#Is that because implementing it everywhere would have been too difficult

[matan4il]

Amin al-Husseini docu: part 7

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Last

Translator's notes:

-> Auschwitz as a camp was huge, bigger than most cities. It was built in parts. The initial, concentration camp was built close to (and was named after) the Polish town of Oświęcim, called in German Auschwitz. It was later expanded, too. The extermination camp, centered around the gas chambers, was built in 1942, and by that point, the entire camp's area was so big, that this part was closer to (and named after) the Polish town of Brzezinka, called in German Birkenau. The concentration camp part was nicknamed Auschwitz I, the extermination camp part was Auschwitz II, Auschwitz-Birkenau, or just Birkenau. There was also an area known as Auschwitz III, where the factories using (mostly Jewish) slaves were.

-> The Sonderkommando were Jews who had been forced by the Nazis to operate the gas chambers. They were often selected based on being less able to communicate the horrors they'd seen to other Jewish slaves in the camp, for example many of the Sonderkommando were Greek Jews (while most European Jews were Ashkenazim, who shared the common Jewish language of Yiddish, the majority of Greek Jews were Sephardim, and spoke the Jewish language of Ladino. Thus, communication between the two groups was harder). Even when the Sonderkommando were physically capable of going on with their work, the Nazis would routinely exterminate them, to wipe out the witnesses of this industrialized genocide. My wonderful colleague, who you see interviewed in this docu, Professor Gideon Greif, in addition to writing one of the most comprehensive books about Auschwitz, also recorded the testimonies of the last surviving Sonderkommando, and published them in an emotionally difficult to read, but really important book, titled We Wept Without Tears. The photograph of Shaul Chazan, one of the last sonderkommando, is from a 1993 trip to Auschwitz, where Prof. Greif recorded a few of the testimonies, as they were being given in the place they were about. This docu has now been translated into English. The book was also the basis for the Oscar-winning film, Son of Saul.

-> The Capo was a camp slave, who was appointed by the Nazis to "supervise" a group of other camp slaves. In Nazi camps where regular criminals were incarcerated together with non-criminal groups, such as Jews, the Capos were often the former, because a part of the idea behind using the Capos was to implement a "divide and rule" system, meaning the less empathy the Capo had for those under his "supervision," the better. Some Capos did what the Nazis told them to out of fear, some enjoyed their new status and were abusive to their fellow camp slaves, and some Capos tried to use the position in order to help, even save, other slaves. I'm detailing this, because there's a misconception that all Capos were traitors.

-> Dieter Wisliceny was directly responsible for the murder of over 106,000 Jews from Slovakia and Greece alone (and he helped Eichmann with the extermination of over 500,000 Hungarian Jews, too). He was arrested by the Americans and NOT put on trial at Nuremberg. Wisliceny was eventually brought to justice by Czechoslovakia, which demanded his extradition.

-> I hope it's okay to add something personal, because the docu briefly shows a translation of a letter written by the Mufti to the Romanian Foreign Minister. My great uncle is Jewish Romanian author and Holocaust survivor, Norman Manea. He wrote about a part of what my family's been through because of the collaboration between the Nazis and the Romanians, as the Jews from eastern Romania were exiled to Transnistria by the hundreds of thousands to die there, in his memoir (which was translated into English), The Hooligan's Return. I have pictures of starved Jewish kids in Transnistria, their bodies look like skeletons everywhere, except their swollen bellies (a now known symptom of starvation). I don't bring these pictures to the museum, unless I have reason to believe I may have Holocaust deniers in the group, the pics are that terrible to me. Among the rescue attempts of Jews, the Mufti stopped a plan to save 80,000 Jews from Romania, and 5,000 Romanian Jewish kids exiled to Transnistria. I can't explain how I feel about that. He never paid for his crimes, they're not even recognized, but then the anti-Israel crowd screams that this is all about "the occupation," even though the State of Israel didn't even exist during WWII, when the Mufti sentenced to death a part of my people, a part of my community, and maybe even a part of my family.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

#israel #antisemitism #israeli #israel news #israel under attack #israel under fire #terrorism #anti terrorism #hamas #antisemitic #antisemites #jews #jew #judaism #jumblr #frumblr #jewish #israelunderattack #al-husseini #ישראבלר

[greenwichnews]

Colgate German Club

On Blatant Student Racism at Colgate

It is okay to be angry. It is okay to be upset. We are too. The attached letter, created by the Colgate Student Coalition and sent directly to the 13 Leaders of this Institution, has been copied and personalized by 400+ students and allies. We encourage you to do the same, paying close attention to what is highlighted. There is no place on Colgate’s campus and within its community for these heinous acts of racism and intolerance. This university must be held accountable, as these actions negatively affect us all.

Watch the videos and read the documents hyperlinked in this letter, sign the petition, calling for the rescission of Sarah Laud’s acceptance, and, no matter how difficult it may be, continue to educate yourselves on your peers’ and your country’s actions.

Stay Strong. Stay Vigilant. Maintain Hope.

A discussion about race has been sparked at Colgate University in Hamilton after the campus went into lockdown last week because a black student was carrying a glue gun. Some students say unfortunately, this conversation is nothing new for the private university.

A few fliers that say "Black Lives Matter" and "White Silence is Violence" now hang in the entranceway of Colgate university's campus center called the Coop. This is the building where a black student was seen carrying what appeared to be a gun. It led Colgate to issue an incorrect warning about an active shooter.

Graduating senior Lucas Musetti says the incident has shaken his confidence in the university.

"Up until Monday, I was regretful about leaving campus and now I’m ready to leave," Musetti said. "I understand that it happens everywhere but it is kind of shocking when it comes home like this."

In a statement, Colgate President Brian Casey said the university would work to understand the role implicit racial bias and profiling played in both the reporting of the student and the response from safety and university officials. Casey says as a first step, the campus safety director has been placed on leave.

But even as Colgate undergoes a comprehensive review of the incident, some students like Alexis Beamon do not expect any meaningful changes.

"We’ve been having issues with racism on campus since I’ve been here and since before a lot of other people have been here," Beamon said. "Colgate likes to brush it under the rug and pretend that nothing is happening and throw money at cultural groups to kind of silence them. I think at this point it’s not something that can be ignored anymore because somebody could have died."

In recent years Colgate has faced backlash over the delayed rebranding of a residence hall named for a former university president with a history of white supremacy remarks. And in 2014 students held a sit-in at the university to demand a more inclusive environment on campus.

Colgate has since implemented more diversity training for its staff and other corrective measures, but Casey says there is more work to be done.

"This has been a difficult, painful several hours on this campus," Casey said in a statement. "My obligation is, first, to demand a full accounting of what happened. My next obligation is to take steps to ensure the safety of all Colgate students, faculty and staff. My final obligation—my desire—is to improve Colgate. If there is anything that can and should come from these events it must be that concrete steps are taken to make Colgate a better place, and a university worthy of both regard and respect."

[hell-yeah-destiny]

So. Sun's out huh. Time to overthink this.

Had a conversation with my dad, an astrophysicist and lots of thoughts on my own.

First of all, if the sun was gone just like that everything that was circling it would just continue on it's path so our solar system pretty much would go nyoom in every direction. Fun.

That obvs didn't happen so it's gravity is still there... sort of? Imagine sun's out but it's mass is still there. Some effects that come to mind? (Edit: ok, the sun is only gone in the last city. It's there everywhere else, I'm just an idiot. Still interesting to think abou the effects of it beeing gone everywhere)

Yeah so it would be dark. BUT unlike we see in the game the moon wouldn't shine anymore. Unless the hive's green light is bright enough. Creepy.

Temperature drops. Like it does in the night but there's no point at which it would warm up again because guess what, no days. (Oh boy, my sleep rythm would be even more broke than it already is). So it would get ever colder - how fast though? Depends on how cloudy it is because clouds keep the warmth in. This is why cloudy nights are usually warmer than starry nights. So let's assume that temperature drops an average of 10°C during one night, that would make 20°C per day although I doubt that it would be linear, just to have some numbers to play with though. That would go on for a few days, maybe 3 - 4 when it comes closer to the lowest it would get. Remember earths core is very hot? Yeah that would balance it out at some point. Also it will take a while for all that water to cool down and there will be some clouds which brings me to the next point:

Clouds. Yes at first but when it get's cold enough all that will come down and no water will be left in the air. No more clouds when it's too cold. And that means it will cool down faster. Great, you better have a solar light wielding friend or electricity bills are going to look funny. Even more so than they already will.

More electricity needed. Y'know. It's dark all the time now and people need light although we'd get used to it beeing dark in general like we do in the night anyway. That means max. pupil extension plus heightened production for the cones in our eyes that let us see in darker environments. Your awoken or exo friend's eyes are gonna be blinding.

No wind! Wind exists because our atmosphere get's warmed up and cools down. Without sun there's only cooling down. No circulation.

Atmosphere collapses. Yeay. The stuff we breathe is more than just oxygen (that would kill us) and all those different types of gas freeze at different temperatures. So it would separate the gasses during the cooling process and at some point the mixture would not be good for people to breathe. And that is ignoring the fact that breathing super cold air is generally a bad idea.

Which brings me to another fun point. So. Stuff get's cold = it get's smaller. Most extreme would be gas. Remember that there's a hecking lot of gas on Jupiter and Saturn? Yeah they'd shrink to a size comparable to earth. Jupiter. Earth. That's... a lot. Mass would be the same though so it shouldn't affect Jupiters moons to a messurable degree.

With the only light source beeing our Milky way and stars I wondered whether Europa would be a bit brighter due to bright surfaces reflecting more light. It wouldn't do much though because there's not that much to reflect. There is no atmospheric shimmer (except if it now has an atmopshere due to the traveler but that would do funny things due to it beeing really damn cold already) and no zodiacal light in general (interplanetary dust that the sun shines at. Would there be a sun that shone at it.) so it really is just the night sky reflecting off of snow and ice so if someone wants to calculate that, please go ahead and let me know.

I'm not even going to start on the effect on plant life and the general biological effects. Like humans need sunlight to produce stuff like Vitamin D. Plants need light. That kinda stuff.

I did not take the traveler into account for this. Does it keep the temperature at level? The plants growing? Humans healthy? Does it change energy levels of it's surroundings or how exactly does it terraform planets? Does it do nothing?

So these are my thoughts on that. Where was I going with this? Nowhere, it is what it started out as; a journey into my insanity.

#overthinking #destiny 2 #season of the splicer #effects of switching to dark mode for real #sun #I don't know what to tag this with #I already overanalised the two trees from Tolkiens Silmarillion and I'm back at my bullshit #What do y'all think? #Also I'm confused - Cosmodrome EDZ Europa and Nessus still have the sun so did they just not implement it in the game #like they kept the moon bright Or is tge sun only out on earth? The last city? #The little shimmers on the tower that show that it's a vex simulation are only on the tower and HELM but nowhere else #Is that because implementing it everywhere would have been too difficult? Could be. #long post #my posts

[crystalkleure]

I have a Concept.

BeyBurst beyblades are supposed to burst. As in, it’s actually a necessity. In spite of the Exploding Beyblade mechanic potentially causing sharp little bits of spintop to go flying everywhere and hit people, what if it’s actually a safety feature?

If I recall correctly, all the way back in s1 territory [specifically in the manga though, can’t remember if we saw it in the anime or not], Valt and Shu just straight-up got their original beys from a store. And there are also all of those Unimportant Characters running around with different-coloured versions of preexisting beys. This indicates that beyblades are, in fact, mass-produced and sold in stores, and those are all built to be able to burst. In fact, I still haven’t seen the newest two seasons of the Burst anime yet, but I’m pretty sure super special fancy custom beys, that some important character explicitly made themself, that have some really creative [and strong] anti-burst features built into them, don’t ever show up as NPC recolour beys? In spite of the trend of “random background characters in new season use recoloured versions of Prominent Character beys from LAST season” to me seeming to indicate that those new recolour beys are either bootleg copycats, or those actual official shelf models have just suddenly started selling really well, due to someone having just recently done something cool with one in a tournament/on TV lol. [Anyway, correct me if I’m wrong on which beys get NPC recolours, I don’t exactly actually, uh, pay attention to all the random background scrubs. That point’s not particularly important anyway because I’m sure unofficial bootlegs are a thing that exists, mmmm delicious plagiarism. The point is the stores seem to sell beys with the normal level of burstability. And so I’m only caring about the everyday random NPCs with no names or anything, if another important character specifically goes and painstakingly recreates a bey similar or identical to another important character’s bey just because they idolize that other character, that doesn’t count. That’s not important here, implication-wise.] So...

What if it’s actually a really bad thing that people keep making their own custom beys now that are increasingly more and more ludicrously difficult -- or even near-impossible -- to burst?

What if the self-destruct mechanic is intended to be an emergency shutdown switch, and actually really needs to not be subverted? We’ve seen what an adept beyblader can do while running at full-throttle -- they’re dangerous, to themselves and their surroundings. Beys have the power to be obscenely destructive...while they’re spinning and battling, primarily. They are by far the most potent while actively in use. But if they hit things too hard like 3-4 times or so...they burst. Their locks disengage, they fall apart, and thus they are forced to abruptly stop. That makes them theoretically incapable of just rampaging indefinitely.

Picture this: One day, in the probably-decently-distant history of the BeyBurst world, a kid has a spintop. Probably made that spintop themself. This kid, it turns out, happens to be one of the Super Special Powerful Kids, who’s not only REALLY GOOD at using that spintop, they also possess that funny little supernatural ability to accidentally create an incredibly powerful incorporeal monster ghost creature thing with their brain. And because they love playing with their little spintop so much, that spintop becomes the vessel for this Terrifying Monster-Shaped Culmination Of Spiritual Elemental Energy or whatever that they’ve manifested. That’s...good, probably, because at least that means the Scary Monster Thing isn’t 1. just stuck in the kid’s brain with nowhere else to go, which would lead to possession that would decidedly be incredibly difficult to deal with without harming the kid, or 2. funneled into something more dangerous to control, like a car or a nuclear warhead or some shit. But then it turns out that the kid is ABSOLUTELY still able to wreak impressive havoc and cause Large Amounts Of Destruction, even accidentally...until the spintop stops spinning. The Power Level drops dramatically as soon as the demon top is still, and it takes a little while for it to build back up once it’s launched again. But what if a feature is implemented into the spintop that allows it to keep spinning for much, much longer? Or just The Supernatural Monster Power itself becomes capable of sustaining it, through wind manipulation or something?

Now, imagine you’re idk, the government or something, someone with Power and Influence over the masses, and you see THAT happen. Shit, that was just a random kid that did that! Looked like any other kid, acted like any other kid! There is no feasible way to tell a kid with Brain Monster potential apart from other kids who are NOT That Powerful, until a brain monster happens. So, if you can’t predict it, and thus can’t do anything to mitigate the potential destruction on a case-by-case basis...well, how about you convince ALL the little kiddies that spintops are just the greatest thing ever, everyone should play with spintops, AND you ensure those spintops are mass-manufactured specifically to not be able to Hold A Charge for too long because...they burst! You’ve designed them so that violence itself causes them to fall apart and stop to cool down! It’s perfect! That way, anytime an odd mutant child with Brain Monster powers comes along, the chance of them funneling their Brain Monster into their spintop is now Very High, meaning that all the Brain Monsters will hopefully end up inhabiting these little plastic toys that actively inhibit them instead of possessing children or nukes. It’s brilliant!

