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from-home · 4 years

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𑁍 MARK LEE┊ 𝒔𝒊𝒙𝒕𝒚 𝒔𝒆𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒅𝒔, 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒓𝒕 / one ˎˊ˗

𑁍 summary : the one where mark lee time travels back and forth throughout the past and future with his crush, (y/n) ˎˊ˗

𑁍 pairing : mark lee x older!reader (by like three years lmao) ˎˊ˗

𑁍 word count : 6.7k ˎˊ˗

𑁍 genre : fluff, comedy (i hope??), minimal angst, time travel!au ˎˊ˗

𑁍 warnings : swearing, unrequited love (i know that shit hurts omg), my humour is ass, mark gives me slight second hand embarrassment in this, bad writing??, i gave up like halfway through this lol, first time writing a fic like this pls have mercy, it’s almost 2:30 am i'm too tired to proof read fuck ˎˊ˗

𑁍 a/n : first chapter of my first ever fic on here hehe - idk when the next chapter might come tbh but hopefully i’ll continue this series for my own enjoyment! in the meantime, uni still kicks my ass >:(( but anyway, enjoy and i hope that at least someone will find joy with this! ˎˊ˗

[ 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟬 : 𝗗𝗔𝗬 𝟬 ]

when your pastor dad’s best friend was the biggest nerd in high school and became an eccentric scientist

O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,

What a beautiful Pussy you are,

You are,

You are!

What a beautiful Pussy you are!

If he could write like that, maybe Mark wouldn't need to be here in this boring literature class of his. Don't get him wrong, he liked writing, and he liked the way he could express his emotions through a pen and paper. But for the twenty-one-year-old boy who could barely sit still in one place without his mind wandering off into four different dimensions, it was hard to be interested in whatever the professor was rambling on about. Maybe Professor Jung was telling the story of how she met Dylan Thomas' widow's sister's friend's cousin, and how much of an artistic impact it had on her. She had told the story a good three times in the past two months - Mark kept count.

Yeah, writing was fun and all, but literature class specifically was boring and dull to him. "Oh but Mark, why take this course then?" one might ask. But one should also know that it was a necessary course if Mark wanted to earn his oh-so-coveted diploma.

Curse him for majoring in creative writing. His dad always did wonder why writers even bother writing when the bible exists.

But maybe one day, an hour and a half of John Keats would produce him some ideas for a romantic poem that he could write and gift off to his love of seven years... and counting.

(Y/N), the shiniest of all pearls and the most beautiful of all Mona Lisa's, the older woman and her beauty often left Mark stunned and helplessly in love. He first met her when he was fourteen, when she had been introduced as his seventeen-year-old tutor. She was so pretty back then, and still was now. In fact, it was as if she didn't age at all!

Someone who resembled a goddess like (Y/N) deserved only the most romantic of all romantic poems, and Mark Lee made it a mission to be the one to write it for her. He was so helplessly in love with her that he was able to channel his feelings for her into five different written forms: poems, song lyrics, an 'A for effort?' drawing of her, letters, and anonymous blog posts about how "unrequited love hurts".

Sure, those blog posts were anonymous, but as good as Mark thought he was at hiding his feelings for her, everybody in town and their ancestors' spirits knew about the big crush Mark had on her. But no one bothered to tell (Y/N) about her not-so-secret admirer and nobody bothered to let Mark know that his mysterious crush wasn’t as well-kept to himself as he thought it was.

But it was cute. Not the part where Mark slowly died on the inside as each day passed without his feelings being returned (that was pretty sad, everybody acknowledged), but the part where the adoration in his eyes were so clear for (Y/N). Legend went that he held stars in his eyes whenever his gaze rested on the older woman - like, actual stars from the galaxy. Or so the first-hand accounts go.

Mark Lee was a talented and hardworking boy, that much was a shared sentiment by everybody in town. He excelled at all subjects, mowed the lawn twice just because he thought he missed a spot, gave it his all at church every Sunday by rapping and dancing in the name of Jesus Christ until he was reduced to sweat and threatening to rip his dress shirt off - he was a jack of all trades. There were even rumours that whenever it was time for a 'Make a Wish' patient to... make a wish in heaven, he would dress up as Spiderman and visit them in the hospital to make their final dreams come true. So maybe that's why it was so endearing, his one-sided love for his noona. If there was one person who could jump over that hurdle of "just friends" and out of the friend zone, it had to be Mark, the boy who's always gave it his all in everything ever since he moved here from Canada when he was twelve. It was one thing to have this crush that you desperately wanted to be returned, but it was another to have the whole town cheering for you - it said a lot about Mark's character.

