t stakes: you could get hurt, physically or emotionally. Sharing information about your body with other people to try to keep yourself from getting hurt all the time can be hard. Playing can make you feel physically accomplished and capable in your body, which is a deep need I think we all have, so having to back away if a team does turn out to be shit is hard. So I don’t say “you can always quit a team” lightly, but…there is no threat if you quit a shit team, no one (who matters) will get mad or make you go back.That means you can advocate for yourself, and if a reasonable shot at advocacy reveals that a coach isn’t just unfamiliar with how to do their job for someone with your disability but uninterested in doing their damn job for a disabled person, you can wave them farewell and find another.

Now, our goal is for you to find a good trainer, who just needs to be given information about what you (not someone with the ‘same’ condition, but you specifically) have got going on.

I’m going to tell you to look up an adult learn-to-skate program. Most rinks will have regular learn-to-skate and learn-to-hockey programs spaced throughout the year (often paired so you spend “first semester” on skating before the people who want to move up to hockey). Look up different rinks, talk to people about the rink culture and the coaches there. If you have the time, maybe spend a while hanging out there watching the open skates, local team practices or public classes, getting a sense what it’s like and telling yourself you have as much right to be in that barn as anyone else. Then sign up for a class. But first I want you to be devastatingly, Hepburn-ishly confident in talking about what your disability means for you.

From the information you’ve just given me, I don’t know almost anything I would need to work with you. You may or may not know that information about yourself already, but you can figure it out.

“Mild hemiplegia” is not a super-medical phrase. Hemiplegia is complete paralysis on one side of the body, where you are unable to move those muscles on purpose. A mild to moderate loss of muscle strength on one side is hemiparesis.

These terms are, to be honest, mostly used to organize medical literature. They describe very specific signs that might happen for a variety of reasons. Other symptoms like loss of sensation, loss of range of motion, involuntary muscle spasms, or loss/delay of involuntary motion (reflexes), which may or may not occur with plegia/paresis, have to be specified and described. If I were treating you I definitely wouldn’t describe your case as “hemiplegia”, I would call it “hemiparesis” with a lot more descriptive words around that (and I probably wouldn’t use either when talking to you).

It’s not that you used a word wrong. I’m concerned that 1. people have made you think you have to use A Medical Name for your disability for it to be taken seriously, but also 2. because the stroke happened so early, you’ve actually been denied care and opportunities to learn about it.

1. First, for the record, you don’t have to justify your disabled identity to me. And while I really (really) understand the self-protective urge a lot of us have to try to say, “my condition is really real and serious, it has a Real Medical Name, please believe me”, I think that (outside of a legal context where you’re seeking protected accommodations) that strategy often isn’t as useful as we hope it will be to communicate with other people in our daily lives. The people who demand to see your Really Medically Serious card before making accommodations will always find something else to demand, while people who aren’t trying to be assholes will be better able to help you if they know exactly, practically how.

It’s not that one way of talking about your disability is wrong, but I want you to talk about it in ways that are useful to you, that help you connect with other people and get you what you want.

2. I’ve worked with a lot of elders who have paralysis or hemiparesis from strokes later in life, after being able-bodied for most of their lives, and doctors and therapists jump right up in there teaching and training them to “recover” that “lost function”. They/their families can’t not know all the medical words just from hearing them over and over. But what often happens when a person is disabled since childhood is that…they aren’t seen as having “lost capacity” that can be “saved”, but as having a baseline “low level of function” that’ll never change, so much less attention is payed.

I’m using the air quotes because many people’s disabilities are present throughout their whole lives, and someone’s disability or disabled identity is not just a “problem” to be solved or gotten rid of. But people with disabilities grow and change, especially when we’re, you know, children. What often happens is that parents/authorities encourage able-bodied children to play, practicing motions and building up their bodies’ ability to move, while children with disabilities get benched from practice, benched from not just one activity but from being active at all, which means being benched from developing their bodies in the ways that might actually work for them, and from developing relationships with their bodies.

Proprioception, for example, is a combination of some fundamental ability/capacity/threshold/potential/whathaveyou and skill developed through experience that changes in context. Ever seen a baby? None of them know where the hell they are. A baby that can crawl is let loose to explore the world and bump into things that trigger their nerves until their body learns to fit all that sensation information together and use it. A baby that doesn’t crawl for some other reason often doesn’t get a chance to explore, to experience those sensations or train up that skill. And a kid that has a different threshold for stimulation, who naturally seeks out more or less or a different sort, is often stopped from stimming in ways which would provide their body information they could process.

As an adult, you get the chance to look at what you want to do and how your body can do it again.

So…

I want you to go throw a ball at a wall. Try to catch it. If you do any exercises already, sit-ups or pushups, do some of those. Run around the block, jump around on your bed. Stretch or just swing your arms and legs around. Find some small objects to use as weights and lift them, with either arm and then either leg (or set them on the floor and see if you can push them).

Work your way up your body one limb at a time, first thinking just about that limb on its own and then comparing the two sides after you’ve done them both. Don’t put a value judgement on anything yet, just pay attention: if your feet feel okay after running around, if you had more strength in one spot than you expected, if you had fun jumping, if there was a time you thought you might wobble but were able to correct, count that too! Think about each activity you did, the sensations around it, and whether that stim was satisfying, overstimulating, or not stimulating enough.

I want you to be able to go to a learn-to-play program, ask to talk with the coach at an appropriate time during the application or orientation, and say things like, “I have this condition. This is what it means: I have less strength with one arm, but I can move it as fast as the other, and with the same range of motion. I don’t grip items as well with one hand, or I tend to grip very hard. I don’t feel this type of sensation in this area, but I do feel that”.

Your coach is then going to recommend exercises to build strength in particular areas, or modifications to exercises so that you can do them without needing to use a particular area; they might have you try different equipment (find a tape job or adapted hand position that helps you keep hold of your stick, etc), and they may also encourage your towards and start training you for a particular position where you could do the most. When it comes to sensation, they’ll know to watch you closer for injuries in that spot that you might not notice.

This came in while I was applying to go back to university, and I bribed myself through the short essay section by pausing every hour to eat chocolate and sketch out what I would have you do for hypothetical positions and exercise plans. That’s still a long way off, but I’m very invested, so a couple things I want you to think about as you work towards the goal:

Keep sled hockey in mind. It’s not always a fit for people whose disability involves their arms, but it’s a cool community and most rinks will offer clinics where you can try out a sled and get a sense of the game.

How do you feel about getting hit with a puck? From your description, stickhandling and shooting may not be super fun for you. They may be, but if you give them a fair try and start to fee discouraged, try picturing yourself as a defender focussing on positioning or shot-blocking, or a goalie. Some people never ever want to do it, which is fair, but if you’re at all interested I’d love to see you try some time in goal! Everyone’s different but some folks the weight of the pads and the focused role can be really good stimulation. If your handling or footwork doesn’t feel great, goaltending would let you focus on moving your body more naturalistically as a whole to position in front of shots. And everyone else will love you for volunteering!

Write back and tell us how it goes!

[womenofcolor15]

Antonio Brown Goes On Another Rant, Calls The NFL 'Racist,' Says Ben Roethlisberger Is A 'Loser' & Accuses NFLPA Of ‘Stealing’ Money

Antonio Brown goes from blasting the NFL, to asking for forgiveness, to blasting the league again. Get the latest inside…

NFL free agent Antonio Brown is popping off on the NFL..AGAIN.

AB hopped on Twitter this morning to blast the NFL, drag Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, questioning the NFLPA’s financial gain and more. He has yet to be signed to a team after his former trainer, Brittney Taylor, filed a lawsuit against him, alleging he raped and sexually assaulted her in two separate instances. Also, another woman spoke out and accused him of sexual assault while she was painting a mural in his home. After news about him possibly sexually assualting these women hit the fan, AB has been active on Twitter - one minute he's blasting the NFL and the next, he's apologizing, then he's blasting the league again.

Right now, he's going off.

AB hasn’t been charged with a crime and since he hasn’t, he's questioning why the rules seem to be different for black players vs. white players.

The former Patriots player first started off by comparing how the NFL handles criminal situations with white players verses black players, launching a series of tweets.

”Guess all mighty @nfl can hold players out against there will no criminal charges pending nothing but A Caucasian player gets a domestic go to jail still out there playing targeted hate against us everywhere my peeps,” he tweeted.

You'll recall, the sexual assault allegations surfaced after the New England Patriots signed him. After playing in one game, the organization cut him and he hasn't been picked up by another team yet. He hasn't been suspended, nor has he been placed on the commissioner’s exempt list. He is currently a free agent, however, it seems no team wants to take a risk in signing him.

The four-time All-Pro receiver also took shots at his former teammate/Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. He pointed out how Ben was accused of raping a woman back in 2009, but he's still playing int he league. Ben and the woman who accused him of rape ended up settling years after she made the accusations. Ben was also accused of sexually assaulting a Georgia woman, but he was not charged.

While responding to a Twitter user, he called Ben a "loser" before he signed to the Steelers:

He also retweeted this comment about Ben:

  “How come Ben Roethlisberger is in the NFL? Didn’t he have serious accusations before ? I don’t always think it’s always necessary to play the “race card” but I can definitely agree with this one! Something ain’t right.”