This does raise some questions, though:

1. What happens when someone’s spintop breaks, and they DON’T get it repaired, after they’ve already manifested a Brain Monster to live in it? Where would the Brain Monster go in that case? Uh oh, demon on the loose? Exactly what we were trying to avoid? Shu’s change between Legend Spriggan and Spriggan Requiem in God does seem to indicate that the Brain Monster probably 1. by default, does just camp out in its blader’s brain until a new Spintop Vessel is created for it, and 2. the Brain Monster itself is probably not actually completely strictly sealed into any bey, because it doesn’t disappear as soon as the bey is destroyed, and it doesn’t stay with an old/broken bey that’s been discarded when a new bey has been made for it. Legend Spriggan was discarded and left on the riverbed, and Spriggan Requiem was then made from scratch, seemingly using no recycled physical parts from Legend Spriggan, but Spriggan Requiem’s bitbeast looks only very slightly different from Legend Spriggan’s. All of Shu’s Spriggans are honestly probably still the same creature, just progressively evolved. I don’t think we’ve ever seen somebody make an entirely NEW Brain Monster that does not resemble their original one, it seems the original simply gets developed more and more. One person apparently only possesses the ability to make a single individual Brain Monster. You Get One (1), but you can upgrade it. But what about Hearts? His Dead Hades, which very much had a Brain Ghost in it, was not only destroyed, but assimilated into Phi’s Revive Phoenix, to make Dead Phoenix. What happened to that situation, over time? We haven’t gotten to see. Is Hearts’ Hades truly actually fused with Phi’s Phoenix, ceasing to be its own entity anymore, or does Phoenix simply very slightly resemble Hades now due to its bey being upgraded with physical bits of Hades’ bey? What if it’s not even POSSIBLE to truly fuse Brain Ghosts, especially without consent? In which case...is Hades itself just lingering around back in Hearts’ brain, waiting for a new bey to inhabit, and Hearts isn’t making one because he doesn’t realize Hades isn’t just Part Of Phoenix now? That sounds potentially dangerous, there’s no more outlet for your Brain Ghost, buddy. I want to see Phi and Hearts again, to know what eventually happened there.

2. Why do the tournaments not actually enforce a rule that says “Your bey HAS to be able to be reasonably burstable”? Chouzetsu Wings and the Mugen Lock System did not equal disqualifications. Has it maybe, over time, been forgotten exactly WHY we Need Beys To Burst? Well, that’s a ticking time bomb, then. How difficult a bey is to burst does seem to directly cause its Potential Destructiveness Levels to scale accordingly. [With somewhat of an exception of Pot and his Pegasus, but it should be noted that Pot was not exactly terribly serious about beyblade initially and yet was STILL considered one of the strongest ‘bladers in the world, GT3 iirc, AND he’s very into the whole “Love and light, chillax, be in-tune with yourself and all the energy in and around you, etc.” peaceful thing.] This HAS To Be A Problem. Why is nobody concerned.

3. ...What is causing the general public not to panic about this? Why are people okay with Brain Ghost and Mass Spintop Destruction happening, instead of terrified? This shit is broadcast on TV. The stands during tournaments are packed with spectators. It may be that perhaps not everybody can SEE the Brain Ghosts themselves [and I’m skeptical about that, because there have absolutely been MANY indications that other people know what someone’s bitbeast looks like], but the Big Bada Booms they cause are DAMN sure Highly Visible. Aiga’s father seems to be the only one truly properly concerned about the incredible mass-destructive potential of the spintops. Realistically, The Salem With Trials 2: Electric Boogaloo should be happening due to the Scary Spintop Kids being Fucking Scary, and sometimes quite clearly even out-of-control of themselves.

Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure this is not a direction canon will ever go in, or I think it would have already done it. I don’t think they’re going to explore this route. It’s a shame I don’t have the chops for writing long-haul fanfiction, because if I did I would absolutely be hardcore capitalizing on this idea. This has incredible Worldbuilding Lore Potential.

#Someone else write a huge fanfic about it so I can read it #BeyBurst #Beyblade Burst #CK's headcanon #CK dissects #I am super not sure what to tag this as because it's so hypothetical but also a solid argument could be made for plausibility here #Also excuse my incoherency I just woke up and finally had to put this concept into words immediately #Long post

[x0401x]

Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun: Ghost Hotel’s Café (Part 2)

Revealing the secrets of the menu, such as “crushing muffins so they will look like earth”! Interview with the staff of Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun GHOST HOTEL’S CAFÉ.

GHOST HOTEL’S CAFÉ, the collaboration café of “Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun” – an on-going manga from Monthly G Fantasy (Square-Enix) by Aida Iro-sensei –, was held in Ikebukuro, Tokyo at AniPara CAFÉ for a limited period from December 5 to February 11. Here, we have carried out an interview with the staff behind the planning and production of “Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun”. We have discussed things in detail, from the background of the collaboration café’s presentation to the public to the secret stories behind the development of the food and drinks that reflect ideas from the author, Aida Iro-sensei!

Interviewees

Square-Enix café organizer: Ookubo Kana-san

Square-Enix editor in charge of “Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun”: Imanishi Chiharu-san

Grounding Lab café planner: Andou Minako-san

Grounding Lab café planner: Nakayama Natsuko-san

Andmowa café menu creator: Aizawa Kanto-san

AniPara CAFÉ manager and menu creator: Shirato Kouhei-san

The collaboration café of “Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun” is entirely supervised by AidaIro-sensei!

——How was it decided that “Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun” would have a collaboration café?

Ookubo: The cue was that, while the café planning members were talking about what café to hold next, we were introduced to “Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun” as the most highly recommended title of our company.

Andou: There are a lot of young people in the staff of AniPara CAFÉ and most of them knew “Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun”, so by the time SquaEni-san talked to us about it, we gave them the one-sentence reply of, “By all means!” and asked them to let us do it. *laughs*

——This is the third time that “Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun” earns a collaboration café, so how were the fans’ reactions?

Imanishi: Since this is the third time, there were many reactions of concern about the very concept of “how will it turn out next?”. Thankfully, the responses were good and we received many warm messages such as “it was fun”!

——How was AidaIro-sensei’s reaction when it was decided that yet another collaboration café would be held?

Imanishi: They were very pleased. An event that the readers can enjoy is a rare opportunity, so they were hyped about many things, such as, “I wonder what we will do~!” and, “How about this?” (laughs).

——The theme of the collaboration café is a “ghost hotel” this time. How was it conceived?

Ookubo: This time’s theme was proposed by AidaIro-sensei.

Imanishi: In the first time, I think it is orthodox that the characters are made into café waiters, but since this is the third one, Sensei suggested that they felt like displaying them in yet another a different light, and that they wanted to make it so that both the people who would be attending for the first time and the people who had already attended before would be able to enjoy it in a brand-new way.

G Fantasy carries out a project of giving away color spreads as presents every year along with the commemorative issue of its launching, and the theme for the color spread of “Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun” on the 25th anniversary was “ghost hotel”. There was also the fact that the readers’ response to it was very positive, so Aida Iro-sensei decided, “Let’s go with a ghost hotel this time!”.

When it comes to “Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun”, you cannot miss out on ●●●!

——Did you get any menu or decoration suggestions from Sensei?

Ookubo: They granted us the base ideas of the menu and supervised the whole thing. They also chose the names of all the menu items. Writing “holy” in English was one of Sensei’s ideas. *laughs*

——The shop’s interior has a wonderful decoration perfectly fitting of a “ghost hotel”, with spider webs and mini characters hiding everywhere.

Andou: When we were thinking about how to reproduce the worldview depicted by AidaIro-sensei, we thought it was perfect... so we left it there (laughs)!

Ookubo: That spider web is amazing, isn’t it? The first time I looked at it, I thought it was a perfect fit for the café’s mood!

——The BGM that plays inside the shop is also a perfect fit for a “ghost hotel”.

Ookubo: We choose after listening to lots of tracks, so hearing that makes me happy! This time, Sensei gave us proper suggestions regarding the worldview, so the interior design parts were easy to picture.

Imanishi: There is a fun to it that is similar to riding on a horror attraction, even if you are inside a café. I think we were able to create this atmosphere exactly because its worldview is solid.

Ookubo: Also, since this is “Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun”, we would like everyone to check the toilets, by all means! I want people to see at least this with their own eyes.

——The toilet is a checkpoint that people cannot skip. The illustrations for the café were made by AidaIro-sensei this time too, but do the numbers written on the keys of each character have a meaning?

Imanishi: In this thematic setting, the employees (the characters) live and work in the ghost hotel. The numbers on the keys are the numbers of the rooms where the employees live, and they increase like 1, 2, 3... when you see them lined up in order, you will know who is whose neighbor and which of them are in the floors below or above. This is linked to the nature of the characters’ relationships, so please give it a check.

——Sensei did not just write the story but also story cards.

Imanishi: There might be people amongst the readers of G Fantasy who know about the 25th anniversary illustration, but I believe most of them will be seeing it for the first time. Since it could be difficult to understand what the story of this ghost hotel is and what the characters are doing, so we introduce them in the story cards and in-store PV. This method is easy even on people visiting for the first time, so we would like them to come hang out with friends here (laughs).

Aizawa: Quite a lot of the people who come to the shop are young, and on Sundays, it is not rare for families to fill up the seats. Amongst them, we have received a call from a father who had never been to a collaboration café before, telling us, “I want to make a reservation for my daughter; how do I do it?” and we have also been asked, “My daughter wants your goods; are they still not sold-out?”.

Andou: We have also been told, “I’ll save up my allowance to go there!”. Hearing things like these makes me think that it is great that we managed to implement a wonderful café, and I want people to enjoy it by any means.

“We crush the muffins to make them look like earth.” “The pot-au-feu is always chamfered.” – The secret stories behind the cooking of the collaboration menu are revealed!

——You have quite a quirky menu, with things such as the “GHOST HOTEL’S CAFÉ Afternoon Tea”, which comes with a written invitation to the Ghost Hotel; Hanako-kun’s favorite food, the “Hanako-kun Floaty Doughnuts”; the shinny “Mokke’s Delightful Candy Cake”, which is modeled after candies, Mokke’s stable food.

Andou: “Mokke’s Delightful Candy Cake” is quite a painstaking piece of work...! Of course, it is delicious, but I think being able to have fun taking pictures of cute food is a point that everyone looks forward to in a collaboration café, so we prepared a menu that everybody would be able to enjoy from their eyes too. When we were planning it out, we had about thirty suggestions for the menu in total, and from there, the team narrowed them down through discussions until the menu took the form it has now.

Nakayama: When it comes to Mokke, I think the image that comes to mind is of candies, do after a bit of devising, I came up with a cake that looks like candy. I am happy that, thankfully, the fans also had positive reactions to it!

——The “Edible Plots of Nene from the Gardening Club” shows quite a bit of uniqueness. Having a dessert inside a vase had a lot of impact.

Ookubo: The “Edible Plots of Nene from the Gardening Club” consists of muffins in flower vases, and the sight of the vases lined up in rows in the kitchen is quite surreal (laughs).

Shiratsuchi: We crushed chocolate muffins for them to look like earth and made them dirt-like. As a cook, I am also conflicted as to whether it tastes good to eat it like that, so while obsessing over the reproduction of its appearance, I break muffins into pieces every day, in order to combine them with a definite deliciousness.

——(Laughs) “Nene’s R•A•D•I•S•H Pot-au-Feu” is a warm and comforting dish, perfectly fitting for this time of the year.

Imanishi: This is actually the menu item that requires the most work out of the other collaboration foods.

Ookubo: The radish used in “Nene’s R•A•D•I•S•H Pot-au-Feu” is not a ready-made one that we warm up, and instead we cook the radish in the shop every day. On top of that, since the ingredients do not absorb the taste when cooked in the normal way, we chamfer (thinly scraping a vegetable so that it will take a round shape) the radishes one by one, so this is a menu item that takes up a lot of time. It costs 880¥, so when people ask, “Is this the quality of a collaboration café?”, I think it is in the good sense (laughs).

——My! The people who visit the shop should totally try this out, then.

Aizawa: We want them to! This desire is quite strong in us, but since it is a hassle to prepare that menu item, it would be a problem if too many people ordered it (laughs).

Shiratsuchi: While I was happy that everyone said, “It’s delicious~” during the sample food meeting, this item made me think, “I might’ve created something terrible (in a laborious sense)” (laughs).

All: (Laugh).

Ookubo: The cooking team really created the collaboration menu with a lot of passion. We make the crust for the “Clock-Keeper’s Tart ~with fruits~”, which is from the latter half of the menu, by hand every day in the shop. We fill it up with layers of berries, chocolate cream and wiped cream one after another... It gives us so much work that it could make people think, “Are you really serving this at a collaboration café?!”. I believe that even people who have only ever been to regular cafés and never to a collaboration one can also enjoy it.

Imanishi: The menu for the latter half of the collaboration has quirky and cute items, such as the “Mad-Risky Soup”, as in a “pretty dangerous” soup, and a limited number of the “Pipe Dream Cake”, so I think anyone can enjoy it, be it the people who visited during the first half or the people who are visiting for the first time during the latter half.

By the way, AidaIro-sensei’s top recommendation was “Kou’s Specialty Omelet Rice”! This rice omelet has caponata (boiling of fried eggplant) inside, so the flavor is unlike that of any other collaboration café. The fact that these secret gems exist is part of the wonderful levels of consideration from the cooks’ side.

——All the foods looked delicious, and every drink was wonderful too, so I was indecisive about which ones to order.

Ookubo: “Nene’s Welcome Cocktail” is also in the story that AidaIro-sensei posted on Twitter before the café’s opening. I recommend it as the first drink to the people who are visiting the collaboration café for the first time.

——By the way, are there any menu items that were rejected?

Nakayama: There was a legendary menu item named “Hanitarou Sandwich”, right?

Imanishi: There was! There is a character named Akane-kun who uses a haniwa as a protection charm, and I suggested a meal based on him – a “haniwa” coppe bread.

During the planning stages, I thought it was possible and tried reproducing it, but the cost turned out pretty high and its appearance was a haniwa through and through (laughs), so I wondered if anyone would order that... There was also the fact that Akane-kun is not much of a “haniwa stan”, so it became a legendary menu item (laughs).

Andou: I had suggested “Hanako-kun’s Doughnut” with the image of a school cap at first, but then the talk turned into, “Rather than a hat, I want it to have the appearance of a cute and tasty-looking doughnut”, so the cap version was rejected.

Ookubo: I also tried to produce a book-shaped cake, with the image of Tsuchigomori-sensei’s Four O’clock Library, but it seemed the price value would be too expensive, so it was unfortunately rejected.

——So there were menu items that were cast aside as “legendary” ones! This means you have created quite a number of items, but how do you come up with those ideas?

Nakayama: We were already collecting information from Instagram and Twitter and analyzing what the costumers were after. We deepened the conceptions from there to plan out the menu a lot.

Andou: Also, we think first-thing about what will be suitable for the costumers’ age range. In these occasions, rather than thinking about it as the menu of a collaboration café, we tried coming up with tasty-looking stuff as a regular food and drinks menu, and from that point, we created many things that drew close to the characters.

