#I was under the assumption its built into how you choose to play the game

[bastardsunlight]

My buddy over at @sxvethelastdance​ is doing some deep dive shit on the subject of Liu Kang’s faith in all his iterations—95, games, 2021—so I decided “hey why don’t I do that too?” because I also desire to be one of The Cool Kids™. This is in no way meant to be taken as gospel truth or whatever. It’s mostly for me own records, headcanons-wise, and just kind of a character-building exercise since Lao has become one of my more active/sought-after muses of late. I’ll hide it under a cut because it’s liable to get long

Like my S C H L O N G [cue pornbot invasion]

PS THIS IS GOING TO BE ABOUT MORE THAN JUST HIS FAITH BECAUSE A LOT OF THAT WILL COME FROM UPBRINGING/FAMILY AND WILL ALSO FOCUS ON HIS PERSONALITY AND THE INS/OUTS OF IT

For our purposes (and like, in reality because I DO respect authorial intent to some extent), Shaolin Monks isn’t canon, like at all. Someone had a fever dream and Liu Kang/Kung Lao were bimbos for a few hours. Okay they’re still kind of like that, god bless ‘em, but you get the idea. AIGHT now that’s out the way, let’s get this cue ball rolling.

Okay for starters, games Lao because well he’s only ever appeared in the games (and we don’t usually talk about Legacy Because OOF middle-aged Liu Kang with a hot topic sweater and anger issues—Liu Kangst. You’re welcome [plays a high G on the nearest piano]).

Kung Lao comes from a long, distinguished family who has always contributed to the order of light—they’re founding members, all that stuff. They did not build the academy itself, but the Order started with the Great Kung Lao. OUR Kung Lao is the fulfillment of a prophecy, some vague old thing that told of an ancestor who would carry the “spirit of the Great Kung Lao”. They figure reincarnation, which is a reasonable assumption. If that’s true or not, only Fire God Liu Kang and Lord Raiden know, because they’re the only ones to have met him in person. Whatever the case, Kung Lao is born with the ability to call spirits and channel their energy, their “pressure” to do a variety of things, including teleport, an ability that thankfully did not come until later—can you imagine a teleporting toddler? Good god.

The entire Kung line is blessed with some spiritual power, here and there. Kung Lao is off the charts. His mother, a short time before his birth, has a dream where the GKL came to her and said “this is the one”. He is reaching out to his ancestor from the Realm of the Honored Dead, knowing full well that the once-a-generation tournament is not far off and feeling the pull to Lao like some kind of magnet or doorway. Kung Lao is the strongest spirit-channeler the Kung family has ever seen. His parents therefore name him Lao and with the name comes a great and terrible burden.

He is, naturally, chosen as the generational tithe to the Wu-Shi academy and, naturally, the Order of Light. This is a case of being raised in the faith, knowing little else, but being sharp enough to question some things. Obviously, as a kid, he doesn’t question—he just learns and obeys, trains under various masters, etc. Sometime during his younger years, an orphan shows up at the temple and, being a charitable organization, the elders of the temple take him in and name the boy Liu Kang. Liu and Lao become fast friends and the elders are, of course, pleased as  punch to see the Kung’s legacy being a good influence on someone like Liu Kang who, unbeknownst to anyone but them (and Raiden), is the blood of Onaga and in possession of a terrible power himself. It does not occur to them that Lao will not be chosen by the god of thunder to be Earthrealm’s champion. Everyone at the academy trains for this purpose, but in THIS generation, no one even questions that it will be Lao.

Kung Lao is extremely gifted, rarely has to study, hardly tries on all exams and new techniques and masters the strange and deadly weapon that is his signature with relatively few injuries. Combining that with his abilities to move spiritual force and teleport and he is a shoe-in. His faith in the Elder Gods is more of a background hum, at this point and, though he has met Lord Raiden, his faith there, too, is hardly a thought. It’s just part of his life. As anyone who grows up in a faith could tell you, the routines become like breathing.

Liu Kang and Kung Lao grow side-by-side as best friends, confidants, troublemakers (though Lao is absolutely the one cutting class), and, as they grow older and into themselves, lovers.

The first time Kung Lao’s faith comes to the forefront and really shakes is when Lord Raiden choses Liu Kang to be his champion for Mortal Kombat. There is the initial shock, of course, and then there is fear. Mortal Kombat has killed very Earthrealm champion, without exception, since the Great Kung Lao’s second attempt. The legends of Prince Goro are written in the forbidden texts of the academy’s library and naturally, the shaolin rowdy boys have broken in and read them all. Kung Lao meditates for hours, wondering what he did wrong. He is never, at any point, resentful toward Liu Kang himself, who has always been an unfailingly loyal friend, a humble monk, an excellent student, and has, with hard work and perseverance, excelled in HIS classes as well.

The more he considers it, the more his faith in the Elder Gods is shaken—if it was ever terribly solid in the first place. More than that, he begins to mistrust Raiden. Kung Lao determines that, due to the hopelessness of the situation, the likelihood of Liu Kang’s return is almost zero. He has all the faith in the world in how strong Liu Kang is, of course, but those odds are not good. He begins to deeply resent the idea that Liu was chosen as a lamb for slaughter based on factors other than likelihood to win. This is also when the insecurity starts to REALLY set in.

Kung Lao doesn’t realize that Liu Kang views him as equal or superior, seeing how he has never had to study or work at ANYTHING to just nail whatever it is, every time. Kung Lao is one of those young adults who was a child prodigy and is experiencing some SERIOUS burnout in his early twenties. It isn’t that Kung Lao doesn’t know he’s good—he’s very aware of his skill. It comes out as brazen arrogance. No one but Liu Kang can seem to knock him down ANY pegs. His faith, he realizes, has always been in himself and in Liu, in what they’ve built and shared. There is a depth of intimacy in that friendship that goes beyond even the physical—though there IS that.

He’s kind of in the mode of “what have the Elder Gods ever done for me?” (spoiler alert: nothing) and he questions Raiden’s motivations as he slowly adds shit up. Liu Kang is an orphan, of no family, with great power. He doesn’t know if there’s something else to it, but he sees the reactions of the elders of the temple when Raiden chooses Liu and it isn’t “weird that you didn’t choose the kid we groomed from birth to do this” but an almost insane level of like, understanding, as if this was a possible outcome. There is something else up, but he has no way of knowing it. He hates the way Liu just accepts it and while they are still capable of making jokes about the whole situation, he can sense the turmoil within Liu, as well, who is ALSO wondering why Lao wasn’t chosen.

Kung Lao is now the black sheep, the family failure, the one who was beaten out by an orphan. This really begins his “second banana” status and everyone seems to know it. They equate his brash pride to insecurity, which in a way it is, because part of him will always wonder what he did wrong, but they did not know him before. It goes from being part of his personality to being a shield. If he is arrogant and aloof, untouchable, no one will see the doubt and trepidation within. And STILL the Elder Gods do NOTHING. When he sneaks into the tournament, he’s taking matters into his own hands, where he is convinced they have always been.

See, he had been okay with dying for Earthrealm, though he was certain with this power, he wouldn’t—that he could save the place like the ancestor for which he was named. He is not ready to lose Liu Kang.

Aight so caveat here, most of this above was built with a VERY specific Liu Kang in mind and below is 100% riding on that same writer (heh riding). None of this has to, in any way, reflect on anyone else’s Liu Kang—not that I’ve seen a ton of those.

MK2021 for all its faults, had amazing characterization for the heroes, even if some of the cuts, scenes, and lines were a bit ……. Clunky. Kung Lao is clearly a powerful fighter, confident to the point of arrogance, but with the skill to back it up. Even when Cole puts him in the dirt, he hops back up and summons his hat, like “okay cool, now let’s get real” because Kombat is not like a cage fight. This is a man who knows few limitations, is highly skilled, and has clearly been raised in the faith, much like his counterpart from the games. His Arcana is passed through his bloodline, much like that of the Hasashi clan and a few others who have passed out of living memory, likely done in by previous Outworld assassination coups.

The biggest difference between games and 2021 Lao is that the latter is a man who demands proof at every turn, by force if necessary, AND HE IS AWARE OF THIS. His faith rests not in the Elder Gods—not caring much for them or their lack of involvement—but in Raiden himself and only then because he has challenged the god of thunder and was put down pretty soundly. Kung Lao respects ability. He has it, so he therefore expects everyone around him to hold themselves to that same standard.

He is two or three years older than Kang, the young orphan Master Bo’ Rai Cho brought to the temple when they are still children, probably six and nine, give or take. They have no classes together, initially, but Kung Lao ss instructed to keep an eye on him, to help him adjust. The two become fast friends and Liu Kang admires the bejeezus out of his shi xiong, both because of that age difference and the obvious experience gap, and because Kung Lao will ALWAYS go to bat for him.

Kung Lao is well aware of the stakes of this tournament, knows that it is, for the most part, riding on him. This becomes doubly true when Sub-Zero is sent to Earthrealm to start taking out the other champions, one by one, to halt a prophecy. Someone carrying Hasashi blood will upset the balance of the tournament.

He is a dutiful monk, a competent teacher, a powerful fighter, and, alongside Liu Kang, the best hope humanity has for victory. Kung Lao’s resentment, in this universe, is directed primarily toward the elders who sent Kang out into the world after his graduation from the academy as a student (as must all students, some with specific orders, and some with more vague directions) to find his true path. The elders have essentially forced Kang to relive the darkest time in his life and thence, to feel the rage and resentment that has for so long boiled beneath his skin, channeling it into a killing urge. Kung Lao protects Liu Kang from this as best he can and, more than that, he protects the world from Liu Kang.

#aboutlaometa #both of 'em are in here so

[zairapvrker]

oookay, so i made the rookie mistake of deleting post this before it was finished and had to delete it, so the ask got lost. luckily i had screenshotted it, i hope you’ll see this anyway dear anon! thank you for requesting and i hope you’ll like this💕 (unedited)

masterlist

This dance around your feelings was softly killing you both. When you were with him you felt like flying and falling at the same time, knowing that he wouldn’t be there to break the fall but choosing to jump anyway. Calum had been a friend of yours for forever, and since you could remember you’d always wished you two could be more. What you did not know was that he felt the same - but the two of you were always too blind to see it, always afraid of losing each other.

If the two of you were together, you didn’t care for the rest of the world at all, alienating yourselves and entering your own little world. 

There had been a few close calls, a few times when either one of you had almost crossed that invisible line drawn in between your hearts, but out of fear it never really went where you were both hoping it would.  Anyone with a pair of eyes could see that you were meant to be, not the two of you though. 

The crowd was the same as always, that Saturday night, when you got to the bar where you were supposed to meet your friends. You saw them occupying your usual booth in the far corner of the room as soon as you walked in, your eyes trained to go that direction almost automatically. The night was going great, everyone had a few drinks in their systems and you were currently playing the most fun game of pool of your life, probably because none of your friends was getting it right. You doubled over in laughter as you saw one of them miss their shot and almost fall onto the table and disrupting the game. Everything was good, you even liked the music blasting through the speakers. That’s when you saw him. Calum, wrapped up into the arms of somebody you didn’t recognize, so close your gut wrenched as you felt your heart drop to the pit of your stomach.

Surely you must be mistaken, you must be jumping to conclusions. But they had smiles that, you thought, shined twice as bright than yours when you were together. Calum was making her laugh, the unmistakable glow you loved lighting up his features as well. You refused to listen to reason, the small voice in your own head suggesting why you shouldn’t be letting your heart break over an assumption. But you wouldn’t listen to yourself.  He wasn’t even yours to begin with, why should you be sad? But the heart has its reasons which reason does not know.

You bid goodbye to everyone, pretending to be tired, as you spared Calum one last glance. His eyes met yours from across the bar, just one second was enough to make you tremble. You left without looking back.

It had been a week since then and you’d let yourself focus on your work and nothing else to keep your mind from replaying the image you had of him with her in your head. That obviously meant ignoring Calum as well.

The poor boy had no idea what had happened, if he’d done something to upset you and he was starting to worry. At the beginning, all that he could get out of you were short answers, telling him that you were busy and couldn’t talk, couldn’t meet. Then that had turned into complete silence and he was about to combust. He’d been fidgety and tense all week, distracted and worried. You’d been on his mind all day everyday, but then again, when weren’t you? Calum took it upon himself to go and check on you, still remembering where your spare key was hidden. He had a bunch of snacks with him and was ready for whatever issue you were going to throw at him. Or so he thought.

Before he could even look under the potted plant of your nextdoor neighbour, where your key was, you opened up the door and a man he didn’t recognize came out, waving you goodbye. He froze.  As soon as you saw Calum you did too, not expecting him to be at your house. You looked at him confused. “Calum” you let out in a sigh.

“Hi” he said through gritted teeth. “Is him why you’ve been avoiding me?” before he could even realize what he was going to say his mouth spoke for him.

Anger built up inside of you. He was one to talk. “I’m sorry, what?” 

“Oh, you heard me the first time” things were excalating quickly and before he could add anything, you’d pulled him into the apartment, slamming the door shut.

“What are you even going on about?” you exclaimed, throwing your ands up and walking to the living room, Calum hot on your trail.

“You’ve barely talked to me all week long, only sparing me yes or no answers and pathetic excuses” his voice started to raise, his bottled up emotions finally being let free.

“I told you I was busy” you retorted, crossing your arms over your chest.

“Bullshit!” you’d barely ever seen Calum like this, and you never wished for this to happen again. “Or maybe, yeah, you were busy with him” he mirrored your stnce, his chin pointing to the direction of the front door.

That was a low blow and it hit you where it hurt, you’d refrained speaking to him in fear of speaking words you could never take back and he had the nerve to come to you just to yell at you? You weren’t having it.  “And even if I was? That’s none of your damn business” 

He scoffed to hide the pain he was feeling, not allowing you to win this yet. “It’s my business alright! I’m your best friend and you won’t even talk to me”

Those two words stung even more than what he’d said before, but you didn’t know about the bitter taste left in Calum’s mouth after he’d spoken them. “Well I could say the same” you said.

“You’re the one who’s keeping secrets and ignoring me” he knew he was being childish, but he couldn’t help himself.

“Yeah, says the onewho hasn’t told me about his new girl” this was hurting you more than you wished it did.

“What girl?” he asked dumbfounded. You scoffed.

“Oh, don’t play dumb with me” you snickered. “I saw you two at the bar, last week” you spat, the image of them still fresh in your mind.

Calum had to stop and think for a second, almost not understanding what you were talking about. “That’s a friend of Mali’s, she asked me to show her ‘round” he replied, recalling the events of the week prior. “If you hadn’t bolted out of the bar I would’ve introduced her to you”

“Yeah, and I’m supposed to believe that when she was all over you” 

“She wasn’t all over me” he defended. 

“Was too” 

“Was not!” you were about to speak again, before he cut you off. “Will you listen to yourself? You’re being a child”

“You’re one to talk after coming here to yell at me over my fucking neighbor asking for some sugar!” the silence was heavy, your words ringing in the air.

After what felt like forever, Calum finally spoke. “That was you neighbour?” you just nodded, not even wanting to keep the conversation going. He remained quiet a while longer, before speaking again. “I still don’t know why you haven’t talked to me in a week”

You sighed, hiding your head into your hands as you sat down on the couch. Calum was mindful of sitting further away from you than he usually would. You looked at him right in the eye, seeing expectation in them, but you didn’t want to adress the elephant in the room yet. “I still don’t know why you seem to hate my neighbour” you spoke, voice quiet and throat burning lightly from  the screaming match that had just ended. 

Calum figured he had nothing to lose right now, apparently you were avoiding him anyway. “I got jealous” he said it in a whisper. Your breathing stilled as you waited for him to go on. “I hadn’t heard anything from you in a week and I was worried something happened or that I’d done something, then I come here to make sure everything’s alright and he comes out of your apartment and you’re smiling and I’m not the reason-” he cut his blabbering short, inhaling deeply as you waited again, sure he could hear the frantic beating of your heart.

“I guess I just really like you” Calum looked at you, ready for you to start laughing and tell him that he might as well just get out, but he was met with utter surprise.

“You like me” you repeated, shifting your gaze from him to the floor. 

“I do” he confirmed, trying to calm down. “Please say something”

But how could you? You were sure you were going into shock. You looked at him again after interminable moments, a shy smile adorning your lips. “I guess I just really like you to” 

It was Calum’s turn to be shocked, as you explained why you didn’t give him the chance to stop you a week prior at the bar, the huge misunderstanding that led you to ignore him for days on end in hopes to shield yourself from heartbreak without him ever having to know. 

You were both idiots, you concluded as you started laughing at your stupidity. He shifted closer to you on the couch, his eyes bright and searching for yours, finding them moments later with just as much glee in them. Calum lifted a hand to lightly place on your cheek, stroking the skin softly with the pad of his thumb. “Can I kiss you?” he asked trembling in expectation. 

You just smiled and nodded, bringing your face closer to his until your lips crashed, knowing right then and there that he’d always be there to break your fall.

#calum hood #calumthomashood #Calum Thomas Hood #calum 5sos #calum hood imagine #calum hood one shot #calum hood oneshot #calum hood blurb #calum x reader #calum 5 seconds of summer #calum hood x you #calum hood x y/n #5sos #5 seconds of summer #5 seconds of summer imagine #5sos blurb #5sos one shot #5 seconds of summer one shot #michael clifford #ashton irwin #luke hemmings #request #blurb #oneshot #imagine

[ardentprose]

Chapter 4 - Eggnog

I can’t decide if this counts as a legitimate chapter or a filler, but it exists so here it is. 

He clicks the screen of his phone off and lets his hand fall to his side. A sigh escapes him as Yoongi musters the courage to rejoin the party downstairs. He can hear laughter and the occasional shout through the walls. 

Glancing around your childhood bedroom once more, Yoongi shakes his head at the amount of memorabilia you have of k-pop stars. The last person he expected to be a fan of that type of music was you, but at the same time, he wasn’t put off by it. If anything, he was glad such a kind and respectful girl took interest in his pop culture. Not that he did much himself but the point remained-

Alright, alright. Quit stalling and take your ass downstairs. They’re just people. Nothing more, nothing less. 

Rather than walking towards the door as he berates himself however, Yoongi finds himself shuffling towards one of your windows, eyes taking in the serenity of falling snow and white whirlwinds drifting over the hills of what was already built up. 

“I like her. I like Y/N.” The words echo around his head sending pulses to his heart. Your smile, your scent, your gentle touch and affection. It all silently compounded upon itself, slowly chipping away at his heart until all at once the evidence was before him and overwhelming in your favor. 

These newly admitted feelings had him giddy and terrified. 

And slightly sick. 

Where did she say the bathroom was? 

The only one he knew was downstairs and he didn't want to go snooping around your private quarters of your home. 

Which meant downstairs was his destiny. 

With one last glance, Yoongi shuts the door of your bedroom and heads for the staircase. 

Each step down, he repeats to himself. They’re just people. 

They’re just people. 

They’re.

Just.

People. 

I like Y/N. 

Unheeded warmth flashes through him again. His cheeks are aflame as he rounds the corner and comes to the edge of the living room where most have gathered. There you sit surrounded by a halo of beaming faces watching you sing. Your eyes are closed as you sway in your seat, your fingers dancing lightly over piano keys. Yoongi waits at the edge, feeling like a renaissance picture had come to life and all its beauty lie in the brush strokes of your hair grazing your cheek. 

I like you. He thinks to himself a smile crossing his features. It wasn’t so much that you were different from any of the other girls. Rather he gave you a chance and you had proved him wrong. You were unrelentingly kind when he was rude. You took his cold stares and curt words patiently, knowing there was more to him than the walls he had built up. 

It took your smile and your touch to make Yoongi reflect on himself for the first time in America. He had come with his guard up and despite having a few ignorant people treat him poorly, he wanted to belong, he wanted to fit in. He wanted a place here to call his and now, with those pretty eyes of yours winking at him and familiar hands waving him over, he knew that place was right beside you. 

“Yoongi! Come on, we’re going to play Monopoly!” You say as the family disperses from the piano. Yoongi shuffles to the piano bench and offers his hand for you to take as you stand. 

Your palm slips over his and his breath hitches in his throat. Everything felt new and yet the same. Now that he had this truth brewing in his chest, now that he had admitted to his harbored crush, every interaction took on a new meaning. His heart had raced before whenever you grabbed his hand, but instead of excitement there were nerves. Was he too forward? Was he too stand-offish all this time? Having you like him back wasn’t even on his mind yet, but wanting to impress you - or at the very least be a good friend - was all Yoongi could focus on. 

“How do you feel?” You whisper, your breath tickling the curve of his ear. 

He offers you a tight-lipped smile. “I’m okay.” He whispers before clearing his throat. 

“Wh-What’s next?” He asks, hoping your proximity will grow so he can think straight. 

“Monopoly! D’you know how to play?” You ask, tugging him along to the dining room where the game was being set up. Half your family had opted out in order to catch up on sofas or watch the football game on television. 

“Kinda…” Yoongi did know how to play. But it was an entirely different ballgame when you added English to it. 

“Don’t worry, I’ll teach you.” You hum. You guide him to an empty seat beside you and hand him a piece. Yoongi takes the small thimble in hand before nodding and placing it at the start.

Turns out English wasn’t an issue at all. Half an hour later, two of your cousins are arguing with you about nearly a thousand dollars missing between properties being dealt poorly. Boldly defending your honesty you fire back accusations on where the money had truly gone. 

Meanwhile Yoongi sits with a Cheshire’s grin, knowing the missing grand was in the two little red houses he had placed on his property. Between feigning ignorance and their assumptions Yoongi had no idea what was going on, he had managed to embezzle the money right under everyone’s noses. But no one would suspect the innocent exchange student. 

“I swear if you’re lying to me I won’t buy you Christmas presents this year!” You threaten your cousins who are just as perturbed. 

“Yeah, well we won’t get you anything either you thief!” 

“Alright, game’s over. Clear the table. It’s dinner time!” Your mother walks in with a heavy tray of turkey in her hands. Yoongi moves first to clear the game board, swiping the tiny houses into his palms and dumping them into the box. 

“Someone’s excited to eat.” Your older cousin remarks. 

Or to get away with the perfect crime. Yoongi places all the money back in its rightful place and your other cousin takes the game to be put away. 

In its place a beautiful golden turkey is laid before you. Glaze drips over the expanse of the bird and settles at the bottom of the glass plate. The sweet and earthy aroma is tantalizing and draws even the furthest family members into the dining room. 

More dishes are carried in and each finds its place on the red tablecloth as guests shuffle past one another to find a seat. You remain by Yoongi’s side, having slipped your hand into his under the table. 

Yoongi feels you squeeze his hand and he squeezes back, the action erupting heartbeats a mile a minute. He hopes the steam from the marshmallow yams is enough to account for the flush of his face. 

“And the salad! Yoongi did all the work, chopping up the vegetables for us.” Your mother announces sending eyes his way. Yoongi flushes deeper, instinctively squeezing your hand on his thigh at the new attention. 

“So he can cook too! Nice.” One of your male cousins winks as he slides into his seat. 

“Yeah he’s actually useful.” You don’t hesitate to quip back at him. Another short round of insults ensues until your father claps his hands settling everyone down to eat. 

Dinner goes by with multiple conversations echoing around Yoongi. Having already been through the routine questions, most of your family left him alone, which he was thankful for. 

Scooping mashed potatoes into his mouth a small satisfied hum leaves his throat. Licking his lips, he cuts off a piece of turkey and has to suppress a groan at the way it melts in his mouth. He would have to thank Hoseok for convincing him to go. American food was rich and sweet, not lacking in any flavor department. Although he missed the familiar seafood aroma of homemade dinners, Yoongi felt like a king at a feast with the amount of food laid before him. 

The salad was pretty damn good too.

After dinner the party separates, some peer through the curtains at the brewing storm and call it an early night. Cousins are rounded up and hugs are exchanged. Yoongi stays with the party that’s decided to stay for another round of drinks, choosing to brave the storm at a later hour. He cleans the table of plates and discarded silverware, handing them off to your mother who smiles generously at him. 

“Here you are, hon.” Taking the last handful of spoons from Yoongi, your mother hands him a glass of thick white substance with the consistency of a milkshake. 

“Thanks.” He nods respectfully, too deep into his food coma to gather the English words to ask what it is. Thankfully your mother reads his expression. 

“It’s eggnog.” 

“Egg?” Yoongi quirks a brow, swirling the cup in his hand. 

“Spiked too, so don’t get too carried away with it. I would stick to two glasses under my roof, alright? Go on ahead in the living room. Y/N should be finishing up her goodbyes by now.” 

Yoongi nods and follows her instructions. He rounds the hall having become familiar with the layout to your house over the course of the night. 

You are just hugging the last cousin and waving them off as Yoongi approaches. 

You close the door after another round of promises to talk soon with a resound click. Slumping against the door, you peek over your shoulder at Yoongi and offer him a small smile. 

“That was fun, wasn’t it?” You laugh lightly but the exhaustion is evident in your voice. Yoongi stretches out his arm and offers the glass in his hand. 

“Eggnog?” 

“Oh, yes please.” You take a sip and hum at the creamy taste reminiscent of holidays past. 

“Hey, you need to try some of this.” You grab Yoongi’s arm and escort him to the kitchen. There, you quickly pour him a glass and watch excitedly for his reaction. 

The taste is unique - creamy - and surprisingly doesn’t taste of egg at all. The rum sends a warmth through Yoongi’s body that is welcome and pleasant. He takes another sip, yet another, and then finds himself downing the glass. 

You’re on your second - which you set aside to get him another. 

“Did you have fun tonight? I hope it was not... overwhelming.” It’s a relief to hear you switch to his native tongue after a long day of English. You top off his glass and he takes it back with grateful hands. 

“No, it was fun. Your cousins are entertaining to watch.” He says over the rim of his glass.

“Oh my word, they get so...so competitive over monopoly.”

“It’s a shame you never found the missing money.” 

Another sip.

“Wait…”you never found”...?” 

Amused, Yoongi watches realization shift over your face. 

“Holy shit, you douche! You’re such a jerk. Leaving me alone to defend my honor when you had it the entire time! I should have known.” You laugh and smack his arm. The touch is innocent but nevertheless, Yoongi winces as if it had actually hurt him. 

“Here, let’s take this up to my room.” You snatch the bottle of rum and tilt your head toward the stairway.

“Goodnight dad...mom!” You call as Yoongi follows you up the stairs. 

“Where’s Yoongi sleeping?” Your mother comes to the bottom of the steps, but not before you tuck the bottle behind your back. 

“I’ll set up the couch for him!” You smile. Yoongi sneaks a glance at your child-like smile in wonder. Had you ever lied to his face so smoothly like that? He quickly pushes the thought from his mind, not in the mood to spoil his night. 

“Alright. Goodnight.” Your mom nods, returning to whatever task she had been in the middle of.

You close the door behind Yoongi as you enter the bedroom, making sure it locks with a click. Then, you settle down on the carpet, gesturing for Yoongi to sit across from you. Idle conversation passes between the two of you, recalling the night’s highlights which lead to recalling funnier moments from college and complaining about the load of work due to be expected after the break. 

An hour passes and half the bottle is gone, most of it consumed by you and although both your faces are flushed, your cheeks are a deeper red through your complexion. 