  The NFL star accused the NFL Players Association of "stealing" money:

  He questioned why his former teammate/Oakland Raiders offensive lineman Richie Incognito is still allowed to play after threatening to shoot up a mortuary:

  Even after apologizing to the NFL, Patriots owner Robert Kraft, and basically begging to get back in the league, he claims he's good on coming back:

He called the NFL racist...again:

AB also reiterated he's NOT going to play in the XFL, a football league founded by Vince McMahon, chairman of World Wrestling Entertainment. A Twitter user made the suggestion and he responded, "No way."

    He finished his Twitter rant with "Innocent until proven guilty it's been 3 months!"

  At this point, he just needs to put his phone down and concertrate on school because this ain't it!

Photo: AP

[Read More ...] source http://theybf.com/2019/12/11/antonio-brown-goes-on-another-rant-calls-the-nfl-racist-says-ben-roethlisberger-is-a-lose

[photochoco]

Two Sides of the Same Coin

After Nimbasa City, Touko now knew the threat Team Plasma posed was serious, and as much as she didn’t want it to be the case, she may very well be the only one who can stop them and their King’s plans. But what is someone supposed to do when they know nothing about the enemy? Go undercover, of course.

--- --- Chapter 1 Registration

Touko makes a decision and gets a makeover. Hopefully it’ll do the trick. --- Oh god, this really was a stupid idea. Touko tapped her pencil against the table in a quick anxious rhythm. 2-4 months in enemy territory, and she had already made quite a name for herself among Team Plasma. Members she had definitely never met before recognized her now. If she was recognized while surrounded by Plasma goons, without her Pokemon, she’d be- “-Fucked,” Touko muttered aloud, resting her head on the table with a loud clunk. “Ow.” It wasn’t like there were many other options. Going forward blind put her at a distinct disadvantage, and she still had no real idea what N was planning. The so-called “King” had been as furtive as ever, speaking only in vague sentences, leaving out information like he wanted Touko to find the missing pieces to fill in. Damn him.

The legendary Pokemon...defeating the Champion...gathering all the Badges... She wasn’t a whole lot she could do like this, besides warn Alder and the League and research the Unovan Legend, while collecting her Badges and going to take on the League, as she had originally planned. Anger boiled in Touko’s gut. Having to do it out of necessity to save the region sapped all the fun out of it. She felt like she was racing against a clock that was timing her without her permission. Fuck that clock. Fuck that stupid bush-haired bastard. Fuck thiiiiiiiis.

Surprisingly, it had been Bianca who suggested Touko go undercover. Even more surprisingly, Cheren, usually ever the cautious one, had voiced his support of the idea. The idea was straight out of a movie, and while it sounded awesome, it carried more risks than the three of them liked. They had spent weeks planning around each one. Her team was sure to be recognized, so she had to leave them with her friends. She wasn’t worried about their wellbeing at all in that department, and evidently new Plasma members were expected to release their Pokemon prior to joining the organization anyway. But losing them meant losing her one safety net if she got found out. There was also the issue of her appearance... “Well that’s an easy fix!” Bianca had said, clapping her hands together once. “You go in disguise!” Cheren nodded slowly in approval. “That fixes the issue of how she looks, but there’s still her personality we have to worry about…” Touko swung her head around to give her friend an insulted look. “What’s wrong with my personality?!” “Nothing, of course.” Cheren pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “But let’s be honest Touko, you can have the temper of a Primeape.” “I think what Cheren means to say is,” Bianca cut in, giving Cheren a pointed look. “you’re very, ah, passionate, Touko. You’re instantly recognizable from that fire in you, but in this case, you don’t want to attract any attention to yourself.” “Exactly. Even though you’ve only met N a handful of times, I feel someone like him would be able to recognize you in an instant. And if not him, then without a doubt that man, Ghetsis. He definitely seems the observant type. So, along with a physical makeover, you need a personality change too.” Touko squirmed. If she looked deep, deep inside herself, she knew they were right. She had to change from Touko into someone else completely. The more she thought about it, the more impossible it seemed. Her inner turmoil must’ve shown on her face, because both her friends reached out a comforting hand at the same time. “Think of it like acting, Touki! Slide out of yourself, and into someone else entirely,” Bianca said. “You’re definitely more than capable. We can help you prepare,” Cheren added. Touko smiled gratefully at them, feeling her nerves absolve somewhat. And that left her where she was now, weeks after that conversation, staring over a list of what she needed to do before she even approached the registration table. She’d spent every day- Every. Day.- rehearsing and practicing with Bianca and Cheren until her new, softer and quieter personality was down pat. It was the first time Touko had ever been relieved Cheren knew exactly what to say and do to set her off. She hadn’t lifted her head from the table yet. She was tired. The Pokemon Center was quiet, with only the occasional sound of the automatic doors sliding open and closed. The ambience was soothing, something that, now that Touko had the chance to think about it, was a part of her life she would miss if it were gone. These late nights were one of the things she liked the most about being on a journey. No matter the town, no matter the Center, there were always Trainers taking a load off their aching feet, resting with their dear Pokemon. It was what Touko had always dreamed of doing herself since she was little. It was that countless people of all ages told her they hoped to do soon when she talked to them. Did Team Plasma really want to take that joy away? Forever? All those people and Pokemon that were happy together, for their sake, Touko had to do this. If N wanted a fight, he was going to get one.A pat on her shoulder thankfully interrupted the anxious swirl of thoughts in her head. Touko craned her neck back to see Bianca looked down at her, her emerald eyes round and sweet. “You’re up late!” she chirped. “You are, too.” “Hee hee weelllllllll! I was getting some hair stuff for tomorrow! But how about we get some sleep now? After breakfast tomorrow, we can begin your transformation!” The last word was accompanied by a dramatic hand gesture. The two girls headed to their room in the Pokemon Center. While Bianca seemed to fall asleep rather quickly, Touko lay awake for a good while, her stomach too twisted from nerves. Countless what-if’s rolled over in her head. She normally wasn’t a worrywart at all; this felt very uncomfortable. The teen let out a sigh and rolled over. There was no more time to think about it. She would just do it, like she did everything.---Touko stared at herself in the full-length mirror. Wow, was that really her? Bianca had done some sort of witchcraft with her hair, it was shorter, completely straight, and black as night. Touko sighed inwardly, it would take effort to upkeep this hairstyle, making sure it stayed straightened and dark. She was far more used to just running a comb through her wavy brown locks before bunching it up in a high ponytail, out of the way. While her eyes were the same, her new hair and clothes made her look like a different person entirely. Maybe she could pull this off. No. She would. She had to. This had to work. And it would. Touko would be damned if it didn’t. After pressing her precious Pokemon, safe in their balls, into the hands of her friends, she set off to the Plasma registry with a good luck and thumbs up. The queue wasn’t long (‘Thank God most people have some common sense,’ Touko thought to herself) and in no time at all it was Touko's turn, standing in front of the table. The lady sitting behind it smiled warmly at her, a stark contrast to all of Touko’s previous encounters with anyone who wore that stupid uniform. Seriously, who designed them? “Hello!” The Grunt said brightly. “Are you here to join our noble cause?” Touko took a breath, steeling herself. “Yes, I am!” She replied. “I do hope you will accept me. I was feeling quite nervous, you see.” The woman waved her hand dismissively. “Oh don’t worry, don’t worry! The only requirements are a passion for Pokemon welfare and wellbeing! Now, we do have an application form we need you to fill out so we can add you to our registry.” It was an application similar to the one Touko filled out for her Trainer’s card. She felt a twinge of discomfort as she filled it out, lying on everything. A fake name, wrong hair color, fake age, she even put down a different birthday, just to be safe. The teen finished the application by signing the bottom with a flare and slid it back to the Grunt. The woman looked it over, giving a nod and a smile. “Okay! You put down that you would prefer to stay in our provided barracks with other members?” “Yes.” “Excellent! I’ve personally found that’s the best way to become acquainted with new and already existing members! Room and board, as well as meals, should you need them, are covered by our generous King and the Seven Sages.” Wow, they sure are putting a lot of effort into making it seem like they aren’t complete whackjob assholes, Touko thought venomously. “Now, if you are ready, we can take you to our base right away.” This snapped Touko out of her thoughts. “Wha--right now?!” “Of course!” The female Grunt said, beckoning to another Grunt, who stood up and walked over. If you’re going to be staying in the barracks, it’s best we get you properly registered and settled right away. Brandon here will be able to take you there.”Brandon waved in greeting before wordlessly turning to walk towards the train station, motioning for Touko to follow him. The teen walked after him, her fists clenched and her stomach fluttering with nerves.

--- -- --- Next -> AO3 Link

[sage-nebula]

For the OTP meme: Keitor for 12!

12.) If you had to take them and plunk them into another fandom, what fandom would that be? Why?

I’ve actually written a Pokémon AU for them! I have one fic completed here, trainer cards completed here, and I also at least started a fic detailing how they first met for that Keitor zine I participated in, though ultimately had to go with a different idea since there was no way this would have made it in under the word count. Here’s what I have of it so far, though:

Keith hated rain.

