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callmewishful · 4 years ago

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Power and Grace

Chapter Two! :)

“He warned you about me? That’s ironic.”

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The rest of her month was spent much of the same way as her first. She attended class, eagerly eating up Professor Byleth’s information on swordsmanship, strategy, and formation types. Most of her free time was spent doing homework with the girls or sparring with Felix. Occasionally, Dimitri would join the pair for a small bout of extra training.

The chalkboard stayed up against the wall for them, constantly keeping track of their wins and losses. Sometimes a spectator would update it for them, but usually her or Felix recorded the new numbers at the end of their training.

Byleth had filled them in on this month’s mission – finding out where the enemy was going to strike the church and defending it. Evy was nervous about the mission. She’d never actually fought another person before – a fact she was afraid to admit to any of her classmates. Most seemed relatively comfortable with the thought of killing another person at the end of this month during the Rite of Rebirth. But, she supposed, they had already had their first taste of killing others when quelling the rebellion Lord Lonato had risen up.

As nervous as she was, she tried not to let those feelings show. She was from Zelshire and the Zelshire army was strong and unafraid. It was a disgrace for her to feel such a way about battle. But try as she might, it was hard to ignore and get rid of her feelings. Instead, a valiant effort was made to suppress the emotions, especially when she was battling Felix. She often imaged him as someone else, a stranger that was really, truly coming for her life. Someone who wished for her blood on their sword, the blood of her new friends on their sword…

“Ey! Evyanna!” Felix rubbed his left arm, that Evyanna had smacked much too hard with her sword.

With wide eyes, she rushed up to him to ensure he was okay. “Felix! I’m so sorry! Are you bleeding? Is it broken?” She grabbed his toned arm, feeling it to check for blood. The blade was dull but could still be a danger.

Sure enough, blood seeped from his arm and stained his shirt bright red. “I’m so sorry. I’m so so sorry.” She kept repeated the phrase as he rolled his sleeve up to see how bad the cut really was.

He grabbed a clean sword-cleaning rag and dabbed at the cut. It wasn’t deep, thankfully, and only a couple inches long.

“Do you need to see the medic?” She whispered, finally snapping out of her ‘I’m sorry’ loop.

“I’m fine. I have some bandages in my room. It’s not that bad. If I wasn’t bleeding so bad I’d say forget it.”

“I’m sorry.” She whispered again.

Her words caused Felix to draw his eyes from his wound and to her. “Apologize to me again and I’m cutting your lips off. I just said it wasn’t that bad.”

“I still hurt you.”

“Yeah? And you’ll do much worse to some poor fucker on the battlefield this week.” He meant it to be a comfort, she knew he meant it that way. Though the pit in her stomach only got bigger. Dinner was a mess.

Felix was unbothered, discussing the better blacksmiths on the monastery grounds. He’d noticed her sword was dulling and had struck up the conversation. Evy listened well enough to remember the information he’d told her, but her mind was too distracted to contribute much to the conversation. She’d smacked Felix with her sword, and he’d bled. And she was going to do worse?

Dinner was completely unappetizing. There was no way Felix didn’t notice, but for once he let her slide without a lecture.

It was no easier to focus in class the next day. She eyed Felix’s arm next to her cautiously, remembering how the blood seeped into the fabric of his shirt. It didn’t seem to bother him at all, moving it freely when he needed to. That didn’t bring her much comfort though.

“Training tonight?” He asked after class, gathering his notes.

Her chest tightened, “Uh, I can’t tonight. I gotta do that homework that’s due Wednesday.”

“You can’t do it after training?”

“I know how we are. We’ll train all night and I’ll have no time for homework. If I finish early enough I’ll come down.” She lied. She had no intention of training with him that night.

She skipped training with Felix the next day as well, not wanting her mental slip to cause him even worse injury before their big battle. Instead, she gave him an excuse of not feeling well and hid in her room again. It wasn’t necessarily a lie. She really wasn’t feeling well. If Felix thought something was off he didn’t speak it, which only brought her comfort and confidence in her acting skills.

On the inside, she was wreck. She caused harm to Felix and would cause even more harm to someone else in a few days. If she felt that bad about a small cut on Felix’s arm that was probably nearly healed, then how could she live with herself knowing someone was dead because of her? How could she face herself in the mirror knowing that she’d taken away a wife, a husband, a brother, a sister, mother, father, child…. Her stomach churned.

Her acting skills were not quite as up to par with Professor Byleth as they seemed to be with Felix. She caught the professor giving her odd looks and lingering stares numerous times during their lessons. If the professor did suspect anything then, like Felix, she didn’t say anything. Though her eyes told a much different story, almost pleading with Evyanna to come talk to her and confide in her. Or maybe that was Evy’s hopeful imagination.

Felix poked her with the end of his quill after class and gave her an expectant look. She knew what he was asking, it was the same thing he’d asked every afternoon since she came to Garreg Mach. Today, however, she was content playing stupid. She rose an eyebrow at him.

He sighed, “Are you training today? Or are you wimping out again?”

The harshness of his words caught her off guard and she stammered out the lie she’d practiced smoothly just seconds earlier, “Well…I c-“

“Look, if this is about your stupid mistake a few days ago, forget it.” He pushed up the sleeve of his shirt revealing a small pink mark on his toned arm, “It’s healed, see? Shit happens. Now let’s go.”

Most of the other students had left already, off to enjoy their afternoon. Felix stood up, shoving the rest of his things in his bag and started to the door, only pausing when he realized Evy wasn’t obediently following him. She heard him sigh behind her and walked back over. He pulled her chair out with her on it, causing a small squeak to escape her lips in surprise.

“Fel-“

“No, you’re not getting out of this today. You’re training with me. We don’t have any stupid homework due; you don’t have to study; your ass is going to the training grounds.”

She groaned, internally screaming to herself. Felix grabbed her bag and haphazardly threw her notes and quill inside, slinging the bag over his shoulder. “Come on.”

Her mouth opened to protest, but no air escaped. The boy rolled his eyes and lifted her up by her arm when she still didn’t move. “I said, come on. You’re being ridiculous! It’s a stupid cut and it’s healed already. I didn’t take you for some meek milk-drinker.”

“Felix.” Byleth, the only other one still in the room, got his attention. She motioned for him to lower his voice. Evy was grateful. She hadn’t heard Felix yell before, but the sound was not pleasant in the slightest.

“Tell her she’s being an idiot. She’s refusing to train because she cut me once and-“

“It’s because I’ve never done it before!” Evy cracked, along with her voice, placing her head in her hands.

Felix shut up behind her, the words swept from his lips. Footsteps came closer to her, presumably the professor coming to laugh at her too.

It was Felix who found his voice first questioning her statement, “Done what?”

“I’ve never hurt anyone before.” She whispered back, cringing as she said so. Now Felix, the toughest boy in the class, probably in the whole Monastery would know that she really was a wimp. Now her friends would question her strength, think her a weak link teammate…maybe Dimitri would ask her to transfer houses to one softer.

“You’ve never hurt anyone? You’ve never killed then?” Byleth asked softly, placing a gentle hand on her back.

Evy shook her head.

“Yeah and?” Felix demanded, crossing his arms. He looked like an upset parent, and Evy found it difficult to meet his gaze.

“I thought you guys would think I’m weak.” She whispered, staring at the floor once again.

“You’re a princess with three older brothers. Of course, you’ve never killed anyone.” Felix exasperated. “Now come on and stop being stupid, we have training to do.”

Her eyes met his for a brief moment before he gave her an impatient look. Though strange, the look gave her a small surge of confidence. They assumed she was new. They assumed she’d never killed and still seemed to enjoy her company. Hells, Felix was even still willing to train with her! Wait, speaking of…. “How did you know I have three older brothers? I don’t remember ever talking about them with you.”

Felix turned and started out the door, leaving her to trail slowly behind. “Uh, I-…the Boar is a loud talker.”

“The boar?” She didn’t remember having met someone with such an unusual name.

“Yeah, the Boar prince.”

Slowly she was starting to piece it together, “You call Dimitri a boar?”

“I call them like I see them. My advice: Stay away from him…before he sinks his tusks into you too.”

“Are you sure? Dimitri has always been nothing but princely and sweet to me. In fact, he’d warned me about you.”

“He warned you about me? That’s ironic. Why?”

Evy smirked at his back, “You’re a blunt, asshole.”

It was so brief, Evy swore she was hallucinating when she saw the smirk on Felix’s lips too, “Touché.”

The plan for the Rite of Rebirth was fairly simple: guard the Holy Mausoleum. While she and Felix trained, Byleth and Dimitri had been snuffing out clues to where the enemies would strike.

Evy was glad to have Byleth and Felix on their side. After seeing the Professor train, there was no doubt as to why she was picked for the job. Hopefully that made this mission easier.

With the festival started, the Blue Lions took up their positions…only to find that the battle had apparently already started.

They all sprinted into the already broken-into room, finding it littered with quite an army. Most notably, a black-armored…man? in the center. His piercing red eyes were nothing like Felix’s. Evy wasn’t sure they were even human. She shivered at the sight of him.

Felix nudged her shoulder, silently telling her to straighten up…well, probably. She doubted he had any comforting words for her. He never did any other time.

“Okay, they’re split down either side of the room, so we’ll break into two groups to take left and right. Dimitri, Dedue, Mercedes, Annette and I will take the right side, while Felix, Evy, Sylvain, Ashe, and Ingrid take left. Felix, you’re lead.” Felix nodded once at the Professor’s directions. “Avoid the Death Knight and do not engage unless he does first. Hear?”

Evyanna found herself nodding absently. She heard every word Professor said: Stay with Felix and Sylvain.

“Go.”

At the one word, the groups split charging towards their enemies. Ashe, the only archer, stayed behind to shoot from a distance, while everyone else got up close and personal.

“Take first hit on that archer, Evyanna.”

“What?” Her mind jerked at Felix’s words. She wasn’t sure if it was the adrenaline or the fear that was clouding her brain.

“Take first hit. I need to make sure you’re going be okay with this.”

I need to make sure you’re going to be okay…he was worried she’d freeze in battle at her first kill. He was worried she’d slip up and be a liability to them. He was worried about her. That wouldn’t do.

She took a deep breath. If there was ever a time to prove herself, it was now. The archer drew their bow and readied the arrow. Somewhere behind her she heard Felix shout for Ashe to hold. He needed her to take first hit. She watched the arrow as she approached. They had to fire soon if they wanted any chance at warding her off.

Their fingers twitched. A sign. She jumped left, the arrow whizzing past her arm. Her sword arm readied, tightening her grip ever so slightly. It rose. She swung.

The archer’s face cringed in pain. A look Evyanna Cecile Leighton would never forget.

She dug her sword deeper into the flesh and the archer’s face paled, relaxing every muscle. Another look she’d never forget. She dipped a finger in the pool of blood below her – a Zelshire tradition – and smeared it on her cheek. The first kill.

Her eyes cast upwards to the mage ahead, readying the flames to shoot at her. She inhaled again. No time to think. She was ready.

“Ashe, go!” Felix called again. Another arrow whirled around her, but this time in the opposite direction. The mage clutched his abdomen, this time Felix going in for the final blow. Evy was right behind him, taking on the next dark mage. Sylvain and Ingrid made work of the other two dark mages on their side.

“Reinforcements!” Ashe shouted, drawing their attention. Sure enough, more mages were flying into the room from the entrance, trying to sandwich them in.

Felix cursed.

“Ingrid, let’s go!” Evy called to her friend, after shoving her blade to mortally wound the dark mage.

The pair fell back to help Ashe with new group of mages that had joined them. She quickly found the hardest part about fighting mages was their long-distance attacks. Magic was much harder to dodge than a simple arrow. Once they were able to meet face-to-face, Evy’s work became much easier. They had little defenses when she could get up close.

With their path cleared, they met up with their second Blue Lion group in the middle of the room to take on the final three enemies. Evy could feel the Death Knight’s eyes burning her skull, but she did her best to ignore it. Her team needed her.

The two before the head mage went down with relative ease with the full power of the Blue Lions against them. With the two thoroughly distracted, the Professor took it upon herself to deal with the mage breaking into the tomb.

A bright glow of orange caught Evy’s attention as the Professor used a new sword she’d somehow acquired to take down the leader.

“A Hero’s Relic.” Dimitri whispered, yanking his lance out of a mage. “But it’s missing the crest stone.”

“Relics can’t work without a crest stone.” Felix stated simply, also watching their professor with the glowing weapon.

Evy had heard of Hero’s Relics. Her father was in possession of one as well, that would be passed down to Quentin when he was King. Only two children possessed the Major Crest of Leighton: herself and her older brother Quen, but the relic was Quentin’s because he was the eldest.

Overall, only a few other Lions suffered minor injuries; a few small cuts here and there, a minor burn for poor Ashe. The Knights of Serios arrived once the battle was done. Some good that did them. Evy flexed her burning hand while the Professor and Dimitri went to speak to Lady Rhea about the battle.

“We need to get you two to Manuela.” Annette looked at Evy and Ashe who were both tending to their burns. Neither was very serious from the looks of them, more of a graze than anything, but still incredibly uncomfortable. Her skin felt as if she were holding it in flames.

“I’ll take he-them.” Felix volunteered. “Evy doesn’t know where the medic center is anyway.”

“I can take her.” Ashe spoke up, “I know where it is. And that way you don’t have to go out of your way.”

“Someone healthy should go with you. We don’t know how serious your injuries are. Next thing we know you could be lying face-down in a ditch.”

Ashe frowned at his metaphor, “But there are no dit-“

“Let’s go.” Felix pushed the injured pair forward, completely ignoring whatever Ashe was going to say. Thankfully Ashe was smart enough not to push the issue anymore once he saw that Felix’s mind was made up.

Behind them, watching them go, Ingrid gave Sylvain a confused look. Felix wasn’t one to openly volunteer to accompany the injured to Manuela. In fact, that was usually a task delegated to Mercedes since she enjoyed it. And Felix had never been one to take an interest in Ashe before. The two boys were so different in their ideals and future plans that they had almost nothing in common.

Sylvain was an expert in the field of Felix, however. He smirked at a suspicious Ingrid and suggested that everyone head upstairs, letting the Knights of Serios take care of the clean-up and disposal downstairs.

“You have blood on your face.” Felix stated, staring at Evy’s cheek. He took the sleeve of his shirt and moved to wipe it away, but she pulled back.

“No. It’s good luck.”

“To have blood on your face?”

She nodded, “It’s a Zelshire tradition. When you make your first kill of a battle, you wipe your enemy’s blood on your face. It’s a sign to your allies that you’re a worthy warrior and a sign to your enemies that you’re a fierce warrior.”

Ashe frowned at the tale, “That sounds…interesting.”

Evy shrugged. She could tell the boy was trying to be nice about it. Still, as odd as it was, it felt good to finally be able to participate in a part of her history.

“Are you dying?” Felix changed the subject, looking at her flaming red arm. Her armor/clothes was singed black from the earlier heat, a gaping hole where it had melted away and burned the skin. It looked angry and painful.

She, however, was determined not to look weak in front of the strongest boy in the class, “No, really I’m fine. It’ll be healed up in no time.”

He gave her a skeptical look but said nothing.

Silence was the main theme from Felix while Professor Manuela and a few other nurses tended to her and Ashe’s wounds. Evy tried not to cringe as Manuela peeled away the melted metal from her arm but she wasn’t always successful. Ashe looked away from it all, staring at the ceiling or the floor. On the few occasions he did watch Manuela, he was cringing for Evy. Felix, on the other hand, was dead silent, watching boredly as Manuela worked. She really wasn’t sure why Felix was still there. He’d fulfilled his duty of getting them to the medical center. There really wasn’t any more reason for him to stay.

Felix was also trying to figure out why he was staying or why he even volunteered in the first place. The words had tumbled out of his mouth before he even realized what the hell he was doing. There was…something…that made him want to tag along. A weird, tight sensation in his chest. Like he’d pulled a muscle…worry, he pinpointed. But why?

Evy was a nice sparring partner, but he also had the Professor to spar with if Evy wasn’t available. Though, truth be told, the Professor was often unavailable as well, her time being more and more precious. Maybe that’s why he was worried about Evy. Evy was now the only consistent training partner he had; the only other worthy training partner he had. That’s why he wanted to ensure her safety. If she was sick or hurt, she would no longer be able to spar with him and make him stronger. Yes, that had to be it.

“Alright, I think I got most of the metal out of the wound but come back tomorrow evening so I can redress the wound and be sure. No using the arm for 2-3 days until it’s healed better. I’ll send you back with some cream to help numb it while it heals.” Manuela instructed as she finished wrapping Evy’s arm. The dressings only exemplified the burning and pulsating she felt.

“Two to three days….” Felix whispered. That was a long time to go without training.

Evy glanced up at him with a sad half-smile. His chest clenched. “I’m sorry, Felix.”

“You’ll have to make it up to me by training twice as much when you’re healed.” He said simply. No room for negotiation.

“Deal.”

Except, it apparently was not a deal.

“Manuela cleared me for training today! Did you want to spar tonight?” She asked him after class a few days later, as she shoved her notes into her bag.

Felix hesitated, the first sign something was amiss. “I can’t tonight. I have…another commitment.”

Evy wasn’t sure what kind of commitments Felix had. He didn’t seem to really talk to anyone consistently, but she respected his privacy. “Oh, okay. Tomorrow then.”

“Maybe.”

That was not the answer she expected, but he strolled off before she could question it.

The next day was much the same.

“Are you free to train tonight?”

“Can’t tonight. Put off that paper for the Professor too long.”

“Ok.”

And the next.

“How about today?”

“Can’t today.”

“Ok.”

And the next.

“Are you free tonight for training?”

“No.”

And the next.

“No training?”

“Nope.”

Evy huffed, blowing a stray piece of hair out of her face. She wasn’t sure what Felix’s problem was. Knowing him, she’d thought he’d combust with a week of no training. That’s what Felix lived for.

“No, again?” Sylvain asked, making Evy jump. “Sorry.”

She shook her head, trying to calm her speeding heart. “It’s fine. Sorry. But yeah, no training. Not even an excuse this time. Just a no.”

“Wanna train with me? I’m no Felix, but I’m a body to swing at.” He winked at her with that damn cocky smirk he wore all the time.

“You know what? Why not? Gives me an excuse to knock you on your ass.” She winked back, grabbing her bag.

They walked into the training hall and Evy froze dead in her tracks. There in the hall, was a very familiar raven-haired boy sparing with Ingrid. He hesitated a second when he saw her, allowing Ingrid to get a good crack at him with her training lance before realizing he’d stopped. She turned to face Evy and Sylvain and looked between the pair who were clearly shocked to see one another. Ingrid tried to silently ask Sylvain for help, but Sylvain was only focused on Evy’s hurt face.

“Ouch.” Sylvain stated loudly, breaking his gaze from Evy to look at Felix.

Ouch wasn’t even half of it. Evy shook her head at Felix in disbelief. He’d lied to her. And for what?

Felix broke eye contact and rose his sword towards Ingrid, “Let’s keep going.”

And he didn’t even care. That asshole.

Evy turned on her heel and stormed out of the room before she did something she regretted. Felix watched her go, despite his words. His chest ached watching her storm out of the room. It was for the best though. He was a good battle partner, not a good life partner. Even she should’ve known that by now. It wasn’t his fault she was jealous about his new training partner.

“That was a real dick-move, Felix. And this is coming from a dude who intentionally breaks women’s hearts.”

“What was a dick move?” Ingrid asked, barely dodging a swipe from Felix. She wasn’t nearly as good as Evy, but it worked. It was obvious that Evy was upset at seeing her and Felix training, but why? Felix was allowed to have more than one training partner.

Before Felix could respond, Sylvain filled her in, “Evy’s been asking him to train all week and he’s been telling her he’s busy.”

“Because I’m training with you.” Felix added to save himself.

“But you ask me to train. Not the other way around. Why not train with Evy if she wants to train with you?”

“I want practice against someone who doesn’t use a sword.” Felix explained smoothly. He’d rehearsed this well and was glad it was going to plan.

Ingrid wasn’t exactly having it though. Ever the knight. “And you can’t just tell her that instead of lying to her and hurting her feelings?”

“It’s a lose-lose.” Felix muttered, still sticking to the script he’d rehearsed day after day in his head. “Either I tell her, and she’s upset, or I don’t, and she’s upset.”

“I don’t think so man.” Sylvain interjected again, “I think if you told her she would’ve respected that. She’s not unreasonable.”

Felix shrugged, knocking the lance from Ingrid’s hands, “Too late now.”

Ingrid stared at him in disbelief, and not because she’d lost, “You’re a real piece of work, Felix.”

“What? It is. I can’t go back and tell her now.”

Ingrid grabbed her lance and gestured for him to raise his sword, “Still. You hurt a friend and you don’t even care.” Ingrid shook her head, “Let’s go again. I’m knocking you on your ass for Evy.”

Said girl was currently storming back to her dorm room, hotter than hot. If Felix would’ve rather trained with Ingrid, why the hells couldn’t he just say that? Why couldn’t he man up and tell her that he wanted a different partner for a while or that he was tired of getting his ass kicked by her and his small-man ego needed a fucking break? But NOOOOO that’d be too easy! Big, bad Felix ‘fucking fight me’ Fraldarius couldn’t possibly use his words!! OH NO!