——It seems you were very conscious of the “showiness” of several menu items this time, so is “showiness” an indispensable element for your needs?

Andou: That’s right. Of course, the menu has to be delicious, but I think that, if it also turns out good for taking pictures, it will be posted on Instagram and Twitter, and become a cue for the fans to interact. The people who know the series will obviously do that, but I would be happy if this menu could become a trigger for even the people who don’t know it to talk about it, like, “That’s wonderful”, “What series is this?”.

Ookubo: We believe that the collaboration café’s menu is important for the original work’s side as well, so we take many requests, such as, “I want you to make this kind of dish” and, “I want to put this illustration card on it”, and the side that plans out the cooking does their best to give them form, so a wonderful menu is birthed every time, and as a result, it turns out as something that the fans can enjoy.

——It seems the people who will visit the store are quite young, so have you devised anything for the flavors?

Aizawa: We added a bit more variety to the taste of “Nene and Mokke’s Broccoli Gratin XD” during the planning stages, but we reviewed it in order to make it match the palate of young people better.

Ookubo: The “Mokke Curry”, which appears in the latter half of the event, was a green curry at first, but we changed it into a normal curry so that it would match the young ones’ tastes.

——On the topic of creating menu items that suit the customers’ age group, were there any difficulties or things you obsessed over?

Aizawa: The biggest hardship in making the menu of a collaboration café is the items’ appearance. Even if we deepen their image, we often worry about how to bring out their colors.

We repeatedly have conflicts such as, “I have to use this ingredient for bringing out this color, but this ingredient doesn’t fit this menu. Then how do I reproduce this coloration?” so it’s a relief when we eat the finished products and calm down with a, “It’s surprisingly good now that I’ve given it a try!” (laugh). Also, when we are feeling confident, the ideas soon flash into mind, but when we are in a slump, we get distressed.

Shiratsuchi: There was also a difference of views between the cooks’ side and the original creators’ side, so there were times when we thought, “We’ve made something really good!”, the original creators would say, “This won’t do!” (laughs). In regards to the menu, it is purely an insight race, so it made us happy when good flashes of inspiration took form and received approval.

——Anything from this menu that gave you an especially hard time?

Aizawa: As expected, that would be “Nene’s R•A•D•I•S•H Pot-au-Feu”, which we talked about earlier (laughs).

——Lastly, please leave a message for the readers.

Imanishi: New menu items will be added in the latter half, so I believe it has turned out as a café that people can enjoy no matter how many times they come. We want them to eat, drink and have fun. Also, the coasters that they can earn by ordering foods and drinks have wonderful designs, so I hope people will take them as a memory, by all means. I think you will definitely enjoy it, so please come over!

Aizawa: There are many attractive menu items, so do not forget your cameras!

——Thank you very much!

#jibaku shounen hanako kun #toilet bound hanako kun #hanakodaily #jshk #tbhk #hanako #hanako kun #yugi amane #yashiro nene #minamoto kou #minamoto teru #mitsuba sousuke #tsuchigomori #yugi tsukasa #akane aoi #aoi akane #nanamine sakura #hyuuga natsuhiko #aidairo #interview #pash #my translation

[jocia92]

(Google translated)

Dan Stevens, who grew up in Wales and south-east England, spent his summer holidays at the National Youth Theater at the age of 15, and he was drawn to the stage while studying English in Cambridge. Since his big breakthrough as Matthew Crawley in the hit series “Downton Abbey”, he has also repeatedly appeared in films such as “Inside Wikileaks - The Fifth Force”, “At Night in the Museum: The Secret Tomb” or “Beauty and the Beast” . Most recently, Stevens played the Russian Schnösel singer Lemtov in the Oscar-nominated comedy “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga” from Netflix. At the beginning of June, the German film “Ich bin dein Mensch” by Maria Schrader celebrated at the Summer Berlinale Premiere, which starts on 1.7. comes to German cinemas regularly. Stevens plays the role of a love robot in it. Unlike on the screen, however, the 38-year-old prefers to speak English in the zoom-conducted interview. He chose a brick wall with a lion motif as the digital background. No allusion to the song “Lion of Love” from “Eurovision Song Contest”, but a photo of the famous Ishtar Gate in Berlin’s Pergamon Museum, where “I am your human” was filmed last summer.

Mr. Stevens, in your new film “I am your human” you play a humanoid robot that is entirely geared towards fulfilling the romantic needs of a skeptical scientist. You yourself recently described the film as “delightfully German”. How did you mean that?

I wanted to say that here pretty big questions - such as what actually makes a person or how much perfection love can take - are negotiated in a very light-footed, elegant and sometimes humorous way. In my experience that is a very German quality. At least I have often seen with many of my German colleagues and friends that they are very good at not discussing difficult issues exclusively deadly serious and melancholy.

Where does your personal connection to Germany and the German language come from?

My parents had friends who lived in Bielefeld and we used to visit them in North Rhine-Westphalia during the school holidays. Traveled from England by car! That’s how I learned a little German as a child, and later I learned it as a subject at school. I even did a short internship there through our friends in Bielefeld. I really love the language. Funnily enough, I was later able to use my knowledge of German professionally, because my first film was “Hilde”, in which I was next to Heike Makatsch played the British actor and director David Cameron, who was married to Hildegard Knef. After that, I always hoped that there might be another chance to speak German in front of the camera, because playing in a foreign language is an exciting challenge. When the chance arose to shoot “I am your person”, I could hardly believe my luck.

Did you know the director Maria Schrader who gave you this chance?

Funnily enough, when the script for the film landed on my table, I had just watched the Netflix series “Unorthodox”, which she directed. I had also watched a few episodes of “Deutschland 89”. In general, I knew that she was a great German actress, not least because friends who knew their way around the German theater scene often raved about her. Working with her was a joy now. Her understanding of actors is quite instinctive and brilliant. I have seldom seen someone who can help an actor who is having difficulties with a scene with such simple means.

The fact that you had already seen “Unorthodox” shows, of course, how quickly “I am your person” must have been implemented in the past year …

Oh yes, that was really quick. In March I was still in New York and was about to premiere a new play on Broadway. But then the pandemic came, everything was canceled and I flew back to my family in Los Angeles. A few weeks later, Maria and I met each other via Zoom - and shortly afterwards I was sitting outside in a café in the Berlin June sun for the first time in months to discuss the upcoming shoot with her. That was pretty surreal because I hadn’t actually left the house since March.

Is it correct that you oriented yourself to Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart to portray the romantically programmed robot Tom?

In any case, these were role models that Maria and I spoke about. When you think of the game between the two of them, you always see an enormous clarity and directness. Cary Grant, for example, was always quite funny, especially in his romantic roles, but also flawless in an almost artificial way from today’s perspective. I found that very suitable for a robot. Apart from the fact that the ideas that Tom and his algorithm have of romance and love are certainly also shaped by the classic romantic comedies from Hollywood. Oh, the woman is sad, so I’ll bring her flowers! Such automatisms from the stories from back then were very appropriate for Tom now.

Keyword role models: Who shaped you in your career as an actor?

There were of course many. Jimmy Stewart was certainly something of a role model. My mom and I watched a lot of his films when I was little and I was always impressed by the kind of sweet tragedy that went into all of his roles. But maybe Robin Williams’ work influenced me even more. I always found the incredible variety of his films remarkable. He could make his audience laugh hysterically like no other, but also move them to tears in other roles. I always wanted to emulate this range.

In fact, the range of your roles is enormous and ranges from the Disney blockbuster “Beauty and the Beast” to a comic adaptation in series format such as “Legion” to bulky independent films such as “Her Smell” or the horror thriller “The Rental “, Which we just released on DVD. Is there a method behind this diversity?

Not in principle. I like variety, but I’m not just looking for roles that are as different as possible from one another. Rather, there are always similar factors that I use to select my projects. Sometimes there is a certain director that I really want to work with. Or the role itself is irresistible because it presents me with acting challenges. And sometimes a script is just fantastically written and I am interested in the topics it is about. With “I am your person” it was definitely the latter, especially since the timing was just right. In 2020 there were so many societal questions that ultimately touched the core of human existence. Such a script, which deals with something very similar in a light-footed way, was just fitting.

A few years ago you said in a questionnaire from the British Guardians that your greatest weakness was not being able to make up your mind. So every time you are offered a role, do you ponder whether you should accept?

No, no, when a script appeals to me, it actually does it very quickly. It’s such a gut feeling. If I’m unsure and skeptical, that’s a good indicator that this is not the right thing for me. That with the difficulty in making decisions related rather to something else. For example, it takes me forever to order in a restaurant because I can never decide what on the menu appeals to me the most.

You became famous with the role of Matthew Crawley in the series "Downton Abbey”. Did you immediately suspect at the time that something big was going on?

At first we were all pretty clueless. There are really many British history series, and we were one of them. When the first season aired in the US and was a huge success there, it was pretty unexpected. I never expected the impact the series would have on my career.

Barely ten years later, are you still being asked about the role?

Oh yes, regularly. Probably nothing will change about that either. I got out after three seasons!

In the meantime, however, the flamboyant Russian singer Alexander Lemtov from “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga” should also be a character with whom you will be immediately associated, right?

Right, it has been mentioned more and more recently when people recognize me on the street. This charming, silly film obviously had a nerve with the audience last year in the middle of the corona pandemic. Especially since the real Eurovision Song Contest had been canceled.

The film was the number one topic of conversation on the Internet for a while - and Lemtov GIFs and memes were everywhere. Did you follow that?

It was really hard to avoid it. I wasn’t looking specifically for what people were posting. But of course my friends passed a lot on to me, and there were already some very funny Lemtov things. But he’s also a figure made for GIFs.

Another question every British actor under 40 has to put up with these days: Would you like to become the next James Bond?

Oh, of course, everyone gets to hear this question again and again who meets certain criteria. But it is completely hypothetical. Although a few years ago I read in an audio book by Ian Fleming’s “Casino Royale”.

You mentioned earlier that you and your family have lived in the United States for a long time. How big is your homesickness?

I actually feel very comfortable in Los Angeles. But every now and then I miss the sidewalk culture of European cities. People on foot, street cafes, things like that. Last year the longing for it was particularly great, although it was of course clear to me that there was a state of emergency in Europe too. In any case, I found myself reading books that were set in Europe and made me homesick. Which is why the unexpected trip to Berlin was really a boon.

You are also an avid cricketer. That’s certainly difficult in Los Angeles, isn’t it?

There are quite a few cricket clubs here. The only problem is that the few people who do the sport here are so good at it that I have problems keeping up. That’s why I always lose sight of the matter here a little. Even as a pure TV viewer, it is not easy to stay on the ball, because of course there is no cricket broadcast here at prime time. But as soon as I’m home in England in the summer, I really want to play again!

#ich bin dein mensch #i'm your man #dan stevens #maria schrader #faz.net #interview #long post

[mrslittletall]

After I played through Pokémon Shining Pearl, I can finally write my review which I completely forgot... Under a readmore, because this is getting loooong:

First, if you get into the games looking for something new, this game isn't for you. This game is there for Sinnoh fans or people who never played Sinnoh. It's very faithful. However, I absolutely loathe all the review bombing the game got. It's NOT a lazy remake and I can feel the Sinnoh love in it from every nook and cranny. Okay, so a little story time. In 2007, when Sinnoh first got published, I was very very sick with a tonsilitis. I couldn't swallow without intense pain, being awake was nothing but torture, eating made me cry. I could only eat ice cream so I ate a massive amount of ice cream. At least it was summer and it was readily available... Then, I got a package. Pokémon Pearl. Because I was so sick, I put it to the side, I completely forgot it was out and I preordered it. But after a few hours, I got curious. I mean, I didn't had anything else to do and maybe playing the game would distract me from the pain. And... I quickly fell in love. I played the game daily, finished the story and caught the legendaries and did the post game. During that time I also had a bad relationship with my family, so the distraction helped me as well. I have a very very soft spot for Sinnoh, so I got Shining Pearl and put it into my Switch. Only to be right back in 2007 (without the hurty throat), taking the same starter again, bopping to the music. Fourteen years later I still loved it to bits. Okay, but of course the remake isn't perfect. Let's talk about the bad first. The contests have been dumbed down. That is a major disappointment. Instead of the whole attack thing to garner attention it is merely a rhythm game now. That isn't very interesting. The next one was a problem that was already in the originals. The roster is too small. There was no excuse to not use the updated platinum roster. Yes, they could have left the two versions intact by still leaving the exclusive Pokémon in, like Skuntank and Purugly. There is no excuse for the usage of the far too small D/P roster. And speaking of that, no Battle Frontier. That is also a decision that has no excuse. The duel tower is there, yeah, but it wouldn't have been one problem to add the update platinum content. TMs are single use again... that is just dumb. Please just give us the forever use TMs that they introduced in Gen. 5 back forever. Now stuff that I have mixed feelings about: I loved it that Pokémon could again follow you like in HGSS! BUT! It is implemented poorly. The Pokémon often are too slow and fall back and just get teleported back to you and they also are objects and sometimes I had to put them away so that I could interact with hidden items. They also don't follow in caves. Also, some of the big ones are TINY in the overworld. Of course I don't know a real life Wailord, but Onix being as big as Zubat was... strange. But overall, I liked that the feature was back and I often had a Pokémon out that desperately teleported behind me. The EXP share. Listen, I am a big enemy of the forced EXP share. I just wish that we could get rid of it and just get the button back to switch it off. Why is that so difficult? However, I had to learn that it is once again forced and then I made a decision when I noticed that a QoL option of SwSh made it back, PC boxes everywhere. Around the second badge I decided to train up a B team. And... actually... That was one of the most fun things I ever did in Pokémon! I never had a team consisting of 12 Pokémon. I normally would switch them out when they got too overleveled and sometimes my A and my B team were mixed and sometimes I used them mixed on purpose to tackle a gym. I could use ALL the Pokémon I wanted and even MORE and honestly? I loved it! That would NOT have been possible without the forced exp share, because without it, I would have just switched it off and only trained up six Pokémon. So, I kinda feel like I made my peace with it, because boxes everywhere work excellently with it. And now to the good! The WORLD! I just LOVE the world of Sinnoh. It is kind of a maze to traverse and it is

so cool. That is always what I loved in Pokémon, just to go to a cave and find the Pokémon there and maybe a rare TM (though that would be nicer if it wouldn't be single use). But just... I love the world of Sinnoh so much. It's a joy to traverse, it's a joy to find so many new areas when you can surf. It's what I missed so much in SwSh, next to no exploratin and Sinnoh is FULL of exploration. The underground. Because they fixed two of the most glaring problems in my book. The first, the sphere levels. They were just ugh to me, you had to check and then if you didn't get the exact right level, you could start over... now we only have S and L, that is better and makes unearthing spheres a lot more fun. The underground now also has these mini wild areas with Pokémon and the good thing is... Pokémon from the Safari Zone equivalent appear there. I HATE safari zones in Pokémon, so that I could catch them there was so good for my B team. Difficulty. What?! With the forced EXP share and everything? First, like I said up there, training up a B team was a good idea to prevent overleveling and next, the gym trainers are a legit threat! Their Pokémon are clearly EV trained and have IVs and items and balanced comp movesets. I actually lost the battle against the first gym and it was very close a few other times. But the cake takes the Elite 4 and Cynthia. I tell you, that will be a Nuzlocke NIGHTMARE! My Pokémon were around the same level as Cynthia's Pokémon and I legit sweated against some of the E4 members, having to use a LOT of revives and potions. I legit only won against Cynthia because her Garchomp has a fairy counter and I put in my Bronzong, which made two of her moves useless (poison attacks don't effect steel types). Yeah, that were some of the most difficult battles in Pokémon EVER. The AI also knew what it did and I am sure it only was programmed to not boost the hell out of the Pokémon to make it a bit fairer for the player! The love to Sinnoh! One of my most loved things was the way the trainer battles happened. They actually used the poses of the trainers from the DS games before they get transitioned to the 3D style of SwSh and I squealed everytime I recognized it! Aaaah, I love little nudges like that in remakes or remasters! And, like I said, the world of Sinnoh was largely untouched and I loved it. HMs are now an app for your Poketch, so you don't have to put them on your Pokémon anymore. Makes it far better to make nice movesets and you don't have to have a flying or water Pokémon in your team for story progression anymore. Also, pretty much every HM was used by Bidoof or its evolution, that was such a nice nudge to its HM slave status in the DS games xD The music! The music of Sinnoh is fantastic and the remake left it largely intact, it just got tweaked a little! It just is a joy to listen to ^^ Route 209 my beloved. Okay and now a thing for all the haters. "Waaah, the rival still has a Starly at Level 20, why didn't it evolve?!" Did you even PLAY the game? I thought the same as you, why wasn't the Starly evolved? And then that Starly completely obliterated my team! Really, I had a full team alive and almost all Pokémon down but Starly and that fucking Starly was a MONSTER! It used a tactic that completely caught me off guard and I barely managed to land the last hit. Honestly, I am convinced that 90 % of the haters haven't played the game longer than two hours.