“You know….” You smirk which leads to a short fit of giggles. Leaning forward you reach over to tap Yoongi’s knee but the momentum sends you cascading over into his lap. 

Yoongi balks, clearing his throat and lifting his hands as if touching you would set him on fire. Despite the fact your head is cradled in his crossed legs and you’re still mumbling as if nothing changed. 

“You’re nothing like her…” 

“W-who?” Yoongi slowly lowers his arms, blinking rapidly and trying to believe you’re actually cuddling his stomach right now. 

You puff your cheeks out and close your eyes. Humming you shake your head slowly. “You’re nothing like Bon-Hwa. Not at all.”

“Is she your friend?”

“She was. In...in high school.” 

“Oh.” Yoongi swallows, at a loss since you fell into his lap. He looks down at you to find you’ve turned onto your back and are gazing up at him with a soft smile. 

Silence falls between you and Yoongi doesn’t know whether to press the issue when you’re clearly not sober or just say something to at least cover the sound of his beating heart. 

You take his hand without warning.  Your fingers curling around his wrist. 

“W-Wh-What are you doing?”

“My hair.” You whine. “Please.” 

You set his hand on your forehead and close your eyes. Yoongi shifts beneath your weight, ignoring the feeling of his legs beginning to go numb. With the softest of touches, trembling fingers settle in your hair. Slowly, afraid you’ll come to your senses and smack him, Yoongi runs his hand over your head, repeating the motion and gaining a steadier pace as you hum in contentment. 

“She was my friend in high school.” You continue after a few minutes. 

“Korean student?” 

“Yeah. An ex- ess- she came to America for school. I was so nice to her.” 

You whine the last part and Yoongi suppresses a laugh. You were the last one to ever give yourself compliments so it was endearing to see you do so now. 

“But…” You inhale. Exhale. “She was a bitch.”

“Oh.” Yoongi nodded as if he knew who this Bon-Hwa girl was and let you slowly ramble your way through the story. 

“I talked to her first...before anyone else did. We became the best of friends. But-but then she started talking behind my back to other girls. She always acted so- so innocent and like she needed help. I bought her lunch and...and I gave her...gave her my clothes. She slept right there.” 

You point to the corner of the room where Yoongi assumed the space for an air mattress would lie. 

“But she told everyone I was a r-rude American. She even took my Suga poster.” You pause and it takes Yoongi a second to figure out you’re genuinely upset by the stolen merchandise and waiting for a response. 

“I’m sorry. That’s awful.” 

“It’s gone forever.” 

“I’ll get you a new one.” Yoongi promises without knowing when or how but as long as you stop quivering your lip he’ll do anything. 

“Okay…” You mumble. 

“Should we go to bed now?” Yoongi suggests while grabbing ahold of your shoulders and sitting you up. 

“Yeah, we can.” You lift your eyes to look at him and his breath catches. Are you going to kiss him? Can he kiss you? You’re not drunk but you’re not sober, definitely buzzed-

“Do you wanna sleep in here?” You whisper, as if your parents will appear out of thin air to drag Yoongi out the room. 

“I shouldn’t.” 

“You can. They’re asleep. Besides, my bed is cozier than the couch. And it’s cold. Look at the snow.” You point to the window and Yoongi’s gaze widens. You stand up and he does with you, walking over to peer outside. 

Despite the sun having set hours ago, the blanket of snow reflects enough moonlight to cast a blue haze over your backyard giving just enough light to realize there’s a good foot of snow outside. 

“Wow.” Yoongi breathes.

“C’mere.” Turning away from the window, Yoongi finds you’ve changed and are holding up the covers for him. He looks at his jeans and then back at you, causing you to roll your eyes and turn your head so he can shimmy out of them, leaving him in modest boxer shorts. 

You slide in first, growing impatient with his hesitancy but scoot over to the far end of the bed tucked against the wall and wave him over. 

Gingerly, Yoongi slides in next to you. 

“Wait.” 

Yoongi’s heart leaps into his throat. Did you change your mind? Are you going to kick him out? Accuse him of coming on to you?

“I forgot to turn out the light. Can you get it?” 

Releasing his breath, Yoongi nods. Quickly, he slides out of bed and flicks off the light, coming back over and sliding beneath the covers to escape the cold nipping at his legs. 

“Night, Yoongi.” 

“Goodnight.” 

#yoongi x reader #cold brew #wow this took years #depression really kicked my ass #so did writer's block #yikes

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

I Need to Talk About “Problematic Faves” within TWDG [2/?]

 Backstories, the introduction of these characters and the importance of first impressions.

"Nice to meet’cha, I’ll be your disappointment for the evening.”

When I first started questioning why I like David as much as I do, I thought back to when we were first introduced to him in ep1. 

He didn’t leave the best first impression since the first words out of his mouth are along the lines of “You’re a real piece of shit.” Plus he, y’know, punches the shit out of Javi for not being there when their dad died. 

On one hand, fair enough to be distraught that your father just died and your brother was no where in sight... but, on the other hand, do you gotta get violent? 

Maybe it’s just because I’m an only child so I don’t understand how the whole sibling thing works, but punching your brother and then tossing him a beer before saying “I love you” seems.... not good? 

But, it’s also very telling in what David and Javier’s relationship is right from the start, and sets an idea for what’s to come throughout the rest of the season.

Say what you will about ANF: it’s a mess, it’s the worst season, whatever. But, when I tell you that it has one of the best openings to a game, I mean it. 

Everything about it is damn near perfect. Not only does it start right at the beginning of the apocalypse, but it tells us so much about our main protagonist and his backstory, it establishes the strained relationship he has with his brother and the rest of his family, and it introduces us to the walkers in a different light. 

I can’t watch the opening and NOT get chills every time little baby Mariana holds that cup in her hand and says, “Papi’s awake.” 

When they go see that Javi and David’s father is up and about after dying, it’s just chaos from there and I love it. 

Fight me all you want, but it’s an excellent start to the season. 

Unfortunately, ANF couldn’t keep that momentum going, but that’s a whole other discussion for another day. 

Back to David, something about the way he was initially presented stuck with me until we finally reunited with him at the end of ep2. 

So I thought back to other character introductions, how their backstories came into place, and how it affected their endgame.

A character’s introduction is crucial when it comes to storytelling, whether its subtle or in your face. You don’t want to give too much away,  but you want to give the viewer a taste of who this person is and what their importance is in this story in a more subtle but clever manner.

When introducing a character, you have the think about what their endgame is. How is this character going to change over the course of the story? How are the choices of this character going to affect our protagonist, the world around them, and the overall plot. 

Knowing these things can help you to sprinkle in little details within their introduction that tie into their endgame. 

When we first met Kenny back in s1, he was just this dude who wanted to get his wife and kid back to Florida, hop on a boat, and live the rest of the apocalypse with his family on the water. 

He was nice and showed concern over how Lee was doing with Clementine. He has a character design that gives away parts of his past as a fisherman before he tells us anything about it, and his accent [+overall voice acting and dialogue] tell us a lot about his upbringing prior to the events of s1.

We only got that glimpse of what was to come of his character after the walkers attacked Hershel’s farm. 

Shaun is stuck under the tractor with walkers pushing against the fence and Duck is grabbed. We as Lee are faced with the choice of who to help first: Shaun or Duck?

Regardless of our choice, Kenny obviously runs to save his son. He gets Duck out of harms way, but when Shaun begs for help, Kenny runs away, leaving him to be eaten by the walkers. 

This portrays the possibility of Kenny being cowardly, selfish, or someone who freezes up in moments of danger and runs.  It also sets up the guilt that lingers in his [and Duck’s] mind all the way through to ep3 and onward. 

When you think about Kenny, without knowing what happens to him in ep3, and you have to take a guess about what tragedy could take place to further his development, as well as bring that guilt full circle, what would you say?

Easy. He loses his family. Of course he does. It doesn’t matter if you don’t like it, but it makes sense that this would happen based on our first meeting with him at Hershel’s farm in conjunction with the themes of the game. 

So what does this have to do with him being a “Problematic Fave?” 

Uh, everything?

Ever heard of a “tragic backstory?” You don’t think such thing plays into why we loves characters like this?

Kenny the family man has a lovely wife and son. He does everything in his power to protect them, and it’s not enough. He was not enough to save his son, nor was he enough to save his wife.  

He lost them both within seconds of each other, being a witness to Katjaa’s suicide and the agonizingly slow death of his son, and he had to keep going in order to survive, even though he had nothing left.

In the beginning, Kenny was a regular John Doe like the rest of us. 

He had a job that kept him at sea a lot, he fell in love with a pretty vet and had a child with her. He thought this all would blow over and he could go back to Florida with his family and live peacefully. 

Season 1 is Kenny’s tragic backstory.

We got to live this tragedy with him, so when s2 comes around and we’re given his second first introduction in the series, we already have all this knowledge of what has happened to him, what his relationship was to Lee and Clementine, and the assumption that he was already dead.

Season 2 was what cemented a lot of people’s love and hate for him.

I have a theory that those who hate Kenny tend forget that 1st episode back in s1, choosing to solely focus on the Kenny from the meat locker in ep2 and all the negative repercussions that stemmed for our choice there, while those who love Kenny tend to look further back and take everything into account when analyzing his character. 

They sympathize with the man Kenny used to be, and are struck by this tragedy of who he became by the time s2 ended. 

Kenny from ep1 of s1 is not the same person as the Kenny from s2 ep5, and his journey is not only compelling from a character development standpoint, but a huge factor in why he is the favorite character of so many. Few characters are built up and developed that way he is. 

But can we say a lot of the same things about Kenny’s introduction in s2 that we can say about s1? Does it drop hints about what Kenny’s potential endgame could be? 

Yes, but it’s not quite as effective as it could’ve been. 

One of the first choices you make after meeting back with Kenny is whether or not you’ll sit with him at dinner. 

It’s a non-assuming choice, one that shouldn’t warrant any big repercussions, right? 

Except it’s the games way of presenting us with the choice of siding with Kenny under a more innocent pretense. It’s a taste of what’s to come. 

Based on our previous knowledge of him, as well as his seemingly good nature [one that reminds us of the beginnings of s1], we watch the way he presents himself to Clementine and decide if we want to sit with this old, nostalgic connection, or the new connections. 

Will you sit with Kenny, or will you sit with Luke and the cabin group? 

Will you side Kenny, or not?

This is what led everyone to believe that the final showdown would be between Kenny and Luke, and they really dropped the ball on what they built up here when they decided to replace Luke with Jane. 

Kenny’s part still holds fairly strong, but everything about it isn’t as well done as S1. 

And because I know I’ll be asked: as for his introduction in S3..... I don’t consider Kenny or Jane characters as much as I’d say they’re obstacles the writers had to throw in to give the illusion that our choices actually affected Clementine significantly when they really didn’t. 

He immediately dies in a car accident after being paralyzed and left to the walkers while Clementine runs away with a crying AJ. This does very little for the story of ANF other than to add fuel to Clementine’s own “tragic backstory.” 

So I don’t count it here. 

I want to talk about another great character introduction: Minerva.

Minerva is a special case compared to Kenny and other character introductions. We’re not plopped down in front of her like “Hi, I’m Clementine, nice to meet you, Minnie.” 

We actually spend two whole episodes only hearing about her, building her character up slow and steady, until we finally meet face to face in ep3. 

This complicates our first impressions of her, but only a bit. 

The game pretty much tells us Minerva’s backstory:

From what we’re told, Minerva was a sweet, musical girl who didn’t even like killing walkers. She loved her brother and twin sister. She and Violet were in a romantic relationship, and Violet gives us plenty to chew on about how lovely her voice was and how she was such a good friend. Her and Sophie’s “deaths” left everyone at the school devastated to the point where they actually started using their graveyard again. 

She almost seems too good to be true, don’t you think?

Then we find out she’s not dead. 

It turns out, Marlon and Brody lied about the death of the twins to cover up the fact that Marlon traded them away to the delta in order to save themselves and the rest of Ericson. The truth only comes out after Brody confesses everything to Clementine before her death dealt by Marlon’s hand.

So not only are we told that Minerva was this wonderful person, but that she was traded away with her twin sister to a group of people who, based on our first impression of Abel, are a dangerous threat that’s back for more of them.

Your mind swarms with the worst possibilities of what those people could have done to them, and you even question whether or not they’re still alive. 

Until we meet Lilly again and find out the truth: they turned them into soldiers, forcing them to fight in their war. 

Keep in mind that this is all apart of Minerva’s “tragic backstory” and we haven’t even truly been introduced to her yet. This is everything that the first two episodes have built up. 

We finally get our first glimpse of her in the trailer for ep3.

Everyone goes nuts. 

Minerva was so hyped up. Everyone was talking about how good she looked and how they couldn’t wait to meet her and learn what happened from her perspective. Everyone theorized about her role in the next two episodes and how maybe we can enlist her help in getting our friends back and reuniting her with Tenn and-

Then we get actually meet her.

Turns out, she is none of the things the game told us she was. 

Not anymore, at least.

She is not our friend or our ally and she is not going to help us get our friends back. She is fully brainwashed into the delta, and that’s the tragedy of Minerva’s first real introduction. 

She is a betrayal of everything we’ve been told due to the crime Marlon made of trading her away. We will never get to meet this Minnie we heard so much about. 

Instead, we get the husk that remains. 

This husk is one of our antagonists for the rest of the game. 

Knowing all of this, why do people still love her? Why are there fix-it fics and AUs where Minerva is “saved?” 

Because we all wanted to meet the Minnie we heard so much about, but instead, we got Minerva, the brainwashed soldier from the Delta who, under Lilly’s fucked up rule, killed her own twin sister in order to prove her loyalty to the group. 

We wanted Minerva to be on our side, to betray the delta for the school she once called home. But she didn’t.

Instead, she became our final antagonist of the whole series. 

Minerva, like Kenny, is a tragedy and we like that. 

I don’t mean that we like it as in “I’m so glad those horrible, traumatizing things happened to you!” but we like it in a way that it colors these characters gray. 

Suddenly, their behaviors are not portrayed the way they are just because they’re the “antagonist,” but because they’re a complex, three dimensional character. The game didn’t hand them to us and say “They’re evil, that’s all you need to know.” 

They took the time to flesh these two out in a clever way that got to us, either in a positive or negative light.

We are drawn to gray characters with interesting, albeit tragic, backstories that we can sympathize with.  

But, when you consider that this IS the apocalypse, doesn’t everyone have one of these “tragic backstories” in this series? Just like how everyone is actually a “Problematic Fave?” Does this really play into why we like them when it’s not even something unique to their character?

That’s a good point, so in order for us to like a character like this, do they have to have an even more intense, tear-jerking past than the rest in order to stand out?

Well... no. 

Nate’s the easy example for this one. 

I honestly don’t know what this dude’s about, and I don’t know if I even care, but somehow Nate tends to end up on everyone’s “Favorite Characters from 400 Days” list. 

Granted, he is a bit of a refreshing character to run into in this environment, what with him being so laid back, sarcastic, gross, and even sadistic in a way that’s mean to be comedic. 

But what do we even know about him or where he came from? 

Well, we know that he’s apart of the group that fan-favorite Eddie accidentally shot at, leading Nate to chase after him and Wyatt as a form of revenge. After that, he picked up Russell and headed back to a gas station where that old couple shot at them. 

The old man reveals that Nate’s been there before and attacked, stating that he’s here to finish them off. Nate denies this, but asks if Russell and him should finish them off and take all their stuff. 

From there, who the hell knows where this dude went. 

But that’s all we got. 

No “tragic backstory” from Nate, no implications of one, unless we missed the nonexistent detail that his previous group was his family or something. Even then, he doesn’t seem so concerned about the state of the world. He doesn’t have an issue picking up a random kid who could be dangerous. He was bored, after all. 

Nate is a character whose backstory has nothing to do with why people love him.  He’s an oddball out, in this case. 

It’s a different story when talking about how he’s introduced, though. This is where he has most in common with Kenny, Minerva, and all the rest of these “Problematic Faves”: He has a great impression. 

Well, assuming that you played Russell’s story before Wyatt’s, I suppose.

Nate’s likable, albeit insane, character isn’t dependent on who he was before or how he suffered. He’s a character who represents those in the world who thrive in times of disaster, choosing to take it as it comes, do whatever it takes to survive, and even get a sick thrill out of doing these problematic things. Odds are, life was boring before and now he truly gets to live. That’s all made clear in how he presents himself to Russell and the player. 

And.... I guess it worked? He is the “Problematic Fave” of a handful of people int he community, after all. 

Now that we’ve discussed three separate characters and their backstories, how they’re introduced, and how these two things affect their role within the story as well as our feelings towards them, I want to touch on one more thing before I go back to David. 

What does all of this say about the people who throw this annoying phrase of “Your fave is problematic” at those of us who find these characters with great backstories compelling? 

Do they not care or understand these backstories or what the introductions meant? Do they ignore them so that their perspective seems to be the correct answer? Are they so quick to judge based on the surface level that they don’t bother thinking twice about anything?

Do they feel that this character has wronged them, therefore they find they can’t bring themselves to tolerate them anymore? 

Or are they just being a bag of dicks who don’t care about anything other than berating anyone who dares oppose them and their opinions?

Well, yes and no to all of these possibilities. 

I’m sure there are people out there who don’t have a full grasp of what made Kenny the way he is in s2 because, well.... they’ve never lost a loved one. It’s easy to say “Get over it” to just about any troubling situation we’ve never found ourselves in. Even if we do feel for this character, sometimes it’s really only surface level because we don’t have a full comprehension of what they went through.

When I took acting back in high school, I had a teacher who could cry on the spot. We all assumed that he was just a good actor who could turn the tears on and off at any given moment, but then he explained how he did it. 

He lost his father in a drunk driving accident the same day he gave his last performance on stage as a high school senior. Whenever he needed to cry for a scene, this 58-year-old man would think back to the last conversation he had with his father that morning, and then about the moment he learned his father had died. 

Even in moments that didn’t require him to cry, but to develop a character and portray that convincingly, he pulled from that life experience. He also could sympathize with certain characters that we’d consider problematic while the rest of us were barely scratching the surface. 

He told us we need to come to terms with any tragedy in our lives and use it not only to create characters of our own, but to understand the ones most wouldn’t give a second glance to, and help relate ourselves to the real people around us. 

Since my high school days, I’ve experienced the loss of a longtime dog companion, and the alarming health decrease of two close family members. While I’ve never lost a child, a spouse, a parent, or a sibling, I find that a part of me can’t completely hate Kenny or even Minerva because I get it to an extent. 

So it makes me wonder if those who look at these backstories and still brush them off do.

But, there’s another argument to be made here. 

Maybe they do understand and that’s why they hate someone like Kenny. 

They have lost a loved one before or experienced some sort of trauma. They know about the grief, guilt, and anger that it can lead to. But, they also know it’s not an excuse to be mean, cold, or abusive to loved one. 

They know that such trauma can lead to lashing out, but the difference is between someone who knows what they’re doing is wrong, they need help, and they try to get it... and someone who using it to explain away why they’re broken and unfixable. 

Some see Kenny as someone who can’t change, or won’t change. That’s how they’ve interpreted him based on their experiences as someone who’s lived through these things, or been around someone who has. 

In their eyes, Kenny isn’t redeemable, “tragic backstory” or not. 

What about those who felt wronged by a character? 

I’ve come to the realization that this why I don’t like Minerva. 

She wronged me in the way that I had to watch either Louis or Tenn die because she showed up on the bridge with the illusion that she would take her brother to a better place. 

Louis, my favorite character across the entire series, and one that I’ve taken so much comfort in during the more recent darker moments of my life. Tenn, a character that I wanted to watch grow and become what characters like Ben or Sarah weren’t allowed to be come. 

Because of Minerva, the only way for both Louis and Tenn to survive is if I let Louis get kidnapped, resulting in him becoming mute due to the delta cutting out his tongue, I have to break AJ’s heart by telling him that I don’t trust him, and I have to watch Violet be devoured alive by a horde of walkers. 

I’m not willing to let Louis die, but I also don’t want him to lose his tongue, so in my route, I trust AJ to shoot Tenn and give Minerva what she wants. 

And no matter what? Clementine gets bit because Minerva sliced her leg apart, leaving her slow and weaker when trying to get away. I firmly believe that if Minerva hadn’t done that, Clementine wouldn’t have been bitten for the sake of “parallel.” 

It’s a situation that could’ve been avoided if Minerva hadn’t showed up, but her will to see and kill Tenn was strong enough for her 

People who love Minerva might not see it that way, or if they do, they’re a lot more forgiving than I am.

Believe me when I tell you that I can see this being a reason for the hate towards any character like this. 

Like Kenny. Lot’s of Kenny talk. 

I know there are those out there who loved Kenny in s1, but by the time s2 ended, they couldn’t stand him because s2 wronged them in their portrayal of Kenny and what he had become. This wasn’t their Kenny. 

To finish this segment off, allow me to answer that last question I posed:  Are they just being a bag of dicks who don’t care about anything other than berating anyone who dares oppose them and their opinions?

Of course, then there are the children who like to fight. The answer for why these people hate such characters is because they think of themselves as... let’s say, Batman. 

This community needs a hero to vanquish anyone who likes or enjoys these problematic characters and it’s a job only they can do! They’re the hero for sending that anon hate to your inbox!

This is an excuse to be a dick and we all know it. 

So, what does all of this Kenny, Minerva, and Nate talk amount to? 

It helped me in understanding a reason in why I like David so much.

I already knew that I enjoyed learning more about who he was prior to the outbreak, as well as having light shed on his and Javi’s relationship, but not in the way I initially thought. 

You see, ANF is different in the way that it feeds backstory to the player- through flashbacks. At the beginning of each episode, we play as Javi in the past before the apocalypse happened. 

From there, we get to see what David was like compared to what he is now, but they tell it to us through Javi’s point of view and we have to pick apart his character through that forced perspective. 

From the flashbacks alone, as well as ep1′s beginning, I put together that:

David was a single father trying to raise two incredibly young children. We’re never told what happened to his first wife. I used to assume that they ended up divorced, but now I’m more on board with the idea that she’s actually dead and that’s why David has full custody of Gabe and Mariana. 

Putting the pieces together now, it makes sense of why he married Kate when they’re clearly not compatible, and why he has these high expectations of her. David’s mother and father are still together, and with family being a big theme in ANF, it leads me to believe that David felt his children needed a mother figure in their lives in order for the family to be complete. He needed a wife. 

While I think he did love Kate, and she obviously loved him enough to marry him in the first place, David didn’t love her the way he should have. 

Kate tells us that their marriage was fucked up. We clearly see that given how she reacts when she sees David again, as well as when David himself confesses that things aren’t working out between them and that’s why he wants to go away.

They’re always arguing, he has those expectations of her as his wife and she’s fed up with it, and things are just.... not working. Of course they’re not. 

He wanted a wife to make him feel more complete, as well as give his children that mother figure. He wasn’t out there trying to find the love of his life. For all we know, he already had that with his possibly dead first wife [note: shoot, add “possible dead wife” to the list of shit David’s got going in his backstory for future reference]. He thought that he could try and change Kate from who she is because he was desperate for this to work. 

David and Kate should NOT have gotten married, but I can understand the stress David was under with having to raise two children as a single father while dealing with untreated trauma from being a soldier, his confidence in himself as a normal human-being deteriorating due to his “I’m a soldier and I can’t function here” mentality, working a shitty job while going back and forth on whether or not he should go sign up again, having a strained relationship with an irresponsible brother who lost his baseball career due to a gambling addiction yet still never being around when David needed him. 

David marries Kate and things don’t fix themselves. 

And then Javi does come around, and David doesn’t know how to act or what to say. 

Then his father keeps from them that he has cancer and he’s not planning on getting treatments for it. 

When his father loses his battle with cancer, everyone is there except Javier. David’s there holding his hand while his dying father asks for Javi.  

I get why David’s upset that his father isn’t seeing him because he’s looking for Javi. Is it selfish to feel jealous or heartbroken when it’s your father that’s dying? Yeah, but it’s a realistic feeling. Most of us have felt some level of this but don’t want to admit it because we don’t want to see ourselves in a negative light. It’s easy to look at David and be like “What a selfish prick.” 

But... why wasn’t Javi there? Everyone makes it clear that he should have been there, no excuse. Everyone was there for hours, for days but Javi was no where to be found. This plays beautifully into Javier’s character growth throughout the season, but what about David? 

Compared to the “tragic backstories” of Kenny and Minerva, David’s seems... a little mundane, huh? 

He has problems focused more in the real world rather than the apocalypse world. 

Every bad thing we’ve ever learned about Kenny and Minerva happened after the walkers. 

Plenty of people have served in the military and dealt with trauma rooted in their service.

Plenty have either been divorced or lost their spouse, were left as a single parent to raise the kids they love but are afraid they’ll fuck up if they do it alone. How about those who are apart of an unhappy marriage? 

Nearly everyone has worked a job they hate and know the toll it can take on your mental health. 

Left in the shadow of a more successful sibling, no matter how hard they try to be on that same level and earn that love, too. 

A parent with cancer, or another life-threatening illness.

Feeling as though they can’t function because they’re not built to live in such a humanly “normal” world, eager to find where they belong and have a fulfilling purpose. 

Everything David has going on prior to the apocalypse is real and relatable, and I like that this is the route they took with him. Rather than having him be like Kenny, who seemed to live happily with very little issue and only began to suffer when the apocalypse came, they took a route similar to Lee and Javier. 

“Things weren’t great before.” 

That being said, do any of these things justify David’s bad behavior towards Javi, Kate, Clementine, and everyone else? Does it justify the bad things he ends up doing during the events of ANF.

Hell no! 

David can be a real prick and amazing backstory/introduction or not, I am not okay with that!  

But look.

Listen.

ANF is such a mess. It’s a disaster. 

It’s ‘s2 mess,’ but on crack.

I firmly believe that David is one of the better things to come out of it, except he got severely fucked over by just how terrible ANF’s writing could be.

They started off so good. David is established and he has some of the better character moments in the entire game, but it’s all buried underneath the bullshit. 

They actually gave us David, who dealt with a lot of “normal” shit to try and find his place and be happy, made him have problems that we can see ourselves having and relate to, making us question ourselves, and then they gave him what he wanted. 

David met up with Ava, he found Clint and Joan, and they created a community together where David got to be this leader with a purpose. He got what he wanted at the sacrifice of his children, wife, brother, and parents, something he didn’t even have a choice in. 

They had all the right ideas... 

I love the different take to David’s backstory. I love the way he was introduced in ANF. I love the way these things managed to weave themselves throughout ANF despite it being...... ugh.

People who hate David, like the one who listed all of those lovely attributes of his in the previous part, think he is nothing but a whiny, selfish, asshole because of the way he’s introduced and portrayed in flashbacks and... I disagree to a point. 

He is an asshole a lot of the time, especially when you don’t side with him [heh, sound familiar] but that doesn’t mean he’s not a compelling, relatable character to study and infer about. And y’know what? I like that he’s not Mr. Nice Guy. Someone like him wouldn’t be. He is a person who can nice moments, and he has bad moments. It doesn’t excuse the shit he does, but it at least adds a depth to it that I appreciate. 