She slammed the door to her room, unintentionally, and tore off her day clothes to change into night ones. It was too early for bed, but she didn’t care. She was done with today. She could not think Princess-ly thoughts and therefore had to go to bed to cool off her mind. Or at least had to avoid people at all cost.

The next morning, she was much more collected. Mostly because she’d stayed up all night fuming and was exhausted.

On the bright side, she’d come to an important conclusion: if Felix didn’t want to train with her, he was not obligated to. There were plenty of other friends she could hang out with and train with. Plenty of other worthy candidates. Dimitri, for example, or Sylvain. If she could get the latter to stop flirting and start training that was….

Anyway, she didn’t need Felix. He clearly didn’t care about her or her feelings, so she wasn’t going to waste her time on his. And that was that.

She found Dimitri, Sylvain, and a few others at breakfast, including asshat Felix. Avoidance would be no use, so she sat down right in the middle of the group with a graceful smile. Much more graceful of one than she felt…hopefully anyway.

“Good morning Evy.” Dimitri greeted her. She nodded to him with a smile.

“So, Princess, where was my invite to your sparring matches?” Claude winked.

“Sorry, Claude. What kind of opponent would I be if I ran off to invite you after being challenged? Gotta keep up my reputation, you know?” She smirked back at him playfully. It was a shame she didn’t get to talk to Claude more. His personality was enjoyable to be around. Maybe he’d be a good spar partner.

“Back off, Claude. Princess is all mine.” Sylvain shot her a charming wink of his own, “By the way, you owe me a training session after you bailed on me yesterday.”

She felt her cheeks turn a light pink at his accusation. This wasn’t exactly how she wanted Claude’s impression of her to be, “You’re right. I apologize for my hasty behavior yesterday. Would you like to train tonight instead to make up for it? I’ll even let you win once.”

Her eyes found Felix’s further down the table, but her smile remained smooth and even. She didn’t care. She was over it. He’d found a better training partner for his limp ego.

“I would be honored.” Sylvain grinned. She wasn’t sure what antics he seemed to be up to but was glad she could release some pent-up frustration by swinging a sword.

“Woah, woah. If this guy gets to train with you then so do I.” Claude waved Sylvain off, “Sylvain doesn’t take training nearly as serious as me anyway. Can’t have Princess Leighton’s abilities suffering because of her partner.”

Sylvain took great (mock) offense to Claude’s words and playfully bickered with the house lead.

In class, Evy took Professor Byleth’s critics more seriously than she had the month before. With so much new information and experiences being thrown at her, it had been hard to focus. Now that she had time to adjust to life at the Monastery, and had the taste of real battle, she was ready to really hone-in. After all, her life very well depended on it.

“Adjust your stance, spread your legs apart just a touch more so they’re shoulder width. You’ll have better grounding that way and will be less likely to be knocked back prone if you take a hit.”

Evy tried to apply the correction while dodging an attack, something was much more difficult done than said. Especially when trying to focus on multiple things at once. The Professor knocked Evy’s blade with the hilt of her sword, causing Evy to stumble back a few steps before she regained her footing. “See? Better grounding helps prevent that. If this was a real battle I could’ve had my sword through your chest before you caught yourself.”

“Yes, Professor.” She agreed breathlessly. Training against the Professor was always a fantastic experience. Tiring, but she learned so much.

“Take a short break and get a drink. Dedue, let’s go over your axe work.”

Evy sheathed her sword and ran a hand through her damp hair. She felt disgusting being all sweaty. After grabbing some water from the jug they had in the training room, Evy patiently watched her classmates take their turn with Byleth. She’d found that even listening to the Professor’s critics of others could be a great learning opportunity.

On the adjacent wall, she found Felix’s eyes on her skull again. Never one to back down from a petty display of dominance, especially in front of this particular boy, she stared right back at him until he looked away. If he felt remorseful about what he did, he certainly didn’t show it. That was fine. He didn’t have to. She was over it.

Training with Sylvain was definitely not as intense or productive as training with Felix, but it was a great time. They even convinced Dimitri to join in for a three-way training battle. Then training got more product and more fun. Sylvain was more for joking than training, but Evy didn’t mind. She could train and he could joke at the same time.

“Shit!” Sylvain cursed when Evy knocked the lance from his grip. She smirked and turned her attention to Dimitri, going in for a hit when she was…attacked?

She squealed in surprise as Sylvain’s fingers ticked her sides from behind. “Quick, Your Highness! Go for the kill!”

“Syl-Sylvain!” Evy screeched through her bubbling laughter, dropping her sword and desperate clutching her sides to limit the surface area Sylvain could touch.

Dimitri looked downright confused, clearly unsure of what was appropriate at this time. Surely joining in would be a personal space violation…right?

Sylvain cared little about personal space violations. Evy soon fell to the floor, him on top of her, relentlessly tickling her sides and the spot where her neck met her shoulders.

“St-stop! P-p-please!” She begged, barely making the words out.

On the other half of the training hall, Felix caught his eyes wandering to the stupid trio. Ingrid noticed as well and momentarily ceased her attacks to question him when he perked up and bested her.

She sighed, picking up her lance, “You know, if you feel bad you should talk to her.”

“I don’t.”

“Really? You’ve been glancing at them since they got here.”

“Why don’t you focus more on your training and less on me. Maybe you’d actually win for once.” He snapped. Ingrid always thought Felix’s eye color made his angered looks even more terrifying as a kid, but now she found him less intimidating and more downright frustrating.

“If you’re going to stand there and insult me you can train alone.” She snapped back quickly. She was plenty used to Felix’s harsh words and had worked hard to turn his boil to a simmer, just like she tried to turn Sylvain’s hot to cool, and Dimitri’s darkness to light. More often than not, she looked at her boys and found her attempts fruitless.

Just like now. Felix was quickly boiling over, and what she thought was her taking the pot off the flame was really her adding grease to the fire. Her frustration at his lack of communication was getting the best of her. Clearly.

Felix apparently cared little whether or not he was frustrating her, just like he apparently cared little that he’d hurt Evy’s feelings. “If you’re too weak to handle criticism then perhaps you need another opponent.”

She opened her mouth to respond, to spout off on how she wasn’t weak and how he was really just an asshole, but instead she closed it and walked away. Nothing good would come from fighting his fire with more fire. Felix didn’t simmer that way.

“I’ll stop if you agree to go on a date with me.” Sylvain continued his bargain with Evy while Felix and Ingrid separated.

“Sylvain!” Dimitri finally intervened, “must you coerce her like that for a date? She is a Princess after all.”

“Exactly,” He stopped his attack on her sides to look at Dimitri, “I can’t use normal tactics on Evy, she’s immune. Gotta get creative.”

Evy hoisted her legs up and wrapped them around Sylvain’s neck, squeezing her ankles tightly together.

Dimitri chuckled in surprise while Sylvain coughed and grabbed at her legs.

“Tap out.” She instructed him to which he immediately responded by hitting the ground.

He rolled off of her and onto his back, coughing and rubbing his neck. Dimitri helped her up with a laugh, “That was impressive!”

“Gotta get creative.” She winked at Sylvain.

Felix’s boiling turned to a downright fissure.

“Hey, as long as I get that date I’m happy.”

Evy sighed. What the hell right? “Fine.”

“Oh com- wait, really?”

Evy broke out into another series of giggles at his surprise. Behind her, even Dimitri rose his eyebrows at her agreement. The girl shrugged, “Why not? I have nothing to lose but some self-respect right?”

“I can’t tell if that’s an insult to me or not.” His brow furrowed for a minute, but he quickly moved on and perked up, “Anyway, tomorrow night. You and me. You already agreed, so no backing out.”

“Can I tell you I’m busy but then go on a date with Dimitri instead?” Evy asked, clearly taking a jab at the swordsman across the training hall.

Sylvain busted out laughing, but Dimitri, who didn’t know the situation, was completely lost. Evy was agreeing to go on a date with Sylvain but then wanted to go on a date with…him? He didn’t think Evy had feelings for him that way. Besides, why would she agree to go on a date with Sylvain when she wanted to go on a date with him? He was so lost.

“No way, Evy. You agree to the date with Sylvain, you go on the date with Sylvain.”

Felix stopped mid swing. What did he just hear? Evy agreed to go on a date with Sylvain? She was going out with him?!

“Alright, alright. What time is this date of ours starting?”

“I’ll swing by and getcha at five.”

“I shall be ready.”

“Oh, you better be.”

Felix stomach twisted. The crest of Fraldarius activated and the training dummy was sliced clear in half.

Evy rose her eyes when she caught the tail end of Felix being so destructive. Guess he really had been training hard. Sylvain just smirked and stalked out of the room. Felix hot on his heels.

“Would you like to go again?” Evy asked Dimitri. Might as well get some real training in now that their distraction was gone. Dimitri happily accepted.

Felix was utilizing a different way of getting his anger out than his normal method: shouting.

“What the fuck was that?” He shoved Sylvain around and got in his face. Sylvain and Felix had talked about Felix’s feelings for Evyanna, on multiple occasions. And now he had the nerve to go after her for himself?

Sylvain, naturally, played stupid. He gave Felix a mock look of confusion, tilting his head to the side for good measure, “I’m not sure what you mean, Felix?”

“You know damn well what I’m talking about.”

Sylvain ‘thought’ for a moment and then shook his head, “Nope. Pretty sure I don’t know.”

Felix rubbed the bridge of his nose. His patience with the redhead was quickly waning. “Your evening plans for tomorrow?”

“What about them?”

The shorter man threw his hands up, “You’re going out with Evy you asshole!”

Sylvain shrugged, “You’re not dating her are you?”

Felix stopped short before more anger could spew from his mouth, “W-well…no.” He knew exactly where Sylvain was going with this conversation.

“Okay. And you said you weren’t going to act on your feelings, right?”

“…yeah.”

“So, there’s no reason I can’t go out with her. If you’re not going to enjoy Evy then I might as well.”

Felix huffed. He supposed he’d rather see her with Sylvain than with someone awful like the boar. The worst thing Sylvain was going to do was get bored of her. And even Evy was smart enough to know that, so she wouldn’t think much of it. “Fine. But if you hurt her, I’ll kill you.”

“Whatever Felix.”

Evy, for her part, was also a bit surprised she was going out with Sylvain on a date. She wasn’t sure what compelled her to say yes. Maybe the fact that she was having a hard time finding a training partner lately. Not that she’d admit that to Felix.

Really, not having a training partner was an awful excuse for skipping off to go on a date. Was she going to skip training every time she couldn’t train with Dimitri? If that was going to be the case she’d hardly ever get training in. She loved Dima but being Prince and House Leader meant that he a bunch of responsibilities that kept him away quite often. She couldn’t imagine having to be him and dealing with those kinds of things. Her mind went to Quen – training to be King. She’d hardly ever saw Quen when he’d come back from Garreg Mach and started his future Kingly duties. He was always in meetings or doing paperwork or, or, or…. She felt bad for his future wife and children. It would be hard to catch him.

Even though she knew Quen’s job was immensely important, she didn’t envy him. She was glad to have been born a spare. It gave her a lovely bit of freedom. Like the freedom to go out with Sylvain. Why she chose Sylvain of all people…to be seen.

Her girlfriends were certainly surprised when she told them she was going to go on a date with the skirt-chaser. None of them downcast the idea, Sylvain was their friend too, but they certainly had questions as to why. He and Evy weren’t that similar. Sylvain was constantly slacking on training, never taking his work very serious; constantly making light and jokes of situations even when they were really quite serious.

Evy was dutiful trainer and worker (much more like Felix than Sylvain) and had common noble sense to take her duties and the issues surrounding respective territories and regions seriously. As a noble, it was her who needed to make the changes necessary to provide a better life for her people. She was mature and full of reason.

Still, they did not discourage her. Instead, they asked what they were going to do, what she was going to wear, etc. Annette and Mercedes offered to help her with her hair and makeup for the occasion. Ingrid was not interested in such things and kept her distance from the gushing over such matters.

Being that Evy had no idea what the plan was, it was difficult to determine what she should wear or what hairstyle to wear. The Verdant Moon meant that it was still warm during the day, but temperatures started turning chillier at night. Because of this, she opted for a lighter dress with long sleeves. Her arms were more susceptible to the chill than her legs she’d found.

Mercedes and Annette worked to plait her hair. They started with just small sections and then worked the small braids into the larger French braid along with the rest of her hair. It was simple, but still elegant enough for a nice event if that’s what Sylvain had in mind.

Right on time, he knocked on her door at 5. He looked…lovely. He too had opted for casual elegance, which made Evy feel much better about her own choice of dress.

“Wow…you look great.” Sylvain complemented her, taking her right hand to kiss her knuckles as royal greeting protocol dictated. Had she been with her father, the King, he should’ve dropped to a knee to greet her, but on her own, a bow and a kiss to the hand was perfectly acceptable.

She felt a small blush coat her cheeks, “Thank you. You clean up rather nicely.”

“Hey, when you take a Princess on a date you gotta look nice.” Sylvain brushed her off, “Are you comfortable walking to town? I got a few things planned down there if you’re up for it.”

“Of course! What did you have in mind?”

He offered her his arm, which she took, as they walked down the dormitory hallway. “Well, I figured we could- hey Felix, what are you doing up here?”

Felix blinked a few times as if he were trying to register what Sylvain was saying to him, “I, uh, needed to finish my homework up that’s due tomorrow.” The swordsman rubbed the back of neck and pushed past Sylvain.

“Good talk.” Sylvain joked with a chuckle, “Anyway, as I was saying, I thought I’d take you out to dinner and then I know this nice little path….”

Felix knew Sylvain was still talking to Evy about their ‘date plans’ but Felix couldn’t listen anymore. He slammed the door to his room and locked it. More for anyone else’s safety than his own. Goddess help the poor person who attempted to disturb him right now. An emotionally conflicted Felix was a dangerous Felix.

He was quickly realizing that he wanted his cake and to eat it too. Not actually, because cake, among other sweets, was not appetizing, but figuratively. He didn’t want to be in a relationship with Evy. He didn’t want the commitment or emotional baggage that came with relationships. He didn’t want to have feelings for her.

At the same time…he didn’t want anyone else to have feelings for her either. He didn’t want the other fools at the Monastery to take her out. None of them were good enough for her, not even Sylvain. Sylvain was reckless, a slacker, and had probably fucked every woman in the place. Why would Evy want to date someone like that? He was practically…Felix’s opposite.

Dear Goddess...She was going on a date with Felix’s opposite.

#felix hugo fraldarius #felix x oc #felix fraldarius #powerandgrace #chapter two

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emmybluefire · 6 years ago

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Accounting for Powerful Characters in RP Events

Story Time

So, towards the last couple hours of my shift at work, a rather concerning thought occurred to me:

“I roleplay a dragon for a reason. But every time I enter the city, or attend an RP event, I’m not allowed to use it. Period. At this point... I might as well be playing a generic mage. That kinda sucks...”

And to be honest? I got a bit angry about it. To the degree that I even started verbally ranting about it to myself in the form of mutters. I just sat there asking myself: Why? Why is it that whenever I enter a RP event, I can’t play my character to the fullest extent? I’ve worked so hard to balance out them out. To make them fun, make them memorable... and yet, people still have yet to get the full experience.

Dilemma

Every time I try to cast something like “Spellsteal” or “Counterspell” or even use the most basic of dragon abilities: “Dragon’s breath” I’m told “No. No, you can’t because it’d solve the problems in the event too quick! And it would be very unfair to others!” It’s almost like people just- don’t account for powerful characters. Ever. No, that would make things “Too Complicated” or “Too Easy.”

But that’s when this thought occurred to me: “Powerful characters being ‘too special’ and ‘A sign of bad RP’ and ‘A red flag that indicates an asshole player’: These thoughts have been so ingrained in our collective server conscious for so long that even guilds who say they’re alright with powerful characters still don’t account for them in their events.”

This often leads to someone having to constantly annoy the DM asking: “Hey. Is this okay? Can I do this or would it be too much?” and detract from the RP at large. And let me tell you, that’s not fun at all. You feel bad for annoying the DM, and the DM winds up constantly distracted from actually running the event. That needs to change.

Disclaimer

Now, before I get too far into this: I would like to say I understand the opposing argument. One character being more powerful than the others would, In fact, make things unfair to other players. It could, in fact, make things too easy. A character that can solve a complex problem with one spell does tend to remove the challenge the DM worked so hard to develop all too quickly. Games like D&D, 5e especially, face this challenge all to often once the characters get to certain high levels. It’s a problem so many people are unsure how to tackle. At least, in a conventional setting...

On one hand: You need to let your characters play true to how they would. On the other: It really sucks when your hard work is surpassed so easily. Many DMs are unsure what to do, and so leave things as is, and silently vent to their closest friends in the background afterward.

My post today isn’t here to argue against this argument. My post today is here to offer potential solutions to these dilemmas all DM’s and event runners face every day. So, without further Ado: “How to Account for Powerful Characters.”

“Flex Raiding”

This one is my first and foremost solution. The one that I, as a DM or Event runner, would personally turn to as my first solution. In MMOrpgs like “World of Warcraft” , the RP environment is so diverse, vast, and random that it’s rather hard to cater to everyone’s preferences. You have people who like playing silly mundane characters like Old Men, Young Warriors, Book Binders, or even just your average run of the mill Civilian Drunk. But in the same environment you also have people who like to play more grandiose characters like Grand Archmages, Grizzled War Veterans, Elemental Lords, Dragons, and things like that. Sometimes more than one pour into the same pot, so to speak. So when you run a guild or dungeon group that contain characters from all ends of the spectrum, it’s hard to find one particular “Rolling System” that would accommodate for all of those and have it still be fair.

My solution? Don’t. Instead, here’s what you can do:

In some MMOrpgs, there’s a mechanic called “Flex Raiding” , it’s when the raid or dungeon scales to the number of players doing it at once, and the levels of each player’s character. One can, in some ways, apply this same principle to roleplay events.

Write a version of the event that would come to being if your entire group consists of “Powerful Characters” , A version of the event for when your group consists of just “Mundane Characters”, and a version for when you have a mix of both. It doesn’t have to (And shouldn’t) just be: Army faces hoard, and bellows into them head on.

This can manifest in ways such as: Your antagonists anticipated facing powerful characters, and prepared accordingly. Perhaps they tamed large, hulking creatures from the deep, and placed them among their ranks to aid the hundreds of soldiers. The powerful characters must focus on them to succeed, while the mundane characters keep the armies busy. Or perhaps they managed to cast a large defensive spell that makes it hard for even the most powerful characters to enter, and the mundane must find creative, mechanical ways, like siege engines, to get past it.

Your antagonists trapped the protagonists, and now the soldiers must defend the casters for as long as they can while they pool their powers together. Encounter ends once the casters succeed in casting a very large, devastating spell that annihilates all enemies around them, or the soldiers fail to defend the casters, and must retreat.

Or perhaps it is just a generic battlefield scenario, and all you have are the mundane characters to appose them. The limit for this is truthfully the sky. Your imagination. BE CREATIVE WITH YOUR ENCOUNTERS!

You prepare accordingly, and you’ll be able to run an event where everyone is able to play their part, and their character to the fullest extent. The downsides to this obviously are the level of preparation you have to do in order to make a viable “Flex Raid” ... and obviously the complexity. But if you get used to doing this, it’ll become much easier than it sounds.

Share the Spotlight

All (Well Written) Characters have strengths and weaknesses. Even the most powerful ones. All characters are an aspect of the player’s creativity. Everyone knows that. You could have a really powerful archmage, but they have a crippling phobia of rats. That very same powerful archmage could also be a ritualist caster, meaning that their really powerful spells take time to cast, taking them out of some attack rounds. Without that time, they’re just a generic mage. Little things like that. Of course I’m describing my own character here, but in that situation, your other party members could very much help you out.

You enter a dungeon that’s infested with rats, and now the archmage is too shaken up to cast. In that situation, the spotlight would turn to the druid who’s able to talk to said rats and remove them from the scene, while one of the more soft-spoken characters work to snap the archmage out of it.

The warrior suddenly finds himself in the middle of an enemy tavern after failing at a stealth roll. At this point, the spotlight would shift to the bard and rogue who’d step in and form a charming distraction or convincing lie to make the patrons look the other way.

The party is asked to come up with battle plans for the impending war ahead but none have any idea how. All, save, for the warrior. He’s fought in wars before. Hell, he was once a general! He knows how to do this. The spotlight shifts to him as he lays his hands over the map and is very quickly able to find a choke point to slaughter the enemy from.

The party is surrounded by a hoard of encroaching goblins, and all seems lost. But at the last second, their draconic ally catches up to the rest of the group and bellows a large cyclone of flame onto the unsuspecting hoard. The spotlight then shifts to the dragon as the party now has an opening to escape their predicament.

Little things like that would help to make roleplay events far more dynamic, all inclusive, and fun for everyone involved. Powerful, OR mundane. Sharing the spotlight with everyone, gives everyone a chance to shine in one way or another. The downside to this one: Depending on the nature the groups you play with, this may require quite a bit of improvisation. But if you’re good at that? Well, what the hell is stopping you? XD

Creative Bosses

Ah yes. The Classic boss. The biggest, toughest, most badass motherfucker in the entire antagonist group. Perhaps even the one leading them all too. I mean, it is in their title right? “The Boss” Well, here’s the thing. MMOrpgs and turn based RPGs often execute them in a way that: “We need a bigger challenge? How do we do that... hmmm.. MORE HEALTH OF COURSE!” ... This, my friends, is a mistake. Especially when there’s much more powerful characters in the group you’re running with. Said characters would, “realistically” just melt through that ungodly amount of health.