#pokémon bdsp #pokémon bdsp review

[toho-literature]

Perfect Memento in Strict Sense: Pages 48-51 - Yukari Yakumo

Youkai of Boundaries

Yukari Yakumo

Ability: Manipulation of boundaries

Threat level: Unknown

Human friendship level: Normal

Main place of activity: Anywhere and everywhere

When talking about youkai-like youkai, the first name that comes to mind is probably Yukari Yakumo.

To start with, she is a youkai that you do not want to deal with. Even besides the fundamental issue of the danger of her ability, this youkai will appear anywhere unexpectedly, her character is lacking in human sentiment, and her behavioral principles are completely different from those of humans, to name a few of her issues.

Her appearance is not especially different from that of a human.

She prefers extravagant clothes, and is often seen with a large parasol.

Her main time of activity being at night, she sleeps in the daytime.

All in all, she is a traditional youkai (*1).

Though she claims to hibernate through the winter, we have only her word on it and it's unknown where she lives, so this is unconfirmed.

There is an article in the Youkai Encyclopedia from Aichi's (*2) Gensokyo Chronicle from long ago that seems to describe her.

It appears she existed back then as well.

Ability

The ability to manipulate boundaries is a terrifying ability capable of fundamentally undermining reality.

As far as we know, everything is built upon the existence of boundaries.

If there was no water surface, there could be no lake.

If there was no sky line, neither mountain nor sky could exist.

Were it not for the Great Barrier, even Gensokyo itself wouldn't exist.

If there were no boundaries, everything would probably exist as a single enormous object.

Thus, the ability to manipulate boundaries is by logic an ability of creation and destruction.

It essentially creates a new existence, or conversely rejects some existence.

Among the abilities youkai are known to possess, this is one of the most dangerous, being comparable even to the power of gods.

She is also capable of moving to an entirely separate location between gaps in space, whether it be her entire body or only a part of her.

It's said that this ability is not limited to physical space, but also applies to pictures, others' dreams, and even stories.

In addition, she possesses superhuman (*3) intellect, especially concerning mathematics.

Furthermore, due to her long lifespan, she has a wealth of knowledge and experience.

Daily Life

She is actually quite talkative, and is willing to teach you about herself or about Gensokyo.

However, most of her stories are impossible to prove or confirm, so no one can say how many of them are true.

Her house is said to be located at the boundary between Gensokyo and the outside world, just like the Hakurei Shrine, but no one has ever actually seen it.

This is because she moves through gaps in space, so she seems to appear out of nowhere and disappear into nothing.

No one can follow her through the gaps, so it's not known if it's true or not (*4).

In addition, she rarely does things herself, leaving all of her day-to-day work to a beast youkai she controls as a shikigami instead.

This shikigami acts in her place while she is sleeping, particularly during the day or in winter.

Also, as she has lived a long life, she has many youkai friends that are similarly long-lived.

Most of her friends are youkai of the strongest class, like Yuyuko Saigyouji of the Netherworld and the oni Suika Ibuki (both described later).

Connection to Gensokyo

Gensokyo is isolated from the outside by a large magical barrier.

This barrier could be seen as the boundary separating the inside and outside.

However, the outside world and Gensokyo are still physically contiguous, so it could perhaps be said that the boundary that the barrier forms is what logically defines the place that we call Gensokyo.

In other words, one could say that with the mere existence of the youkai of boundaries, it's possible for places like Gensokyo to be created and destroyed.

It could be claimed that the fact that a youkai of boundaries lives somewhere unknown in Gensokyo, a land surrounded by an enormous boundary, implies that she must have some deep, vital connection to its formation.

Strangely, this youkai rarely attacks humans.

A youkai that never attacks humans is by definition not a youkai, so it is assumed that she does somewhere.

As she can freely visit the outside world, it's speculated that she attacks humans in the outside world (*5).

Anecdotes About This Youkai

Genso-Lunar War

This is a story from over 1000 years ago.

It is said that she once invaded the moon by modifying the boundary between truth and falsehood and plunging into the moon's reflection on the lake's surface.

Although she went in with an army of impudent youkai, they were crushed by the Moon's advanced weaponry.

It is believed because of that incident, youkai usually do not choose to attack outside their territory.

The stories of this event are also what made her powers widely known among humans.

Youkai Expansion Project

A story from over 500 years ago.

The project refers to a plan designed and implemented by Yukari in order to restore power to the youkai of Gensokyo, who felt pressured by the increase in the human population.

Until then Gensokyo was merely a spot deep in the mountains in the middle of nowhere, but she planned to create a boundary of illusion and reality around Gensokyo, logically creating a new world.

By establishing Gensokyo as an illusionary world, and the outside as the real world, the youkai weakened by the outside world would naturally flock to Gensokyo; this was a truly epochal event.

With this, it ended up that even youkai from outside of Japan immigrated to Gensokyo.

The effects of the boundary continue even now.

The cleverness of the plan lies in allowing youkai to disappear in the outside world while permitting them to thrive within Gensokyo.

As long as the outside world remains in the hands of the humans, Gensokyo will remain in the hands of the youkai.

The Great Barrier Commotion

This, of course, refers to the existence of the Great Hakurei Barrier (*6).

It is said that this youkai was one of the sages who suggested the creation of the Great Barrier and created what is now Gensokyo.

However, it appears that in the beginning there was some opposition to this plan from a number of youkai, and there was open conflict between them.

As this conflict distracted youkai from their normal attacks against humans, the Great Barrier has received great praise among the humans of Gensokyo.

Eventually, word of the usefulness of the Great Barrier circulated among the youkai, and there are scarcely any that oppose its existence now.

The Phantom Commotion

The Phantom Commotion refers to the weakening of the boundary between the Netherworld and the world of the living, which has made it easy for the respective denizens of each to cross through it.

It is obvious it was the doings of this youkai.

Since this was the act of a wise youkai, it's possible there was some extraordinary benefit to youkai society in doing this. (*7)

As this is an ongoing incident, the matter remains unresolved.

Eyewitness Reports

"She makes my food disappear right out from under my nose, even when I'm careful about it. I wish she'd stop." (Reimu Hakurei)

When you're not looking she can slip her hand through a gap in space and take things from far away.

"She keeps poppin' into my house and I wish she'd cut it out. Can't she at least use the door like a normal person?" (Marisa Kirisame)

Even playing with teleportation has its limits.

Countermeasures

She seldom appears in the human village.

Barring unknown circumstances, she likely doesn't attack normal humans very often.

No matter how confident one is in their abilities, it would be wise not to attempt to exterminate this youkai.

Though, she would likely make allowances for the power of her opponent so as not to allow the battle to become too one-sided.

In any case, there is neither any sort of defense against nor weak point in the ability to manipulate boundaries.

Her intellect far surpasses those of humans, and her physical strength is what you would expect from a youkai.

Humans probably don't even have a one in a million chance of winning against her.

Excepting, of course, the countermeasure of approaching her in a polite manner.

*1: Recently, as the number of nocturnal humans increases, so does the number of diurnal youkai.

*2: The Gensokyo Chronicles written by the first member of the Hieda line, more than 1200 years ago.

*3: She's a youkai, so it's no wonder she is superhuman.

*4: There are rumors her house is located in the outside world.

*5: There are other rumors that she is a youkai from the outside world, and she simply comes to here for play. Indeed, she may spend the winters and the daytime, when she claims to be sleeping, in the outside world, and some even say that the world in Yukari's dreams IS the outside world.

*6: The boundary separating Gensokyo and the outside world. It's a logical boundary, but it is said to have become extremely difficult for humans and youkai alike to pass through it, so it's clearly a strong boundary.

*7: I have been unable to confirm this in my lifetime.

#touhou pmiss #perfect memento in strict sense #touhou #touhou project #project shrine maiden #yukari yakumo #yakumo yukari #i never quite understood how one would manipulate boundaries until i read this

[noellekoc]

Where do I start… I’m 31 and have been trying to get pregnant for going on 8 months. A few questions/thoughts come to mind… am I too old, why did I wait for long, and what right do I have to be so sad compared to others worse off. Let’s see, I waited until I was done with school, that PhD is great, but I’m still incomplete. The superstitious part of me thinks, if it was this hard to get pregnant, I should have started the journey sooner, but my luck would be that I would get knocked up within the first month. I now envy those women; happy for you, hate you, want to be you.

Month one through three were fine enough. I went through post pill amenorrhea. Thanks for that protection from ages 15-31… but did you ruin my chances now? Don’t think I haven’t asked my doctors, I did; they denied it would be a problem… “it just takes time,” cue eye roll. I’m blessed enough to not have endo or other known fertility disorders; the worst I’ve had is a leep procedure, but again that rarely effects conceiving, or so I’ve been told. Speaking of endo, I’ve been on this journey with a friend/peer/former colleague who does have endo, as much as this hurts for me, I knows she suffering more. So again I ask, what right do I when to be so sad? She assures me that I have a right, but it’s hard to believe.

By month four through seven, it cuts deep. Every month I do more and more research, I implement changes to increase my chances. My life has been put on hold and for what? Disappointment. I stopped consuming alcohol and caffeine, I went on a fertility diet, did the ovulation tests, track periods and symptoms, used a reliable at home test kit for my husbands swimmers, had sex on the appropriate days, laid there long enough to probably give myself a UTI, legs above head (I know it’s a myth, but I’m desperate), used well researched lube, stopped doing research, and gave up social media. Aside from testing, I don’t think I can do much more. I swear if I hear one more time that testing can’t be done till one year, or worse that “it’ll happen when it happens,” “don’t stress it,” “everything happens for a reason,” “give it time” I swear I will scream and knock someone out.

I find myself fearing the week before I’m supposed to menstruate. Keeping an eye on symptoms from month to month, hoping for something to be different to indicate pregnancy. Hello gigantic fall!

I’ve been regular until last month. I bleed 5 days early and was joyous that it was possibly implantation bleeding, I didn’t sleep that night due to my excitement. Thoughts running through my head as to how I would tell my husband and family.

My soul died when I saw crimson the next morning. I wouldn’t doubt that my neighbors heard my sobs and saw me ugly cry outside while letting the dogs out. I was ruined and it was my fault, I got ahead of myself.

To say I’m miserable is an understatement. I can’t concentrate, I’m tired and irritable; I’m just sad! I find myself holding a bloated belly from time to time wondering if this will ever hold my baby, or if I’ll ever feel kicks. Why me? Why is this so difficult? Why won’t it just happen?

Not only do I feel like I’m disappointing myself, but also my husband and family. The pressure is coming from everywhere, but mostly from me. As my mom would say, I’m my own worst enemy because I’m always my harshest critic. If you’re type A, much like me, how can you not feel like this. It’s worse when you (me) know only two people who have gotten pregnant within the first month and everyone else has been plagued with miscarriages. First step- want and hope to get pregnant. Second step- keep pregnancy, if only we could actually be fully in control of that. But back to my point here, if these women are perfectly healthy and lose the baby, how could I be any different, but slow your roll woman, you have to get pregnant first.

This journey is defeating, miserable, disheartening and again, I was in school for 22 years with so many disappointments along the way. Yet, this is the worst one. Let me get pregnant! Just get pregnant already! I want to be a mommy/mama/mom! Will this ever happen?!

#infertilityproblems

[greensydney]

Wellness Segments from The Friend Zone Podcast

This is where I’ll be listing Fran’s Wellness Segments. It will be updated regularly. Any specific products/stores mentioned will be linked :)

Ep. 1: It’s Ok to Log Off  

Being the first episode, Fran starts us off easy with a loving suggestion to take a social media break. At the time of this recording, “Twitterless Assante” was reaping the benefits of taking mindless twitter scrolling out of his life for some time.

Ep. 2: Family Matters  

This is where we start digging in and doing the work. Here, Fran asks us to look within to resolve family disputes that have gone unchecked. Have the talks that you have been avoiding, even if it feels uncomfortable. Remember to come from a place of compassion when approaching loved ones, and to not take anything personally. Which is a theme throughout many of the early episodes, as it’s the 2nd agreement in The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, one of the many books Fran has suggested.

Ep. 3: Take 5  

Work on building and maintaining a healthy morning routine. This helps set the tone of the day. By leaving our phone out of this part of the day, we can avoid things like waking up to a long, angry text or some other drama  and letting that guide how the rest of day goes. Basically, set the tone of your day before taking in information from anyone else. 

Ep. 4: Surrender 

Meditate, meditate, meditate. 

Osho books are great for learning more about quieting the mind, as recommended by Fran. Sadhguru is another great teacher who I look to for insight on meditation, mindfulness, parenting, and just life in general. He has a channel on YouTube with tons of videos. Fran also recommends trying Mala beads to assist with meditation, or maybe journaling afterwards. She really just stresses the importance of beginning a meditation practice, without fear of doing it “right” or “wrong”.

Ep. 5: Even Martha Went to Jail  

No clear-cut Wellness Segment for this week, but the main gist of things was: create what you want, what feels good for you. Critics will appear for everyone, no matter how great they are, so do you. Don’t keep yourself from creating things because of fear of how others will receive it.