He hated it for a lot of reasons. For one, all but one of the pokémon on his team were weakto water, and while rain didn’t usually bother them (with the exception ofSunspot) too badly, it strengthened water-type attacks, which made battlingwater-types during a rainstorm a hassle. For another, rain plastered his hairagainst his skin, his bangs in his eyes, and soaked his clothes until theyweighed on him. But while those were perfectly valid (and perfectly true)reasons for hating rain, in that moment, what Keith hated the most about one ofthe world’s worst weather phenomena was how it made his shoes squish.

He took another step down the corridor, heard the squish as his soaked shoes pressedagainst the linoleum, and scowled.

Rain was the worst.

The weather forecast hadn’t said anything about rain when hehad planned this mission out. It was his luck, Keith thought, as he starteddown the corridor again and stepped as lightly as he could to mitigate the squish, squish, squish that came withevery step. Of course the one night he decided to break into QuintessenceFoundation offices after hours to ransack them for intel the sky decided tounleash a pulse storm on him. The worst part was that it wasn’t even like hewas given an option to avoid it; the weather dropped the storm on him when hewas already halfway, and given that theseoffices were out in the middle of nowhere,he’d had no choice but to make a run for it. In total, he’d probably spent nomore than ten minutes out in the rain given how hard he’d ran, but thetorrential downpour outside meant that even two minutes would have been enoughto soak him to the bone.

He huffed a sigh, and tried not to be annoyed when it didn’tbudge his drenched bangs a millimeter.

Some might say it was his comeuppance for deciding to breakand enter somewhere at all, much less with the intention of stealing. But inKeith’s opinion, crimes were only crimes if done against those who wereinnocent, and by now he believed that the Quintessence Foundation—whatever actthey put on for the rest of the world—was anything but.

The world was no stranger to large criminal organizations(many of which called themselves “teams” in an attempt to look friendly andharmless), including those that sank their claws into a regional governmentin some way, and the Quintessence Foundation seemed a whole lot like nothingmore than another link in the same chain. Based in the Daibazaal Region, theQuintessence Foundation’s mission statement was a promise to push theboundaries of science beyond what had ever been achieved before, and in sodoing to pull the world into a future beyond its current imaginings. They wereprivate sector, except for how Zarkon, husband of the Quintessence Foundation’sfounder Honerva, had been the reigning Champion for the past decade. Of course,Zarkon and Honerva both claimed that the two things didn’t intersect atall—that nothing Zarkon did as Daibazaal’s Champion affected the QuintessenceFoundation in any way, and vice versa. And maybe that was true, and maybe itwasn’t. Keith didn’t care for politics very much, which was why he’d neverpursued the title of Champion himself. But what he did know was that there hadbeen strange instances of pokémon deaths all over the region in recentmonths—groups of swanna falling from the sky, dead, or entire schools oftentacool washing up on the shore, dried out and lifeless. There had been weirdweather phenomena, too—more frequent pulse storms, and documented instances ofhorizon turning blurry, the sky bizarre colors in weird, fragmented patches.And each time this happened, it happened near where the Quintessence Foundationwas operating. The Quintessence Foundation had one main base of operations inthe center of the region, near the League, as well as offices spreadthroughout. Some of the offices were in perfectly normal buildings, in cities.Others were nothing more than little satellite trailers stationed in forests ormountain paths. And still others were large buildings positioned smack in themiddle of routes, looking polished and impressive, but also impressively out ofplace.

And one such building was where Keith was now.

He was sure that any Quintessence Foundation building wouldhave some access to their main information storage systems. But the satellitetrailers likely only had the bare minimum, and the offices incities—particularly their main baseof operations—would be too well-guarded, even at night. But the officebuildings located out on routes, despite keeping odd hours, were alwayscompletely abandoned when the day finished up. No one stayed overnight, and noone lived closely enough to keep tabs on it after leaving. And so, afterkeeping an eye on the Route 423 building for a week to make sure he had theschedule down pat, Keith decided to make his move to find out just what havocthe Quintessence Foundation was trying to wreak on the planet (or at least theregion).

That was how he ended up soaked to the bone, squish, squish, squishing his way down acorridor to the far staircase.

Like most offices, the Quintessence Foundation building lefttheir lights on after hours. This was something that had at first thrown himduring his reconnaissance; it was hard to tell whether everyone had actually left or not when the entirebuilding glowed like it housed its own personal sun. But intel he had receivedfrom his uncle (along with a warning to “not engage” that Keith had skimmedpast to get to the important stuff) told him that the lights were left on toconserve energy. How energy was conserved when the lights were left on allnight was beyond Keith, but then, he guessed he wasn’t an expert. It wasn’tlike he had a house, or even an apartment. He lived on the road, and when heneeded light, he turned to one of his pokémon (between Mars’ tail flame andRed’s mane, they had more than enough light to go around). It wasn’t like heknew the ins and outs of maintaining and paying an electric bill.

Regardless, the fact that the building was still powered updespite the late hour meant that the elevator was still in service, too. Keithhad paused as he had passed it, considering. The building was empty. He was 99%sure that it was empty. But that nagging 1%—the feeling that someone was there, even if he was sure all theemployees had left—pushed him to the stairs instead. It wasn’t like he wasundetectable if he took the stairs. If there was someone in the building,they’d hear the doors to the staircase opening and closing. But there wassomething a bit quieter about it, inKeith’s mind—a bit less noticeable than the low hum and soft ding of an elevator. In any case, itmade him feel better to keep moving, even if his shoes squished with every step.

Hisplan was to search through the district manager’s office to start with, andthen move on from there if he didn’t find enough information the first time. Despitebeing out in the middle of nowhere, this office building had three floors;Keith took them two at a time, using the handrail to haul himself up, turningthe second his foot hit each landing so he could continue the climb withoutbreaking stride. When he finally emerged onto the third floor, he was met withthe same, thick silence the other floors had.

[makomaragi]

left over thing from femslash february. it’s long and dumb but idk.  a prequel to another fic I wrote last year. i’m just kind of over tweaking this lol 

prompt: jewelry

pairing: juniper/fennel (scientificshipping), but burnet/kukui are there for a little bit

rating: um pg they talk about sex for a second

fandom: pokemon

Research never seemed to take her to Alola as often as it did other regions, and after having been there for nearly a month, she wasn’t sure why. The region was teaming with all sorts of relevant topics, the time she had spent there not feeling like enough. Professor Juniper had gone to help excavate a new tar pit that was found near the sea, hoping that what they might find would help her with some theories that linked to other fossil Pokemon in other regions. She had heard for years now that Alola was a heartland for fossils – found so often that they were being sold in shops to trainers. Her own theory was that it had to do with the volcanoes and how the island itself developed millions of years ago, collecting samples of the dirt, rocks and fossils to take back home and test.

Packing up the camp site always left her feeling a bit nostalgic, having spent most of her childhood and teenage years backpacking with her father. She could probably untie and repack a tent with her eyes closed by this point, though, not everyone enjoyed the camping aspect of it as much as she did.

Most of the research team had left by that point, Professor Juniper and a few others lagging behind to tie up a few loose ends. She booked herself a hotel for the final few nights in Alola, giving her a chance to have a steady internet connection and a quiet place to get organized before returning to Unova. It worked out, and she was much obliged to meet her old friend Burnet and her husband for lunch in Konikoni City the next day.

She had kept herself holed up in her hotel room the entire time since checking in, seated at the desk that morning, reviewing her scribbled notes and attempting to make more sense out of them by typing them out on her laptop in a more final report. She still had hours to kill until lunch – too close to the time to eat, but plenty of time to do something else.

There was the lingering feeling of wanting to scope out the town. It would give her a chance to stretch her legs, hoping her body would adjust before the long flight home. She had been aching after sleeping in a tent for the past few weeks, but she had hoped taking a few days off from physical labor and sleeping in a proper bed would help ease it.

Bringing something back home for Fennel had crossed her mind several times. She tried her best to pick something up for her in her travels most of the time, but this time especially seemed to carry some weight. Fennel had been upset that she would be gone for nearly a month as it was and they hadn’t been able to speak much while she was gone. When they did speak, Fennel was her usual bubbly self, but the feigned distance and sadness in her voice couldn’t be ignored.

Several flyers and signs had caught her eye in the time she had been in town of a jewelry shop run by one of the Island Kahunas. She had known that Alola ran a different league system than many other regions, and wasn’t sure exactly what the Kahuna’s job was, but it was something to do with trainers. The professor felt a tad embarrassed not being as well versed in Alolan culture as she was elsewhere. She had met the Elite Four in other regions numerous times, some more than others, but felt she should at least know the names of those with the title in the region she was visiting, at least making an effort to introduce herself.

It was said that money couldn’t buy happiness, but higher end jewelry would at least put some sort of sparkle in Fennel’s eyes when she gave it to her.

The shop was small and rather quaint, Aurea not even sure it was open until she pulled on the wooden door handle. “Hi, there. I was told to come speak to Olivia?”