All adding more health to a boss does is create conflict among a group, and prolong an event for far longer than it should be. Come on guys. We all have lives, we cant spend ten hours a week of it playing through an event that gets almost nowhere. Instead, what I’d suggest is to consider the following questions:

-“What makes this ‘boss’, the boss?”

-“What is happening to them that’s making them so impossibly powerful? Can it be stopped? How do you get around it?”

-“Does ‘power’ always have to mean magical ability?”

-“Do they utilize all the resources at their disposal? What’s stopping them form doing so if not?”

Considering these, and applying the answers to your “boss” makes them much more interesting and dynamic. It gives the players something to strive for, something to work together on as a group to figure out and take advantage of.

Your boss could just be a normal human war general, but who’s power come’s from his political influence and the men he has at his disposal. This makes the players strive to expose his corruption and unseat him from his political standing. The men at his disposal could also make it difficult to get to him as well. Get past those obstacles, and suddenly he just becomes a normal human that can be overpowered and arrested just like any other.

Your boss could also be a young, power-hungry elven sorcerer who’s only been studying for about a decade. But in that decade he somehow came across forbidden lore and is now attempting to conduct a ritual that makes him physically invincible. The players could find out about this and find him in the middle of this ritual. To stop the ritual and take away his invincibility, you can’t just cast a “Spellsteal”. The overwhelming power of such magic would tear anyone apart without proper anchoring. So to stop him, you have to destroy his ritual components and the magical crystals he’s siphoning from while he tries to stop you. The boss fight, at that point, would just be avoiding his attacks and his minions until you shatter all the crystals, and the ritual itself is the thing that destroy’s him. Not you.

Conclusion

Accounting for powerful characters, when done right, can be just as hard as it is fun and dynamic. All it requires is, if you’re willing to have a powerful character in the group, is to mold the event accordingly, and work to understand the strengths and weakness of each member. If they don’t show up then have a backup writ on hand for the non-powerful characters. It just takes a bit of care and consideration. I suppose the TL;DR to take away from all of this is: Be creative, consider the circumstances, and create rolls each character in your party has a chance to fulfill. That way nobody feels left out, or held back.

Thank you all so much for reading. As you can tell, I did a lot of thinking into this. I’m open to discussion, and questions should anybody have some. But overall, I feel I’ve said all I need. After all, the goal of this post wasn’t to tell you--step by step--how to account for a powerful character. Just ideas and suggestions to guide you on your way to greatness! ... Being over-dramatic of course XD. But yes. All of you, have a good day or night wherever you may be!

#wow #rp #roleplay #power playing #accounting for powerful characters #discussion #ideas #suggestions #world of warcraft #dungeons and dragons #table top

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gammaprimesmw · 4 years ago

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TRANSFORMERS FANFIC - SEPARATION Pt. 1

I started this sometime in 2019 as a sort of backstory for a pair of Transformers characters I brought into a mass-crossover roleplay server on Discord. It's loosely based on the continuity of my ill-fated Transformers Genesis fic, but it exists within its own micro-continuity. Any future fics I write will likely either be set in a micro-continuity of my own making or tentatively set in an official one.

For at least two million years, a brutal civil war had been raging on the distant planet of Cybertron. What began as a coup d'état launched by what was once a mere terrorist organization has since escalated into a planet-wide battle between the planet's new, dictatorial regime and a dwindling band of freedom fighters led by the bearer of what was once seen as the symbol of office for the planet's true leader. This small band of rebels would come to call themselves the Autobots, and the oppressive regime they sought to topple would become known as the Decepticons.

"How exactly are we gonna get off this planet, Prime?" asked a warrior in the form of a teal ground vehicle resembling a classic sports car. "Even a single space-capable scout couldn't make it past that Decepticon blockade."

"Dash's got a point, boss-bot," added a white and blue vehicle driving alongside the Autobot convoy. "That blockade's coverin' the planet like an Insecticon swarm on an Energon crystal."

"During the Age of Colonization, eons before this war began, Cybertronian engineers developed technology that would allow us to travel across the stars without need of spacecraft," replied the heavy red, silver, and blue vehicle leading the group. "The only terminal of this 'SpaceBridge' has, thus far, survived the ravages of war."

"Even if such a thing works, are you really plannin' to just flee the planet?" asked a sturdy-looking red vehicle with maize-colored accents. "This is our home, Prime! We can't just give up on it!"

"Ironhide, I have no desire to simply surrender this planet," the one called Prime replied. "Though I do intend for us to relocate, I do not intend to surrender. We will fight on, but our prospects for victory are grim should we remain here. We will establish an off-world base from which to retake Cybertron. In so doing, perhaps we will re-establish contact with the lost Cybertronian Colonies."

"With all due respect, Optimus, can we really be sure that the SpaceBridge will work as intended?" asked a white and red medical vehicle. "It hasn't been used in four million years."

"Ancient Cybertronian technology is astonishingly resilient, Ratchet. Were I uncertain of the SpaceBridge's functionality, I would not have informed Prime of its existence, nor would I have provided the coordinates of its location."

While the Autobots continued their trek to the ancient SpaceBridge Terminal, Megatron, leader of the Decepticons, watched them from his throne room in the city of Kaon, smirking as he did so. "So...the Autobots are still trying to escape the inevitable," he said to himself before turning to face a powerful dark blue and white robot who was manning the nearby computer terminal. "Has their destination been calculated, Soundwave?"

"Affirmative, Lord Megatron," the faceless technician droned.

"Excellent. Deploy the nearest Eradicon squad," the powerful Decepticon leader commanded as he rose from his throne. "I shall join them. In the meantime, Shockwave is in command of this fortress."

"Fear not, Lord Megatron," a purple, cycloptic robot replied with a salute. "Kaon shall remain as you leave it."

"I have the utmost faith that it will, Shockwave. You seldom disappoint," Megatron commented before transforming into a vehicle resembling a dual-rotor helicopter with a large cannon mounted on its underside before flying off toward the Autobots' location.

“Autobots, alert,” announced a flyer in the form of a gray and maize UAV-like vehicle. “Skybolt is detecting incoming Eradicon units.”

The word ‘Eradicon’ immediately brought about an uneasy feeling among all the Autobots. It wasn’t because they feared these Decepticon shock troopers though. It was because of what they were: former Autobots and Cybertron civilians that had been subjected to Spark extraction and, when necessary, modifications to make them more combat-capable. Each one was governed by a Teletraan-Class Artificial Intelligence that was completely subservient to Megatron. Because these drones were once friends, it was particularly hard for the Autobots to fight against them. Even the steely Optimus Prime would falter somewhat when being confronted with them.

One Eradicon in the form of a bulldozer-type vehicle transformed and fired on Dashlane and Jazz, who responded by transforming themselves and drawing their weapons. The cool-headed white and blue warrior fired a couple shots at the Eradicon, who blocked them with the half of its shovel that was attached to its right forearm. Dashlane, meanwhile, was a bit more hesitant to fire, recognizing this now mindless drone as his former mentor Landmine. He briefly flashed back to his last moments with the elder Autobot as he was being dragged away by Shockwave’s minions before shaking the memory away and firing. He, like the others, had to remember that these things were no longer their friends.

Skybolt, meanwhile, had not been sentient long enough to truly understand the emotional connections his comrades had with the Sparks that once occupied the Eradicons’ shells. He scanned the Landmine Eradicon for a weakness, eventually pinpointing one on his lower back and firing a missile into it, sending the drone falling forward as Dashlane and Jazz backed away. “You’re lucky, kid,” Dashlane commented before taking a deep breath and shooting the Landmine Eradicon in the back of the head. “Fighting these things doesn’t take the kinda toll on you that it does on us.”

“Skybolt is unfamiliar with Eradicon Units’ previous identities,” the flyer replied, his voice largely monotone.

“Like I said, you’re lucky. You have the good fortune of not knowing these guys as your friends,” the teal warrior said with a sigh before aiming in the direction of more approaching Eradicons. One of these took the form of a black and red moped that looked as though it had additional weapons and parts grafted onto it that were never originally intended to be there. This moped transformed into an equally patched-together robot, which scanned the Autobots in front of it before locking onto Skybolt. “Vulnerability detected,” it announced before being tackled by Dashlane. “Not that you’re gonna get the chance to exploit it, buddy,” the warrior growled before shooting the drone in the face. “I’m not about to let the ‘Cons turn him into another science project like you.” He fired again, aiming for the Eradicon’s chest this time and blasting a hole through the original armor that was not covered by the grafts. “Hate to do this to something that was once somebody’s friend.” he sighed before picking the drone up and hurling him at his fellow Eradicon, who simply blasted him away before aiming its weapon at Ironhide and Ratchet and charging up for another blast. Optimus, who was directly in front of them, transformed into his robot mode, performing a backflip over his companions as he did so. He then proceeded to hold his Energon Axe in front of his chest to shield himself from the brunt of the blast.

“Wheeljack! Perceptor! Proceed to the SpaceBridge and activate it. Jazz, Ironhide, Skybolt, and Dashlane will cover you.” the Prime ordered before jumping into the air and bringing his weapon down on the Eradicon, slicing it in half before returning it to his Subspace Storage Pocket and staring down at the remains of what was once an innocent civilian. “I derive no pleasure in having to desecrate your now Sparkless husk.” he remarked sadly before looking up. “This war must be ended...before other innocents are subjected to the same fate,” he continued, his optics narrowing as he heard a familiar pair of helicopter rotors. “Megatron must be stopped…”

While Optimus prepared to face his approaching nemesis, Wheeljack, Perceptor, and those assigned to cover them continued to make their way to the SpaceBridge, remaining in robot mode with weapons drawn as they did so. Soon enough, they would hear the screech of approaching jet engines as a group of Seekers swooped down and opened fire. Ironhide, having the toughest armor of the group, positioned himself to take any shots being aimed at the two scientists he had been asked to cover. “You two git to the control panel an’ try to git that SpaceBridge online! The rest o’ us’ll deal with these Decepti-Creeps!” the red warrior barked before firing on the gray and red Seeker leading the group. The other Seekers would break away from the formation to attack the other Autobots.

Dashlane backed out of the way as one of the Seekers, who was decked out in a black, red, and silver color scheme, attempted to dive-bomb him. The Seeker transformed into his robot mode before crashing into the ground and glared at the teal Autobot before drawing an Energon Sword.

"Nightshade, It's been a while. I guess your boss finally decided to hide behind bots who aren't just mindless drones."

"Heh...I see we are in agreement regarding Starscream's cowardice and seeming inability to learn from past mistakes," Nightshade responded. "Of course, this does not equate to a potential alliance, Autobot."

The Seeker charged forward, using his blade to block Dashlane's plasma blasts before leaping upward for an aerial slash attack.

Dashlane slid out of the way before the enemy's blade could make contact with its intended target, avoiding being completely bisected but still losing his right shoulder pad. He gritted his teeth, inwardly thanking Primus that his whole arm wasn't severed as he took aim and rapid-fired several plasma bursts into the junction between the Decepticon's torso and right shoulder. While not doing as much damage as a charged shot, these bursts did push Nightshade backwards as they hit, eventually pushing him into a nearby light post. Dashlane would follow this up by charging at the Seeker swordsman while charging up for another shot, which he would fire point blank while punching him in the same junction he had weakened with his previous shots.

"You're braver than Starscream. That's for sure," the Autobot smirked. "He'd turn tail-rudder and fly by now."

"Indeed, and that is precisely why I am more deserving of the position of Seeker Commander. That, and I am far more loyal to Lord GAH!"

The boastful Seeker's comment was interrupted by a sharp pain as a missile struck him from behind, blowing off his left wing upon detonation. Nightshade growled before turning to face his new assailant. "Skybolt, I presume?"

"Affirmative, Decepticon Warrior Nightshade."

"I did not anticipate such underhanded tactics from a glorified Teletraan Backup Module. You would make an excellent Decepticon. I will be sure to inform Lord Megatron of your accomplishment. He could use more competent--"

This time, Dashlane interrupted Nightshade's long-winded speech by delivering a powerful punch to the Decepticon's face.

"Mute it, motormouth! Sky's not about to become a 'Con!" Dashlane countered before delivering another punch that knocked his opponent down.

Skybolt, meanwhile, picked up Nightshade's discarded sword and studied it for a bit before activating it to block a barrage of laser fire from a cackling Seeker in navy and white with gold accents.

"Decepticon Warrior Triggerhappy, why are you still permitted to engage in combat?" Skybolt asked, making a perhaps feeble attempt to taunt the crazed Decepticon the way his mentor would.

"Uhh....'Cause I can blast you into spare parts!" Triggerhappy replied before cackling and unleashing another wild hailstorm of blasts, doing more damage to the surrounding environment than any of his targets.

"Maybe you could if you paid more attention to your targets than the sound of your weapons," Dashlane smirked before transforming into vehicle mode and driving toward a trio of incoming Seeker Drones, causing Triggerhappy to fire on them while attempting to blast him.

"Alert! Ally fire," one of the drones announced in the usual monotone before one of the stray shots hit its wing and caused it to crash. Dashlane swerved out of the way as the downed drone crashed into the road, destroying the guard rails as the impact caused it to explode.

Triggerhappy growled in annoyance. "Stupid Autobot! You made me blast one of our drones!"

While the warriors continued to battle the Seekers, both Sparked and drone, Perceptor and Wheeljack worked together to get the SpaceBridge terminal online.

"SpaceBridge control system interface successful," came the pleasant, but fairly monotonous, voice of Teletraan 1 through a speaker on the control panel. "Diagnostic commencing."

Both scientists waited patiently while their base computer AI scanned the SpaceBridge's systems, their expressions turning from excited to concerned as a maniacal cackle sounded in the distance and was followed by an approaching jet engine.

"Oh scrap....Triggerhappy," Wheeljack groaned.

"Your concern is indeed warranted, Wheeljack," Perceptor spoke in agreement. "While his targeting skills may be questionable, his propensity for collateral damage is not."

"I think I know what you mean, Percy," Dashlane replied after returning to his robot mode and firing a charged shot on Triggerhappy's left wing. Skybolt, meanwhile, watched for a bit while accessing his memories regarding Nightshade's swordplay techniques. It didn't take too long for him to settle on one that seemed like it would be effective: The Aerial Slash. All the while, though, Triggerhappy continued to spray ammunition everywhere, with one of his stray shots hitting Skybolt before he could perform the technique.

Another stray shot, meanwhile, struck the SpaceBridge control panel just as a portal was opening. This stray blast managed to strike vital control systems on impact, causing Perceptor's optics to widen with a sense of worry that bordered on a mild panic. Teletraan's words only heightened the scientist's anxiety.

"Alert! Destination control failure. Wormhole magnitude extending beyond acceptable limits."

Dashlane and Skybolt, who were closest to the terminal, soon felt themselves being pulled toward the open portal.

"Skybolt! Dashlane! You must make a concerted effort to escape the vortex before its yield increases...if possible," Perceptor instructed.

Dashlane and Skybolt both attempted to transform, figuring they'd have a better change with the increased speed of their alternate modes.

"Skybolt is...unable to...transform....Maximum speed....is limited."

"You and me both....kid."

"Perceptor, any idea where those two are gonna end up?" Wheeljack asked as he watched his friends' futile attempts to escape the increasingly powerful pull of the destabilizing wormhole.

"The SpaceBridge portal has grown dangerously unstable. In its current state, its endpoint is impossible to determine. Given the exponentially increasing level of subspace distortion, there is a probability of interdimensional transport that further complicates their current situation."

"Gah....Can't that bot explain things in a way that the less scientifically-inclined can understand?" Dashlane asked out loud before being pulled through the vortex, disappearing to parts unknown.

"Oh no! Dashlane! Perceptor, we gotta shut this thing down!"

"Agreed, Wheeljack. If it is allowed to remain open, it will further destabilize," the red-hued scientist said while trying to remain upright as the ground beneath him began to shake. "It's already adversely affecting the structural integrity of this facility."

"Critical alert! Energon conduit overload detected," Teletraan announced as Skybolt was pulled into the portal. "Detonation imminent."

"Scrap! We gotta roll," Wheeljack called out as he transformed into his white, red, and green racer mode and revved his engine. Perceptor soon followed suit, assuming the form of a halftrack scientific research vehicle. Both quickly accelerated to top speed and drove away as the building housing the terminal collapsed further.

"I don't think the other bots are gonna like this," Wheeljack said with a heavy sigh. "The SpaceBridge is scrap, and Dashlane and Skybolt are missing."

"Indeed. It will be imperative that we concentrate all efforts on their retrieval, as well as securing an alternative means of relocation. For the moment, the latter objective seems far more viable."

"If I can get that Vanguard Class Deep Space Transport we found up and running...and retrofitted for combat, we might be able to at least start looking for our future offworld base."

"Given your history of assigning simple, yet intuitive designations for your scientific endeavors, it would not be illogical to assume you have done so for this project."

Wheeljack chuckled, allowing Perceptor's words to distract him from his worries about Dashlane and Skybolt. "You know me all too well, Percy. I call it 'The Ark.'"

"Again...Simple, yet appropriate. Perhaps if...fate...is in our favor, we will locate our friends....and they will be online and well. Yes, I am well aware of how patently unscientific my previous statement was, but...I want to hope."

"Yeah. It's a good thing you didn't delete your emotions the way Shockwave did."

"If taking such an action would result in a similar abandonment of scientific ethic on my part, it is not one I'd ever be willing to take."

TO BE CONTINUED...

#Transformers #fanfic #writing #youtube

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lupine-publishers-sjpbs · 4 years ago

Text

Lupine Publishers | Usa Facing to Challenge for the Future: Domination or Cooperation? the Final Choice

Abstract

The path we have attempted to describe briefly in the previous pages shows the evolution of a society that no longer seems able to make head or tail of what is going on in a moment of great difficulty. An incredulous society faced with facts it fails to understand but that it seems incapable of questioning. It remains locked in an ideological impasse between the return to ancient glories and ostentation of the past, and the idea that instead a new road must be found at the end of a journey that has come to a dead-end. So it is driven towards a form of “compulsion to repeat in a regressive manner”. In 1949 British historian A. J. Toynbee in his book entitled Civilization on Trial made the point that an individual’s character (and I would say also human society’s) is always forged by having to face setbacks and obstacles. However, the toughest situations are those that arise in the middle of fortunate, prosperous periods that people fatuously believe can never end. In such situations people, fighting with destiny, give in to the temptation of looking for scapegoats who will bear the burden of their own incompetence. But trying to saddle someone else with one’s own responsibilities in hard times is even more dangerous than believing in everlasting prosperity. Toynbee postulated that the real challenge at that time came from Western society’s enormous technical progress that made it the master of non-human nature. It was indeed this magnificent advance in the knowledge of “secrets” that had illuded the past generation to the point of daydreaming that conveniently history had come full circle [1-4]. The extremely perspicacious Toynbee already saw the risk of a decline of our society. Much water has passed under the bridge of history, but his considerations have indeed been borne out, also as regards the role of Asia in terms of global domination. In fact in his posthumous work Mankind and Mother Earth Toynbee already saw that Western Europe had lost its leading role to the United States. Having said this he believed that American supremacy would not last longer than that of the Mongol Empire a mere two generations! Looking ahead, he felt that it was quite likely that leadership in the future would pass from America to East Asia [5,6]. Today we are facing a new chapter in history, one in which the United States must try to map out the role it intends to play. Whether this will be oriented towards a dangerous hegemony or possibly will experiment a role that is more oriented towards promoting cooperation. As the great Bard wrote -‘To be or not to be: that is the question’. For the very first time after the collapse of the Soviet empire, the United States is faced with a new situation. It no longer has a well-defined enemy as the USSR had been; it is no longer the world’s only power as has been the case for the past twenty years; it can no longer play a dominant role, because its very own history means that its cultural model is now open to debate. It seems unsure of which role to play: one of continuity with the past twenty years or one more oriented towards the legitimation of a position focused on reducing global tensions [6-12].

Introduction

This doubt sums up the country’s dilemma. On the one hand Obama is in favour of a constructive dialogue, one not only based on military power. On the other hand his political opponents consider this to be a sign of weakness, they want the US to continue to play the dominant yet disastrous role embarked on in the Bush era. But times have changed and this position is no longer tenable. The Republicans’ deep-rooted cultural model has led them to believe they are omnipotent, making Obama’s rivals incapable of learning history’s lesson and turning over a new leaf [13]. To think that America’s first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, in the middle of an extremely stormy period reminded Americans that: ‘The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion [14-17]. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country’ Figure 1. The history of the United States and the cultural model that has asserted itself has been primed by the unjustified idea of infinite technical progress. It has adopted technical knowledge as being the basis for unquestionable moral guidance. Whereas an awareness of the limits of that model could well bring down the castle of dreams of unlimited success on which it is based [18].

Figure 1: The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational min.