I’m mature enough to recognize these his bad behaviors, acknowledge them, and infer more about his character without makes excuses and pretending that him having a tough time means it’s okay for him be that way. 

I can see what they were going for as far as his endgame, but I’ll talk more about that later. 

As for the conclusion of this long winded segment: 

A character’s backstory, first impression, execution of developing these small seedling details into an overarching story plays an important role in the growing love of a character, problematic or not. Both love and hate can be stemmed from the maturity and knowledge of the viewer based on how relatable and sympathetic they find these ideas. 

[Continued in 3/?]

#long post #'problematic fave' essay #twdg kenny #twdg minerva #twdg david #twdg nate #twdg lilly #twdg clementine #twdg aj #twdg louis #twdg violet #twdg marlon #twdg brody #twdg lee #twdg jane #twdg javier #twdg kate #twdg gabe #twdg mariana #twdg tenn #twdg russell #twdg wyatt #twdg eddie #like in the first post i'd like to hear your thoughts on these ideas #of how backstory and introductions play a part in why we love problematic characters #next part is all about a character's physical appearance #and if we're shallow enough to forgive a characters problematic behavior based on looks

[commandermanifesto]

The Six-to-Eight Problem and the Zero-to-Eleven Scale

The Rules Committee has long maintained that Commander players should have a pre-game conversation during which those players come to an agreement about a number of facets of the game. (1) One of these facets is how “powerful” the decks each player will be piloting ought to be. Many prolific commentators have espoused utilizing a One-to-Ten Scale by which to measure a deck’s power level, with some commentators opining that a deck will have enough power to compete with decks ranked about two ranks above it, while not being so powerful as to obliterate a deck two stages below it. (2) Applied, a “seven” might be competitive at a table of “nines”, but not so powerful as to be unable to play with a table of “fives”. An “eight”, on the other hand, could contend with the most powerful decks in the format, “tens”, but would leave a table of “fives” with almost no window to victory. (2)

Problematically, the advocates of the One-to-Ten Scale typically cannot provide more than heuristic guidelines on how to evaluate a deck’s numerical rank. There are simply too many decks in the format to place them all in an ordered row, too much nuance through Magic’s long history which can become lost in any foray into specific archetypes, and too many opinions on where the line between one number and the next ought to be drawn in the first place. Many players who would use those ranking systems that do exists are not familiar with the underlying theory of what makes for a powerful deck in Commander, are unfamiliar with a particular scale, or are familiar with an alternative numerical metric. Because of the ample opportunity for ignorance or confusion, many are equipped only to rank their deck according to their own played experience.

This reliance on the played experience in evaluating one’s deck’s strength creates what I call “The Six-to-Eight Scale”. Essentially, because no deck exists in a vacuum, there is one easy way to determine if a deck is powerful. It can perform as well as its peers, it can underperform, or it can overperform. If our scale is relying on heuristics anyway, this particular heuristic capitalizes on the core strength of heuristics generally—ease of application—and seemingly achieves results on par with many of the other heuristics proposed for categorizing a deck the One-to-Ten Scale.

Now let us see how we lose seven tenths of our scale. If we suppose, as many players familiar with the letter grading system might, that a “C”, or 70 percent, is passing, any deck which sits at a comfortable power level, performing on par with its peers, should be a “seven”. A deck which fails utterly would get an “F”, fifty percent. Since nobody would choose to live with a failure of a deck, any deck which underperforms but does not get culled is, at minimum, a “six”. Since most players play opposite opponents of a similar level of skill or dedication, their decks are unlikely to significantly overperform. That is, they will see their decks as leaving some opportunity for the underperforming decks in their metagame to win, but also capable of withstanding a “ten”—the most powerful decks in the format—or at least the most powerful decks against which they have played. If they could not, they would not be “overperformers”.

Because no Commander player is equipped to envision their deck’s power level along the absolute continuum of legal combinations of cards which make up the format, our most convenient heuristic reduces the One-to-Ten Scale to just three points. Six, seven, and eight. When you sit down for a game with unfamiliar players at a Magicfest or your local game store, they each appeal to their played experience in whatever metagame they hail from, and they offer you a value ranging from six to eight. Because you have brought conceptions based on your own played experience, you offer a number in the same range. The difference is not in excess of two, and the One-to-Ten Scale is satisfied.

Except, of course, it is not. The metagame consisting of five new players who are building only from cards they drafted over the past six months is going to have a very different “seven” than the “seven” of longtime veterans who consider dual lands and Mana Crypt standard-issue.

This is why I propose a new system. This new “Zero-to-Eleven Scale” will be based, as much as possible, on concrete metrics. It will be grounded in indicators of success into which cards can be broadly categorized. It is intended as a diagnostic tool to aid a deck’s owner in pre-game conversations but will rely very little on the played experience of the deck’s pilot. Some will require a measure of familiarity with the game, but where that is the case, I will attempt to highlight that need. Others are aided by data generated by simulated play (goldfishing), although an experience player may not need that data. This, too, will be explicitly noted. Several terms of art will appear below and will be defined as necessary. Each point will feature demonstrations of the metrics application using my own decks, but the examples I give are not exhaustive. Less mechanical use of the scale will produce more accurate results.

To use the guide below and place your deck on the Zero-to-Eleven Scale, simply go from one criterion to the next and determine, for each, whether the deck meets that criterion. Then, when you have read all eleven, count the number of criteria you have satisfied. That number is your deck’s power level on the Zero-to-Eleven scale, although it behooves you to bear in mind which points your deck has earned.

Before I begin, I will highlight some assumptions upon which this system rests.

First, the appearance of power can often substitute for power. Players who perceive you as doing something powerful will treat you as powerful regardless of the truth behind that appearance.

Second, this scale does not weigh particular powerful features over others, which means that two decks which meet five of them could have done so using completely disjoint sets of criteria. It is my belief that two such decks would nevertheless seem comparable, but I recognize that this point is the greatest weakness of my method. Nevertheless, I believe the need for an easily applicable scale which creates a greater variety in outputs outweighs this deficiency. If you are worried that these criteria are unequal, know that it is also my belief that this list is more useful when employed as a checklist of descriptions by which decks can be compared, anyway. In-depth pre-game conversations can be had about any or all of the topics which follow, and all of them will be more useful than fielding a subjective rating on the six-to-eight scale.

Third, this scale uses turn counts for certain metrics. These are meant to reflect fairly optimized play, and I believe they would be indicators of powerful activity in nearly any format in which they appeared.

Finally, this scale assumes that even if a deck is built to lose, it is piloted to win. If you are not interested in winning when you sit down to play, that pre-game conversation is more important to have than a conversation about deck power level for a variety of reasons, a point which may be explored in the future.

Without further ado, here is the Zero-to-Eleven Scale Checklist, which I urge you, gentle reader, to adopt:

 1. Is your Commander considered “powerful”?

Most players know who to fear as soon as the contents of each command zone are revealed. Certain commanders simply lend themselves to more powerful decks. Nowadays, it seems like it’s hard to sit down at a pod where nobody’s commander worries me. This is not to say there aren’t very powerful decks which feature underwhelming commanders. There certainly are. But the plain fact is, nearly any Xira Arien deck would be made better by swapping her out for Prossh, Skyraider of Kher. For that reason, your deck will earn this point if the Commander has a reputation for being powerful.

This criterion lacks a concrete measure, resting fairly cleanly on the expertise of the player. It relies on perception and reputation, but there is ample opinion available online which can guide one to a conclusion, and most players you meet will not begrudge you asking their opinion, as well. If you just aren’t sure, leave this a maybe and decide based on what the players you are sharing this calculation with believe. My Derevi, Empyrial Tactician deck, whose reputation, deserved or not, precedes it, earns this point. My partner’s Surrak Dragonclaw deck does not.

2. Is your deck built around a supported strategy?

Most decks will earn this point. Essentially, your deck will earn this point if there are enough cards printed in the history of Magic to accomplish your mechanical route to victory. Rather than enumerate the many supported strategies in Magic’s history, I will instead offer a few examples of under-supported strategies.

Building around a unique non-legendary card is an example of failing to meet this criterion. Warp World is the only card in Magic’s history with an effect of its kind. For that reason, a Commander deck designed to cast Warp World to create a game-winning board state would fail to get this point. A Commander deck cannot include a second copy of the card, so any further consistency will need to be in the form of tutoring. Should the card be countered or exiled, any opportunity to recast it will require dedicated deck infrastructure. By virtue of your deck’s dependence on a card you will not see every game, the power level of your deck is naturally capped at a certain point. Distinguish this example, however, from a deck that uses Warp World not as its main win condition, but merely as a tool in some token-based strategy. In that event, the deck is built around tokens, not around Warp World. Because tokens are a well-supported strategy, that use of the card would not mean the deck fails to gain this point.

Another example can be found in art-themed decks. For most Magic artists, the cards they have illustrated do not share a cohesive plan, in a mechanical sense. The cards might be individually powerful, but without a cohesive plan, they are unlikely to be the equal of a deck with a mechanically-minded through-line. Even among artists whose style lends itself to certain kinds of cards, the artificial restriction placed on your selections will depower your deck enough to rob it of at least some potential. An enchantment-matters deck featuring only art by Rebecca Guay will be playable, but will be second-best to the enchantment-matters deck featuring any artist.

Of my decks, Patron of the Moon comes the closest to failing to earn this point. The limited number of Moonfolk and related effects left early drafts of the deck without a supported route to victory. However, opening the list up to an X spell theme and including mass mana production effects put the game-plan in firmly supported territory. By the same token, my partner’s Eight-and-a-Half-Tails deck uses nearly every card which interacts with the color White. It is almost insufficient to create a meaningful amount of interaction—but it is nevertheless sufficient due to the inherent synergy between the Sword of X and Y cycle (e.g. Sword of War and Peace) and a low CMC Voltron strategy. By avoiding “shell” decks and decks where winning is a secondary concern, all eleven of our decks earn this point.

3. Does your deck decline to abide by the “social contract”?

Most Commander players are familiar with the concept of the “social contract”. There are a number of formulations, but when discussing individual card choices, the crux of the idea is that the Commander community has implicitly agreed to avoid certain “antisocial” in-game actions. (3) Commonly cited examples include the use of mass mana denial, infinite and/or time-consuming combos, targeted blowouts, and STAX effects. (4) For the most part, the commonality shared by these kinds of cards is that they deny your opponent the ability to engage with the game in the way a player typically expects to be able to—by producing mana to resolve effects. If your deck features one or more breaches of the “social contract”, it will earn this point.

It should come as no surprise that many of these effects, when applied strategically, can be very potent. Timely mana denial can turn an early lead into an inevitable victory. Infinite combos can end a game regardless of the state of affairs leading up to the game-ending sequence. An untimely Mindslaver can foreclose any possibility of recovery. STAX effects have been known to hand the only player prepared for the quagmire onboard—the STAX player himself—a soft lock on his opponents, who he can then defeat at his leisure.

Swearing off these kinds of effects comes at a cost to your decks’ power level. Properly utilized, each is an avenue to overwhelming advantages. If your deck features cards like Armageddon, Sunder, or Mindslaver, is built to win using an infinite combo, or is geared to play as a STAX deck, your deck will earn this point. My Muldrotha, the Gravetide deck earns this point by using infinite combos, Mindslaver locks, and Parallax Tide shenanigans. My Feather, the Redeemed deck, like many of its peers, relies on interactive removal and a combat-based win, and avoids this point.

4. Can your deck pull off an early kill?

Perception can often influence reality. In Commander, this is no less the case. If you can explain a reasonably straightforward line of play which leads to another player losing before they’ve taken their fifth turn, your deck earns this point. It can be through combat damage, an infinite combo, Commander damage, an alternate win-condition, or any other conceivable avenue. Note that there is no requirement that this line of play be consistent, only that it be straightforward. That is, you might play no tutors for your Commander-plus-other-card-infinite-combo, but if the combo can be pulled off by turn five, it will still create a dangerous possibility in the perceptions of your opponents’—danger worthy of a one-point increase to the deck on this scale. Note also that this is one of the points that often reflects opponents’ perceptions of a deck’s power, and is, at least in some cases, somewhat peripheral to the deck’s power level on an absolute scale.

This point is an indicator of power for various reasons at different levels of Commander play. In casual circles, a kill of this speed will be blisteringly fast. You might not win that game, but you will certainly create a strong impression in both the victim and any witnesses to the event. In more competitive circles, this point reflects the capacity to remain a danger to competitive decks. Even if your deck is lacking many other indicators of a powerful deck, the fact that your deck, with the right hand, could kill them before they kill you means that your opponents’ must remain wary.

This point can, on occasion, be earned by decks which can create “soft locks”—board states from which opponents are unlikely to win due to incapacity. Evaluating whether a deck can create locks which a majority of decks are unable to escape can be an exercise in heuristics, but an illustrative example might be the well-known combo of Lavinia, Azorius Renegade and Knowledge Pool.

My partner’s Ezuri, Claw of Progress deck earns this point with the following line of play: ramp on turn one or two, Ezuri on turn three, Deranged Hermit on turn four, Sage of Hours on turn five. On the one hand, the combo can be interacted with; on the other, it must be interacted with. By contrast, my Kruphix, God of Horizons deck is geared toward a longer game of casting Eldrazi titans and other haymakers. It can apply overwhelming force by turn five, but that force will never be lethal without outside aid.

5. Does your deck have “perfect” mana?

Color screw is second only to mana screw when it comes to taking the wind out of the sails of an otherwise exciting hand. Being unable to cast your spells all but guarantees defeat. (5) And while there are plenty of ways to fight color screw using cards of all rarities, clunky means like searching lands to hand and multi-colored lands which enter tapped can rob you of crucial tempo on the turns that matter most—and deny you full range of motion should you need three of one color one turn, and three of another color the next. Recognizing the power of reliable, on-demand access to all of your deck’s colors, this point is awarded to any deck which essentially never has problems with the colors of its mana while remaining on-curve.

Decks earning this point will next-to-never be delayed a turn by a land that enters tapped, will be able to produce three of one color one turn and four of a different color the next, and will generally take as a given that they will be able to cast their spells on-curve. At its most advanced level, a deckbuilder will likely have calculated their mana needs on a turn-by-turn basis and will have selected their mana base to meet those specific demands. (6) In decks with many colors, this will often be accomplished using fetch-, shock- and dual-lands. In mono-colored decks, simply ensuring that your utility lands are not so numerous as to impede your curve will suffice. It can often be difficult to evaluate this point without a lot of experience with your deck, or even more experience with Magic generally, so evaluating this point will typically rely on the played or goldfished experience of your deck.

My partner’s Eight-and-a-Half-Tails deck earns this point by being mono-White and using few mana sources incapable of producing White mana. Her Jodah, Archmage Eternal deck, which relies on karoos and tri-lands, will often meet its color needs at the cost of falling behind the curve because of lands which enter the battlefield tapped, and fails to earn this point.

6. Does your deck aggressively ramp?

It is supposed that the victor of a game of Commander can be predicted by identifying who spent the most mana in that game. (7) Thus, any deck which is more likely than not to have a turn before their sixth where they produce effects worth more two or more mana than the than the turn count will earn this point.

I am aware that is a very dense sentence, so allow me to parse it by explaining why each clause is worded with such particularity. First, “is more likely than not…” means that the deck will aggressively ramp in the manner described below at least fifty percent of the time. Hypergeometric calculators can be useful in ascertaining whether a deck meets this criterion. For example, hypergeometric calculation informs us that a ninety-nine card deck featuring thirteen spells which ramp for a single mana will feature two or more such cards in a twelve card sample forty-nine percent of the time. Thus, a deck with twelve spells which ramp by one and a Sol Ring probably earns this point.

“…to have a turn before their sixth…” simply means that any of turns one through five might be the turn on which your deck is geared for action. Some decks are more concerned with an early Commander than sustained mana production; these will attempt to exploit fast mana to consistently land their commander two or more turns early. Others will attempt to build a lead in the development phase, which they can then exploit in turns six and beyond. The former strategy hopes to effectively close out the game early, while the latter will be poised to dominate the late-game. Successfully pursuing either avenue is likely to increase a deck’s win-rate.

Finally, the clause “…where they produce effects worth more two or more mana than the than the turn count …”, appears to issue the demand to produce four mana on turn two, or five mana on turn three, or six on turn four, and so on. That is nearly accurate. However, the requirement is somewhat more nuanced. Tapping a Swamp to cast Dark Ritual results in the addition of four mana, but only three mana worth of effect will be produced—the effect of whatever is cast using the three Black mana derived from Dark Ritual itself. Relatedly, some decks will opt not to produce more mana, but rather to produce effects at a discount. Sapphire Medallion et al. are a perfectly valid means of working toward this goal—given that the mana savings is more likely than not to put the controller two turns ahead. Cards which offer a means to reduce their own cost should be evaluated with that in mind, but will need to be evaluated heuristically on a card-by-card basis. Obviously, a card like Tasigur, the Golden Fang should not cost a single Black mana—you are probably getting an actual savings of two or more mana if you cast him at that price. By contrast, Emry, Lurker of the Loch costing a single Blue might only be an actual savings of one or so from the retail price of her effects, when you get down to brass tacks. You are encouraged to use your best judgment on this point.

Hypergeometric calculators are also useful for assessing this point. (8) For quick reference, a deck with thirteen spells which put a player ahead single mana (e.g. most mana rocks) has a forty-nine-point-one percent chance to draw five of those cards in the first twelve draws from their deck—the number of cards a player will typically have drawn by the end of their fifth turn.

Because this point begs for unconventional solutions, I will present multiple examples. My partner’s Jodah, Archamage Eternal deck earns this point in an unconventional way—it is more likely than not to cast Jodah on turn four, then cast a spell with CMC seven or greater on turn five. This potentially thirteen mana worth of effect comes before turn twelve, and the test is satisfied. Similarly, my Derevi, Empyrial Tactician deck features many, many permanents that tap for two or more mana. By untapping any one of these the turn Derevi enters the battlefield, the mana source can be used to cast another spell that same turn—the deck, more often than not, jumps two turns ahead the turn Derevi enters the battlefield. Finally, Muldrotha, the Gravetide features fast mana, conventional ramp, and a number of tutors for Sol Ring, all of which contribute to the deck, more often than not, playing two turns ahead by turn five. Each of these three decks earns this point.

By contrast, my Ghave, Guru of Spores deck runs very few ramp cards, preferring instead to spend the development phase installing synergy pieces which will begin working once Ghave begins creating and sacrificing Saprolings. These cards, theoretically, all factor their effects into their own costs, so while the resulting machine quickly produces value in the mid- to late-game, rarely does any piece enter the battlefield two or more turns early. The deck fails to earn this point.

7. Does your deck produce reliable card advantage?

It is a simple observational matter that in the standard four-player game of Commander, you draw only one card for every three cards drawn by an opponent. This means that, relative to all potential aggressors, you are disadvantaged by a margin of two cards per turn.

In any other format, this would spell doom for your chances for victory. Because of the social dynamics of the typical game of Commander, it is unlikely that you will need to deal with your opponent’s cards on a three-for-one basis to come out on top. Nevertheless, it never hurts to prepare for the worst and begin to level the playing field. For that reason, a powerful deck will need reliable sources of card advantage. While it is difficult to prescribe a precise metric which captures such a monolithic concept, this point will be awarded if your deck is more likely than not to generate three cards worth of card advantage by the end of its sixth turn.

As many have recognized throughout the years, card advantage comes in many forms. (9) It can be internal card advantage, where one or more of your cards is used to gain access to a greater number of cards (e.g. Divination). Alternatively, it can come in the form of external card advantage, where one or more of your cards is used to answer a greater number of your opponents’ cards (e.g. Decimate). Either is fine for earning this point, so long as the external card advantage proves itself reliably available. Playing ten pieces of mass-removal for artifacts, for example, will mean you can reliably destroy four artifacts by turn five—but if you aren’t consistently able to find enough targets, the card advantage cannot be relied upon for the purposes of this point.

This point uses activity in the first five turns as a prediction for the entire game. Recognizing that this is not necessarily accurate, it is my belief that it will hold true in an extremely large majority of cases. It is hard to envision a deck that is fifty percent likely to create three cards worth of card advantage in the first five turns, but which will then be unable to continue that trend in the next five turns. By playing enough cards that present the opportunity for card advantage that it becomes more likely than not that you will see them in the first five turns, it is difficult to see how the cards you draw over the rest of the game would be unlikely to present that same opportunity. With that said, there are a lot of variables inherent to any attempt to quantify card advantage, and this relatively modest benchmark will nevertheless bear the appearance of high card advantage at most tables.

My Feather, the Redeemed deck earns this point by running over a dozen removal spells and half a dozen cantrips, none of which are lost while Feather is on the battlefield. In an average game, the deck can draw cards and remove threats with no loss of cards from hand. My Derevi deck, by contrast, fails to earn this point. While it does contain cards which I can tap repeatedly to multiple cards in a single turn, they require attacking creatures to reuse, they are not numerous enough to be drawn reliably, and they are not a high enough priority for me to consistently cast them on or before my sixth turn.

8. Does your deck significantly interact with opponents’ play patterns?

A deck that can win quickly is all well and good, but it won’t have much recourse against a deck that can win quicker—at least not without disruption. A deck’s winrate will be greatly increased by the inclusion of spot removal, board wipes, counterspells, hand disruption, and any and all other means of ensuring that your opponents’ plans are foiled. (10) A deck with little besides an excess of answers can fend off far more powerful decks for many turns, and that extra time might be enough to set off a winning combo or grind out a Voltron win. With that in mind, this point is earned by any deck which runs thirteen or more relevant pieces of selective or mass removal. 

There are some terms in the forgoing sentence which beg definition. Selective removal takes the form of targeted “destroy” or “exile” effects, counterspells, discard effects which offer a choice to the caster, cards which neutralize a particular card (e.g. Pithing Needle) or any other effect which could conceivably make a specific problem card into a non-problem for a significant period of the game. Mass removal takes the form of “destroy all” or “exile all” effects, effects that force a player to discard all or most of their hand, exiling all cards from a graveyard, stax pieces which neutralize all cards of some description (e.g. Collector Ouphe) or any other effect which takes all or most cards of some description from one zone and neutralizes them.

Based on this description, you likely have unanswered questions. Are “bounce” spells (e.g. Cyclonic Rift) removal? Narrow counterspells? Cards that exile only one or two cards from a graveyard? That depends. The cards which count for this point must be relevant removal—that is, they must remove things that you are likely to need removed, and they must remove them for the amount of time you need them gone. If the tempo loss to your opponent from your bounce spell is sufficient to create your opening to victory, it is relevant. If exiling a single card from a graveyard forestalls a game-ending combo, it is relevant. And so on. Naturally, this means that it is difficult to be entirely certain that your deck actually runs thirteen relevant pieces of removal, and it guarantees that the same thirteen cards could satisfy the point at one table and not at another. For that reason, this point does require some generalized player experience. Fortunately, the average Commander game has enough in common with even the most extreme outlier that most players have some sense for what will be relevant at a completely unknown table.

My Ghave, Guru of Spores deck is built as a control deck, can disrupt multiple opponents simultaneously, and earns this point with exactly thirteen cards. While the deck does not feature any instants or sorceries, the Saprolings and +1/+1 counters produced by Ghave can fuel repeatable removal for all permanent types, as well as discard effects to suppress spellslinging decks. While the deck has a standard setup which I use for most games, I also carry a ten-card sideboard with the deck, which contains card which challenge particular strategies. Given that my opponents are up to the challenge, this sideboard ensures the slots devoted to interaction are not just relevant to Commander games at large, but relevant to the particular game we are playing.

My Patron of the Moon deck is on its own plan full-time. While some Moonfolk have disruptive payouts, the deck is mostly interested in protecting its mana-doubling pieces, drawing cards, tutoring, and threatening a solitaire win at the earliest possible opening. It fails to earn this point.

9. Is your deck capable of withstanding interaction by your opponents?

Perhaps the most ethereal criterion on this list, this point springs from the premise that threatening a win is good, but protecting that win with a Counterspell or a Teferi’s Protection is better. There are lots of ways to make a deck resilient: leveraging mechanics like Hexproof and Indestructible to make your threats harder to remove, having counterspells available to stop your opponents’ removal, or having recursion for when your pieces get removed. If your deck is commonly the aggressor, disruptions to your opponent’s plan (especially their mana development) might be disruptive enough to preclude them disrupting your plans. If your deck relies on your commander to execute its plan, single-body protection for it can constitute protection sufficient for this purpose as well.

It is sometimes difficult (and other times not) to say with specificity what cards count toward this tally, especially where those cards can serve a dual function of removal or protection. The bottom line is that your deck will earn this point if six or more slots are devoted to any combination of proactive protection of your plan and defensive counter-play. Alternatively, commanders who are inherently protective will earn you this point, given that you are running the kinds of cards your commander inherently protects.

My partner’s Ezuri deck earns this point by having a small suite of counterspells and effects that grant Shroud or Hexproof. The deck can usually sandbag answers to shake off a piece of removal or two on the turns where it really matters, and can seize the opportunity to close out the game through disruption on these key turns.

My partner’s Eight-and-a-Half-Tails deck earns this point by caveat. The commander itself is such that the deck will never want for a response to removal that gets pointed at its permanents.

My Derevi, Empyrial Tactician deck fails to get this point. The deck relies on late-game card draw, avoiding the command tax, and efficient interactions between Derevi and token producers to rebuild after board wipes, but when an opponent presents that board wipe, the deck takes the hit right on the chin. Since the deck offers no agile counter-play to the humble Wrath of God, it fails to earn this point.

10. Does your deck have a critical mass of tutors?

Some players have all the luck. It’s tough to compete with the player who always seems to draw what he needs on the right turn, game after game after game. We can’t change our luck, but there’s something we can do to alleviate the problem: run tutors—cards that search for cards. (11) Playing a handful of tutors means that, in the average game, we will draw a card or two that will play as a modal spell with five, ten, twenty, or more modes. Put another way, by incorporating, say, six tutors in your deck, you have effectively made it so you are running seven copies of each card in your deck. A sufficient suite of tutors lets us draw exactly what we need, on the turn we need it. The more tutors the merrier, but if your deck has six tutors which are not mana development, your deck has earned this point.

The exception for tutors which only develop your mana is merely to point out that running Farseek and Prismatic Vista—cards which do technically search for other cards—does not get you any closer to this point. Those do contribute to a stronger deck, but they do so by facilitating earlier plays and more perfect color production. That is not to say, however, that cards that search for lands cannot count toward the six-card threshold. My Multrotha deck, for example, can sacrifice Expedition Map to search for color fixing and ramp, but can also search for card selection, combo pieces, removal, protection for the commander, and pillow fort pieces, as well.

This example is just one case which illustrates a broader principle for this point: general tutors like Demonic Tutor always count toward this point, but you will need to use some judgment to determine which of your narrow tutors have enough cards falling under their search conditions to count toward your six-card count. In general, a tutor which can search for mana development, a way to prevent you from losing, and a way to contribute to your deck’s win-plan is sufficiently diverse to count as one of your six tutors. If your tutor needs to find a second tutor to get to what you need, that is probably fine to count, too. If those lines are common, the mana inefficiency of such plays is accounted for in other locations on this list.