“You’re looking at her,” the younger woman looked up from her spot at the counter, raising an eyebrow. “I know you from somewhere.”

“Could be.”

“You’re a Pokemon professor, aren’t you?”

“Professor Juniper,” she held out her hand as a more formal greeting with the Kahuna.

“I’m Olivia. Island Kahuna and proud member of the Alola Elite Four,” shaking her hand before gesturing to the jewelry under the glass countertop. “So, what are you looking for today? Something for yourself, or a gift for someone?”

“A gift, I think.”

“For your wife, I’d assume.”

Aurea’s brow raised at this.

“You’re wearing a wedding ring and I don’t have anything in the way of men’s stuff. Besides, I know that you’re with that scientist chick,” the kahuna continued. “Any certain occasion? Let me guess. You’ve been away from home for a while, and want to get her a souvenir.”

“Something like that, I guess.” It was all extremely presumptuous of the girl, but she also supposed that she had an eye for these types of things when it came to her jewelry business. She was also sure that Kukui had something to do with all of her previous knowledge of her, somehow. Though being a Pokemon professor did technically make her a public figure. Olivia had already known who she was, after all. Nothing she said had been a secret in any way, and she supposed word had gotten around that she was visiting the region and had been there for a few weeks.

“What does she like? Necklaces, earrings, bracelets, what?” The young kahuna started pulling some shelves around under the display, pulling a few of them on to the glass counter top.

Aurea had a pretty good idea of what Fennel’s tastes were, it was easy enough – anything pink, purple, or shiny. None of which helped her narrow it down. There was a lot of jewelry in front of her. Fancy jewelry was never something that interested the professor on her own, never wearing much of it herself. Her late mother had left quite a bit for her, most of which she had given to Fennel. Fennel knew what all of the jewels were, what they meant, and which ones to wear with which outfits.

There was one piece that caught her eye, though. A small crystal looking, heart shaped pendant set on a silver chain that didn’t look at all like the other pieces, somehow. “This necklace is interesting.”

“Ah, this one. I don’t have many left.” Olivia picked it up and set it down on a cloth on the table to provide a better look at it. “We can only make them one time a year and sometimes not at all if the temperature wasn’t low enough.”

“Why is that?”

“The Vulpix shed their coat, leaving behind these crystals that look like ice. They can only be made and found here in Alola! It’s my shop’s specialty.”

“So it’s Pokemon dandruff?”

“Er, sorta. But it makes for some nice jewelry, don’t you think?”

“I guess.” She couldn’t pretend to be as enthusiastic as Olivia was over it, because she simply didn’t get it. Fennel would like it, though. “I’ll take that one, then.” Maybe she would save it for a special occasion, even if she didn’t know for what yet. It was expensive enough to warrant a birthday or anniversary gift. Or maybe she would just give it to her as planned.

Olivia picked up the necklace, finding a box for it in a bin behind the counter somewhere. “You probably know Kukui and Burnett then, huh?” she mused as she looked around for something else.

“Oh, yes.”

“They’re really nice people. He comes in here a lot. I made her engagement ring, you know,” she continued, stuffing the box in a bag and taking a few of her business cards off of the counter to add to the contents of the bag. “Well, you’re all set, then.”

“Thanks. Let me know if you’re ever in Unova, alright?”

Olivia gave a cheerful nod to this, waving in the same tone as the professor saw herself out.

Olivia was friendly enough, if not a bit bold. The professor could see she and Fennel becoming fast friends should they ever meet.

With what started with time to spare ended in her being late now. Kukui and Burnet were already seated at the restaurant, them noticing her before she could scan the room.

“Aurea Juniper!” Burnet pulled her in to a hug before she had any time to react. “It’s been forever!”

“Professor,” she extended her hand to him, only to be pulled in to another awkward hug.

“Alola!”

“How are you? How’s Fennel?”

“Fine, it’s all fine,” Professor Juniper barely had time to take her seat across from them and pick up the menu before the questions started.

“You know, I really wish she had come with you. She could of stayed with us, we’d have been happy to show her around.”

“I know, but she’s been very busy herself. So have you guys, for that matter.”

“I’m sure we’re all always busy. But we should make time for friends, right?” Kukui set down his menu to add. “I bet she’d love it here!”

“Fennel’s never been to Alola. She’s been wanting to come here as long as I’ve known her. She really wanted to go for our honeymoon, but then she changed her mind when she saw how busy it gets in the summer.”

“You’re both always welcome, you know that,” Burnet repeated.

“Maybe you should come back to Unova. Let us know when you come to visit your family.”

“Aurea and Fennel were roomies in college,”Burnet started, turning to her husband. “Then they got married.”

“That’s not...the exact progression,” Aurea attempted to hide her face in the menu, despite that she already knew what she wanted.

Yet Burnet continued, seeming fueled by her friend’s embarrassment. “Fennel had a thing for her for a long time.”

“I’m not the one that went to Alola for a research assignment and came back showing off that rock on your hand,” she attempted to direct the attention off of herself and on to the other couple.

“No, but Fennel showed me the one you got for her.” Burnet shrugged off Juniper’s comment, even if it was true. “They were together for, like, 10 years before they got married. Had a house and a lab and everything. Aurea thought they were being secretive, didn’t you?”

“It’s beside the point now.”

Aurea was certain that her old friend was only telling her husband this now in an attempt to embarrass her, and it was working. Surely she had told him all of this before. Even if it was the case, he was laughing. Burnet had actually known Fennel first, and introduced them in college. She was also confident Fennel had confided in her with other details of their relationship through the years, and the professor was perfectly happy not knowing what.

“Speaking of rocks, you were at Olivia’s, huh?” Kukui gestured to the bag that sat next to Aurea.

“Yeah. Thought I’d introduce myself to the Kahuna. She’s a very sweet girl.”

“But you bought something, eh?”

“I, um...” revealing the contents to them would only result in more attention on herself, which she did not want. But maybe it was best to get it over it. Picking up the bag, she handed it across the table for the couple to inspect. “Be careful with it. It’s for Fennel.”

The two scientists had opened it and gazed upon it for a short time, both smiling and handing it back quicker than Aurea thought they might.

“You did good. She’s going to like it,” Burnet had some sort of sly smile. “It’s just hard to imagine you in a jewelry store picking that out for her.”

She had never been so thankful to have a waitress approach and take their orders.  

Their lunch was nice at least. Burnet couldn’t open her mouth to embarrass her if they were all eating, even if it had all been in good fun.

“I hope that next time you’re here we’ll be able to spend more time together than just lunch. Unless I make it to Unova by then,” Burnet gave her one more hug upon their departure.

“It was great seeing you guys, really.”

“Tell Fennel to come visit, with or without you.”

She couldn’t help but laugh at that. “We’ll see.”

Aurea didn’t know why she felt such a rush to get back to her hotel, besides to finish up some paperwork so she had less to do once arriving home. Fennel would want her to take the next few days off, and she probably would, if only to enjoy being in her own space for a few days and not hotel rooms and camp sites.

She was trying to wait until it was late enough in the day in Unova to call Fennel. If it was 2 am in Alola, it would be around 10 am or so in Unova. Or something like that.

Fennel quickly answered the video call, though she seemed a bit distracted. “Aurea, hi!”

The professor couldn’t help but smile upon seeing the other’s face on the screen. “I figured I’d call you at the lab because you’d be on the computer. You’re not busy, are you?”

“Not really,” Fennel started, seemingly organizing some papers around her computer desk. “But I can talk for a little bit.”

“We’re done in Konikoni City. I’m actually in a hotel. I’ll be home tomorrow evening.”

“I can’t wait. I miss you so much. And when you get home, we’re going to have sex all night. And we can take a bubble bath, and drink some wine, but mostly I just want to touch you again.”

“Is….is anyone there….with you…?” the professor’s face was definitely turning red, not that Fennel seemed at all alarmed by this or what she was saying to cause it.

“Oh, yeah. My assistant’s here, and Bianca. Bianca, Marie, say hi to Aurea!” Fennel picked her laptop up and spun her chair around, turning the screen so that they could see it across the room. The professor gave a hesitant wave to the other two women,  both who gave over exaggerated waves in return. They both seemed rather occupied, only looking up when Fennel prompted them to. Thankfully blissfully unaware. She really had been gone for too long if the dream scientist was being so forward with her.

“I had lunch with Burnet and Kukui this afternoon,”  she attempted to change the subject.

“How are they? I’m glad you were able to take time away from looking at rocks to be a normal person and socialize. When are we going to go to Alola? I miss Burnet,” Fennel had looked down at her papers again, throwing some off to the side but not wavering in her conversation.

“They’re fine. They’d be glad to see you, too. I’d be happy to take you there sometime.”

“We’re about due for a vacation, I think,” Fennel gave a wistful sigh. “But mostly, I just want you home with me. I’m so bored without you here.”

“You want me home because you’re bored?”

“Mostly, yeah,” the quick response met with giggles on both behalves.

“Well, my plane should get in tomorrow around 8. I’ll text you when I’m on my last transfer.”

“Hm...will you take a few days off to spend with me before you get all wrapped up in your research stuff?”

“I suppose.”