Ep. 6: Tacos & Quickweave 

In your journal, dissect the relationship you are in. Asking questions like, “Why are you with this person? Who are you *really* doing this relationship for?”   For singles, ask questions like, “What am I *really* looking for, in a person? How do I want to feel when I’m with them? How do I want to show up in their lives? How do I want them to show up in my life?” For those resistant to relationships, ask yourself why and really work through it to get those answers that you seek. ~meditate, meditate, meditate ~

Ep. 7: The Choir & The Competition Are Out 

Parents: Sit with our children and start asking them questions about their interests. Fran shares how she was impacted by her mom not being more encouraging about her becoming a singer, so she wants us to know how important it is to truly listen when our kids ask to pursue new things, even if it isn’t exactly what we pictured for them. 

For everyone, even those who don’t have children or maybe they aren’t quite at the age to start discussing these things: we were all a child at some point. Many people can benefit from asking ourselves if the profession we are in is for you, or if you were just trying to please our own parents. It’s never too late to begin learning more about anything that excites you.

Ep. 8: Fitness Regine Hunter  

(I’m pretty sure they purposely didn’t spell it “regime” because of the difficulty for many in pronouncing the word. lmao)

In this episode, Fran speaks on the importance of holistic health and wellbeing, sharing how much it has shaped who she is and improved her life. She wants us to really sit with ourselves and think about the things we want to work on. Ask, “What can I do to ensure that I’m being the most beautiful *me* possible?” From skin and hair care, to diet, to fitness, to the way we talk to ourselves or others. All the little things that make up holistic living. No quick fixes! We’re here to werrrrrrk, hunty. 

“Forget the internet for a second. Forget what the Instagram models look like, we’re talking about YOU...” - Fran the MF Goat.  

Implement a fitness regime that works for you. Maybe it’s part of your morning routine, maybe it’s an after dinner thing; everyone gets to choose what is best for them and that’s part of the beauty of this life. :) Try a few things and see what works. There is an emphasis on the importance of starting slow, allowing your mind and body to get used to new activity. Fran started off with walking, increasing her distance over time, and then turned that into jogging when it felt right for her. Blogilates and Yoga With Adriene are YouTube channels she mentions here. I have been hooked to yoga ever since trying a few videos from  Adriene. Yoga by Biola is another great channel to check out. Biola has this video, “Restorative Yoga for Collective Trauma”, which I love. I learned of her from The Friend Zone earlier in 2020. 

Skin and Hair: Check out Frans YouTube channel to see all the informative videos she has on all-natural beauty and health tips. Personally, I really like Naptural85 for hair videos as my curl pattern is very similar to hers. Click around on suggested videos to find the ones that speak to you. 

Ep. 9: Don’t Forget the Feet  

OIL UP! From head-to-toe. Get that moisture. Especially in these colder months. Hands, feet, nails, toenails...literally everywhere. Dustin cannot get over the importance of the feet. Fran says this aztec healing clay is great for dry, cracked feet, and she hinted at its ability to fix some facial skin woes as well. Extra Fran tip: put a small amount of oil on your nail beds before painting them. This protects the skin and promotes nail growth. I tried this myself and it’s a game changer in my nail health! They used to get cracks in them once they start getting to a certain length, but if i keep them oiled up, they are smooth as precious little stones. :) 

Ep. 10: A$AP Shirley Caesar  

This episode reminds us that finances, too, can impact our total feeling of well-being. The Friends all want us to get our finances in order, taking the tiniest of baby steps, if needed. Fran’s 3 things to cut back on: 

Eating Out

Online Shopping

Places like Target, where you go for 1 thing and leave with a full cart.

Making these sacrifices adds up. The goal is that eventually, any big things that are weighing on our mental due to finances can more easily be dealt with.

Ep. 11: And I’m Telling You, I’m NOT Going!

It’s all about skin-care in this wellness segment! Starting with what goes into your body, and ending with what goes on your body. First off: DRINK LOTS OF WATER! This not only promotes healthy skin but as we all know, it’s just good for the body in general. The body runs nice and smoothly when it’s hydrated from the inside-out. 

If you need to cut down on your caffeine intake (I’m right there with ya), Fran suggested Yerba Mate. It’s a natural source of caffeine and much cleaner than what comes in other energy drinks. I must say, I feel like the naturally occurring caffeine just hits different. I was hyyype the first few times I got a Yerba Mate instead of my usual orange Red Bull! Energy drink isn’t the only form to get your Yerba fix, thankfully. It’s sold as a loose leaf tea, or in bagged tea as well. I LOVE coffee though, and I am not giving that up so easy. I find that bringing mindfulness to my habits with it, helps me to not consume too much.

Now, for the outside of the body: washing and moisturizing daily is imperative. This may be obvious to some, but it can also feel difficult for those with a really busy schedule. I know for me, as a mom, there has been many times when I only had one chance to take a shower on a given day, and if I didn’t take it, I was always sorry. Or I would take a rushed, half-effort shower and get dressed immediately after without oil, lotion, anything. Having a routine in place for daily washing and moisturizing (that works with my sporadic life) helps me make sure it won’t get missed. Again, as with episode 9, OIL UP! Coconut oil is a great choice, but my skin just drinks it up like water. Sesame oil is a nice alternative because it’s a bit thicker. It was hard for me to get used to smelling like a huge sesame seed though, not gonna lie. But there are so many different oils and butters out there to love our bodies with, just use some trial and error to find which one(s) work best for you.

Last thing: Bedding. Change it at least once a week. Get on the silk pillowcase train! Or if you real fancy, like Fran, get you a full-on silk sheet set. Cotton sheets soak up all the moisture from our skin that we work so hard and lovingly on.

Ep. 12: The Shut Down Mixtape

House cleaning time! Clean your fridge, clean your closets, clean your desk drawers. Clean everything! Trying to especially bring focus to areas that are often overlooked in your regular daily cleaning. By doing this, we clear out old energy, removing heaviness from our homes that we may not even realize is there. I personally can vouch that this helps with anxiety and even lifts my depression symptoms as well. It feels good when the space I live in looks and smells nice, so taking the effort is more than worthwhile.

Ep. 13: Oh God…

Get in touch with what religion/spirituality mean to YOU. This one was hard for me because I wasn’t raised with much knowledge of (or respect for, sadly) religion. As I grew, I became super interested in the various religions and how they affect the lives of others - good or bad. I’ve now learned to adapt my own spiritual practices that support me and help me get by. And this is life changing.

Ep. 14: Say It Like You Mean It

Here, we are instructed to find out what our individual love language is. This comes from the book The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman. The 5 Love Languages are: 

Quality Time

Acts of Service

Receiving Gifts

Words of Affirmation

Physical Touch

You may already have an idea of what your primary love language is, but you can get some more information on that by reading the book or by taking quizzes on the book’s website. Knowing your love language, as a single, can help you define what you need from a partner. As someone in a relationship, it can help both partners learn how to best make sure everyone knows they are loved and valued. 

Ep. 15: Yo Mama

Scalp Care for Winter Weather!

½ Cup Olive Oil ~ Seals in moisture

2 Tbsp. Honey (Fran uses Raw honey) ~ Creates pretty shine

½ Cup Coconut Milk ~ Adds protein

½ an Avocado ~ Healthy fat

½ a Banana ~ Softens hair

Blend all ingredients into a creamy conditioner, which should come out a nice light greenish color. 

I keep forgetting coconut milk at the store or else I’d have been tried this one, smh *face palm* But I will edit to add my review after I finally do this. :) 

Ep. 16: Non Profit & Chill

This episode had no segments, but we can still gain a wellness tip from it. Recorded right after Fran returned from a trip to Africa, she had a ton of insight to share on why it’s so important to be an ethical consumer. This episode was a great one to re-listen to as it reminded me that I am reading labels and the “about” pages on brand’s websites for a valid reason that is important to me, not just following trends. Dang imposter syndrome, always trying to step in and ruin everything (shoutout to the Friend Zone for teaching me about that as well, in a later episode.)

Fair Trade Errything !!!

Ep. 17: There’s A Song For That

No wellness segment this week, per say, but again I’ll summarize the episode to make it wellness for us all. The friends basically dode over their favorite break-up songs, from the deepest of soul, to the pettiest of rap songs. Many genres listed, and many bangers. This episode is a great listen for those going through a breakup, or even if you’re a big fan of the episodes where the Friends just let loose and have fun.

Ep. 18: Don’t You Go To Work?

Inspired by Assante and his newly purchased stones, which he is carrying safely in his pocket, Fran suggested that us listeners get in on the magic as well by getting our own stones. Starting with Citrine. This stone is a light orange color, and can be found online or in local crystal stores in most cities. Often referred to as “the merchants stone”, Citrine is believed to attract success. Fran offered the idea of laying it on some money, because she did it and got a random check in the mail soon after...And I kid you not - I did it, and the saaame thing happened to me. I was shook and beyond grateful!

Other stones mentioned here are Lapis Lazuli and Black Tourmaline. Lapis is a pretty, royal blue shade, usually with gold flakes in it. Lapis is known as the “communication stone”. Black Tourmaline is, you guessed it, black, and often found in shiny pieces. Fran says she keeps one of these by her bedside to absorb negative thoughts; letting it cleanse her energy before bed.

Stores mentioned on this episode: Rock Star, and Namaste shop. Both New York based but have online shopping available. Personally, and this is gonna sound real woo-woo, but I prefer picking out stones in person because then I can actually feed off of their energy to pick the right one for me. Those living in a small town, there is probably a crystal shop not too far away.

Ep. 19: The Friend Zone & The Read Mash Up Pt. 1

Wellness this week: be messy and silly with your friends. For me, I don’t currently have any real life friends to hang out with, plus COVID, so my family gets to enjoy all my silly mess. Life just cannot be lived being serious 100% of the time!

Ep. 20: 2015, I’ma Let You Finish, But 2016…

I loved this episode because it brings us back to our journals. Fran asks the guys and us listeners to reflect on two simple, but powerful questions to answer at the end of each year:

What are 3 things you discovered about yourself this year that you love? Things that you feel will propel you into the next year, as a person, career-wise, and as a whole. Write freely about how you plan on maintaining and evolving.

What are 3 things you discovered about yourself this year that you did not like? Maybe some of these things are hard to face. Reflect on how you’ve allowed them to hold you back and what you are doing to adjust them.

#friendzonepod #wellness #holisticliving #forthe #hoodhearted

[maraudererasmut]

what kinds of things did you do when you were first practicing digital drawing? did you use reference images? where did you find them? anything you would recommend to a baby drawer with a short attention span for instructions?

Well, first and foremost, I’m gonna take a moment to do a little fangirl wiggle, because I’m a huge fan of your work! Thank you for messaging me! 

I’m gonna include a lot of info here, so bear with me! I’ll try to break it down so that it’s easy to understand, but if anyone ha any questions, feel free to ask!

The absolute most important thing for starting out drawing is practice. 

You’re going to hear it from everyone, everywhere, but it’s so very true. When I first started digital drawing, I made sure to use my tablet every single day. Now, that doesn’t mean I spend three hours each day trying to do something amazing; some days I only had a few minutes here and there, but I’d try to sketch something rough, something loose, maybe just a doodle. Maybe it’s a face one day, maybe it’s just a bunch of swirls and stars the next. It doesn’t matter what you draw, as long as you are developing the habit of drawing! No matter what it is you are doing, you’re learning! Playing with brushes to see how they feel on your new drawing program? Learning! Trying to see if one way of colouring is better than another? Learning! Drawing the same nose over and over and over again until you like what you see? Also learning!

Another key step to learning to draw is to identify what you like!

What does that mean? Well, look at other artists who inspire you! Why does their work appeal to you? What is it about their drawings that you LOVE? Once you realize what it is that makes something beautiful to you, you know what to practice and how to learn to adopt that into your own style!

@burdge is an excellent example for illustrating this. They are a fandom artist that has been around for so long, nearly every fandom artist I know has been inspired by them in one way or another!

So what is it about Burdge’s art that I love? I love the closeness that’s portrayed, and the softness. But those are very arbitrary things that are difficult to identify and even more challenging to implement. I love the noses. I love the proportions. I love the hairlines! I love the body movement! Those are things that are a bit easier to pick out and start practicing!

This leads so well into my next point:

It is okay to copy someone else’s work if it’s for practice!

Let’s break this one down, just to ensure that nobody accidentally misinterprets what I’m saying: It is okay to copy someone else’s work if it’s for practice. It is NOT okay to copy someone else’s work and post it, claiming it as your own! If you use a reference picture, generally speaking, most artists will post which reference they use, but I know that I often forget to do that as well! But using a reference picture is different than copying. 

When you copy someone’s work, what you’re really doing is working on identifying what you love about it. You’re practicing drawing in their style! And that’s totally fine! When you’re first starting out, it’s actually really helpful to be able to use someone else’ expertise and practice to guide you to draw something you love! A lot of people have it in their heads that copying = bad. And sometimes it does. But I think it’s important for new artists to get rid of that notion in their heads. Practice is practice. When you practice cooking, you copy other people’s recipes! You’re not going to post those recipes online and say you created them, but you CAN feed them to your friends and you CAN eat them yourself! And if you do post pictures of your food? You can say whose recipe you used and thank them for a great meal! 

We were all starting at one point, and every artist I know started by copying something. 

Use reference pictures! Use them liberally! References are helpful!

Yes, some artists are so good that they do not need reference pictures. That’s fine. Good for them! I’m very proud of them!

When you’re first starting out, you don’t have to worry about that! Don’t get into your own head and tell yourself “Real artists do XYZ, blah blah blah, etc.” None of that is helpful. Use whatever is available to help you improve!

Now the question is what actually makes good reference pictures? Well, everyone uses something a little different. Some people use faces of famous actors, some people use stock photos, some people use other people’s drawings that are specifically made for references! 

What do I do? I save every single photo I come across that inspires me into a folder. I have tons of folders labeled “Reference: Pose” or “Reference: Remus” or “Reference: Gay”. (That one is smut references. :3 )

I use blogs like @posereference and @fantasyartistreference, which I follow on here! I’ve gone through their content and saved photos that I think will inspire me in the future. Sometimes I don’t do anything with them. Sometimes I use them! 

I also take advantage of stock photos. That includes ones that adobe puts onto the internet as well as ones that other artists put! Senshi Stock on Deviant art is an excellent resource that has made a TON of photos available to artists to use for FREE! 

Google is also my friend! I like to google terms like “Couple Pose Reference” or “Couple Kissing”. If you include search terms like “pose reference” you often find that you get things specifically created for artists to use to help with poses!

Look at all the helpful poses! 

Now, this leads us to my next point:

How to use reference images

Everyone does this part differently, too! I’m going to show a few different examples. Let’s use this amazing reference sheet by @kibbi as our example!

Some people like to have their reference photo beside their drawing space, to use for them to look at, simply as a guide:

Some people like to have their pose reference in a layer beneath their actual drawing on a lower opacity so that they can trace right over it:

Often times, what you end up doing is using your traced sketch as your base for your drawing, with your actual drawing over top of it. Essentially, you’re using this time to identify what you DO like about the reference pose and what you DON’T like about it, and changing it!

See how different it’s looking already? I put my own style over top of it, but I used the pose as a reference because I really liked it!

((EDIT: I JUST REALIZED THAT I GAVE SIRIUS THREE ARMS. I AM SO SORRY, GUYS!!!!))