Under these criteria, tutors like Green Sun’s Zenith and Fabricate will count in most decks that are running them. Open the Armory and Trinket Mage, on the other hand, will require you to build your deck in such a way that there are searchable cards for a variety of situations. Ultimately, whether a card is a tutor will require you to appeal to your played experience.

Finally, Commanders which are tutors themselves will earn this point automatically, as long as your search targets make a diverse toolbox, as discussed above. The chance of “drawing” your commander is one hundred percent, which puts you in an even better position than six slots in the ninety-nine.

My partner’s Oona, Queen of the Fae deck is packed with conventional tutors, cards with Transmute, and narrow tutors with manicured toolboxes. It’s stuffed to the gills with cards that find other cards, and uses those other cards to ramp, control the board, and combo off. It earns this point to excess. In a less extreme example, my Kruphix, God of Horizons deck utilizes a number of tutors for colorless spells, creatures, Eldrazi, and so on. These tutor targets are the win conditions, interaction, and combo pieces of the list. The tutors make sure I always have the right haymaker for the job. It earns this point.

My Ghave, Guru of Spores deck is in a color identity which could run many, many tutors. It runs none. Because so many cards I enjoy playing with work so well with Ghave, I built the deck to force me to fit the square peg of any given hand into the round hole of the game I happen to be in. For that reason, the deck does not earn this point.

11. Is your deck a cEDH deck?

It’s no secret that there are folks attempting to “solve” Commander—and they’re doing a pretty good job of it. Anyone with an interest in doing so can find threads, primers, decklists, and videos highlighting the most efficient, effective strategies for taking down pods. (12) This subculture has considered every angle on every commander, has agonized over every card in the ninety-nine, and has honed the most lethal options to a razor’s edge. The most aggressive of these decks will consistently end the game before most decks finish ramping, and the control decks will unload streams of the game’s most efficient removal and Stax pieces as they march inexorably toward their combo finish. This approach to Commander is known as cEDH.

Any of these titans of the format will earn each of the first ten points, or will have a very, very compelling reason for not doing so. Since these scale-busting decks are exceptional, so too is this point. If your deck is, in significant portion, a known cEDH deck, your deck is an eleven-point deck, regardless of how many points it has earned up to now. Since playing a cEDH deck at a typical, non-competitive pod is considered bad form (unless everyone involved knowingly consents to a game of Archenemy), you must have a conversation about your deck’s power level with the table, even if you have made a few personal tweaks to the list or are saving up for one or two of the hundred dollar singles.

If you are at a table of similarly high-powered decks, the previous ten metrics will not help you distinguish between them. If you don’t already know how powerful your cEDH deck is when compared to its peers, you will need to consult a cEDH tier list as opined by one of the gurus of that well-defined metagame. I can be of little help, as none of my decks are even remotely in this stratum.

 Having gone through all eleven points, I urge you to bear in mind that this scale’s intended use is diagnostic. It is not intended to convey any value judgments about a deck. It is merely to facilitate meaningful pre-game conversation.

 For those curious, my decks rank as follows using this scale:

Ghave, Guru of Spores: 7

Patron of the Moon: 6

Kruphix, God of Horizons: 7

Muldrotha, the Gravetide: 8

Feather, the Redeemed: 6

Derevi, Empyrial Tactician: 6

 My partner’s decks rank as follows:

Ezuri, Claw of Progress: 5

Surrak Dragonclaw: 4

Oona, Queen of the Fae: 7

Eight-and-a-Half-Tails: 4

Jodah, Archmage Eternal: 7.

 It is noteworthy that many of the decks still fall into the six to eight range. This is because many of them have lost points in the tutor, ramp, and mana categories either by design or because of budget constraints—comparable decks without these factors could approach a nine or ten. More importantly, the scale offers concrete guidance into why the deck is only a six or only an eight. Because this scale has prompted me, I am aware of the fact that my Ghave deck is weaker for not having ramp or tutors. It can get early combo wins, but it requires its draw engines to find them, and it won’t stop you from stopping it. This qualitative description can temper opponents’ expectations before a game begins and provide some context when my deck that’s a “7” goes infinite on turn four.

(1) See https://mtgcommander.net/index.php/the-philosophy-of-commander/; see https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/commander-edh/809264-april-2019-banlist-rules-updates, but compare https://mtgcommander.net/index.php/rules/

(2) https://open.spotify.com/episode/6KmCuH6mvYpdF24dKxbqU0

(3) See https://edhrec.com/top/salt

(4) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au2FR_q6fh8

(5) https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-academy/managing-mana-screw-2007-04-28

(6) See https://www.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/articles/how-many-colored-mana-sources-do-you-need-to-consistently-cast-your-spells-a-guilds-of-ravnica-update/

(7) https://open.spotify.com/episode/4fTdxRRLTpzqVnXDBr26rU

(8) E.g. https://aetherhub.com/Apps/HyperGeometric

(9) https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/lo/basics-card-advantage-2014-08-25

(10) See generally https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/shaman-you-2008-03-24

(11) See https://commandertheory.com/post/188329252907/quantifying-color-power-rankings

(12) E.g. https://cedh-decklist-database.xyz/primary.html

Originally Posted April 12, 2020

#Commander Manifesto #Magic: the Gathering #Magic #MtG #MtGCommunity #MtGCommander #Commander #EDH #Conclusion #Call to Action

[signaturedish]

I really liked Detroit but didn’t get as much context? Maybe I’m just oblivious but could you explain it a bit more?

Let me just start out by saying I enjoyed playing DBH, I thought the fanon was fun, and any criticism I have toward the creators and the game have nothing to do with fans of the game.

You not agreeing with my perspective isn’t something you need to stress about. This is a no judgment zone.

THAT SAID. I could bitch about dbh for an eternity lol, it’s just a disaster on so many levels.

I’m going to regurgitate some points you can find carefully explained (with visual aid) in the Mother’s Basement video I linked in my other dbh post if you want to take a peek at that as well.

DBH is very clearly an allegory for minorities discriminated against in American history. It’s similar to Bright in how blatantly tied their metaphors are to American civil rights issues.

It’s in the rhetoric the rebel androids use, it’s in the symbolism you choose through Markus, it’s in the direct comparisons characters draw in-universe. Markus can (depending on your choices) paraphrase MLK on multiple occasions- one very memorably since in that same sentence he insinuates that humans are inherently inferior, violent, naturally opposed to harmony and will never accept them. Kind of the antithesis of what I Have a Dream stands for.

The fact that David Cage doesn’t seem to respect the references he’s using to communicate the android=minority idea to the audience is an issue all on its own without taking into account the world building.

Relating a fictional people’s suffering to a real one isn’t new at all. Even if it’s distasteful, it’s fast and effective shorthand to get an audience onboard with what is, in reality, a very socially complex issue that takes time to explore in a foreign society.

But David Cage’s world building is so poor- I’m pretty sure the world was built AROUND the shorthand and not the other way around. You can point to anything in the game to see this- laws and normalized behavior. Sale practices and common rhetoric. Almost every facet of the world hinges on logic that doesn’t make sense when ironed out.

It’s so incredibly flimsy when removed from the real world context it desperately needs to even camouflage as coherent that the writers straight up forgot to prove to the audience that androids are actually alive.

Sure- there’s a stupid twist ending where Amanda laughs maniacally and declares the entire revolution to be a conspiracy (which is so nonsensical I don’t even need to debunk it). But that’s a ‘treat’ for major fans to find.

The generic storyline most players see requires you function under the assumption that androids are alive to receive good endings and positive reinforcement (like from menu girl). This isn’t a major hiccup for players because the androids are so heavily related to real minorities and their suffering is so comically malicious that most people follow along and empathize. But that doesn’t mean it’s not one of the biggest failures you can possibly achieve as a writer for this kind of story- they didn’t even seem interested in trying to justify the androids’ humanity. They just are.

It’s only if you’ve already accepted them as Jewish analogs ala armbands and concentration camps that you consider shooting murderous janitor and prostitute androids immoral and not on par with unplugging a rogue lawn mower.

The only suggestion offered in the general storyline besides waking up with a soul is that it’s a virus that simulates emotions androids are not equipped for. Considering the amount of androids snapping and murdering people without remorse, the existence of a self destruct rather than an emergency shut off or reboot like virtually every other tech device on the planet, and that Markus spreads ‘emancipation’ through a wireless transfer- randomly growing a soul seems the lesser probability here.

So here we’ve got a civil rights allegory that is missing the point of the real world message and movement when it’s not actively insulting minorities by simply existing. And its conclusion fails to prove that androids have humanity, which implies so many ugly things about the oppressed people used for the initial comparison.

And I’m pretty sure it was all one big accident because no one editing thought to mention how Not Cute it is to explicitly tie the struggle of black people in America to naturally subservient inhuman laborers. :/

It’s 2 am and I’m probably rambling now so I’ll stop here. Thanks for asking, hope you can understand my complaints about their total abuse of context now even if you may not agree with me.

#jeez i hope that made sense #i stopped myself before i could bounce back to praising connors route as being mostly clean of sin #he doesnt sprout a soul #he has much more agency in his character arc compared to the others #anon ask #sd speaks #dbh #detroit become human #markus #connor #kara #david cage #criticism

[cruddyborderlandstheories]

“So Happy Together” Analysis

i don’t sleep

tl;dr: tbh not much to go off on about. i think we see a new skin for Iron Bear, one with some stripes. amara smiles, i do talk a little bit about little sisters in bioshock but tbh i think this was all just a stylistic choice lol. oh and handsome jack’s masks- probably Mount Jackmore. i don’t want to get to freaked out over jack returning, but damn gearbox lol u had me there for a second. im pretty sure it’s just a reused cut quest from bl2 that they never got to implement. 

EDIT: here’s all the cut content in bl2 (plus all the non-cut content as well for funsies). you can go to the cut quests and see the audio files for claptrap’s jackmore quest

holy shit can i just vomit all my emotions rn, they’re all good so imma do that so im rational when i start analyzing stuff okay? okay! 

holy shit that was fucking great and im really glad i tempered my expectations to something smaller than i thought because i feel bad for people expecting something huge, i was under the assumption we’d be getting a new mechanic that was like ‘choose ur +1 and they’ll be able to play the game with you if you’re both online even if they don’t have the game’ which was what someone said on reddit. altho im sure the poor company is gonna get spammed now with hate like ‘WTF YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE BUILT THIS UP AAAA’. not to lie, i was slightly disappointed it wasn’t a longer stream, but i mean if they’ve got nothing to announce, they’ve got nothing to announce and HEY! new trailer!!! gonna be combing thru on the assumption this has some easter eggs like the MoM trailer did, just in case. i thought it was a cute trailer, gearbox never explicitly said what it was gonna be, a lot people all just assumed what was gonna happen was a demo/beta which sucks so i hope this doesn’t negatively impact people’s perspective of the game. im staying off reddit for now bc when i first checked it people were pretty pissed and i dun need that negativity lmao

okay! emotions are LOCKED behind closed doors. i am shifting into study mode. here we go boys/girls/those of us who know better. haven’t done one of these in a while, let’s see if im rusty at all.

claptrap! and the skull on the chair which reminds me of tyreen’s “favorite skull”. 

tv says “we are under attack, please stand by”

and afaik claptrap is near the beginning of the game, you can see part of the recruitment center behind him when the camera pans.

im thinking there might be something in the roses, specifically the hand-drawn roses later on in the trailer. will be keeping an eye open for that.

this is specifically a jakobs brand chest. i really like the see-through aesthetic of it

intro area of the game again. possible hint to the opening cutscene? tbh i was worried that’s what we were about to get because i haven’t finished the roughs of my mock up lol

so what i didn’t notice my first time through is that you can then see claptrap, also being shown in the chest

waving up at the camera. that’s not trippy at all or anything lol

this car in the foreground (with no one driving it, mind you)

randomly combusts, looking quite like elpis in that one shot of the claptrap presents pandora trailer. wonder if that means it’s gonna ‘splode.

ohhh it spins. please no spin imma get motion sick blech

shot of some cultists. one appears to have a jetpack near the bottom right there

another explosion to the beat

the shock wave!!!! that’s awesome

shock nomads cultists are back. f in chat for our shields

another cultist seconds before he gets blown to bits

it cuts to black for a secco as it moves thru said explosion

another cultist, i assume a psycho

finally some good fucking angles

heh.

idk what i expected from someone who’s first action skill line i ever heard was them shouting MAGIC WALL!!! TAAAADAAAAAAAAH

as a side note

who is shooting those lasers

we see them coming from behind the VHs, but

there’s nothing there

SPOOKY~

they’re coming from... the wall???

tfw u shot urself in the foot on accident

amara is not amused

`is this some human custom i don’t understand yet`

also i hate that i’ve done this exact dance before when i took dance classes as a kid

with less style of course, i was like 7

moze is into it, hell yeah

this reminds me a lot of Kingsman. where all the blood is like fireworks and stuff. i wonder if that has anything to do with the psycho brainwashing. like little sisters in bioshock. they see roses instead of blood, right? maybe there’s something like that going on with the psychos

i’d certainly hope our vault hunters aren’t brainwashed, anyway.

this dude looking SHOCKED to see that tho, lmfao

i relate to this man on a spiritual level i stg

man he looks pissed

omfg lol

“um”

“i guess this is okay”

the body language in this is gold i am just having the time of my life

adsfdgfhgjhgfk

this is so cute

also in retrospect, i think this is one of the turrets we see on promethea. i wonder what it’s doing here!

moze u ok?

oh nvm she’s into it, look at her! she’s dancing! She’s Dancin’!

oooo one of the robots from the we are mayhem trailer! okay you can totally see why i think they’re jakobs, RIGHT???

iirc this is a maliwan soldier

man this is a crossover event, isn’t it?

i get it now. togetherness. i gotchu gearbox.

some maliwan ships in the sky. possibly sanc-iii on the right? or a ship of the same model as sanc-iii!

this is a magitek dropship, change my mind

eh, they both start with M, fuck it.

no idea what fl4k is doing here

mayyyybe shielding themselves from the ‘firework’/confetti shower

i like that the confetti explosions are backed up by purple, you know like eridium/slag/siren powers. seriously, maybe this is just how to cultists see us Vault Hunters and the mass murder.

at the very least, the psychos.

fl4k’s into it. i wish we knew the name of their skag, if it has one. i hope it does.

well now the lasers are coming from the other side! what the hell

moving on

i think this is the HBC from the speakers, plus im pretty sure that skull and the stained glass are the entrance to mouthpiece’s arena

we also get a different colored explosion. im paranoid jack is somehow making a return (please god no), so i’ll just note it’s the same color as his eyes.

AND the chests are vomiting out gold guns, which i think, gold-plated gear, is the cult’s way of signifying standing. which im sure is a tongue-in-cheek commentary as gearbox gives out a gold weapon pack as a pre-order bonus. no, like, it even shows up as an ad on the video

smh gearbox lmao

oh, also, the cultists are doing fuckin flying impressions

im not saying its a reference to the cultist with rakk wings on the cover, buuuut

bitch it might be lol

it’s an upside-down vault symbol! ive been trying to figure out what that is in those screens for the longest time!

back on promethea and we get to see fl4k’s spiderant in action

their skag, too, of course

the jabbermon in the back there, too! i wonder if they’re going to be shock or cryo. i would imagine shock given how they’re glowing

also i love the way the flowers look in contrast to the character models

moze is so happy aw

i love the way fl4k’s skag comes flying in and slides to a stop. such a good doggo ;-;

this is beautiful, i want it as a wallpaper

moze skipping? holy shit

100% verified the best thing i’ve ever seen

i lied. this is.

is this the fast travel station effect?

also! IB is looking a bit different

i wonder if this is a redesign or if IB is wearing a new skin moze picked out

pan over to zane who clearly doesn’t notice the being of darkness and horror in the doorway

oh also, we’re on eden-6 now. which would explain the fast travel effect

psychos dancing on the rooftops lol

oh god my eyes

nothing to really say here, i just like this screenshot

pink shields booyah

this is so fucking cute

we also get a better look at that one facility on eden-6

is that... red i see? >w> i won’t say it i won’t i won’t say it i swear i just- ATLAS

fuck

i like that zane’s clone spawns with his melee attachment

not AS excited as the real life version though

GB pls let this be a zane emote

is that a varkid? on eden-6?

wtf is a varkid doing on eden-6???

more shots of the facility btw. reminds me a lot of sanc-iii so maybe this actually is the supamax mfg construction facility like i originally thought. hmmmmmmm

ah yes, of course

holy shit what is this a reference to?

im told it’s the sex pistols

the back of the bullet turns into Athenas

pans in

amara!

enemy with a top hat on. some variation of/upgraded gravedigger? it’s like a psycho but recolored with blue pants and a top hat. you can see it fall off when amara shoots him

y’know, these guys

some rakk in the background

i am hoping bc this is a celebration of togetherness we’re seeing all enemies everywhere, not that the planets don’t have their own unique fauna.

she’s so happy omfg

oh, you want some?

Uhhh then there’s THIS sequence

they’re doing the flying thing again lmao

there’s also whatever that black blob is on the left. a spaceship maybe?

car wheel

all their eyes started glowing red. uh oh gamers

also another fast travel effect

hmmmm... zarpedon is that you??

back on pandora.

“super 87 racetrack”, maybe this is near that motorcade fast travel we saw?

huzzah! rainbows!

i do believe that’s sanctuary-iii

another ship. drop ship?

elpis is looking nice this time of year. definitely not explode-y. yet.

pret-ty sure that’s iron bear. moze is standing atop the tower lmao

also! back to it’s old paint scheme. looks like moze was using a skin or smth

we also have this. are my eyes failing me or is that a big cross on the left? could be where jack was buried. 

also i know there was cut content in bl2 about Mount Jackmore! and this looks like a Mount Jackmore to me. it’s a cut quest where claptrap asks you to basically ruin the thing. but since the quest was cut, it’s still here in bl3. maybe they’ll reintegrate the quest lol

i can’t imagine it being roland’s gravesite. because it looks like the below.

i do know we’re going to roland’s grave in bl3, but the statues don’t really match up. maybe it is and the statues were broken, or ruined or something and replaced by a cross. could be then that the gravesite was defaced with, well, the guy that killed him. 

im really hoping jack doesn’t make a return. im fine with dealing with what he set in motion, and his influence, and probably even some ECHO logs and movie trailers, but please, for the love of god, don’t actually bring him back, AI or otherwise. im really excited for the calypso twins, i’d really hate to see the focus shift back to that guy. he’s had his fingers in every borderlands game. it’s time to let him go.

idk what this is exactly. it looks like maybe that weird eye bot troy stands next to in the intro for the behind closed doors panel?

goodbye mr magical jakobs chest, it’s been real

the RC now has red drapes going down it. have those always been there? i don’t remember those

hmmmmmmmmm maybe we’re looking at it from the back 🤔

anyway, that’s all she wrote. i haven’t see any hidden morse code messages or anything yet, but if something surfaces, i’ll be sure to add it here.

#borderlands #bl3 #borderlands 3 #so happy together trailer #oof #tumblr fought me on posting this like 7 times

[ebaeschnbliah]

SCANDINAVIAN  REFERENCES

________________________________________________________________

In Sherlock BBC - and also a little bit outside of it 

While writing on DISTRACTION & CONSEQUENCES and CABIN ON THE MEADOW, involving Phil with his ‘explosive’ car and the Hiker with the bashed-in head, I couldn’t fail to notice that Phil’s unmoving car is a SAAB … which is a Swedish brand. 

According to the informations given during the promotion campaingn for the Escapre Room, TheGameIsNow, Sherlock lives currently in Sweden. Since these aren’t the only occasions where Scandinavian regions are mentioned in Sherlock BBC, the suspicion inevitably arose that those references could be of some importance. Reason enough to make another little list. :)

TBC below the cut ….

Short definition of Scandinavia

The term Scandinavia in local usage covers the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. 

In English usage, Scandinavia also sometimes refers to the Scandinavian Peninsula, or to the broader region including Finland and Iceland.  x

A Scandal in Belgravia

As mentioned above, Phil’s immobile car, which ‘explodes’ and thus distracts the Hiker who, as a consequence, is killed by his own boomerang, is of the Swedish brand SAAB. 

The Empty Hearse

Mr. Howard Shilcott, the ‘train guy (and mirror for Sherlock), possesses important informations about the Underground station at Sumatra Road, which once was built but then closed before it ever opened. He wears a ‘funny hat with earflaps’ made of Islandic sheep wool. That hat becomes an object of significance when Sherlock invites his brother to play deductions with him, just like in the old days.

MYCROFT: The earlier patches are extensively sun-bleached, so he’s worn it abroad – in Peru. SHERLOCK: Peru? MYCROFT: This is a chullo – the classic headgear of the Andes. It’s made of alpaca. SHERLOCK: No. MYCROFT: No? SHERLOCK: Icelandic sheep wool. Similar, but very distinctive if you know what you’re looking for. I’ve written a blog on the varying tensile strengths of different natural fibres.

His Last Vow

The main villain of this episode is designed after Doyle’s British character Charles Augustus Milverton. For some reason, in this adaptation, name and origin of the man have been changed into Charles Augustus Magnussen, who is now from Denmark. The fact that he is ‘foreign’ is driven home explicitly right at the beginning of the episode by the dialogue as well as the accent of the man, who is played by Danish actor Lars Mikkelsen.

GARVIE: Do you think it right that a newspaper proprietor, a private individual and, in fact, a foreign national should have such regular access to our Prime Minister? MAGNUSSEN: I don’t think it’s wrong that a private individual should accept an invitation. However, you have my sincere apologies for being foreign.

The Six Thatchers

Mr. Kingsley, a client, thinks that Sherlock’s deductions, once explained, are actually dead simple. Highly annoyed, Sherlock spontaneously invents a ludicrous story and tells the shocked man that his wife is actually Greta Bengtsdotter, Swedish by birth and the most dangerous spy in the world. She secretly works for none other than James Moriarty and uses her unsuspecting husband as cover to hide her true intentions which will finally precipitate in World War III. 

The first location Mary visits on her hiatus is Norddal in Norway. That’s a small place (ca. 1660 inhabitants) deep inside the Storfjord. Here she picks up a fake passport hidden inside the stonewall of a coastal watchtower. Her new name, Gabrielle Ashdown, is taken from TPLOSH, where Holmes chooses the pseudonym ‘Mr. and Mrs. Ashdown’ for himself and Gabrielle Valladon, the woman who consulted him in the case of her missing husband but is actually Ilse von Hofmannsthal, a German spy who pretends to be Mrs. Valladon. 

The Final Problem

One of the very last scenes of this episode shows a man dressed as Viking, including the (cliched) horned helmet. He lies motionless on the floor in the livingroom of 221b Baker Street (played by Paul Weller). John bends over him and examines his left eye. 

Vikings were highly skilled Norse seafarers who raided and pillaged (like pirates) with their infamous longboats (also well known as dragonboats). They acted as mercenaries but also as merchants, who traded goods across wide areas of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, European Russia and the North Atlantic islands. Some of them even reached the North-Eastern coast of North America. (X)

That Viking is not the only character in this story who ‘wears horns’. Furthermore, cow horns are also connected to the eye-goddess Hathor, whose other, dangerous side is represented by lioness goddess Sekhmet.

The way this Viking lays there … one leg sharply angled at the knee, the foot shoved beneath the other, outstretched leg and both arms straight beside his torso … it’s a bit odd and strangely reminds me of the ‘dancing men’ drawn on the blackboard in the shot displayed immediately before this one. It almost looks like the way this man lies there could have some meaning. 

And something else comes to mind: the way John bends over the Viking stunningly resembles the scene from Magnussen’s office in HLV, when Sherlock got shot by Mary. One could even say, there are three potential ‘pirates’ gathered in Magnusson’s bedroom in that scene ... Sherlock, John and ‘Viking descendent’ Magnussen. Interesting ...

The Game is Now - Escape Room Promotion

With the cliffhanger of The Final Problem in mind and still no official announcement regarding a fifth series on the horizon, one could come to the assumption that the ‘TheGameIsNow- EscapeRoom’ event serves as a sort of interlude and somehow resembles a ‘SherlockBBC-Hiatus’ (hopefully). Isn’t it interesting that here too, Scandinavia seems to play a role?

During the conversation with Mycroft, in the intercepted message Nr 1, Sherlock mentions that he currently is in Sweden. 

During the intercepted message Nr 2 a map of Scandinavia is shown in the background with informations regarding its natural recources: iron ore, copper, zinc, gold, IKEA and uranium. 

Additionally Mycroft confirms a second time where his brother might be found at the moment: ‘Missing, rumoured to be in Sweden’ is written below a picture of Sherlock, kept in black and white, but temporarily overlaid with pink and green  (Study in Pink and Green)

Scandinavian canon reference regarding the ‘hiatus’

In Doyle’s original story The Empty House, Sherlock Holmes tells Dr. Watson after their reunion that, for some time during his hiatus, he had stayed in Norway under a fake identity. 

“You may have read of the remarkable explorations of a Norwegian named Sigerson, but I am sure that it never occurred to you that you were receiving news of your friend.” (ACD, The Empty House)

Using Sherlock’s own words from The Great Game, one could say that, by now, the story told in Sherlock BBC as well as the EscapeRoom event have a …  ‘distinctly Scandinavian feeling about it’.  :)

Some Scandinavian side notes outside Sherlock BBC

Not Sherlock related. Should be taken with caution and humor: 

Radio Times, November 2018:  Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss reveale that Danish actor Claes Bang will be playing Dracula in their new series. ‘Hell has a new boss’ says the headline. Strictly speaking, the boss in Hell is generally considered to be the Devil (maybe also his grandma :) but surely not Dracula, who is after all just a human who desired immortal strength to protect and revenge the ones whom he loved. At least, that’s the story told in ….

Dracula Untold  (2014) -  some quotes:

"One day I will call on you to serve me in an immortal game of revenge … to unleash my wrath against the one who betrayed me."

“This is not a game!”

"Oh, what better way to endure eternity. For this, is the ultimate game. Light versus dark, hope versus despair. And all the world's fate hangs into the balance." 

Vlad Dracula meets his creator         Let the games begin

“You want me to shake hands with you in Hell? I shall not disappoint you.“  (Sherlock at Jim Moriarty, TRF)

How Dracula BBC came into being

“It came about several years ago,” Gatiss said. “We were filming  — we’d just started the third series of Sherlock, where he comes back from the dead, and we had to break off after two days to go to the RTS Awards (March, 2013) and I had a picture on my phone of Benedict silhouetted against the door of Mrs Hudson’s room. I showed it to Ben Stephenson, who was then the Head of Drama [at the BBC], and I said, ‘Looks like Dracula’. And he said, ‘Do you want to do it?'”  (RadioTimes, April 2019)

“We’re gonna go all Dane“

The same article from RadioTimes, contains an interview with Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. When asked about their upcomming mini-series ‘Dracula’, if there will be more ‘homegrown talents’ among the cast, the producers answered the question in their most familiar way - with lots of laughter and giggling - obviously taking much pleasure in the announcement of their new ‘informations’.

“No, no ..., it’s strictly Dane from now on. We're only casting over Denmark. I don’t think Denmark’s being sufficiently represented and so we’re gonna go all Dane.”  