Which is why! There was no other perfect test subject for Scientist Kim, the local eccentric scientist who was obsessed with creating his "next big invention". He also happened to be the best friend of the town's pastor (weird combination, everybody knows), courtesy of their high school days and a misunderstanding over a carton of milk. The town's pastor also oh-so-coincidentally happened to be Mark's father, who had lived in Korea for all his life until he moved to Canada so his wife could give birth to baby Mark. He ended up moving back to his hometown, however, thus creating a new relationship between his best friend and son.

Now Scientist Kim - who liked to go by "Cabbage" as a homage to his idol, Charles Babbage - didn’t really care about Mark's painful one-sided love, but he knew the boy could never say no to his father's best friend from high school, so there was no one better to try out his experiments and inventions than Mark. Like, there was literally no one else at all - the whole town swore Cabbage was out of his mind and were still waiting for the day the newspaper would come out with a headline that he's been charged with involuntary manslaughter. Everybody would be disappointed, but not surprised. But such an incident hadn’t happened yet, so for now, Cabbage was still freely working hard everyday to successfully complete and unveil the invention that would propel him to "the front page of every science magazine and a Nobel Prize in Physics".

And it just so happened to be today, October 30th 2020, when Mark received a phone call from his dad's best friend in the middle of class. He was glad he kept his phone on vibrate, but god, was it distracting. To answer or not to? Why now of all times? Right, he forgot that some people don't have anything else to do with their lives other than... creating things that usually end up on fire by the end of it. You know, now that he thought back on it, the last time Mark willingly participated in Cabbage's experiment which involved some tinfoil, antennas, and laser beam machining, it left Mark's right shoe on fire - thank God he had brought a fire extinguisher over to Cabbage’s house with him.

Just that memory alone convinced Mark to ignore the call, nearly forgetting about it once it had stopped ringing if not for the fact he received another call just seconds later. "What is this, an infatuation?" Mark grumbled to himself, before glancing up at the front to see if Professor Jung was distracted enough for him to take this call without her noticing. It didn't help that he sat three rows away from the front. But she still seemed to be rambling on about how much she loved Dylan Thomas' works, and that was a sign for him to accept the call. He kept his voice to a hushed whisper, however, "Hello-"

"Mark! You have to come over!" There was no way Professor Jung did not hear that screech that came from his phone. He glanced up nervously, noticing his classmate's startled gazes on him. But his eyes wandered over to the front, and judging by how Professor Jung was now going on about Dylan Thomas' "attractive appearance", it seemed he was in the safe for now.

"Cabbage, I'm in class, so could you keep it down?" Mark hissed quietly into the phone.

"Right, right, sorry!" While he was still loud even after lowering his voice down, it was more than quiet enough for Professor Jung not to notice, thankfully. "Mark, I've just completed my latest invention. But this isn't just any invention, it's the invention of both my - and everybody's dreams!"

Mark would be mildly curious if not for the fact that Cabbage said that about every invention of his, but he figured that his dad was going to urge him to go anyway, even if Mark didn’t want to. "But he's my best friend, Mark!" Jeez, because how could he possibly say no to the power of friendship?

"Mark? Boy? You still there?" Cabbage’s voice pulled Mark out of his thoughts, and the boy could do nothing but sigh. This was just going to be like every other time - he’d be introduced to some machine that supposedly did one thing, said machine would catch on fire the next minute, and it would all result in Mark going home an hour later.

"Fine, I'll be there. After class in like, half an hour." Mark reassured the scientist, and he swore, he could hear something catching on fire in the background.

"Great!" He then heard rushed footsteps and... a fire extinguisher? "See you then!" And the call ended.

He just couldn’t wait.

When visitors would come to the humble town of Uicheon (의천), located just thirty minutes away by car from the bustling capital city, Seoul, the first thing they would notice was how much the town gave off Suburban American vibes, like walking through a town where the main characters of some random Disney high school movie lived. All single detached houses, varying in style from Country French to Cape Cod with recent contemporary and modern upgrades to those houses by residents who wanted to "spice it up".

Uicheon was a town seen by others where most of the population was upper-middle class. There was nothing wrong with that at all, and actually, the residents of Uicheon were both happy and welcoming of anybody and anyone who stepped foot into town or even took an interest in moving, no matter of their social or economic status.

If anything, the residents of Uicheon - the ones who've lived in the town for longer than ten years at least - were often worried that those who did show interest of moving in inevitably get... scared off. By one particular daunting house.

