#we need a beach episode AND a festival episode AND a culture festival episode too | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

missingmywing · 1 year ago

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Pure fluff and Minato regretting letting Mitsuru sign him up for the Student Council last year.

Day 4: Genderswap (Ao3 Link)

My original plan: oh, this could be fun to play around with some femc-stuff!

This au gaining a life of its own and turning into a mini-fic: Well Actually.

I’m pushing the prompt for this one to the limit and past it with this, I know.

These prompts were not originally going to all be connected. Now they are. Which means sadly no Kotone, but we do get Minato convinced into being a maid for the culture festival.

We had to get Minato into the maid dress somehow.

Also the running joke about the student council being forced to pull all nighters to get the culture festival done (and Shinji bringing food) is inspired by Fate’s “Emiya-sanchi no Kyō no Gohan” episode where that happened (and tbh that whole show is kinda the vibes I’m leaning into for these post canon chapters).

~ ᙙᙖ ~

Minato had been trying not to think about the rapidly approaching September and October and the dread that accompanied them.

Not just for the reminder of the anniversary of Shinji’s very near death experience - and Minato’s subsequent near killing of himself using revive and healing spells over and over and over until they stuck - though that was certainly part of it, especially given Ken’s brooding and guilt until Koro and Shinji snapped him out of it.

No, Minato was dreading October because of one specific, exhausting, exasperating event.

The stupid culture festival.

Chihiro had been determined that the planning for the event would go smoothly this year, that they would prepare the back-end paperwork and forms well ahead of time, order and assign everything they knew would be needed regardless of the specifics of individual booths, and be prepared for any curve balls any of the clubs or classes threw at them.

Which naturally, the student council all knew, meant that it was going to fall apart spectacularly when it made contact with the enemy. They were all closing their eyes and begging whatever gods were listening to have mercy on their schedules and allow things to go smoothly this year.

Minato knew what god was listening and there was not a single merciful bone in his body.

Ryoji was going to ruin his life with whatever antics he and Junpei tried to rope their class into, and Minato was already trying to plan contingencies.

Contingencies meaning he cornered Yukari and Aigis after school one day and ordered them to help him rein the two class troublemakers in when the dreaded class meeting to decide their booth came into being. At least he wasn’t class rep, so he wasn’t responsible for organizing their booth on top of his duties on the student council.

(Why had he accepted Mitsuru’s invitation to the council? Why had he given in to Hidetoshi and Chihiro’s request that he stay on for third year? Maintaining Social Links were not worth this hell.)

The day finally came, and Minato slunk low in his seat and tried not to think about how much work was about to be piled onto his shoulders against his will. He just hoped that their class wouldn’t go for anything too out there…

“How about a Hawaiian themed grilling booth?” Junpei suggested with a grin, Ryoji wearing an equally devious grin to match.

Yukari shot them both dirty looks. “We’re not going to wear hula outfits, so you can just give that up now.”

“Aww, c’mon Yuka-tan-”

“I’m telling Chidori.”

“W-Wait that’s not what I meant, I just thought a beach themed booth would be unique-!”

The class rep cleared his throat. “Any other suggestions?”

Minato listened as other ideas were thrown around - haunted house, drink stand, various food stands, a couple of plays that were quickly vetoed by people who didn’t want to deal with scheduling show times thankfully - before the one they’d all secretly been expecting was finally called out. Not by Ryoji, surprisingly.

“Well, what about a maid cafe then?” a guy in the back called, grinning in a way that proved he was really only saying it for the joke.

There were immediately groans and protests from around. Yukari shook her head in exasperation, while several other girls rolled their eyes and made faces. One of them had apparently been preparing herself just for this, though, because she immediately shot back with, “Only if it’s a crossdressing maid cafe and the guys are the ones in dresses.”

That immediately got a different round of protests, though some of the girls were grinning at the idea and a couple even endorsed it.

Minato just sighed and dropped his head onto the table. He didn’t honestly care much either way - a maid cafe would be convenient because of its simplicity, and the student council had expected that there would be at least a few of them so they’d ordered the basics ahead of time so it would cut down on his workload. And he’d taken on cafe-work before, so working as a waiter - or even a maid, annoying as it may be - wasn’t that big of a deal. Compared to some of the other things they could try to foist on him, at least.

“How about a Halloween themed maid cafe instead?” Ryoji suggested, making Minato glance back up narrowly. “Since the culture festival is around a week before Halloween, it could be fun! And it’s not as cliche is the usual maid cafes.”

The suggestion actually made everyone in the class pause and think it over. Even the ones annoyed with the initial suggestion looked to be considering it.

“We could do a bunch of different foods that are easy to make in bulk and just change how they look to be more scary,” a girl in the cooking club said thoughtfully. “That wouldn’t be hard to do, some of it could just be food dye…”

“Oh that’s true, if we were doing a costume theme rather than a food theme we wouldn’t have to worry about making sure our food choices complimented each other!”

“Not to mention drinks, I follow a gothic lolita blog and she makes some really cool looking creepy drinks!”

“And if it’s Halloween themed we can choose our own types of outfits rather than the stupid frilly ones you rent from those event sites.”

“With Halloween being so close we could also get stuff from those street party stores for decoration, Tokyo has a ton of them. We can put together some color palettes and decide how creepy or festive we want it to look!”

“Oh, and a budget so we can get an idea of what’s allowed.”

He hadn’t expected Ryoji’s suggestion to immediately take off with popularity, but it sounded like an accidental unanimous decision had been made. It didn’t sound like it’d add much paperwork on his end either.

The class rep cleared his throat. “Alright, just to make it official: Anyone in opposition to the idea of a Halloween themed maid cafe for our class booth?”

Everyone in the class glanced around and shrugged. Even those who seemed disinterested didn’t seem actively opposed.

“Alright, I guess that’s what we’re doing then. That was much less painful than I expected, thank you for the suggestion Ryoji. That said, I have a memo from the student council reminding everyone that the school rules of conduct are still in effect. Uniform dress code may be suspended for the festival participants in costume but those costumes are still required to be school appropriate. Keep in mind that we represent Gekkoukan; don’t do anything to embarrass the school.” He straightened. “That said, I vote we set up a planning committee now so we can begin preparations soon. The student council is pushing for our plans to be submitted early this year, so we need to have that done by October 5th, and the festival will be on October 24th and 25th.”

“Ehhh? Why so early?” one of the girls asked, already pulling out a sketchbook and handheld calendar.

The class rep just shrugged so Minato answered in his flattest tone. “Because we already know we’re going to be staying all night getting ready in the week leading up to the festival and we’re trying to lighten the load as much as possible.” He grimaced, running his hand through his hair, remembering Hidetoshi’s grim warning and already dreading the upcoming event. “The consecutive all-nighters we’re going to have to pull in the week before the event trying to fix everyone’s paperwork mistakes and make sure all the correct permissions are assigned are going to be miserable enough without making it harder on ourselves by leaving things to last minute.”

“Huh?” Junpei blinked at him. “Is it really that bad?”

Minato shrugged. “According to Hidetoshi and Mitsuru it is. Last year’s was cancelled for the typhoon so I missed the worst of it. The year before that was apparently a nightmare though.” Not that they’d given him details, but he’d gotten the impression it had nearly been a catastrophe.

“Oh I remember that,” Yukari mused, tapping the side of her face. “The first-years missed most of the problems, but apparently some of the second-years got in serious trouble for trying to break some school rules, and a few third-years had really weird events that almost didn’t get approved. Not to mention some of the clubs…”

On that note - Minato turned to send a direct glare at the president of the art club at the front of the classroom. “We will veto the art club’s booth if it isn’t reasonable. I will personally deny it.” He remembered what they’d tried to pull last year - he wasn’t dealing with that again. He refused to even think about it. He didn’t even have Keisuke as a buffer this time.

She cringed, raising her hands defensively. “I-It’ll be reasonable! Nothing like last year! No spray paint machines!”

He sent her a long look but let it drop. He didn’t care what they did as long as he didn’t get forced to deal with the paperwork of it.

“Just what the hell were you guys planning…?” one guys in the back muttered, shaking his head. “Anyway, how are we doing to planning committee?”

“Right, so first I’d like any volunteers-”

~ ᙙᙖ ~

Minato had been dragged onto the planning committee against his will by over half of the people on the committee - Ryoji included. Mostly with the justification that as a member of the student council, he’d be in the best position to tell them what would and wouldn’t be allowed.

They did at least take pity on his workload and mostly relegate his role to advisor and final judge so he wouldn’t be doing much of the actual planning work. Which was good because he doubted he would have time - especially once he stepped into the student council room and found everyone as grim faced and determined as though they were staring down exams.

Which really just set the tone for the next month and a half.

It was after dark before he made it back to the dorms, and he walked only far enough to reach the sofas before flopping down.

“That bad, huh?” Akihiko asked, and Minato couldn’t see his face but he could hear the pity in his tone.

“I should have let Nyx destroy the world,” Minato mumbled into the sofa. “Saving the world is not worth this.”

“Oh come on, don’t be so dramatic. It can’t be that bad!”

If he’d thought Junpei would be capable of focusing on permission and order forms he would have forced him into helping for that alone.

“It can, in fact, be that bad,” Mitsuru sighed. “Let me know if you need any advice, Minato. While I sincerely hope your experience won’t as taxing as mine was it is best to prepare yourself for the worst.”

“At least ours is pretty straightforward,” Ryoji pointed out brightly, and Minato felt the sofa dip as the boy sat down next to him. “A maid cafe is pretty cliche, and doing the Halloween theme should give us a lot more freedom to do whatever we want!”

There was that at least.

Sighing, Minato rolled onto his side to look at everyone. “It being a maid cafe knock-off does make things easier. We knew at least a few classes would choose that for a theme, just statistically, so we ordered some of the basics ahead of time. Portable stoves and the like.”

“Good thinking.” Mitsuru nodded approvingly, resting her hands on her crossed knee.

“Thank Chihiro,” Minato muttered, closing his eyes as Ryoji ran his fingers through his hair. “It was her idea, and she’s put a lot of thought into planning this out. We’re just all hoping it works and it doesn’t fall apart at the last minute.”

“It will,” she chuckled. “It always does. But the scale of it will be minimized drastically by pre-planning for it.”

He sighed.

At the very least the kendo team didn’t ask him to help out with their booth. He was, in fact, explicitly told by the captain not to worry about it and to let him know if Minato needed to skip practice. He winced a bit when Minato told him not to expect him at all for October, and there was sympathy on his face.

He clapped Minato on the shoulder. “Good luck.”

Unlike everyone else, however, Ryoji did not take pity on him. If anything, he seemed delighted at Minato’s involvement in everything. If Minato hadn’t known why he probably would have punched him.

… actually knowing why didn’t make him want to punch him any less.

“This is a lot of fun,” Ryoji told him as he stole Minato’s laptop to look at various stores in Tokyo and what decorations they offered.

“I’m so glad you think so,” Minato muttered sarcastically as he lay listlessly on the bed. “Why is this so much work? Why are we responsible for this? Homeroom teachers should be the one approving class booths.”

Ryoji snorted, leaning back in the chair to smile at Minato. “On top of everything else they do? I can’t imagine them agreeing to that.”

Minato mumbled something unpleasant about teachers and what they did in their free time and reached over to pick up his phone as it buzzed. He flipped it open to find a text from their class rep asking about whether he had free time to go to Tokyo with a group of them that weekend and groaned.

“C’mon, it’ll be fun! It probably won’t even be a serious planning trip, we’re just getting ideas for what’s available. And looking at costumes too!”

Ryoji was lucky he liked him so much.

And so it was with resignation that Minato allowed himself to be dragged by Ryoji and Junpei (and Chidori, who had somehow been convinced to come along) to the train station early Sunday morning in order to catch the train to Tokyo so they could, supposedly, go window shopping and make a list of ideas. Yukari and Aigis trailed along after them, so at least he wasn’t alone. He almost wished Fuuka was in the same class as them, but she seemed excited about her own class’ booth so he supposed it was for the better.

She was trying to be secretive about it, but he would find out sooner rather than later what it was with the looming October 5th deadline. He didn’t mention that, though, because she seemed to be having fun.

They met up with… definitely more than just the planning committee just outside Ikebukuro station. Over half the class had shown up, though he wondered how many of them were just using it as an excuse to come to Tokyo for a shopping trip.

That didn’t seem to bother the actual planning committee, who quickly laid out an itinerary of stores they’d be visiting in order to make a list of what they’d actually be using for the culture festival.

Minato would really have rather been sleeping but Ryoji was persistent so here he was.

So they explored the shops around Ikebukuro. Chidori ended up being more help than Junpei, though he couldn’t really be surprised about that given her own aesthetic tastes. She got along surprisingly well with the art club president, the two of them pulling out sketchbooks and sketching out the classroom from different perspectives with various decorative ideas.

It at least gave them all a better mental perspective of how the decorations would look and Chidori seemed to be enjoying herself, and Junpei seemed thrilled, so Minato didn’t feel too guilty about hanging back and letting the rest of them take the lead. Ryoji seemed equally excited to pick out decorations and Minato ended up mostly watching him rope various people into conversations about what they wanted.

Overall, the whole process of picking out classroom decorations went much more smoothly than he’d expected.

And then it was time to start costume hunting, and the laid-back atmosphere vanished as tension suddenly ratched up.

That was also when Yukari took an active participation in the shopping, and Minato realized why she’d come along.

Minato sighed as the arguments began.

“You don’t seem surprised,” Aigis noted from beside him. “Did you expect this?”

“Yeah.” He tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling as Yukari and Junpei’s voices both raised, a few other of their classmates joining in after a few moments. “Costumes were always going to cause arguments, especially with Junpei and Yukari taking the lead in them. I’ll step in if the class rep can’t stop them.” He really didn’t feel like it though. Why couldn’t everyone just be normal about this for once?

“Oh come on, we’d get so many people coming in-”

“If you think we’re wearing that you’re out of your mind!”

“G-Guys, come on, we do still have to follow school regulations for dress code, and we don’t want the outfits to clash too much-”

“This is fine-”

“Oh the hell it is-”

“You’re just being unreasonable-”

“Why don’t you wear it then?!”

“I-I mean, I don’t really think it’d look good on me-”

“She does have a point Junpei.”

“Chidori?!”

Minato groaned. “Junpei put the maid lingerie away.” He ignored the boy’s protests that that wasn’t what it was and just sent him a deeply unimpressed look. “No. School regulations are still in effect. Let everyone pick their own outfits. As long as they fit the general theme it’s fine.”

“R-Right,” the class rep cleared his throat. “Given we’re using Halloween as theme the uniforms don’t have to be perfectly matching, so long as they keep the general maid cafe look. But school regulations are still in effect. So don’t pick anything… risqué.”

“That means anime cosplays are fine, right?” One of the girls asked, leaning slightly towards the anime section. “Like anime maids or butlers?”

He nodded, pushing his glasses up. “I believe that’s perfectly fine, so long as they’re decent.”

“Great!” she chirped and darted away along with several other people.

Everyone else seemed relieved at the break in tension and quickly split off as well. Yukari shot Junpei another dirty look as she returned to grab Aigis and lead her off to choose costumes together. Junpei looked put out as he pouted at Chidori, who just seemed vaguely amused at the whole situation.

The class rep sagged against the wall next to Minato with a deep sigh. “Thanks for stepping in,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “I thought a fight was about to break out, and I wasn’t sure how to handle it.”

Minato shrugged. “Telling them to knock it off and calling them out for being stupid usually works. They’re both headstrong but they’ll listen if you’re specific about what they’re doing wrong.” Usually. Most of the time it also made them mad, but Minato had been ignoring that sort of thing for years anyway.

“I’ll… keep that in mind.”

“Minatooooo~!”

He closed his eyes. “No. Whatever it is that has you using that tone, the answer is no.”

“Aw, come on!” Ryoji slung an arm over his shoulders, and Minato had quickly catch himself as he turned to glare up at Ryoji. “I just want to go look around with you! I have a couple of ideas in mind-”

Minato sent a long-suffering look towards the class rep and the other classmates who had joined him and they all sent him sympathetic glances. They didn’t rescue him, though, so their sympathy did nothing to endear them to him.

How did he end up in these situations?

Fortunately, Ryoji didn’t submit him to endless questions about his preferences or start holding up costumes next to him or anything equally ridiculous, but he made no effort to hide the way he was clearly eying Minato up to compare to whatever various costumes he was looking at. Minato scanned the shelves himself for the sake of putting in at least a little effort, be he wasn’t surprised when nothing caught his eye.

He really didn’t care about dressing up; as long as it wasn’t too ridiculous he was fine with most anything.

Something Ryoji was going to take full advantage of, he was sure.

“Hmm… something like this, maybe…”

Minato looked to where he was leaning close to the costumes and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Those are maid dresses.”

“Yep!”

“…”

Ryoji turned and grinned at him for his silence. “Come on, don’t you think it could be fun?”

“Not really.”

“Well I don’t see you choosing one yourself.”

Minato sighed. “I don’t care about dressing up, I just don’t want something ridiculous.”

“This isn’t ridiculous, most of the class is doing it!”

“The girls are doing it you mean.”

“So?”

“I don’t want something that’s going to make me stick out, thanks.”

Ryoji raised a brow at him and-

Dammit. He knew what that look meant, and yeah, sure, he knew he knew he had the type of appearance that didn’t look out of place while crossdressing, he’d gotten comments from people before about it - hell Yukari had made note of it a few times - and it annoyed him that he knew what Ryoji meant.

“I’m really not interested,” he sighed. “I was planning to just go with something basic.”

“Come on, isn’t that too boring? Have some fun with it!”

“That’s your area, not mine.” Dressing up for holidays had never been one of his thrills, and it wasn’t going to start now.

Rather than deflating the idea like he’d hoped, Ryoji just got a mischievous gleam in his eye that Minato didn’t like. “Hmm, give me a bit!”

He didn’t trust that. “Ryoji-”

The boy waved him off with an unfaltering grin. “We don’t have to choose our costumes now, and I have an idea!”

Great. Those always went well.

And always meant trouble for Minato.

He sighed, giving up the fight. Ryoji would do what he wanted and they would all probably suffer the consequences.

While most of the class did end up buying costumes there, there were still a few like Minato and Ryoji who were holding off for a bit. Junpei was one of them, he noticed, and wondered if he’d end up being dragged into by Ryoji’s attempt to get Minato into a maid outfit or if he was planning something of his own.

“So,” Ryoji said cheerfully once they regrouped outside, “if we’re running a cafe then we should probably do some hands on research for how that works, right?” He raised a finger as though it would prove his point, and Yukari narrowed her eyes at him.

“Meaning what?” she asked dangerously.

He smiled only widened. “Well as it happens I saw a cat maid cafe just down the street, and I thought we could swing by there while we’re in the area!”

… Minato didn’t know what he was up to, but he didn’t trust it. Almost everyone else seemingly did though, because most of them looked thoughtful.

Yukari didn’t seem to fully buy it either, but she didn’t seem as suspicious as she had a few moments before. “Why a cat maid cafe? Aren’t there a few maid cafes around? It is Tokyo after all.”

“Well yes, but that one’s the closest so we wouldn’t have to go far. And since I doubt we’ll be able to find one with a similar theme as ours it might be good to see how something else unconventional works!” It sounded so reasonable when he said it like that, Minato almost could have believed him.