Fennel was still smiling, but seemed suddenly alarmed by something off camera. “I need to go, I’m sorry. There’s a trainer call coming through. I’ll see you tomorrow, I love you!”

Aurea didn’t have time to repeat the sentiments before Fennel had hung up the call. She’d rather Fennel tend to her work than ignore trainers for her sake. They would have time to catch up and plan vacations, especially now that she had promised Fennel a few days without her research coming between them.

They hadn’t spent but more than a few minutes speaking, but the yawn that crept up on the professor reminded her of how late it was. She would cram in as much note taking as she could before the hour was up, and force herself to sleep at some point. A night’s rest and a few plane rides were all that stood between her and being reunited with her beloved wife.

[professorpalmarosa]

Want to know something cool? Your positive reviews have inspired me to add EXTRA chapters!

I wanted to take a moment to thank my readers and reviewers for the Pokemon Dawn & Dusk story so far. Here’s what I’ve gathered from the feedback I received, organized by frequency and enthusiasm:

The setup for the Kinzo region so far has been very interesting. I want to know more about it!

Here’s some of the cool things we learned about in the first arc:

Upon entry to Kinzo, a Pokemon Trainer receives a free Metro Pass. This pass doubles as their Trainer ID card and can be used to travel from one town to the next. Until a trainer has four Kinzo badges (and ideally one Fire Pokemon), they are not permitted to travel from town-to-town on foot.

The Kinzo region enforces a sunset curfew. Being outside after dark requires a special government permit. These permits are very difficult to get and the paperwork can take a while.

The Kinzo region enforces a two-month quarantine on foreign Pokemon. Foreign trainers can leave those Pokemon with Professor Myrtle in Natrium Town, or within a special PC box. Cynthia and Cyrus’s journey began on March 15. They won’t have access to their old Pokemon again until May 15...which will be the fourth (Ferrum Town) arc.

Kinzonian Pokemon Centers are treated as hospitals only, with PokeMarts as separate buildings.

Kinzo has a unique feature called a Trainers Lodge. These facilities are in every city/town and provide free room and board for trainers. You can pay for a private room, or you can stay in the public barracks. Either way, the Lodge Owner will provide you with a place to sleep, a place to wash off, a locker for your belongings, and two free meals a day. Some Lodges also have additional features, such as a common area and battle rooms.

The Kinzo Pokemon League prides itself as being very challenging. In fact, Simon Morozov (the Plumbum City Gym Leader) has gone out of his way to be insanely difficult for a first gym.

If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve discovered so far, just wait! The Kalium City arc (which started on August 10) is going to paint an even more vivid picture about how this region works. It’s also the first we’ll see of Kinzo’s dark side.

This is not a cute and cuddly region. This is not a cute and cuddly story.

Cynthia and her Spiritomb are so cute together! I really like their bond!

Good! Because guess what? You’re going to see some ups and downs to that in the next arc. The Kalium City Gym Leader (Jet Melkadze) specializes in Fighting Pokemon. Assuming Spiritomb cooperates with Cynthia, it’s going to come in handy.

I’m also glad that so many of you have left remarks that you like how I’ve been writing Cynthia. She’s a smart and resourceful kid who has already gone on two other Pokemon journeys. This is old hat to her by now, and I wanted to showcase that.

Kalium City is the first time I put her through the wringer.

Cyrus is breaking my heart. I hate his parents, and I’m glad he’s made a couple of friends already.

Again, good. For both protagonists, I wanted to really elaborate a bit on their home lives since it plays a key factor in how they behave. You won’t see too much of the parents in this upcoming arc, but there is a chapter where Cynthia calls Cyrus’s father. You’ll also see more of them in later arcs.

I also felt that it was important to really crawl into Cyrus’s head a bit around the end of the Plumbum City arc, just so we can see what makes him tick a bit more. There’s already some elements of the man we battled in Diamond/Pearl/Platinum, but he’s actually been a pretty good kid in this story so far.

That may change as the story progresses, since the plan is to get both Cyrus and Cynthia to what we saw in the games.

I love the Eevees. Don’t you DARE make the kids give them back to Professor Myrtle!

It tickles me to know that everyone seems to love the Eevees. I swear, it’s almost like half of the comments I receive involve the Eevees or Cynthia’s Spiritomb!

I didn’t want to treat the Pokemon like plot devices that simply keep the story going. I wanted to go out of my way to make sure their personalities were every bit as dynamic and developed as the human characters. They’re just as important.

And just think: you’re going to meet way more of them as the story progresses. Cyrus’s Sneasel or Cynthia’s Gible is probably my favorite.

Thanks to the overwhelming feedback I got about the Eevees, I’m actually taking the time to add some brand new chapters in this upcoming arc that focus on them. These are new material: something my beta readers didn’t see! YOU GUYS ACTUALLY INSPIRED ME TO ADD MORE!

Team Sigma is interesting! I want to find out more about them!

Well, guess what? Those two Gammas (Grunts) that Cynthia and Cyrus faced off against in Plumbum City come back with a vengeance in this new arc. You’ll find out a little more about their goals, and even meet their Beta (Admin)!

But now I have a question for everyone...

I’ve been tempted to occasionally post some supplemental articles about certain Kinzo subjects on this blog, such as:

A map

Concept notes & character studies

An historic timeline (which will be updated each arc to avoid spoilers)

An “OST” tag in case anyone wants to listen to mood music to go with the story.

Historic and cultural articles

Announcements if another canon character appears as more than just a passing cameo (fun fact: that happens in this arc. Twice)

Would anyone be up for that? Also, it is 100% okay to IM me if you want to talk about the region or the story! I live for that! This is my passion project!

[brandongunte1r]

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[diaspora9ja]

Organizational fraud has robbed Canadian youth sports groups of nearly $8M in past decade

For the Nook Brook Minor Hockey Affiliation, it was like being on the receiving finish of an open-ice physique verify. 

It was in late March close to the tip of the 2018-19 season in Nook Brook, N.L., when league officers have been knowledgeable they have been hundreds of {dollars} behind in funds for ice time.

By the point officers bought to the underside of issues, it was found the group was lacking round $80,000. 

An investigation by the RCMP led to the league’s former treasurer being charged with six fraud-related offences. 

“It was a shock. It was very unlucky, particularly when you’ve gotten a small group and everybody’s concerned in hockey,” stated Darren Harvieux, the league’s new treasurer and a part of a gaggle of volunteers who has labored to place the group again on agency monetary footing.

Harvieux says the arrest did nothing to restore injury brought on by the alleged thefts.

“The cash that went lacking was cash that got here from dad and mom, hard-working dad and mom in the neighborhood,” he stated. “We’re a small group and the most important factor was actually that folks’s cash had gone lacking — cash they’d thought was for the enjoyment of their kids taking part in hockey.”

Darren Harvieux, treasurer with the Nook Brook Minor Hockey Affiliation, put his identify ahead a yr in the past to assist the group get out of debt after cash went lacking. (Colleen Connors/CBC)

And it is only one instance of a standard scenario Canada-wide: adults in positions of belief stealing or allegedly stealing cash from a youth sports activities group that’s left reeling. An investigation by CBC Sports activities reveals that within the final decade alone practically $8 million has gone lacking from dozens of sports activities leagues and associations throughout Canada. 

The sum of money stolen ranges from a number of thousand to tens of millions of {dollars}, however the sample in nearly each case is analogous: a theft is carried out by one individual inside the group who’s answerable for the league’s funds.

Click on on pinpoints for particulars

One other instance: across the similar time because the Nook Brook incident however midway throughout the nation, it was rising {that a} staggering sum of money had gone lacking from the Ontario Minor Hockey Affiliation.

The OMHA oversees 225 native associations and 28 leagues throughout the province, involving practically 300,000 gamers, coaches, trainers and oldsters. In accordance with courtroom paperwork obtained by CBC Sports activities, the league’s director of finance — a 16-year worker — stole practically $2.4 million over six months “to help a web based playing and buying habit.”

The theft is believed to be the most important sum of money ever stolen from a North American youth sports activities group. It solely got here to gentle when the worker confessed to OMHA government director Ian Taylor after she realized the affiliation could be unable to make a big scheduled cost. 

The girl subsequently pleaded responsible and is awaiting sentencing. 

In accordance with courtroom paperwork, she had “sole entry” to one of many league’s secondary financial institution accounts. On 35 completely different days, she made 84 transactions from the OMHA’s major account to the secondary account. She then, based on paperwork, used the cash to repay private bank card payments. 

Court docket paperwork within the OMHA case reveal three separate transactions of $1 million went undetected. (CBC)

In most of those instances, the cash is stolen over an prolonged time frame and is commonly used to fund a playing or drug habit or to purchase luxurious objects.

For instance, the person tasked with organizing athletic competitions for numerous faculties round London, Ont., stole nearly a million {dollars} over practically a decade in what the choose referred to as an “egregious breach of belief.” 

At his trial, it was revealed a lot of the stolen cash went to pay for dwelling renovations, together with “a saltwater pool and sizzling tub, retaining partitions, interlocking pathways and associated development and important costly plantings.” He acquired a three-year sentence.