Strictly Danes …. well, well …. I’m more curious than ever ... and extremely exited!  :))))  

On Scandinavian name-giving tradition

It is a well known custom in Scandinavian regions to create personal names based on the given name of one’s father, grandfather or male ancestor by adding the ending -son/-sen/-søn or -dotter/-dottir/-dattir. This is called a patronymic (while the same method based on the mother’s name is called matronymic). A good example for this in Sherlock BBC is the character Charles Augustus Magnussen …. Magnus-sen = son of Magnus. 

This kind of Scandinavian name-giving tradition is based entirely on first names. Just assuming though, this method would also be applied to last names, then ... a female descendent of someone with the family name ‘Bang’ could be named ... ‘Bangsdotter’. :)))

A last funny detail:  the subtitles for Sherlock BBC, Series 4 (British Edition), display the name of the famous Swedish spy, Sherlock invents in TST, as Greta Bengsdotter. The correct spelling of the first name of Greta’s father (used here as patronymic) isn’t Beng though …. but Bengt.

Bengt (female, Bengta) is the Swedish equivalent of … Benedict.   :)))

As I said above ... to be taken with caution and humor.  :)))))

Thanks @callie-ariane for the scripts.    Related post by @tendergingergirl

Mai 2019

#scandinavian references #sherlock bbc #the game is now #escape room #scandinavia #sweden #norway #denmark #iceland #dracula untold #hell has a new boss #let the games begin #this is not a game #vlad dracula

[poorvioletdraws]

Tom vs. The Underworld

Chapter 1 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10

Chapter 2: Santeria, Part 1

I had been moping at home in our kingdom for two days before I decided to leave. No matter how many video games, or ping-pong matches, or the numerous times I hurled pear grenades at Petey as we played dodgeball, I just couldn’t stop thinking about how I left Star on the day we should’ve left for our trip together. My parents were away discussing business matters with the Pigeon Kingdom so that ruled out me talking to anyone about my problems. Brian’s expertise was anger management, and I wasn’t particularly angry over anything that counting backwards from ten would resolve. And Petey is loyal and all, but he doesn’t quite get it. So I decided to just go wherever the road led me and my skeleton horse-drawn carriage.

I picked up my “Alphonse the Worthy’s Atlas of the Multiverse” and started turning its pages. The titular sea captain had documented many dimensions throughout the universe that I thought would be a great starting point for Star and I to choose where to visit on our first getaway. All she had to do was pick one--any one. But she didn’t circle anything. And there were SO many dimensions we could have seen together. There’s the Underwater Dimension, Pixtopia, and even the Plains of Time where Father Time literally maintains time! There’s the Desert Dimension, home of the universe’s best hot dog, the Goblin Dog—I’ve always wanted to try one. There is even the Crystal Dimension where all the renowned, most evilest of beings are imprisoned; sounds pretty metal if you ask me! 

I let out a sigh and closed the book. I sat it down on the table next to the throne chair I had been slumped in and rubbed my fingers to my temple irritated. Was none of those worlds just not interesting to her, or was she hiding the fact that she already had been there before… with Marco?

I pulled myself up and decided to brood over by the window of my carriage for a change. My skeleton horse trotted along a mountainous volcanic region of the Underworld, towing my caravan behind it. I had been travelling for two days now and I didn’t really know where I was headed, I just knew I wanted to get away and go anywhere at this point. I wanted to clear my mind and give Star space. I wanted to see something new. Star and I both would be seeing something new right now if it all worked out. But now I’m travelling through my homeland, the same old Underworld where I have lived all my life. 

Granted, this was a region I had barely been in. My family would travel by portals to get to Lava Lake so we wouldn’t have to waste time travelling the hard way. This area was a divider between the lake and Prickly Plains, where the demon city of my common people resided. I don’t know why I decided to take the long trek through, it just felt like something I had to do. Plus, the change of scenery was not too bad. There were mountains of all sizes and volcanoes oozing out its molten rock like blood from a wound. The path I was on was decorated with charred skulls and skeletons, probably of tourists who foolishly came to the Underworld without a firesuit or any other form of protection from the burst of flames that would emit from the earth spontaneously. But no matter how cool the sight was, I couldn’t stop thinking about Star.

I wanted Star to be with me right now. I wanted her to finally start having fun and enjoy being a teenager for once. She no longer had any obligations to the Butterfly throne. She was done with being a princess and wanted to be free. But I can’t help to think that maybe she wanted to be free from everything that pertained to that aspiration. And since I am a prince, that included me being apart of what held her back as well. 

“Ugh! What does she want me to do? It may be easy for her to just give it all up, but not for me.” I groaned as I rested my chin in the palm of my hand and leaned on the windowsill with my elbow. The Lucitor throne is what I’ve always known to be mine one day. I was proud of it--being a prince. It is my path and something I accept for myself. But I should accept what she wants for herself too. I finally got a second chance for Star and I to be together and I don’t want it to end over me being upset or letting my emotions get in the way again.

Without warning, my skeleton horse halted its pace abruptly and I shifted about on my feet. “Why have we stopped?” I said aloud.

I opened the door of my carriage and stepped out to see where I had ended up. I first noticed a humongous mountain a mile or so before me with bats and vultures dotting the sky around it. It was the tallest point in the Underworld--The Mountain of Boom. And seated within the mountain’s col was what looked to be a small town. There were a few buildings and residences built in to the mountain range as other structures came to the center of its valley. A crowd of demons bustling around a busy marketplace was the forefront of the town that lay ahead. It actually was a wicked sight to behold. The perfect place to get distracted.

I looked up to read the large entrance sign in the shape of a traditional Japanese shrine gateway that I was standing under. “Yomi Town”. Never heard of it. There were a lot of civilians around for it being in a remote location so it must have some interesting secrets behind it.

“Guess I’ll have a look around, not much else to do.” I said while placing my hands in my pockets and walking through the torii. “Get comfortable, skeleton horse.”

“Yes, Master Tom.” My horse uttered from behind me.

I strolled through the town’s marketplace engrossed in fascination. Not only was it loud, but it was crazy busy. Demons and monsters littered the streets haggling over shop items or enjoying the many varieties of food selections to be had. There were handcrafted weapons laid out on embroidered mats and decorative wares such as plates, bowls, clothes, and jewelry all being presented by its sellers to their intrigued buyers. I saw street performers dancing with basilisk boas while others blew fire from their mighty jaws to create authentic glass art. Customers were entering and exiting restaurants, ordering at side carts, or walking around eating their delicacies in order to not miss anything the market had to offer. There was even cute little cerberus puppies on display in the window of a pet store. I just had to check those out!

The little monstrous pups with three heads were tumbling and pawing at each other without a care in the world. I pressed my hands up against the window to admire their adorableness further. There were five of them altogether and they were practically identical. Their jet black fur was smooth and their red eyes shone brightly as they tussled with their siblings. One of the multi-headed canines finally noticed me and came up to the window. It looked up at me with its six big eyes and gave me a tiny fanged smile, wagging its tail playfully. It was so cute!

However, despite all of the excitement, my hand idly returned to its previous location in my pocket and held on to my compact phone. I began to wonder what Star was up to right now. Not being able to text her nonstop was one of the hardest things about this time away. She hadn’t called me since I left, come to think of it. Did she even care where I went? I wonder where she ended up going to… Probably Earth, I bet… Who am I kidding, I know she did…

I closed my eyes and pulled my other hand away from the glass and back into the adjacent pocket of my leather jacket. I sighed as I felt the depression returning. Even though I’m far away from her, I still can’t forget about Star...

“P-Prince Tom?” I heard a feathery voice float through the noise of the multitude of monsters and rest upon my ears. Her voice was familiar and inviting, I knew I heard it some time before. And although it was soft, it was as if everything around us seemed to hush for the female demon that stood a few feet from me.

She was a teenager like me, an assumption I gathered from her appearance. She had gray skin with patches of what resembled small rocklike fragments dotting portions of the parts of her body that was shown. Her golden eyes mirrored the sunlight and her somewhat disheveled scarlet hair spread out like a bird’s wing. But only the right side of her tresses were visible as the left side was concealed by the hood of her black sleeveless sweatshirt she had on under her shoulderless jean jacket. Her dark blue denim shorts were high-waisted and her white knee-high combat-style boots were scuffed from extensive use perhaps. 

I remembered her. She was the delivery girl for that store on Lava Lake that would bring our order every few weeks. I answered the door for her once. She was clumsy and a bit high-strung, but she seemed friendly. Her name was…

… nice to meet you, Raya. Well, see-ya around …

That’s right. It came back to me. 

“Hey there, Raya.” I greeted her by taking my hands out of my pockets and waved at her, my phone being forgotten at the moment.

She looked surprised and said, “You remembered… someone like me?” She began to blush and smiled to herself. “Thank you, Prince Tom…” 

“Hey, I told you last time. No need for the formalities. Just Tom is fine.” I told her.

“Oh, no I couldn’t.” Raya tightened her grip on the bag she was holding. “My parents would be very upset if they knew I spoke to you in such a casual way... I’m sorry, Prince Tom.” She sounded very sorrowful over the thought of the idea.

“Well it’s fine, I guess…” Feeling defeated, I rubbed the back of my head not knowing what to say next. I fixated on the bag in her hands and became interested by its contents being a rather large flat square. “Hey, what’s that?” I asked.

“Oh, just a vinyl record.” Raya reached in and pulled it out. I recognized the band on the front and got a little excited.

“Are you for real?! Love Sentence! I love them! I’m like their number one fan.” I didn’t notice I had grabbed on to it during my fit of fangirling. I continued to gush over them, “What the!! This album is hard to find and contains all of their songs from when they first started out, like before they even were famous! There’s even a lot of never before released stuff on here! So you’re a huge fan too?!” 

She said without hesitation. “No, never heard of them.”

If this were a cartoon, this is the part where I would face fault.

“What?! Then why did you buy such a widely-sought-after-by-fans album such as that?” I exclaimed dumbfounded.

“Oh is it that rare?” Raya looked it over perplexed.

“Yes, of course, have you not been listening to what I’ve been saying!” I was astonished by her naivety over such a remarkable boy band such as Love Sentence. 

“... So that’s why it was the last one.” She said nonchalantly.

“WHAT?!” I felt fire explode from me as I yelled in disbelief. Keep it together now, keep it together. 

I quickly calmed myself down and pleaded with Raya, “You have to let me buy that from you.”

Raya put the record back in the back and looked at me worriedly. “Oh… I’m sorry, Prince Tom, I can’t do that…”

“Why not? I’ll pay double what you paid, anything actually! Please!” I had grabbed on to her shoulders and begged for the album.

“I can’t because it’s a gift…” Raya said meekly, the gray on her cheeks were turning pink.

“Oh.” I squeaked out. Well that was a definite open mouth insert foot moment. I dropped down from 10 to 0 on the freak-out scale and could now think with a clear head again. I quickly released my grasp on her shoulders and it was my turn to blush due to the awkwardness that I had caused. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have touched you like that. And I shouldn’t have tried to pay for something that is a gift of yours…”

Raya smiled at me and said happily, “Actually, Prince Tom, it’s kind of nice seeing how passionate you are about music. I’m the same way really.” 

“Yea… Still that was a jerk move on my part. I still have a lot to learn about boundaries obviously… So I’m sorry.” I apologized as I was still kicking myself for how I acted.

“Thank you.” She gave me another sincere smile and accepted my apology.

I didn’t want to pry but I still wanted to know why she bought that record. So I asked, “So… you buying that for a brother, or a sister, or a boyfriend maybe?”

Raya shook her head and said, “Every year my family comes here on vacation and there is always some one-of-a-kind finds out here. I try to buy one souvenir for each of my friends back home since they don’t get the opportunity to leave our hometown very often…My friend Blair loves this band so I had to get it.”

“Wow… that’s pretty cool of you.” I praised her kindness. There is also more to this place than I thought and since her and her family come here enough to know about it, I had a great idea come to mind. “Hey, how about I help you shop for your friends as a way to make up for how I acted?”

Raya grew nervous again and said, “Oh no, I don’t want to take up your own time here that you could be spending with your family or… your girlfriend?”

Upon hearing her rebuttal, my heart skipped a beat. I started thinking about Star again. If only you knew, Raya. You won’t be taking up any time that I would have been spending with her because she didn’t even want to come with me anywhere… 

I shook the thought away and tried keeping my composure as I told her, “Nah, it’s cool. I’m travelling alone actually. This is my first time here...” I began itching the back of my head, unsure of how she would handle such a proposal, but I continued anyway. “I was thinking… Since your family comes here more than I ever have, do you think you could also show me around?”

Raya put her hand to her chin and was actually considering what I had asked of her. “Well, if Your Highness… I mean, If you insist, Prince Tom. It would be rude if I turned down your request.” She began fiddling with her fingers. 

“Awesome, let’s go then!” I was ecstatic. This was a great chance to get distracted. I started strutting forward but then froze in my steps. I looked back at her and said, “Uh… Where to first?”

She giggled and we walked down the main street together.

There was so much to see and so many novelty stores that I never would have expected from a town so deep in the mountains. This section of Yomi Town containing the marketplace and shopping center was known as the Tsukiyomi District. It was the social hub for practically everything. Raya showed me the music store where she had bought the vinyl record. What made it stand out from many others was the signed instruments it had from popular bands and infamous singers--I even saw one of Eclipsa’s skeleton guitars on display. While there earlier, Raya was debating on whether she should buy “The Box of Applause” for one of her friends and after a second opinion by me, she did (seemed different, but cool). Raya scored some gourmet coffee beans from an espresso stand as a gift and I pointed out a seller closeby with all sorts of exotic crystals she bought as another one. We finally picked out chocolate scorpions from a dessert store for the last friend on her mental list--it being a banned delicacy back in Prickly Plains--and we tried a few for ourselves.

In between our search for souvenirs we were also able to do some of the recreational activities Yomi Town had to offer--we went ziplining through the fiery caverns, played a few games of flamethrower tag at an arcade, and we caught a local band performing at Yomi Town’s cemetery event center while passing by. I even tried extreme hot air balloon racing with the speed being controlled by miniature dragon flames; now how sweet is that! I let Raya beat me though, I swear. I was actually quite impressed with how this day was turning out.

Raya knew a lot about Yomi Town too. She told me about the Mountain of Boom being the largest volcano in the Underworld and that when it erupts its vibration is felt throughout all of Mewni. It’s lava empties into crevasses around the mountain, kind of like a fondue fountain. There’s a hot spring at its base where her family is staying that has water with temperatures reaching up to 1,000 degrees due to the lava flowing underneath.

It was towards the end of our adventurous day where I slipped up. We had made it to a clothing store where we were trying on outrageous fashion styles and having so much fun laughing over the choices we showcased in front of a set of full-length mirrors. 

Raya and I both were making vogue faces while wearing matching spider hats and spiderweb shades when I mindlessly said, “Haha! Oh wait, let me take a selfie so I can send it to--” 

I stopped myself before I could finish but I was already holding my compact phone up as a reflex to snap a photo. Send it to Star? What was I thinking. Why would I say that? Would Star even care anyway?

Raya didn’t notice I had cut my sentence short and she agreed with a simple “Sure.”

I went ahead and took the picture for the sake of not alerting the demon girl of my sudden switch in emotion; but I didn’t send it. I was somewhat happy, from what my forced expression on the photo suggested, but deep down I was still bothered by my situation with Star. After all this, still?!

I removed the hat and shades and sat them back on the display rack. I’m sure it was written all over my face how I was feeling right now. I didn’t want to bother Raya with my problems so it would probably be best if I stepped aside for a moment.

“Hey, I’m going to get some fresh air, ‘kay?” I mumbled. Without waiting for a response from her, I walked out of the store and wandered over to a courtyard that was in proximity to the marketplace but away from all of the hustle and bustle. I stood under a large black tree with bare branches and frowned wistfully at it.

I can’t believe myself sometimes. After everything I’ve done today I still can’t get Star out of my head. She was probably having her own fun right now, with Marco. Not giving me a second thought… Seriously, what is wrong with me, why am I not good enough...

“Is everything alright, Prince Tom.” I heard Raya’s amiable voice as she carefully stepped up from behind me. So she did follow me outside...

I didn’t want to lie to her and I didn’t want to hide the reason for me ending up in this town. But these were my own problems and after she dedicated her time to me (to keep me distracted) she didn’t deserve my drama or baggage. She could’ve been doing anything she wanted, but she hung out with me. She wasted her time for me to show me around a place that she has been coming to for years. Yet I was the one being a downer? It seemed she had fun today, but did she really?

“Prince Tom?” She repeated with some worry in her tone after I forgot to answer her the first time.

“Sorry, I just… started thinking about my girlfriend…” I confessed with my back still turned on her.

“Oh! Is she okay?” Raya inquired concerned. 

“Yea… I think she is. I’m just… We’re having a…” I was struggling with what to say. This was my business and I needed to handle it on my own. “Hey, t-thanks for today.” I choked out trying to deflect from my growing depression. Why did I feel I were on the verge of tears.

“Prince Tom?” 

I heard her lightly step forward as my eyes welled up further. I croaked out, “You know, I don’t have a lot of friends… And it seems the ones I do have, the ones who are supposed to be my best friends, would rather spend time together than with me. And you have been SO kind to me today for me to just start acting like this. All I wanted was to relax and have a great time while I’m away. I just wish it were always like this when I’m with her... I’m sorry you had to put up with me and do things you’ve probably done a million times. You probably had more important stuff to do and I selfishly took you away from that. I can be such a buzzkill so I understand if you’re ready to just go--”

“Prince Tom, don’t say something like that.” Raya objected. Although her voice was still very sweet-sounding, it had invoked a formidable presence that rendered me speechless to what she had to say next. I turned to face her to see she too appeared to be holding back tears. She walked closer to me and put both of my hands in hers and said, “There will never be anything more important than showing you, our Prince, around a place that has been apart of me for years. You even helped me immensely with gift shopping, which I am so grateful to you for. I’m glad I was able to share with you the fun things I like doing. And for you to be happy, well, it makes me happy witnessing that…”

I still couldn’t find my words, “Raya… I…”

Within an instant, she had released her grasp and stepped back from me. Her voice became genial once again as she coaxed me further, “When you’re ready to talk, I’ll listen. Your friends are probably just occupied with issues of their own, so it may seem like they don’t have time for you. Just try not to take it too personally, and most of all, try not to let it ruin your time away from what is upsetting you.”

I felt my anxiety beginning to fade from what she said. Over the past few days I felt so empty. I felt that no one understood or even cared. I was trying to feel that void of not being acknowledged or not being wanted. But then I came here. This place and Raya was starting to help me feel whole again. And for only knowing her for a short time, I was glad I had found a friend like her.

“Raya, thank you so much for that.” I expressed my gratitude toward the demon girl.

As if on cue with my words, an ominous bell began to toll in the distance.

“What’s that?” I asked as I scanned the area for the origin of the ringing.

“Oh, that’s just the temple where they do all the rituals and sacrifices and tortures, you know, stuff like that.” Raya spoke as if it was just some ordinary, everyday occurrence.

“Okay I gotta see that.” I said. Well, for the Underworld, it is kind of the norm.

“Alright, I’ll show you.” Raya went to pick up the bags of gifts that had been sitting on the ground by her feet.

“Here, let me get that.” I volunteered. 

Raya became flustered and said, “Oh, you don’t have to do that, Prince Tom. I don’t want to burden you with having to carry my gifts.” 

“Nah, it’s cool.” I held my hand up and the bags began to effortlessly float into the air the same way the packages did when Raya came to our lake house. “‘Kay, ready?”

Raya was amazed by my telekinesis. “That’s amazing you can do something like that. Thank you!”

“Yea, I guess it is.” I couldn’t help but grin over her compliment. 

The two of us began to walk away from the courtyard, not noticing two gray figures that had been crouching behind some bushes hop up and take off in the opposite direction.

Raya and I rounded the corner as the gigantic bell recessed in its tower ceased its powerful resonance. I was expecting to see an ancient temple erected with stone pillars or something basic along those lines, but instead, what my eyes discovered was truly magnificent. It was an enormous cathedral designed in the style of perfect Gothic architecture. It was made of black stone that glimmered from the surrounding fire that spewed from the ground steadily. And the craftsmanship was superior. There was a significant amount of excruciating detail no matter where your eyes wandered, right down to the last arch. I was mesmerized.

“It’s… It’s…” I stuttered as I couldn’t quite think of a word to describe it.

“Wicked, isn’t it?” Raya stared proudly at the building. She asked if I wanted to go inside but I think she already knew the answer from how bewitched I was already in the temple’s beauty. 

We walked under a series of flying buttresses that outlined the foyer of the temple. And I just couldn’t stop gawking at the sight of the art on the walls. There was depictions of torture and agony brought on by fire-breathing demonic figures and satanic language etched in its borders. Any Mewman would cower and flee but to us demons, it was glorious.

I stopped marveling long enough to declare to her that this is probably the coolest thing I’ve seen all day but she had started walking through a great passageway. I quickly followed behind her to enter a room even more darkly majestic. We walked into the grand hall that was dimly lit by floor-length candelabras positioned systematically near the walls and toward the center. There were rows of benches facing an altar made of a numerous amount of skulls with what appeared to be blood dripping down from it.

“Darn, seems like we missed them harvest the blood from the unicorn.” Raya mumbled to herself.

“Hey what’s that?” I pointed over to two large statues that faced away from each other behind the altar. We walked over to them and I saw a table with small wooden boxes filled with beads and rope used for making what seemed to be necklaces. I stepped up and started examining each one. There were beads shaped like eyes, fangs, bats, teeth, and skulls. Upon further investigation, I could see that in the hands of the statues were finished necklaces hanging from them.

“These are the founders of Yomi Town, Izanami and Izanagi.” Raya explained as she came to my side. “They were demon lords from long ago that originated from this region and became known as the Underworld’s greatest fighters of that time. My mother always told me stories about them during bedtime when I was little. I’m sure your own mother did the same…”

I intently watched Raya as she spoke. She really did know a lot about this town--No, the Underworld’s history. More than I did, that’s for sure. My parents and advisors focused my rearing on what my duties as a prince are and what they will be as a king. Although I may be the prince, I have never been to Yomi Town; a place of great importance to my people and home to two legends. I’ve never even been to Prickly Plains either, come to think of it. And that’s the home of my subjects. Raya’s home... My people don’t even know who I am or what I’m like. I mean, when I first met Raya she was afraid I would harm her. Am I really that out of touch with my own people and their lives? Have I been too preoccupied with what has been going on in Star’s life that I’ve neglected my own? If I’m to rule this world one day, I need to understand it and be more involved in it than I have been. 

“Please, tell me more.” I implored her. 

Raya continued, “Alright, Prince Tom... Well, Izanami and Izanagi were close companions and fought alongside each other during many battles. Their most famous--and final legacy--was what had transpired from the war against the demons and Mewmans. Izanami was captured during an ambush on the battlefield and held prisoner by the Mewman army. When Izanagi tried to save her, he was too late. They burned her as a show of force to the demon army, her necklace being the only thing he could recover from her ashes. And although he fought fiercely for her revenge, he wasn’t the same without her by his side. When his army retreated, he kept fighting until he died in battle… alone.” 

“Tragic…” I murmured as I studied the statues.

“So as a tribute to them, this temple was built. Other events and activities take place here but this ceremony is the main highlight of the temple. The giving of the necklace.” Raya pointed at the hands of the statues. “Because Izanami and Izanagi were separated, tragedy ensued and created the key factor for our species losing the war. And even after the treaty was signed between the Mewmans and demons, many still do not trust them and fear they will try to separate us from those close to us again. Izanami and Izanagi were strong because of their unity. The necklaces solidifies a union by two people who come before the statues--which are the sacred presence of the demon lords--and seek their blessing to never have their own companionship separated.”

Upon hearing the end of Raya’s retelling of the two demon lords’ story, an idea popped into my head.

“Hey, you know what? We should make one together.” I suggested.

“W-h-what?!” Raya stammered.

“Yea.” I responded unabashedly as I started picking through the boxes of beads. “To symbolize our friendship.” 

“Oh. Okay…” Raya said with flushed cheeks as she started helping me choose what should go on our necklace.

Within a few short minutes, it was complete and I held it up to show it to her. “Look, it’s finished! Do you like it?” I said exultantly.

“Y-yes.” she mumbled while still blushing nervously.

I turned toward the statue and said, “Now, let's hang it on--”

“EEEEEEEAAAAAAAAHHHH!!”

A blood curdling shriek came from the hallway and caused the necklace to drop from my hands in an instant. The frightening screech carried on as the commencement of chanting voices were now heard as well.

“Oh! They’re about to torture someone!” Raya exclaimed.

“What?! We have to see this!” I said excitedly. “Come on!”

I ran out of the room toward the screaming. It took Raya a moment to follow me as she looked back at the altar once more.

After spending some time in the temple, we finally headed on our way. We had been walking down by some of the shops again while talking about our favorite torture devices and how it would feel to be the victim in a situation like that. 

I was on a jovial high as I told her, “That was the best part about today for sure!”

“Well I hope just not the torture.” She remarked.

“No way! The whole temple itself was freakin’ awesome! I’m so glad you showed it to me!” I clarified punched my fists up into the air triumphantly .

Raya halted in her tracks and fixated on me as a smile began to tug , “I’m glad you liked it, Prince Tom… It is my favorite place about this town…”

“Really?”

Raya nodded as her cheeks reddened once again. “Every year that’s usually where I spend most of my time… Something about it is just so calming to me. When you walk in everything that troubles you seems to go away, at least for a little while. So I hope it had the same effect on you…”

I gazed over at Raya and felt something I couldn't really explain. This whole time I was too busy thinking of being distracted when I failed to recognize something else. Raya wanted me to enjoy myself. She didn’t really know me but genuinely she wanted me to still experience what this town could do for me. Had she known all along that I came here for this sort of retreat? Or could she just sense that I needed this? It was true that I felt some relief but once she had put it back in perspective, I tried my hardest not to think of what I was trying to forget. Fortunately for me, there was something, or should I say someone, lying in wait for the opportunity to help me further.

“Raya!” A powerful and intimidating bellow came from behind me, causing me to almost jump out of my skin.

I turned around hesitantly to see a tall looming figure with a muscular build and dark gray skin. He wasn’t anywhere near the height of my Mom, maybe half her size at least. He had long, sharp horns like a springbok and wild crimson hair. His glowing yellow eyes were in a glare as his fangs shown. Although he was very menacing-looking, he was wearing a baby pink tank that read “Gneiss Guy”.

“Hi Dad…” Raya darted her head down as she greeted him. 

Oh it’s her Dad. I relaxed a bit.

“So who’s your friend? This BOY!” He growled as he placed emphasis on the gender portion of his statement, the ground beneath him cracking.

I tightened up a bit and could feel the sweat break out over my face.

“Oh!” She perked up and held her right hand out toward me as if she were presenting me. “This is Prince Tom Lucitor.”

“H-Hi…” I replied shakily.

Raya’s father’s eyes shot towards me as they sparked even more, I felt my heart stop. He was silent and still snarling. But then all of a sudden, the killing intent that was emitting from the great Stone Demon did a complete 180. His face grew soft as he gave me the biggest smile I’ve ever seen. “Ah, Your Highness. It’s been some time since I’ve seen you. You were barely able to peek over your crib if my memory serves me correctly. My apologies for not recognizing you, our Young Prince. I am Albion, head of the Belmonte Family.” 