“Is it an actual cat cafe crossed with a maid cafe, or is it just maids with cat theming?” One of their classmates asked suspiciously. “If it has actual cats I’m going to pass - I’m allergic to them.”

Ryoji tilted his head, clearly thinking. “Hmm, I didn’t get a good look at it while we were passing, but from what I could tell it looked one cafe with two sections. Probably one for actual food service and one for playing with the cats, if I had to guess. We can always ask when we get there.”

That idea seemed to set even the hesitant ones at ease. A couple of them still begged off to go visit other stores they had planned, but most of them ended up at the cafe.

Fortunately (for those interested in it) they’d chosen a time of day that it was fairly quiet, so there was room for all of them.

It was… about as cutesy as he’d expected. The maid dresses were in various colors and cat designs, with ears and tails to match whatever look they’d gone for. The cafe itself was filled with cat themed items, with food and drink designs to match, and the maids used cutesy cat puns as they took their orders and served them.

It was a bit too saccharine for Minato’s taste, and he saw Chidori and Yukari making equally pained expressions. Normally he’d have expected Junpei to be thrilled at the whole thing, but he seemed more distracted by Chidori’s discomfort than the cute maid girls around them, and he’d reached out to take her hand under the table and leaned down to murmur something to her.

Minato felt a nudge against his leg and glanced over at Ryoji. The boy tilted his head towards he far wall of the cafe. “Thoughts?” he asked.

It took a moment for Minato to realize what he meant, but once he did he took another longer look around the cafe.

It was themed well, he could admit. There was a door just past the entrance stand that led to a room with large open windows so that customers of the cafe could see the cats playing or sleeping inside. The cafe was lighthearted, with white wooden paneling and brown wooden counters, stills of cats either painted on or carved into the wood. The shelves around them were filled with little statues of cats in various materials, alongside pictures of various maids holding cats or cat-themed items. The menus were equally decorated, with pictures of the various cat-themed food and drink items being offered.

“It’s probably good that we aren’t going for subtle with our decorations,” he deadpanned.

That drew a snort from Ryoji as he shrugged. “Most maid cafes are kind of the opposite of subtle on purpose,” he pointed out. “The gimmick’s the point.”

True enough. “I’m not looking forward to untangling all those spiderwebs from each other in the packages, though,” he said. The art club president and Chidori might have gone a little bit overboard in some areas… Though he and the planning committee had at least managed to veto the fake blood paint on the walls.

“They’re not going to be easy to put up…” Ryoji agreed distantly. “Or the lights. And don’t a couple of our classmates have arachnophobia?”

Did they? Minato didn’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise him. “Even the plastic ones?”

“Hmm… those two might have to be greeters outside.”

Whatever; that was a problem for the rest of the committee to figure out. He was just there to make sure nothing broke school code and to help out for an hour or two at the booth itself. Minato tuned back out as the maid came back to check on them and chat with Ryoji, distantly acknowledging that Ryoji was explaining the culture festival and their idea to her. She seemed delighted, laughing at the concept and explaining some of the choices of the decorations of the cafe itself. Minato could see some of the committee members taking notes, so at least they were taking this seriously he supposed.

It was loud and a headache was starting to form behind his eyes. He’d forgotten how loud Tokyo was all the time. Loud and busy, and the bright cheerfulness of the maids and cafe around them wasn’t helping. He was tempted to put on his headphones and just tune everything out.

But he wasn’t quite that rude, so he just disconnected from the interactions and let Ryoji handle them as he watched the fruit fragments in his drink slowly settle and separate.

Another nudge of Ryoji’s leg brought him back and he blinked and looked up to see several of his classmates getting up.

“The others want to go pet the cats,” Ryoji explained, small smile on his face as he clearly understood Minato’s disorientation. “You should go. It’d give you a break.”

Minato frowned at him. “You’re not going?” That was a surprise - Ryoji liked animals. He had, even as Death unable to interact with them except secondhand through Minato.

Ryoji shrugged, something wry and a little sad in it. “Pretty sure I’d just scare them. You know animals don’t like me.”

Oh - that was right. They’d gotten so used to Koromaru’s utter lack of fear that it was easy to forget that most other animals could sense Death and got unnerved. It happened to both of them, but it was infinitely worse for Ryoji as the personification of death itself.

But most wasn’t all, and Minato wasn’t going to leave Ryoji sitting here by himself when he knew that he wanted to go.

Minato stood up and grabbed Ryoji’s hand, pulling him after him. “Come on.”

“Wha- Minato-”

“It’ll be fine.” He dragged him towards the door, Yukari pausing to hold it open for them with a little smile at their clasped hands.

Ryoji looked a little resigned as they entered the room, glancing around at their various classmates luring the cats around into playing or pets, and retreating towards the windows facing the street outside as couple of the nearby cats dart away from them. He settled on the low cushioned bench beside the window and leaned against the wall as Minato sat next to him.

They watched Junpei lying on his stomach dragging a feather toy across the ground for an excited tabby to chase, Chidori sitting seiza on a mat a couple of feet away and slowly petting a long-haired white cat that was sitting elegantly beside her and kneading the mat. Yukari was standing beside the cat tree, reaching up to pet a short haired russet cat with a white heart pattern on its chest as it nuzzled into her hand. Aigis was kneeling beside her and leaning down to peek inside one of the tunnels where an excited orange cat was popping in and out as though trying to lure her into chasing it. Minato glanced over to see a sad, longing smile on Ryoji’s face and subtly reached over to weave their fingers together.

Ryoji squeezed them and sent him a quick smile and little shrug.

There wasn’t really much he could do about this, so Minato just sat next to him and watched the others. It was nice to get a break away from the bright and general loudness of the rest of the cafe and the city outside, and the room with the cats was a much more muted, brown-toned room with a calming atmosphere. It was nice.

They were both taken by surprise after a few minutes when there was a sudden movement from one of the platform rests halfway across the room, and a dark blue-grey cat suddenly rose up and stretched. It caught the attendant’s attention too, and she glanced up with a surprised and slightly concerned expression.

Minato has a moment to wonder why before the cat abruptly swiveled around and looked directly at he and Ryoji.

His breath caught at the sight of it. It was heavily scarred on its left side - missing an eye and its ear slightly tattered, its fur mostly regrown but clear scars beneath it all the same. It stared intensely at them for several long moments before its single eye narrowed and it leapt down from the platform onto the bookshelf in an easy and powerful move. They watched as it wove between the objects on the shelf with ease - so those injuries weren’t new in the slightest, and it was clearly used to accounting for them and its altered depth perception - until it reached the end of it and paused to stare at them for another moment.

Then without any hesitation it leaned down and kicked off the bookshelf to land directly in Ryoji’s lap.

Ryoji froze and stared down at it, taken entirely off-guard, until the cat turned around to glare at him with an accusing look at not immediately receiving the attention it was deigning to demand. Minato snorted as Ryoji hastily reached up to start petting it, carefully avoiding its scars.

The attendant wandered closer with a wondering look, though Minato noticed that she stopped before she got too close.

He tilted his head. “Is this unusual?”

“It is for him.” She watched the cat close his eye and begin purring softly - a rough, growly sound. “He’s one of our newer ones, and is a temporary rescue from Shibuya. We’re just taking care of him until a safe home can be found. He’s… not exactly friendly. He’s wary of strangers in general and will snap at most people if they try to touch him. There are a few exceptions, but they’re all much older customers usually. His favorite - and future home once all the paperwork goes through - is an older man who was… I think he said he was a goods shipment manager in the Shinjuku area, or maybe it was Shinagawa. He’s as gruff and snappish as the cat, but they seem to be soft for each other so I think they’ll be good for each other.” She shrugged. “I’m not sure why he likes you, but I guess there’s something about you that draws him in.”

Ryoji hummed in soft agreement. “Well most animals seem to dislike me for some reason, so I guess he’s just a contrarian.”

“Maybe that would explain it,” she laughed softly. “In that case, I’m glad you get along then.” She waved at them and turned to help one of their classmates untangle one of the kittens from the yarn it had gotten caught up in.

Minato hummed. “Goods shipping from Shinjuku to Shinagawa, huh?”

“Yakuza?” Ryoji asked, dropping his voice.

“Probably. Or former, at least. If he likes us then I guess he’s just indifferent to the feel of death.”

“Or maybe even drawn to it,” Ryoji agreed in a murmur. He looked down at the cat, still purring and kneading gently at his leg. “He’s clearly had it rough.” His lips twitched up. “He reminds me a little of you, actually.”

Minato sent him a flat look but didn’t respond. He knew what Ryoji meant, and he wasn’t exactly wrong.

The cat didn’t seem to mind when Minato reached out to pet him either, which really just pushed Ryoji’s point. The calm atmosphere of the room made it hard to hold onto annoyance though. Especially when Ryoji and the cat both looked so content.

When they all finally left to head home an hour or so later Ryoji was back to a more cheerful state and his arm brushed against Minato’s the whole walk back. It was nice to see that uneasiness in him washed away - even if it meant that he was likely back to plotting how to pressure Minato into a maid dress.

Getting SEES involved was a low blow he hadn't expected.

Minato wasn't sure exactly how he'd convinced them - Junpei and to a lesser degree Aigis were no surprise, but Yukari too??? - but he found himself ganged up on by half his team in the dorm lobby the next day with looks ranging from bemused to determined to devious and had a sinking feeling that he wouldn't win this fight.

So Minato ended up in the maid dress.

It was an ordeal in and of itself that he had to fit in between his other duties, because Ryoji decided to continue the theme of being symbolic and roped Yukari into it, so he found himself being measured more than once.

He did not ask what for; he did not want to know. He'd find out when it was time for the booth either way and he didn't have the energy to resist it, what with all his other duties.

October crept past quickly, days passing one after the next as most of the school gained a frantic edge trying to get everything together in time. The student council became increasingly on-edge and snappish as they tried to get all the paperwork in order and permissions signed on time. Minato found a particular loathing for permission forms for weapons - the kendo team wanted to put on a live technique demonstration with real swords and the sheer number of hoops Minato had to jump through to allow them made him want to reject the idea outright. He hadn't thought it would be that hard when Hidetoshi foisted it off on him but it turned out the school didn't like the idea of openly allowing the students to have real weapons.

The irony wasn't lost on him.

Eventually Minato lost his patience with the whole affair after being forced to argue with the principal directly and just pulled rank by calling Mitsuru and asking her to get permission from her father.

The permissions were granted two hours later.

(He was probably going to be forced to participate in the showcase in exchange, but he could deal with that.)

The week leading up to the festival was exactly as difficult as they expected it to be - Minato hadn’t actually expected anyone to bring in sleeping bags or futons but a couple of them had - and they did, in fact, pull all nighters getting everything in order. On the second night Shinji, Mitsuru, Ryoji, and Aigis showed up around ten with food and drinks to their collective relief. They had prepackaged snacks but real food was preferable.

Mitsuru stayed to help - nearly bringing Hidetoshi and Chihiro to tears out of gratefulness - but the other three were ushered out soon after so they could all get back to work. Shinji and Aigis went easily enough if a bit nonplussed, but Ryoji pouted the whole time as Minato shoved him out the door.

If he’d been allowed to stay Minato wouldn’t have gotten anything done and they both knew it.

And so the days leading up to the festival passed in an increasingly hazy blur of paperwork, classwork, and sleep deprivation until the night before when they finally finished everything and the setup was done. They all collectively breathed a sigh of relief and then went to pass out for several hours before the school day officially began.

And then Minato woke up partially refreshed, had coffee, and braced himself to meet up with his class.

He still hadn’t actually seen the costume Ryoji and Yukari had prepared for him.

Ryoji pulled him into a nearby empty classroom a couple of hours before the event was supposed to begin with a grin that spelled… maybe not trouble, exactly, but an anticipation that made Minato narrow his eyes at him.

He paused when he finally saw it, taking it in.

It wasn’t… bad. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t nearly as obnoxious or frilly or ridiculous as he would have expected. It was an understated black, in the usual design but patterned with white cherry blossoms almost like a kimono would have been. There was a waist chain with very familiar looking coffins hanging from it that made Minato swallow and think back to that final battle. Rather than the usual frills, the bottom had a single line of lace (or faux lace probably) with more cherry blossoms patterned into it, and the apron overtop had cloth blossoms sown into various edges.

“So, what do you think?”

Minato sighed with a shrug. “It’s fine. Not as ridiculous as I was expecting.”

Ryoji laughed, bumping his shoulder. “Have some faith! Yukari and I wouldn’t be cruel enough to force you into something bad looking. Come on - I’ll help you put it on.”

It probably wasn’t difficult enough to warrant that, but they’d barely seen each other all week and the contact was nice as Ryoji helped tug the fabric into place and buttoned up the back and tied the apron’s ribbon into place. The socks, like the dress, were a simple black with more blossoms sewn into the sides at the top. The shoes were a traditional black with a strap overtop, though the small kitten heel made him roll his eyes.

At the end of it Ryoji stepped in front of him with the same soft smile that he had before as he reached up and slipped the cherry blossom hair clip into Minato’s hair. It drew another sigh from Minato as he closed his eyes and leaned into it.

He couldn’t say he was at all looking forward to this, but… well, he could tolerate it. Even when Yukari showed up and forced him into a chair to do some quick makeup.

At least he didn’t look out of place, he could grudgingly admit to himself as they joined up with the rest of their class beginning to don their own costumes. Ryoji’s costume was clearly inspired by his form as Thanatos - if altered to fit vaguely more into the cafe theme - while many of their classmates had chosen to cosplay one anime or another. He saw several Kuroshitsuji and Kaichou wa Maid-sama inspired cosplays, atop of others that were clearly inspired by something even if he didn’t quite recognize them.

The fact that it took several minutes for anyone to even notice him and do a double take at least meant he wouldn’t draw to much attention from people coming in to try the booth…

The classroom looked good at least. It had just enough creepiness to sell the halloween edge, while still being lighthearted enough not to feel genuinely off-putting.

… as long as you ignored the spiders.

(Granted his perspective was rather skewed, so the fake coffins around may have been creepier to everyone else than they were to SEES.)

Most of the setup had been done the day before, so it was as simple as turning on the equipment and preparing the ingredients and then dividing the tasks. Minato was extremely grateful that he at least had a morning shift so he could avoid the worst of the crowds and have time to deal with the kendo showcase.

Granted that also meant that the rest of SEES showed up first thing in the morning before he was properly awake. Ryoji and Junpei greeted them cheerfully, while Minato just gave them a dead-eyed stare.

They all stared at him for a moment, eyebrows raised.

“Huh,” Akihiko mused, crossing his arms. “I wouldn’t even question it.”

Shiji shook his head. “Guess I see now why Yukari and Ryoji were so confident.”

“It suits you.” Chidori nodded, hand on her chin. “The lace was the correct choice.”

“Wow…”

Junpei snickered and elbowed Minato lightly. “Yeah, never would have guessed, huh? He makes a pretty girl.”

Minato rolled his eyes and ducked around him, ignoring their notes about his costume. “You couldn’t have waited until later?” he asked as he shooed them to a pair of tables and handed them menus. Even Fuuka was here, since her shift for her class was apparently later in the day.

“What, and wait until all the options were gone?” Shinji snorted, skimming over the menu. “Given how much the other three have been hyping it up I want to judge for myself.”

Had they been? He must have missed that while he was drowning in paperwork.

Minato shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine, I’ve been busy.”

“Indeed you have,” Mitsuru sighed and brushed her hair from her face. Yukari suddenly appeared next to them and placed down a glass mug filled with frothy, bright pink liquid with red fragments floating around inside and a leaking cherry stuck on the rim of the glass. Mitsuru raised a brow at it and glanced up at Yukari - who was wearing an equally pink maid dress with red stains painted onto it as though dripping from a red spot over her heart. “Do I dare ask what this is?”

He wasn’t sure he wanted to know either.

Yukari shrugged with a smile. “Coffee. I figured you needed it since you’ve been helping the student council.”

Ken eyed it doubtfully. “That’s… coffee?”

“What kind of coffee is pink?” Akihiko asked in a mutter.

Shinji narrowed his eyes at it, expression thoughtful. “I can think of a few ways.”

Mitsuru stared at it for a few moments before shrugging and picking it up to take a sip. She paused and seemed to be considering. “This… isn’t bad at all. It’s as sweet as I expected and I can taste the cherry… but I wasn’t expecting cinnamon. It has an almost earthy tone… what coffee did you use?”

“It’s just instant coffee, actually.” Ryoji popped over cheerfully as he set a glass with a bright orange drink in front of Ken, green flecks floating around in it. “The pink stuff is beet powder, and we used honey and cinnamon to make it sweet and milk to make it creamy, and then pulverized cherries for the red bits! Is it good?”

“It is, I’m impressed. I suppose you all did your own taste testing?”

“And lots of research,” Yukari agreed, folding her tray behind her back. “We split up the tasks between hunting across Tokyo cafes and across the internet for recipes.”

He’d missed that too, it seemed, and he couldn’t even lie and say he was disappointed about missing taste testing questionable concoctions.

“And what’s this…?” Ken asked warily.

Ryoji grinned at him. “Try it.”

The boy eyed him mistrustfully but hesitantly took a sip. His eyes widened. “Oh, this is really good.”

Yukari nodded, pleased. “We found that one in one of the American inspired cafes near Shinagawa. It’s a pumpkin milkshake. It’s kinda weird, I think it has some sort of sweet cracker ground up in it, but it tastes good.”

“It’s a bit early in the morning for milkshakes, isn’t it?” Shinji scowled down at the purple and green drink that Junpei set down in front of him. “What the hell is this?”

“Gotta try it and find out, senpai!” Junpei said cheerfully.

Shinji made a face but picked it up anyway. He paused, eyebrows raised as he tasted it. “Taro and matcha. Not what I was expecting given your other combinations.”

Ryoji shrugged. “We had to keep some things close to home.” He paused as he saw the drink Aigis was bringing out to Akihiko. “Wait, Akihiko did you get-”

“Oh no,” Yukari muttered, glancing around nervously. “He’s not actually going to drink that, is he?”

“D-Did you actually read the ingredients, senpai…?” Junpei watched Aigis set the drink down with wide, nervous eyes, and Minato wondered what the hell was in it that was making them so worried. Even a few of their other classmates were glancing over with frowns.

Akihiko shrugged. “Not really, but with a name like “Final Gasp” how could I not try it?”

Minato raised an eyebrow at the violently red, thick looking drink with green bits.

Shinji picked up the menu again to read it and Ken leaned over to peek. Ken’s eyes widened and he paled a little while Shinji immediately smirked and looked up to look Akihiko dead in the eye. “Bet you can’t drink that all at once, Aki.”

Yukari and Junpei both choked and Ken’s eyes widened in horror. Ryoji stiffened.

“Akihiko I really wouldn’t recommend-” he began, but Akihiko ignored him to lean forward.

“You really putting an easy bet like that down, Shinji?”

“Akihiko,” Mitsuru sighed, bringing a hand to her forehead. “It could not more obviously be a trap.”

“Of course it is, but a man’s gotta take a challenge head on if he’s to get stronger!”

“So cool, senpai!” Junpei’s fear was forgotten in the face of awe as he cheered him on as usual.