Dramatically, the USA has illuded itself that the time of omnipotence never ends, a mistake the ancient Romans also made, and that the sun could be halted at the zenith indefinitely without even pronouncing Joshua’s password. However, as the tenth chapter of the book of Joshua says: ‘And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the Lord harkened unto the voice of a man [...]’. So requests like the one above stand even less chance of being heard. Unrestrained liberalism without moral rules has ended up by eroding US society, instead it must be relaunched by such rules to achieve a social cohesion capable of reconstructing a foundation of shared values. This is the first problem, because if the US fails to question its social and economic model it will never manage to understand the new role that the march of history is asking it to play. Or it manages to question its unequal society or it becomes extremely difficult to understand what role a great power like the USA can possibly have in a globalized world. Also Ortega Gasset highlights how coming face to face with suffering and a new awareness this provokes is decisive in order to rethink the sense of human society and solidarity. The United States cannot set itself up as the champion of world social values before experiencing suffering as a result of becoming aware of its own unequal, sick society that, if left to its own devices, could well end up losing itself. The Obama presidency has tried to propose a new model, the right one [19]. But this change questions those wellestablished powers that control the media and that, opposed to this action, weaken it and make it more difficult. In a country where 19% of the population find it difficult to read and understand a newspaper article, media communication becomes a difficult tool to fight against. The dominant approach seen in past years is deeply engrained in a highly oligarchic society that wants to maintain its position in spite of a society that is weakening at the base. It has pursued this course by always displaying a military force for which the USA spends 50% of global military expenditure. But even the armed forces are showing signs of weakness given that the number of suicides is sometimes higher than those who die in battle [20].

This choice has led to other countries rearming for instance, Russia and China have started to spend on weaponry again. And while Russia has lost power its nuclear arsenal still remains intact. Other levers used to exercise its dominant power have been to extend US models of the economy and consumption to countries with different histories and recourse to the use of finance governed by lobbies whose interests do not always coincide with those of the USA. Exporting entrenched lifestyle and consumption models to other countries with different histories and traditions presents the risk already indicated by Toynbee in 1948 and as mentioned previously in La Competizione Collaborativa. ‘Other countries have absorbed our economic models while maintaining their own cultural models; their history has become part of ours and we must learn to live with it. It is unclear, said Toynbee, how they will react to this Western occupation’. The first reaction he saw was the creation of a Soviet communist empire, however, in Civilization on Trial he stated that it was likely that in the long term India and China would have a much greater impact on life in the West than the hopes of Russia and its Communism. And this is exactly what has happened!

The reactions foreseen by Toynbee were due to the fact that only models of consumption had been exported but not the religious roots, because the economic model could propagate in far less time than a total global culture. And so the Chinese were given a stone instead of bread, whereas the Communist ideal gave them a few grains of nourishment for that spiritual life without which people cannot survive. Today China has to face social problems that its need to grow rapidly had put to one side, in particular the longstanding conflict between its urban areas and agricultural world [21]. The exercise of financial dominance, instead, is especially evident in tensions that have developed between the dollar and the euro. The weakening of the dollar could have oriented “markets” to choose the euro as the reserve currency, perhaps even the settlement currency for oil. In order to dissuade this idea the weakening of the euro would seem like a good move.

Weakening the euro meant weakening Germany, but as the German Bund is much stronger than the US Treasury Bond this meant that the euro had to be progressively surrounded and weakened. As in World War II Germany was defeated by conquering Greece, Italy and, lastly, France , with the Normandy landing. In the same way the financial markets first attacked Greece, then Portugal, Ireland and lastly, Spain and Italy. It must be admitted that these countries, which mostly have strong roots in Catholicism, had done everything to get into trouble without any help! Concerning this game plan, we must first get the facts straight. The attack on Italy got under way in early July 2011, playing on the country’s fundamentals and the risk of a possible default. But the fundamentals were exactly the same as they had been at the beginning of the year, when the risk represented by the country’s growing debt was already quite clear. A trend of rising interest rates could have been unsustainable for Italy’s financial equilibrium and economy. Despite the fact that everything was already clear in January the rating agencies didn’t see any country risk but then this oversight was rapidly remedied in July when Italy’s Treasury Bonds came under fire. In the meantime the bloody campaign in Iraq had come to an end with the announced withdrawal of American troops, also thanks to the capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden two months earlier on 2 May 2011. But the Middle East question continued to be an open issue for the world, together with the unresolved issue and consequences of its threat to Israel [22].

The autumn of “our discontent” grew worse and financial tension hit Italy enabling Wall Street’s merchant banks to make profits by speculating on the country’s Treasury Bonds. It must be said that in the past ten years Italy had made all the wrong moves, by increasing the debt to capture votes and failing to make the necessary reforms, and so the action was quite justified and, what is more, Italy served it up on a silver plate. However, the anomalies of the rating agencies’ assessments continued although to a certain degree they loosened their grip. In January 2012 the agencies lowered their ratings for nine European countries and the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) started to become a target for gamblers. But exactly one week later, for the first time, the spread between Italian and German bond rates dropped to 400 base points.

There was an evident contradiction: how come the rating was cut while the spread improved? Technically there was no explanation. But for those interested in coincidences, that same day the Council of Europe stated it would take a harder line as regards the embargo against Iran by ceasing to buy Iranian oil starting from the end of June. As regards Italy, from that moment on the conflicting trend between an improving spread and a rating, public debt, employment and GDP that were getting worse continued to be unexplainable. Are markets rational or not? As always, the most obvious answers are those that are less easy to see [23,5].

And lastly, the current dilemma concerns the role of the BCE as regards the EFSF. Positions of the markets and the Bundesbank have hardened, in particular the latter feels it should not give an open-ended guarantee to purchase bonds on the secondary market. On the other hand, without a protective shield acting as a disincentive against speculation of US banks, which can operate in a market without the rules applying to European banks, and with a Fed monetary policy oriented towards printing an unlimited supply of money, the fund would certainly not last long on the secondary market. The problem for Italy doesn’t change because it needs to cure the ills of its public finances or it will always be an easy target for speculation [11,8]. But the action of markets and media focus on them make it easy to lose sight of the real problem: is it right to say that markets are rational and never make mistakes as economic theory would have us believe, or is this not true? If, in terms of finance, we are not just rational but also act based on our emotions, and if as a consequence markets are not rational (or not entirely so), the conclusion we can come to is that their trend is perhaps more comprehensible if we understand the true, undeclared interests that move those operators who are mainly capable of influencing the underlying market trends. The choice between a dominant or cooperative position is in effect the key issue for the future of the USA. And the outcome will largely depend on the ability of those governing the country to manage to bring order to and create an equilibrium within the country and the world a finance, which currently seems completely free to act independently. Today such an oversized financial compared to real economy represents a mortal threat to a return to a focus on people and the real economy. This is the challenge not only facing the USA but also the entire world. So it would seem that the very history of the USA, as it has developed over a period of time that enables us to grasp the sense of what has inspired it, is the most obvious demonstration of the theory on which this and my previous book are based. The economy and finance are not the foundation on which to build a good society, that is, a cohesive society inspired to realize values that put people at the centre of our interests [14,10]. Exactly the opposite is true: a good society is the foundation on which to create the conditions for a durable, long-term economic and financial equilibrium.

Conclusion

When I came to the end of my previous work it was still not yet clear how an interpretation of the facts could be confirmed by history. Although I have now made considerable headway the same words I wrote then still hold good today. ‘In a context of uncertainty unparalleled in history, one that in no way compares to developments in our ability to dominate nature, people now aspire to a valid order that can remain under their power. An order that is both useful and promotes human progress, capable of reconciling humanity with the extent of its scientific knowledge, which today is perceived as an absolute value, placing it at the service of the search for a more widespread common good’. (La Competizione Collaborativa) Now, perhaps, the boundary of the enigma and this hope seem better defined and can therefore lead to a clearer answer for everyone, while remaining fully aware, however, that responsibilities are always an individual concern. Let us hope that in the middle of all this confusion and uncertainty we manage to see the light and find the right path to follow. A path that humanity must find in order to fulfil its destiny and its unique and creative mission on this Earth.

https://lupinepublishers.com/psychology-behavioral-science-journal/pdf/SJPBS.MS.ID.000159.pdf

https://lupinepublishers.com/psychology-behavioral-science-journal/fulltext/usa-facing-to-challenge-for-the-future-domination-or-cooperation-the-final-choice.ID.000159.php

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fandomtrash-1 · 8 years ago

Text

Just Ask Her

I write for any ship and will mostly write anything!

Pairing: Shiro x Allura

Genre: Fluffy, Nervous Shiro

Words: 1753 lord help me

Requested by: @goplaymusic

Summary: Shiro’s going to ask Allura out....eventually.

A/N: First request! I love this show so much and love writing fanfics and oneshots for any of the ships! I hope you enjoy! I love nervous Space Dad in this lol…

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“I...would you? Uh- want to get dinner sometime?! No what? That doesn't sound right…”

Shiro sighed for what seemed the millionth time, running his robotic Galra-manufactured hand through the white tips of his hair. Today he was going to complete the toughest mission of his life. He needed all his strength and energy to success and nothing was going to stop him.

“Today’s the day I ask Allura out. You can do it Shiro, you just need to focus..”

Yes Shiro, the tough shelled leader of Voltron, who always seems composed and stoic, was in love. With a princess.

‘Boy…’ he chuckled silently, ‘This is not how I thought the Kerberos mission would change my life. Fame or fortune, maybe but never love...’

Princess Allura. Hearing her name alone brings him chills. A single glance from her captivating ocean blue orbs releases millions of butterflies into his stomach. He’s left in awe whenever she’s giving life saving orders to the paladin during a treacherous battle and he admires how much she cares about everyone on team Voltron. He knows she believes in his leadership and he strives everyday to be everything for her as she is for he. It didn’t surprise him when he confessed his feelings for her to himself in the middle of a bonding session with his lion. He could hear Black’s groan complain about the amount of time it took him to realize his feelings towards the Princess.

“At this point paladin, I think even Zarkon know that you like the Princess. ”

“Shut up.”

He never had to worry about asking anyone out before. Sure he’d meet girls that were very pretty. In fact if he remembered correctly, before Voltron girls were constantly throwing themselves towards him. He knew Allura was different. She was a Princess. She must have had multiple suitors before she was frozen in a healing pod for 10,000 years.

‘I can't compare myself to any princes….’

It's not like he hasn't tried to before. Multiple times in fact... yet all of his courageous attempts have ended up in failure and embarrassment. A couple months ago he had everything set to ask her out during a meal. He had succeeded in distracting Hunk by sending him off to collect new herbs on the planet they were currently helping. He also may have lied to Pidge and Coran about how the teletub wasn’t functioning at its full potential. Lance was easy enough to distract, one word about the hot aliens that lived to their neighboring planet and Lance was off with Blue, in hopes of coming back with a new lady friend. Keith never came down for meals with the team anyway, as he was often lost in thought training, but just in case he told Keith he was going to check up on his sparring skills later that evening and he knew Keith would prepare for it.

Everything was perfect… until he opened his mouth.

“Shiro? Are you alright?” Allura asked, picking up a steamed slope of goo from her plate with her fork. Shiro gulped as she looked up to meet him with her atomistic blue eyes.

“I-I just wanted to…” He cleared his throat, nervously rubbing the scar on the bridge of his nose. “Uh-ahem ALLURA! Wow, ok uh, I have something to -cough- TELL you..”

Allura looked up, an amused twinkle dancing around in her eyes, “Shiro?”

Shiro inhaled deeply before setting his fork down, “Allura I was wonderi-”

The sound of Shiro’s own choking echoed the dining room.

The hairs on his neck stood up as he remembered the feeling of despair from that moment. He spent the rest of the night cursing at the glowing blue ceiling in his room, pressing a palm to his forehead. He felt so… stupid. Him, Shiro one of the calmest pilots of the century intimidated by a girl. He couldn’t even talk right.

He first tried to ask during a rare time of peace between battles. He was walking her to her room when she stopped to peer out into the galaxy, admiring the plants and systems that danced in front of her.

“So, ah Allura …”

“Yes Shiro? Isn’t space just magnificent?” Shiro smiled as she looked up at the twinkling stars with childlike wonder. Her excitement was just too enduring.

“Yes.. they are.. I-i just wanted to say that..Or to ask… have you got a favorite constellation?” Allura’s smile widen as she began to ramble about the different coordinates of the state and what they each mean for the Altean people

“THIS one is my personal favorite! Father and I always use to take a pod and fly it up to see this cluster of sta- Quiznak! What's it's name again?”

Shiro gritted his teeth into a smile as he politely excuse himself to go train. He didn't ask her.

Next time will be different...

His lip curled up into a small grin at the thought of his first attempt. It was magical is some aspects, but the downside was that he never asked her. And he still hasn't.

‘Never mind about that, today I'm going to make sure it happens.’

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When the Black paladin asks you for help, it's usually because he you both are in amidst in battle, ready form Voltron. At least that's what Lance McClain has learned in the past two years being. He's doing this for Allura, as the beautiful princess deserves someone as strong and tactile as Shiro. He could see his friend being a beloved king one day. And of course anything to one up Keith.

“Ok Shiro , it's real simple. I've managed to get the everyone occupied in different parts of the castle for the next hour. You just have to walk up to the princess,” Lance plastered on a seductive smile,” shoot her one of my famous smiles and seductively say ‘Allura go out with me.”

“Allura go out with me?”

Lance hugged as his smile faded into a look of despair, “No Shiro! Say it with that leader confidence I know you have!”

Shiro let out a ragged breath, “A-Allura will-uh you-”

Lance groaned as he flopped on to the couch located in the middle of the room, “Argh...you’re so whipped, Shiro. No wonder you haven’t asked Allura out yet.”

Shiro raced over and used his robotic arm to clamp Lance’s loud mouth shut, “Shhhhhh. I don’t want Allura finding out before I get to ask her out”

“You haven’t asked out Allura, yet? Huh, whadda ya know?” Hunk appeared frightening the paladins. He was snacking on some goo cookies he recently engineered to taste like actual chocolate chip cookies. He wiped the sticky crumbs off his shirt before turning to Lance and nudging his shoulder. Both blue and yellow paladins turned to Shiro with the biggests smirks on their faces.

“I know Hunk, it really is unlike the head of Voltron to be lacking the small amount of courage it takes to ask out a girl.”

Shiro sighed as he pleaded both paladins to keep quiet. They all knew however that both boys would only keep quiet for a couple of hours before they couldn’t contain themselves and tell Allura.

“Ugh- well just make sure I get to ask Allura before you guys go running off telling the entire galaxy about this, alright?” The pilot stressed as his hand tugged at his collar. Lance kept smirked but silently nodded his head in agreement. Hunk’s cheeks swelled up with excitement, “Don’t worry we won't tell Allura a thing!”

“Won't tell me what?”

Shiro turned around, jaw lowered due to a combination of shock and embarrassment. “Princess! I-uh it's nothing really..”

Allura narrowed her snow white eyebrows as she turned away from Shiro to face Lance and Hunk, “Do you two have somewhere you have to be?”

Bursting out into laughter, both boys went off red-faced to stay away from the Princess and Shiro for at least a couple of hours. “Good luck!” yelled Lance as Hunk pushed him through the doorway into the hall. From there, the laughter only seem to increase.

“Is there anything I can help you with Shiro?” Allura asked, lifting her hand to rest on the shoulder pad of the black paladin’s armor, a small patch of pink forming under her eyes. Shiro’s apple bobbed as he felt sweat forming around the top of his head.

“A-actually Princess I-i wanted to ask you if you wan-”

Beep! Beep! Beep!

Both paladin and princess looked above to the blaring alarm that was currently shining throughout the hallway.

“Sorry paladins! I’m just testing out the new alarm system Pidge and I installed over night! It's going to run for the next couple of ticks! Stay tuned!” Coran’s cheery voice rang over the speak system. Shiro groaned as he turned to face the princess, who raised her eyebrows in amusement of the situation.

“I’m sorry Shiro, where were you?”

Shiro coughed as he lifted his hand to scratch the nape of his neck nervously, “Allura, I-i was wondering… if you were inter-”

Beep! Beep! BEEP! CRASH! “Whoops! Nooooooo! I dropped a batch!” “Lance were supposed to cover me!” “I’m sorry mullet, but that was all on you!

“What’s in the quiznak is going on?” Allura said turning towards the door. Shiro’s eyes closed as he pictured Hunk mourning for his latest creation of cookies that were surely currently scattered over the kitchen tiles. He pictured Pidge and Coran, both with dark underbags, testing out their latest modification to the Castle of Lions, proud of their work. Then, there was also Keith and Lance who were arguing over what he knew was something stupid and pointless. Their combined chatter and sounds began to clog up Shiro’s brain.

If only everyone would shut up and get along!

“Allura!” He yelled, grabbing the Princess’s wrist before she exited the room, “I need to ask you something!” The room grew quiet until the only sound that could be made out was Shiro’s heavy breathing

“Yes Shiro?” She asked, eyes locked onto his own.

“Would you like to get dinner sometime? Like actual dinner at a restaurant… as in ...would you like to go on a date with me?”

Allura flashed him a huge smile, a giggle threatening to escape her throat. Shiro looked up hopefully.

Maybe the world still is good. Hunk will whip up some new cookies, Pidge and Coran’s new technology works, and Keith and Lance will bond and get along. Everything's coming together just like I-

“Shiro, I’d love to...only what is a ‘date’?”

Oh quiznak.

#voltron #voltron fanfics #voltron legendary defender #takashi shirogane #allura #voltron coran #coran coran the gorgeous man #lance mcclain #precious boi #hunk garrett #keith kogane #pidge gunderson #shallura #shiro x allura

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bigevidence · 6 years ago

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The Picture

Browsing Reddit I stumbled upon this image of Room 100 of the Central Building in the New York Public Library. Its catalog details are dateless but the clothes, hairdos and office equipment seem to place the moment in the teens of the 20th century.

My New York chauvinism presumes this was state-of-the-art in the go-go days of early modernity. Room 100 would have been its brain, the system’s central processing unit with its card catalog system indexing a vast database of manuscripts, objects and books.

I count thirteen women and six men, a healthy two-to-one ratio. This suggests, anecdotally, the early days of information management system culture were dominated by female knowledge workers. Then I see a guy, that stern-looking guy in the back. His hands clasped behind in the classic pose of ready reproach. This is the boss. Some things in business change more slowly than others, and males dominating the management class remains infuriatingly one of them.

We Were Warned

Aldous Huxley, writing in 1932, imagined his Brave New World of techno-dystopia as a huge card catalog index. He might have guessed wrong on the storage media, but his prediction betrays an insight: library sciences in the early 20th century was the innocent precursor for the Wild West information economy we inhabit today.

So, how did we get from that mostly girl-powered Room 100 to the brave new marketplace of facial recognition and black-box algos? In less than a hundred years we galloped from an open-access, community-financed, human value-add information culture to something Huxley basically nailed: a violent chaos of data energized by the cold logic of value extraction - a surveillance economy.

Boys and Their Toys

History’s short, brutal arc from our image above to that touch-screen you’re staring at this very moment has a defining characteristic - phallo-technic. An insurgent whiff of testosterone infuses every leap beyond the analog. Turing’s machine thinking starts sparking early innovations like Colossus, the mighty Allies’ crypto-breaking war machine. From there, the guys blast genius paths to stored memory on tubes instead of cards, and by the 60s they came up with microprocessors and CPUs. Big businesses formed around these break-throughs - companies like Sperry Univac, IBM and Intel all laying claim to the emerging frontiers of cutting-edge tech. Then the 70s happened, and the soon-to-be unholy trinity of business, government and academia spawned the defining product Eisenhower warned us about - Messrs. Cerf and Kahn’s development of TCP/IP and the birth of ARPANET. Recognizing early they had a naming issue, somebody in the vast military-industrial complex had the branding smarts to re-christen their new everywhere machine, the Internet.

The battle matrix for humans versus machines was locked and loaded. If only there was a simple way to connect it all. Thinking through the problem of what regular people might be able to with all those connected servers, Tim Berners-Lee came up with the protocol for the World Wide Web. The lowly but lovely browser was born and released into the early 1990s world with the promise of a “free and open” web for the world.

And so began the most fertile, frenzied fifteen business years the planet has ever known. A handful, you guessed it, of guys puttered their way from garage labs to an almost total takeover of the Web. Today was born, the state of human affairs defined dystopically by the *FAANG-ilization of everything. Huxley, dude – how did you know?

Theft as Gift

If there’s a key to understanding how we got here it’s the human data-theft at the heart of our devil’s bargain with the FAANG/BATs* (*adding the emerging Chinese tech conglomerates Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent.) A theft calculated by the imbalanced exchange of our data for their “free” services, utility and content. The swindle sealed by a brilliant if insidious deception, that what was sensed as newfound control turned out to be full frontal surrender.

This human data theft premises, privileges and permissions the dominating platforms to treat this new connected culture lab as their shareholder piggy bank, ringing up billions in $s, ¥s and €s each hour with its super-efficient violence of value extraction by-design.

Capital’s OS

There’s nothing new about the insight connecting the human male with aggression. The history of everything – science, philosophy, art, sport, invention – has always been told through the muscular narrative of men on the march. Business and its platform of capital perhaps even more so. But the 20th century’s technological advances, along with their owners, sponsors and profiteers were definingly male, fueled by states, their militaries and compliant academic accomplices.