It was a beautiful town. No seriously, Uicheon had been mentioned on multiple "Top 5 beautiful towns just outside of Seoul that you should visit!" lists published on the internet. And in the beautiful small town where all the houses provide comfort and beauty, surrounded by flowers on nearly every available patch of grass like something straight out of a magazine, there stood a modern house - the only completely modern house in the town - its exterior all... black. Even the big windows were tinted black, and it was obvious that the house stuck out like a sore thumb. Sometimes, the local kids told stories of how the house was abandoned, and was home to a ghost with a vengeful spirit inside who wanted to steal your teeth. The residents of Uicheon had gotten used to the house's presence already, but it didn’t stop the mutual sentiment of "...really?" amongst them.

And currently, Mark stood in front of its black front doors, ringing the black doorbell and covering his ears as trumpets echoed from inside the house, playing to the tune of the guitar solo of Gun N' Roses' 'Sweet Child O' Mine.' Only seconds later, did the door swing open, revealing a robot, half of Mark's height. "SCANNING FACE... HELLO M-A-R-K, MARK." It greeted, well, robotically.

"Hey, Edison," Mark greeted the robot nonchalantly, walking in and shutting the door behind him, "where's Cabbage?" He asked as he took off his shoes and placed it on the nearby shoe rack.

"LOCATING THE DOCTOR..." Edison's eyes turned yellow, colour blinking repeatedly until it turned into a green light and stayed like that. "DOCTOR LOCATED - HE IS IN HIS LABORATORY DOWNSTAIRS."

Because was it really surprising that the house belonged to a guy who invented things for a living and went by the name of a vegetable in a bizarre way to honour his idol?

"Got it, I'll go meet up with him then." Mark informed, heading down the hall until he reached the black spiral staircase that led both to the third floor and bottom floor. It was really nice up there on the third floor though; Mark had been there before and it even came with a movie room! Too bad Cabbage rarely used it because he "doesn't have time for action sequences". So Mark, being the loyal lab assistant/test subject he was, headed down instead to the bottom floor, where he was greeted by a hallway that was lined up with pictures of old men on the walls. "My inspirations!" Cabbage would say. Among them were the likes of Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison (who he named his robot after, clearly), Nikola Tesla... you got the drift.

Regardless, Mark never stayed in the hall longer than he needed to - he wasn’t sure if portraits of old men who were dead by now staring at him was exactly his kind of vibe.

At the very end of the hall, all that awaited him was a grey metallic door that had some vapour seeping through the narrow space at the bottom of it. "Shit, I didn't bring a fire extinguisher today..." Mark cursed, grabbing onto the straps of his backpacks and readjusting it on his shoulders. "It's okay, Mark. He hasn't killed you before, so he can't kill you today...?" He wasn’t sure what the logic behind that thought was but you couldn’t blame him for trying to... reassure himself for whatever was about to come beyond those doors. It was funny to him; he had been the lab rat of many of Cabbage's crazy experiments and inventions, yet he kept coming back and every time he did, the jitters were always there.

Maybe it wasn’t because he was scared of death. Because he wasn’t - his father always drilled the idea into his head that God would welcome him with open arms when the time came. At the very least, if Mark died - most likely because of one of these experiments and inventions - he'd be bringing Cabbage with him. But hey, that was beyond the point.

If not the fear of death, then what? Maybe, just maybe... one of these days, one of Cabbage's revolutionary inventions would actually be successful. That for all of the craziness that's going on inside the mad scientist's head, it would finally pay off.

If only he knew when.

Mark reached for the handle and twisted it, pulling the door open and nearly coughing when a whole cloud of mist and vapour rushed at him. "Jeez, Cabbage, what are you doing this time?" Mark coughed into his arm as he took a step into the laboratory. He actually couldn't see the scientist at first, waving his hand around in hopes that he'd be able to swat away the mist and vapour. The space around him eventually did clear, though, revealing...

Nothing?

Instead of the usual grand machine that looked like it was taped together, Mark was greeted with... a clear space. The scientist was over at his desk just up a set of stairs that led to a second floor within the big room. "Cabbage!" Mark called after him, waving his hands to get his attention.

Whatever the scientist was busy doing, it was important enough to leave Mark ignored for a good five seconds. It left him pouting, though the scientist eventually did glance over at the boy, his eyes widening behind his circular glasses. "Mark, boy, there you are!" Cabbage sprang out of his seat, quickly rushing down to the boy he had called over. He held some sort of watch in his hands, like it was the most precious thing in the world. Jeez, since when did Cabbage wear Rolex? "Took you long enough! I was bouncing in my seat waiting for you to come over! But in the meantime, I was able to complete another one after confirming my calculations for the twenty-seventh time..."