Minato casually leaned over to read the menu as he took Fuuka and Chidori’s drinks from a classmate and handed them to them. Fuuka’s was some electric blue raspberry drink with some sort of yellow and mint decorations, while Chidori got what looked to be a strawberry and cream drink decorated in a way that it looked like blood was trailing down the glass into the milk.

Akihiko’s was-

… were those four types of peppers? Not to mention at least one spicy sauce mixed with tomato and beet juice of all things.

Minato sighed as Akihiko picked up the glass, tilted his head back, and began chugging it.

He could see te exact moment the spices hit because Akihiko’s face screwed up and began turning bright red. To his credit, though, Akihiko did managed to chug the whole thing in one go. He just leaned over his knees choking on air with a crimson face, ears, and neck afterwards. Shinji was still smirking at him while Junpei looked sympathetic, and Yukari and Mitsuru both seemed like they were contemplating whether to throw the both of them out of a window.

His team really was full of idiots sometimes, wasn’t it?

“Try not to die,” he told them all blandly then turned and headed back to the front and away from their antics. Yukari could suffer through it.

The next few hours of the event went smoothly enough. They got a lot of compliments on the theming and their costumes - and Minato got recognized several times with much double-taking and amused confusion that he generally ignored - and lots of interesting reactions from their food and drink offerings. A few more people tried the spicy drink, though only one or two could finish it. The mochi was another hit - white powdered with either red jam or black paste inside - and overall it was a success that went smoothly.

Minato wasn’t sure how to feel about how many compliments and borderline criticisms his costume got from people who didn’t know him. His classmates seemed very amused that no one even noticed that he wasn’t a girl unless they knew him directly, but Minato found himself more exasperated by the comments and compliments he got about his outfit’s theming. The ones who didn’t wondered if it was too pretty (aside from the coffins) while the ones who did waxed poetic about it and beautiful subtlety of the ephemeral nature of cherry blossoms and the fleeting beauty of youth-

Maybe he was just a little too sensitive about the topic of his not-so-metaphorical death and the meaning of the transience of life because some of the comments about it being too subtle or too on-the-nose rubbed him the wrong way.

The problem with it being such a personal reference between SEES he supposed.

But their class’ first shift finally ended around noon and he made his escape back to the empty classroom as the second group came to relieve them. He slumped back against a desk with a sigh.

Ryoji slipped into the classroom with a sympathetic look, sliding the door closed and walking over to lean against him and cage him against the desk. Minato dropped his head against his shoulder and closed his eyes as he just breathed and relaxed to be away from people.

It hadn’t been that bad, honestly. He’d dealt with far worse while working at the actual cafe. But something about some of the inherent misunderstandings of his costume and what it meant needled at him in a way he hadn’t expected. It was just a costume - just a fun gimmick not meant to be taken seriously.

Except it wasn’t.

The pin in his hair, the coffins on his waist, the flowers that referenced his short life and temporary death and return-

Minato sighed.

Ryoji pressed his face to Minato’s hair, murmuring, “Sorry. I didn’t realize how much it’d be.”

“It’s fine,” he sighed and leaned into it. “I don’t know why it bothers me. It’s not like I care about their opinions.” And he didn’t; he couldn’t even remember their faces now. So he wasn’t sure why it annoyed him so much.

“It’s the principle of the matter.” Ryoji wrapped his arms around him in a proper hug. “No one should make light of what you went through or how much you struggled. Even if they don’t know… it shouldn’t be trivialized.”

Minato hummed quietly in acknowledgement. Maybe it was that. But it shouldn’t matter because they didn’t know and couldn’t know. He wouldn’t want them to know. No one should have to know how it felt to become enveloped by death. To know so far ahead of time and see it creeping ever closer year by year until it became day by day knowing it was an inevitability.

You couldn’t close your eyes and cover your ears to escape, after all.

And he’d come back - they both had because Ryoji was stubborn and Aigis asked them to please try despite all odds and SEES was their anchor and Minato had wanted so desperately to stay, but-

He sighed again as he wrapped his arms around Ryoji. “Maybe not,” he said quietly. “But we’re still here.”

“Wounds leave scars.”

“Is it a wound?”

“What else could a death knell be?”

Maybe so.

“We’re still here-” he repeated quietly.

“-and we’ll stay here,” Ryoji finished. “That doesn’t mean the memories don’t hurt.”

Minato didn’t respond - but he didn’t need to. Not with Ryoji. So they just stood there for several minutes together waiting for Minato to recuperate enough to deal with people again.

They eventually pulled apart and changed out of their costumes back into normal clothes to go meet the others, Aigis falling into step with them at the end of the hallway where she’d clearly been waiting for them. It was a quiet comfort.

Especially exploring the rest of the festival with SEES, and Fuuka excitedly showing them her own class’ booth, or being dragged into more trouble by Junpei, Ryoji, and Akihiko, or trying out other weird foods with Mitsuru and Fuuka as Yukari made faces, or listening to Chidori casually eviscerate other class’ costume or decoration choices.

Despite everything, they were still here and would stay here.

~ ᙙᙖ ~

Yes, I know this is… not exactly the prompt. But it’s the closest I could get while still working within this au and keeping a less depressing tone. I thought about PQ2, but then I started mentally plotting it out and it was getting very sad so I decided to do this instead to keep both the linear narrative going and the crying to a minimum.

It is also once again much longer than I intended.

#ryominaweek2023 #ryomina #ryoji mochizuki #minato arisato #makoto yuki #pushing the prompt to its limit with this one #but it was fun #minato regrets everything but at least ryoji is having fun with it

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hotheadrednecksimmer · 3 months ago

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Looking For The Hoes - Struck by Love Legacy Challenge - Season 2, Episode 8

After the travesty that happened, Naomi decided to go out for herself. She wanted to get out and see some of the world before she started her career. She had a couple places on her checklist that she wanted to go to, and some places like Sulani that she wanted to go as she always did with her mom in the summer.

Friday Night - Naomi went to a bar in Del Sol Valley hoping to meet some people from the area.

She met this guy - who she can't remember the name of and hooked up with him.

Early Friday morning around 4 am, she found herself drunk and falling asleep on the walk home to her apartment, alone. She could feel that she needed a shower pronto from the hookup that took place in the bar's bathroom.

Saturday - Naomi found herself traveling to Sulani for the day, even though she had a killer hangover, she thought she deserved some R and R. During the day, she spent her time sunbathing and swimming in Sulani's beautiful water. She even spent some time picking up some trash that she found on the beach.

Her parents and brother went home, but Naomi decided to stay. It was great seeing them again and enjoying this family vacation that has been a constant in Naomi's life.

During the family beach trip, Naomi filled her parents in on the break up with Gabrielle without revealing that Naomi was cheated on or what she did in revenge.

That night, Naomi headed over to Sulani's local bar and began drinking. Somehow, drinking slowly had become her crutch to reality. Everything that was wrong in her life was fixed with booze and sex. While at the bar, she met another random guy and hooked up with him.

He wanted to go home with her instead of hooking up in the bathroom, but she refused. She wasn't letting anyone in her apartment except family and friends, he didn't exactly fit the bill. She was only going to sleep with him and never see him again, at least that was the plan.

She slept with him and did the walk of shame home once again. As soon as she got back to her place, she took a shower, grabbed another drink, and slept.

Sunday night - Naomi went out again before she had to clock into her job tomorrow. She went to the city, San Myshuno, she missed the city life. Del Sol Valley had city elements, but it was nothing compared to San Myshuno, the culture, the festivals, Naomi could go on. She went to Honey Pop Karaoke to get some drinks and sing to her heart's content.

At the bar, she grabbed a drink and signed up for a spot at Karaoke, there was only one spot left. As she was telling the bartender that she wanted the spot, a very handsome black haired guy spoke up at the same time.

Naomi: Hey! I was going for that! It was the whole reason I came here!

Black haired beauty: Well, there's only one spot left and it was the only reason I came here too.

Bartender: That's not true Leo, you come here most nights I'm working.

Leo: Well, my twin has outed me, but the only solution I can come up with is that we sing a duet.

Naomi: I'm pretty good, can you keep up with me?

Leo: Oh I'm absolutely positive I can.

The two wait for their turn conversing over their drinks. Soon enough, they were up and as they approached the stage, Naomi was nervous to sing for the first time ever. She wasn't sure if it was because she was sharing the spotlight with someone who she barely knew or what it was.

But as the song started, her nerves were released as she heard Leo's beautiful voice.

They're duet ended and they smiled at each other. They were perfect pitch and everyone in the audience and at the bar were applauding them.

Leo: Hey, I know this is bold, but you want to get out of here? I know a place.

Naomi was itching for an adventure and trouble, hoping that was exactly what Leo was: You might be trouble for me, yeah let's get out of here.

The pair walked out together flirting and laughing.

To be continued....

╭┈◦•◦❥•◦ Season 1 | Season 2 First | Previous | Next

#the sims 4 simblr #ts4 simblr #the sims 4 #the sims 4 legacy #ts4 challenge #ts4 legacy #ts4 legacy challenge #the sims 4 cc #ts4 gameplay #sims 4 #simblr #sims 4 story #sims 4 gameplay #sims 4 screenshots #the sims #my sims #ts4 #struckbylovelegacy

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raven-at-the-writing-desk · 2 years ago

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"Because Yuu is called the “prefect” of Ramshackle, but isn’t exactly treated like a dorm leader (like, they’re excluded from all dorm leader meetings????)." hi! in your recent ask you said this and about it, I wanted to mention something that might be worth noting,

Yuu attended the dorm leader meeting in chapter 2 and was acknowledged as one when crowley says something like "is all the dorm leaders here?" and stuff, so i don't think they're normally excluded from all the dorm leader meetings too, but something interesting to note would be how they weren't searched for during fairy gala.

In the first fairy gala, crowley holds an emergency meeting, calling all the dorm leaders but Yuu wasn't there, instead, they were missing rather than Malleus and no one brought up them not being there (when I believe riddle and kalim would've mentioned it). So about that, I also want to say what if this is a hint to what will happen to the ramshackle dorm after/during chapter 7?

i hope i didn't say anything offensive and i thought that would be interesting to mention;;

[Referencing this post!]

Hi, and thank you for sharing!! 😅 I think there’s been a misunderstanding in your interpretation of episode 2’s dorm leader meeting?

I believe the part you’re talking about is 2-6 (Housewarden Meeting). Crowley opens up with, “I call to order this meeting of housewardens.” However, there is nothing in this chapter which would indicate that Yuu is present (such as the choice to pick between two dialogue options, or Grim piping up to give his two cents about something, as he is usually the character that “speaks” for Yuu and technically is “half” the student that Yuu is). Characters reintroduce themselves not for the benefit of Yuu, but to announce and to reaffirm their positions as it relates to the events they are planning. For example, Azul says he is the head of the Magift/Spelldrive tournament planning committee, Riddle is the one in charge of the oversight of the cultural festival, Vil is in command for Halloween, etc. Just because we are seeing a scene play out does not mean that Yuu is physically present to witness it. (This is true of many events and vignettes where Yuu doesn’t appear, Epel and Deuce’s beach scene in episode 5, the end-of-episode scenes that preview the characters to star in the next episode, etc.)

None of the characters seem to acknowledge Yuu’s presence, and, if they do, both they and Yuu do not have dialogue in later chapters which imply that they recognize one another from the dorm leader meetings. Like… Leona was pretty pissed at Yuu for stepping on his tail in episode 1 (he wad also pissed when Grim called out to him in episode 5); don’t you think Leona would be surprised to see the magicless human at a dorm leader meeting and make a remark?

Yuu canonically being at meetings would be especially weird if Malleus showed up at a meeting and Yuu figured out who he was well in advance of episode 5; if Malleus sends Lilia to fill in at the meetings for him, then why doesn’t Yuu recognize Lilia when he delivers a holiday card in episode 4? The same is true for the case where any vice dorm leader fills in for a dorm leader (which can be done in the case a dorm leader is busy or cannot attend), which is totally possible in the months that Yuu has spent at NRC in the main story; why wouldn’t the vice dorm leaders like Jade and Jamil recognize Yuu as a fellow dorm leader? Why do they always refer to Yuu just as the one that stays at Ramshackle/the magicless human/the one that’s been caught up in the Overblot incidents? Why wouldn’t they just say “oh, a dorm leader” or “hey, I recognize you as a dorm leader/at the meetings”.

There is also supplemental information outside of 2-6 which implies Yuu does not attend dorm leader meetings. Yuu is never present when they plan events, such as the cultural festival in episode 5, Halloween on NRC campus, or the Fairy Gala. They’re always just kind of… there? Or the pop up when needed (like in Vargas CAMP!) to help out.

Within episode 2 itself, in the previous part, 2-5, Crowley is explaining to Yuu and Grim why they don’t qualify for a Magift/Spelldrive team IN HIS OFFICE, which is in the same building as the Mirror Chamber (where the dorm leaders meeting happens in 2-6). Crowley quickly excuses himself (“Anyway, as I believe I've mentioned, I'm a busy man. I must be off.”), presumably to this meeting. Odd that he doesn’t invite or remind Yuu and/or Grim to join him for this meeting which is supposedly for dorm leaders (especially since this is in the same building), right? Then, in 2-7 (right after the meeting has ended), we are in Ramshackle dorm with Grim complaining about not being able to play. It’s not clear if this is large time skip or not, but this directly picks up from 2-5, not 2-6. It’s weird that a blabbermouth that Grim wouldn’t also comment on what was going down at the meeting if he truly was there with Yuu. (And, circling back to a point I made earlier, it’s weird that Grim wouldn’t call out the dorm leaders he recognizes from the meetings if he were attending these gatherings, seeing as he casually calls out to Leona in episode 5).

Like I’ve said in my original post, I propose that Yuu is being excluded from these meetings since Ramshackle is no longer formally a dorm, or even because Yuu is only technically only “half” of a student. A full Ramshackle restoration is certainly possible somewhere down the line though.

#twst #twisted wonderland #Malleus Draconia #Leona Kingscholar #Dire Crowley #Yuu #disney twisted wonderland #Lilia Vanrouge #Grim #notes from the writing raven #spoilers

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tseneipgam · 4 years ago

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“The collapse of revolutionary hopes after 1815, the brutal deceleration of time and radical expectation, left a reservoir of unused, turbulent energies. The romantic generation was jealous of its fathers. The "antiheroes," the spleen-ridden dandies in the world of Stendhal, Musset, Byron, and Pushkin, move through the bourgeois city like condottieri out of work. Or worse, like condottieri meagerly pensioned before their first battle. Moreover, the city itself, once festive with the tocsin of revolution, had become a prison. For although politics had entered the phase of bland mendacity analyzed by Stendhal in Lucien Leuwen, the economic-industrial growth released by continental war and the centralized consciousness of the new nation-states took place exponentially. The "dark Satanic mills" were everywhere creating the soiled, hybrid landscape which we have inherited. The theme of alienation, so vital to any theory of the crisis of culture, is, as both Hegel and Saint-Simon were among the first to realize, directly related to the development of mass-manufacture. It is in the early and midnineteenth century that occur both the dehumanization of laboring men and women in the assembly-line system, and the dissociation between ordinary educated sensibility and the increasingly complex, technological artifacts of daily life. In manufacture and the money market, energies barred from revolutionary action or war could find outlet and social approval. Such expressions as "Napoleons of finance" and "captains of industry" are semantic markers of this modulation. The immense growth of the monetary-industrial complex also brought with it the modern city, what a later poet was to call Ia ville tentaculaire-the megalopolis whose uncontrollable cellular division and spread now threatens to choke so much of our lives. Hence the definition of a new, major conflict: that between the individual and the stone sea that may, at any moment, overwhelm him. The urban inferno, with its hordes of faceless inhabitants, haunts the nineteenth-century imagination”

“Thus there are links-both Engels and Ruskin were in no doubt on the issue-between mass manufacture, as it evolves in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and a movement towards dehumanization. Watching exhausted, brutalized factory workers pour into the street, Engels saw that a reservoir of subhuman impulses was filling. There is, doubtless, a sense in which the concentration camp reproduces the life-forms of the factory, in which the "final solution" is the application to human beings of warehouse and assembly-line techniques. Blake's vision of the "dark mills," which is contemporary with Sade, carried a precise charge of prophecy. Yet the analogy is too simple. Apart from sporadic episodes of rational maltreatment, the death camps, like the Gothic keeps of Justine, are rigorously inefficient and counterproductive. Their deliberate product is waste. No industrial process could operate in that way. The new barbarism has adopted the instrumentalities of the industrial revolution. It has translated into human terms key aspects of the technology of materials. But its sources must be looked for at a deeper level. It may be that the dramatic increase in the density of population in the new industrial-urban milieu is relevant. We conduct a good part of our lives amid the menacing jostle of the crowd. Enormous pressures of competing numbers build up against our needs of space, of privacy. The result is a contradictory impulse towards "clearance." On the one hand, the palpable mass of uniform life, the insect immensity of the city or beach crowd, devalues any sense of individual worth. It wholly deflates the mystery of the irreplaceable presence. On the other hand, and because our own identity is threatened by the smothering mass of the anonymous, we suffer destructive spasms, a blind need to lunge out and make room. Elias Canetti has made the intriguing suggestion that the ease of the holocaust relates to the collapse of currency in the 1920s. Large numbers lost all but a vaguely sinister, unreal meaning. Having seen a hundred thousand, then a million, then a billion Mark needed to buy bread or pay for bus tickets, ordinary men lost all perception of concrete enormity. The same large numbers tainted with unreality the disappearance and liquidation of peoples. There is evidence that men and women are only imperfectly adapted to coexist in the stifling proximity of the industrial-urban hive. Accumulating over a century, the increase in noise levels, in the pace of work and motion, in the intensity of artificial lighting, may have reached a pathological limit and triggered instincts of devastation.”

“Slogan-mongers and pseudophilosophers have familiarized the West with the notion that the white man has been a leprosy on the skin of the earth, that his civilization is a monstrous imposture or, at best, a cruel, cunning disguise for economic, military exploitation. We are told, in tones of punitive hysteria, either that our culture is doomed-this being the Spenglerian model of rational apocalypse--or that it can be resuscitated only through a violent transfusion of those energies, of those styles of feeling, most representative of "third-world" peoples. Theirs is true "soul," theirs the beauty of blackness and of eros. This neoprimitivism (or penitential masochism) has roots in the core of the Western crisis and needs to be understood both psychologically and sociologically. I will come back to the question. The point to make is an obvious one : there In a Post-Culture 63 can be no natural return to the lost centrality. For the great majority of thinking beings, certainly for the young, the image of Western culture as self-evidently superior, as embodying within itself almost the sum total of intellectual and moral power, is either a racially tinged absurdity or a museum piece. In America particularly-and America is, today, the main generator and storehouse of cultural means -the confident pivot of a classic geography is irreparably broken. To what extent are that sense of loss and attendant guilt j ustified? Contrary to the "Scythian" fantasies of nineteenthcentury apocalyptic fables, barbarism did come from the European heartland. Though in parodistic and ultimately negating forms, political bestiality did take on certain of the conventions, idiom, and external values of high culture. And, as we have seen, the infection was, in numerous instances, reciprocal. Mined by ennui and the aesthetics of violence, a fair proportion of the intelligentsia and of the institutions of European civilization-letters, the academy, the performing arts-met inhumanity with varying degrees of welcome. Nothing in the next-door world of Dachau impinged on the great winter cycle of Beethoven chamber music played in Munich. No canvases came off the museum walls as the butchers strolled reverently past, guidebook in hand. It is equally true that-to an extent as yet to be gauged by economic and social historians-many of the superflu- 64 In Bluebeard' s Castle ities, zones of leisure, and hierarchies implicit in Western culture drew on the subjugation of other races and continents. That fact is not eradicated, only qualified, by the undoubted elements of creative exchange and beneficial import in colonialism. Specific and often indefensible power relations with and towards the rest of the world energized the cultural predominance of the West. But to be seen in its full scope, the indictment must also be internalized : within classical and European civilization itself, numerous representative achievements-literary, artistic, philosophic -are inseparable from the milieu of absolutism, of extreme social injustice, even of gross violence, in which they flourished. To be argued seriously, the question of "the guilt of civilization" must include not only colonialism and the capacities of empire but the true nature of the relations between the production of great art and thought, on the one hand, and of regimes of violent and repressive order, on the other. In short, it is an argument that involves not only the white man's rule in Africa or India but, each in its own way, the Medicean court, Racine at Versailles, and the current genius of Russian literature. ( In what sense is Stalinism the necessary condition for a Mandelstam, a Pasternak, a Solzhenitsyn?)”