He bowed. I sighed in relief.

“Raya!” His loud roar was directed at his daughter now but still caused me to jump again. “It was Piers and Peter who alerted me of your whereabouts and that you were hanging out with a BOY, only to come and find that it is His Majesty’s son! Why didn’t you come get the rest of your family to greet the Young Prince? Unforgivable!”

It was Raya’s turn to stiffen up in nervousness.

“No, no, It’s alright. We just met. Well actually, we met before. But--” I pleaded for her.

“Your Highness, will you please do our family, the Belmontes, the honor of courting you!” He proclaimed, though it seemed to be more like a demand than a request as he knelt to the ground with his head touching it. I faintly remembered that Raya put her body in the same position when she first met me.

“... C-courting? I do--” I stuttered, a bit confused by his word choice.

“Thank you, Your Highness!” He cried out happily as he scooped me up and took me away with Raya trailing behind us.

#svtfoe #star vs the forces of evil #fanfic #tom lucitor #oc fanfiction #oc #starvstheforcesofevil #The Underworld #TomVSTheUnderworldFanfic #TVTU

[endenogatai]

Target Global has a €1M ‘super seed’ pot incoming to switch on laid off tech talent in Spain during COVID-19

Target Global and a number of Spain’s startup founders are allocating a €1 million pot of money to support local tech talent laid off or furloughed as a result of the coronavirus crisis.

The aim of the initiative is to provide pre-seed financing to help local, crisis-hit tech workers switch gears and build out a startup concept over the next four to six months, covering living expenses plus enough funds to get going on a business idea.

The VC firm, which now has some €800M under management, says it’s putting €500,000 towards the initiative — allocated out of its existing early stage fund.

A further €500,000 is being chipped in from a number of local founders, including entrepreneurs behind AlienVault, TravelPerk, Job & Talent, Badi and Adyen.

They’ll be cutting checks of up to €200k for “qualified applicants”, per the VC firm, which says the initiative could initially support around 10 aspiring entrepreneurs who have found themselves sat at home without a job as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The idea is to cap it at €1M for now,” says Target Global investment director, Lina Chong . “We don’t know where the end of the tunnel is but for now let’s say we cap it at that.”

She says the aim is for each check to cover the living costs of one or two people for four to six months, along with “initial startup costs” — aka: Founding an entity, working with a designer and engineer, developing an idea or concept to beta or prototype and testing some early assumptions — to get it ready for a pre-seed round.

“We’re calling it super seed,” she adds. “It’s like a real first check just to get you started.”

The VC firm will be putting up a landing page for the initiative shortly — this week or next, per Chong — to begin taking applications for the ‘safe notes’.

In terms of requirements, applicants must be located in Spain, and will be asked to specify a few categories their concept falls into; plus whether they’ve built anything yet; whether they have users; whether they’ve incorporated yet, and so on.

“All of those things can be ‘no’ — that’s totally fine,” Chong tells TechCrunch. “We will ask for your LinkedIn because we do want to have this go towards people in tech. We want to see some minimum amount of experience in startups or in technology — but you yourself don’t have to be an engineer.

“And of course the idea has to be pretty bold and ambitious… That’s going to be the bulk of our work — filtering through candidates where we feel they have the relevant background, plus what they’re thinking about it something really relevant and big.”

“We’re not looking to fund the next sunglasses shop,” she adds. “But if you have a different way to engage with government… [or] think about even media. There’s so many things up for grabs right now. There’s going to be a host of security, identity, so many issues. And that’s the stuff we’re looking for — real, big, global problems.”

Chong confirms that some of Target Global’s own portfolio startups have had to lay off or furlough staff themselves during the crisis — including flatshare finder business Badi and business travel booking platform TravelPerk. Both of which are types of businesses that are very exposed to the national population lockdowns that have been imposed over most of Europe. (The travel sector has of course been especially hard hit.)

“Every business that’s been affected by shelter in place have had to let go of staff,” adds Chong, suggesting portfolio layoffs have been up to around a third for the worst affected startups.

Local founders have therefore been keen to support the initiative, not only to help the wider tech ecosystem in Spain, but as something they can point furloughed or laid off staff to as an opportunity.

“Everyday we’re getting more sign ups,” she adds, noting that founders can also choose offer mentorship/advice as well as chipping into the fund.

Target Global dialled up its focus on Spain last year, when it opened a country office in Barcelona. Though Chong, who is normally based in Barcelona, has been spending the lockdown period in Berlin, after returning to Germany from a trip to the US in March.

“For me this [crisis] is super unfortunate because one of the reasons we made a bet so early on Spain is because of exactly this talent — Typeform and all the gaming studios, and Facebook and Amazon in Madrid. Let’s say priming the early generation workforce. And giving them the ideas how to be in a tech company, how an organization runs, how to build product, how to think of marketing — all of this stuff. So I think it’s a big shame,” she says.

“Clearly Spain has a highly entrepreneurial spirit. They’ve come out of the last crisis… with a very ‘we make our own reality’ view of the world. And I think the same will happen in this crisis so we thought why won’t we just allocate a small amount of money — for our early stage fund it’s a relatively small check — it’s a very exploratory one.”

In terms of the business opportunities that may open up as a result of the societal and economic disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Chong suggests “a new way of thinking about consumer products and service” is certainly coming down the pipe.

“I would be shocked if there isn’t a plethora of ideas coming on how to rethink brick and mortar and rethink retail or consumer goods,” she says.

“This is a clear trend that brick and mortar, as a model, is not working. In the US, around the world, you see everything from massive shopping malls to main street small shops, owner-operated shops, all shuttering doors. And I think it’s a big opportunity — whether the entrepreneur decides to tackle this opportunity from a pure digital play to maybe it’s a turn on real estate? Maybe there’s a new model of thinking about shop ownership or what to do with that space? Because consumers are pretty fickle. They’re used to entirely new experience with Amazon. I think there’s a lot of opportunity there for sure. The specific form or shape of that opportunity — I leave it to the wild imaginations of entrepreneurs.”

She also points to the whole value chain around retail — from supply chains to marketing, to manufacturing to getting the goods and services into consumers hands — as ripe for rethinking right now, adding: “I’m hoping there’s going to be a lot of innovation around even the supply chain aspects.”

Entrepreneurs in the country may also do well to focus their energy on ideas around reskilling/upskilling the large numbers of people who suddenly find themselves unable to do their usual work because of the impact of social distancing on traditional businesses and ways of working. Spain’s bar culture, for example, looks set to be very heavily hit by the coronavirus.

“How do we manage ourselves? How do we manage others in a remote working environment?” posits Chong. “There’s such a huge population of people where — it’s becoming pretty clear — that if you can’t work remote, if you’re not a knowledge worker, there’s a huge question mark over your ability to maybe more into those knowledge worker/desk type roles. And that’s a lot of value that’s left on the table. That’s human brains and muscle — just so much energy and potential that’s just kind of left out there.

“I would argue that a real forward thinking entrepreneur can think of ways to help utilize and bring meaning to these people’s skill sets.”

The terms of the safe notes will be “flexible”, according to Chong, though there will be a provision for investors to get a discount on the next round, i.e. if there is one. 

“You don’t have to pay it back if there’s no financing afterwards,” she says. “So far we really do want to keep it case by case — so it’s super flexible. It’s essentially like ‘hey, we want the option not the obligation to follow on in the next round’.

“Clearly, we’ll decide on that case by case. Anything beyond that we want to make sure that terms of the next fund — it’s likely going to be seed funds that come in at that next stage of the company life — we want to be able to keep the slate relatively clean in order for those funds to feel comfortable coming on board. So there’s not too much stipulated at the moment in the safe note.”

“It’s an amount. We can help you incorporate. It’s an option to the next round. There’s going to be a minimum discount — probably pretty standard, like 20%. And that’s pretty much it,” she adds.

This report was updated with a correction: We originally stated that Target Global has €700M under management — in fact it now has €800M. We also updated our report to clarify that the €500,000 which the VC firm is contributing is being allocated from its existing early stage fund. We were also originally told that the checks would be smaller and more numerous; we’ve now been told the evolving plan for this pot of money is to write fewer but, larger checks

Target Global is firming up its bet on Barcelona’s entrepreneurs

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#IFTTT #RSSMix.com Mix ID 8204425

[junker-town]

A French summer in Lyon and Marseille

“No good.”

The ticket-taker at Paris Gare de Lyon shook his head after scanning the piece of paper that should have had me on the next train to the World Cup semifinals. He didn’t explain why my ticket to Lyon was invalid. Just that it was. I stood there, drenched in sweat, both from running to the station and that I happened to be in Paris during a heatwave.

I looked up to the sky and said, “Oh, my God, now you’re just being petty as fuck.”

But the accusation wasn’t directed at the station employee; It was directed at God.

The bad ticket was one in an already long list of frustrations on my journey. When my friend Zack first suggested this trip last year, he positioned it as a summertime French adventure of long walks, decadent food, lazy mornings mixed with work and relaxation that would give way to days filled with lightness and wonder. I couldn’t turn it down.

Zack, buying the pastries for one of our walks

Plus, I wanted to go to a World Cup.

The plan was to spend a few days in London before traveling to France, but my initial flight from New York to Heathrow was overbooked. What followed was two days of standby hell as I kept getting bumped from one flight to another until a merciful gate agent who recognized me from an earlier flight got me on a plane to Paris.

”Why does this always happen to you?” my friend, Graham, asked when I told him about my troubles.

The answer is God. God is fucking with me. Not out of maliciousness, I don’t think, but a shared playfulness that sometimes goes too far.

God puts problems in my path, especially when I travel, and my job is to find hidden solutions to get what and where I want. The obstacles are sometimes ridiculous — once on my walk home from school a bunch of squirrels blocked my path and came after me when I tried to scare them — but the solutions often involve finding compassionate helpers, like the gate agent who I wouldn’t have seen again if I hadn’t changed my flight to Paris or taken the advice of going to Amsterdam instead.

God’s game resumed soon after I landed in France when I didn’t see my train to Lyon on the departure board at Paris Gare du Nord. I learned from an employee who noticed my confusion that not only was I at the wrong station, but it would take a 15-minute metro ride to get to the right one.

Even then, I still made it — with three minutes to spare. I felt triumphant, smirking at God and thinking, “Once again, I’ve won.”

”No good.”

I’m not an anxious person, and I often enjoy these misadventures, but there is an overwhelming loneliness that takes hold when things go wrong in a foreign country. If you know the language, you can choose not to speak — you can choose solitude and silence. When you don’t have that choice, you’re trapped in silence. It’s suffocating.

The long line at the ticket counter almost guaranteed I didn’t have time to make it on the next (and last) train to Lyon. Before I could come up with a new plan, a worker who looked like a darker version of my uncle spotted me in the crowd and motioned me over. Most non-Nigerians can’t tell that I’m Nigerian — even some of my own friends still forget. But anywhere I’ve gone, the Nigerians there have been quick to spot me.

He grabbed my hand and asked what was wrong before pulling me into the ticket office and repeating my story to his coworker. His friend looked at him, looked at me, looked at my ticket, and then told us to give him some time to take care of two other customers.

During our wait, the Nigerian man told me how he ended up in Paris — the menial jobs he worked and how he eventually got a job at the station which allows him to send money back home. Before our paths crossed that day, he had already helped two Nigerian families who missed their trains.

Anyone who has ever been an immigrant knows they often have to pave their own paths to navigate societal structures lacking in compassion and mercy. Some are based on pure kindness, such as knowing the owners of an African grocery store who will let you defer payment for food when you can’t afford it. Others are based on small monetary exchanges. They help you solve a problem otherwise unsolvable within the standard bureaucratic system, and you make it worth their while in return.

This isn’t a point of privilege — it’s the reaction to not having any to begin with.

The man in the office spent five minutes looking back and forth from my ticket to his computer screen before printing a ticket for the last train to Lyon. The train that was supposed to be full.

The Nigerian man explained afterward that he told his friend I was his sister’s son. And though the terms of his help were never made explicit, I gave him 30 euros.

Missing that first train meant missing England vs. the United States, but once I made it to Lyon and was en route to my Airbnb, I took solace in soon being able to shower, eat, and sleep after such a long day.

Such a naive assumption. The real art of pettiness is denying victory when the person is almost at the finish line.

The first time the key fob didn’t open the gate, I thought I was doing it wrong. A few more tries confirmed the gate recognized the fob but still wouldn’t open. It was the middle of the night, and all I could do was sit on my suitcase outside — in a French suburb where I knew no one — laughing like a maniac.

After playing this game with God for so long, you’d think I’d know better.

Lyon wasn’t crowded despite being the concluding host city of the World Cup. Walking around it seemed most people visiting Lyon were there for their own adventures that just happened to collide with the biggest sporting event in the world.

You could sit outside a restaurant in the middle of the city admiring the architecture or absorbing the scenery and totally forget you were at the World Cup. It happened to me multiple times.

In the city center of Lyon, the day before the Final

As much as I was enjoying Lyon, I had yet to explore my ulterior motive for going on this trip in the first place. Marseille has had a pull on me for as long as I can remember— the more I learned about it, the stronger that force became. A city of immigrants and exiles. Of water and myths. A fiery place with open arms that doesn’t hide its struggles with poverty and corruption. A cosmopolitan city with people who are constantly under pressure to leave, but refuse to be gentrified away.

The only place I have ever longed for as much as Marseille is the village in Nigeria where I was born. Both have the feeling of home but in different ways.

The village is where I was born, where I became. I can feel the history of my family and my people pulling me back to it. It is in the foundation of who I am. Marseille feels like where I can live and die as an adult, and God willing, an old man. It’s where I will be at peace. It’s the place where the longing, daydreaming, and the pain of being and feeling out of place would stop.

It was made for me, which is why when I developed a heat rash on my wrist the day before I left, I was overcome with anxiety that my body was going to break down before I could see Marseille for myself.

All you can see are trees and sky before entering the train tunnel that leads into the city. It is only when you come out the other side that Marseille unveils itself in breathtaking fashion. Sprawling hills dotted with houses and ancient buildings. Boats scattered along the coastline of the Mediterranean. In an instant, you go from trees, sky, and darkness to one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

Entering Marseille

I was prepared for a day of wandering with only two places in the city I considered mandatory to see. The first was Old Port. I wanted to be by the water, watching the people, the boats, the seagulls — to know whether they did follow the trawler. I wanted to sit and simply be there.

I then roamed the city with no destination in mind, from the port to the Cathédrale La Major to the Basilique Notre-Dame de la Garde.

I walked through Le Panier, an art-covered neighborhood of shops, cafes and alleyways and the oldest district in Marseille. There, I saw people like the Nigerian man from the train station and young African and Arab boys following the universal dress code of football shirts and track pants. I walked past people whose stories I felt close to, and I was happy to be in a city whose identity was built by people searching for a better world. Lyon was the lightness of a vacation, but Marseille had the heaviness and the force of life.

Fittingly, the city makes you work to see the beautiful nature surrounding it. If you want to see the Instagram version of Marseille, you have to walk the steep hills that’ll take you there. Long staircases are the only way to get inside many of Marseille’s beautiful churches.

Old Port

My favorite picture of the trip wasn’t of the gorgeous landscape. It was of a woman, a stranger standing outside on the balcony of her apartment overlooking a cruise ship harbor.

She was the only person on the balcony, smoking and gazing out at the water. Like she was waiting for something, or someone, or imagining a different life than the one she had. It reminded me that even in the places where we wish to be, some people there might be looking to escape to somewhere else.

After a minute or so, she looked over at me and smiled. I raised my camera, silently asking if I could take her picture. She nodded and then she went back to smoking and gazing as if I wasn’t there.

The other place that was mandatory for me to see in Marseille was the Stade Vélodrome.

Since I was young, I’ve loved three teams: Arsenal, Marseille, and Milan. Out of those three, it’s Marseille’s stadium that I had to visit before I died. Not that I don’t love the San Siro, which is more legendary in terms of Milan’s success there, or the Emirates and Highbury before it, but they don’t represent the city and its myths for me in the same way the Vélodrome does for Marseille. San Siro and Emirates are stadiums for teams; the Vélodrome is for Marseille.

François Thomazeau wrote about Olympique Marseille in Le Monde years ago:

”MARSEILLE is a city of lies of such peculiar exaggeration that the town invented a word for them — galéjades. Marseille has a knack of turning every petty memory into myth, to try to make life bigger than it really is. And its most powerful dream machine is its football club, Olympique de Marseille OM. It sounds and reads like the name of a strange cult, which in many ways, it is - the Stade Vélodrome, the temple to the only religion that unites rival communities in town.”

When I arrived, only one person was there — a man sitting nearby, eating lunch. I had a knack for finding people in public solitude in Marseille. Had I been alone, I would have bent down and kissed the ground. I would have thanked it for Eric Cantona, Samir Nasri, Hatem Ben Arfa, Dimitri Payet, Benoit Cheyrou, Lucho Gonzalez, Chris Waddle, Franck Ribery, Didier Drogba, Steve Mandanda, Marcel Desailly, Abedi Pele, Mamadou Niang, Robert Pires, André-Pierre Gignac, Djibril Cissé, and Florian Thauvin. Even Zinedine Zidane, who never played for the team, but was born in the city and was a citizen of the team.

I didn’t want to leave. I had a World Cup final to attend, but all I wanted to do was to stay at the Vélodrome. After tweeting a selfie in front of the stadium, I reluctantly made the journey to the train station where I realized Marseille’s English account had quote-tweeted the selfie with the words, “Welcome…” and the emoji for home.

I thought of Thomazeau writing about Gunnar Andersson’s death after he had come to Marseille: “Was he trying to leave town, to make it back home to Gothenburg? Did he realise you never leave Marseille once you have been lured there?”

I knew the USWNT would beat the Netherlands in the World Cup final, but I was quietly cheering for the Dutch. The U.S. is a much deeper and talented team than its competitors. They’re so good they can often overcome tactical deficiencies by sheer ability. You don’t really suffer from not playing the best players if the second-best players are still better than the opposing team’s. I wanted the Dutch to win, to give a sign of hope that other teams were catching up to America.

The United States is an ironic soccer country in that everywhere else in the world, institutional sexism had termed soccer as too masculine for women and sabotaged the game. In America, it was seen as an effeminate sport for such a long time that it allowed women in the U.S. freedom that others didn’t have. That’s not to discount the historical sexism and misogyny, both institutional and explicit, that still exists in American soccer and sports in general. Beyond the weird perception of masculinity and sport, the USWNT’s dominance in soccer can also be traced to the implementation of Title IX in 1972.

They’re much more talented than every other team, but that dominance, while deserved, is also predicated on the imbalance of opportunity that exists in women’s soccer. The hope then, is that the powers that be in other countries will start investing in women’s soccer, creating opportunities for participation, and professionalizing the game so much that the players won’t need to suffer and work multiple jobs while trying to be athletes.

It’s because of this context of inequality and sabotage that there was a sense of universal solidarity to the World Cup final I don’t imagine exists in most male tournaments. It felt as though everyone, while cheering for their separate teams, was also cheering for the sport as a whole. The competition is still there, but so is the understanding of how delicate survival of the sport is. When the final whistle blew and the Dutch players fell to the ground in disappointment, many of their fans stood up and cheered with joy and pride as opposed to a showing of sadness.

After the game, my friends and I made our way to the city to celebrate the USWNT’s victory — a relatively well-behaved party after a World Cup win. It seemed impossible to cause pure chaos in Lyon, at least as an outsider. The only thing removing me from the illusion of lightness were occasional sightings of gun-toting military forces tasked with security during the games. We passed a group of them en route to a McDonald’s, which we soon realized was closed despite being surrounded by a large group of Algerians immersed in celebration. Their display went from peaceful to chaotic as I looked up and saw what appeared to be an incoming grenade.

It hissed upon landing, clouding the air and making it instantly unbreathable. As someone who has been pepper-sprayed before, the pain of it was familiar. There was no clearer sign that the lightness of the World Cup was over, and the chaos of the African Cup of Nations had started.

I wanted to apologize to my friends when we finally got home, as it wasn’t their fault that we got pepper-sprayed, or even the fault of the Algerian fans. I wanted to tell them that God was fucking with me. And there was no way he’d let this trip end without making me play the game one more time.

[berniesrevolution]

In 2016, pundits speculated endlessly on that mysterious place called Trump Country. To many in the Beltway, much of America was a foreign country, to be analyzed statistically rather than in person. Chris Arnade, on the other hand, was determined to escape his coastal bubble. Arnade got into his old van, and has spent the last several years traveling hundreds of thousands of miles, interviewing people all over the country, discovering their joys, sorrows, discontents, and aspirations. In the process he has produced a set of photographs and stories, depicting the everyday Americans who are left out of the media’s understandings of the country, and who feel left out of the 21st century economy. Arnade spoke to Current Affairs editor Nathan J. Robinson about what he has learned in his travels.

NR: You’ve traveled over 100,000 miles across America talking to people from all stripes of life. What are some of the misconceptions that people have about the country they live in? What are some things people think they know about America that are totally wrong?

CA: Everyone knows we’re a divided country, but I don’t think people understand exactly how deep that division is, and what the true nature of it is. I was a banker for 20 years. I lived in Brooklyn Heights, I sent my kids to private school. I was paid well; I had a Ph.D. in physics. I was kind of the New York neoliberal elite who valued science, valued rationality. And that elite built a world over the last 30 years that is massively unequal. I think everybody knows statistically that we have massive wealth inequality and continued racial inequality. But we kind of pat ourselves on the back and say we’re an egalitarian society in other ways. We’ve given equal legal status to gender, sexuality, and race. And so we kind of think we’ve addressed many of the issues. But when you go out in the country, you realize that we’re massively unequal, and we’re unequal beyond economics. We’re unequal in terms of the way we live, how we choose to live, unequal in our valuation framework, what we view as moral, what we view as right and wrong, what we view as the goals. And beyond the obvious racial differences, which are huge—I spent, as much time in poor minority neighborhoods as I did in poor white working class neighborhoods—the most salient division I see beyond race is education.

NR: Yes, you’ve described this framework for thinking about educational inequality, what you call the “front row kids” versus the “back row kids.” The kids who did well in school and advanced to the top of the economic ranks, and the kids who were sort of left behind, and the differences that creates in their worldview. Could you talk a little bit about that framework and what that division in worldview really is?

CA: Right, the front row kids and the back row kids. Now within that there are some divisions and complexities obviously. But the most salient thing about it is that it’s not about political party. It’s non-partisan. “Front row kids” means both Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. The front row is anybody who comes from an elite school, Princeton, Harvard, the Ivies or has a postgraduate degree, Ph.D. They’re mobile, global, and well-educated. Their primary social network is via college and career. That’s how they define themselves, through their job. And within that world intellect is primary. They view the world through a framework of numbers and rational arguments. Faith is irrational, and they see themselves as beyond gender. You can describe this using other frameworks, like “the Acela corridor” types.

On the Democratic side, you can think of the Matt Yglesias types in the media, these kinds of global technocrats, policy wonks. Their framework is: “Give me a problem and I’ll devise a maximally optimal solution using my data.” Most importantly, though, they view their lives as having been better than their parents, and they think their children’s lives will be better than their own. And for them, that’s still true.

The front row kids have won. They’re in charge of things. They are the donor class in politics, they’re the analysts and specialists who scream every time someone has a policy difference they disagree with. “You can’t do X, you’re going to cause a global world war.” Or “You can’t get rid of NAFTA,” “you can’t do Brexit.”

NR: What about the “back row kids,” then? What is that segment of society, and what is the difference in its worldview?

CA: It encompasses a lot of types of people, but it’s defined by its difference with the front row. It’s not just the “white working class,” it includes minorities, black kids who are stuck in east Buffalo or central Cleveland or Bronx in New York. Mostly they don’t have an education beyond high school degree and if they do it’s kind of cobbled together through trade schools and community colleges and smaller state schools. Their primary social network is via institutions beyond work such as family. And their community is defined geographically, meaning they generally don’t leave where they grew up. They might leave for 5-6 years to go to the military, take jobs that bring them to Alaska for a few years, but they’ll come back.

And they have different kinds of worldviews and values. They find meaning and morality through faith, which is also a form of community. And if you read the work of [Harvard sociologist] Michèle Lamont, she writes about the ethos of the decency of hard work. It’s the idea that you don’t necessarily use your brain to advance, you use your strength and you use your commitment. You’re going to play by the rules, you’re going to break a few rocks, you’re going to work hard. It’s also, and here’s where I’ll sweep a lot under the rug, a kind of traditional view of race and gender.

This group of people views their life as worse than their parents, and they think their children’s lives will be worse than theirs. And that’s rational, from their perspective. After all, they’ve lost. Their kind of worldview has been devalued, because it’s the front row kids that have been in charge: the globalized, rational meritocracy versus the more traditional concepts of morality.

NR: You mention rationality. One of the things that seems to puzzle elites as they try to understand these other parts of society is that they feel the grievances there are genuinely irrational. From their perspective, free trade has been good for everybody, it’s made everybody better off than the alternative. And so they don’t understand these kinds of populist backlashes in the form of the support for Trump (or Bernie Sanders), because they feel like the rage and the desire to destroy the elite is a failure to recognize their own self-interest. After all, why would you vote for someone whose economic policies are irrational, or who, like Trump, might destroy the universe? It just doesn’t make sense. They don’t know why people hate experts, since experts have expertise, and expertise is good!

CA: Well, let me approach it this way. I think that when you talk about any group’s failings as being atavistic, because of laziness, because of weakness, because of some other failing, you’re doing it wrong as a progressive. So when we progressives look at poor minorities and, from a sociological perspective, the frustrations and deviances that are there, and when conservatives say “Hey, there’s more crime in black neighborhoods because they’re more violent” or “There’s higher unemployment because they’re lazier,” we liberals rightly push back. We say “Whoah, let’s look at the structural issues here. Let’s look at the structural racism that denies them access to jobs. Let’s look at the structural inequalities in the educational system which provide a harder route for them to leave.”

And I’d say you have to do that for all groups, instead of dismissing them as irrational. And that includes the white working class. You have to look at the context of what they’re facing. So from their perspective, knocking over the system probably makes sense because their worldview is being devalued. It’s being devalued monthly, has been devalued for 25 years.

Now, some of that devaluation I agree with; I believe the idea that you should get supremacy from being white and male should be devalued. But regardless of what you disagree with, that devaluation is happening. And they’re also being devalued economically. And then, even further, their whole worldview, their sense of place and meaning, is being eroded.

So let’s talk about NAFTA, you alluded to NAFTA and free trade. Mathematically it works, because the winners win more than the losers lose. So on a net basis, you say: “Hey look! The data says everybody wins.” There are three fundamental problems with that. One is that winners never share with the losers, that just doesn’t happen. Secondly, what you’re measuring is a very narrow framework of what’s valuable; you’re making the assumption that everybody wants more stuff, having more stuff is what meaning’s about. But the back row finds meaning through their connections, their community, through their structure. When they lose, they’ve lost everything. When the factories go, the town and community fall apart. Their churches hollow out. Their families start facing problems with drugs. So when your sense of meaning and place and valuation comes from your community, and your community gets eroded, that’s it. Game over.