Side by side comparison for the curious:

Eventually, a time will come where you can do simple poses like this without the use of a reference. That’s amazing! You will be so proud of yourself! But if you still need to use references for complicated poses or foreshortening, remember not to beat yourself up about it. It is OKAY to use reference poses, and it is OKAY to take advantage of resources that are available to you! Just try to remember to cite your sources, just like we all did in school! :P

Practice Anatomy

Try doing things like figure drawing! Use sites like Quick Poses to give yourself a timed figure drawing session, if you’re up for it! The more you practice bodies and anatomy, the better you will get at drawing them! Don’t focus too much on anything being perfect; remember to say loose and just aim for general shapes and general proportions.

This isn’t the greatest example, because I didn’t do any dynamic poses, but here are some rough figure sketches:

See how loose I was? See how little I cared about it looking nice? That’s the best way to start a sketch! Just with loose scribbles!

The same thing can apply to faces:

Learn the rules, and then learn when to break them!

Just like writing, where you have “rules” for writing an essay, in drawing, you have rules for anatomy! But… I don’t always love to follow those rules. It’s important to understand human anatomy (if you plan to draw humans), and then figure out where you want things to be exaggerated in order to create your own style! Here’s an example:

The same rules apply to musculature! It’s important to understand what muscles go where and how they move in order to properly draw them consistently! However! That is something a bit more complicated that we can go into another time! I don’t think that would be included in my simple break-down of drawing!

And… last but not least…

Have fun!

You’d think this one would go without saying, but I’m going to specify it anyway. If you are NO LONGER enjoying drawing what you’re drawing, STOP. Don’t just draw humans because I told you to practice anatomy! If you’re not having fun, you’re going to grow to resent it, and we don’t want that! Draw whatever it is that you want! If you want to draw the same two men hugging over and over and over and over and over (Case in point: my entire blog), you do that! Ignore everything I said about knowing anatomy and about reference pictures and about anything! Just do exactly what makes you happy, nothing more and nothing less. Practicing should be fun, and the moment it’s no longer fun, you’ll begin to lose your passion. So… move on to something else that’s fun! Tired of drawing Wolfstar? (Pfff, that’s impossible, but okay). Move on to Drarry! Or to Linny! Or to a different fandom! Or to flowers! Or to still life! Or to whatever you think will bring back that spark!

Because that’s what drawing is all about. It’s just another form of expression and another way to have fun!

ANYWAY! I know this was SUPER long! I hope it was at least somewhat helpful! I’m not an expert, not by any means, but I enjoy doing this, and I am still working on improving! If anyone has any more questions, shoot me a message!

#ask me things #ask me stuff #ask maraudererasmut #drawing guide #drawing tutorial #basic drawing tutorial #not even really a tutorial #Just... drawing stuff #my art #art how-to

[phoenotopia]

2020 May Update

I hope you're all staying safe and healthy during this time of Coronavirus!

We continue towards the finish line, slowly, but surely. Coronavirus did throw a few wrenches in our plans. Our talks with a publisher about a possible sponsored appearance at an upcoming event stalled.

But that was always just a possibility. We have a backup plan. If we didn't win a sponsor, we were just going to pay our own way to a convention. That's what most indies do! Anyway, that's canceled too. It doesn't seem like there'll be any conventions to showcase in the near future...

Nevertheless, we did move forward in other areas. We've got the press materials ready as well as the game's official launch site up. You can view it in its prelaunch state at this link. NOTE, It is in a "prelaunch" state, so some media links are being withheld until reveal time. But there are a bunch of new pictures and artwork you can look at.

You might notice the link reads "phoenotopia.wordpress.com". The plan is to direct "phoenotopia.com" to it in the near future. That means if you wanted to reach this tumblr specifically, you'll have to visit it at its tumblr link, "phoenotopia.tumblr.com" (which, I just noticed doesn't work... huh). Anyway, since this is a dev blog, I'll talk a little bit about the journey of creating the website.

SQUARESPACE vs WIX vs WORDPRESS

I actually tried 3 different services (in the above order), before I settled on wordpress. I did a bunch of researching, and most reviews seemed to point at WIX >= SQUARESPACE >>> WORDPRESS.

I went with Squarespace first, since it was recommended a bunch on some youtube videos I saw (guess marketing works). Even though it didn't win outright in the reviews, my impression of it was "less quantity, but more quality." I tried it and found it serviceable. It was kinda sluggish, with some not so intuitive areas. I had to ask for help a few times for some things that would seem simple ("how do I change the BG and font color and of the music player?", etc).

That was last year, when I *thought* I was near launch and would need a press site soon. One year later (present day), it was time to create a press site again, and since my website with Squarespace expired (I had only signed up for a trial period), it was a good opportunity to try Wix, especially since Pirate had lots of praise for Wix.

My impression of Wix was that it was... too distracting. After I chose a theme, in the editor view I felt bombarded by menus. Everywhere you move the mouse, things kept lighting and popping up. And it was slow. So I guess it was sorta like Squarespace, but maybe even a little worse?

(Easy ways to preview the website from phones and tablets was one of wordpress’s neat features)

What prompted me to try Wordpress was one of their slogans "35% of the web uses WordPress". If it's good enough for 35% of websites, it's good enough for me! I ended up liking it most of all. It's definitely less featured, which suited me, since I'm not trying to create something too fancy either. Unlike the other website builders which emphasize free-form, wordpress was more rigid. I couldn't drag and drop an element just anywhere - I found that comforting in a "I can't screw this up" sorta way. The most important thing was that it was fast. Loading the editor view to Wix took 11 seconds vs 4 seconds with Wordpress. And the speed advantage of wordpress extends across every action. Similarly, when Chrome launched 10+ years ago, it was also less featured vs Firefox, but it became my choice browser. I guess speed is something I value highly.

Anyway, my experience is from a drag/drop perspective with minimal coding. This is also NOT a paid advertisement. However, if wordpress would like to send some money my way, I would not be opposed... (call me!)

Achievements, Bugfixes, and Cleanup

Lots of small tasks and polish was done over the past 2 months. I finally fixed the time tracking bug - important because the Speed Run achievement depended on it. I also finally finished implementing all the technical stuff for the achievements. There was a bug where some enemies would stack up too many light sources, causing them to appear too bright and drain system resources. That's now also fixed. Lots of other small ones that don't bear mentioning.

A neat trivia about the game is that there's a final super hard achievement for those seeking to prove their mastery over the game. The player has to beat the game having never picked up a heart or energy upgrade. When playing under this constraint, some enemies can even kill the player in one hit! In the game's most current iteration, even I failed to achieve it, so I'm definitely going to have to go in and tweak things a little more.

Age Ratings

I went and got the game's age rating. I did a little research on this - it's quite fascinating. ESRB would be the age ratings board for the United States (where I'm based). But if you were in Europe, you'd get a PEGI rating. Then there's ACB for Australia and so forth. So if you wanted to launch a game globally, you'd have to deal with this process over and over, and each country rates things a little differently... that's a lot of work!

Enter IARC (International Age Rating Coalition), which aimed to simplify the process by being the one standard that you apply to, and from which you could then get the equivalent rating for all participating countries. IARC is an entirely automated process - probably necessary due to the boom of digital titles across all platforms, particularly mobile.

IARC is great for me, because they relaxed the standards for getting a rating. From my understanding, the process used to be more difficult. And you'd have to pay ESRB a hefty chunk to get a rating, but with IARC, it's totally free! So long as it's for digital and it's used only on licensed sites and store fronts. If I wanted to launch the game physically, I'd have to deal with ESRB on an individual basis again.

Without further ado, here's Phoenotopia's IARC ratings:

Fascinating... Phoenotopia is rated "Mature" in Australia... but for "Horror". Which seems suspect. The horror elements are rare (remember Dreadlands?). But when I was answering their questionnaire, they provided a video example of what they considered "horror", and it was pretty mild. About as mild as my game, so I checked that box. It is what it is...

We also got a "Teen" rating for ESRB for reasons of Fantasy Violence and "Mild Blood". This one is kinda iffy. In the game, if you hit a giant bug, it spits out a few drops of green blood. Does that really count as blood? Ocarina of time skirted by with an E rating 2 decades ago, and it let a dude spit out green blood. However, since IIARC is an automated process, I didn't see any place to dispute. But also, I wouldn't have disputed it anyway. A "T" rating is cooler than an "E" rating!

I'd like to mention this is not a paid advertisement for IARC. However, if IARC would like to send some money my way, I would not be opposed... (call me!)

Submission

I expect to polish the game for about 2 (maybe 3) more weeks. After which, I'll be submitting the game to the console "authority". From my understanding, I'll then have to wait a month while they "inspect" the title. After which, I'm then cleared to have an official launch date - which I'll probably set to be 1 month after getting approval.

So the plan is to have a very short marketing campaign. The reveal trailer will basically drop 1 month before release. And we're going to sprint to the finish line. Some marketing campaigns are 6 months to a couple years. Ours will be one month... Let's hope it works.

Wrench

That's what the plan looks like right now, but there is a possible upcoming wrench in this whole thing. I recently learned that my version of Unity is too old. Games running on old Unity versions are not automatically accepted - so I'll have to apply for an exemption. If the exemption gets rejected, we can't launch without upgrading, which will require *significant* work...

This came as a surprise to me. When I started dabbling in games development a decade ago, the most common advice I found online was "Make Games, not Game Engines." I interpreted this to mean lock in your technologies. There's always going to be a new and shinier bell or whistle, but if you keep chasing it, you're not going to work on the actual content of the game. That's probably what kept me to releasing the original game on Flash. That was a game I was making as a hobby while working a full-time job. By the time I quit my job to go full-time indie dev, Flash had long been a dead technology. But I remembered "do you want to build game engines or games?" And so I pressed forward.

So that mindset could potentially backfire here. If PC was the lead SKU, we wouldn't have these issues since PC is more relaxed as a platform. Consoles, as I'm now learning, have an ever forward shifting window of technologies. If we get rejected for the exemption, there's a couple ways we can play it. One, we go through the pain of upgrading which will take months... Two, we pivot and make PC the lead SKU again, but have to handle porting that plus its specific features, which will also take months...

So why is updating such a big issue? Unity has changed drastically over the years. When I started, it was a lot less 2D friendly. They didn't have an official 2D tilemap solution, so you had to build your own or buy a 3rd party library from their asset store. I used 2DTK for tilemaps - 2DTK is now entirely deprecated. Similarly, I had to search for and purchase a good asset to display crisp text - since you couldn't even do that in Unity back then (heh). That's the story for a lot of old Unity stuff. Think of it as a first mover's "disadvantage".

Hopefully it won't come to that, since I'm pretty spent as a developer. I've been ready for this to be over, and I know many of you feel the same. Hopefully soon! As usual, I'll update in 2 months at the latest (end of June). An update might come earlier if we have some good news to share sooner. Until then!

Fanart and Cosplay

This first picture comes from roccy_chair and shows Gail basked in light. I like how her pose and equipment together form an "X". That's a neat hidden symmetry. The way she floats also kinda reminds me of Crono's "Shining" spell. Perhaps Gail should have the ability to cast spells? Hmmm...

Cody G returns with a new art depicting the 2 Moonstone enthusiasts. I like Fran's starry-eyed expression here. That's true love on display. I also like how the Moonstones are depicted as flat and coin-shaped. Very unique! Also note Gail makes an appearance in the back :D

Thanks to M1shaaa for this cosplay of Gail! There's a lot to like here! The vibrant pink hair. The costume with 3 stitches across the vest. The pose with slingshot, accurate to Gail's depiction in the box art. Amazingly, this might also be the very *first* cosplay of Gail! Will and Pirate both alerted me about it excitedly since they were pretty stoked. We joked that we crossed the final milestone in terms of fandom.

[inumaqi]

top ten tagged by @linkspooky 🍊 explanations under the cut! sorry for rambling xo → rules: name your top ten favourite characters from ten different fandoms, and then tag ten people - @osomanga @kara-suno @anonimarevolts @zeninmaki @wildbishonen @shysheeperz @tkmewthyou @kaldurlenn @joxterism @marshmallowdonutsprinkles

snufkin okay so he’s the only one not from an anime or manga but i had to put him on bc he’s the most important fictional character to me, ever. i grew up watching the moomin cartoons in the 90s and thinking about it instantly calms me down - they used to air the episodes early in the morning when it would still be dark outside: the landscapes were moody and cosy, the characters were so softly spoken and articulate... it’s just peak nostalgia. anyway, snufkin is moomin’s best friend; he returns to moominvalley every year to be with his friends during the spring and says his goodbyes to go adventure again come winter. it upsets moomin when he leaves but snufkin is adamant that quiet and solitude are important and healthy, and it’s not fair to expect him to compromise on his independence - that made a really big impact on me as a kid, especially as someone who never really had their ‘own’ space (twinsies). relationships aren’t weakened by physical distance or time, they’re about communication and understanding. that was important too. i don’t think i realised just how influential it had been until i was an adult but snufkin is an anarchist. he first shows up in the comics when moomin and sniff are talking about opening a bank - he tells them they should plant fruit trees instead. he destroys private property and rescues orphans, he refuses to participate in things that don’t bring him joy. when he’s asked where home is, he replies, “nowhere. or everywhere! it depends how you look at it” - the whole world belongs to him, and the whole world belongs to everyone else too.

yomo renji in general, i like characters that trudge along in the background and do the nitty-gritty work that supports the main story. i like people like that irl too. more than anything else, yomo is desperate to form human connections, even though he’s shackled by self-doubt and self-loathing. he just wants to positively contribute to a community, thinking he’s most useful keeping a quiet eye on people who might need protection/guidance (while still giving them space to grow and act themselves) or foraging for human corpses so that others aren’t in danger or moral anguish doing it for themselves.

bird boy is a total weapon - “the perfect ghoul” - and you’re reminded over and over again but a lot of his growth is about rejecting violence and repurposing his power as something productive that he can use to help the people around him instead of hurting people (the yang to uta’s yin). in the first few chapters, he says he kills humans (he’s a ghoul, humans are food, it’s natural) and yet he’s consistently framed as a scavenger who seeks out ‘roadkill’ [suicide victims] for sustenance, even before coming to anteiku, and implements a system so other people can do the same.

suguru getou i was originally gonna say meg bc i love him but, having just finished The Flashback Arc, i can’t stop thinking about getou and i’m beyond impressed with how akutami has managed to ground him so well, so sympathetically. getou is the sick, warped darkness to the hopeful light that gojou commands but... in an uncomfortable twist, the reverse is true, kind of.

actually, gojou is arrogant and confrontational and hyper individualistic. he’s a dissident. getou is obedient, compassionate, self-aware... he has a sense of social responsibility and passionately believes that his skills should be used to protect those who can’t protect themselves - non-jujutsu sorcerers - and all of the suffering he endures as a result is worth that. idk if others are reading his downfall differently but, from where i’m standing, that overwhelming responsibility never goes away, he doesn’t give up on it - he just starts to view the social landscape differently and begins to see how jujutsu sorcerers are vilified and mistreated in spite of all the good that they do. the ‘weak’ aren’t really weak when they’re able to organise and assert collective power over a minority, and so his sympathies shift.