“We no longer accept the projection, implicit in the classic model of beneficent capitalism, that progress will necessarily spread from privileged centers to all men. Indecent superfluities in developed societies coexist with what seems to be endemic starvation over a large part of the earth. In effect, improvement in the chance and duration of individual life, as brought on by medical technology, has fueled the cycle of overpopulation and hunger. Often, the supplies and distributive means required to stop famine and poverty are available, but inertias of greed or politics stand in the way. In too many cases the new technocracy is not only destructive of preceding and alternative values but cruelly impotent beyond local and profitable appliance. Thus we find ourselves in an ambivalent, ironic stance towards the dogma of progress and towards the fantastic well-being which so many of us, in the technological West, actually enjoy.”

“The thrust of will which engenders art and disinterested thought, the engaged response which alone can ensure its transmission to other human beings, to the future, are rooted in a gamble on transcendence. The writer or thinker means the words of the poem, the sinews of the argument, the personae of the drama, to outlast his own life, to take on the mystery of autonomous presence and presentness. The sculptor commits to the stone the vitalities against and across time which will soon drain from his own living hand. Art and mind address those who are not yet, even at the risk, deliberately incurred, of being unnoticed by the living. There is nothing natural, nothing self-evident in this wager against mortality, against the common, unharried promises of life. In the overwhelming majority of cases and the gambler on transcendence knows this in advance the attempt will be a failure, nothing will survive. There may be a cancerous mania in the mere notion of producing great art or philosophic shapes-acts, by definition, free of utility and immediate reward.“

“As the glossaries lengthen, as the footnotes become more elementary and didactic, the poem, the epic, the drama, moves out of balance on the actual page. As even the more rudimentary of mythological, religious, or historical references, which form the grammar of Western literature, have to be elucidated, the lines of Spenser, of Pope, of Shelley, or of Sweeney among the Nightingales blur away from immediacy. Where it is necessary to annotate every proper name and classical allusion in the dialogue between Lorenzo and Jessica in the garden at Belmont, or in Iachimo's stealthy rhetoric when he emerges in Imogen's chamber, these marvelous spontaneities of enacted feeling become "literary" and twice-removed ( in part, of course, the problem is one of time, of the mere fact that meaning is no Tomorrow 105 longer grasped as quickly, as directly, as it is articulated ). How is Pope's EJJay on Man to register its delicate precision and sinew when each proposition reaches us, as it were, on stilts, at the top of a page crowded with elementary comment? What presence in personal delight can Endymion have when recent editions annotate "Venus" as signifying "pagan goddess of love"?”

“We cannot turn back. We cannot choose the dreams of unknowing. We shall, I expect, open the last door in the castle, even if it leads, perhaps because it leads, on to realities which are beyond the reach of human comprehension and control. And we shall do so with that desolate clairvoyance, so marvellously rendered in Bartok's music, because opening doors is the tragic merit of our identity”

#book

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kaitlynpcallmebeepme · 5 years ago

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Food and Wine Festival

Tom Holland x Reader

Warnings: Fluff and Food

Summary: A trip to Disney World, but seeing it in a new light.

A/N: This is my first of two works I have for @peeterparkr and @marvelousxtsh (now @lovestrucktom) for their Rom Coms writing challenge. Both of them are separate from one another. I am VERY LATE on this, but I had to get my college readings annotated before band camp starts because I know I will have no time then to work at all.

#mandnchickflicksummer

I’ve only been to Epcot once on a band trip and I realized why I don’t like it (or maybe it’s just my family). I tried to do some research before writing this. Comments and feedback are always appreciated. Requests are open and Messages are open if you want to chat. I’m trying to make these shorter because I’m behind on some of my writing. Also, sorry for not really putting the events in order by where they are in the park. I haven’t been there in years and forget how it’s set up. P.P.S. As I was googling stuff, the question came up on what phd does Dr. Doofenshmirtz have on reddit? The person who asked had a username of u/SEND_ME_YOUR_D1CK and that made me laugh at 5 a.m. I’m going to link the two videos that helped me out. One is from Disney Food Blog which gives great coverage on disney snacks in all parks and one is a vlog from one of my favorite youtubers, Syndicate (on his Life of Tom vlog channel)

Disney Food Blog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNk550AeBuY

Life of Tom vlog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GG1-M-EqdLo

P.S. Ok, I’ve now seen Far From Home because I won a bet and my mom said she’d take me to see my first Marvel movie in theaters. I’m going to write something else about what happened that day. ♡

Tag list: Send me an ask if you want to be added.

@trashinaglass and @peter-pan-hoe ( @definitely-not-black-cat and @nnatasha you two seemed to like my stuff so I added you, tell me if you want me to take you off)

Song Prompt:

1. I see the light – Tangled

Word count: 1,383

This ended up being so much longer than I intended.

"Tom. Please. I've been to Disney World a million times. I can probably make it around Magic Kingdom without a map that's how well I know it." It was late summer, before the hussle of school and work swept everyone away, Tom wanted to get away for a mini vacation with you.

“Please come with me. Doesn't mean I don't enjoy it. And you know how much Disneyland freaks out when there's a celebrity there. Also, you can go on different things that you wouldn't normally go on.” You don’t like to admit when he’s right. Your family can be a little controlling when it comes to vacations. Like why does a baseball game need to be involved in every one.

“You know that won’t stop people from coming up to you.”

“We’ll just wear our matching bucket hats and be that couple. Please.” You couldn’t resist his puppy pout anymore, and you both needed a break.

“Ok, as long as we don't go on roller coasters if I get sick from one.”

“I won't make you go through that. Especially the amount of stories you tell me about someone being sick on vacation.”

After a long plane ride and a good night's rest, you two are ready for a trip. You got your backpack with the old school Disney World logo ready to get your weekly tickets. You got the tickets while Tom was spending time with a couple people who noticed him. You both never minded it as long as they were respectful. You thank the lady as Tom heads back to where you’re standing.

“Ok, you want to head to Epcot first?”

That five letter word made you choke on your own spit. You followed Tom up the railway to the monorail. As you waited in line, you felt the need to tell Tom what's been eating at your mind. “Tom, you know I don't really like Epcot that much.”

“What! Why?”

“Well, the only other time I've been here was with my family once we went on the band field trip here. You know my dad never keeps his opinion to himself about how he thinks all of this ozone layer and eco saving thing is bullshit and how he hates culture. He just kinda complained that whole day, so I've never liked the park. Also, there's more food than rides here and you know I’m not a big food guru.”

“Is your dad coming with us?”

“What?”

“Is your dad coming on our vacation with us?”

“No. But what does that-.”

“Then his opinion and voice should not affect our judgement.” To be fair, Tom has changed your opinion on a lot of things, football (English kind) being one of them. You just didn't know if you could shut up that annoying tick in the back of your head that repeats all the things your Dad would say about this place, but you were willing to give it a shot. You grabbed a food passport and map in front of the golf ball and off you two went.

Before entering the park, you booked fastpasses for the one thing you knew you loved at Epcot, and that was Sorin’. It felt like you had wings and earth with its gravity could never take hold of you again. Even with the fastpasses the line wasn’t too long because people wanted to be the first to get the food in all the countries. It reminded you how Harry would have his drones to get the cinematic videos of the ocean washing up on the beach that look gorgeous. But alas, you had to touch ground again and continue.

You two went to have a good time eating stuff. Like you wanted to order everything from the Irish stand, except the alcohol which Tom took so you could keep the decorative cup (best boyfriend ever), so you settled on chocolate pudding with custard and the two of you split the Irish sausage with potatoes and gravy. You two weren’t worried about overfilling yourselves because 1) everyone does that at the food and wine festival and 2) there weren’t many rides that could make you throw up afterwards.

You grab a Light Lab Phosphorescent Phreeze (you secretly wanted to collect all the cups you could) and signed up to do a Perry the Platypus adventure in the UK (just to see if Tom liked their stereotyping). “Okay, well this is from and American Disney Show Phineas and Ferb where they do a bunch of crazy stuff during the summer, and the subplot is their pet platypus is a secret agent that stops this not-so-good supervillain every episode. Dr. Dofesnberg-something was his name. You basically have to go to different shops within the country, follow the story video on our phone, and some objects will move as you interact with stuff. Basically stopping this guy from carrying out his completely elaborate and unnecessary evil scheme to rule the world.”

“Okay, and of course it’s about golf. How can you get more British than that.” Apparently the adventure included tea once you told the cashier a secret word phrase, so yes, it got more British than golf.

You guys stopped by Canada and you could not stop doing impressions of Ryan Renolds as you stopped for a quick snack as the Perry the Platypus mission took an hour. You ordered a Canadian Cheddar Cheese and Bacon soup with pretzel rolls to split (of which you only at the pretzels because even Tom doesn’t know why you don’t like bacon).

After the Frozen ride and a couple more snacks along the way you settled in China and watched some acrobatics and get out of the heat. You couldn’t do everything in Mexico, but the San Angel Inn would be a place you save for a different trip. You got your faces painted to be half skulls with decorative details. It definitely helped you get recognized less.

Last stop of the night before the fireworks/water show you traveled to Japan. The architecture was realistic and you just thought of the time it took for someone to design and construct that. You both waited in line to try to see if you could get a pearl out of an oyster. You both end up getting one with the lady being very excited for you two. “Mine was 7 ¾ mm, and what was your Tom?”

“7 ½ mm. But you know size doesn’t matter.”

It wasn’t long before the fireworks and lights danced on the water’s surface and you two were heading back from a long day. Tom wanted to take the ferry boat back complaining that the line for the monorail was too long. It always is but the boat was very slow. You gave into his wishes because he was the one who made you enjoy the park today. You stood over the bow of the ship looking at your reflection upon the water until Tom broke you from your thoughts.

“So, didn't I say you would have a good time?”

“Yes you did. My dad's opinion did not affect my judgement as much as I thought it would. It’s still hard to see things with my own opinion, but I’m getting better at it. Thank you Tom.”

“My pleasure princess. Maybe next time we can crack some oysters and keep the pearl” You two share a sweet kiss and the fireworks in Magic Kingdom across the water started going off. Nothing could make this moment more romantic. “But there's still one more thing to do tonight.”

“Thomas Stanley Holland. Do NOT follow that statement with ‘when we get back to the hotel’.”

He laughed so much that he leaned back and his eyes crinkled in the corners. “Not what I was going to say darling.” You’re still confused at his intentions, until he starts playing music from his phone and holds your arms out while you two are on the tip of the boat; keeping his hands on your hips.

“Only you could turn this into a Titanic moment. “I'm flying Jack. I'm flying.”

The moment had gotten better once you realized Tom had asked a crew member to take your picture, and now you have a new phone background and a new perspective.

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cultural-luxuries-blog · 5 years ago

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A Critical Perspective on Luxury Tourism & Cultural Tourism in Japan

Cultural tourism is all about culture. It involves three categories: heritage, popular culture, and living cultural attraction. The first category, heritage, is related to historical components from the past. For example, the Japanese tea ceremony introduces its history and importance in Japanese culture. The second category, popular culture, deals with current trends like museums, festivals, culinary, and music. The Tokyo Imperial Palace explains about the life of emperors with its architecture, museum, and history. The third category, living cultural attraction, is about the people who belong to a certain community or society. The indigenous Ainu people from Hokkaido presents musical performances, dances, and their lifestyle in their village.

On the other hand, luxury tourism is definitely expensive due to its personalization. It can be recognized in seven ways: communication barriers, vacuous spaces, visible-invisible labor, recognition, performing plenty, disorder, and neocolonial fantasies. The first way, communication barriers, talk about the anti-interaction in which tourists can mind their own business without interruption from outside like the train lounge in Japan. The second way, vacuous spaces, involves extensive space allocated for the destined people to allow the physical space such as huge rooms for dining at the resort. The third way, visible-invisible labor, talks about materials prepared and presented by people in the service industry although they would not be seen after their work and labor. The fourth way, recognition, means that there would be people waiting for the command like butlers at the Ritz Carlton hotel. The fifth way, performing plenty, involves the excessive demonstration which marks its uniqueness such as making the most expensive Christmas tree full of silver and gold ornaments in Dubai. The sixth way, disorder, refers to the craftsmanship of the people in designing the space to the luxury tourists. The seventh way, neocolonial fantasies, is about the preparation of living in intended living styles such as the existence of kimono costumes to be worn at the restaurant.

Cultural tourism in Japan can be considered luxury tourism due to its expensive cost and personalized experience. There are many expensive luxury foods such as Wagyu beef, tuna, and fruits due to their need for extensive labor, care, and attention. In May 2019, two Hokkaido melons were auditioned for $45,000 from the Business Insider report. Even a family can be rented to accommodate the desires according to the “Conan Rents A Family In Japan” episode from the Team Coco TV talk show. The service industry provides a luxurious experience in shopping, gastronomy, and culture. Furthermore, the combination of historical background and architecture with the modern touch upon lifestyle and adventure provides unique tourism which can be enjoyed at the expense of old yet new pleasures. With such detailed attention, expensive cost, and specialized labor, and personalized service, Japanese cultural tourism can be considered luxury tourism.

What turns a place into a tourist place? As we all know Japan is a country with a long history and rich culture. Their rich cultural heritage turns Japan into a tourist place. People are attracted by the Japanese’s culture, diverse food, and stunning architecture.

Culture

Such as the Japanese tea ceremony, Kabuki (a classical Japanese dance-drama) and Wagashi (A traditional Japanese sweet)

They have a traditional festival to celebrate fours season and nature

Like spring (Sakura) and summer (firework)

Those festivals unlike the others - beer festival in German

They have specific food, clothes (Kimono is a traditional Japanese garment, the national dresses) and parade for the festival

Hot spring is must-try when tourist visit Japan

It is good for your skin and blood circulation.

Food

Sushi is one of the popular cuisines of Japanese food

It is the most representative food of Japan

The thought of Sushi was shaped in the 8th century.

Everyone loves Ramen

It is also the signature food of Japan

Its idea transforms from Chinese noodles and Ramen is invented at 1910

Those two Japanese food spreads out the name of this little island.

Architecture

Temple in Japan is well known as the spectacular view of maple in fall and cherry trees in spring.

It affected by Chinese architecture and developed its own style after years

Tourist come to Japan to dress up a Kimono and visit those temples in a different season

How do they secure it in time?

The Japanese government tried their best to protect the temple and the culture of Kabuki. Also, they created an organization “Cool Japan” to promote tourism in Japan. Japanese animation plays an important role to promote Japanese culture too. Japanese’s hospitality is famous in the world and it is part of their culture and will continue. They value and inherit their tradition

In turning their cultural highlights into luxurious experiences, luxury tourism and cultural tourism in Japan work hand in hand to effectively lure in tourists who seek “authentic” and high-class cultural experiences. Based on Japan’s travel website, they market these experiences as pure and absolute reproductions of some of their most significant cultural practices. They explicitly refer to their attractions: “From remote island beach resorts and exclusive cultural encounters to traditional hot spring retreats offering unparalleled relaxation, Japan is a must-visit location for those seeking the ultimate in luxury travel” Calling back to our activity in class where we brainstormed what our ideas of luxury are, one of the most prominent images of luxury is the idea of being catered to and being served. Japan’s luxury tourism prides itself on this exactly, calling this “omotenashi” which means means taking care of your guests wholeheartedly. In these luxurious experiences, Japan’s hospitality, specifically their “omotenashi” embodies the idea of anticipating and fulfilling the needs of guests before they even realize what they are.

This Japanese hospitality is built by the people who live in these areas and by people who have extensive knowledge about their craft or the spaces they have built. These professionals range from Michelin-star sushi chefs, seasoned geishas, and hot spring (onsen) keepers. By putting these professionals on the forefront, Japanese tourism is able to produce these luxurious experiences while “maintaining” the significance of their own culture. A notable example of this would be the efforts of the groundskeepers and employees at Japanese onsens The professionals who maintain the hot springs and serve guests at hot springs provide tourists not only with tangible accommodations but with knowledge about the significance of onsens in Japanese society. Another example of Japanese omotenashi is seen in Japanese sushi and omakase restaurants, more notably, the Michelin star restaurants. These restaurants create a more intimate and personal relationship between tourists and the professionals who make their food. Employing their “omotenashi”, the chef crafts each cut of fish as the guests eat. Meaning, as the guests finish one bite, the chef has just finished another. This experience showcases the quality of Japanese cuisine while maintaining their hospitality.

These traditions have existed for hundreds of years in Japan and there is no doubt the industry will continue to thrive off of these experiences. The Japanese hospitality incorporated into luxury travel ensures an experience in which tourists truly only have to focus on relaxing and the stimulation of their senses. The professionals who maintain this industry cater to both their physical needs (emphasis on relaxation) and their intellectual needs by providing them with first-hand and intimate encounters with the Japanese culture. By offering tourists a more intimate and elevated take on their culture, Japan successfully fosters “luxury travel” within their country.

QUESTIONS:

1. In your opinion, does a cultural experience need to be luxurious to be enjoyable?

2. What are some examples of luxury and cultural tourism in San Diego?

works cited -

https://www.japan.travel/en/guide/luxury-travel-in-japan/

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shazzeaslightnovels · 6 years ago

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Reading Long - March 2019

Volume’s read: 12

As per usual, no spoilers unless otherwise tagged and I obtained all of these volumes in Japanese from Bookwalker.

Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata 8 by Fumiaki Maruto

A welcome breather after the last few volumes of non-stop drama. It felt a lot more like the early volumes but I enjoyed it anyway. I swear Katou’s relationship with Eriri is the true love story of this series. Even though it’s only been a couple of months since I read the first two volumes, I couldn’t help but be nostalgic about the events in them along with the characters, as if a year had really passed for me too.

Sword Art Online: Mother’s Rosario by Reki Kawahara

Since I read the interview with Kawahara Reki where he talks about wanting to write a proper yuri series someday, my interest in this series was renewed. I rewatched the anime and genuinely enjoyed the first two seasons, though I still dislike Phantom Bullet arc (mostly because GGO just doesn’t look like much fun to me) so I wanted to read some of the light novel and figured I’d start with my favorite arc.