NR: And this something quite real, it’s not an illusion, it’s not just on paper. You’ve traveled all over, and there really are communities like that, that have just been hollowed out. And you’ve extensively covered the drug epidemic.

CA: I didn’t get into this because I wanted to write about politics. I got into this because I was writing about drugs. And I always kind of glibly say that wherever I went to find drugs, I found hope leaving. And where I found hope leaving I saw Trump entering, if it was a white community. Drugs don’t just go into a place because people are lazy; drugs go into a place because drugs work and help. They’re a get-meaning-quick scheme. So is fascism, so is populism. Both these things give a sense of meaning. People use drugs because they think their life is stuck. It’s a form of suicide, and for them, it’s a way of finding some relief from something that seems like it’s not working. That they’re humiliated and devalued, and they want to find a way to fight back against that. And drugs are just one way to do that, with another way being fascism and populism.

NR: So the rise of Trump is definitely some kind of response to despair and hopelessness, then.

CA: Oh, hell yeah. But I would go even further. First, just because I say I’m not surprised this happened, doesn’t mean I’m justifying it. But what I’m saying is: if you want to put a recipe together to create populist fascist white identity politics, we’ve done it over the past 20-30 years. We’ve created a system that’s immensely unequal, created a ruling class, which is educated and uses their education to elevate themselves and demean anybody else. And we’ve rendered it not simply economic, but cultural as well. These divisions are massive. You can blindfold me and put me in any town in the United States and I can tell you within five minutes if it has a college in it or not.

There are these marches across the country that are taking place against Trump. And they’re great. I approve. I don’t like Trump. But there’s a meme that’s going around now that says: “Look it’s all across America. It’s even happening in Texas! And Arkansas! But it’s happening on a goddamn college campus in Texas and Arkansas. I spent a week and a half in two towns, Kalamazoo and Battle Creek, Michigan, separated by 35 miles. One has a college, one doesn’t. Which one do you think voted for Trump? First time they ever voted for a Republican.

(Continue Reading)

#politics #poverty #eductation #election #working class #chris arnade #economics #economic inequality

[emilyplaysotome]

Part 37 - The Bachelorette

Down the Voltage Rabbit Hole is an ongoing story about our MC, who could easily be anyone in voltage fandom. She woke up in hospital bed only to discover that she’d somehow been transported Voltage universe.

This story is ongoing, so if you missed a part, or are new to the story, please use the link to the masterpost below to catch yourself up:

https://tinyurl.com/k4rrxna

Part 37 - The Bachelorette

I am not, nor have I ever been a religious person.

It’s fair to say that I am one of those people who would classify myself as “spiritual” in the sense that I like the idea of reincarnation better than heaven and hell, which has always felt so binary to me. 

I believe in the fact that we, as human beings, are limited in our understanding of the world around us. I have always considered myself to be agnostic, and I believe if God, or some higher power does in fact exist, he/she probably isn’t as petty as the God I learned about as a child in the bible stories that come to mind.

With that said, this particular God who ruled all over the heavens as king, appeared to be as petty as the God from the old testament.

“My poor little Zyglavis,” he said with an amused smile that I didn’t trust for a second, “Oh well! I suppose the events to come will provide me with great entertainment...and that’s really all I can ask of someone as insignificant as yourself.”

It was clear that this God was an omnipotent, all powerful shit-stirrer, and being aware of that fact I thought it unwise to rock the boat any more than I already had. I simply bowed my head in response, as I tried to formulate the best way to provoke him into giving me answers to all the questions that I was currently kicking around in my head.

When I found myself unable to find the right words, I found myself muttering an, “Um,” which turned out to be just as successful in inciting the king to engage with me further.

“Yes? Speak up human.”

“Your highness...you said I had a week. What do you mean by that?”

“The tome Huedhaut found - the door. I’ll be sure to give you a personal send off then.”

“But why in a week, why not just send me back now?”

“Because where would the fun in that be? The second I heard your thoughts to take someone home with you, I felt compelled to intervene. Giving you a deadline will only serve to make it a more enjoyable viewing for me.”

I had to chuckle at that - the king of the heavens was far more of a troublemaker than I ever anticipated. 

It was clear that intervention was not quite what he was after, and it would be more accurate to say that he wanted to shake things up and then bask in the afterglow. What he craved was obviously reality-tv style entertainment at the hands of a few Goldfish and one of his most trusted ministers. 

Not wanting to let him down, and seeing as how I have always been a fan of reality shows, I decided to take the bait and appeal to his desire for what I would consider to be good, trashy television.

“I’ll make a deal with you,” I said, fully aware of how brazen I was being towards a creature who could smite me with the snap of his fingers.

“A deal with me?”

The king of the Gods’ smile hid something darker, but I didn’t let that scare me. I was in the home stretch so to speak, and I was determined to win the otome game that I’d been playing these past few weeks.

“I get three overnight dates. One with each guy. At the end of the week I choose one of them to return home with me and you see to it that he’s able to do so...even if that means losing one of your ministers.”

“Oh-ho!”

It was suddenly clear where Leon had picked up that small quirk of his, and the King, visibly amused cocked his head to the side.

The idea of three overnight dates with three men, resulting in one winner evidently intrigued the king, as I figured it would. After all, the Bachelorette had built its entire franchise on this concept, and had managed to keep itself alive and booming for over a decade after it first premiered on television. 

If that format was good enough for millions of Americans I had to figure it’d be just as good for a God who loved a little drama.

“You know it’s forbidden for a Goldfish to lay with a God, do you not?”

“I do. But part of my deal with you, is that you allow it - you give us your blessing.”

“And what am I getting in return?”

“Entertainment. Each night this week you’ll be able to tune in and see what happens. Don’t you want to see if I’ll be able to seduce a man as steadfast as Zyglavis? Isn’t that why you were encouraging me to try moments ago? You want to test him. You want to know if his loyalty towards you can be swayed. But if it can...I get him. Do we have a deal?”

“We do.”

The king of the heavens seemed delighted at the prospect of watching me as the Bachelorette, and with a far off look in his eyes, muttered something to himself about being able to part with anyone other than his beloved Scorpio. Upon hearing that I wondered if Scorpio and the king might be lovers (considering his clear attachment), but seeing as how it was none of my business, and not wanting to engage the king further, I bowed once more and began to exit the bath.

“Goldfish.”

I paused, worried that the king might throw another curveball my way and timidly turned back to face him.

“Choose wisely. Good luck.”

With the snap of his fingers he was gone, and my time as the Bachelorette was just now beginning.

I’d watched a fair amount of reality tv in my day and knew full well what I was going to get myself into with these overnight dates. 

For once, the speed at which feelings grew between people in this world seemed to be beneficial, and I pondered how, on my overnight dates in a fantasy suite, I could accurately gauge the interest of “forever” with a man who I’d only known for a short amount of time.

On the show, The Bachelor(ette) they kept things vague in terms of how far things progressed sexually between the contestants, but knowing that I was going to be headed home in only a week made me certain insofar as how I wanted to handle things. 

I’m sure there will be many who would judge me for this, but I knew that I’d need to sleep with all of them (unless something happened on the date that prompted me to change my mind), in order to properly evaluate our sexual chemistry, along with our long term potential.

Back in Zyglavis’ room, I changed into my pajamas (not quite ready for bed) and sat at Operation GTFO HQ with my slice of cake and laptop. 

I had planned on starting to write lyrics for Revance, but with a new project fresh in my mind, I decided to focus on planning my last week in this world. Having been familiar with the king of the Heavens from the game back home, I knew him to be a trickster, who often set up situations for his own amusement. 

Even though he’d told me that he would send me home personally, I considered the fact that he might not be telling me the truth. He was the type of God who often did what would amuse him most, and if that involved me being stuck in this world, it was obvious that he’d have no qualms as far as backing out of our deal.

For the time being, I would stay committed to reclaiming my independence while going on my Bachelorette style dates. 

If the king were to back out of his promise to send me home, I hoped that Huedhaut and the other Gods might be able to get me back under the assumption that I returned to my old self and shook off the characteristics that kept me stuck in otome-ville.

With all this in mind, I did what I did best and put together a tentative plan for the week to come.

Tomorrow (or today, seeing as how it was 2:30 A.M.), I would go to Ryo’s cafe and whip up Revance’s lyrics for them. 

Once they were approved, I would ask the band to wire me payment for the songs which would hopefully cover a shopping spree on Sunday. Like any notable Bachelorette, I was going to need a fabulous wardrobe for my upcoming dates. 

The king of the Heavens was unfamiliar with the production value associated with a show like the Bachelorette, and in order to curry his favor I wanted to deliver. This meant using the money from Revance on gowns, hair and makeup, in addition to planning extravagant dates designed to create a real life fairy tale experience.

Once I secured the funds needed to bankroll a week of luxury and glamor, I would coordinate the first (and what may very well be the last) meeting of my restaurant club for Sunday night, knowing that Sakiko, Chisato, and the Conte MC would most likely be available. With a girls only friend date on the horizon, I then would assert my independence using the rest of Saturday as a day to bide my (alone) time by attempting to stretch my new fun-loving, free-spirited muscles.

I would have a “Treat Yourself” evening. 

I’d see a movie, go to a park, or maybe even try my hand at creative writing or read a book...anything that made me feel good. In this bizarro version of Tokyo there were plenty of things to see and do, and while most of the settings had been used as date backdrops, I was going to check them out myself.

With my Saturday now planned, I shifted my focus to what needed to be done on the following day.

On Sunday, I’d spend the morning and afternoon shopping with the money from Revance. Next, I’d need to book three different fancy hotels for my overnight dates - Tuesday/Wednesday, Wednesday/Thursday, and Thursday/Friday. 

I knew the schedule was aggressive, and that there was a nonzero chance I would be able to get all three men to agree, but I’d promised the king a show and I was determined to give him one.

It made the most sense to try and schedule Jin on Tuesday/Wednesday, seeing as how we’d just had a great date together and it would be easy enough to tell him that I couldn’t get him out of my head and wanted to see him again. He’d offered to take me out even if I was leaving Tokyo, so morally and ethically I didn’t feel bad on taking him up on that.

I figured having an overnight date with Shun during the Wednesday/Thursday time slot would be too aggressive (seeing as how I’d accepted his job offer and he was now my new boss), and planned to go out with him last, using our time at work together in order to line that up in the most natural way possible.

This meant that Zyglavis got my time Wednesday/Thursday, and I felt myself smiling with anticipation as I pictured what a date with him would look like. 

Unlike the other two men on my roster, Zyglavis was the most reserved. It was apparent that both Shun and Namba would have no qualms spending the night with me, but Zyglavis...he was a different story.

On that note, sexual chemistry in a relationship is something that has always been important to me, and while I knew that most of these nights would be awkward and chock full of navigating each other’s likes and dislikes, I hoped to walk away with a real understanding of how each man was in bed.

Was he communicative? Giving? Selfish? Tender? Rough?

I wanted to know before I could make my final choice, and I worried that convincing Zyglavis to break the rule of the heavens and lay with a Goldfish (despite the king’s blessing), might be an impossible task.

I sighed, alone in the empty room as I finished the last bite of my gateau slice, picturing Zyglavis somewhere in the heavens completely in the dark as to the fact the King had paid me a personal visit. 

It was obvious to me that he was the frontrunner in my heart, but that did not necessarily mean that he would be the best choice for my life back home. 

With such a short amount of time left, I’d need to really separate the fantasy of each man from the reality of what life with them would look like back in New York. Strong feelings and passion only go so far, and the most successful relationships are often between two people who share a deep mutual respect and friendship that results in an ability for them to grow as individuals, together.

On paper, Shun seemed to be the best fit for me. 

We worked in similar fields and I knew that he’d be able to easily find employment in New York. He was a cosmopolitan man who enjoyed the finer things in life, so living in New York City would suit him quite nicely. I could see him being a great plus one with my inner circle, charming them with his looks and manners, while also being able to hold his own in our conversations.

With this said, I needed to know if he was capable of being more than a charming, pretty face.

I worried he might be too much of a playboy for my tastes. I had little to no time to convince him to remove his mask for me, but I knew that before I could commit to him I would need to see who he was underneath his slick, creative director facade. 

I knew that I wanted someone who was kind and caring, and who, when things would get tough as they inevitably did in life, wouldn’t cut and run to something that seemed “easier”. 

Whereas Shun struck me as someone who preferred ease in his relationships, I knew that Namba could handle a rocky road from time to time. In the short amount of time we’d spent together, I was certain that he possessed the ability to be there for me in the way I wanted someone to be. 

The problem with him was his lifestyle. 

He’d told me himself that he’d been in the force for half of his life. He’d worked impossibly hard to move his way up to the high ranking position he was currently in and I couldn’t see him giving all that up in an attempt to join the NYPD or something similar back home.

I knew how close he was with his team and I worried that taking him home with me would force him into a world in which he was isolated and miserable. A scene of living with him in my studio apartment flashed through my mind, except this time he was depressed, smoking out a crack in the window while complaining about how gross and deplorable the city I lived in was.

Crime in New York City was so drastically different than crime in bizarro Toyko. Would he be able to handle terrorism? Murder? Sexual Assault? 

Or would the cruel world I came from destroy his optimism for life, and slowly beat him down day after day.

Finally, there was Zyglavis who would be trading in his unlimited cosmic powers for an itty bitty living space (literally speaking seeing as how I live in a small New York City studio apartment). 

He was the biggest wildcard of the group, and I had to think it was unlikely that should he be the one to join me he’d be able to keep his powers or immortality. With that in mind, could I even ask him to step foot through the door knowing that committing to me meant he’d be stripped of everything he found familiar. 

Furthermore, if he were to agree to do so, then what?

Zyglavis hadn’t worked a day in his life in the human realm. Would he be able to happily acclimate to his new life as a Goldfsih? Or would he lose patience with things and grow to resent me for dragging him along with me?

These questions weren’t going to get answered tonight, and with my eyelids growing heavy I decided to pick my planning back up tomorrow. 

I closed my laptop, hiding all traces of my upcoming plan should Zyglavis return prematurely and got under the covers, snuggling up to the pillow he’d laid on the day we’d almost kissed. It still smelled faintly of his hair and the lavender smell from the baths, and I hugged it tightly, quietly wishing that I'd see him sooner than I expected.

With the room pitch black, I found myself drifting off into a peaceful slumber.

That night, I had two dreams that felt more like a vision, and less like a mishmash of my subconscious trying to process the day. 

Both scenes took place in the King’s throne room, and I watched as the same conversation played out in two different ways. 

In the dream, Zyglavis was in his true form, which I had yet to see in real life. He was more beautiful than I could even attempt to describe, and in both scenarios I stood off to the side, as if I were an invisible bystander.

In the first scenario, the King had been the first to speak.

“Zyglavis, I have paid your Goldfish a visit.”

Zyglavis blushed fiercely, breaking eye contact with the King and said, “It would be inaccurate to describe Ami as ‘my’ Goldfish, but with that aside, why have you done so if I may inquire?”

“She and I have come to an understanding. She will be allowed to take a man from this world home with her, should he give his consent, and you are in the running.”

“Me?”

The king chuckled, seeing through Zyglavis’ feigned surprise.

“Yes. She even went so far as to demand my blessing...which I gave her. You should feel free to have your way with her.”

Zyglavis blushed furiously, unable to mutter anything other than, “Yes, your highness” as he stared down at his feet.

“But hear this - should you chose to go with her you will no longer be a Minister of Punishments. Scorpio will succeed you, and though you will be able to return to this realm once the mortal dies, you will be unable to return to the high position you currently hold. Gods will no doubt talk, and it could be entirely possible that upon your return you will be considered the disgraced God of Libra by your peers.”

“I see.”

“However, note this. True love is something that alludes both men and Gods in their lifetime. Many will go through this life never knowing what it is to experience something so priceless. If this is in fact love, you would be foolish to turn your back on it. Consider these words.”

“Yes your highness.”

With that, the king smirked and dismissed Zyglavis. He started to leave and then paused. Sensing his unease the king addressed him once more.

“What is it?”

“These...other men. Who are they?”

The king chuckled, clearly tickled to see his stoic minister showing signs of petty jealousy.

“Zyglavis. Fear not. You are a God. And a man is no match for a God.”

Zyglavis gave the king a small nod, and with that he exited. 

The king turned towards me, and breaking the fourth wall smiled, as he snapped his fingers.

A bright light flashed before my eyes and I saw the two together once more. In this second scene, Zyglavis was the first to speak.

“Your highness, you wanted to speak with me?”

“Yes, Zyglavis. As you know, I have paid the Goldfish a visit.”

“How did it go?”

“Swimmingly,” the king said, laughing at his own bad joke, “I have given you both my blessing. You should not feel as if you have to hold anything back.”

Zyglavis smirked, “I don’t think that will be necessary. Taking advantage of a woman’s affection is not my style.”

To that, an angry look flashed through the king’s face.

“Zyglavis - you will put aside how you normally proceed to ensure that she picks you. I cannot have her taking anyone from this world home to hers.”

Zygavis’ expression became stoic and obedient, “Yes, your highness.”

“My trusted Minister. I knew I could count on you.”

“You honor me your majesty.”

The king smiled, and then as if something unpleasant crossed his mind he became serious and asked, “Tell me, do you feel badly at all for the Goldfish?”

“A little, but it is for the greater good - the logical way to proceed. I look forward to the time when I can return to serving you and the Department of Punishments once more.”

“Very good. You are dismissed.”

With his head held high, Zyglavis coolly turned and exited the room. Just as he had in the first scenario, the king broke the fourth wall and with a harsh look, addressed me directly.

“One is true, one is false. Which one? That I cannot say…Choose wisely Naomi.”

He snapped his fingers, and I jolted awake, covered in sweat and breathing heavily.

Daylight streamed in through the windows, and I checked the time to see it was 10 in the morning. 

I put a hand over my racing heart, reminding myself that it had just been a dream. However, as quickly as that thought crossed my mind, I turned to see something on the nightstand that hadn’t been there before.

Almost as if he wanted to hammer the point home, I picked up the card which had my name, my real name, on the envelope. 

It read:

Not a dream Naomi - One true. One false. Choose wisely or go home alone.

I sighed aloud, realizing how difficult my last week was going to be. Now that the king of the heavens was involved, I had opened myself up to unforeseen challenges, no doubt in the interest of making things more interesting for him.

I had been the one who was foolish enough to suggest a “Bachelorette” style competition in order to secure who would accompany me home, and like any good reality producer the king had merely stirred the pot.

To be continued…in Part 38

Let the games begin! Who are you rooting for? Next chapter up will be up on Monday but cast your vote now!

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Thanks for reading :)

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[midukki]

IT’S NOT ‘REGIONAL’, DAMMIT, IT’S ‘INDIAN’!

Next time you say the words “regional cinema”, remember the many political insinuations, the propaganda, lies and myths built into this loaded term By Anna MM Vetticad I hate the term “regional cinema”. There was a time when I only mildly disliked it, but as time passes I find myself unable to ignore the implications of those two seemingly innocuous words. For a start, “regional cinema” suggests that there is such a thing as a “national cinema” of India, just as the term “regional language” used for languages other than Hindi suggests that Hindi is our “national language” though it is not.

I was reminded of the impact of these constant insinuations in the oddest way by the reader reaction to this column a few months back. Well, actually, it is not as odd as it is telling. I devoted a recent instalment of Film Fatale to the manner in which Hollywood has, for years now, been tapping multiple markets across this country by dubbing their films in various Indian languages or subtitling them, while a majority of Indian film producers still do not make an effort to target audiences outside their home states.

Although the immediate news pegs for the write-up were the release of the National Award-winning Tamil film Visaaranai and the Marathi blockbuster Sairat this year, I clearly stated that the points being raised “apply equally to Tamil, Hindi, Telugu and India’s smaller industries”. Yet, curiously enough (or perhaps, unsurprisingly?) almost every response from readers I received on the social media assumed that my discussion was about the need for subtitling films in languages other than Hindi – what they described as “regional cinema” – to take them beyond their domestic audience.

The inference is clear. The assumption that Hindi is spoken and understood in every corner of India has been so drilled into our heads, that we often miss a contrarian point even when it is spelt out for us in black and white. It is equally unthinkingly assumed that Hindi cinema is the primary choice of cinema for people in all Indian states, with films in their own mother tongues coming in second. Neither claim is true. This column then is an examination of that loaded term “regional cinema”, the political propaganda, myths and lies built into it.

Myth 1: That Hindi is India’s national language. It is not.

Contrary to popular belief, Hindi is not India’s national language. No language has been given that status by the Indian Constitution. It was decided early on by the authors of the Constitution not to impose a single language on the entire country as a “national language” with all the political and patriotic connotations intrinsic to that label, until such time as the country was willing to accept one. Instead, under Article 343, Hindi and English were anointed the official languages of the Union – read: the languages in which all Central Government work would be done – while leaving each state to choose its own official language in which state government business would be conducted.

(Note: The Constitution does not use the term “national language”, it does however use the term “regional languages” to denote the official languages of all states including Hindi.) How then has the “Hindi is our national language” fiction been circulated so effectively? The answer lies in a mixture of propaganda, political games, media ignorance, casualness towards facts and on the positive front, the soft diplomacy of the Hindi film industry.

The Constitution enjoined the Centre to make efforts to popularise Hindi. Independent of this instruction, Bollywood has beautifully and non-aggressively generated goodwill for the language outside the Hindi belt, quietly managing to popularise it among populations that do not consider it their mother tongue. This alone would have been perfectly acceptable, but other insidious efforts have been and continue to be made in favour of Hindi through deliberate misinformation campaigns and political aggression that have vitiated the language debate.

For instance, in classrooms across this country it is not uncommon for Hindi teachers to tell young students that Hindi is India’s national language. Politicians too routinely repeat this falsehood, as I recall BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra doing last year on a TV show where we were fellow panelists. From his silence when I corrected him, I gathered he was aware of the truth but chose to speak an untruth on a public platform anyway.

As it happens, the news media further spreads this lie, either due to their own poor research or because there are propagandists within its (our) ranks too. In 2009, for example, when Samajwadi Party MLA Abu Azmi was assaulted by Maharashtra Navnirman Sena hooligans in the Assembly because he insisted on taking his oath in Hindi, not Marathi, some newspersons spoke of an attack on the “national language”.

This fib has been repeated so often in the 69 years since Independence that it has now become a Goebbelsian truth for large swathes of the population. In a 2005 interview, film star Aishwarya Rai famously misinformed US talk show host David Letterman that Hindi is India’s “national language” and fuzzily implied that all Indian cinema is Bollywood. Myth 2: That most Indians are Hindi bhashis. They are not. What is the big deal, you ask? You mean apart from the importance of facts? The big deal is that politics and egos have blinded us to our amazing diversity. It is not Hindi but an imposition of Hindi that raises hackles in a country where Census figures have shown that 59 per cent of the population lists Constitutionally recognised languages other than Hindi as their mother tongue. For the record, Hindi has become an umbrella term for many languages dismissed as “dialects”, which makes even this figure misleading. Since India is trotting along fine without a designated “national language”, why alter a harmless status quo?

The term “regional cinema” emerges from this context. India is the world’s largest producer of films. Unlike its closest competitors in terms of volume, the United States and Nigeria, India is also unique in that it is home to multiple thriving film industries in different languages that have survived the cash-rich American film industry i.e. Hollywood’s marketing muscle. This is a massive achievement and should be a matter of pride for Indians, yet the so-called ‘national’ media usually ignores all our cinema other than Hindi i.e. Bollywood.

I say “national media” for the English media, since English is the only language not specific to any Indian region. This media is primarily headquartered in Delhi and Mumbai. Hindi is a language of Delhi, Mumbai is the centre of Bollywood. Combine the convenience of proximity with biases, and you may see why most of them behave as if Bollywood is India’s largest (or only) film industry.

This media largely recruits professionals specialising in Hindi cinema, firstly because many of these organisations tend to have a north India bias, and second, since Hindi film specialists are more easily available in Delhi and Mumbai than those who write prolifically on other Indian industries.

Unfortunately, many Hindi cinema experts imply through their words that Indian cinema is primarily or entirely Hindi. Using the terms “Indian cinema” and “Hindi cinema” / “Bollywood” synonymously is also standard practice. Then there are those labouring under the misconception that Hindi is India’s “national language”, who believe it is okay to ignore what they consider secondary film industries. Other industries are thus relegated to the status of “regional cinema”. To be fair, Hindi films do have a wider, pan-India reach and the Hindi industry has marketed itself better than its compatriots. The other side of that coin, though, is that even if a non-Hindi industry wishes to market itself, the ‘national’ media is rarely interested. The primacy of Hindi cinema is now a self-perpetuating myth. As the media ignores other cinema, it plays a role in expanding Hindi’s audience, an audience size it then uses to defend further ignoring other Indian cinema. The only non-Hindi film to get as much coverage as Hindi films in recent years has been 2015’s Telugu blockbuster Bahubali – not so much because of its mega scale that was unprecedented in India, but because the iconic Bollywood producer-director Karan Johar backed the Hindi dubbed version. Since 2007, when the ‘national’ media suddenly discovered during Sivaji’s promotional period that Rajinikanth was perhaps India’s highest-paid star, this Tamil film legend too has been extensively covered – but again with a certain them-and-us attitude, often with a condescension directed at “the other” because of his trademark fantastical stunts on screen and bizarre levels of fan adulation off screen. The ‘national’ media usually covers Rajini as they would a display in an old curiosity shop, rarely with any degree of seriousness.

Myth 3: That the Hindi film industry is India’s largest film industry. It is not. 

The selective coverage of Indian cinema by the ‘national’ media cannot be explained away by volumes. According to the Central Board of Film Certification’s annual report for 2014-15, the language in which the maximum number of films was certified for the given year was Tamil, followed closely by Hindi and then Telugu. This was not unusual at all. For years, Tamil, Hindi and Telugu have been neck-and-neck in terms of number of films produced.

In a country that makes 2,000-plus feature films each year, an individual film journalist cannot possibly devote equal attention to all film industries. Hopefully, open-minded editors reading this column will see it not as an indictment but as a call for organisations to hire specialists. Just as BJP, Congress, Left and so on are separate beats in political journalism so also Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, Malayalam, Bengali, Marathi and so on should be separate beats for the news media in the country that is the world’s largest producer of films.

At the very least, media platforms should hire separate critics for each of our three largest industries. Until that happens, the least that we as individual film journalists can do is to not imply through our writings that the Hindi film industry is India’s only or largest or most significant industry. A good start would be to flush that awful term “regional cinema” down a bottomless drain.

#non-hindi cinema #indian cinema #article #anna vetticad #a well written and researched version of what I just posted

[spicynbachili1]

Warframe: Fortuna graphics performance: How to get the best settings

Warframe‘s new Fortuna growth is lastly right here, offering the right excuse for gamers previous and new to mud off their Tenno armour and head out into the never-before-seen frozen wastes of Venus’ Orb Vallis area. It’s the second open world map that’s been added to the sport since final yr’s Plains of Eidolon replace, however given the variety of efficiency points folks encountered the primary time they ventured into out onto these titular plains, there’s been a lot consternation over whether or not Fortuna may also be an excessive amount of for some PCs to deal with.