Click on on pinpoints for particulars

The thefts have a tendency to not be sophisticated affairs.

In 2012, the previous treasurer of the Richmond Soccer Affiliation in British Columbia was sentenced to 2 years in jail after being convicted of stealing greater than $200,000 over 5 years. She merely wrote greater than 200 cheques to herself and her husband. 

In sentencing the girl, the choose wrote: “The Richmond Youth Soccer Affiliation was not a complicated enterprise entity with programs of checks and balances designed to guard its monetary affairs. It’s a volunteer group and was extremely depending on the accused to behave actually with their cash. The actual victims have been the hundreds of younger individuals who would have benefited enormously from the monies the accused stole.”

The actual victims have been the hundreds of younger individuals who would have benefited enormously from the monies the accused stole.– Choose in sentencing treasurer who stole $200,000 in Richmond, B.C.

Extra just lately, the treasurer of a special small hockey affiliation in Newfoundland was sentenced to 5 months in jail after stealing greater than $50,000 over two years. The accused wrote greater than 35 cheques to herself to gas cocaine and playing addictions.

In a sufferer impression assertion, the affiliation instructed the courtroom the theft left it “involved about their potential to proceed to function minor hockey on this area. Mother and father are being requested to fund-raise over and above the standard stage and there was a further monetary burden positioned on the households and group members, typically, as they’re being requested to contribute to the affiliation to maintain the hockey program viable.”

In our evaluation, CBC Sports activities included solely instances the place felony costs have been laid or a civil motion was launched to recoup stolen cash.

However specialists say the problem is probably going way more prevalent as a result of many instances, for numerous causes, are by no means reported to police.

Erik Carrozza is a Philadelphia-area accountant who has documented dozens of comparable tales throughout the USA. He’s a longtime youth sports activities treasurer and founding father of the Middle for Fraud Prevention. Carrozza began the centre to assist youth sports activities organizations implement prevention methods to scale back the chance of theft.

WATCH | Why group sports activities organizations are weak to fraud:

Why group sports activities organizations are weak to fraud and the way they will higher defend themselves. 3:30

Carrozza says the volunteer boards of administrators who run these organizations usually try and cope with fraud internally to keep away from their very own embarrassment, because the boards are answerable for governance and oversight.

“They’re really reporting themselves and admitting their very own shortcomings,” he stated. “That’s not a straightforward factor for some individuals to do.”

Carrozza additionally factors to the so-called group issue, the place the responsible social gathering is commonly a widely known member of group, has associates on the board and has a number of kids who play within the league.

“[The organizations] are slightly reluctant to explode any individual’s life and [their] household,” stated Carrozza, including the instances which might be reported often observe a well-recognized script.

“You have bought a brazen crime occurring within the sense that there is no try and cowl it up. These are the individuals which might be writing cheques out for themselves and it goes on for years,” he stated. “The rationale why is the shortage of oversight and governance.

“The treasurer is not a complicated monetary felony. [They are thinking] I can simply write a verify to myself and no person will discover.”

Katie Misener says youth sports activities organizations are weak to fraud for a number of causes. (Courtesy U of Waterloo)

Katie Misener, a professor on the College of Waterloo, examines fraud and theft on the youth sports activities stage.

Misener says that at numerous factors of the yr — and particularly round registration time — leagues might have tons of of hundreds of {dollars} flowing by means of their financial institution accounts.

She says numerous elements make these largely volunteer organizations weak.

In lots of instances, a league’s cash is dealt with by a single volunteer with what Misener calls a “discovered benefit,” any individual who is aware of how the group’s funds work and how you can manipulate them.

“We are inclined to belief the dad and mom which might be in these management roles inside our sport golf equipment,” Misener stated. “They’re nice individuals and so they contribute numerous time and their very own assets to these roles, serving to children be lively and working the membership.

“We do not are inclined to assume that Joe down the road, who’s the treasurer for a hockey membership, would possibly embezzle funds. However the actuality is that it usually is a treasurer or a board member such because the president who’ve been those who’ve dedicated fraud.”

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League Of Angels 2 Hack Download

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[junker-town]

Ron Wright had the worst MLB debut of all time

Three plate appearances. Six outs. This would be a freakishly terrible day for just about any hitter in baseball. For Ron Wright, who as a minor leaguer was compared to Cecil Fielder and Fred McGriff, it was his whole career. A series of wildly improbable events — botched surgery, incredible perseverance, baserunning calamity and a baseball to the ear — all came together to build this moment, the worst MLB debut of all time.

It’s weird to say this now, but on April 14, 2002, the Seattle Mariners were an elite baseball team. They were coming off matching the all-time record for wins in a season, boasted the defending MVP and Rookie of the Year in Ichiro Suzuki, had eight (!) returning all-stars, had made a big trade to upgrade at third by swooping for Jeff Cirillo, had added another power bat in Ruben Sierra and were also looking at a full season of rising ace Joel Piñeiro. The 2001 Mariners had been a juggernaut. On paper, at least, the 2002 edition were going to be even better.

By the time they arrived in Dallas for their four-game series against the Texas Rangers, the usual suspects were rolling. Ichiro and Bret Boone had been relatively quiet, but the likes of John Olerud and Mike Cameron were piling up the runs, and the Mariners had rushed to an early lead in the American League West. There was, however, something missing. Or, more to the point, someone.

John G. Mabanglo/AFP via Getty Images

ARLINGTON, Texas — Seattle Mariners designated hitter Edgar Martinez has a ruptured left hamstring and was scheduled to have surgery [on April 13].

Martinez injured the hamstring while running out a grounder to third base in the ninth inning of Thursday’s 8-4 victory at Anaheim. The six-time All-Star had to be helped off the field.

An MRI exam was done Friday, and the Mariners put Martinez on the disabled list. Rick Griffin, Seattle’s trainer, said the exam revealed a ruptured tendon behind Martinez’s knee.

In 2001, future Hall-of-Famer Edgar Martinez owned a .306/.423/.543 batting line, compiled over 132 games. Now the Mariners were going to have to do without their iconic designated hitter for a few months.

Edgar’s hamstring blowing up was exactly the sort of situation that the team signed Sierra to handle. And, indeed, the 36-year-old was handling it. In his first game spelling Martinez, Sierra hit a grand slam to lift the team to a 7-3 win. In his second, he hit a double and drew a walk. While life without Edgar wasn’t ever going to be fine, it looked at least like it would be bearable.

But Sierra wasn’t just Seattle’s backup option at DH. He was also the team’s primary bench bat and a rotation option in the outfield corners. While he was pencilled into the Edgar slot, the team needed some cover for their cover. And so, buried in that article about Martinez’s hamstring surgery, was a note about a minor roster move.

The Mariners purchased the contract of first baseman Ron Wright from Triple-A Tacoma of the Pacific Coast League.

Wright’s name would have meant very little to Mariners fans back then. I suspect it didn’t even mean that much to Wright. He was drafted by the Atlanta Braves out of high school in 1994. As a seventh-round pick, he wasn’t expected to amount to much of anything, but he quickly pushed his way through the minors, reaching AAA for the first time as a 21-year-old.

By then Wright was already with his second organization. The Braves had claimed the World Series in 1995, and by the time August ‘96 rolled around they were making a push for a second consecutive ring. They needed pitching reinforcements, and decided on Pittsburgh Pirates lefthander Denny Neagle.

Neagle did not come cheap. He had made the National League All-Star team in 1995, and by late summer he’d amassed a 14-6 record with a 3.05 ERA. If the Braves wanted him, they were going to have to give up some talent. On Aug. 28, 1996, two minor-leaguers and a player to be named later were dispatched to Pittsburgh. Wright, ranked by Baseball America as the Braves’ No. 8 prospect, was part of the deal.

Ron Wright during a 1998 spring training game with the Pirates

Back then, Wright was projected as a Fielder or McGriff type. He’d strike out, he’d walk, and above all, he was going to hit home runs. He would hit huge home runs and a huge number of home runs. In two full seasons, he’d managed to rack up almost 70 of them, several of them true monsters. Having dominated at A and AA, it was time for him to move up.

Wright thrived in his first season with the pirates, smoking the Pacific Coast League, hitting .304/.348/.539 for the Calgary Lookouts over 91 games. Sure, there were only 16 home runs, but in 91 games, coming from a 21-year-old in AAA ... that’s the sort of performance that turns heads. A breakthrough seemed inevitable.

It was not.

A wrist injury robbed Wright of a September call-up in 1997. Worse was to come. Going into 1998, he was ranked as the Pirates No. 5 prospect, but a back injury immediately knocked him onto the disabled list. That injury required surgery: a spinal disk needed repairing. Wright was out of regular action for almost two years. When he returned, the power was gone.

While rebuilding that busted spinal disk, Wright’s surgeon had damaged his sciatic nerve, causing loss of feeling in his right leg. A key part of the swing that produced those mammoth home runs had disappeared. Wright’s calling card, the key to his prospect status, was no more.

Wright slowly fell down the Pirates pecking order. After the ‘98 season, Baseball-America had him at No. 6. A year later, he was their No. 10 prospect. And a year after that, he was gone, claimed on waivers by the Cincinnati Reds.