Even though this volume doesn’t hit me as hard as it did when I read it in English as a teenager, I still really like this volume. I’m one of those people who was annoyed by how little presence Asuna has in Fairy Dance and Phantom Bullet so I always liked that this volume gives her a lot of focus. And I LOVE Yuuki. One of Kawahara’s strengths has always been his ability to make the reader care about a character with only a couple of pages. Despite how little time she has, Yuuki still means a lot to me and I love her relationship with Asuna so much. One issue I did have with this book though was how many pages at the beginning were dedicated to recount the events of previous volumes. I already know all this and I doubt there are many readers who didn’t know all this. The other issue I had with this volume is how the last chapter tries to tie the arc into the main story. It didn’t need to and I think it shifts the focus of the arc away from Asuna and Yuuki’s relationship too much. And, as much as I enjoyed reading it, I think the anime surpassed it. Aoi Yuuki’s performance as Yuuki is breathtaking and the action scenes are so brilliantly animated. I did like having more insight into Asuna’s thoughts though so if you liked this arc in the anime, definitely check out the light novel!

This volume was published in English by Yen-Press as Sword Art Online: Mother’s Rosary so check it out if you’re interested!

Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata 9 by Fumiaki Maruto

I’m not sure what to say other than that this keeps up the quality of the series? It was a good volume.

Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata: Girls Side 2 by Fumiaki Maruto

Well this was a surprisingly satisfying read. Like the first volume, this volume is split into two parts with the first part taking place after volume 8 and the second after volume 9. The first part has three stories in it all focusing on characters and relationships that don’t get much focus in the main series. For example, the first story focuses on a conversation between Michiru and Utaha who I don’t think have had a real interaction since vol. 4. Even though these stories aren’t very plot relevant, I enjoyed them anyway. The second part is much more plot relevant and has some really good character moments for Izumi, Eriri, Megumi and Michiru and also includes a guest appearance by Mayu (from Koisuru Metronome manga)! The stories here were really good and the epilogue really tied them together nicely. I’m not sure whether this volume will be necessary to understand the story of future volumes but I get the feeling that the events that happen in the volume will be necessary to understand the characters and their relationships with each other.

Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata 10 by Fumiaki Maruto

Once again, Maruto takes a typical light novel volume premise and quickly turns it into a dramatic affair. The cover and the colour illustrations are a lie! This isn’t a beach/swimsuit volume but it is an Utaha volume and a good one. It made me remember why I loved Utaha in Koisuru Metronome and why I still do. I’m a bit anxious about vol. 11 given that the cover and the colour illustrations show Megumi being embarrassed which is very out of character for her.

Saenai Heroine no Sodatakata 11 by Fumiaki Maruto

Welp, Maruto finally did it. He finally made Megumi into a boring heroine for me. I can’t get into too much details about what I disliked about this volume without spoilers but I think one thing that was really missing was scenes without Tomoya in them. I get that he’s the protagonist and the narrator but in the first few volumes, there sections that were just dialogue that showed Megumi interacting with people who weren’t Tomoya. I think we haven’t had a scene like that since vol. 7 and GS doesn’t fully replace it. Those scenes made Megumi feel like a full character and they were needed here. The reader needs to be shown that she has a life outside of Tomoya.Without that, she’s boring.

This is the last volume in the series that I own so I won’t be reading the last four volumes (including FD and GS) until Bookwalker has them on sale again.

Iriya no Sora, UFO no Natsu 1 by Mizuhito Akiyama

A few years ago I read The Picture of Dorian Gray. It was the first time I had read any novel that was written before I was born and I remember being so amazed at how paragraphs could last an entire page. Reading Iriya gave me a similar feeling to that, even if it’s not nearly as old as Dorian Gray. It’s amazing to see how much the light novel medium has changed since the first volume was released in 2001. There were so many descriptions of settings and movements and some of these lasted for more than a page. Due to this, I had a tough time reading this volume. There were a few times where I lost the plot and had to go back and read the scene from the start again. The writing style is smooth and the relationship between the two leads is cute but I can’t say I found the plot very interesting. I don’t quite understand what most people find charming about this series yet but I’m looking forward to possibly finding out in volume 2.

As for the anime, I saw it a long time ago and barely remember it and don’t have easy access to rewatch it. Looking at the episode summaries from Wikipedia, the first episode adapts around 170 pages so I’d imagine it’s pretty rushed.

Torikago Miko to Seiken no Kishi by Izuki Kougyoku

A short ~90~ page story from the author of Mimizuku to Yoru no Ou. It’s a pretty standard fantasy story about a legendary knight and I can’t say I cared for it. I didn’t really buy the relationship between the two leads but I did really like the ending. Even if I didn’t care much for it, I’d still recommend it to people who liked Mimizuku.

Kidou Shitsuji by Takeshi Matsuyama

Well, this was a pleasant surprise! This is by the author of Ame no Hi no Iris and Koori no Kuni no Amaryllis and the English title is Robot Butler but the titular character is not the funniest thing about it. Instead, most of the scenes I found humorous involved the female lead, Liese and her attempts to get Bel to notice her through the use of shoujo manga tropes. Of course, they all backfire on her. She tries to wink flirtatiously at him and he just asks if she has dry eye. She tries to run into him with a piece of toast in her mouth… only, they’re in the middle of a hallway and he catches her effortlessly when she tries to run at him. Liese’s cluelessness when it comes to romance is genuinely charming and of course I loved her relationship with her best friend, Flora, who introduced her to the concept of shoujo manga in the first place and encourages her every step of the way. The other notable character is Flora’s robot butler, Victoria who seems to be the only one who knows how much of an idiot Bel actually is. In addition to how funny it is, the volume has some surprisingly tight world-building and chapter six is truly awesome. There are so many things that get revealed and there’re big epic fights! I liked it a lot. Unfortunately, I didn’t care for the ending. I thought it was a bit of a cop-out though I suppose it did end it cleanly in the way that I am not desperately wanting a second volume. Anyhow, I’d highly recommend it and I’m looking forward to reading more of Maruyama’s works in the future.

Iriya no Sora, UFO no Natsu 2 by Mizuhito Akiyama

Despite my lukewarm opinion of the first volume, I actually quite enjoyed this volume. Surprisingly, Iriya isn’t in this volume much and the volume instead gives the reader some insight into some of the side characters thoughts, particularly Akiho. My favorite part of the volume was when we got to experience the school’s cultural festival through the eyes of the Asaba parents. It was an interesting choice and one that I quickly got behind. Rather than being just background dressing, Asaba’s parents are actually pretty interesting and fun without being too eccentric and silly. One thing I think this series does really well is that I never feel like the author is treating the characters like adults. A huge issue with a lot of fiction is that they tend to think of teenagers as adults instead of just a pile of people who are still growing and learning how to make decisions. (Saekano has this issue too, btw.) But these characters are still in their first year of middle school and they act like it. I think I’m starting to get the charm of this series now. This volume was very fun to read and I enjoyed it enough that I started volume 3 right away.

Iriya no Sora, UFO no Natsu 3 by Mizuhito Akiyama

I’m starting to realize that I like this series the most when it’s not being told from Asaba’s POV. I still like his character and a lot of the impactful scenes come from his POV but the most memorable part of this volume was chapter 1 where Akiho and Iriya have an eating competition and become friends. I liked it a lot, especially since Akiho kind of becomes Iriya’s “Mum friend” afterwards and Kiyomi starts affectionately calling Iriya “Kana-bu” which I thought was pretty darn cute. One thing that I really like about the dynamic between Akiho and Iriya is that Akiho is never portrayed as a straight-up bitch trying to get between Asaba and Iriya. Instead, she’s just a girl learning how to deal with her feelings. And Iriya is never portrayed as just a victim of Akiho’s attitude. Iriya is strong in her own way and can be very determined when it comes down to it. But enough about them, this volume had a lot of character development for Asaba. I really liked that he asked Iriya what she wants. Does she want to keep things the way they are? Or does she him to help her? He asks and I really liked that. I also think the way he runs to the bathroom in uncomfortable social situations is hilarious and adorable. In general, despite this volume having pretty heavy plot developments, I just found all the characters to be really cute. Anyway, I’ll be taking a short break before reading the final volume but I am really enjoying this series so far.

Ankoku Kishi wo Nugasanaide 1 by Shinichi Kimura

From the author of Kore wa Zombie desu ka? this story starts when a high school student called Najima’s class gets a new transfer student who just looks like a suit of armour wearing a female uniform. Honestly, I found it boring which is why I’m not putting much effort into the premise summary. It was fine, I guess, but I didn’t laugh at all and I found the characters to be bland. But I bought the first three volumes when they were first released so I kinda have to read them.

#Saekano #Sword Art Online #Mother's Rosario #Mother's Rosary #Iriya no Sora UFO no Natsu #Torikago Miko to Seiken no Kishi #Kidou Shitsuji #Ankoku Kishi wo Nugasanaide #light novels #Light novel reviews #Reading log #Shinichi Kimura #Fujimi Fantasia Bunko #Mizuhito Akiyama #Dengeki Bunko #Takeshi Matsuyama #Izuki Kougyoku #Fumiaki Maruto #Reki Kawahara

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uomo-accattivante · 7 years ago

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On 21 August 2017, the Great American Eclipse caused a diagonal swathe of darkness to fall across the United States from Charleston, South Carolina on the East Coast to Lincoln City, Oregon on the West. In Manhattan, which was several hundred miles outside the path of totality, a gentle gloom fell over the city. Yet still office workers emptied out onto the pavements, wearing special paper glasses if they had been organised; holding up their phones and blinking nervously if they hadn’t. Despite promises that it was to be lit up for the occasion, there was no discernible twinkle from the Empire State Building; on Fifth Avenue, the darkened glass façade of Trump Tower grew a little dimmer. In Central Park Zoo, where children and tourists brandished pinhole cameras made from cereal boxes, Betty, a grizzly bear, seized the opportunity to take an unscrutinised dip.

Across the East River in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Oscar Isaac, a 38-year-old Guatemalan-American actor and one of the profession’s most talented, dynamic and versatile recent prospects, was, like Betty, feeling too much in the sun. It was his day off from playing Hamlet in an acclaimed production at the Public Theater in Manhattan and he was at home on vocal rest. He kept a vague eye on the sky from the balcony of the one-bedroom apartment he shares — until their imminent move to a leafier part of Brooklyn — with his wife, the Danish documentary film-maker Elvira Lind, their Boston Terrier French Bulldog-cross Moby (also called a “Frenchton”, though not by him), and more recently, and to Moby’s initial consternation, their four-month-old son, Eugene.

Plus, he’s seen this kind of thing before. “I was in Guatemala in 1992 when there was a full solar eclipse,” he says the next day, sitting at a table in the restaurant of a fashionably austere hotel near his Williamsburg apartment, dressed in dark T-shirt and jeans and looking — amazingly, given his current theatrical and parental commitments — decidedly fresh. “The animals went crazy; across the whole city you could hear the dogs howling.” Isaac happened to be in Central America, he’ll mention later, because Hurricane Andrew had ripped the roof off the family home in Miami, Florida, while he and his mother, uncle, siblings and cousins huddled inside under couches and cushions. So yes, within the spectrum of Oscar Isaac’s experiences, the Great American Eclipse is no biggie.

Yet there is another upcoming celestial event that will have a reasonably significant impact on Isaac’s life. On 15 December, Star Wars: The Last Jedi will be released in cinemas, which, if you bought a ticket to Star Wars: The Force Awakens — and helped it gross more than $2bn worldwide — you’ll know is a pretty big deal. You’ll also know that Isaac plays Poe Dameron, a hunky, wise-cracking X-wing fighter pilot for the Resistance who became one of the most popular characters of writer-director JJ Abram’s reboot of the franchise thanks to Isaac’s charismatic performance and deadpan delivery (see his “Who talks first?” exchange with Vader-lite baddie Kylo Ren: one of the film’s only comedic beats).

And if you did see Star Wars: The Force Awakens you’ll know that, due to some major father-son conflict, there’s now an opening for a loveable, rogueish, leather-jacket-wearing hero… “Heeeeeh!” says Isaac, Fonzie-style, when I say as much. “Well, there could be, but I think what [The Last Jedi director] Rian [Johnson] did was make it less about filling a slot and more about what the story needs. The fact is now that the Resistance has been whittled to just a handful of people, they’re running for their lives, and Leia is grooming me — him — to be a leader of the Resistance, as opposed to a dashing, rogue hero.”

While he says he has “not that much more, but a little more to do” in this film, he can at least be assured he survives it; he starts filming Episode IX early next year.

If Poe seems like one of the new Star Wars firmament now — alongside John Boyega’s Finn, Daisy Ridley’s Rey and Poe’s spherical robot sidekick BB-8 — it’s only because Isaac willed it. Abrams had originally planned to kill Poe off, but when he met Isaac to discuss him taking the part, Isaac expressed some reservations. “I said that I wasn’t sure because I had already done that role in other movies where you kind of set it up for the main people and then you die spectacularly,” he remembers. “What’s funny is that [producer] Kathleen Kennedy was in the room and she was like, ‘Yeah, you did that for us in Bourne!’” (Sure enough, in 2012’s Bourne Legacy, Jeremy Renner’s character, Aaron Cross, steps out of an Alaskan log cabin while Isaac’s character, Outcome Agent 3, stays inside; a few seconds later the cabin is obliterated by a missile fired from a passing drone.)

This ability to back himself — judiciously and, one can imagine after meeting him, with no small amount of steely charm — seems to have served Isaac well so far. It’s what also saw him through the casting process for his breakthrough role in Joel and Ethan Coen’s 2014 film Inside Llewyn Davis, about a struggling folk singer in Sixties New York, partly based on the memoir of nearly-was musician Dave Van Ronk. Isaac, an accomplished musician himself, got wind that the Coens were casting and pestered his agent and manager to send over a tape, eventually landing himself an audition.

“I knew it was based on Dave Van Ronk and I looked nothing like him,” says Isaac. “He was a 6ft 5in, 300lb Swede and I was coming in there like… ‘Oh man.’” But then he noticed that the casting execs had with them a picture of the singer-songwriter Ray LaMontagne. “Suddenly, I got some confidence because he’s small and dark so I said to the casting director, ‘Oh cool, is that a reference?’ And they were like, 'No, he just came in here and he killed it.’” Isaac throws his head back and laughs. “They literally said, 'He killed it.’ It was so good!”

In the end it was Isaac who killed it in Inside Llewyn Davis, with a performance that was funny, sad, cantankerous and moving. The film was nominated for two Oscars and three Golden Globes, one of them for Isaac in the category of: “Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture — comedy or musical” (he lost to Leonardo DiCaprio for The Wolf of Wall Street). No cigar that time, but in 2016 he won a Golden Globe for his turn as a doomed mayor in David Simon’s HBO drama, Show Me a Hero. This year, and with peculiar hillbilly affectation, Vanity Fair proclaimed Isaac “the best dang actor of his generation”. It is not much of a stretch to imagine that, some day very soon, Isaac may become the first Oscar since Hammerstein to win the award whose name he shares. Certainly, the stars seem ready to align.

Of course, life stories do not run as neatly as all that and Isaac’s could have gone quite differently. He was born Óscar Isaac Hernández Estrada in Guatemala City, to which his father, Óscar, now a pulmonologist, had moved from Washington DC in order to attend medical school (having escaped to the States from Cuba just before the revolution) and where he met Isaac’s mother, Eugenia. Five months after Isaac was born, the family — also including an older sister, Nicole, and later joined by a younger brother, Michael — moved to America in order for Óscar Senior to complete his residencies: first to Baltimore, then New Orleans, eventually settling in Miami when Isaac was six.

Miami didn’t sit entirely right with him. “The Latin culture is so strong which was really nice,” he says, “but you had to drive everywhere, and it’s also strangely quite conservative. Money is valued, and nice cars and clothes, and what you look like, and that can get sort of tedious.” Still it was there, aged 11, that he took to the stage for the first time. The Christian middle school he attended put on performances in which the kids would mime to songs telling loosely biblical stories, including one in which Jesus and the Devil take part in a boxing match in heaven (note the word “loosely”). For that one, Isaac played the Devil. In another, he played Jesus calling Lazarus from the grave. “So yeah,” he laughs, “I’ve got the full range!’

He enjoyed the mixture of the attention and the “extreme nature of putting yourself out there in front of a bunch of people”, plus it gave him some release from stresses at home: his parents were separating and his mother became ill. His school failed to see these as sufficiently mitigating factors for Isaac’s subsequent wayward behaviour and, following an incident with a fire extinguisher, he was expelled. “It wasn’t that bad. They wanted me out of there. I was very happy to go.”

Following his parents’ divorce, he moved with his mother to Palm Beach, Florida, where he enrolled at a public high school. “It was glorious, I loved it,” says Isaac. “I loved it so much. I could walk to the beach every day, and go to this wild school where I became friends with so many different kinds of people. I met these guys who lived in the trailer parks in Boynton Beach and started a band, and my mom and my little brother would come and spy on me to see if I was doing drugs or anything, and I never was.”

Never?

“No, because I didn’t drink till I was, like, 24. Even though I stopped being religious, I liked the individuality of being the guy who didn’t do that stuff. Maybe it was the observer part of me… I liked being a little bit detached, and I wasn’t interested in doing something that was going to make me lose control.”

When he was 14, Isaac and his band-mates played at a talent show. They chose to perform 'Rape Me’ by Nirvana. “I remember singing to the parents, 'Rape meeee!’” Isaac laughs so hard he gives a little snort. “Yeah,” he says, composing himself again, “we didn’t win.” But something stuck and Isaac ended up being in a series of ska-punk outfits, first Paperface, then The Worms and later The Blinking Underdogs who, legend has it, would go on to support Green Day. “Supported… Ha! It was a festival…” says Isaac. “But hey, we played the same day, at the same festival, within a few hours of each other.” (On YouTube you can find a clip from 2001 of The Blinking Underdogs performing in a battle of the bands contest at somewhere called Spanky’s. Isaac is wearing a 'New York City’ T-shirt and brandishing a wine-coloured Flying V electric guitar.)

Still, Isaac’s path was uncertain. At one point he thought about joining the Marines. “The sax player in my band had grown up in a military family so we were like, 'Hey, let’s work out and get all ripped and be badasses!’” he says. “I was like, 'Yeah, I’ll do combat photography!’ My dad was really against it. He said, 'Clinton’s just going to make up a war for you guys to go to,’ so I had to have the recruiters come all the way down to Miami where my dad was living and they convinced him to let me join. I did the exam, I took the oath, but then we had gotten the money together to record an album with The Worms. I decided I’d join the Reserves instead. I said I wanted to do combat photography. They said, 'We don’t do that in the Reserves, but we can give you anti-tank?’ Ha! I was like, 'it’s a liiiiiittle different to what I was thinking…’”

Even when he started doing a few professional theatre gigs in Miami he was still toying with the idea of a music career, until one day, while in New York playing a young Fidel Castro in an off-Broadway production of Rogelio Martinez’s play, When it’s Cocktail Time in Cuba, he happened to pass by renowned performing arts school Juilliard. On a whim, he asked for an audition. He was told the deadline had passed. He insisted. They gave him a form. He filled it in and brought it back the next day. They post-dated it. He got in. And the rest is history. Only it wasn’t.