Marx in all his prescient insight about how capital morphs and snakes through a social system couldn't have predicted such omnipotence. No one (if only Huxley’s insight was more economic) could have imagined how capital might behave when unleashed across the digitally collapsed frontiers of nations, markets and human autonomy itself.

But here in the teen years of the 21st century, capital has found its most perfect operating system. Essentially owned and operated by the FAANG/BATs, finally exceeding states' powers to regulate by cutting them in on the deal. The merits seemed obvious, for a few cycles. But now the darker downsides unsettle, even if muted by the seeming benefits. All we have to do is lean forward, accept the terms of service and enjoy the pleasing haze of surrender. Or not.

Fork You

One of my more unlikely sources of insight is Audre Lorde. In the late 70s, in her call-to-arms for a broader reset of culture, politics and governance she suggested, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”. Lorde added a caveat to her provocation – “in the long run, anyway…”. I take her qualification as inspiration for an alternative path to our shared futures together.

Lorde understood that, in the near term, sometimes the fastest and most efficient way to ignite change was to borrow from the master's tool-box. So, from our reigning overlords of the technosphere I borrow a term – forking. Originally coined by application engineers working in the early Unix operating system, it describes how a system makes a copy of itself in order to launch a new program or procedure.

It’s useless to ponder what if we hadn’t succumbed so completely to the current techno-economic regime. But it’s not crazy to suggest an act of shared re-imagination about what’s next – and doing something about it. Given the choice and taking the chance, ask ourselves what a more equitable human fork beyond this replicant economy might look like.

Look at Me... I matter!

Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek lay equal claim for musing, “it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”. We won’t be solving for capitalism, but it’s certainly within our imaginative grasp to re-engineer a fresh fork in the fabric of our shared technosphere.

Our first leap together is the toughest, but everything depends on it. We must re-imagine a reward incentive to replace the predatory value extraction at the heart of the current model. Imagination without insight is an empty exercise. The stakes are too high and the opportunities too sweet. We arm ourselves with an insight grounded in the ancient core of human need: recognition and affirmation.

This is the essential human insight driving our behavior together since we sat around communal fires 50,000 years ago to tell stories and share things like food, heat and protection against the forces from without. It��s the insight we’ve been baking into our creative briefs for a more radical marketing for the past twenty years.

It’s also an insight we’re all intimately familiar with, given our newfound togetherness on socially connected devices. Whether you’re a lurker, a poseur or somewhere in between, that feeling you get when someone likes your lunch picture or comments on your pithy comebacks is a pleasing if minor reward. A gift minted in a scalable social currency of affirmation and recognition.

If we need an insight to spark our imaginative leap into a different future of everything, I’m going with - “Look at me... I matter!” The challenge remains what we do with it to disrupt the disruptors out of their ubiquitous ownership of our 24/7 lives.

The Big Lie

Our primary solve for applying this insight is cost. The cynical lie at the heart of the surveillance economy is that the companies who give us all this free stuff – image storage, social connectivity, email and massaging, document management, navigation tools, video services – need to pay for them with advertising.

I’ve been in the global advertising and marketing racket for over thirty years and I can tell you, as we say on Madison Avenue, this is absolute bullshit. From the radio soap operas of the 1930s through to the sitcoms of the current twilight of linear TV, the default economic model was to exchange content costs with eyeball reach.

But advertising is an increasingly moribund model when it comes to getting and keeping customers. Brand marketing teams, agencies, publishers and broadcasters have known this for the past several years and are frantically trying to figure out alternative models. Don’t expect what they come up with will have you the human at the heart of its value equation.

Note well: if we’re imagining a more equitable human technosphere, someone will need to pay for it. The shareholders of the FAANG/BATs – full disclosure that includes me – aren’t candidates. We, and that includes everybody, will need to be ready to offer up some value in exchange. This new currency of exchange, unlike the attention we spend under today’s regime, will be something quite different.

Identity and Attention

Under the dominant rules the most valuable asset we control is not our attention. It’s our identify itself.

In the past fifteen years Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple and LinkedIn (the shortlist) all have aimed for a lock on owning and managing our identity. Each developed APIs and competed for publishers to offer their credentialing service in return for reducing the friction of visitors to their sites or apps to register. This was a brilliant strategy for aiming to "own" human identity on the Web. The winners would become the custodians of our identity, allowing them to monetize our attention and continue gathering our personal data trails, even when we were off their sites and networks.

We underscore this founding and enduring connection between identify and attention, and the pair's critical role in the business model of platform value extraction. Pundits coined the benign term the “attention economy” to sugar-coat the brutal mechanics of the emerging surveillance economy. But what we thought we were so freely exchanging wasn’t really our attention. That was simply the metric (see views, impressions) of their very last-century media model. What this economy was actually based upon was the signs and manifestation of our identity itself - our behaviors, our transactions, our attitudes and our fears, our desires and our demographics. Our human identity data serving as fuel for all this perfidy.

If identity is how we signal our authentic and autonomous presence, attention is merely just one of the things we do with it. With our forking leap grounded in the human desire for connection and affirmation, human identity is a critical first principle. Our digital, just like our IRL identities, must be integral, persistent, authentic, privately and personally owned and controlled. Unlike the current mess we’ve surrendered ourselves into, it must be ours. Identity has been the golden goose of the surveillance economy’s value model. We want it back.

For several years infosec geeks, technology activists and a handful of marketers and payment solutions companies have been talking about the personal information economy. There is much to be inspired about here. But we can’t kid ourselves about the daunting task of challenging the profit at stake in the walled gardens of the hegemonic platforms.

The Diamond District

To the platforms, attention was always a zero-sum competition. Ever wonder why links are rare on Instagram or why those redball notification counts are so addictive? The platforms engineered everything they could to keep you on their sites and apps when you got there and get you back soon and often when you left.

There’s a problem with this idea about attention being zero-sum – it isn’t. Yet, in order to more fully monetize our identity through our attention, the platforms and the complicit brands they've duped all had to believe the same things about human desire, value exchange and the very nature of competition. They got all three wrong.

I teach a graduate course in Competitive Strategy at NYU. On the 19th slide of tonight's first lecture deck are three words in 90 point type – FUCK THE COMPETITION. The insight here is one you won’t get from traditional business theorists (99% men by the way). They advise we obsess over the competition, so to better annihilate them. This defensive zero-sum thinking informed the product, interface and technical design strategies for all the big box platforms. Hold that thought.

For evidence to support my profane advice, I suggest my students take a walk down 47th Street between Sixth and Fifth Avenues. If you know Midtown New York you know that block is crammed with jewelry stores selling ~$400 million worth of diamonds every day. Each one of those shops is competing with each other. Observer’s intuition tells us this is dumb. Why would all these competitors within a single category put up their shops next door to each other. The answer is because this is where the customers are.

Each of those stores is forced to compete for customer attention, dwell-time and purchases in one of capitalism’s most Darwinian exercises imaginable. Here’s the insight: this commercial system is the anti-thesis of zero sum. Everyone’s a winner, but mostly the customers who know exactly where to go, how to compare and who to buy from when they’re diamond shopping.

Better Business Building

The key that connects our forking strategies to these gathering insights is value. Our brief is bold: how do we enable humans to come together with each other in their shared worlds – cultural, social, commercial, political, economic, aesthetic – in moments of mutually satisfying value exchange. And, when the moment presents, get and keep them as customers.

I have a disclaimer which my cowardice can no longer contain. I’m a selfish business strategist (if a slightly more interesting value marketeer). My aim of strategic attack remains true: mine and articulate fresh insight powerful enough to be transformed into value. Value first for humans and then, the selfish part, the businesses who hire me. My call for forking radically from the predatory platform models of today isn’t altruistic. It’s good for business. Better business, different business. Sustainable and organic business.

Recent business history is rife with inspiring cases…

One of history's most commercially disruptive business models exploded at the heart of technology itself, the open source software initiative. Launched in 1998 it was intended to foster a community of creators, software developers, around the principles of free speech. The software wasn’t meant to be free, but its collaborative creation and distribution was. Within ten years of its founding the reigning software industry incumbents Microsoft and SAP were forced to succumb to variations on its themes, or become marginalized and irrelevant.

Wikipedia was founded in 2001 on the same principles of collaborative value creation, or in the words of its Wikipedia entry (as meta as you wanna be...) - “based on a model of openly editable and viewable content”. Within four years, independent comparative reviews of the quality and extent of its entries against the dominant incumbent encyclopedias essentially put those publishers out of meaningful business.

Bandcamp is another business model based on the refreshing new rules of respectful mutual value recognition and exchange. It’s counter-intuitive post-platform axiomatic confounds Hayekians fully: the pricing posted by musicians for purchasing their music is set as a floor, and 40% of the time customers choose to pay more. Music and media critic Steve Smith suggests Bandcamp’s growth and popularity is due to its “responsible and ethical business model more equitable to artists than any other retailer of comparable size, but also a savvy grasp of social media’s power of peer-to-peer persuasion, implemented through public-facing “collections” meant to function as virtual record shelves to be pored over and emulated.”

Another jewel in the crowd of emerging better businesses is GitHub. Launched by two developers in 2008 it was acquired by Microsoft in mid-2018 for $7.5bn because, well, the Internet… More specifically, like other companies forged upon the exponential power and value of community, GitHub offers its code repository and hosting services absolutely free. As long as you’re cool with all your work being public. This is a lower barrier than you might imagine. According to this paper analyzing its business model, “GitHub currently hosts millions of free repositories, including many powerful projects like MySQL and Ruby on Rails used by GitHub themselves to power the platform.” Italics added and you can see why.

Each of these modestly alternative businesses share at least five key characteristics, distinguishing them from the reigning predatory models.

They leverage community to scale contributive value through collaboration.

The rewards reaped by all participants are either symmetrically aligned, or equably unbalanced to the mutual benefit and happiness of all involved.

The core behaviors of value exchange are essential public acts of private production.

The exchange of products and services generate uniquely exponential surplus value. One plus one isn’t three – but, potentially 3 million (see characteristic number 1).

Although none rely on decentralized technology a la blockchain (that’s another chapter…), both trust and authority exist within and emanate from the contributive crowd.

It’s Tomorrow Again

In 2009 Google sent a crew of corporate flacks into Times Square to ask people “what is a browser?”. The self-serving video they promoted elicited the desired response. People thought of their browser as their search engine. Lol, what sweet dear idiots. In retrospect, Google’s stunt seems more strategic than mean-spirited. Exactly a year before wading into Times Square, Google launched their own web browser Chrome, and it wasn’t yet ripping commanding market share from the then dominant Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Google’s insight from their video was used to ignite a market-share grab that soon proved those poor misguided people were actually right. Today, Google enjoys almost 70% of the browser market and over 90% of the search engine market. And we don’t even have to trouble about going all the way over to google.com to search --- just pop those search terms into your browser’s URL box. Combining these two interfaces and offering both ‘free’ remains the founding act of the extractive surveillance economy. An economy that generated about $120 billion for Google in 2018 – nearly 33% of all the advertising income cashiered globally.

This sort of commercialization of online attention through the primary entry-point into our connected world probably wasn’t what Tim Berners-Lee had in mind when he founded the W3C as a not-for-profit organization in 1994 to release his invention of the World Wide Web to the world, “available freely, with no patent and no royalties due.”

But it most certainly was a factor inspiring Berners-Lee (TimBL to the digerati) to found another organization, the World Wide Web Foundation in 2009. At the time, he announced the move as a necessary step to, "advance the Web to empower humanity by launching transformative programs that build local capacity to leverage the Web as a medium for positive change."

TimBL was making a point. The “positive change” he had imagined was not about the unimaginable market cap realized by the surveillance platforms who have been monetizing his invention since he went all pay-it-forward and gave it the world “free” twenty years earlier.

I say we have a winner. Our pivot model is Tim Berners-Lee and his founder’s intent for what was to be done with his invention called the Web. We don’t need to fork from the chaos of extraction dictated by the FAANG/BATs of today. Philosophically and strategically we aim our imagination and make our fork from the same ethical, technical and social location Berners-Lee set the damn thing free in the first place.

Real Feels

Here on the edge of the 2020s the digital fumes of a pervasive, violent system of connected platforms sicken our lived experiences on the planet. Recall the data theft and value extraction at the heart of its formula for exchange. We’re proposing to subvert, reject and eventually replace that life-negating technosphere with the more touchy-feely kumbaya model as imagined by Berners-Lee and his fellow do-gooders from the World Wide Web Foundation.

Go ahead, place your bets. But then hold my beer…

Reconsider the picture atop our wandering manifesto. Imagine yourself one those primeval knowledge workers. What got you going each day? My guess is it was a passion for knowledge and a love for sharing it. Here’s another question - don’t you think they would’ve wildly embraced Berners-Lee’s quixotic quest to “empower humanity by launching transformative programs that build local capacity… as a medium for positive change”?

Me too.

The reason 40% of music purchasers on Bandcamp pay more than the musicians ask is because they love their music and it makes them feel good to pay more. They will never forget that feeling of munificence, of genuine generosity. It makes listening to that music, and the emotional relationship to its producers, different and special.

How about those developers giving their code away on their no-charge GitHub because, what the hell: maybe someone can improve it, do something with it I might not have done. Better together rules.

How about all the thankless hours nameless Redditors spend moderating their subreddits or Wikipedia editors competing to nurture their entries. I imagine they'd all say it was time well-spent.

We improve each other when we share and give. And that, if you’ll pardon the warranted exuberance, feels fucking great. It’s a little bit vain sure. It’s a little bit self-serving, adding to the bank of our social currency among communities that matter to us. Communities of people – customers, employees, partners, clients – that matter to my happiness.

There’s a final insight we can lean on to inspire us to start building and sharing things differently, whether it's products, services, companies or communities. Importantly, it’s the same insight about why we spend so much time on social networks and what we get and give in return. Belongingness. We gather in these communities to affirm our place in the world. To prove to ourselves we matter. We belong there, here among the like-minded, like-employed or like-impassioned.

Passion. That’s the thing we’ve got to bake into the core of our replacement formula for value exchange. The passion to create, to nurture, to add not subtract to something of minor meaning in the world. Feelings, real feelings, are the domain where the rewards for this work are both sown and reaped.

But is it possible to imagine, never mind develop, a candy brand, or clothing brand, a soap brand or a pharmaceutical brand inhabiting the marketplace under such a feeling-based regime? Well that’s the job at hand. So we’d better figure it out.

For inspiration, we take one more loving look at those long-gone library staff. They showed up to contribute. Their work gave them worth. Their service was of a particular and very special value. Their passion for helping knowledge sustain and spread was a potent and positive force in the community of their customers, users - humans.

Not bad poster-children for a brazen fork towards a world of humans, brands and the technology that connects us all.

This article is adapted and excerpted from Kennon’s upcoming Madland: A Radical Marketing Manual to be published in the Fall of 2019.

http://www.freeradicals.marketing/2019/01/31/real-feels/

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teeh79-blog · 8 years ago

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Over it!!

Today was THAT day!! The day I realized I was over my baby’s father. I know most people would want to congratulate me me thinking it was a quick year or two that it took me to finally get over this horrible man, but unfortunately it took me eight whole long miserable years. I know like dang right?? Well see when a person physically, mentally, emotionally, sexually and verbally abuses you and takes all the strength you thought you had left, well I was left with nothing else to give. Looking back now to eight years ago when my abusive relationship ended I kinda feel like I went through the five stages of grief, you know denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The denial I experienced was me allowing him to continue to use me in any way he seen fit after HE had declared us over. See, it was funny how we were over and he moved out but he would still use me for sex when he wasn’t getting any from other females, sometimes against my will and he would never forget to tell me that we were no longer together this is just sex and that I needed to move on from him but when I would find a nice man I liked spending time around I became a whore and he put hands on me to remind me that I was his and couldn’t be with anyone else but he was no longer mine and could do what he wanted and be with whom he wanted so it’s best that I move on but if I did he would fuck me up crazy right, I thought so too and it explains why I was in denial of it being over because he wouldn’t let me move on so I’m my head we were still together. Next came the anger, I experienced anger when he would find a female he was really interested in ( air quotes). He would come around and put me down saying I was nothing but his new girl was everything but what I couldn’t understand was if his new girl was everything why was he still coming around using me, oh yes because I allowed it, and in his mind he wasn’t doing anything wrong as long as I allowed it, and I couldn’t be mad at him for that but I wasn’t ready to admit it to myself and be mad at me just yet. I was angry for a long time and would express it to anyone who was willing to listen this stage took up most of the eight years. So after I stopped being angry which was last summer I can think to say because that is when I believe I began to bargain because he was now single and I had BEEN single for seven years due to the last butt whooping I got when I tried to move on although he had many failed relationships I was afraid to really move on, now don’t get me wrong I had friends or flings I should say ( only because I moved to another city) but I had never let myself get into anything serious because of my fear of both him finding out and wanting to hurt me or the possibility of us getting back together and that not being possible if I was with someone else. Now I know ur looking sideways like why would I want to be back with him but the stages of grief had not fully run its course yet which brings me back to last summer we had to spend a great deal of time together because our son was playing little league football and we would go to the practices and game and would see each other there and our communication was more positive around that time so wanting him felt right again. But that was short lived because once again he shot me down with the I’m not good enoughs, which made me depressed and a whole lot of bad things happened. Depression is very serious and I am sad to say in my depression I Lost everyone I thought I had but like it is always said everything happens for a reason and my reason was God had to remove everything and everyone that was not in his plan for me and I am happy to say I am a better person for it. I am not ashamed to say I was an emotional bag lady ( shouts out to Ms. Erykah Badu) for so long I had been carrying around every bad unstable thing that ever happened to me in life and that is how my sons father was able to abuse me the way he did I was already damaged before he got to me and that is why I mentioned earlier that he took all the strength I thought I had left. A lot of very unfortunate things had to happen in MY life before I was able to make it to my last stage, acceptance December 5th, 2016 was one of the worst days of my life I had just turned thirty- seven years old the day before on the 4th and I was tried, broken, wore down and severely depressed I used some words I shouldn’t have in a conversation with my mother those awful words were, I want to kill myself, yes I know I should have come up with a better description of how I was feeling at the moment but I didn’t think my own mother would take my venting literally. She called my sons father while I was at work and they went to my house and took my son away to live with his father. I felt like someone had taken the air right from out of my lungs, my soul died that day. I became very cold and distant for everything and everyone and that is when I accepted that my sons father was not for me he was just a plot in Gods plan for me to suffer for greatness. They say God gives his toughest battles to his greatest soldiers, and I am happy to be a soldier for the lord and although my story is far from over I have faith that it will end great and TODAY, I felt like God answered a long winded prayer in allowing me the realization threw a conversation with my sons fathers woman, I said his woman in my stages I would have NEVER been able to speak with one of his females without want to physically hurt them but I stood there happy and proud to myself for finally seeing it for myself that I was finally and officially OVER the horrible man and I can say my soul is restored and my heart is warm because of this great revaluation. Hallelujah, Amen, Thank you O’ precious and mighty King for bringing me through every single trial and tribulation you bring me to. I love yah, Love Yah Jesus for all your love and endless gifts. My sons father is a better man today as well then he was when he was with me and his lady is good for and with him I pray great blessings upon their union and that maybe wiring with it become right in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Today my journey to God greatness is sure to began, follow me as I share my journey.

#follow me please 🙏🏾🤞🏾👍🏾😏

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autumn-elwood · 7 years ago

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A Study in Invigorating Description

This is a prompt list. Please vote in the ask box. Please. I've worked on this for several days. Please. Just write a number between 1 and 20. Please.

Also available on Blogger

Enjoy! (I'm exhausted. Send coffee.)

1. When I was younger I always thought I was pretty hot shit. I could write stories and draw pictures that could move even my toughest classmates to tears. As an adult, I came to the stunning realization that I was not, in fact, the hot shit I thought I was. My first manuscript did not even make it past the publishers and my other attempts fared no better. It was not, however, because I lacked talent. One man told me my writing was great but I lacked references. Why should I risk publishing your work if I don’t know if it will tank or not, he told me. It’s not worth the risk.

Since then I have set my book career aside to earn myself some small time fame. I am now a journalist for a local paper.

“Clyde? What are you thinking about? The ask-column is due by 17:00! Hurry your ass up!”

“Almost done, Grace. I just need to complete some small corrections,” I hollered back. Grace did not reply.

One day I’m going to make it big with a novel that’s going to knock everyone’s socks off. Those damn publishers are going to regret the day they turned down the brilliant writing of Clyde Palmer.

“Wipe that damn smirk off your face Palmer and get to editing!”

“Yes, Grace.”

I hate that woman. 2. Patrick Delaney will freely admit he is slightly terrified of his daughter. She is a skinny little thing of thirteen with no weight training to speak of, that can lift things that would give him trouble. Don’t get him wrong. He still loves his little princess but seeing her lift two twenty-four packs of water bottles at the same time would make any single father break a sweat. He was finally getting used to her unnatural strength when she dent a semi’s hood that had been careening toward a small boy and herself.

When that happened, Patrick did what every reasonable person would do in that situation; he fainted.

3. Humans, in my experience, are odd and violent creatures. Many of them strive for individualism while attacking anyone and anything they perceive as different from themselves. Quite the paradox.