the nail in the coffin for getou is learning that the hurt and pain could be eradicted from the world by cutting the head of the proverbial snake: non-jujutsu users generate cursed energy, so get rid of non-jujutsu users and cursed energy won’t be generated. it’s all horribly, weirdly rooted in good intentions that weigh him down and misdirect him.  shinazugawa genya i feel like the bond that slowly starts to develop betwen tanjirou, and zenitsu and inosuke (in particular) is nicely foiled by genya’s lonely journey towards becoming a pillar. after losing almost all of his family and having sanemi walk away, genya is angry, antisocial, rude, violent, evasive...

he’s characterised as competitive, as if he hates his peers and wants to leave them in the dust as an act of self-satisfaction, a power fantasy or whenever, but this is a deliberate misdirection to cover for the fact that he’s scrambling to be a pillar so that he can reconnect with his brother and prove to him that he can protect himself; that sanemi doesn’t need to shoulder everything alone like he used to. his entire goal is an act of apology.

and in a story where so many characters are able to hone these exceptional skills, genya is uniquely disadvantaged as the only one who can’t master breathing techniques. rather than having a hero moment and powering up, his need to reconnect with sanemi is so strong that he essentially decides to compromise his humanity and become a kind of monster by ingesting the demons he’s pledged to annihilate. amajiki tamaki i wish i had a a longer explanation for this one but it’s actually super simple: tamaki is a really, really, really good portrayal of a person burdened with severe anxiety. the way he physically carries himself, the way he hides his face, his manner of speaking, his dependency on his mirio, how he interprets compliments as trickery, how he needs to be pushed and pushed and pushed before he’s finally able to release his potential... every single scene with tamaki felt deeply personal when i was reading bnha and i knew exactly what he was supposed to be feeling. shinmon benimaru sometimes good, nice people don’t fit a little friendly mould and i like that benimaru is hostile and rough and antisocial, even with people he cares about. he doesn’t expect anything of people, he doesn’t want them interfering with him, and he wants to help and support them all the same because he believes in community. he’s completely oppositional to the special fire force because he thinks it’s a tool to pursue an ideology rather than to protect people, which is why it’s so important when the eighth are finally able to win his approval - they become the only company the seventh consider allies, and it’s proof that their objectives are righteous. despite his reputation as... kind of a nuisance, his skill is acknowledged by everyone and he’s universally regarded as the strongest fire soldier there is. in spite of his antisocial attitude, he agrees that it’s important to share that with younger fire soldiers - he’s incredibly patient and understanding with them, helps them to individually adapt. the way he (and others in company seven) operate in contrast to the other companies when fighting infernals is really cool to me for two reasons: (1) it provides a commentary on how cultures and traditions often struggle to survive when they’re systematically (forcefully) replaced through power and wealth - although the subtext is a little troubling because it’s unclear whether ōkubo is conflating multiculturalism with globalisation which, uh, big nope; and (2) philosophically speaking, the approach to death is interesting. where the other companies essentially perform last rites and offer absolution to the deceased, benimaru personally takes responsibility - at the request of the people in his district - for sending them off in huge public display, kind of like a festival intending to celebrate their life. i think it speaks to how profoundly he values life. akihiko kaji i liked akihiko from the beginning because he’s stoic and introspective and also excitable and dumb. he’s a people watcher and waits for opportunities to softly guide uenoyama and mafuyu when they’re quietly crying out for help but doesn’t interfere any more than he thinks is necessary because he knows they can make their own way to where they need to go. i liked akihiko even more when he got really fucking messy. his relationship with ugetsu is sweet and it’s incredibly ugly and unhealthy because they both fail utterly to communicate with one another - they’re both to blame for avoiding and hurting each other, and i think that’s a really normal issue that people find difficult to overcome. i’m super interested (and really nervous) to see how his relationship with haruki develops. he’s done some horrible things to haruki and i want him to be accountable for those things and have them affect their relationship in a realistic way.

tanigaki genjirou one thing i really, really love about golden kamuy is the way noda satoru incorporates the importance of minority cultures into the story, and tanigaki’s apparent abandonment of his matagi heritage is really beautifully written. matagi hunting traditions shaped his life as a young man, it’s how he was able to really assimilate to the people around him and form relationships and - without getting too spoilery - he divorces himself from it all when he’s overcome by grief and hatches a plan for revenge against the person responsible. so, by allowing himself to surrender to negative feelings and thoughts instead of seeking support and learning to heal from what happened, he becomes a total shadow of himself. 

makimura takeshi i know i’ve gushed about it before but i can’t properly explain just how incredible it felt seeing an asexual character in manga dialogue about being asexual, and devils’ line does it twice. the reason i’m so attached to makimura in particular is because he doesn’t seem to have fully figured it out - and he’s kinda... comfortable with that. he wants to be with someone and he wants to be monogamous but he can’t understand why he doesn’t feel sexual desire towards her; he knows his feelings aren’t platonic but doesn’t know whether they can really be called romantic either.

not to go dark mode but i very vividly remember just how lonely and horrifying it was battling with those uncertainties when i was a teenager, thinking i was broken because i didn’t have Normal Human Feelings and needed to be fixed. i was so worried about it that i thought about all the boys i knew, picked the one i thought was the nicest and actively tried to develop a crush on him. it was dumb as fuck but, ten years later, i realise it was really desperate and sad too. i forced myself to have ~my first kiss~ (it was horrible) because i felt like i was getting left behind and i think i would’ve put myself in worse situations as i got older if i hadn’t suffered with such bad social anxiety.

i hadn’t really thought too much about a lot of this stuff for yeaaars but it all came flooding back when i was reading devils’ line. it was bittersweet bc i was remembering all of those shitty feelings but also watching this character grapple with those same questions and go: i don’t know yet and that’s not weird, let’s just grow with it. i still don’t totally know whether i’m ace or aro or bi, or whatever, but i’m trying to be okay with just... not knowing.

misora shuuji anyway, devils’ line isn’t actually a manga with a specific focus on sexuality and gender but shimanami tasogare is and all of the characters are written beautifully. if you haven’t read it yet... then why haven’t you read it yet? misora is only about twelve years old and watching them battle with their growing pains is really compelling - they’re closeted but, through the lounge, they have somewhere to explore their gender and all the questions they have about it. they’re amab and present as traditionally feminine wrt clothes, wigs, makeup, etc. but can’t quite tell if they see themselves as a girl, a boy or non-binary.

with the onset of puberty and anxieties about physical changes to their body, misora’s story puts a lot of emphasis on the pressure they face to just ‘make up their mind’ about something that’s actually incredibly complex and doesn’t have any easy answers. they snap and shout and get upset, especially when tasuku (the protag) tries to push them into a corner because he wants a concrete label or identity he can attach to misora, even though space is exactly what misora needs.

#jujutsu kaisen #given #kimetsu no yaiba #boku no hero academia #enen no shouboutai #tokyo ghoul #shimanami tasogare #devils' line #golden kamuy #moomins #mine*edit

[omoi-no-hoka]

My Experience Working in Japan

Fear not--it’s not all gloom and doom.

Today I thought I’d talk a bit about what it’s been like working in Japan for half a decade. I imagine that my experience is probably different from someone who lives in a more metropolitan area like Tokyo. 

Why did you choose Hokkaido?

Hokkaido is the northernmost island/prefecture of Japan. It’s the biggest prefecture and plays a huge role in Japan’s agriculture. Since it’s a separate island from Honshu (the island with Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, and pretty much everywhere else of note), not too many foreigners choose to live here. However, there is a small but ever-growing community of winter sports lovers who move here long-term. 

I studied abroad in Hokkaido when I was in uni and fell in love with it. What can I say? I grew up on a farm in a county that had a grand total of three traffic lights, and I just hate the hustle and bustle and endless concrete of big cities. I’d go crazy if I had to live somewhere like Tokyo. I need to see green, I need to hear birds instead of sirens. 

What was your first job, and how did you get it?

I knew by about my third or fourth year of uni that I wanted to go to Japan for a while, so I double majored in the two areas that I knew would help get me a decent job there: Japanese, and English with a focus on linguistics, second language acquisition, and English as a Second Language (ESL). I also obtained a CELTA (Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) from Cambridge. There are many different TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) certificates out there, but the CELTA is the most esteemed and recognized worldwide, so that was what I got. 

I ended up looking for teaching jobs in Sapporo, even though it was a much bigger city than I wanted to live in. It has a population of 2 million, and the city I had my eyes on was less than 1/4 of Sapporo’s size. But I couldn’t find any teaching jobs in the smaller city. The job-hunting was difficult, because unless you have a spousal visa or something, the employer has to be able to sponsor a work visa. But sponsoring work visas is very expensive for the company, so many smaller businesses can’t give you a work visa. 

There are many 英会話 (Eikaiwa) English Conversation schools in Japan. Basically, the entire English education curriculum and its implementation in Japanese public schools is...atrocious. Absolutely worthless. The vast majority of students study English for all 6 years of middle and high school and can’t have a simple conversation by the end of it, though they can read and write it somewhat decently. So the Eikaiwa industry was born, and these schools promise parents that their children can have native-like pronunciation and get jobs in fields where English is necessary if they pay outrageous costs for weekly 50-minute lessons. 

There are many big-name Eikaiwas in operation throughout the country, but many of these are so-called ブラック企業 (black kigyou, a.k.a. black businesses) which means that they commit various labor law violations. Most foreigners they hire don’t speak Japanese and aren’t aware of their legal rights, or what they can do when they are violated. A quick google search will show you tons of horror stories from foreigners hired by eikaiwas who didn’t receive pay, were screamed at for calling in sick to work, etc. Basically, most corporate eikaiwas don’t care who is teaching the kids, as long as they are white. You are a piece of meat to them. 

So I avoided all the big-name places and found a small, privately owned Eikaiwa in Sapporo, run by a fellow foreigner. I had a skype interview with her from my living room in America, she hired me, and I moved to Sapporo. I worked there for three years. Despite having a fellow ex-pat as a boss, I was still subjected to the mistreatment of the corporate eikaiwas. No matter how sick I was, despite the fact that we were forbidden from wearing masks (kids need to see our mouths for pronunciation), and despite the fact that I was constantly around infants, I was ordered to “take an aspirin and get to work.” I was under the impression I was enrolled in the Japanese pension, but after two years of working there I learned that we were not, in fact, enrolled in the pension. This is illegal, and I was forced to pay about $4,000 USD in backpay to the pension. My employers refused to provide assistance paying this even though by law the employer is required to pay 50% of an employee’s pension. 

So yeah. Not too fun really. The kids were really cute, though, and I didn’t hate teaching English. But after 3 years, I was ready to move on.

What’s your current job, and how did you get it?

The three years I worked at the Eikaiwa, I studied Japanese at least one hour every night, and at least 8-10 hours on the weekends. I had the conversation and grammar down, but my kanji and vocabulary was lacking so all I did was read, read, read. Thanks to that, I passed the JLPT N1 and my Japanese reached a level that I could survive in a Japanese workplace. 

Fed up with my current job and jaded of teaching, I looked for translation jobs in companies in Hokkaido. But there were absolutely zilch. I realized that (in Hokkaido), there were no jobs for foreigners other than teaching English. The situation was so hopeless that I actually looked for jobs back in the United States and applied for a couple. Moving back home after only 3 years of living abroad felt like defeat and I didn’t want to leave Japan, but I just couldn’t take the eikaiwa industry anymore, and I knew that I would only spiral further into depression in a metropolis like Tokyo. 

In June of 2017, I sent out some applications and applied to headhunting agencies in America. And in August, a friend here in Hokkaido called me with some incredible news. A student of hers was working as a temp translator for a company in the city I had originally wanted to live in. He needed a replacement, and would I be interested?

I couldn’t believe it. Translation was my dream job, and it was in my dream city. I immediately called to find out more, and I looked up how to make a Japanese resume. Did you know that resumes are printed on A3 paper and hand written?! Good lord, I spent about 9 hours writing and re-writing it because I don’t have good handwriting in Japanese. I went in for an interview. They said they would match the pay of my current job and then some, that I would have business trips to Tokyo, that there was a very likely chance I would get to see other parts of Japan due to this job, that I would be able to build experience in multiple fields at once, that they would give me all the benefits that they are legally obligated to give (lol), and they would let me go home to America for extended periods as long as I took my work laptop and didn’t mind doing a bit of work while I was there. It was everything I dreamed of, so of course I accepted the position. 

And the cherry on top? The guy who gave me the interview had a very unusual last name, which I’ll say is K___. At the end of the interview, he asked, “By the way, do you know anyone else named K___?”

Me: “Well, actually I do have a student whose last name is K___.”

And he smiles and says, “Yeah, that’s my daughter.”

In a city of 2 million people, about 700 children aged 0-18 were enrolled in my Eikaiwa. Out of those 700, I taught about 120. And out of all of those kids, one of them turned out to be the daughter of the man who gave me my interview and would become my boss! WHAT ARE THE CHANCES?! It still blows my mind to think about. 

Later, after I was hired and we went for drinks after work, he told me that the moment he had seen my resume and the name of the Eikaiwa, he had gone to his daughter and asked, “Hey, do you know omoi-no-hoka-sensei? What’s she like?” His daughter said a bunch of really nice things about me, and he decided that if his daughter liked me, then I must be a good addition to the company. Before the interview he had already decided to hire me. 

It just goes to show that you should always be your best because you never know who’s watching!

So yeah, I quit my job at the eikaiwa, moved to my dream city, and started my dream job two years ago. My coworkers are all really, really nice. My bosses are all great. I’m the only person in my whole office that speaks English though, so sometimes I get a bit lonely in that regard. But because I’m the only one who speaks English and this is a global company with headquarters in America, I get asked to do a bunch of miscellaneous tasks, so I’m never bored! Sometimes this means I have a lot of overtime, though. It’s not uncommon to have a 12 hour work-day. But in my downtime between translation requests, I make most of these Tumblr posts. 

#about me #life in japan #expat #expatlife #japan #nihon #langblr #studyblr #work #teaching #esl

[huilian]

Old Pains

AO3 Characters: Bruce Wayne, Damian Wayne, Tim Drake, Jason Todd, Dick Grayson, Cassandra Cain

Summary:Bruce knew his would be a life of pain. From the moment he decided to do this, he knew what it would cost. His time, his body, his soul, every single thing he owned. He chose this, he knew. But pain when you receive an injury is not pain every time you breathe. It is not pain every time you walk. It is not pain every time you want to sleep and found that you can't because all those pains you have pushed away in the day and night all came back to haunt you in your sleep.

A/N:Merry Christmas, have some pain! I had the idea when my ankle was acting up, but uni life got the better of me, so it had went away, but then act up again before I post this fic. That's how long it took to write this. Sorry!

***

Bruce had quite forgotten how it felt to be painless. There was always something bothering him, treading through his consciousness. The mangled joint he called his shoulder, which was always aching. The broken spine, the one he had almost succumbed to. Broken and mended, and then re-broken bones gave phantom pain Bruce could never quite ignore completely. The hundreds upon hundreds scars decorating his skin, which either itch or returned to him the pain he got receiving them. Bruce couldn't quite decide which one was worse, the itchiness or the pain.

Bruce knew his would be a life of pain. From the moment he decided to do this, he knew what it would cost. His time, his body, his soul, every single thing he owned. He chose this, he knew. But pain when you receive an injury is not pain every time you breathe. It is not pain every time you walk. It is not pain every time you want to sleep and found that you can't because all those pains you have pushed away in the day and night all came back to haunt you in your sleep. 