“In the second year they would do cuts,” Isaac says. “If you don’t do better they kick you out. All the acting teachers wanted me on probation, because they didn’t think I was trying hard enough.” Not for the first or last time, he held his ground. “It was just to spur me to do better I think, but I definitely argued.”

He stayed for the full course at Juilliard, though it was a challenge, not only because he’d relaxed his own non-drinking rule but also because he was maintaining a long-distance relationship with a girlfriend back in Florida. “For me, the twenties were the more difficult part of life. Four years is just… masochistic. We were a particularly close group but still, it’s really intense.” (Among his fellow students at the time were the actress Jessica Chastain, with whom he starred in the 2014 mob drama A Most Violent Year, and Sam Gold, his director in Hamlet.) He says he broadly kept it together: “I was never a mess, I just had a lot of confusion.” He got himself an agent in the graduation scrum, and soon started picking up work: a Law & Order here, a Shakespeare in the Park there; even, in 2006, a biblical story to rival his early efforts, playing Joseph in The Nativity Story (the first film to hold its premiere at the Vatican, no less).

By the time he enrolled at Juilliard he had already dropped “Hernández” and started going by Oscar Isaac, his two first given names. And for good reason. “When I was in Miami, there were a couple of other Oscar Hernándezes I would see at auditions. All [casting directors] would see me for was 'the gangster’ or whatever, so I was like, 'Well, let me see if this helps.’ I remember there was a casting director down there because [Men in Black director] Barry Sonnenfeld was doing a movie; she said, 'Let’s bring in this Oscar Isaac,’ and he was like, 'No no no! I just want Cubans!’ I saw Barry Sonnenfeld a couple of years ago and I told him that story — 'I don’t want a Jew, I want a Cuban!’”

Perhaps it’s a sad indictment of the entertainment industry that a Latino actor can’t expect a fair run at parts without erasing some of the ethnic signifiers in his own name, but on a personal basis at least, Isaac’s diverse role roster speaks to the canniness of his decision. He has played an English king in Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood(2010), a Russian security guard in Madonna’s Edward-and-Mrs-Simpson drama W.E. (2011), an Armenian medical student in Terry George’s The Promise (2017) and — yes, Barry — a small, dark American Jew channelling a large blond Swede.

But then, of course, there are roles he’s played where ethnicity was all but irrelevant and talent was everything. Carey Mulligan’s ex-con husband Standard in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive in 2011 (another contender for his “spectacular deaths” series); mysterious technocrat Nathan Bateman in the beautifully poised sci-fi Ex Machina (2014) written and directed by Alex Garland (with whom he has also shot Annihilation — dashing between different sound stages at Pinewood while shooting The Last Jedi — which is due out next year). Or this month’s Suburbicon, a neat black comedy directed by George Clooney from an ancient Coen brothers script, in which Isaac cameos as a claims investigator looking into some dodgy paperwork filed by Julianne Moore and Matt Damon, and lights up every one of his brief scenes.

Isaac is a very modern kind of actor: one who shows range and versatility without being bland; who is handsome with his dark, intense eyes, heavy brows and thick curls, but not so freakishly handsome that it is distracting; who shows a casual disregard for the significance of celebrity and keeps his family, including his father, who remarried and had another son and daughter, close. It’s a testament to his skill that when he takes on a character, be it English royal or Greenwich Village pauper, it feels like — with the possible exception of Ray LaMontagne — it could never have been anyone else.

Today, though, he’s a Danish prince. To say that Isaac’s turn in Hamlet has caused a frenzy in New York would be something of an understatement. Certainly, it’s a sell-out. The Sunday before we meet, Al Pacino had been in. So scarce are tickets that Isaac’s own publicist says she’s unlikely to be able to get me one, and as soon as our interview is over I hightail it to the Public Theater to queue up to be put on the waiting list for returns for tonight’s performance. (I am seventh in line, and in my shameless desperation I tell the woman in front of me that I’ve flown over from London just to interview Isaac in the hope that she might let me jump the queue. She ponders it for a nanosecond, before another woman behind me starts talking about how her day job involves painting pictures of chimpanzees, and I lose the crowd.)

Clearly, Hamlet is occupying a great deal of Isaac’s available brain space right now, and not just the fact that he’s had to memorise approximately 1,500 lines. “Even tonight it’s different, what the play means to me,” he says. “It’s almost like a religious text, because it has the ambiguity of the Bible where you can look at one line and it can mean so many different things depending on how you meditate on it. Even when I have a night where I feel not particularly connected emotionally, it can still teach me. I’ll say a line and I’ll say, 'Ah, that’s good advice, Shakespeare, thank you.’”

Hamlet resonates with Isaac for reasons that he would never have foreseen or have wished for. While playing a young man mourning the untimely death of his father, Isaac was himself a young man mourning the untimely death of his mother, who died in February after an illness. Doing the play became a way to process his loss.

“It’s almost like this is the only framework where you can give expression to such intense emotions. Otherwise anywhere else is pretty inappropriate, unless you’re just in a room screaming to yourself,” he says. “This play is a beautiful morality tale about how to get through grief; to experience it every night for the last four months has definitely been cathartic but also educational; it has given structure to something that felt so overwhelming.”

In March, a month after Eugenia died, Isaac and Lind married, and then in April Eugene, named in remembrance of his late grandmother, was born. I ask Isaac about the shift in perspective that happens when you become a parent; whether he felt his own focus switch from being a son to being a father.

“It happened in a very dramatic way,” he says. “In a matter of three months my mother passed and my son was born, so that transition was very alive, to the point where I was telling my mom, 'I think you’re going to see him on the way out, tell him to listen to me as much as he can…’” He gives another laugh, but flat this time. “It was really tough because for me she was the only true example of unconditional love. It’s painful to know that that won’t exist for me anymore, other than me giving it to him. So now this isn’t happening” — he raises his arms towards the ceiling, gesturing a flow coming down towards him — “but now it goes this way” — he brings his arms down, making the same gesture, but flowing from him to the floor.

Does performing Hamlet, however pertinent its themes, ever feel like a way of refracting his own experiences, rather than feeling them in their rawest form?

“Yeah it is,” he says, “I’m sure when it’s over I don’t know how those things will live.” He pauses. “I’m a little bit… I don’t know if 'concerned’ is the right word, but as there’s only two weeks left of doing it, I’m curious to see what’s on the other end, when there’s no place to put it all.”

It’s a thoughtful, honest answer; one that doesn’t shy away from the emotional complexities of what he’s experiencing and is still to face, but admits to his own ignorance of what comes next. Because, although Isaac is clearly dedicated to his current lot, he has also suffered enough slings and arrows to know where self-determination has its limits.

What he does know is happening on the other end of Hamlet is “disconnection”, also known as a holiday, and he plans to travel with Lind to Maine where her documentary, Bobbi Jene, is screening at a film festival. Then he will fly to Buenos Aires for a couple of months filming Operation Finale, a drama about the 1960 Israeli capture of Adolf Eichmann which Isaac is producing and in which he also stars as Mossad agent Peter Malkin, with Eichmann played by Sir Ben Kingsley. At some point after that he will get sucked into the vortex of promotion for Star Wars: The Last Jedi, of which today’s interview is an early glimmer.

But before that, he will unlock the immaculate black bicycle that he had chained up outside the hotel and disappear back into Brooklyn. Later, he will take the subway to Manhattan an hour-and-a-half or so before curtain. To get himself ready, and if the mood takes him, he will listen to Venezuelan musician Arca’s self-titled album or Sufjan Stevens’ Carrie and Lowell, light a candle, and look at a picture of his mother that he keeps in his dressing room.

Then, just before seven o'clock, he will make his way to the stage where, for the next four hours, he will make the packed house believe he is thinking Hamlet’s thoughts for the very first time, and strut around in his underpants feigning madness, and — for reasons that make a lot more sense if you’re there which, thanks to a last-minute phone-call from the office of someone whose name I never did catch, I was — stab a lasagna. And then at the end of Act V, when Hamlet lies dead, and as lightning staggers across the night sky outside the theatre, finally bringing the promised drama to the Manhattan skyline, the audience, as one, will rise.

Fashion by Allan Kennedy. Star Wars: The Last Jedi is out on 15 December. The December issue of Esquire is out now.

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#oscar isaac #esquire uk #star wars #the last jedi #interview #david slijper #article

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canvaswolfdoll · 7 years ago

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CanvasWatches: My Hero Academica

If there’s something I needed in my Anime Repertoire, it was a fun, pulpy Shonen Series.

I have selected My Hero Academia because frog girl.

Tsuyu Asui and the various tumblr posts she spawned is what drew my attention, and I was hearing good things about the series, so I thought I’d give it a go. Plus I’m catching it in the early stages, so there’s not too much of an archive to panic over. It’s a good time to get in.

I’m not one for long runners, since I enjoy definite start and end points.[1] Media designed to just go on forever, stuffed with filler and formula is a quick eject for me. And I’ve never been one for fighty man Shounen.

I couldn’t get into Dragon Ball Z, because I only caught brief segments, and those segments were the parts with Goku floating there staring down his enemy. Or Buu turning someone into a cookie and eating them. Contextless nonsense that was very unappealing.[2]

Naruto began it’s dubbed broadcast as I entered Middle School. However, those were troubled times of much grounding due to academic indifference, and I couldn’t be bothered to monitor the broadcast schedule. So I fell off the Naruto train… basically after the second episode.

I didn’t care about pirates enough to try One Piece, and Bleach seemingly left no cultural weight to enter the equation.[3]

However, these reviews are nothing if not a bizarre justification for making up for my misspent youth. Because yearning for the nostalgic past is what adulthood is for.

And I finally committed to Funimation’s streaming service, so, yay! More dubs for Canvas![4] Which leaves only the Viz stable to have difficulties with.

So… why does My Hero Academia succeed where it’s predecessors fail?

Likeable cast, mostly. While other self-perpetuating shonens have large casts with various interesting gimmicks, usually only one or two will resonate with the viewer, and there’s often little by way of character complexity or arcs.

Meanwhile, MHA has a cast that, oddly, are mostly characterized by positivity. There’s one or two grumpy loners, sure, but they’re handled with an almost parody tone, and the rest are actually nice kids you can appreciate.

And our protagonist, Deku, is notable for not being uniquely special. At the outset, he’s in the minority of people without powers. He eventually gains some, a decision I’m… conflicted on, but he gets superpowers by earning them.

Deku’s a tenacious fanboy, particularly idolizing the biggest hero in the world, wanting to follow the man’s example. However, as he doesn’t have a gift, he’s seemingly incapable of reaching that point.

Our hero takes this in stride, instead dedicating his attention to analyzing heroes and their methods. He’s a very clever and intelligent protagonist, and considering he’s following the trail of Naruto and freaking Goku, that defining trait is a refreshing departure.

Then he earns his chance at his dreams by being undeniably heroic despite being a squib.

Now there are obviously two sides to Deku inheriting All Might’s power:

One one hand, we miss the story of a muggle climbing his way up the ranks through sheer willpower and analysis.

But, with him getting All Might’s power, we instead see a young boy struggle with a power well beyond his control and capabilities.

While I’d prefer the Rock Lee route, the physical struggle of Deku literally destroying himself with every use of One for All, and the ramifications (risk of permanent damage and Deku needing to use it strategically) is a compelling narrative thrust in its own right, so I can’t complain too much.

The duality of All Might is an interesting sight to behold. In full hero mode, he’s nothing if not positive and encouraging. Outside of that persona, All Might is a little pessimistic and grumpy, but he still has a clear streak of good that’s never suppressed, even when he’s feeling sick.

It would’ve been easy and in line with established tropes to make All Might a lazy and harsh task master, but even when sending Deku through an excessively intense training regiment, All Might’s encouraging and positive, pushing Deku not for his selfish purposes, but because he honestly believes in Deku.

Then, after Deku goes above and beyond the task All Might set (clear out a stretch of beach), All Might tells his student to eat a strand of his hair, which is precisely the sort of thing I make jokes about when watching television.[5]

The even more amazing thing is that this positivity isn’t exclusive to All Might. The entire hero cast are positive and supportive people. Besides Bakugo, who’s the childhood friend turned rival character, no one specifically puts down anyone else. Every challenge and lesson has the whole of Class 1-A cheering each other on.

Even during the admission trials, where they’re literally competing against one another, you never see any character go out of their way to sabotage another.

Normally, it’s so easy to make the main character a total reject, give them a whole community of opposition and conflict. So it’s refreshing that everyone who wants to be a hero is a positive person.

It’s the same reason so many people gush over pages featuring Batman offering sympathy to others instead of punches. We want our heroes to be the best example of humanity, something to aspire to be.

Which is the exact philosophy that brings All Might to take Deku under his wing.

Then Bakugo, who’s introduced as a violent bully, wanting to believe heroics is his birthright, becomes mocked for being such a hothead. He’s got a powerful quirk, was number one for the admission test, but the rest of the class silently agree that they don’t wish to abide by his attitude. And it’s not even bullying Bakugo, but more gentle mocking and pushback against his egocentrism and violence.

Because the class are still children, but their nature shows a preference toward acceptance and teamwork, and an openness for redemption. The class’s treatment of Bakugo is negativity towards his current actions, not the kid himself.

UA is structured to be a competitive environment, a whetstone to hone the next generation of heroes. You have to compete in a trial to get into the programs, teachers can expel whole classes, and you can lose your spot in class to someone in a ‘lesser’ course. However, even when the cast are explicitly telling one another they’re gunning for each other, it’s usually with a tone of ‘nothing personal, it’s just the situation,’ and there’s no hard feelings. No one resents anyone else, really, and there’s no hesitation to work together when the situation calls for it.

Which is important because this is a show for children, and it’s showing, by example, that intent and actions are a better defining trait than raw ability or natural born talent.

A lot of the quirks are explicitly underwhelming. Class 1-A runs the gamut between making explosions, nullifying gravity, sticky balls, being invisible, and having a tail, with various and unequal limitations. It’s not what you have that makes you good or evil, it’s what you do with it.

To further cement this, One for All is absurdly powerful, and after a training montage, Deku’s given a portion of the quirk. And that portion is so strong, so powerful, that even with the preparation All Might put him through, using it still physically breaks Deku.

Which means, while most Shonens are about the protagonist becoming stronger, working their way to being the best there is, Deku literally gets handed that strength in episode 4. So, instead of growing powerful, Deku has to learn restraint and self control when using One for All.

Because being a hero isn’t about being better than everyone else, it’s about using what you have effectively to make the world around you a better place, with both physical abilities and personality.

Deku has the right personality and philosophy, he needs to learn how to use his power.

Bakugo knows how to use his power, but he doesn’t quite have the needed interpersonal skills or humility.

Thus why the two are the rivals.

The actual arcs do a good job of tracing old structures while also bringing in its own twists.

There is, of course, the introductory arc, where we’re introduced to the protagonist whose dream seems impossible to him, until a mentor figure steps in and grants him the one thing needed to proceed (A quirk for Deku, headwear for Naruto and Luffy). Then he meets his crush and turns a few low-grade rivals into allies (like you do) as he begins the journey to become the best… hero/ninja/pirate/grim reaper?[6]

Deku takes the entrance examine, which he technically failed, but he put in such a good effort that he was given bonus points so he could enroll at UA anyways.

Then we get a nice mix of Slice of Life and implied opposition from a mentor figure, who turns out to have been performing a secret test of character.

Next, the main cast is given their first field mission, which suddenly becomes a lot more serious than expected.

Which brings us to the end of the first season.

So, a quality that I find takes a series from good to great is its approach to balancing drama and comedy: namely, no one’s truly exempt from either. Naruto had shades of it, Fullmetal Alchemist did it to the hilt. Sometimes it’s well set-up jokes, sometimes it’s just goofy character designs.[7]

Class 1-A is filled with goofballs, and even though they serious up when a horde of villains crash their first rescue training mission, their personalities are able to leak a good amount of comedy where needed.

Then the entirety of the second season is dedicated to the required tournament arc. Which… okay, time for Canvas to zone out, right?

Well, no. Because My Hero Academia is pretty good at both dynamic combat and interesting situations. Further, the previous season already did a good job of establishing people’s powers, so there’s space to split the focus between showing fine details and solid character work.

UA’s tournament is actually a broadcasted sports festival, so the competition starts with a obstacle course, which revels in all the slapstick potential inherent. Deku also wins it by looking at the mine field that is the final obstacle, and says ‘Nah. I can use this.’

Good for our hero!

Then, the second event is a cavalry battle,[8] where Deku’s reward for winning the first event is getting a 10 million point bounty on his head. It’s so unfair it turns to the realm of parody. Which I’m all about.

The second event is thus a showcase of Quirk Synergy, more of Deku’s strategy and resulting counter strategies, and more slapstick. So that’s nice.

Since Deku soundly won the first round, our protagonist is getting diminishing returns for the rest of the arc.

The third event is straight up tournament battles, but with most of the cast already eliminated, so that saves time, and the show only really focuses on the big events, split between the second half of one episode and the first of another. Between those, there are match ups that are just squashes[9] and comedy.

The final winner is then Hannibal Lecter’d on the podium in a great mix of character drama (he didn’t like the way he won) and comedy (because the final winner has to be actively restrained and muzzled. That’s just silly!)

Then the cast picks out their codenames.

Which pretty much brings us even to where the dub’s gotten.

I’m having a good time with the show, and I look forward to more episodes. It’s going to be interesting to follow an anime episode by episode instead of marathoning the whole thing through. Let’s see if I can keep my sanity.

Kataal kataal.

[1] There are exceptions, mostly in the form of webcomics and Discworld. [2] Dragon Ball, meanwhile, had a youthful energy that drew me in. But it also aired infrequently so I never got totally invested. [3] Okay, I had a high school friend who was interested, much to the annoyance of another high school friend, who had a weak understanding of difference in media interests. [4] You had your chance Crunchyroll! [5] Seriously, ask Vulpin, it’s exactly my humor. [6] Again, never got into Bleach. [7] Depowered All-Might looks like a muppet. [8] A sport I’ve only seen in the context of anime, but should totally be more common. [9] Following a wrestling podcast may be helping me appreciate some of the meta-aspects of fight scenes.

#CanvasWatches #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #anime #CanvasReviews

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thebestintoronto · 6 years ago

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Things to do this week in Toronto

What's happening in Toronto April 15-19, 2019

MONDAY, APRIL 15

3rd Monday Nights Free at the Royal Ontario Museum: Bring family and friends to the ROM on the 3rd Monday Night of each month and enjoy free admission from 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm.

Education Town Hall with Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath: Discuss the impact of Doug Ford’s education changes. This is a free event and the venue is accessible. Light refreshments will be served.

TechTO April Edition at RBC WaterPark Place: Join the TechTO Community to meet and learn from Toronto’s technology leaders, innovators, and enthusiasts.

Pop Music : Better Now or Better Then? Is music better now or was it better back in the day? We play a new number one hit, then pick a random year out of a hat and play the number one hit from that year and let the audience decide: better now or better then?

Etobicoke Camera Club presents Rob Stimpson: The Challenges (and Rewards) of Travel Photography: professional photographer, Rob Stimpson, will discuss capturing images on the go focussing on the challenges and rewards of travel. Guest fee of $10.00 in effect for non-club members.