My name is Venxiaqle and I am not from this planet. I am an explorer from a small planet on the far ends of the Milky Way galaxy. After landing on Earth, or Terra Prime as it is called on my homeworld, I was quite thankful to have been born with my shape-shifting ability, that I inherited from my father. Without it, I fear my new earthling companion, William, would have attacked me worse. He was quite terrified when I crashed my ship on a strip of his grandparents’ grape orchard.

Despite our rocky start, I am grateful to have found a native to help me detail the wildlife of ‘Earth’ and assist me in blending in with the planet's dominating species, the human. I just wish he would call me by my actual name, instead of the diminutive, Vinney.

4. I breathed heavily as I scaled the desolated parking complex, dragging my companion up. Mandy was frightened and apologetic, muttering unintelligently about how it was all her fault. I wanted to smack her but I was afraid her already weakened jaw wouldn’t be able to take the force. Most of the flesh in that area had already decomposed and the only thing keeping it attached was some discolored skin and her muscles.

The zombies after us were my fault. The hunters were Mandy’s. Both of us were simultaneously at fault and victims of our circumstances. Mandy had been turned and had kept her mind while I was in love with her.

“Amy, please just leave me behind,” she pleaded. “You need to escape.”

“Not without you, honey,” I told her. “Never without you. We said death ‘till us part and you’re still kicking even if you aren’t breathing, sweetie.”

“You’re an idiot, Amy,” she muttered as she held me tighter, rubbing her oily head into the crook of my neck as I hoisted us above the ledge of one of the parking levels.

“That’s why you love me,” I laughed as I tossed a homemade explosive at our pursuers, zombie and human alike. At one time I would have felt bad for all of the people I just massacred but now I felt only relief. Fire slowed down the zombies and charred humans couldn’t shoot us or be forced to join the ranks of our undead pals.

I heard the cock of a shotgun.

“Fuck.”

5. My neighbor, Rena, scares me. I often see her storming down the corridors of our apartment complex with murder written on her face. The few times I have heard her speak, she was yelling and cursing like the world had personally insulted her. I do not know if I am more scared of her or for her. Sometimes I just want to ask her what’s wrong. How’s your blood pressure? Can I do anything to help you?

“What the fuck do you want, bitch?”

“Nothing Rena!” I whimpered as she passed me that afternoon of September 12th.

Her eyes narrowed dangerously in my direction. Oh my god. What did I do? Is she going to kill me? Why? Oh, I’m so dead. God, help me.

“How the fuck do you know my name, round face?”

Round face? I hugged my chubby body subconsciously. Why couldn’t she have continued to call me bitch like she does like every other chick on this row? What did I say to warrant a nickname?

“I heard the landlord yelling at you when you moved in,” I whispered.

Rena looked pissed.

“Stupid son of a bitch. Can’t keep his mouth shut,” she muttered mutinously. “Anyways, what’s your name, round face?”

“Um, Lucy…”

Rena gave me a stiff nod before she stomped off to her flat. I clutched my heart and sank to the floor. Well, that was over, thank the lord.

6. Sometimes the things we love the most hurt us the most. That was very true for me. I stared in horror as a large shadow towered over me like a running spider. Like hail from the sky, the books rained down on me, leaving no inch unbruised. I whimpered and pushed the heavy novels off me only to be assaulted by four more books.

“Oh shit,” an unfamiliar male voice shouted. “Are you alright?”

“Is that you, God?” I muttered unironically.

“Not the god you’re talking about.”

I threw the tomes off me.

“What?!”

“Kidding,” a man with caramel skin snickered. HIs eyes were black like the void. He seemed like the kind of guy that if he were a fictional character people way younger than him would be screaming, “My son, I will protect you!”

“Hug me.”

“What?”

I should not have said that.

7. When I became a villain I did not sign up to be a parent. Usually, when you think villain, you think terrorizing the public and world domination, which is what I signed up for, not trying to get some twelve-year-old some help.

My nemesis, Star Child, had been kicking my proverbial ass for months when I realized he was in fact twelve.You would think I would be offended that my arch enemy was a pre-teen but I was in reality, horrified. I had held a twelve-year-old boy above an acid tank. I had thrown him into several buildings. I had broken his arm. He wasn’t even in high school and he was fighting supervillains. Oh my god.

Next time we fought, I handcuffed him to a chair and gave him some fruit slices.

“Why are you not in school?” I began. “Your grades are important, Star Child. Even if you choose to pursue hero work after you complete your education, you still need to be able to get a job. Also, you are twelve. You should not be going up against supervillains at your age. Small crime maybe but supervillains… No.”

The boy blinked rapidly. Several times he opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out.

Finally, he settled on a very intelligent, “What?”

I scowled at him and put my hands on my hips.

“KId, do not throw away your life for a payless job. Being a hero is noble and very rewarding but it doesn’t pay the bills. Besides, what would your parents say f they knew you were fighting crime instead of doing your homework.

Dead? Fuck. Who’s watching this kid if he gets away with this? I need to adopt this kid stat. Wait, no. I can’t. I’m a villain He’s my nemesis. I really shouldn’t.

Fuck it. I’m going to adopt this kid.

8. Two days ago, Daddy finished building me so I look like a normal little boy. Yesterday, Daddy was arrested for villain activity. Today, Mommy’s still scared of me. She doesn’t know what to do with me. My energy levels are low and my water tank is near empty as a result of me sobbing as I watched Daddy be arrested on television. Daddy hooked me up to the internet and the internet says villains are evil. I hate Daddy. He made Mommy sad and scared.

I don’t think he told Mommy I have to eat. Another reason I hate Daddy now is because he left Mommy with the burden of taking care of me all by herself.

“Mommy, I’m hungry,” I whispered as we watch Daddy’s arrest for the 767th time. She hadn’t eaten since it happened. I hope taking care of me will remind her even though I scare her. I wish I knew why Mommy was scared of me. Maybe then, I could fix it.

“What?” she stuttered out in alarm. She flinched seeing how close I was.

“I’m hungry, Mommy. We haven’t eaten since yesterday and we haven’t slept. I’m tired.”

She hugged herself and looked away from me. Her long glossy black locks were a mess and her dark circles were unhealthy pronounced. She looked pale and broken like a porcelain doll that had slipped off its display shelf. I wanted to hug her but I knew any physical action of comfort I could offer would only make things worse. My body was so cold.

“Don’t call me that,” she sobbed, voice cracking.

“Mommy–”

“Chester, I’m not your mom. Evan― your dad―started making you when we found out I was infertile,” she wiped a few stray tears away, straightening herself like a soldier preparing for battle. “Frankly, I never approved and based off what happened yesterday, he… he started working with villains to get the parts to make you

“I found a letter in his journal. They only agreed to fund him if they could use you later. I… I don’t know what to do. I just know I can’t handle being your mother. I just can’t, knowing what they’re going to use you for. I can’t let myself get attached to you.”

I felt tears build in my eyes. “ I don’t want to be a villain. I don’t want to hurt you. I want to be a hero. I want to stop people like Daddy from hurting other people!”

She looked at me like a shattering wine glass and lunged forward, pulling me into a tight embrace.

“I’m sorry, Chester. I’m sorry,” she wailed.

The meaning of her apology evaded me but those words and her arms made me feel something I had yet to feel in my two days of existence; safe. My resolve to become a hero cemented itself into my programming. I would become the strongest, kindest hero and no one, not Daddy and not anyone else would ever hurt Mommy, or anyone else, like this again. I would not allow it.

9. It’s 1:00 am and I should be asleep but I’m not. What my father said early this evening echoes in my head.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that,” he said as he pulled me into his unfamiliar arms.

I do not understand why he apologized. This is hardly the first time he has said I have ruined his life. This is just the first time he has said it so blatantly. He has never said sorry before so I am confused on why he is now. Maybe Mom told him he had to. I wouldn’t be surprised.

I’m tired of pondering this but it won’t leave me alone. Hearing him say that should have made me sad or mad or something but I hardly blinked. I just went to my room and did my homework.

“What are you doing up?” I heard my brother ask from my door.

“I could ask you the same question, Peter.”

He walked over to my bed and sat down near my feet.

“He should know better than to say things like that to us, to you, Eliza. He’s an adult.”

“He’s a child who never grew up. He was just throwing a tantrum because my opinion didn’t fall in line with his.

He clenched his fists in his lap and growled.

“That doesn’t make it any better, that doesn’t excuse him.”

I breathed out a laugh.

“I know but there’s nothing we can do. We just have to deal with it.”

Peter threw his hands in the air, his face turning red with anger.

“We shouldn’t have to deal with it,” he whisper-shouted.

“I know,” I sighed, my heavy eyes sliding shut as slipped into oblivion.

10. I’m sitting on the cool itchy grass of summer, staring at the inky night sky. Around me, couples and families sit on picnic blankets, on the edge of their seats staring up at the glittering heavens in anticipation. I am alone.

Boom! The first firework explodes in a cascade of reds, blues, and golds.

Many times when people think of fireworks, they think of smiling children running around with sparklers, a kiss between lovers under the vivacious colors, hope. I do not think of these things. I think of how a firework can parallel loneliness. The unexploded firework being launched into the sky is like me when I say everything’s wonderful and amazing, and I don’t need anyone to be happy.

The explosion is when it all comes crashing down. So many tumultuous feelings breaking free of their bottle. The furious roar of red unrighteous anger covering up the fear. The endless chasms of blue sorrow and hopelessness. The festering and blistering like greens of envy. I hate fireworks but here I am watching them again, my emotions on full display to my empty eyes.

It is truly pathetic.

11. Veronica had always been a risk taker so when her friend Barry dared her to spend the night in the abandoned house on 6th street, she hadn’t said no. She told Barry that his dare was a bit cliche but she hadn’t said no.

The abandoned building on 6th was practically a public danger. It had been sealed off in the sixties but was much older than that. The right corner of the place’s roof was caved in and the structural integrity of the place was poor. The place was infested with rats and bugs of all sorts. There was illegible graffiti throughout the rotten walls and few had dared step foot in it since the murder five years ago. Regrettably, the murder had revived the urban legend that the place was haunted.

Veronica thought those rumours were bullshit but Barry believed in them wholeheartedly. Probably the reason he chose this dare, she thought with an internal scoff.

She carefully laid her stuff in the middle of the floor of what she thought may have once been a dining room. She slowly lowered herself onto the floor, wincing at every creak of the ratty wooden floor. So far she hadn’t found any evidence of ghosts but she hadn’t really ventured past the first floor. To be honest, she was more scared of finding a living person in the house than an incorporable being of post-human consciousness. She crossed her fingers and went to bed.

Her blood was pumping with excitement which made nodding off very difficult. Urban exploration was illegal after all. She felt herself drifting off when a young voice cut through her drowsiness.

“What are you doing here?”

Her eyes snapped open. Veronica barely held back a scream. Above her was a floating young girl, her long hair seemingly unaffected by gravity with her eyeballs gouged out leaving bloody black holes in their place.

Veronica struggled backward, incoherent noises exiting her mouth in panic. The specter followed after her and stopped as Veronica made impact with a wall.

“Hi! I’m Erie,” she beamed, obliviously unaware of Veronica’s terror. She wondered if the ghost could see. “What’s your name?”

“Veronica,” she managed to squeak out before fainting.

12. Kain couldn’t help but feel bored for some odd reason. He honestly shouldn’t be feeling bored with the number of adventures Cyrus and himself had been on together since they took up the pseudonyms, Castor and Pollux, and joining the cavern of Hermes.

They had made tons of new friends in Eris, Apollo, Thanatos, and Persephone. They had raided a slave auction and dug up objects and tomes from the buried pre-rest buildings in the dunes of the Estival Desert. They had even met up with Lady Alma to make sure she was getting on alright, for crying out loud. Kain was safe from Lord Zafar. Cyrus was safe from Lord Zafar. They got to transcribe books and sell them in Apple-polish market.

Why was he so bored?!

“Um… Are there any titles you would recommend?” a familiar voice queried.

He looked up to see a man with short blond hair and a scruffy beard. He looked familiar too. Had he met this man before?

“Oliver Twist’s pretty―,” he began before cutting himself off, the man’s identity becoming shockingly clear.

“You bastard,” Kain growled, eyes filled with rage.

The bastard blinked in surprise, unsure of how to respond to Kain’s sudden insult.

“Pollux,” he heard Cyrus say with a sharp a sharp warning before making apologies to the customer.

Kain clenched his fists, his anger rising even higher after realizing Cyrus didn’t recognize the bastard in front of them. And even worse, the no good lying son of a bitch didn’t recognize them either. Kain threw a hand in front of his brother in a clear sign for the younger boy to be quiet. Cyrus’ voice faded off and he stared at his brother nervously, wondering what Kain was going to say.

“How dare you show your face here in front of me after what you did!” Kain sneered.

The man looked flustered as he glanced around the market at the stares they were attracting. “Sir, I believe you have the wrong―”

Kain slammed his hands on the front of the stall, cutting the man off.

“How dare you show your face after you abandoned your wife and children to the mercy of Lord Zafar!” he screamed, a mixture of hysteria and anger coloring his words

Cyrus gasped as the meaning of those words sunk in.

“Kain,” the man proclaimed in shock.

Kain slugged him straight in the nose.

13. I was fairly young when I first asked my mom why she chose the Merriam for my name. She gave me a smile before pulling a tattered paperback dictionary from the living room shelf.

“I’ve always admired the Señores Merriam, mi hijo. Not for any of their actions or beliefs. To be honest, I've never much looked into their history but I admire them for creating a book full of meanings. One of the first books your abuela bought for me when I began my schooling here, was this dictionary,” she remarked wistfully. “We didn't have much money then so when she gave it to me, I was so excited.”

Mom gave a little laugh.

“It was my first book in the start of a grand collection but never mind all that, Merriam. You were asking about your name. I gave you the name Merriam because I wanted you to have an understanding of both your heart and mind.”

It was such a sweet story that at the time I was so proud of my name. I later grew to hold my name in my heart with an odd amount of awe and resentment. Being called “Dictionary Boy” does not always inspire positive feelings.

“Yo, Mary, whatcha thinkin’?”

I looked over to my friend, Bryce, in disdain. Besides the association with dictionaries, Merriam has more often been a girls’ name than a boys’, men only finding Merriam in their names as a surname.

“I told you never to call me that,” I hissed.

Bryce cackled obnoxiously. “Oops. I forgot, man.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I didn’t,” he affirmed with a smirk.

Pulling a cigarette from his pocket, he put the unlit stick in his mouth and proceeded to take out a rubix cube without lighting the thing.

“If you’re going to put them in your mouth at least light them. Who are you? Augustus Waters?”

“Don’t make references to books you've never read, Mary,” Bryce muttered distractedly. “I’m trying to quit.”

“You’re trying to quit now, months after I’ve stopped lecturing you about the health risks posed by cigarettes,” I questioned skeptically.

“Yep. Better late than never.”

This came across as bizarre to me. Bryce was stubborn so I didn’t get why he had chosen to change his habits now. After a minute of me staring at him and him trying and failing to solve the rubix cube, he said something that made me almost topple down the stairs.

“Adrie’s pregnant.”

“Fuck.”

He looked up at me and shrugged.

“It’s not that bad. We’re in college so they can transfer to online courses before it gets to the point where they shouldn’t be straining themselves anymore.”

“You’re right, I suppose,” I agreed, still reeling.

Adrie was a pretty responsible person so it was kind of a shock that Bryce had managed to get them pregnant but then again, condoms did break.

“Would you like to be the godfather?”

“You’re joking, right?”

“No. Adrie likes you.”

Adrie likes everyone.”

Bryce put the rubix cube down and extracted the cancer stick from his mouth.

“Surprisingly, no. Adrie smiles and talks to everyone but the two of us are their only friends. Well, I’m their boyfriend but you get the point.”

“Very touching but I think you could find a much better choice for a godfather.”

Bryce snorted. “We’ll see.”

Yeah, no.

14. The room was warm and smelt of singed turkey. I blinked blearily at my surroundings. Where was I? My apartment? No, much too clean. A friend’s? No, none of my friends could afford a turkey. Rubbing sleep from my eyes, I also noted that much of the furniture was too expensive for my apartment or anyone else I know.

How did I get here? I looked around for a door before landing my eyes on the thing in question.

It was painted white with a gold peephole. The deadbolt was broken and the knobs were unlocked. I felt a deep seeded feeling of dread in my gut.

Did I break in here, I asked myself.

Most people don’t have to ask themselves these kinds of questions but I take some anxiety medication that causes some disinhibition and memory loss, and I am prone to making stupid decisions regardless of my state of awareness. What day was it?

The aroma of the turkey caused the date to click with me.

A scream of shocked terror had me holding my ears in pain.

“Who are you?” a feminine voice cried. “Why are you in my house?”

Then, like a dumbass, my chosen reply was a slurred:

“Happy Thanksgiving!”

15. The lazy sunlight crept into my apartment window, sharply hitting my eyes. I shift against my soft couch cushions, a warm weight melting into my side.

“Lee, you awake?”

He mumbled unintelligently but didn’t stir. I held him tighter in my arms. I never wanted this moment to end but like all beautiful moments that block out the horribleness of reality, it has to end.

My name is Jay, codename, Vitality and I am a hero. My boyfriend, Lee, is a villain named Lord Decay. We live in a society of people with metahuman abilities where few elect to utilize those abilities. The few that do mainly use their powers to help maintain our society or tear it down.

Lee wants to tear it down and rebuild it from scratch. He wants to change the world and he grew to believe the only way to inspire that change was to make people listen. The people don’t like being told to change. The people have too much pride in the society we created following the rise of powers.

People without powers are left isolated and degraded. People with stereotypically villainous powers are abused and treated like shit while those gifted with heroic-like powers are praised and treated like gods.

Our society needs to change but the way Lee has chosen to go about bringing that change is wrong.

One time I asked him why he didn’t go to school to become a hero, to prove society wrong. To prove people with villainous powers can be heroes too. That powers don’t make the person, the person makes the powers.

“No place would accept me,” he said. “When my powers activated… I… I was playing with my cars and they began to turn to dust… Everything my hands touched turned to dust. I started screaming and my mom came in with a worried expression

“She fell to her knees and told me to calm down but I couldn't…”

Tears pooled in his eyes and his voice began to choke out every word.

“She pulled me into a hug and then she started screaming and pushed me away… On her back where my hands had been. God, there was so much blood, Jay and I couldn’t call for help. The phone fell apart in my hands. She was already dead by the time my dad got home,

“He sent me away. He couldn’t handle knowing his own five-year-old son had killed his wife.”

Lee stared down at his hands.

“I still can’t control my powers. At any time I could accidentally destroy this bus. I could hurt you… I could hurt you. Who would want someone like me to be a hero?”

“I would,” I whispered.

His smile looked like fractured glass.

“It might be too late for me to be a hero now.

16.Sometimes the drifting apart of a friendship is gradual. Sometimes it’s quick. For Jane and Mels’ friendship, Jane felt like she was pulling a loose thread tighter only to feel tears of frustration prickle at the corners of her eyes as she saw the thread loosen again, occasionally losing more stitches. She was stuck looking on because somewhere along the way she had lost the needle in the sands of Kronos’ beach.

“Hey, Jane,” Mels said as she sat down. “How are you?”

“Great. How was your morning?" Jane replied, trying to focus on the conversation.

It was so hard to focus these days. Mels’ reply was negative but Jane couldn’t register the contents and everything sounded thick like her head was underwater. Jane murmured vaguely while Mels turned on her phone, scrolling through her messages.

The silence was stifling for Jane but she didn’t know what to say. Should she ask after her sister? Who her latest crush is on? A school thing?

“Finals are coming soon,” she settled on. “Which are you dreading?”

Mels glanced up from her phone, distaste clear on her face.

“Jay, don’t get me started on finals. You know I’m not prepared for any of them.”

Personally, Jane felt Melane was exaggerating but she did not interrupt her friend’s tirade.

“I guess chemistry,” Mels concluded after several minutes of listing why she thought each final was going to be difficult. Jane nodded, not sure what to say. The bell rang for class. Jane did not see Melane again until the next morning.

17. Joseph had been Chase’s roommate since their freshman year of college. After three years he couldn’t really call them friends but they were closer than mere acquaintances. Chase was not the kind of guy that was easy to get to know. He was a stubborn, rude, asshole but Joseph liked him okay. He had a low tolerance for bullshit and messing around which was basically all Joseph liked to do. They balanced each other out that way.

Joseph liked to think the reason Chase had such a low tolerance for bullshit was that he liked to shove his own behind a counter and never speak about it. That was probably kind of unhealthy but he was no therapist so he just shrugged his shoulders like “what can you do”. Today was one of those days where Joseph actually got to see some of basket case’s bullshit and found himself stumped.

“I’m not going to be here tonight. I’m going to help my dad check my mom out of the hospital.”

Joseph spit out his drink and looked up from his show.

“Your mom was in the hospital! Since when?”

Chase grimaced, probably more at the idea of touching the sticky soda that had been sprayed from Joseph’s mouth than the question.

“Six months ago.”

Joseph felt sick. Did Chase say something about this while he wasn’t paying attention?

“What happened? Coma? Cancer?”