Denny Neagle, incidentally, made 71 starts for the Braves, going 38-19 with a 3.43 ERA. In 1997, while Wright was tearing up the PCL, Neagle finished third in the National League Cy Young voting (the two dudes ahead of him were named ‘Pedro Martinez’ and ‘Greg Maddux’, so we’ll call that a moral victory).

The Pirates, disappointed in Wright, still did OK out of that trade. The PTBNL ended up being 23-year-old pitcher Jason Schmidt, who carved out a productive career up in Pittsburgh before blossoming with the San Francisco Giants.

Meanwhile, Wright couldn’t gain any traction. A mediocre 2000 with the Reds was followed up by an equally mediocre 2001 with the then-Devil Rays. By the time 2002 rolled around, Wright was a fully-fledged journeyman, his prospect status long forgotten. He was a traveling mercenary, organizational filler. The particular organization he’d be filling that year was, of course, the Seattle Mariners.

Did Lou Pinella have any intention of actually playing Wright while Edgar was out? Probably not. At least, not much. On April 14, Wright had been in the majors for two days, and he’d spent them parked happily on the bench, watching the Mariners beat up on the Rangers. There he would have stayed but for starting third baseman Jeff Cirillo taking a baseball to the face.

Cirillo would eventually become sort of a bogeyman for Seattle, the human marker for both the end of franchise’s golden era and the perils of doing business with the Colorado Rockies. Neither is, strictly speaking, fair. The bulk of his pre-Seattle career was spent hitting .307/.383/.449 in Milwaukee, not Denver, and during his two years with the Mariners the team won 186 games. But there’s no getting around that fact his tenure in the Emerald City was, well, awful.

On April 14, however, all that lay in the future. He was off to a slow start, sure, but with his pedigree and status as the team’s major off-season acquisition, few had any hint at the mess that was to follow. Cirillo was pencilled in at third, hitting second behind Ichiro and he’d have hoped to bust out of his season-opening mini-slump against Rangers southpaw Kenny Rodgers.

He never got that chance. During batting practice, center fielder Mike Cameron cracked a line drive off the pitching screen. By an implausible twist of fate*, the ricochet took the ball straight into Cirillo’s left ear. The cut required three stitches.

*This wasn’t the only time in Cirillo’s career that he picked up a freak injury. According to Tom Haudricourt, he once just missed a home run and threw his batting helmet in frustration ... right at his ankle. He was out for four games.

Piniella hastily re-jigged his lineup. Charles Gibson was shifted from left field to third. Sierra would go to left field. And Wright, who became the 33rd man named ‘Wright’ to appear in a Major League Baseball game, would get the nod at designated hitter.

That Wright wound up making his debut for the Mariners looked suspiciously like fate. He might have been drafted by Atlanta, but Washington State was home. He’d moved there at eight, and played high school ball at Kamiakin High School in Kennewick, three and a half hours drive from Seattle and the Kingdome. He had to navigate two away series before the team got back to his home state. Make some noise in Dallas or Oakland and he’d get to swing the bat in front of his family.

During his first appearance, he made zero noise with the bat. None whatsoever. With two runners on and no out, and the Mariners up, 1-0, it was the perfect time to do some damage. But Wright took Rodgers first pitch, a fastball, for strike one. Then he took the second. Strike two. One more and he was back in the dugout, a strikeout victim. He hadn’t even taken the bat off his shoulders.

A debut strikeout is forgivable. It’s the sort of thing that happens to rookies in their first game, especially rookies who’ve taken the scenic route to get to the majors. Upon his return to the dugout, Wright would have gotten (I assume) a good butt-slapping and told to go get ‘em next time.

It’s the top of the fourth. It’s almost an exact replica of the opportunity he missed the first time up. The Mariners are still 1-0 to the good. Sierra and Olerud are on base. The only difference is that this time Sierra is at third, an easy RBI opportunity. Wright wasn’t going to let this chance get away. He was going to swing.

He swung three times. Two were swinging strikes, sandwiching a pair of balls to bring the count to 2-2. Then, for the first time in his career, he made contact. As it turned out, the Mariners would rather he hadn’t:

Wright should not have swung at that pitch. It was down and well away, and drew the sort of swing that leads to embarrassing outcomes. This particular swing produced an ugly tapper back to the mound. Rodgers (who’d win his second gold glove that year) eased his way off the mound, made a slick grab, stared Sierra back to third base, then fired to second to get Olerud on a force play.

That should have been that. End of story. Erasure of story, really. But someone had blundered. If Sierra had simply stayed put, history would have remembered Wright’s debut as merely a bad one, and we’d have no reason whatsoever to discuss him years later. But every interesting story is made up of a collection of tiny chances, seemingly unrelated events which Rube Goldberg themselves into an unstoppable force.

We arrived at this moment through a botched surgery, an exploded hamstring and a face-seeking baseball. But the pivot this story really turns on is Sierra being a huge idiot.

Unlike Wright, Sierra had been around the Major League block. 2002 was his 16th season in the big leagues. He knew how to run the bases just fine, swiping well over 100 bags over the course of his career. His speed had long-since gone by the time Wright came around, but a player with that much experience should know better than to break for home while the shortstop is essentially holding the ball at second.

Sierra broke for home while the shortstop was holding the ball at second. Alex Rodriguez duly tossed the ball to the catcher, and a half-assed rundown ensued. During the melee, John Moses told Wright to advance to second, thinking that the Mariners might as well keep a runner in scoring position despite Sierra’s blunder.

Further calamity ensured. As Wright bolted for second, Sierra gave himself up, allowed Rodgers to tag him and throw to second again. Michael Young applied the tag to complete the play. 1-6-2-5-1-4. Wright had become the first player in a century to hit into a triple play on his debut.

He wasn’t done there. His spot in the lineup came up in the sixth, with the Mariners now 2-1 down. Sierra and Olerud were on base again, having hit back-to-back singles. Rodgers was near the end of his tether, having given up 11 baserunners in 5+ innings. His pitch count was in the 90s. A hit here would have tied the game.

Wright came up with a first-pitch double play instead, grounding hard to Rodriguez at shortstop.

The Mariners came back, but Wright did not. Seattle grabbed four quick runs in the top of the seventh, with Olerud knotting things up with a line drive single to right field. With runners at the corners, Piniella decided he’d had enough misery out of his DH for one evening and pulled Wright for super-utilityman Mark McLemore, who ended up going 0-2 with two strikeouts. It takes an unusual day for that to be an upgrade.

Wright’s game in full: 0-3, K, GDP, GTP. Nine pitches seen; two balls; three called strikes; four swings; 50 percent contact; six outs made. Once known for his ability to hit ridiculously long bombs, he had hit the baseball a combined 150 feet.

Some of the magic of baseball is a product of sheer volume. Enough baseball is played for all sorts of strange things to happen, and here they just happened to happen to Wright. Unsurprisingly, he was sent back down to AAA following the end of the Rangers series. Wright never got to play in front of his family at Safeco Field. Two years later, after a couple more minor league stints and then a go-around with the independent Sioux Falls Canaries, he was out of baseball entirely.

After the injuries he picked up in the late-90s, there wasn’t much chance Wright would have had a lengthy career in the majors, even if his first crack at the bigs hadn’t been quite so catastrophic. But by doing so, he turned his non-career into a spectacular event, a nonsensical comet blazing its way through a Dallas afternoon.

Reaching the pinnacle of baseball takes an obscene amount of talent and even more hard work, and Wright’s path was even harder than most. Getting to start for the Mariners at all represents an incredible achievement, and if Wright didn’t exactly make the most of it. at least he impressed himself on the history books.

Fortunately, that’s how he sees it too. Talking to Larry Stone 15 years after the fact, Wright looked back at his performance with few regrets:

If I got into one game. I might as well do something memorable. I wish it had been three home runs, but it wasn’t. It was kind of a weird sequence of events that led to the actual outcome. With different baserunning and different bounces, you never know.

As for the 2002 Seattle Mariners, they’d go on to win 93 games but miss the playoffs anyway. It was the start of what is now the longest playoff drought in American sports.

[rosiemotene]

My three passions in life are Women, Arica, and the arts. When I founded my Pan African talent agency, Waka Talent, in 2011, my dream was to have a footprint and synergies with territories across Africa. Rwanda was one of the countries that were in my Pan African expansion plans. I, like many people, was awakened to the country Rwanda through the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Through the media, we were fed a few of the facts that the Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi, was a mass slaughter of Tutsi in Rwanda during the Rwandan Civil War, which started in 1990. It was said to have been directed by members of the Hutu majority government during the 100-day period from 7 April to 15 July 1994. At that time in my life, I was uneducated about the history of our continent, as our educational system was based on the biased and untrue view through the eyes of the colonizers. In 1994, I was in a relationship with a boy who was of Rwandan origin and before the brutal break-up, I was able to hear of the harrowing stories of how his family fled the country. I remember a few days, whilst visiting them in their Johannesburg home, the family were incredibly worried, as their grandmother had gone missing from her village in Rwanda but was soon discovered after walking for days, she was then brought to South Africa to live with the family. Although she did not speak English the pain and trauma in her eyes spoke volumes. Fast forward to 2004, I was cast in one of the first films made on the genocide, Hotel Rwanda. Once again the trauma and history intrigued me.