Jaymz Bee's Caravan of Music at Old Mill Toronto: Jaymz Bee’s Caravan of Music is a four hour event where you can explore the various rooms at Old Mill Toronto. Experience 20 bands in 10 rooms. Proceeds will support the Unison Benevolent Fund.

Eric Andersen and Scarlet Rivera: Performing at Hugh's Room Live. Doors open at 6 p.m., concert at 7:30 p.m.

'This Is Me' at Fairview Library Theatre: showcases talented artists from Centennial Colleges PAFS before they make their leap into stardom.

TUESDAY, APRIL 16

Humber Docs Film Screening at The Assembly Hall

Humber College School of Media Studies and IT would like to cordially invite you to the annual Humber Docs Screening, showcasing the documentary film work of the Third Year Bachelor of Film and Media Studies Students. Free admission.

ALSO ON TUESDAY

Toronto Lit Up: Alexandra Kimball at The Ossington: Alexandra Kimball is releasing The Seed: How the Feminist Movement Fails Infertile Women and will be celebrating its publication with a Toronto Lit Up book launch.

Canadian Children's Opera Company's Junior Open House: Does your child love music, drama, and theatre? The CCOC is just who they're looking for. Join them to find out what a CCOC music education looks like and learn about our programs for kids aged five and up.

F*ck Sh*t Up: Trans + Non-Binary Cabaret: A night of performances by trans and non-binary artists and performers! Featuring M A N G O S A S S I, Ravyn Wngs, Robbie Ahmed, Ben Agiter and Velvet Earl. Hosted by Babia Majora and Fluffy Soufflé.

Pro-Case Tuesdays at Absolute Comedy Toronto: Event features headliner Tommy Savitt and host Alastair McAlastair, with Joe Vu, Noor Kidwai, Perry Perlmutar, Rhiannon Archer and Sam Feldman.

Kelvin Wetherell at Cafe Mirage: Cafe Mirage Grill and Lounge presents Kelvin Wetherell on Nov 6. The performance runs between 8:00 pm to 11:00 pm in the evenings with a 15 minutes break in between. Cafe Mirage is one of the leading restaurants in Scarborough.

Hot Breath Karaoke at The Handlebar: Ridiculous game show style karaoke, with prizes.

Westway Christian Church Food Bank: The Westway Christian Church Community Food Bank is open for clients to receive food on Tuesday evenings from 5-7 p.m.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17

Caught in the Net by Ray Cooney

Teens Gavin and Vicki happen to meet surfing the internet. They are attracted to each other and yet are amazed by all the coincidences — each having a father with the same name, same age, and same occupation. Why? Find out in this farce.

ALSO ON WEDNESDAY

2019 Cannabis Capital Conference: Benzinga is the go-to source for investors who need the latest news in the cannabis sector. This is the event that connects companies with investors.

Coloured bodies: Material Moves by Dori Vanderheyden: Dori Vanderheyden’s work layers and enfolds themes of sexuality, the body and colour as a way to evoke questions of what it means to be a human in the universe at this time.

OCAD University’s President’s Speaker Series presents: Burton Krame: Kramer was a professor at OCAD University for over 20 years and in 2003 was one of the first to receive an honorary doctorate from the institution.

'My Father's Son' releases new single at The Dakota Tavern: Montreal's 'My Father's Son' releases his new single, "Ribbon in the Wind", ahead of his second full-length album, The Greatest Thaw.

Who run the world? QTBIPOC: A free drop-in workshop series on relationships for youth. Learn skills and connect with other 2SLGBTQ Black, Indigenous and youth of colour (16-29) at this Beyonce-themed workshop series on relationships-- with pals, family, partners and yourself.

Off The Rails Comedy Competition at Comedy Bar: 'Off The Rails Comedy' is an interactive, improvised stand up show where Toronto's bravest comics make up their acts based on your suggestions! You have the power!

Christian Bernard Singer and Heidi Leverty: HABITAT: In this exhibition we bring together two artists whose artistic practice embraces our relationship with our Habitat, the exhibited works create a striking narrative between the chaotic and the sublime.

The Liveable City? Transportation: As Impressionism in the Age of Industry takes viewers on a journey through a period of immense change in 19th century Paris, we invite speakers across various disciplines to enter into conversations around urgent issues facing Toronto today.

Chocolate Groove: A weekly social dance celebration featuring Toronto’s best DJ’s in one of the most visionary alternative venues in Canada: Alternity.

THURSDAY, APRIL 18

Great Art: Rembrandt in Black and White: The Printmaker

Art historian Anne Thackray shows how Rembrandt’s immensely creative and fertile imagination embraced the expressive possibilities of prints, the most widespread art form of his times.

ALSO ON THURSDAY

Toward environmental rights in Canada: A panel discussion: To mark Earth Week, educators, activists and thought-leaders will convene for a half-day symposium on environmental rights. The event will map a rights-based approach to climate, water and health challenges in Canada.

The Experiment at Comedy Bar: Come see a hilarious improv show featuring performers from CBC's Workin' Moms, Baroness Von Sketch, Sunnyside, and Netflix's Umbrella Academy!

Sketch Swap Showcase: The best of Toronto's Sketch Comedy Scene will be performing the best sketches seen on Toronto stages in the last year and they're not allowed to do their own material! A fun night full of laughs, drinking, and stupidity!

Casual Chess Club at Beaches Library: Join other chess players in a friendly and welcoming environment for casual play. All ages and skill levels are welcome.

Online Reputation Management with Veronica Chail: The CEO of VC Strategies examines the current online culture and provides tools to help you: Curate content that aligns with your brand; Build trust with your audience; Monitor your reputation; and React promptly to avoid crises.

Rock for Dimes Toronto 2019: The annual fundraiser supports MODC's After Stroke suite of programs. Acts include Fresh Water Sharks, Oui B. Jamon, Bit o' Brit Collective, Martha Rocks and Envy & The Cants. Maie pauts of boom 97.3 will host.

Earth Love & Learn - Yoga, Meditation & Earth Talk: Join Irina Andreea and Cassidy Thedorf for this celebration of earth day. A portion of proceeds will be donate to One Tree Planted to help support global reforestation.

RuPaul's Drag Race Viewing Parties: Fans of the hit reality television series can watch new episodes every Thursday at several spots around the city, including The Gladstone Hotel, The Beaver and Striker.

FRIDAY, APRIL 19 (GOOD FRIDAY)

The Toronto Passion Play at Church on the Queensway

The Christian Performing Arts Centre presents 'The Toronto Passion Play' this Easter Season. This spectacular musical depicts the life of Christ, in a brand new riveting story that is sure to delight and please audiences of all ages. April 19-21.

ALSO ON FRIDAY

Mike Rita's 'Pot Comic' album release party: A fresh voice in a haze-filled room, Mike Rita's Pot Comic riffs on being at the forefront of the “weed generation”, how his mom came to love pot, and the hilarious ways in which legalization has changed Canadian lives.

Hey Girl Hey: Bad Friday! Come get bad with us at The Baby G at your fave queer hip-hop and r&b dance party celebrating female and non-binary artists.

International Fan Festival Toronto at Metro Toronto Convention Centre: International Fan Festival Toronto is the newest Anime Convention in Toronto. IFF Toronto is a multi-day, multi-fandom, Japanese focused event. Our featured events include, exclusive Fate/ stay night talk shows with the main casts of the series.

Kidnetix 13th Annual Easter Egg Hunt: Egg-citement for the whole family! Hunt for thousands of Easter candies in our indoor playground. Free photo booth with the Easter Bunny. Crafts, fun interactive petting zoo, and video game theatre.

Friday Night Jazz at Ripley's Aquarium of Canada: Explore the waters of the world the second Friday of every month with live jazz music as you sip on a drink (alcoholic and non-alcoholic available) under the sea.

C'mon, Angie! at The Assembly Theatre: Told with humour, heart, and unflinching honesty, C’mon Angie! is a new play by Amy Lee Lavoie that dramatizes a difficult and all-too familiar situation, as two character navigate consent and sexual assault following a one-night stand.

Brooklynn Bar Comedy: We’ve put together some of the best Pro Comedians in the city with help from 'Perfect 10 Comedy' for a VIP comedy show.

Redwood Comedy Cafe: A weekly comedy showcase featuring Canada's top comedians at the intimate Redwood Cafe in Little India.

After Hours: Comedy Bar's beloved late night ensemble party show returns with a fun lineup of some of Toronto's favourite stand ups.

ONGOING

Annual Beaches Easter Parade Weekend: Easter weekend celebration includes: Good Friday Easter Egg Hunt at Kew Gardens, which includes children's entertainment and a meet and greet with Peppa Pig. Easter Sunday Parade on Sunday at 2p.m. along Queen Street East.

Neighbourhood Trust at Lakeshore Arts: A collaborative project examining the state of affordable housing in Toronto through the lens of those directly affected. Runs until April 18.

Angélique at Factory Theatre: Inspired by historical transcripts from the infamous trial, Angélique is a moving account of Black Canadian history beyond the Underground Railroad.

Winter Stations 2019: Featuring six unique art installations. Runs until April 21.

Art Show & Sale by Marley Berot at Starving Artist Restaurant: Trini-Ja Canadian Marley Berot is opening her first show at the Starving Artist Restaurant and Gallery at 467 Danforth Avenue. Her acrylic paintings will stay on the walls until May 18th.

PRECIOUS: An Exhibition of Contemporary Art and Jewellery: By creating precious artwork and art jewellery from everyday and discarded items, Micah Adams, Christine Dwane and Lawrence Woodford remind us that our world is shaped by the decisions we make. Whether disposable or sustainable, beauty is everywhere. On display through May 23.

Being Japanese Canadian: Reflections on a Broken World at the ROM: Explore the original exhibition through the eyes of curators Bryce Kanbara and Katherine Yamashita. Runs until May 25.

The post “ Things to do this week in Toronto “ was originally seen on toronto.com by Whatson

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kizmetcandy · 8 years ago

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Valentine Flirt Guide

I will add more questions as I go along.

Correct Answers are in Bold.

Newly Updated

Nathaniel

Do you know what my favorite color is?

A. Blue

B. White

C. Yellow

If we went on vacation together, where do you think I would take you?

A. Japan.

B. The United States

C. England.

I have a rather good memory… Do you know what I can remember without any effort?

A. Birthdays

B. The periodic table of elements

C. English irregular verbs

As you already know, I really like to read. Do you know what type of novels I prefer?

A. Historical novels

B. Detective novels

C. Adventure novels

You know that I have very difficult relations with my father… But do you remember his name?

A. Richard

B. Henry

C. Francis

I’m getting more and more attached to my little Birman… Do you remember the name I gave her?

A. Duchess

B. White

C. Carla

If I tell you we’re going on a trip for the weekend… What activities would we do together?

A. Movies and a restaurant, classic but romantic.

B. Visit a city that’s full of History, because immersing in the culture is better when you’re two.

C. A concert and then a club for a festive moment.

For me, an ideal relationship is:

A. Share our passions and hobbies… It’s important that we learn each other.

B. Have a passionate bond type of relationship: we don’t call it “better half” for no reason.

C. Make plans: if we don’t make plans for the future, the relationship is worthless.

Do you remember when we first met? You were all over the place! Tell me one thing you didn’t forget for your registration.

A. A photo ID.

B. Enrollment fee.

C. A photocopy of my last report card.

There’s a particular quality I appreciate in a girl

A. Intelligence.

B. Altruism

C. Openness.

In my family, most of us have allergies… Do you know what I’m allergic to?

A. To milk

B. To casts

C. To pollen

When you first arrived, you and my sister were feuding. I gave you advice on how to scare her…

A. You told me she was afraid of spiders

B. You told me to let her believe that she could be expelled from school.

C. You told me to give her a box of laxatives.

I find a girl more elegant when she wears

A. Stilettos

B. A pencil skirt

C. A cute purse

Since I met you, Melody seems very attached to me… Do you know what I really think of her?

A. She’s kind of a suck up, but deep down you appreciate her.

B. She annoys you, so you avoid her as much as possible.

C. You’re indifferent towards her. You don’t even see her.

I was almost in big trouble when Amber stole those exams… Do you remember why?

A. The principal accused you of being an accomplice. It’s normal, because she’s your sister.

B. To seal the exams the key to the teachers’ lounge had to be stolen. And you were the only student who had a spare.

C. Because you fell asleep even though you were supposed to watch the teachers’ lounge.

Castiel

I remember when you arrived at the high school… I was even wearing my favorite rock band t-shirt. Do you remember the band’s name?

A. Winged Skull

B. Skull and Roses

C. Gloomy Skull

There’s something I love eating when I’m spending the day at the beach…

A. Churros!

B. Italian Ice Cream!

C. Donuts!

If I had to choose an artistic workshop… What would it be?

A. Photography

B. Painting

C. Sculpting

> Actually that’s not entirely true. Sure it’s the right answer. But in episode 29 Castiel says (on his route) he wanted to be in the video workshop.

Sometimes, when I think of Deborah, I ask myself how I was able to believe all her lies… And that idiotic nickname she gave me…

A. I remember very well, it was “Kitten”.

B. I remember very well, it was “Dear”.

C. I remember really well, it was “Kitty”.

I love when a girl wears.

A. Low cut tops.

B. Bare back tops.

C. Short Shirts.

I don’t get along with many people in this high school, that’s not a secret. Although, there’s a girl I have always found cool. If she needs my help, I don’t hesitate.

A. You’re talking about Violette.

B. You’re talking about Iris.

C. You’re talking about Amber.

The character trait I prefer in a girl:

A. Openness.

B. Assurance.

C. Courage.

If I tell you I’m taking you somewhere on vacation, where would it be in your opinion?

A. New York

B. San Francisco

C. Las Vegas

Do you know what my astrology sign is?

A. Aries

B. Taurus

C. Leo

Right now, the most I can consider with a girl is:

A. Move in with her.

B. Introduced her to your parents.

C. Have a long distance relationship.

I wasn’t really thrilled when we had to act in the play in front of our parents… But there was a play that I particularly disliked more than the others, what was it?

A. Little Red Riding hood

B. Alice in Wonderland

C. Sleeping Beauty

If there’s something that relaxes me the most after classes, it’s walking my dog. By the way, do you know his breed?

A. A German Shepherd!

B. A Rottweiler!

C. A Beauce Shepherd!

The entire high school knows that Amber is head over heels for me… Do you know how long it’s been?

A. Since you were little.

B. Since middle school.

C. Since I arrived at Sweet Amoris.

I don’t know if you’re aware, but I didn’t always have red hear… Before my hair was…

A. Black

B. Blond

C. Blue

One time you thought Lysander was a ghost that was haunting the high school, haha! By the way, after doing some snooping, you found out something about me… Do you remember what it was?

A. Sometimes, you hide in the basement to smoke.

B. Sometimes, you isolate yourself to read Lysander’s texts from his notebook.

C. Sometimes, you go to the basement alone to play the guitar.

Lysander

If we went on vacation together… Where would we go?

A. Iceland

B. Thailand

C. Ireland

When I saw you the first time, it was rather funny… You took me for…

A. A teacher

B. A ghost

C. A. thief

My partner is science class is more and more friendly these days. Do you know who I’m talking about?

A. It’s Capucine.

B. It’s Iris.

C. It’s Peggy.

You noticed that my style is a bit particular. What kind of style do I have?

A. You have a gothic style.

B. You have a steampunk style.

C. You have a Victorian style.

I try to be present for my mom as much as possible these days. Do you remember her name?

A. Gissele

B. Germaine

C. Josiane

If we went to the movies, what kind of movie would I propose we watch?

A. A romantic drama

B. An independent film

C. A period piece

I’m not really good at taking care of an animal… However there are some I have great affection for. Which are?

A. Rabbits

B. Hamsters

C. Guinea pigs

What I like a lot in a girl is:

A. Sincerity

B. Adventurousness

C. Ambition

What do I find that’s particularly elegant on a girl?

A. A floppy necktie

B. A flowy and flared dress

C. A vintage purse

It’s been a while since I last saw Nina… Do you remember when you first met her?

A. Yes, she was pretending to be the president of your fan club… Only, there’s no fan club!

B. Yes, she pretended to be your girlfriend.

C. Yes, she pretended to be your little sister.

I don’t know if you now this, but I really like theater and particularly the big classics. Can you cite one of my favorite playwrights?

A. Edmond Rostand

B. William Shakespeare

C. Jean Racine

Do you remember what my blood type is?

A. O+

B. AB+

C. AB-

You know that I have a tattoo on my back now… What does it represent?

A. It’s a phrase from your favorite author.

B. Set of wings.

C. It’s a tribal tattoo.

During the art day, I participated in the sculpting workshop. What went through your mind then?

A. You were really clumsy, haha! It didn’t surprise me.

B. You were really good for a beginner, it was impressive.

C. You already bad sculpted outside of school, so you were way better than anyone else. Of course.

An ideal relationship for me would be…

A. Two soul mates: it may seem like a cliché but if this belief has existed for so long, it’s because it must have some truth to it.

B. A long term relationship we can only know if we really love someone after years of being with them.

C. A tortured and absolute love, as in all great tragedies…

Armin

I find that I’m rather good at music… Do you remember what instrument I play?

A. You play the drums

B. You play guitar

C. You’re just good at Guitar Hero!

If I could only bring one object with me to live on a desert island, what would it be in your opinion?

A. Your cellphone.

B. A good book.

C. Your game console.

The quality I greatly appreciate in a girl is:

A. Being able to laugh at yourself.

B. Curiosity.

C. Perseverance.

I really like my brother but sometimes he doesn’t make life easy for me… Why?

A. He often asks that you stay with him.

B. He steals your clothes.

C. He’s never there when you need him.

Do you know what my astrology sign is?

A. Scorpio

B. Libra

C. Gemini

You know, I think my mom likes you… Do you remember her name?

A. Elena

B. Moira

C. Victoria

What do I find hot on a girl?

A. Glasses

B. Ripped jeans

C. A good girl dress

I love playing with the ferret I adopted. Do you know its name?

A. Demon

B. Link

C. Rocket

Since I’ve been at this high school, I’ve become really close to certain guy in class. Do you know who it is?

A. It’s Nathaniel

B. It’s Castiel

C. It��s Kentin

What area of the high school do I dislike the most?

A. The garden

B. The library

C. Science class

In your opinion, what’s an ideal weekend I would spend with my girlfriend?

A. A weekend to geek out and watch movies.

B. A weekend at the Japan Expo.

C. A weekend spent visiting Disney studios.

For me, an ideal relationship would be…

A. A game of cat and mouse, once we’re certain of how the other feels about us, it gets boring. x

B. “Carpe Diem”, seize the day and live worry free.

C. A passionate relationship, when you’re a couple you have to share a maximum of things.

You’re starting to know me quite well… In love, how am I exactly?

A. Shy

B. Forward

C. Out of it

Do you know what I think about Star Wars?

A. You think it hasn’t aged well

B. You’re a fan!

C. You find it too commercial.

In your opinion, what do I prefer eating?

A. Burgers

B. Pizza

C. Salad

Kentin

Since military school, I’ve gotten quite involved in sports! Today, there are two sports I’m involved in, which are they?

A. Basketball and running.

B. Soccer and weight lifting.

C. Swimming and long jump.

There’s a quality I love in a girl…

A. Kindness

B. Spontaneity

C. Humor

Do you know who my best friend is?