Chase got a peculiar expression on his face like he was debating on whether to answer the question or smack his roommate for being insensitive.

“She had a mental breakdown.”

“Holy fuck.”

18. Matt heard crying from through the baby monitor. It’s too early for this, he thought in despair as the fog of sleep seeped out of him.

“Janielle, could you―” he mumbled, frowning as his arm hit the cold sheets beside him.

Had she already started to make her way to the twins’ room? He sat up slowly, blanket slipping off his shoulders causing him to shiver in the frigid morning air. He scratched his fluffy brown hair scanning the room. The crying persisted. Maybe both the twins were up. He should go―

There was a note on Janielle’s pillow. She probably had to go to work early, he thought, grabbing the note, making his way down to the nursery. Halfway down the hall, he froze.

Matt,

I’m sorry but I can’t do this anymore. I wasn’t even sure I could handle being a mom of one but of twins, I just can’t. And Matt, you’re sweet but before we found out I was pregnant, I was going to break up with you. You’re a great guy but you’re just not the great guy for me. I’ll send money for Bernice and Aaron when I can. I love them and you dearly but I am afraid I can’t be there for you three.

Love,

Janielle

Matt felt numb. He robotically went up to one of the cribs and picked up Bernice. Aaron, miraculously, had not woken up.

“What’s wrong, Burn-Burn,” he whispered feeling like he was choking on every word. “I-is it Mommy? Did you see her leave?”

Bernice continued to wail. Matt sank to the floor, cradling his daughter close.

“I’m sorry. Daddy’s so sorry Burn-Burn,” he croaked.

He didn’t know what he was doing. He didn’t know what he was going to do.

He was alone.

19. I sat down at a table, a trusty trash can by my side. My sharp blades glittered smartly as I swiftly cut ovals and triangles into a dead tree sheet in the shape of a circle folded multiple times like a two-dimensional cone. I unfolded it. Snowflake decoration twenty-five complete and ready for hanging.

“Hey, Clarence. Nice snowflakes.”

I paused in my work and looked awkwardly up at who had spoken.

“Um… Why thank you, Karen. Well, um… how are you doing?” I floundered.

“Great,” she beamed. “What are you doing for Christmas?”

“Nothing really,” I muttered looking at her shoulder.

I could literally hear her smile grow.

“Fantastic. I'm having a holiday Christmas party for everyone at work at my house on Christmas Eve. Would you like to come?”

I didn't want to go.

“Yes.”

She clapped excitedly.

“Sweet. Do you need my address?”

“No. I still have it on my phone. How many people are coming so far?”

Karen looked downcast.

“Well, only you and I so far,” she perked up. “But I'm sure lots of others are going to come too.”

Well, there goes my chance of skipping out.

“See you at the party, Karen.”

“See you there, Clarence,” she winked at me.

20. I live with Father and Mother in my dreams, although they are not my mother and father, those are simply their names. They are married but they are not in love.

Father once told me that Aunt and Uncle decided that he and Mother should be joined together in holy matrimony forever. However, Father when narrating these events to me always pronounces the forever as foe-ever. I can understand why Father might view Mother as an enemy. They are completely opposite forces of nature, after all.

Mother is small, poised, and incredibly neat. She wears her white hair straight down, not a single hair out of place. She dresses in a wedding gown so clean and refined, lacking the creases made by clothes on a body that it is as if she is not wearing the dress at all. She is often quiet and seldom speaks. When she does her voice is clipped, cold, and cruel like the breaking off a glass.

Father has messy black hair and wears a rumpled burgundy suit. He is loud and very kind.

Mother rules the house. She keeps the house so spotless it is devoid of life. It is wretched but I enjoy living with them when I sleep.

“Ernest,” Mother calls. “When are you going to come find us? Father and I grow tired of waiting for you.”

Father laughed. “The only thing we can agree on. When are you coming, Nestling?”

I blinked. “I don't know where the house is.”

“Do not,” Mother corrects flatly as if she cannot even summon annoyance to respond to my stupidity.

Father rolls his eyes at her and grabs my hand.

“Well then, sweet Nestling, I'll simply have to fetch you. Where do you find yourself now?”

Smiling widely, I whisper, “Broomstock’s orphanage in Miller’s Hollow.”

Father frowns and hums vaguely.

“That's so far Nestling, amusement peppering his voice. “But Mother and I will make the journey to retrieve you.”

Mother leaned forward and muttered, “Be grateful, boy. If it were up to me, we'd leave you there and simply wait for your lazy bum to make its way to us.”

“Oh, hush, Mother,” Father laughed. “She likes you. She would have grown very impatient and ran ramped to find you if it was up to her.”

I smiled. How lovely, my friends wished to come to whisk me away. Too bad they were only the products of a child’s fancies.

“I look forward to your arrival, Father, Mother.”

“See you soon,” Father cried.

“Farewell,” Mother muttered grudgingly.

I open my eyes to the wooden beams of the ceiling, cold seeping into my bones. If only they would come.

Regular prompts are also still open. I'll try to get a poem out tomorrow but no promises.

#autumn writes #personal list #do not use #fiction #writing #coffee #need sleep

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revel80r · 8 years ago

Text

On the turning of Scyther88

I met my best friend when I was five years old. at the Akron Chinese Christian Church. On this blog, I call him Scyther88. Scyther, myself, and another guy, let’s call him ‘Mango’, have been the three musketeers for most of my childhood. We’d only see each other on sundays, and sometimes a friday, or saturday here or there, because our families all lived in different areas of Akron and we went to different schools during the week. But oh, the bliss of those sundays together with those two idiots. At church on sundays, we hung out together, we got in trouble together, bullied and picked on other smaller kids together, and all the joys of 90′s boyhood ...together. We definitely had our different personalities too. Mango was the oldest (by 8 days). He was always domineering, manipulative, and was kind of our de-facto “leader” of the little gang. Scyther was always the lancer to Mango’s alpha. He always challenged him, had more of a streak of irony and sarcasm than Mango. He was cool. And then there’s me. I was younger than both of them by about a year. I was the little 3rd fiddle. I just played loyal and loved being with these two guys... complicit in all our stupid sins as a bunch of kids.

We got really, crazy into Pokemon, and bonded over it. To this day, Scyther’s email, gamername, username on most platforms has always been “Scyther88″ or some form of it. Mango’s moved on from his “Jolteon88″ or whatever it was. I was an ‘89 baby so I’m not even cool. Now I’m just reVelstΛr. I remember I was the first to get pokemon cards. Mango and I were at some Chinese church camp, and we both got one card each, he got a machop and I got a charmander. Later, a couple weeks later, I got the old blue Pokemon card starter deck. And I became the cool boy. Mango and Scyther both got rival (and better) decks pretty soon afterwards and the 90′s head fever of pokemon collecting materialism had bitten us, and our parent’s wallets hard. We fought, we argued over rules and technicalities, (the best that 4th graders could anyway), etc. But we were buddies and knew that. Even though we didn’t go to the same schools in Akron, we’d go to each other’s birthday parties, play N64 together, etc. It was the good ol’ days. The best and worst part of it was, the Chinese church met in this very large mega-church building in Akron. Very extensive facilities. And us boys had the inside of the church fully explored and mapped out. We knew the place very well. So on sunday we knew there would be the inevitable time our parents had finished socializing and decided it was time to go home, and do other things. And so, purposefully, to milk every sweet moment of pokemon-card battling that we possibly could, we would hide in nooks, crannies, upper rooms, balconies, anywhere we could find and hide in, to hide away from our parents so we could spend more precious moments pokemon-carding away. Our parents had to send out search parties and scour the buildings for us little brats. hahaa. We’re guilty of many white hairs on one of the assistant pastors.

Reality hits hard. Mango’s family moved away to Asia at the end of 5th grade, and we would not see each other for a very long time. Scyther’s life hit a very rough patch when his dad’s brother passed away. Scyther’s father got angry and blamed Jesus for the passing of his brother. He full turned away from the faith, and forbid Scyther’s mother and Scyther from going to church anymore. I was young and not aware of such heavy things. but I did remember my two best friends no longer being at church, and I was suddenly a lone little guppy in the church youth group. The youngest, least mature, and most annoying, by many grade levels, to the rest of the church youth group.

I saw Mango once, in 8th or 9th grade when his family stopped by Akron for a visit, and the next time I saw him was in college.

Scyther and his mother would occasionally come to church over the years. Scyther’s father was vehemently against God, but Scyther’s mother was all the stronger in the faith in Jesus. And so they’d sneak to church whenever she can over the years to come. And blessings for me, my friendship with Scyther was intact and I got to have a middle school and high school life with my best friend from time to time, talking to him about video games, stupid jokes, girls, and all other kinds of bad things.

Scyther and I even went on a mission trip together in 2006 to Beijing, China.

In the fall of 2007, all three of us idiot musketeers went to the Ohio $tate University as freshman, Mango, Scyther, and my darned self.

I got in contact with Mango the weeks before commencement, and hung out with him the first day on campus. We both got involved with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and that ended up being our primary community on campus for the next 4-5 years (or on my case, [one of my] primary communities). Scyther and Mango were no longer buddies, no longer close. Mango’s become a popular, social kid. Scyther and I are outcast, and fringe people. I was not aware of this at the time, but Scyther had a very rough middle school and high school life, being rejected and picked on by his white peers, because he is one of only two or three Asians in his entire schools. White people. Y’all messed up. Need to get help. I was not aware, that this messed up my best friend on the inside, as he has a cynical, vengeful, vindictive streak hidden that I either missed or chose to ignore. He became ambitious and focused. So that, one day he will be at the top of the heap, looking down on everyone else who was cruel and had mistreated him in the past. And Scyther will know who had one in the end. That was his plan anyway.

Scyther was driven, ambitious, and disliked people. Mango was popular, responsible, and worked around people. I was a desperate loser junkie who would give up anything to be with people or video-games.

Guess which one of us dropped out of Ohio State, heheh.

And so Scyther did not like InterVarsity after attending one time, and picked up on the community’s unfortunate clique-y tendencies. decided he was not going to put up with that bovine stool, and chose to attend a Korean church instead. Meanwhile Mango and I became career InterVarsity attenders, becoming leaders in different chapters of IV. Mango got a lot farther along than I did, in leadership and socially, and so it went on.

I am kind of sad to admit that I picked up on signs that Scyther had given up on Jesus very late. He had stopped attending his Korean church, and I simply assumed it was because of the busyness of his schedule, as I had missed many church sessions, although that may have more to do with irresponsibility, though like many college students, I liked to chalk that up to “busyness”. And being roommates with Scyther, we would have bitter arguments from time to time. One time I got so angry, I threatened to murder him, and the dorm manager had to have me stay at a friend’s place overnight that time because of the difficulties in our dorm room. After a year of college I began to realize that Scyther no longer believed or followed Jesus. I was not even aware of my own shallowness and the brokenness in my own pursuit of Jesus, but all I knew was I felt InterVarsity was doing the right thing to me, and I seemingly couldn’t do anything to convince stubborn old Scyther to come back to either InterVarsity or church.

In Scyther’s mind, he realized that being in college, he could do whatever he wanted and was no longer forced to go to church by his mother. He could make his own choices now. And so he decided to not go. And his pains from his past, cynicism and disdain for people, including Christians, took over, and he lost faith in people, community, and Christ. He admitted to himself in not believing or seeing proof of God’s existence. and became atheist.

During all of this, Scyther’s mother remained the strong, strong prayer warrior Christian she has always been. Praying every day for the salvation of her family, urgently imploring God to bring Scyther back to faith. She prayed, and prayed, and prayed.

For many years after that, we had an understanding that InterVarsity and Jesus were just me and my ‘God thing’. but Scyther saw no evidenc, proof, or need for him. There was no way to work around his buttheadedness. Plus, Scyther’s got lots of crap on me, my deepest darkest secret, etc. So it’s not like I’ve been a particularly good, effective, or pure example of a Christian to him. And that was that. There was not much of a productive conversation beyond that.

Scyther graduated from Ohio $tate, and got into grad school in a virology PhD program at Cornell University, while I got academically dismissed, and dropped into crippling depression... Mango graduated and went on to teaching or something like that. There was a drop of contact for awhile.

Over the years from 2011-2016 Scyther and I would skype and hangout online from time to time. sometimes more frequently, chatting and playing vieogames together online every night. Other times we’d go through months of hiatuses from online contact. I visited him at Cornell University in Ithaca. That was a special night as by the grace of the Lord, I got a chance to talk with Scyther about why I believed in God, why I believed in Jesus, and how experienced him. A deeper conversation than the typical StarCraft and World of WarCraft talk we had. In the end, Scyther still saw no evidence, proof, or need for God and I had to just agree to disagree... It’s good. I love him. I love this guy. He is my best friend. He was there with me through much of my shit and depression. Especially that worst period in 2013.

This year in 2016, I took a very, very long hiatus from video games and much social media. Worked through some of the toughest semesters I had at Capital University, which God has provided for me after scraping and mopping up my mistakes through sweat, blood, and tears at Columbus State Community College... And so 2016 was a banner year for me. Most excellent. I got to go on not one, but two missions trips, one to Mozambique, and one to Taiwan. and after all that crazy goodness, I was brought into church staffship, and finished college in december, finally earning that accursed, elusive piece of paper...

Meanwhile, Scyther was told to wrap up his research, do a dissertation and defense, and finish his graduate school studies. And he did so. And now we all tease him and call him Dr. Scyther. What should have been a joyful, celebratory time, became a disappointment for Scyther, as life after attaining doctorhood was no different from life before. He did not feel any redemption, release, or beams of purpose. Only the emptiness. And so, with his emotions crashing. Scyther realized the truth of life is meaningless. There is no rhyme, or reason. Why spend so much effort building, only for someone else to enjoy the fruits of his labor? What was worth it? We all die and go to the same place, and life is meaningless. He spiraled into depression and decided to kill himself. and with the many years of laboratory experience, he knew exactly what he needed to do to kill himself. He planned it out, wrote apology letters to his mother, wrote one for me, and only found that..... he could not do it. The fear is too much. He is afraid of pain, and confronted with the fact that he did not know what happens to him after he does it. And so, THANK GOD, my best friend Scyther did not kill himself. During this time I was completely unaware that my Scyther was going through so much... Lesson and word of advice... check on your friends, keep in contact with them, ever after you sign off or swear off from social media.. check on your friends. Because honestly, depression and suicidal resolve can come quite swiftly....

Scyther did not kill himself. Thank God he chickened out. One thought reached out to him, The Timothy Keller book he bought out of curiosity on a whim a while ago: “The Reason for God” It is an apologetics book laying out philosophical, experiential, theological arguments fro the experience of God. Very good. Scyther read through it.

One day, in November of 2016, after a conversation with his mother, Scyther felt truth in his mind, that maybe, just maaaybe, God really is real. And that very night he had a terrifying demonic nightmare, as if he was being dragged down to hell itself. Sleep paralysis, the sciences call it. A couple nights later he had another sleep paralysis attack, this time seeing an angry face. He looked it up online and discovered sleep paralysis. And happening so suddenly and coincidally with his openness to the existence of God, a higher being..... He called me and asked about it. Being intrigued, I opened up a little about my own demonic experiences, and assured him that the name of Jesus has power. Jesus has power. Pray, invoke the name of Jesus, and the enemy will flee in every direction from you... We talked for a little while, I mentioned being at the church I was at, and how I was going to a big conference called One Thing in Kansas City that december.

A couple days later, my cell phone broke and I had to switch phones, missing a couple texts and calls in the process; several of these texts were from Scyther, inquiring about this conference, One Thing, and whether IHOP-KC was a cult.

By the time I got in contact with him a couple days after that, Scyther had already figured out the answers to his questions himself. And he was thinking about going. When I talked to him again, Scyther simply told me, unflinchingly, that “God is real. God is totally real. Acts chapter 9. That is all I can say, man.” I really was on the verge of tears, hearing my childhood and best friend, of 22+ years say to me over the phone that God is real, after he had abandoned the Lord and lived as an atheist for about a decade.

And just last month, in December, Scyther joined me and my church going to IHOP’s One Thing conference. It was a beautiful thing to see. His heart was being opened and his character was already different. He had a passion and a zeal for the Lord that I have not seen before. It was amazing. His heart was being opened, and he was being softened to people. My best friend, who in the past hated pretty much every single human being except for his 5-6 friends and family... is now an open, sociable, empathetic heart. I cannot make this up. Jesus is sooooo good and I am so thankful. God’s even opened up Scyther’s mind to the possibilities of prophecy, healing, and miraculous prayer. Things that were strongholds to Scyther’s mind and heart were being unlocked and opened and it is a beautiful, beautiful, redemptive thing to see.

Nowadays, Scyther comes to my church in Columbus, and we are growing, Scyther is growing so, so fast, we are all growing towards the Lord, we are growing together.

I cannot be happier with life.

#Scyther88

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lovelyrainystarlight-blog · 7 years ago

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Wrestling With God

Have you ever watched a wrestling match? Wrestling is a really popular sport all in excess of the entire world. Newbie wrestling is well-known in colleges, schools, and in the Olympics. There is also specialist wrestling like we see on tv. I feel most of that type of wrestling is fake, but men and women nonetheless get pleasure from observing it. Wrestling is one particular of the oldest sporting activities in the planet relationship back countless numbers of years. How a lot of of you have wrestled with God and ended up being transformed by the expertise? If you have, you know what occurred to Jacob in Genesis 32:22-31. Jacob was getting ready to return to his homeland. He did not have to go near his brother Esau's territory, but he understood that it was only a matter of time until they fulfilled. He sent messengers to Esau to announce his return, but the messengers returned with the information that Esau and 400 guys had been on their way to meet up with him. Jacob was terrified. He sent gifts to Esau to appease Esau's prospective anger. Then he sent his wives, maidservants and children. Jacob was left by yourself with his fears and ideas, so he did a sensible issue. view He prayed to God. Jacob was susceptible. He was ashamed of the way he experienced lived in spite of God's grace. He was frightened for his life and the lives of his loved ones. He was by yourself, just like others who have suddenly felt insufficient to offer with life's trials. All of us have mentioned or done factors in the previous that we regret. At some position these factors arrive to the surface area and confront us. How can we utilize Jacob's wrestling with God to our life when this occurs? (Pause) Jacob did not initiate the contest. God wanted to different the self-willed Jacob from all supports till he was still left alone ahead of Him-something the Lord even now does with some of His followers. The simple fact that Jacob wrestled with God shows that there was nonetheless a part of him that resisted God's rule in his daily life. Jacob's prayer confirmed an component of reliance, but the underlying perspective was 1 of resistance. Jacob's language was the language of dependence, but there was proof of a latent defiance in the way he fought God's grip on his daily life. The Hebrew word for "touched" may reveal any type of contact, from a gentle caress to an influencing strike. Evidently, Jacob knowledgeable the latter. Jacob proved robust as the pair wrestled via the night. But one particular final result was a lifelong weak spot in Jacob's hip. The male was evidently the Lord himself. When God touched Jacob's hip, He confirmed that there is a limit beyond which He is not ready to go in His dealings with mankind. At that moment Jacob realized that his wrestling with God was puny. When God selected to reveal the correct character and extent of His power, Jacob was powerless to stand up to it. Jacob was powerless to transfer. The instant of real truth regarding the correct character of Jacob's finiteness occurred to him. Jacob's defiance turned to reliance. Jacob made the decision to arrive clean about himself the very same way he determined to admit getting arrived at the end of his very own methods. God dealt graciously with Jacob. Regardless of his numerous failings, weaknesses and sorrows, Jacob was decided on and beloved by God. By way of his wrestling match, he turned the model of effort necessary for successful prayer. Like Jacob, we sometimes combat with God. God says, "I want you to do this," but we will refuse. He will permit us have our wrestling matches with Him, and eventually we'll realize that we're fatigued of preventing with God. What we need to do is honour God and do what He tells us to do. When we do, God will open doorways for us. Strange as it may possibly appear, we usually win above our enemies only right after we have been soundly defeated by God. God defeats our enemies by defeating us. When God foresees that we need to fulfill a lethal opponent, he assures that we will win by bringing us down in humbleness at His very own feet. Jacob was missing God's will for his lifestyle due to the fact he was often winning. God set him in a holding sample. Sometimes on our journey of faith God places us in a keeping pattern, specially when we are often operating. Sometimes what God does in our lives even though we are waiting around can be far more essential than what we are waiting around for. God may possibly want us to set our priorities, our eyesight statement, mission objective and other troubles on keep as we knowledge His will for our lives. We celebrate prosperity, electricity, energy, bravado, self-assurance, prestige and victory. This celebrating begins with Little League baseball for our young children and continues on by means of their higher education admissions, very first work and very first handle. We are scared of weak point, failure, battle and doubt. Even even though we know that a evaluate of vulnerability, worry, discouragement and despair are a element of our lives, we see these indications as signs of failure or even a lack of religion. In real daily life, naïve optimism and rosy rhetoric are a recipe for disappointment and discouragement. Sooner or later on actuality catches up with us. What does God have to do in our lives to remove the controlling and manipulative nature that is so usually a part of our life? It may require a time of immobilizing, reduction of a job, loss of income, reduction of well being or decline of a near partnership. Our new mother nature is not going to be total till we cease relying on ourselves and begin relying on God. If God is getting us via this method, we can be inspired since of the inheritance He has for us-an inheritance that can only be obtained when we turn into absolutely dependent on God. The toughest bout we will experience is not saying "no" to a lucrative job, but declaring "of course" to God's prompting. It is not expressing "no" to joy, but saying "indeed" to holiness. It is not stating "no" to temptation, but stating "sure" to righteousness. God does not want us to be miserable and unsatisfied. He desires to give us the wants of our hearts, but expressing "yes" to God's management can be a battle, if not a downright battle. The phrase, "no more time known as Jacob," is proof of a outstanding transformation. Jacob's start identify described the heel of his brother, Esau. The nightlong wrestling match, nonetheless, made him Israel, a good name that means "God Prevails." Likely forward, Scripture utilizes the names interchangeably. Following the come across, Jacob limped on his hip, every phase reminding him that he no longer operated in his very own strength but in God's. Jacob was modified for the better---from crafty to clinging, from resisting to resting, from the crafty 1 to the conquered one. Jacob's battle scar was a limp. All of us have battle scars. What are yours? Have you approved them for what they are and for the individual they have created you? Have you allowed the ache of your wrestling match with God to switch you into a much better, more compassionate man or woman? Regardless of whether we require time to wrestle with God or basically chat something out with God, discovering time when we can encounter God by itself is critical. There are several of us who are wrestling with God now, hanging on with the hope of finding new meaning and new energy for our life. Even far more of us are on a journey to one more moment in which we can uncover renewal and refreshment to a lifestyle tattered and tainted with our compromises and failures. To each of us, God phone calls with this assure that we hear in the Communion liturgy in the Guide of Typical Prayer: "Occur unto me all who labour and are weighty laden, and I will give you relaxation."