It will someday take his life too, this crusade of his. This he knew. It was not really something he would oppose. He knew that going in. It would take his time, his body, his soul, his life, and every single thing he owned. He would gladly give it. He knew that going in. 

He did not know that there would be others that would share this pain with him. 

Bruce did not know everything there is to know about Damian. It was a mistake he was trying to correct, but it was hard the way chasing a kitten is hard. The kitten itself would not come to you if he didn’t trust you, and the more you chase it, the harder it would run. Damian had not trusted Bruce, with a yet in that sentence if Bruce was feeling particularly hopeful that day. He had to keep reminding himself to let Damian come to him instead of chasing Damian around demanding answers. (It was Dick who gave him the kitten metaphor. It was very apt. It seemed that Dick knew Damian better than Bruce would ever be able to know him.) 

Bruce would try this way of letting Damian take the lead for some more time, then he would go and ask Dick again. It did not seem to work, because Damian had not gone to Bruce for anything at all, not from the smallest of things to the important ones. 

Like his spine. Damian’s spine. 

Damian was not even twelve yet. He had not gone through puberty, had not felt the awkward changes to his own body that would make doing a simple maneuver felt like trying to juggle ten maneuvers at once. He had not even been to high school. 

And yet, sometimes Bruce would find him laying down on his bed, clutching a hot compress to his back. The first few times Bruce just thought he had sprained something, and let him be. Damian did not appreciate it when you needle him with small things. But it happened again. And again. And again. 

Bruce was a detective. He was good at this. He knew what repeated pain in the spine meant. He knew that Damian would be feeling this pain for the rest of his life. Bruce wished Damian would have a long life, living until all his wishes and dreams had come true, but he knew even if Damian lived a long life, this pain would haunt him for the rest of his days. And Bruce would never wish pain on any of his children. 

"Damian?" Bruce asked. 

"Yes, Father." Damian said. He did not offer any other information. It had been like this every time Bruce asked Damian something. Damian expects you to already know what was happening in his life, and would never offer any additional information. It didn’t help that Dick was the one caring for him before. Dick could see through Damian as easily as he could see through Bruce, and would not need any more information. 

Bruce decided to go through this another way. “Have I told you the story of when I broke my back?” 

That got Damian’s attention. The boy was always interested in hearing Bruce’s stories as Batman. Maybe it was because he was raised to see Batman as something that should be attained, but nevertheless, it suited Bruce’s purposes for now. 

“No, Father, I believe you have not told me this story yet. I think that Mother or Grayson may have mentioned it, but I would be glad to hear the full story of it.” 

Bruce sat down on the sofa, and expected Damian to do the same. He did not disappoint. Bruce watched Damian sitting down on the sofa, cataloguing every movement he makes. There is no pain, not today, at the very least. Not from recent injuries nor from old ones. No pain on Damian’s back, at least for today. 

As Bruce began the story of how Bane had broken his back, and everything that entails from it, he realized that this was not the story children usually hear about their parents. Any other twelve-year-old would not be hearing about the time a criminal broke their father’s back. Any other twelve-year-old would not be taking notes on how to improve in their capabilities as a fighter from this story. But Damian was not any other twelve year olds. 

It should concern Bruce that the parts he was glossing over was not the violence, nor the destruction. No. The parts that Bruce was glossing over this story was Dick and Tim’s brief partnership as Batman and Robin, because he knew that Damian would take offense in that. Damian would not be bothered by the violence, because he had lived all his life in it. He had borne the marks of that, from the way he moved, to the way he did not move. The way he would bite his tongue instead of screaming out in pain. The way he hides his pain even though it bothered him every single day. 

As Bruce finished his tale, he very deliberately gave out lists of things that would lessen the pain, if not relieve if immediately. He gave out strategies to deal with back pain as a part of his story, knowing that Damian would be able to pick it up. A smart child, this one. How lucky was Bruce to be able to have him, and how it broke Bruce’s hearts that he missed ten years of Damian’s life. 

When Bruce saw Damian implementing the strategies he told him in the story, he pretended not to notice. Not just because Damian would stop using that tried and true methods if he even suspected for a second Bruce would not agree with it, but because he truly did not know how to feel about it. He was glad that he could bring relief to Damian’s pain, but at the same time, a child of twelve should not be dealing with spine problems. And so Bruce pretended he didn’t notice, and made a note to keep the heat packs always stocked. 

Bruce did not realize that Tim had worn his ankle brace to patrol. 

Tim had periodically worn the ankle brace off and on; Bruce had expected that. Any joint that is prone to injury, yet still used again and again will need to be supported. The ankle is one, the knee is another, and yet another is the shoulder. Bruce's most painful one is mostly the shoulder, even though all of those joints hurt on a daily basis. That is why he was not surprised to see Tim sporting an ankle brace. It was easy enough to explain too, most of the active children had a brace somewhere on their body, and Tim was notoriously a skateboarder. 

Tim had not skateboarded in so long, not since he became the CEO of Wayne Industries. He had not worn those ankle brace in quite some time either. 

Bruce just realized that Tim had worn his ankle brace underneath his costume when he returned from patrol. It was not weird that Tim had worn it, it was weird that Bruce did not realize that as something pressing. 

Had this really become their reality? Of pains and aches everywhere?

"Is your ankle okay?" Bruce asked. 

Tim startled. It was as if he didn't expect Bruce to care about this. It was as if he didn't expect Bruce to care about him. 

(Bruce cared. Of course he cared. It was just expressing it was sometimes difficult.)

"Yeah, it's fine. It's just acting out, you know?"

Bruce knew. He knew intimately how that felt. Bruce still wished none of his children have to feel that. 

"Do you need to take a break from patrol?"

"What?" Tim genuinely sound confused. Is it that confusing for Bruce to want his children to be safe? "It's nothing Bruce, just my ankle acting up. It does that sometimes. Nothing to worry about.” Tim shrugged. “I’ll be fine. It’s not going to be a liability on patrol.” 

Did Tim really think that Bruce only cared for him being a liability on patrol? Bruce just didn’t want his children to be feeling pain on a daily basis, not like he is feeling pain on a daily basis, but it seemed like all of them are. Tim, who is not out of his teens yet, who is not legally allowed to drink yet, is already feeling pain that will stay with him for the rest of his life. This was not supposed to happen. Bruce was supposed to protect them from this. 

“I’ll take it easy tomorrow if you’re that worried, Bruce, but honestly, I’m fine. I’ve been having this on and off for years now. It didn’t bother me that much anymore.” 

Bruce took from that sentence that it used to bother Tim, but he ignored it because he saw Bruce ignoring his own pain and thought he should too, and now it didn’t bother him anymore. It was not as reassuring as Tim no doubt meant it to be. 

Bruce wanted to say so many things. Bruce wanted to keep this precious child that he had been given safe and sound. Bruce did not do any of those things. Words are not his forte, especially words filled with emotions. He could play with it just fine, could solve questions and intellectual riddles, but when it came to emotions? Bruce did what he had always done. He grunted. 

Tim laughed. He honestly laughed. Why is he laughing? His safety is not a laughing matter. 

“Good night, Bruce.” Tim smiled, and then he head up to the Manor, hopefully to get some sleep. He had not been sleeping enough. (Bruce is aware that he is being a hypocrite, but he is allowed to be a hypocrite if it’s for the wellbeing of his children.) 

It was good to hear Tim laugh. He had not done that nearly enough too. 

“Bruce!” 

“Yes, Jason?” Bruce would still not be able to comprehend that his child, his Jason, is here in the Manor. He never imagined that he would be able to see Jason again, to hear him again. He never thought he’d be able to see Jason all grown up, instead of the lanky teenager he was before… Before. 

It was a gift that Jason was in the Manor, because it was very rare. It was even rarer that he would walk around the way he is now. Shirtless, with his whole torso open??. 

Bruce was still bitter that Jason grew up to be taller than him. Mostly because while he was a child, Jason was short. It figures that he would be the one to finally be taller than Bruce. But what really struck Bruce the most was how rigid and muscled up his boy had become. Oh, he had muscles as a child too, he wouldn’t be Robin without it, but it was not to this extent. Batman was supposed to be a shield, and so Bruce cultivated his body to be such. Broad and able to take the most damage. He did not want any of his children to make themselves to be like that too. (He did not want any of his children to make themselves take damage. He was supposed to take that damage for them.) 

Nevertheless, Jason is as broad as Bruce is now. Bruce had known it, had seen Jason with this new stature that is so different yet similar to his stature as a child, but with armor and uniform on, Bruce hadn’t really registered that Jason is now very, very different than the skinny, lanky child he had been. 

Bruce had also never seen the scars that littered Jason’s torso. Some of it Bruce knew he got from before Bruce had ever met him. Life on the streets in Gotham is harsh, doubly so if you are a child. Some Jason got from his tenure as Robin. Some, Bruce knew is a remnant from… the explosion. Most disturbingly, there is much more that Bruce didn’t know where those came from. 

Bruce knew, or suspected, that Jason had training before he came back to Gotham. He must have. His skillset is so much more diverse and honed than it was when he was Robin. Bruce never thought about, or didn’t want to think about, what kind of training that he would have gotten. 

Bruce was not a kind teacher. He knew that. He trained his children so that they could live. That result would not be from kindness. Gotham streets are not kind, and so Bruce trained them the way Gotham streets would treat them. But he was not harsh, either. He would not injure them for training purposes. Training is training, not grounds for punishment. 

Jason was hurt a lot during those years he was away. That much Bruce knew. Bruce wants to go hunt out those people and make them pay, yet he knew he would never do that. (He knew once he started, he won’t stop.)

“Bruce!” A snap of fingers. “Hey, Bruce, are you listening to what I say?” 

Bruce blinked. Cleared his mind. “Sorry, Jay. What were you saying?” 

“Did you know where Alfred put his cleaning supplies? I spilled marinara sauce on my sweater and I need to soak it, like, now. I won’t get it out if I don’t.” 

Bruce knows a lot of things, and Bruce knows most of the things in the Manor, but the location of the cleaning supplies was not a thing that he knew, or that Alfred deemed it fit to let him know. “I don’t know, Jay. Maybe ask Alfred?” 

Jason scrunched up his face. It looked exactly the same as the expression he used to have as a child. “Yeah, I should have known you wouldn’t know. Should have gone to Alfred right away. See ya, B.” 

As Jason walked away, still muttering under his breath, Bruce was greeted with the sight of Jason’s back, which had as many scars as Jason’s torso. Bruce wanted to ask how he got those scars. Bruce wanted to keep him safe so that there would be no more scars on Jason. Bruce wanted to ask if those scars bother him as much as Bruce’s own bothers Bruce, and Bruce wanted to share his tricks to mitigating the pain. But most of all, Bruce wanted to take all those scars and injuries, now and at the time they were inflicted, and let Jason be free of it all. 

Jason being in the Manor is as rare as it is. Bruce did not want to lose that. (The last time Bruce said something Jason didn’t like, he didn’t come to the Manor for months, not even to see Alfred. Bruce did not want that to happen again.) Bruce kept his mouth shut, and watched Jason walk away from him. 

Bruce would like to think he knew Dick. Bruce had spent almost half of his life with Dick, and that was the majority of Dick's life. But Bruce did not even really knew Alfred, and he had spent all of his life with him. So. He did not know Dick as well as he would have wished to. 

He did not know the story of every scar on Dick's body. There was once a time that he knew that: a time when Dick would tell it excitedly to him and he would pretend not to freak out because this was a child, his child, and he had gotten hurt. Now Dick tend to hide his injuries from him, or simply disappear until that injuries had healed. Bruce knew that Dick is a more than capable vigilante, and an adult. But Bruce will never be able to see him being hurt without remembering the nine-year-old boy. 

The man before him had many more scars and injuries than that nine-year-old boy. 

"B, stop staring," Dick said without even removing his hands from his eyes. It was like he had a sixth sense of knowing when Bruce was staring at him. (He probably did. Bruce had stared at him for so long that he would.) 

Bruce grunted.

“I’m fine, B. There’s no new injuries I’m hiding from you this time.” 

This time. Bruce wished that Dick would not hide any injuries from him at all, but of course that is not what happens. Bruce grunted again. 

“Ugh, fine! It’s the leg. I miscalculated someone’s weight and didn’t land as I should have. It’s fine. I’ll go and get the heat pack in a moment. I know I should have known better, and I should take more care of my leg. Just...let me stay here for a minute, okay?” 

Bruce loved it that the two of them could communicate without him saying anything. Dick had been with Bruce almost from the very beginning of it all. There is no need for him to say anything. But sometimes, like now, Dick did not understand fully what Bruce meant. Bruce knew Dick was expecting a lecture on thinking before leaping, or to amp up his training as to not make anymore mistakes like this again. Bruce knew Dick interpreted his scowl as displeasure on him making a mistake. 

This was not the case. Bruce’s scowl was because Dick had been hurt, again, in the crusade that was not his to begin with. Bruce wanted to say that to Dick, to let him know that he was both proud and worried about Dick’s achievements. But he will never say that, not in any foreseeable future, anyway. 

So Bruce did the next best thing. He went and took the heat pack from the (very big and extensive) first aid kit, and put it on the very spot that is hurting on Dick’s leg. Bruce knew precisely where it is. That injury, and every other injuries Dick had sustained during his lengthy career as Robin, Nightwing, and Batman, were his fault, because he was the one who put Dick in that costume. If he could not stop it from happening, then Bruce would memorize every single spot that Dick, and the rest of his children, had been injured in. 

(The spots that he knew of, anyway. Bruce was not so blind as to not know that there are many, many injuries his children hide from him. It broke his heart to know it.) 

Then Bruce put his hand on Dick’s shoulder, and kept watch as Dick went to sleep. 

“Cassandra?” 

The girl in question was sitting on a bench, staring at her leg. She gave no indication that she had heard him, but Bruce was sure that she had. 

So he spoke again. “Cassandra?” 

When even the second mention of her name elicit no response, Bruce walked to where she was sitting and crouched in front of her. “Cassandra?” 

She did not smile. She did not acknowledge him in any visible way, but he knew that she knows he is there. Her hand did not move from its position in her back. 

Oh. How could he not realize that when he came in? Bruce may not know every single injury on Cass’ body, but this one is hard to miss. David Cain was lucky that Batman did not do worse to him. 

Bruce lifted his hand, and slowly reached for Cass’ back, to the spot she was touching too. Cass wordlessly shifted herself to let Bruce touch it. God. She had been hurt here before, had been shot here and expected not to flinch as a girl, yet she still let herself be touched by Bruce. 

Bruce let his hand stay on Cass’ back. She finally looked into Bruce’s eyes. Bruce looked back. 

Moments passed. Words did not. They just looked at each other. 

Then finally, Cass smiled. A small one, unlike the ones she usually give him. (Cass have multitudes of smiles, and Bruce had the biggest one directed at him. It was a privilege he knew he did not deserve.) Bruce smiled back.

Bruce knew going in that his would be a life of pain. He did not regret any of his choices that led to this life. He regretted that his children’s life would be a life of pain too. 

#dc #bruce wayne #damian wayne #tim drake #jason todd #dick grayson #cassandra cain #fic #lian writes #happy holidays everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!