My Rwandan experience. The background. Rwanda is a republic in central and eastern Africa. Uganda is to its north, Tanzania to the east, Burundi to the south, and the Democratic Republic of Congo to the west. Over the years, it has been reported that the capital city, Kigali is the safest city in Africa. I was rather overwhelmed at the sense of calmness and as a global citizen who has traveled to many cities, I can honestly say that I felt 100% safe, walking the streets, lying in bed or exploring in the middle of town. The streets are immaculate, the people, like the rest of East Africa, are welcoming, humble and wonderful to talk to. On my morning walks,​ I was welcomed to the magnificent landscape of rolling hills, organised traffic, Bod-Boda driver (Motorbike taxis) and as mentioned before, a wonderful​ sense​ of calmness.

On the streets of Kigali.

Since the end of the Genocide, the country has been socially and politically stable. As a result, agriculture, roads, mining, and tourism have developed. The government also placed itself as the leader in gender equality principles.

The Memrorial. On visiting the genocide memorial, I learned many interesting facts but the one that stood out the most was the truth behind the fraction between the Tutsi and Hutu tribes, facts that media have not revealed. This is what i discovered- Humans migrated to what is now Rwanda after the last ice age. Hunter-gatherers settled the area in the late Stone Age and were followed by early Iron Age settlers. These were ancestors of the Twa, a group of Pygmy hunters who still remain in Rwanda. Additional migrations took place between 700 BC and 1500 AD. This divided society into three groups which are the Hutu, Tutsis, and the original Twas. For centuries, these three groups live in harmony, it was only when the colonizers entered the territory, did they create the tension and hierarchy between the Hutus and Tutsis. It was in 1884, the Berlin Conference assigned Germany Ruanda-Urundi. German East Africa was then formed when this area was combined with Tanganyika. In 1894, Gustav Adolf von Gotzen explored the country. The Germans favored the Tutsi group and help suppress the Hutu group of people. During World War I, the Belgians took the territory.

It was World War I, Rwanda became a League of Nations mandate with Belgium in control. Belgium also kept the class system in place and promoted Tutsi supremacy. They also considered the groups to be different races and created identity cards labeling each person a member of the Tutsi, Hutu, or Twa group. They based this classification on arbitrary physical characteristics. This fact, sent shivers down my spine as it reminded me of the South Africa apartheid laws of classifying black people, with the pencil test. (The pencil test is a method of assessing whether a person has Afro-textured hair. In the pencil test, a pencil is pushed through the person’s hair. How easily it comes out determines whether the person has “passed” or “failed” the test. This test was used to determine racial identity in South Africa during the apartheid era, distinguishing whites from coloureds and blacks. The test was partially responsible for splitting existing communities and families along perceived racial lines. Its formal authority ended with the end of apartheid in 1994. It remains an important part of South African cultural heritage and a symbol of racism.)

This friction continued after World War II, here the two groups emerged and became rivals, one based on the Tutsi elite and the other based on Hutu emancipation. This rivalry continued throughout the ages right up until the known 1994 Genocide. My time at the memorial was traumatic as the two-hour tour gives you insight into the back history. Picture, artifacts, clothes, personal items are on display. There is also a beautiful rose garden of remembrance, where families can go and show respect to their family members and friends that were killed in the genocide. As a group, we laid a wreath on the tombs and said a prayer.

The Mashariki film festival. Earlier this year, I reached out to the Mashariki Film festival as I wanted to create a synergy between them and my agency, http://www.wakaagency.biz. They responded​ and we entered​​ into a partnership​. I flew into​ Kigali​ for​ the festival, which​ is in its 5th edition. My agency was an official partner and I also sat on the jury for the African​ feature film category. I wanted to host an acting and producers master class but the schedule was full, so on my​ next visit in the year, I plan to see Waka Agency can work with actors and performers​ from http://mashirika.com​. They are a performance art​ and​d media company, not affiliated to the festival but have been in existence for nearly two decades. ​

– Opeing night of The festival.

The festival categories were made up of the following: African feature films, African short films, African documentaries, East African feature films, East African short films, East African, and national short films. Each category had a team of three jury members, assigned to watch, critique and analyze each submission. The jury groups were made up of film and industry practitioners​ from across the world. My jury included Klaus Keli​ from Germany and Kivu Ruhorahoza, from Rwanda. Klaus, a revered filmmaker​​ educator​ , ​and trainer, who has worked extensively in Europe and has been instrumental in training in East Africa, particularly in Rwanda. Kivu is internationally known for his feature film Grey Matter which won the Jury Special Mention for Best Emerging Filmmaker at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival and the Ecumenical Jury special mention at the 2011 Warsaw Film Festival. He also won the Grand Prize of the Tübingen French Film Festival, Best Director and Signis Award of the Cordoba African Film Festival and the Jury Special Prize of the Khouribga Film Festival in Morocco.

We were given the task of watching​ 12 full-length​ feature films with the aim of sourcing the best in the selection. The films submitted came from all African territories​ from South Africa,​ Kenya, Morocco​, Ethiopia, Tunisia, Ghana, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and others. Of the jury’s​ that I have​ sat on, I have to say that this selection was incredibly tough, the majority of the films were all high​ callibre. After many hours of debate, deliberation, a few​ disagreements​s, we all agreed that the best film in our selection came from Morocco.

The film Indigo by Selma Bargach. Indigo is the color blue of the aura given by a psychic to children who have the gift of clairvoyance​. This is shown through the main character, Nora. The actress, Rim Kettani is a first-time actress and is only 13 years old, she brilliantly narrated the story of a young girl who is confronted with violence and the world of the irrational. The filmmaker​​ did an excellent​​t job in narrating the story and directing the film, creating magnificent​​t mise-en-scene and emotionally driven scenes. We as the jury believed​ that the story has universal appeal.

The lack of gender equality. As Rwanda has become known as one of the most gender equal territories, I was rather disappointed at the lack of representation​ of female filmmakers. On the opening night, there was very little mention of the female input to the festival, The festival has a platform titled, ‘Girls in film’. At first, this intrigued me as I saw it as a possible platform for young girls to learn the world of filmmaking, only to discover that the platform is for women who have graduated in film and working as producers and filmmakers. Another alarming incident was on the closing night, along with other jury members and delegates, both male and female, it was noted and discussed the lack of female representation in speeches, acknowledgment, and presence. The prize for the best actress was awarded by an all-male delegation and as the emcee stated the most powerful filmmakers in Rwanda. I find that worrying as there are many female filmmakers and practitioners who could have added value to that. The snide and below the belt comment from the emcee was also unwelcomed by many, it went along the lines of perhaps the actress knows each of the male representatives personally. We need to move away from that type of language. After the comment, there was an uncomfortable silence from the audience. I have brought these facts up with the organizers but being the feminist that I am,I have also made contact with local female filmmakers on how we can work together as African filmmakers and writers, so to ensure this gender disparity does not occur again. The festival has welcomed the suggestion.

Other activities. In between my jury duties, workshop attendance and watching films, I managed to experience some of Rwandan city life. My Kenyan sister, Nyambura Waruinzi and I treated ourselves to steak at a lovely restaurant​, close to our residence. The food was delicious, ambiance​​ and decor were​ magical, a little pricey but worth the experience. When two powerful​ Africa​n female forces get together over red wine and a meal, it can only lead greatness. Watch this space for future Kenya​- SA projects​.

After our meal, we met up with our other delegates​​s for a night of dancing, laughter, ​and fun.

I also was treated to true Rwandan cuisine​, thanks to my Jury colleague, Kivu.

We had Cassava leaves known as Isombe, Chicken curry, spicy aubergine with potatoes​ and chicken​ curry, East​ African style.

On another day I had the opportunity​ of having a meeting at the Ikirezi Bookstore. This book​ store hosts a bouquet of African​ authors and hopefully will stock my book soon. The book store is close to downtown Kigali and has a spectacular view.

My love for East Africa has now been extended to Rwanda, I would like to give special thanks to my superb hosts Jean de Dieu Ngirabaganwa, the Assistant Coordinator of the festival. He is also a revered director, camera operator, ​and fixer in Rwanda. Our on the ground hosts, Mwiza Gloria, Didier Mpatha and Bingo Regis. All three ensured we were happy at all times, drove us to the necessary destinations and shared the beautiful East African hospitality. They truly made our stay a memorable one. To my new family and friends who stayed at the same apartment compound as me as well as the other delegates, thank you for the laughs, honest conversations and for sharing delicate and beautiful stories.

When creative Africans unite.

Look out for my next blog where I will share my time with some ofRwanda’s most talents performers.

Until next time Murakoze Urakoze, Asante Sana, thank you!!​

Rwanda- The land of a thousand hills My three passions in life are Women, Arica, and the arts. When I founded my Pan African talent agency, Waka Talent, in 2011, my dream was to have a footprint and synergies with territories across Africa.