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thecultofculture-blog · 8 years ago

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They come in all shapes and sizes, some with deadly skills and others with questionable intellect, but every villain needs a horde of henchmen to help them carry out their nefarious plots. Plus, players need something to kill as they hone their skills for future boss battles.

From the horrifying right hand men to mindless cannon fodder, here is The Cult of Culture’s top 10 video game henchmen!

10. Kremlings – Donkey Kong

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The Donkey Kong series features plenty of bad guys, but none compare to the prowess of these reptilian henchmen. The Kremlings come in a variety of forms from standing alligators to the annoying Klaptrap, but all of them serve King K. Rool in his quest to steal DK’s famous banana horde.

While the average Kremling might be an idiot walking straight to their deaths, other members such as the Rockkroc can make any level a difficult challenge. Who knows what these crocodiles want with bananas, and who cares?! Pummeling these henchmen is way too much fun.

9. Bob-ombs – Mario

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There are all sorts of henchmen lurking within the Mario universe, but none gets the job done like a Bob-omb. Why? These walking, and sometimes talking, bombs sacrifice their lives for Bowser’s cause. First appearing in Super Mario 2, it’s hard to imagine a game without them now.

These single minded kamikaze minions can give anyone a run for their money, especially in large numbers. However, like all mindless henchmen these bombs are easily thwarted. In some cases, they can even become a weapon to throw at other enemies. While they’re certainly not the largest threat in the game, they sure do make it more fun.

8. Grunts – Halo

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Ah, the comical grunt! Sometimes, you have to feel bad for the Unggoy. These poor aliens are the workhorses and cannon fodder of the Covenant Empire. Cowardly, usually unintelligent, and pathetic on the battlefield, the only advantage these aliens have is in their numbers.

Grunts can be found in abundance throughout the Halo series ranging from mindless idiots firing laser pistols to the more dangerous Unggoy Heavy, but it’s hard to take an enemy that falls asleep on the battlefield seriously. The never ending chance for a fun kill, mass numbers, and comical relief make these goofy aliens awesome video game henchmen.

7. Badniks – Sonic

Common sense dictates that any evil genius should have an army of evil robots at his disposal, like the Badniks. These dastardly animal-like mechanisms are constantly getting in Sonic’s way as he attempts to stop Dr. Robotnik’s wicked plans.

In the original games, these automated death machines were powered by real life animal friends of the game’s protagonist that would be released upon destroying their metal captors. They come in a variety of styles, each with their own weaponry, and some are even modeled after Sonic and his allies. While some are easier to take down than others, they all can lead to a fateful game over screen.

The Badnik’s undying loyalty, determination, and massive numbers earn them a spot on any top henchman list.

6. The Star Wolf Team – Star Fox

Lead by Wolf O’Donnel, this team of galactic felons seeks to destroy the Star Fox team. While they run their own operations these days, they were originally henchmen for the evil Andross as he attempted to take over the Lylat planetary system.

These humanoid animals are expert fighter pilots, especially Wolf, putting any player’s skills to the test when facing them in a dog fight. Their highly advanced Wolfen starfighters, determination to kill Fox McCloud, and evil cunning made them incredibly dangerous henchmen.

While their original appearance was in Star Fox 64, fans of the series can face off with them once again in Star Fox 2 on the SNES Classic Mini.

5. Darknut – Legend of Zelda

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Since the very first title in the Zelda series, these knights have been one of the top choices in henchmen for Ganon. Heavily armored and highly skilled combatants, they are often considered the toughest non-boss enemy in the game.

Their heavy armor makes them impervious to head on attacks, forcing the player to wait for a chance to strike from behind. They carry a large shield that they use to deflect any arrows, as well as a gigantic sword that they often use to charge at Link. While a one on one fight with a Darknut is going to require your best moves, many games feature insanely difficult rooms filled with these evil knights.

Terrifyingly fierce, these opponents test any players mettle. Therefore, they certainly earn a spot on this top videogame henchmen list.

4. The Tarkata – Mortal Kombat

A mix of humans from Outworld and a demonic race from the Netherrealm, this vicious warrior army serves Emperor Shao Kahn (or whoever is ruling Outworld at the time). Their large mouths harbor razor sharp teeth while spikes protrude from their bodies. These nomadic creatures are tribal, brutal by nature, and downright evil.

The most famous of Tarkata is named Baraka, a prominent character in the MK universe, who’s brutal fighting style and arm spikes make him a great character choice and a deadly opponent. He leads the Tarkatan hordes into Earthrealm in both timelines as they slaughter countless warriors and imprison helpless civilians.

These video game henchmen are not to be taken lightly and prove to be worthy adversaries for even the most skilled fighters.

3. Space Pirates – Metroid

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This alien species is one of the most brutal in the entire Metroid universe, destroying and enslaving civilizations out of sheer pleasure. They are an intelligent race of arthropods who use advanced technology to create devastating weapons. One on one they aren’t much of a threat, but their numbers are vast and can easily overwhelm a player.

These cronies serve Ridley, a giant pterodactyl-like villain, who has led them to unleash some of the most dangerous things found within the galaxy. They are constantly experimenting on themselves and other species with mutagenic substances such as phazon or biochemical weaponry, which has led to some horribly monstrous results as well as widely altered appearances. Their brazen attitude and superiority complex has led them to attempt harvesting deadly aliens such as the Metroids.

They know no fear and will fight Samus to the death in Ridley’s quest to conquer the galaxy. With minds like worker bees serving the hive, these aggressive Space Pirates make formidable henchmen.

2. Red Arremer – Ghouls ‘N Goblins

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If you have ever played one of the titles in the Ghouls ‘N Goblins series, you know exactly who these pesky devils are. Although small in stature compared to other enemies in the game, the Red Arremer are lethal opponents.

Serving the ruler of the Demon Realm, these demonic foes swoop down at high speeds to attack Arthur with their sharp claws and teeth. Incredibly fast, they can be hard to dodge and even harder to attack. In fact, they’re so good at dodging your weapons that they will even taunt you by dancing.

It takes several hits to bring down a Red Arremer, but the satisfaction after killing one is priceless. Why did they make number two on the list? They are one of the most annoying yet successful henchmen in video game history being one of the few who actually succeed in killing the protagonist. While you might succumb to henchmen now and again, you will most certainly land on that dreaded Game Over screen more times than you like to admit because of these demons.

1. Verdugo – Resident Evil 4

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Henchmen to Ramon Salazar, who happens to be a henchmen of Lord Saddler, these are easily one of the most terrifying creatures you can encounter in any video game. Considered Bio Organic Weapons, they are the combination of human and insect DNA implanted with the Plagas virus. What makes them the top henchmen on The Cult’s list?

For starters, their appearance is horrifying. They initially hide behind demonic looking cloaks with their nothing visible but their clearly inhuman faces. Never speaking and never moving without a word from Salazar, they give off a a dark, ominous presence. Once the cloak comes off these insectoids are the stuff of nightmares. Their mouths are comprised of two salivating mandibles that open to create a horrid sound, while their entire body is cased in a jet black exoskeleton.

The Verdugo attack with large tri-clawed hands and an long tail that features a deadly blade-like point at the end. The move at superhuman speeds as they stalk their prey, snarling and gurgling. In Resident Evil 4 Leon Kennedy faces off against just one of these abominations, which proves to be one of the toughest fights in the game. They are capable of withstanding gunfire and explosions to the point where a player can fire off all of their ammo to seemingly no effect.

The only way to destroy it (without having gone through the game a few times to acquire the Chicago Typewriter or Hand Canon) was to freeze it with liquid nitrogen and use the action kick button. However, the beast can still muster up the strength to claw Leon while frozen. What made this fight the most terrifying was being stuck in such close quarters with a lightning fast opponent who could tear you in two with the flick of its tail.

Subservient, deadly, nearly invincible, and downright horrifying monsters, the Verdugo are the perfect henchmen for any villain’s evil plot. Thus, making them the ultimate video game henchmen. Thankfully, they haven’t appeared in any further RE games.

Thanks, Henchmen

Without henchmen in a videogame, things would be awfully boring. They give us something to wail on, practice trick shots with, add a challenge, and sometimes even give us comic relief.

Which henchmen would you have added to the list? Let me know in the comments section below! There were so many to choose from that I actually had a hard time slimming this down to just 10.

If you liked this post and want to see more from The Cult of Culture, follow us on Facebook or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

The Top 10 Video Game Henchmen They come in all shapes and sizes, some with deadly skills and others with questionable intellect, but every villain needs a horde of henchmen to help them carry out their nefarious plots.

#Donkey Kong #Ghosts &039;n Goblins #Legend of Zelda #Mario #Metroid #Mortal Kombat #Resident Evil #Sonic #Star Fox

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thesnootyushers · 8 years ago

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We like our fan casts here at Snooty Ushers Towers, and now for the first time we jump into the majestic world of Warhammer.

Given the sources that have been mined over the years in order to provide material for films, in particular fantasy. It strikes me as odd that the Table Top Games produced by Games Workshop have never been adapted to a more visual medium. I am not sure if this is a choice on the part of the company , so as not to risk a film/televison vehicle flop like say Warcraft did. It could also be their just hasn’t been anyone willing or able to do it justice, given the scope and scale of the products range from high Fantasy to bleak war torn space and everything in between.

Whats more in 2001 the company even worked alongside New Line Cinema to bring A Lord of The Rings dice based games into their stores. Given the success of LOTR and now the popularity of shows such as Game of Thrones it’s just unusual that Games Workshop haven’t entered the proverbial cinematic battlefield.

The Games Workshop’s lore and worlds are phenomenal. Everything is backed up by incredible art, miniatures, clever gameplay and also its Fiction. Games Workshop have an immense collection of short stories, Novella, character bios and army books all designed to enhance the world of the game. This collection is dubbed the Black Library.

I am a collector and player of the Games workshop products. Mainly playing fantasy and have for years. When I was twelve and very much just getting into it I read and played as much as I could, building my knowledge of the world in which the game was set. Then I was recommended a Novel called Trollslayer….as you can guess it started something.

From then I followed the series and still do. I have now read everything save the last two publications which I have just started. Given my love for these two over the years and how I have been invested in them made me think that if anything could work as a film this could. So for about seven years I have considered this fan cast and now am finally going to give it life.

The Series

Gotrek Gurnisson, a Dwarf Slayer, and Felix Jaeger, his Human chronicler, are a duo of warriors traveling throughout the length and breath of the Old World, battling Dark Forces and stopping complots in Gotrek’s quest for a heroic death against a terrible foe. The adventures of these warriors have been written down in the series of books: “My Travels with Gotrek” by Master Felix Jaeger, which outlines Felix’s many adventures with his maniacal comrade throughout many of their endeavours, recording everything till the day Gotrek finally met his doom, and will finally be allowed to enter the halls of his ancestors.

The skills of these two heroes is near unequal in the known world, their deeds becoming near legendary in the eyes of many of their own people. Their exploits have led these two warriors to places only heard of in whispers and legend. Though sometimes considered vigilantes of the law, and sometimes having themselves locked up from the very people they tried to protect, such is the deeds these two have fulfilled in their twenty long years of battles. The forces of evil they encounter during their journeys will always be stopped, for these two are unrivaled in combat, and are considered one of the worlds most powerful heroes of the age, and many ages since.

The stories are violent action adventures, they encompass most of the different races and places within the World of Warhammer Fantasy. Tell me this wouldn’t be an incredible film and or TV series. The duo are an odd couple, but one that is pretty effective against the forces of evil.

The time they spend together they grow and change and their friendship is believable. Mainly in the sense that it develops over 20 years and some horrendous moments of violence, loss and peril. It is very understated, no declarations of brotherhood or bombastic speeches. Just respect built over time and familiarity.

A major theme in the novels is the tension within Felix between his desire to settle down in peace and comfort, away from the danger of being Gotrek’s companion, and his longing to escape the banalities of civilized Imperial society for a life of heroism and adventure. It is this conflict that shaped much of his relationship with Gotrek.

There is so much depth and narrative meat you can sink your teeth into..it’s just amazing.

Backstory of Dwarven Slayers (as quoted in the Lexicanum)

Dwarves in most fantasy lore are a proud race and do not cope easily with failure or dishonour. Should a Dwarf suffer some terrible personal tragedy like, the loss of his family, his hoard, or failure to uphold a promise can seriously unhinge the mind of any Dwarf. Whatever the cause, Dwarves who have suffered what they perceive to be a serious loss of honour and great shame will often forsake the Society for a life of self-imposed exile. These Dwarfs become Slayers.

Slayers seek death in combat in order to atone. Although they seek death, Dwarfs are incapable of deliberately fighting to lose, and so always enter the fray to win. Therefore Slayers spend as much time as possible improving their warrior skills.

Slayers deliberately seek uneven combat, for example by entering an Orc stronghold alone. The greater the odds, the more dangerous or numerous the enemy the more glorious the death. Their way of life weeds out all but the toughest and most determined warriors, so that those Slayers who survive for any period time are invariably exceptionally tough, violent, and extremely dangerous. Slayers are almost famous for dying their hair orange and shaping it into Large Crests. It’s one of the most identifiable features of a dwarf slayer.

Now before we start let me say these are just my thoughts and opinions, and what I would do if money were no option.

Gotrek Gurnisson

Gotrek is morose, taciturn and gruff. Even after years of travelling and fighting side by side he still refers to Felix as ‘manling’, though he respects him in other ways and values him more than any other human. Completely obsessed with finding his doom Gotrek is fearless in the face of any danger and actively seeks it out in order to fulfil his vow. He is a heavy drinker, able to consume amounts of alcohol that would kill a human. Though outcast from dwarven society he retains many dwarven qualities, including a lust for gold, mistrust and contempt for other races. The exact nature of Gotrek’s crime has never been explicitly revealed; like many Slayers, Gotrek considers his transgressions an intensely personal shame, and has threatened to kill those nosy enough to pry. However, some hints have been revealed over the course of the novels, though the authenticity of these sources is somewhat questionable.

His signature weapon is a battleaxe imbued with powerful rune magic called the Runemaster’s Axe and supposedly previously belonged to the dwarven deity Grimnir.

Samoa Joe (Nuufolau Joel “Joe” Seanoa)

I know this will probably enrage the zealots and purists but just hear me out.

Gotrek is a Dwarf like no other he is bigger than an average dwarf, more powerful and he is unstoppable knot of fury and violence. With the Weta workshop magic, used in the hobbit to make Thorin’s Company, he is physically right for the part. Now having no real acting experience could be a setback, he has never really been tested on screen. That being said it hasn’t stopped Batista or the Rock, so it can work.

Not only this but sometimes less is more. Gotrek isn’t a talker, he is surly and gruff so maybe speaking less and using his body language and facial expressions etc could be equally as effective. Especially when he is alongside someone who is more of an experienced actor. Look at a raging Samoa Joe with that ferocious snarl on his face as he is challenging or choking out an opponent. That’s Slayer right there.

Felix Jaeger

In contrast to Gotrek’s taciturn and absolutist mentality, Felix is a much more romantic, pragmatic figure. He frequently serves as the voice of logic and moral reason of the duo in order to remind Gotrek of the long-term consequences of his actions, and guide him towards greater heroism. He also finds himself serving in a more diplomatic role, helping to soothe bruised egos after Gotrek’s anti-authoritarian nature provokes people. Felix is also something of a womanizer, and forms several romantic relationships over the course of the series, most prominently with the Kislevite noblewoman (and eventual vampire) Ulrika Magdova.

Felix is a human with a swordman’s physique and long blond hair. Over years of following Gotrek, Felix has become an accomplished swordsman and duellist. His own weapon is the rune sword Karaghul, a blade with a dragon hilt recovered from the fallen hold of Karak Eight Peaks

After a night of heavy drinking, Felix swore a blood oath to follow Gotrek on the Dwarf’s quest to find his doom in battle, promising to record it in an epic poem. The two have been companions ever since.

Domhnall Gleeson

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Startraks Photo/REX (3095555ac) Domhnall Gleeson ‘About Time’ film premiere at the 51st New York Film Festival, America – 01 Oct 2013

Versatile and off kilter, this could be a different role for the talented young actor to play. He may need a slight bit of training for the physicality but he can do commanding, funny, weird, awkward, nervous and evil without effort. He would be fantastic as Rememberer Felix.

This man starred in Richard Curtis Comedy Drama About Time, as Tech specialist in Ex Machina, a drug addict criminal in Dredd and a sociopath in Calvary.

It would be a nice anchor for Samoa Joe who would be very green but they could create that unusual chemistry and characterization that the story is built on. I reckon you could hit some hilarious comedy spots. Even if just for the fact you play off Joe as the Straight man.

Yes this is an unusual pairing but so are the characters they are playing and I think you could get a lot of mileage.

Now the supporters.

Snorri Nosebiter

Snorri Nosebiter is a long time friend of Gotrek, a Slayer who is also on his quest to seek his death in battle. Snorri was a friend of Gotrek long before they became slayers. Snorri’s personality is almost the opposite of Gotrek, while Gotrek is mostly serious and gloomy and has little respect for others, Snorri is always in a cheerful mood, slow to anger. But when he does he is a very formidable foe. He charges into battle swinging his axe and hammer. He is also much more ugly, having a cauliflower ear, a very broken nose, many scars and his most notable feature, three massive nails, painted orange, nailed into his bald head instead of a crest. He too is an unholy consumer of alcohol and a little mentally unbalanced.

Joseph Gilgun

Actor Joseph Gilgun on the red carpet of ‘Preacher’ during the 2016 SXSW Music, Film + Interactive Festival at Paramount Theatre on March 14, 2016 in Austin, Texas. Suzanne Cordeiro for American-Statesman

Now again I am thinking you would need that Weta Workshop Magic but I think there is no one better to play Snorri. This man is quirky, witty hilarious and another very talented actor have a solid resume. This is England, Misfits, Preacher, Pride and Harry Brown. He would bring something novel to the role and would work nicely against the unconventional leads.

Ulrika Magdova

Ulrika was Felix’s lover, and arguably his most beloved one. She first appeared during the dwarven expedition through the Chaos Waste. She is the daughter of a Kislevite Noble. She is described as having close cropped hair, with furred and leather armour. She travels with Gotrek and Felix on their jouney for a while. It was during this time that she was herself turned into a Vampire, due to the Vampire, Adolphus Krieger. Once he is stopped she leaves to follow her own path and was spun out into her own series.

Choice 1 – Melanie Laurent

Actress Melanie Laurent poses for photographers upon arrival for the screening of the film Inside Out at the 68th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Monday, May 18, 2015. (Photo by Arthur Mola/Invision/AP)

Melanie is a beautiful, dynamic and sophisticated actress, she has a number of great French and American films Including Dikkenek, Days of Glory, Inglorious Basterds and Je vais bien, ne t’en fais pas. Although she is slight she could readily handle the action and fit the role of warrior woman turned creature of the night. I also feel she could match wits and bounce off the other cast members especially Domhnall.

Choice 2 – Katheryn Winnick

Having an extensive martial arts background and playing a viking warrior in the series Vikings. Katheryn is more than ready for a part like this.

There are several more characters that could fit such as Max Schreiber, Malakai Makaisson and Grey Seer Thanquol. For now however I decided to just cast who I think would be the most important four. I may come back and cast other characters later on, who knows

There it is readers. If you agree tell me. If you don’t agree I am sure you will also let me know. Until next time. Stay Cool.

Warhammer Fan Cast – Gotrek and Felix: The Slayer Saga We like our fan casts here at Snooty Ushers Towers, and now for the first time we jump into the majestic world of Warhammer.

#Fan Cast #Felix #Gotrek #Warhammer

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