A. Alexy

B. Armin

C. Nathaniel

I was so sad to leave you when I left for the military school… Do you remember, I had given you something…

A. Yes, cookies, like usual.

B. Yes, a bouquet of flowers, it was super nice!

C. Yes, a cute teddybear.

I’m so happy to have gotten rid of my glasses. Do you know what I did so I wouldn’t have to keep wearing them?

A. You got laser treatment.

B. You wear contacts.

C. By wearing glasses your sight was corrected.

Do you know how the relationship with my father has evolved?

A. It was difficult at first, but now you’re starting to understand each other better.

B. You’re very close, but since military school, he’s been distant.

C. It has never been easy. You thought going to military school would help you get along better, but it’s not the case.

During the art day, I was put in the sewing workshop. Do you remember what my reaction was?

A. You were happy. Your mother taught you to sew, so you already had prior knowledge.

B. You didn’t care. No matter the group, what mattered is that you didn’t have to go to class!

C. You were upset. It was exactly the group you didn’t want to be in.

I was kind of all over the place when I came back from military school… I kissed a girl I didn’t like.

A. I remember… It was Amber.

B. I remember… It was Melody.

C. I remember… It was Charlotte.

If I tell you that I’m taking you on a trip for the weekend… What destination would you bet I take you to?

A. A cozy mountain lodge.

B. A luxurious and romantic hotel room.

C. An isolated but comfortable cabin perched up in the trees.

In your opinion, do I like animals?

A. No, you’re afraid of them.

B. Yes, they have a way of bringing out your protective side.

C. They don’t bother you, but you don’t really want to adopt one.

For a romantic activity, I would like to try…

A. Rafting! It’s sporty, but you need to be tightly knit.

B. A spa. Nothing better than relaxing together.

C. A night out at the theater. That changes things up a bit.

How do I imagine an ideal relationship to be like:

A. Kinetic: you have to share as many things together as possible.

B. “Run from me and I’ll chase after you, chase after me and I’ll run from you,” It’s not fun to have everything right away.

C. Carpe diem: Seize the day without any worries.

What clothing item I think is super sexy on a girl.

A. A mini skirt

B. Tight pants

C. Wedges

There’s a guy at the high school I can’t stand… In the beginning, I was even scared of him, even though now it’s no longer the case… Who do you think it is?

A. Nathaniel

B. Castiel

C. Lysander

#my candy love #mcl #episode guide #MCL Valentines Event 2017 #mcl events

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kchatjjigae · 5 years ago

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Korea trip, day five! At this point, I can’t believe these travelers have already been in South Korea for almost a week, and I can’t believe we’re also at week five of this series! In this episode, the lingering effects of Steve still direct our day and we hike up, up, up, towards a “cool temple”, catch the others members up on Gamcheon, find the truth of Biff vs. Beef, get the first glimpses of a bad moon on the rise, meet some meerkats, and then check off a significant Kdrama moment. Oh, and have our first run-in with the Korean police. Yep, it’s another jam-packed day!

Travelers on the go, go, go! When we came to Korea, we had some ideas of what we wanted to do but chose primarily to keep things loose enough so we’d be comfortable to do things on the fly. This day, (day five for those of you who weren’t paying attention) we did a little of both. A breakfast of triangle kimbap and coffee/banana milk/ and tea kicked off the day and our strategy session. As on the previous day, we’d shown such delight in the lanterns hanging in the temples, Steve suggested that we may want to check out a big temple right in central Busan which uses thousands of lanterns and he figured should be mostly decorated by then. This time we all took a look at my wildly inaccurate tourist maps and determined where we thought it would be. (I’m not incredibly clear on this point, I may have just been the only one looking while they used such things as Naver Maps and Google to figure out what he’d been talking about. From there we debated on whether it was smart to go to Gamcheon Cultural Village (though I’d already been, I didn’t mind going again and figured, after what had happened the other day splitting up probably wasn’t the best choice if we wanted to do any touring together), stopping at the shopping area I told them about by the university first and then come back and do Biff Square? Or to do the opposite?

We decided to wing it and go forth.

The storm has moved off, the sun was out, and I was no longer bone cold. Bring on the tourism! But not before a quick stop to get SaraG cash (unsuccessful as, unfortunately, note to you future travelers, only ATMs specified for foreigners will work for…foreigners.)

We also needed to get the other girls hooked up with travel cards, so off to the convenience store where, the same manager was there, hovering happily as SaraG, Alix and Leila sorted through all the handsome young men options. Guys. Remember when I couldn’t buy one and ended up with a plain black card? Totally worked for each and every one of them. BOOOOO! I mean… I’m very happy for them and their choices.

I felt like an old pro as I led my friends to the bus stop where we caught the same bus I’d used before, but this time we sat in the back like a bunch of Kdrama badasses.

Alix was firmly in control of our direction, and it wasn’t too long that she directed her ducklings to hop off the bus. We were in downtown Busan, her with her Naver app, Leila and I attempting Google Maps again, and SaraG wandering around with us with a willing “let’s get this going” attitude. (Future note, SaraG has absolutely no sense of direction, it’s adorable. She makes up with a magical ability to know almost to the minute what time it is at all times without the use of a watch.)

Where we were in use of differing directional maps, there were some conflicting ideas of how to get to the temple, and as we climbed up and up and up stairs (so many stairs), some of us despaired we were headed in the wrong direction where some of us were “You’re going to question my directional abilities? I’m mother flipping Alix and let us not forget you’d be wandering around the Busan subway hub still if it weren’t for me.”

Good point. Continue to tell us which stairs to climb, leader.

We seemed to be marching further and further into a residential territory, with no real directions on the street to what was supposed to be some sort of large scale temple. Suddenly? A lady with a full-on ahjumma visor came around the corner, saw us, smiled, asked if we were looking for the temple, and gave us directions.

For anyone keeping score as to what was right, Naver or Google, I’d have to say both were in this case. Naver/Alix took us more on a trail that deposited us along the side of it, where Google/Leila and I had directions to the bottom of it. We were all right! Let’s rejoice and be friends.

As we got closer and closer to the building or series of buildings, I was amazed. This thing was HUGE. Steve was right, it was almost completely ready for the lantern festival and was covered entirely in lanterns of various colors and styles. As we arrived, several of us instantly pealed off to the bathroom while I listened to the drum practices that were going on while we were there. The atmosphere was set.

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Its Sunday, which means I'm catching up on posting Korea videos needed for the weekly post. We are gonna have a couple. Brace yourself. This is #samgwangsatemple #samgwangsa #lanternfestival

A post shared by Stephanie (@kchatjjigae) on Jul 14, 2019 at 8:15pm PDT

From these buildings, we followed up the road (and more stairs) and found the central portion of the temples. From there, we scattered and investigated the nooks and crannies of the property, which just seemed to keep going further and further, higher and higher.

Past the buildings, there was a trail with wooden bridges, Buddhist music playing softly on loudspeakers and, you guessed it, more lanterns! The views from this height were pretty amazing, looking out over Busan, with the backdrop of these classic buildings.

What we didn’t expect to find was a set of outside exercise equipment which, as good kdrama fans, we were honor bound to try out. At the top of the hill, we reconvened and sat there taking it all in a while eating some of the trail mix Alix was smart enough to carry and kind enough to share.

It was decision time though. Where would we go? Gamcheon or Biff? Would we be able to find Steve’s restaurant? If we did would that be creepy? “We promise you, Steve, we’re not stalking you, we just find you adorable and want to know if you’d like to come home with us.”

Why were we so concerned about what and when? It was all part of the bigger plan. In Haeundae, there is the Rainbow Bridge, which is supposed to do a light show and we were determined to see it in all its glory, full night time with fried chicken and beer. Everything other schedule was built keeping the end goal in mind. Booze, a beach, and a colored bridge?

So we decided on Gamcheon, thinking to go the furthest out and work our way backward towards Haeundae. So me, again heady with the knowledge that I’d been there before and could totally get us all back there, wowing everyone with my Korean directional prowess, insisted on being lead.

Not a great plan. Sorry, ladies.

Turns out there was a bus stop right at the temple, so we hopped on and headed back to the city center. Which is where it got a little wonky. Turns out I got us off on the wrong stop (ugh, thanks, Google) and said, that’s cool, we’ll just hoof it from here, it’s not far. Turns out, that was a little wrong, or, not so much wrong as Google couldn’t quite figure out where I was, and I couldn’t figure out if I were heading us in the wrong direction or not. Frankly, I was super stressed about it. Sometimes it’s not easy being the leader, knowing everyone is waiting on you, knowing you’re just burning time.

Anyway, I did Google Maps again, worked with Alix and found out we were actually right by a subway station which would take us most of the way there, then we could pick up that little bus I had previously ridden. All good except we couldn’t find the correct subway entrance number.

Actually. Side note. The Korean Subway system is pretty amazing. It gives each entrance a number so you can tell your friends exactly which door to meet you at, or GPS can tell you precisely what door to enter or exit to get to your destination. At each entry to the subway cars (as they have doors that open and close so 1) it can be temperature controlled and 2) you don’t have any people vs. train incidents.) the floor before each door is labeled with a number as well so when you finally break down and use Naver Maps, it will tell you which door will be the best for you to wait at in order to get off and be closest to your destination. There are, as seen in Kdramas, underground shopping areas (with the swankier stops getting swankier shops) bathrooms galore, and also as seen on Kdramas, ahjummas, and halmonies selling produce or kimbap rolls.

In the more significant station hubs, you can find foreign ATMs, the place is loaded with adverts including those ones you see online put up by fan clubs wishing their favorite idols happy birthdays. During the longer connections, you know, where you mainly are just traveling underground to get from one subway train to another thinking, how far did we just walk? There are those flat escalators you see in airports. As a reward for choosing not to take them, you’re given the cartoon journey of a man or woman who is getting healthy, slowly getting smaller as you walk. By the end of the treck, you see them at their healthiest and are told how many calories you’ve burned by choosing to walk.

The train itself has pregnancy seats marked in pink, they have constant commercials running, and the subway train is all yackety yack, giving directions in multiple languages. The trains and stops are all clearly labeled, not only with what station you’re at or approaching, but it will tell you the next station in either direction. So handy — especially when you get on and quickly realize you’re heading in the wrong direction.

A downside to the subway station? The signage to get from one place to another (get off one train and have to go find your connecting train) is not always the clearest. It will tell you to go one way, then the next sign will say to swap back to your original route.

End Subway tangent.

So we’re back on the street in Busan trying to figure out, on this series of intersections and large roads just where our subway entrance was. Somewhere. I noticed some young police officers wandering around on the street before they went into the local police officer and my ears pricked up. A local police station? Putting on those big girl panties, emboldened by my stress of leading everyone astray, I was all, “Don’t worry ladies, I have this,” and waltzed into the police station.

Where a shocked a small contingent of police officers with the “Oh no, she’s going to want us to speak in English” look on their collective faces. They spoke no English, I spoke no Korean. All I had was a destination, directions on a cell phone, and the determination to find this subway stop. Unfortunately? No go. We couldn’t really get around our language barrier, though for some reason, this didn’t stress me out any more than I already was. I climbed out of the station, went to go find my friends, looked up, and there was the giant subway number.

Like, right next to the police station.

Moving on and moving underground, we managed to get to our stop fairly uneventfully, ready for the next leg, which to me meant catching the next bus, to my friends, who I think were a little leery of my directional skills were more, “or we could just walk up here a ways fortified by this street fish bread we found.” “Are you certain? The bus stop is right here,” says me. Buuuut instead we marched. Higher and higher, the road in some points almost vertical. We’d have to be those people who stopped to catch our breath, thankful for my Nature’s Republic Chanyeol blotting compact. I felt especially terrible for Miss Leila, who was doing this with a terrible head cold, so bad that she had her own adventure….the Korean pharmacy. And then another Korean pharmacy when the first one refused to sell her the cold medicine she needed. (Not malicious, just a miscommunication.) Finally, though, thankfully, we arrived.

WAIT!

Gah, this post is like verbal vomit. But I just remembered something super important now that we’re back in Gamcheon! Remember, on my last post where I kept pointing out how my shoes were wet and sandy and promised there was a reason for my banality? GUYS. I woke up to slightly damp shoes, walked outside, and….no squeak! They were (almost) silent. Or as silent as regular non-squeaking shoes were. At that point to the best of our knowledge, getting the insert wet was the key to stopping the squeak! We were all very excited as now I would stop embarrassing myself and them as we walked everywhere.

As we did walk everywhere.

Back to the squeakless story! So we, hot, tired, and a little cranky, finished hiking Busan and were ready to experience Gamcheon as a team. I picked up more of the postcards that I’d purchased the first time around as they were so pretty, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to give out the first set as souvenirs as I’d anticipated and settled into our next order of business. LUNCH.

We found a tiny little cafe up one of the alleyways and popped in. I got a delicious Katsu, but I think also at our table was some ramen, some kimbap, and some pork. All the food was so yummy and super cheap. (I think my whole tray was 7000 won.) As we sat there, recovering, eating, and blotting, we watched out of the window as a group of school kids, mostly schoolgirls, all dressed in hanboks, made the one boy pose with them for saeguk kdrama selfies. You know the pose, the heroine leaning against a wall, the hero looming above, his arm pressed into the wall above her head. They were all having a blast, and so were we watching them.

Nourishment level achieved, we went out to enjoy Gamcheon. Checking out the little artist shops, taking pictures, stopping off at the little senior tea house (this is where we found the black bamboo salt that got me in trouble with security). Just as I had thought, this is one of those places where you can go multiple times and continue to see different things and have different experiences. This one was through the eyes of my friends, as I really wanted them to like the place as much as I did. Was I successful? Who knows? I like to think so, as it’s a really special place.

But it was time to go. We decided to skip the University shopping district and go immediately to Biff Square. Luckily, the tiny Gamcheon bus was ready to take us on our way.

Turns out, Biff Square? Is the same location as the Busan International Film Festival! It was pretty cool to see. There were tons of shops and food stalls. We wandered, popping in and out of stores. Not so much Kpop but there was a butt-ton of KBeauty, and I think we all took home a portion of it. (We purchased it, the shoplifting didn’t come until later.)

It was there where we saw it. The Animal Cafe.

On the list for several people in our Kconvoy, was visiting one of the animal cafes which are prevalent in Korea. (We actually have a cat cafe here in Denver, but only on vacation would you be willing to pay actual money to have coffee with a cat.) These animal cafes have regular cats or dogs but can also be more exotic with raccoons, owls, basically if you name the animal, and they probably have a cafe for it. This one? Meerkats. While I had been on the fence of going to one, the idea of seeing a meerkat up close had me tagging along.

We paid our money, squeeing over the tiny little herd of meerkats racing around a large enclosed pen. My only other previous meerkat experience had been Meerkat Manor on PBS. (Did anyone else ever watch that?) There was also another room which had cats and two HUGE raccoons. But meerkats first. With your entrance fee, you get a can of soda or tea (the cafe portion) and all the animal interaction you can take. The worker offered to let SaraG and Leila in to see the meerkats and, no dummies, they jumped at the chance, sitting in the pen while meerkats raced around them. I was let in a little while later and, no lie, it was an awesome experience. They are the cutest little creatures, and we got to pet and held them, feeding them little bits of lettuce while squeeing over their tiny little chattering voices. In the holding pen, it was us with another couple (obviously on a date, it was super cute) and when the manager walked back in from break saw us all, and chided the employees, before coming in to give all the women lap blankets. He said it was so we could hold the meerkats, but I didn’t notice him giving one to the guy that was in there. Hrm.

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Last one for the day, day 5 if the korean memories. We went to an animal cafe, this one? Surprise new friends!

A post shared by Stephanie (@kchatjjigae) on Jul 14, 2019 at 8:31pm PDT

While one is never actually done looking at meerkats, we decided to keep moving and go into the room with the cats and the raccoons. With a regretful pat to our new chewy friends, we climbed out of the enclosure and (after Purexing our hands) grabbed our sodas and went into the cat room. First off, the raccoons were huge. I come from New Hampshire, raccoon country. You could almost count me as an expert on these rascals that always want to get into your garbage or break into your back porches (in pursuit of more garbage), so when I tell you these things were big, they were big. Big in stature, but also clearly just fat. They bumbled around, asking for treats, asking to be petted and scratched.

There were also at least 5 maybe 8 cats of a particular Korean breed, and this is where I got skeeved out a little bit. Either these cats were SUPER chill, or these cats were on something. I’d actually heard of that before in these places. There were a couple of cats that moved around, but for the most part, they just lay there, most of them sleeping no matter how much they were patted. Just as I know raccoons? I also know cats. This is not the natural behavior of cats, and it made me feel really, really bad. I hope I’m just overthinking it, but after that, I was pretty much done and was ready to go meet Alix (who had opted to go find a coffee shop.) Luckily the other ladies were prepared to go, too.

With a wave and a coo to the meerkats, we put our shoes back on (we took them off and swapped them for house shoes) we were on our way to find Alix. At this point, the sun was starting to sink, and it was time to break out Operation Chicken and Beer.

But not before some street food! I’m not certain why I didn’t take pictures here! Shame on me! And for everyone else as I have access to everyone’s photos and no one took any of what we ate here! It’s almost as if we all decided if it’s not hoteok, we don’t care. I tried a fishball thing, decided I didn’t like it, offloaded it to SaraG and ended up with a pornato. Noms.

Thanks, Steve, you were right, we really did enjoy ‘Beef Square’!

On a mission though, we take the next train to the beach where we thought we’d be able to see the Rainbow Bridge. We walked on tired feet, down and down and down, not finding beach and not finding fried chicken. Luckily, much further than we thought, we realized not only were we close, but the fried chicken was within our grasp! Dropping SaraG and Alix off to wait for our order to cook, Leila and I hit the convenience store for the second most crucial ingredient, beer.

I love Korean convenience stores. Look what I found!

Also, the soju was like 1700 won. Amazing. I stocked up.

Goodies in hand, we walked to the beach where a bridge sprawled out in front of us… abridge we hoped would be the Rainbow Bridge. The beach was relatively empty as, just as our luck, the weather turned to a light drizzle. You know what though? We didn’t care. We were there for an experience, and we were not going to leave until we had it! We sat on the stone stairs eating fried chicken, pickled radish cubes, and drinking beer. (I was drinking Coke Zero and soju as beer is gross.)

Then suddenly it happened! The bridge not only lit up but it did a solid five minute light show! Pretty cool, man.

Experience completed, we bagged up our garbage (pack in, pack out, folks) actually finding one of Korea’s only outside public garbage cans. Not sure if I mentioned this before, but there are no garbage cans in Korea. None. You have a piece of garbage, I hope you have a pocket because that thing is going to be with you for a while. Gloria, who’s Seoul foodie food tour we booked that night when we got back to the Airbnb, actually laughed when we asked, and actually told us about the pocket of her purse that’s just for the day’s garbage.

On the hike back to the subway station, we passed one of their newer subway stops which have tv monitors built in. The news that evening? The breaking Seungri, Burning Sun, hidden video fun chat news. Yeah, our stay was about to get WEIRD.

That’s a story for another post though.

KOREAN ADVENTURE DAY FOUR: Stairs, and Meerkats, and police…oh my! Korea trip, day five! At this point, I can't believe these travelers have already been in South Korea for almost a week, and I can't believe we're also at week five of this series!

#Korea

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