Happily (sorry), I’m right here to assist, as I’ve been chucking a bunch of at this time’s finest graphics playing cards at it, in addition to a handful of older ones I’ve bought knocking round, to see the way it fares. Beneath, you’ll discover every little thing you should know on the way to get one of the best settings for Warframe’s Fortuna replace, in addition to what you should do to be able to squeeze each final drop of efficiency out of your trusty graphics card.

Warframe graphics efficiency: The specs

For essentially the most half, Warframe is an absolute doozy to get operating on PC. Certainly, each graphics playing cards listed by Digital Extremes of their minimal spec necessities for the sport (see under) are virtually ten years previous at time of writing, that means even aged PCs and laptops ought to be capable to obtain a secure framerate with out you having to spend plenty of cash on costly new .

Minimal specs: OS: Home windows XP CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo e6400 / AMD Athlon x64 4000+ RAM: 2GB Graphics: Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT / ATI Radeon HD 3600 DirectX: 9.0c

Now, I’ve solely bought a restricted number of ‘mature’ graphics playing cards at my disposal for this specific efficiency take a look at – the oldest I’ve is simply 5 years previous versus ten – so the recommendation you’ll discover right here will naturally skew in the direction of the more moderen crop of playing cards you should purchase proper now.

Nevertheless, whereas most of at this time’s graphics playing cards can run Warframe simply high-quality, there are nonetheless loads of events when framerates can start to tank – and that’s in a PC with an Intel Core i5-8600Okay, 16GB of RAM and all the newest Home windows 10 and DirectX updates put in, too. Living proof: the floor of Venus in Warframe’s new Fortuna growth. Right here, framerates have been virtually lower in half in comparison with the speeds I used to be getting on common missions, so hopefully there ought to nonetheless be loads of helpful information right here no matter how previous your graphics card is.

With that in thoughts, listed below are all of the graphics playing cards I’ve examined up to now. Apologies prematurely but once more for the shortage of AMD playing cards on this listing. I’ve been doing my finest to get extra of those in to steadiness out all of the Nvidia ones, however man alive are they onerous to come back by today. I’ve additionally determined to not embody Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 2080 or RTX 2080Ti playing cards on this specific take a look at, as a result of they’re simply too rattling quick to even fear about. As at all times, I’ll replace this text with extra graphics playing cards as and once I’m capable of get them in, however for now, right here’s what we’re coping with:

Warframe graphics efficiency: The aim

As at all times, the primary intention of those graphics efficiency assessments is to attain a secure 60fps utilizing the very best doable graphics settings, which in Warframe’s case is its Excessive preset. This time, nevertheless, I’m making the positively monstrous assumption that almost all of you in all probability aren’t enjoying Warframe at 4K resolutions, so I’ve restricted my assessments to only 1920×1080 and 2560×1440 (when you would like 4K outcomes, do say so within the feedback and I’ll add them in).

Since Warframe doesn’t have the benefit of a built-in benchmarking software, I examined every card by finishing a normal mission, the place I famous the minimal and most framerate I noticed in every playthrough, operating round Fortuna’s hub world for a bit (additionally jotting down the minimal and most framerates on provide), after which enjoying via Fortuna’s very first Vox Solaris mission out on the large, open-world expanse of Vallis (or at the very least so far as I might get via it as a result of I’m garbage at Warframe, once more recording these min and max frames). This could hopefully offer you a reasonably first rate thought of what sort of common pace to anticipate in every of the sport’s three most important play states, in addition to how low any potential pace dips may go when issues get a bit heated.

Warframe graphics efficiency: How you can get one of the best settings

As talked about above, many of the graphics playing cards on take a look at right here had completely no downside by any means operating Warframe on its Excessive graphics preset, no matter whether or not I used to be enjoying at 1920×1080 or 2560×1440. Nevertheless, there have been nonetheless a few older playing cards that have been clearly struggling to maintain tempo as soon as I used to be out within the wilds of Vallis, so listed below are a few issues to remember when you discover your efficiency is beginning to lag.

One of many largest issues that may assist enhance efficiency in Warframe is to allow the sport’s Dynamic Decision function. That is disabled by default, however switching it on will mechanically downscale the decision on the fly to assist keep a gentle framerate. It’s a typical function employed by a variety of demanding video games today, and will be useful while you hit a very tough patch however don’t wish to spend ages tinkering round with the settings manually – particularly when Warframe doesn’t truly pause the motion while you open up the settings menu.

I’d go for Auto if you need the least quantity of fuss, however you too can set your individual decision scale by choosing the Consumer choice (though how a lot profit you get with this over merely selecting a decrease decision is debatable). For reference, 100% is your monitor’s native decision (or no matter decision you at the moment have chosen in the primary show settings), and the bottom Consumer setting on provide, 50%, shall be half of no matter that decision that’s.

I additionally discovered that switching off Ambient Occlusion, Trilinear Filtering and Runtime Tessellation additionally helped to stabilize efficiency in Warframe’s common missions, as these are among the extra GPU-heavy settings within the show choices.

Over on the floor of Venus, nevertheless, simply turning off these three wasn’t fairly sufficient to provide a noticeable enchancment within the sport’s total efficiency. As an alternative, I additionally needed to flip off Native Reflections and Dynamic Lighting earlier than I noticed a good soar in pace.

Typically, although, I used to be capable of get every graphics card operating with out a lot tinkering in any respect. To see how all of them bought on, simply click on the web page numbers under or hop again up the web page to the cardboard of your alternative. Additionally, when you’re in want of correct, Fortuna gameplay help, be sure you try Dave’s intensive assortment of Warframe guides, too.

from SpicyNBAChili.com http://spicymoviechili.spicynbachili.com/warframe-fortuna-graphics-performance-how-to-get-the-best-settings/

[delicadenza]

The Long Way Home: On Love, Departures, and What Detroit Means to Me

(What originally started off as a little thought-seed about the Very Specific way I imagine my precanon Phichuuris turned into a grossly long-winded ramble about the nature of love???? I don’t know how to explain, omg. I’m so sorry.)

The fourth episode of Yuri!!! on Ice was a pivotal episode for me for many reasons. Prior to that my investment in the series’ early episodes was always tempered by a kind of caution—I’d been enjoying the push-and-pull between Yuuri and Victor as Yuuri struggled to come to terms with the fact that his idol had taken any degree of interest in him and Victor attempted to draw him out of his shell, and seeing the seed of what would eventually develop into a complex dynamic between him and Yuri Plisetsky, partly admiration, partly rivalry, partly a care and concern that neither of them quite knew how to express. But likewise I’d made it a point to be a little guarded—to hang back and wait until fuller character arcs for the protagonists and for the people in their world began to emerge before I gave the series my heart and soul. (I was a little scared, do you see? I didn’t want things to just turn out like another carrot-and-stick game between the shy anxious boy and the hot foreign guy he’d idolized forever who had taken a sudden and inexplicable interest in him. It didn’t help matters that at the time all the conspiracy theories floating around were that Victor was evil, or that he was dying. But anyway.)

All of that reserve flew out the window by the fourth episode, which essentially took the little hints the earlier episodes had been making at the characters’ hidden depths and cranked them up to eleven. There’s so much wonderful insight that comes out of this episode—from the by-now iconic “When I open up, he meets me where I am,” to the way Victor challenges Yuri to put together his own free skate as a way to build his confidence. The conversation they both have with Yuuri’s former coach, Celestino, is especially telling of Yuuri’s personal challenges and what he needs in order to grow: Victor asks, “Why didn’t you let Yuuri choose his own music?” to which Celestino replies that he chooses the music for his skaters unless they tell him that they’d like to pick their own. He proceeds to add that Yuuri only brought him a piece once, but that he’d gone back on it when asked if he believed he could win skating to it: “Please choose the music for me after all, Coach.”

In a sense, this conversation with his former coach reveals to Victor how past!Yuuri failed a kind of test—one that had to do with his capacity to trust his own choices—and that present!Yuuri now needs to face and surmount a similar test before he can move on. The difference is, of course, that Victor’s not going to let him give up on himself. Where Celestino withdraws and lets Yuuri fold, Victor insists on pushing. I also like how this short conversation is illustrative of the fact that, for all that it didn’t work out between them, and for all that his methods differ from Victor’s, Celestino knows Yuuri and has his best interests at heart, and understands what he needs in order to succeed, even if it’s not something he can help Yuuri with at this point.

Suffice to say that there’s a lot to like about this episode, a lot to love, but the real kicker for me came a little under ten minutes in, when Yuuri’s slumped at his desk at a loss as to what to do with his program, and he’s scrolling through his Instagram feed. He sees a friend of his is practicing in Thailand—and right then and there, he calls this friend. Yuuri, who’s anxious and overthinky and shy and has such a hard time opening up to people, just calls up this random boy from Instagram in the middle of the night, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. He greets him with “Sawasdee krab.” Cue me bringing my hand to my mouth in dismay—He has a Thai friend and he’s greeting him in Thai, oh my god. I felt the axe hovering above my head about to drop.

Suffice to say that it was love at first sight for me, as far as Phichit Chulanont was concerned. From his very first appearance as a smiley image on Yuuri’s phone screen, he exudes a natural warmth and an effervescence that it’s difficult to look away from, and that have proceeded to endear him to the fandom surprisingly thoroughly for a supporting character without too much screentime/internal monologue time/poignant backstory reveal time. But more than that, it was the ease with which I saw him and Yuuri talk to each other that intrigued me, and the idea of their shared past—“Detroit’s boring now that you’re gone!” he said, and I felt the axe smash me right down into extrapolation hell, because cute former rinkmate? Cute former rinkmate whose wiki entry later told me was also a former roommate? Look at all the fanfic waiting to happen.

(Spoiler: Happen it did, and then some.)

I think one of my favorite things about fanfiction—possibly my favorite thing—is that you never start from zero. There’s a joy to be derived from building upon the foundations of a preexisting universe—taking the characters and fleshing them out in ways that canon doesn’t get to, dropping them into entirely new scenarios or even entirely new worlds, exploring “what if” scenarios. In other words, the act of filling in gaps.

I love visiting other people’s worlds to play. Add to this the fact that I’m the kind of person who enjoys thinking a lot about how our pasts shape who we eventually become, and who can get pretty obsessive about going back over my own memories with a fine-toothed comb and trying to trace how the various people I used to be might have been built, brick by brick, experience by experience, into the person I am now. So maybe it only stands to reason that I’d latch on to the idea of Yuuri’s time in Detroit, that long formative period in his life that’s talked about in canon but we never actually get to see except in the tiniest glimpses, and turn that strange obsessiveness of mine toward extrapolating the life out of it. Or, well, extrapolating the life into it, I guess I should say—making it real, trying my best to build it into a world of its own. I’ve never been to Motor City myself, but in the process of all this extrapolation I’ve looked at so many maps of the city, so many long lists of shops and restaurants, so many photos in particular of the Detroit River and of Ambassador Bridge, that it kind of makes my head spin. The imaginative exercise has made Phichit and Yuuri’s Detroit so real to me that sometimes I think I can almost smell the air. It’s honestly kind of weird when I stop and think about it, but that’s what the imagination can do if you take it and run with it.

Yuuri leaves home at eighteen, and spends the next five years in Detroit. He trains under Celestino, goes to college, makes it to his first Grand Prix Final. It’s never established in canon how many of those years he spends living with Phichit—usually I go with around two, on the assumption that Phichit moves to the US at eighteen, as Yuuri does, though this varies depending on who you ask—and how they come to be such good friends, different as they are. In other words, lots of gaps to fill in. Lots of room to play, and to extrapolate.

In the Detroit that I imagine, Yuuri and Phichit go to school and train together. They do the groceries and the laundry. They explore the city. They get hamsters. Somewhere in the middle of everything, Phichit gets his driver’s license, which means long late-night drives in Celestino’s car. Sometimes they go to parties. Sometimes they dance. They eat and watch TV and clean up their apartment and study together, and eventually they push their beds together so they can sleep next to each other too. Probably in that shared space they talk more and more deeply with each other than they ever have with anyone else. (Needless to say I was happy beyond words to see that little flashback in episode 11, where Phichit tells Yuuri about his dream to skate to “Shall We Skate?” at a major competition, and how important it is that Yuuri be there too when it finally happens. Needless to say at least three friends who saw it before I did were kind enough to tweet me a warning that the episode was going to kick my ass. Shout-out to my friends. I love my friends.)

In my imagination, all of this leads to them falling in love, though weirdly enough that’s almost beside the point—secondary to the fact that, somehow, they come to love each other. More on the difference between those two things in a bit.

Yuuri tanks at the Grand Prix Final in December. He returns home to Hasetsu in March of the following year. In the intervening months you can imagine him as caught in a kind of downward spiral—how depressed he must be from what he imagines is the worst performance of his life, how lost he probably feels. The competitive season has ended early for him, and he’s right about to finish his college degree, so in a lot of ways he’s at a crossroads, and there are a lot of things he’s unsure about. Should he leave Detroit or stay? Should he keep skating, or start trying to imagine a life where he does something different? Can he see himself taking over the family business, even?

What little we learn from canon about Yuuri’s eventual decision to leave Detroit is zeroed-in on Yuuri to the exclusion of everything else. All we know is that he doesn’t think that what he’s doing is working anymore, so the only decision that makes sense to him in this time of intense personal crisis is to seek a change of scenery. We learn that he’s trying to recover the love for skating that he’s somehow lost along the way, and the way he’s decided to do it is to make his way back to his origins. We see him return to Hasetsu, his hometown, and skate Victor’s “Stay Close to Me” program for his childhood friend Yuuko, a nod back to when they were little and fell in love with skating copying Victor’s iconic performances. We’re not told anything about what he’s chosen to walk away from, what he’s decided to leave behind.

Detroit City is one of those things. Celestino is one of those things, as is Phichit, as is the skating club they practice at, and the place where they live, and the hamsters. And it’s possible from here to spin out versions of this story that are sad and painful and poignant especially with regard to Phichit’s place in this quite complicated order of things—to look at it from bittersweet pining Phichit angles and I’m-sad-I-couldn’t-help-you-love-skating-again angles and I-know-you-don’t-love-me-like-I-love-you angles, and from here it makes sense that in some imaginative spaces this develops into a deep undercurrent of helpless sadness that those Phichits carry with them into the canon timeline, sometimes past it, sometimes forever. And I get the place those Phichits grow from, I do. I know what it’s like to love someone you’re scared you can’t help because you don’t completely understand what they’re going through, and how easy it is to feel like you failed them, and to carry that with you so long it starts to feel like part of you—but that’s another story for another time, and the bottom line is that, with all the respect due the imaginations of others, my particular imagination always gives me back something different.

My imagination hits a wall whenever it tries to imagine Phichit wishing that Yuuri might stay when he knows he’s not happy, or that he isn’t growing. I can’t see Phichit looking at Yuuri and feeling like he’s the one that got away. In some versions of this story, sad!Phichit exists, but mine isn’t one of them. It can’t be, just because my imagination—the tiny, not-so-significant-for-all-its-obsessive-extrapolations little theater of my mind—doesn’t play it out that way for me. I’ve already told you that I’ve watched them fall in love; now I see them not so much fall out of love as decide that it might not be good for them to be in love anymore if they’re going to be apart in such a big way, and that this decision is just one of the many things Yuuri has to set in order if he’s going to go home. And he needs to go home, if he’s going to move forward with his life. I’d like to imagine that, not only does Phichit know this, but he commits wholeheartedly to helping him. Because, any way you want to slice it, he loves him.

Phichit knows that Yuuri needs to go—and yes, this knowledge is a sad thing, but that’s not all it is. I want to think it’s also a decision that makes sense to him. For one, he’s a skater himself and knows how ephemeral their existence as professional athletes is and how tumultuous lifestyle setups can be when your craft necessitates you shuttle back and forth all over the world. In addition to that, though, there are certain things I imagine someone like him—someone who by every token seems to be such a giver, such an emotionally generous and caring and other-directed person—would probably understand about the nature of love.

It’s easy to see the act of letting someone go, of ending a relationship, as essentially black and white. If you really loved this person, you would never have left them, or if you can’t make someone you love stay with you, then you’ve failed them and yourself. But the thing is, a lot of the time it’s not like that. It’s entirely possible to love someone a lot and still need to recognize that your time together has run its course, at least for now. It’s a loss that needs to be grieved, for sure, and it can feel like your whole world has been turned on its head because suddenly you’re missing an important presence, so many routines have fallen through, certain places look weird to visit now without them beside you. I know.

But the sad thing about getting stuck on what-might-have-beens and if-onlys is that you miss the possibility of something good coming out of that necessary separation—which you probably can’t think of at all in that moment, I know. It’s hard. Sometimes you can’t even imagine what life would be like after you let someone go, because naturally human beings find comfort in consistency, resist change because the unknown is frightening. If you let someone go, how can you be sure you’ll ever reencounter each other? How do you know you’ll ever be happy again?

On the flipside of that, we talk all the time about how love is wanting the best for the other person. I think what we talk about less often is that part and parcel of wanting the best for someone you love is giving up control over them and their decisions—trusting the other person to know what’s best for themselves, to do what’s best, to make their way back to you eventually in the ways that are best. Or maybe not, if life happens and leads them so far away it doesn’t make sense to reconnect; that’s the risk you take. But if you do find your way back to each other, after you’ve had the chance to be apart and grow up a little bit and become essentially new versions of yourselves, how can the chance to pick up again be anything but a gift?

There’s a very specific nuance here to the act of letting go. It needs to be total. You don’t let go halfheartedly, while still partially clinging, still wanting to hold on. You don’t let go kind of hoping to be vindicated somehow for your selflessness. You let go with grace, in good faith, and trust the process that may or may not bring you and the one you love back around. (The feelings are running high at the moment, so let me pass you briefly to Maya Angelou, one of my favorite poets, who captures the idea of true unconditionality better than I ever could: “I am grateful to have been loved and to be loved now and to be able to love, because that liberates. Love liberates. It doesn’t just hold—that’s ego. Love liberates. It doesn’t bind. Love says, ‘I love you. I love you if you’re in China. I love you if you’re across town. I love you if you’re in Harlem. I love you. I would like to be near you. I’d like to have your arms around me. I’d like to hear your voice in my ear. But that’s not possible now, so I love you. Go.’” The last words are gratitude and acceptance. That imperative she ends on is really, really important. She said Go.)

One of the things that makes Yuuri such a compelling protagonist is that all throughout his narrative the biggest, most frightening, most important struggles are against himself. His greatest battle is the battle to recognize himself as a person of worth, and so much of that has to do with how he learns to recognize love—to recognize himself not just as someone who’s capable of immense love but as someone who is loved. It’s a battle you see him begin to win in (again!) episode four—which practically deserves an Oscar just on its own, IMO—and it’s a thing of joy to see him work at it, sometimes mastering his demons, sometimes folding under them, but always coming back a little stronger each time.

It can be terrifying, paralyzing to realize that you are loved. Often it makes people push others away—don’t look at me, don’t care for me, I’m not worth your time or attention, direct it at someone or something more worthy—but I like to think it can be inspiring too, and that there’s so much strength to be gained from resting securely in the love of others. And I don’t mean this in the sense that you have to constantly depend on others to build you up because you can’t do it for yourself; rather that sometimes it’s enough to recognize that you’re not alone, to draw strength from that and to become, in turn, a more loving person. Yuuri starts off utterly unable to imagine what Victor sees in him—which, if you think about it, dovetails entirely too well with his difficulties with accepting support from anyone else in his life—but everything is changed by the fact that Victor insists, continuously, that it doesn’t matter. He won’t be beaten down by Yuuri’s stubbornly deep-rooted poor opinion of himself. Instead, it becomes a challenge: Try to see in yourself what I see in you. Try. Try your hardest. Use your imagination.

I haven’t spoken a lot about Victor in this rambly, weirdly convoluted little essay, I realize. Part of it is because I never quite feel like I need to—so many wonderful things have already been said about his and Yuuri’s relationship, and about how important they are to each other’s journeys toward becoming more loving people and learning to own what they do and who they are. Part of it is also because I’m looking at him right now as a link—albeit a singularly important one—in a chain of events that precedes his and Yuuri’s relationship and spirals incessantly beyond it. And that’s one other really wonderful thing about love, I think—that love in the true sense doesn’t close the world. Instead, it opens up the world; it makes everything look more whole.

In light of all these things, I find it so compelling that so much of what Yuuri learns, through Victor and everyone else, is retrospective—that not only is he loved and supported and believed in now, but that he always has been. Victor helps him see something that’s existed all along—that love has passed from person to person and from place to place and that never for a moment has Yuuri been without it. For one reason or another he hasn’t always felt it, recognized it for what it was—anxiety, terror, the impossible standards to which he holds himself—but it’s an idea we see him grow into little by little, with help. And by the end, when he’s running down the sidewalk in St. Petersburg toward Yuri and Victor and thinking “We call everything on the ice ‘love,’” he knows. Suddenly it makes sense now how everything that came before had a hand in bringing all of us here to each other; suddenly it makes sense that all of us are meeting here, where we are.

Let me wax extra self-indulgent for a bit and talk about one imaginary scene I always go back to whenever I think about Yuuri and Phichit. Whenever I think about Yuuri leaving Detroit, I always think about Phichit taking him to the airport. Twice now I’ve written out that scene in a fic, Phichit behind the wheel of Celestino’s car (legally borrowed, this time, because it’s an Important Day), Yuuri in the passenger’s seat playing the music as he’s done on so many similar drives that I’ve imagined. Except this drive is a little different, because it’s the last for the foreseeable future. They see the end coming; they’re moving together towards it.

It took me a while to figure it out well enough to get it down in words (instead of, you know, emotional keysmashing) but now I know why I always imagine things this way. I understand why I need to put Phichit where I do, right on the knife’s edge of that departure, carrying him all the way to the last possible moment before the separation happens. I think at the heart of things it’s me trying to emphasize something to myself about goodbyes—that yes, they’re sad, and they hurt, and for a long time you’ll inevitably miss the person or place or thing you’ve let go of. Sometimes deeply, sometimes for a long time, like an arm or a leg or a chunk of your heart. Of course you will. But then I think about Phichit and Yuuri in that moment I imagine, idling in the airport driveway—and part of my mind is already flashing forward some months later, to that first Skype call and Phichit’s smiling face on Yuuri’s phone screen, forward still to Beijing and Phichit turning up by chance in the very hotpot place Yuuri and Victor have decided to eat at—and I can’t help wanting to believe that that’s not all there is.

I want to imagine Phichit smiling at Yuuri across the car, maybe squeezing his hand for courage and good luck. I want to imagine in that moment things are as simple as they’ve always been between them—that while it’s not easy, because departures never are, these two silly boys rest secure in the knowledge that they’ll always have each other even when they’re not side by side, that it won’t be impossible to pick up again anytime they get the chance to. That’s how much I want to believe they trust each other, how important they are to each other—and how much I want to think that holds, no matter where they go and what they choose to do.

A couple of days ago a friend of mine pointed out that in Japanese the expressions mata ashita and mata ne, which mean see you again, are so much more common than sayonara, which signals a more permanent, or at least a more long-lasting kind of goodbye. I think about how in my native Tagalog the word for goodbye—paalam—has its roots in the verb alam, which means “to know.” When you say goodbye to someone—pamamaalam—you’re letting them know something, and somehow in my imagination that act of telling someone that you’ll be leaving works to make the absent person even more present. Weirdly enough it helps me remember the idea of returns.

I love these boys too much—and I want to believe that they love each other too much—to keep them stuck on the idea that they’re losing each other. (Is such a thing is even possible?) I much prefer to put them in the space of “see you again,” of “catch you when I do,” like it’s not a big deal at all, even if at the same time it is. Imagine Phichit laughing and saying, “Text me when you get home,” which is something most of us have said to our friends at one point or another before parting. Never mind that home is across the sea, on the other side of the world, fourteen hours away. Imagine how strongly he’d need to believe that the two of them have the power to collapse that distance, make it feel like nothing. Imagine that Yuuri, for all the things he’s afraid of in that moment, kind of believes it too.

There’s a tiny amount of actual footage from the show to go on, so maybe I’m making mountains out of molehills here, but from the very first moment I ever saw Yuuri and Phichit interact, I’ve been struck by how simple things seem to be between them. I love that. I love that it’s uncomplicated, that the only way they seem to know how to be with each other is just tender and joyful and pure. I really love the idea that it’s possible to be that way with someone that you may have loved differently in the past, and that you can acknowledge how important it was to you without necessarily wanting to bring it back again, because that would take away from the integrity of what you share now. And while you can remember the then as something beautiful, so is the now in its own way—and that it’s okay, you’re here, you can be happy now with what you have.

Even if you don’t imagine them as having been in love before, look at how present with each other these two are, in the instances that they have to reconnect. They’ve been apart and come back together, attentive to how much they’ve grown but also to how little certain aspects of their relationship have changed. One of them can call the other in the middle of the night and greet him in his native language, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. They smile at each other on the phone. They bump into each other in a foreign country and sit down, organically, for hotpot. They allow themselves to be proud of each other, to cheer each other on in competition: He’s giving everything he has to this season, too.

In all instances, they’re still them, only grown-up enough now to stay in each other’s lives by choice. That’s what holds, regardless of where they end up or what they do or how much time passes in between. The next time I catch up with you, we’ll probably be totally new people, but I know that over and above everything else these moments are a chance to rediscover you, again and again. Even with the people you know best in the world there’s always something new to learn—and I choose to keep learning. That’s how much you mean to me.

I don’t want this to be a utopic scenario, something that’s thought of as unrealistic or too good to be true. It’s real and it can happen, and it’s worth all the work.

The tenth episode shows us a pair of photos of Phichit and Yuuri at the Detroit Skating Club, taken at an unidentified point in their shared past. The first is a selfie at the entrance, where they have their thumbs up, and they’re laughing. The second is of them posing on the bleachers while Celestino sits in the background, looking away, thoroughly unamused.

I look at Yuuri in these pictures—take in his smile and his silliness and how comfortable he looks in his own skin—and I can’t bring myself to think of those days as any less real than the days leading up to his departure. It’s easy to conceive of Detroit as the place Yuuri chooses to walk away from, the place he needs to leave so his story can begin. But it’s also a place with stories of its own, and even if canon never reveals them to us, it’s not difficult to imagine the ways Yuuri himself is touched by them even as he moves on.

I think this could be true for him as it’s probably true for many of us: you need Detroit to make it, in the end, to St. Petersburg, that wonderful faraway ending-place that you probably thought existed only in your dreams. You may not be in Detroit anymore, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it was a false start or a waste of time, or that it was never important—in fact, it’s precisely because you aren’t there now that you can maybe now begin to comprehend what it did for you, looking back over your shoulder in memory at all the places you’ve been and seeing with a clarity you didn’t have before just how far you’ve come from where and who you used to be.

On the one hand, of course you remember how hard things used to be. But maybe, just maybe, as you sift through all the things you remember, you’ll find that in more instances than you might originally have thought, you were happy too.

You don’t need to go back to Detroit, even. In a way, you never left—you carry that truth with you. You were happy then. You are happy now. All of it is real.

#phichit chulanont #katsuki yuuri #yuri on ice #phichit x yuuri #yoi meta #i guess??? #i actually have no idea what this is #whatever it is i'm so sorry for inflicting it upon you #there are way too many words in this monster #and way too many feelings #don't look at me #meg rambles #headcanon #phichuuri