One thing that nobody wanted to do was sit through Cabbage's rambling, prompting Mark to speak up. "Whoa, calm down, Cabbage. What's going on? Where's your invention?"

"Oh Mark, you're looking at it." Cabbage held out the watch and Mark raised an eyebrow.

"That small thing?" Mark narrowed his eyes at the watch in the scientist's hand. "Are you sure? Last time I came in for one of your creations, it was twice my size and almost killed me." But knowing the kind of person Cabbage was, Mark wouldn't be too surprised if this little watch managed to wreck havoc as well. How ironic it would be, for something so small to cause so much chaos.

Cabbage shook his head, meeting Mark's gaze with oddly serious eyes. "Mark, the creation I hold in my hand can - and will - change the world. If left in the wrong hands, everything could collapse. Society will crumble, the universe will be left in a never-ending stream of terror, reality will no longer exist, the concept of time will-"

"Okay, okay," Mark was left, once again, trying to calm down the frantic scientist, "Cabbage, deep breaths. Tell me, what did you create?" It couldn't be that bad that it left the older man going on some admittedly fear-inducing rant.

"A time travel machine."

One Mississippi, two Mississippi...

"Alright, I'll see you next time then, Cabbage." And almost immediately, Mark turned on his heel, prepared to just dip out of there.

"Wait, no, Mark!" The scientist called after the boy, grabbing a hold of his sleeve, "Please, hear me out!"

"Time travel, Cabbage!" Mark whirled around, disbelief painted in his features. "Do you even hear yourself right now? That's impossible! This is impossible! Listen, I'm fine with being your test subject but even I have to put my foot down somewhere when things get a bit too crazy!"

Despite Mark's reasonable concerns, Cabbage really didn't feel like letting his lab assistant slip away from the tip of his fingers, especially now of all times. "Come on, Mark! Twenty-seven times! I checked my calculations twenty-seven times! Don't let my hard work go down the drain!"

"Then do it yourself! Time travel yourself!" Mark exclaimed.

"I can't! I need you to go so I can stay behind and collect all the data while making sure you don't get stuck in the future or something!" Cabbage explained.

Unfortunately, Mark's face still showed utter disbelief. "You know, this really doesn't help your case, Cabbage!"

"Fine! We'll do this the fair way then!" Cabbage shouted, holding his fist out.

"Are you serious? Rock, paper, scissors?!" Mark cried out, covering his eyes. If there was one thing he couldn't say no to, it was rock, paper, scissors. Why? Maybe because he boasts a seven-hundred-fifty-two win record, with a mere twenty-one losses in the game. As you could probably assume, Mark was the undisputed rock, paper, scissors king in Uicheon, and only two kinds of people would dare challenge him in the game when it came to bets. Those who were bold and those who were desperate.

"I mean it, Mark! If you win, you can walk right out that door and never look back. I won't force this onto you. But if I win..." If Cabbage won, "you have to at least give this experiment a thought."

"Wait, that's it?" Mark uncovered his eyes, surprise in his voice. But hey, it wasn't a bad deal at all - in fact, the opposite. If Mark won - which he was pretty much guaranteed to - he could leave. If he didn't, he could pretend he thought it over and just say no in the end. "Well shit, say no more, Cabbage." And out Mark's fist went. “On shoot?”

"On shoot." The scientist confirmed, the two men placing their fists behind their backs.

"Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!"

Rock for Mark, and... rock for Cabbage.

"You got lucky." Mark rolled his shoulders back. "But this is it." And back their fists went behind them.

"Rock, paper, scissors... shoot!!"

Scissors for Mark, and... rock for Cabbage.

"I won..." Cabbage glanced down at his fist, mouth left agape, "I-I won! Against you!"

Yikes, better make that record seven-hundred-fifty-two wins to twenty-two losses now.

"I-I..." Mark was still in disbelief, for a totally different reason now, however. "I... I lost?" Under such circumstances too... but seriously! Time travel was a bit too much! "H-Hey, that doesn't mean I'm going to be going through with this! Remember, you said if you won, you'd let me think about it!" Mark reminded.

"Yeah, but only because I didn't think I'd actually win!" Cabbage snorted, shaking his head as he tucked the watch safely in the pocket of his white lab coat. "But I am a man of my word, so I'll give you some time to think about it. How about until the end of the day?" He suggested.

"That's a bit too soon, don't you think?" Mark frowned, not really liking the idea of being forced into a decision so quickly.

"Sorry, is that loser talk?" God, that damn Cabbage always knew how to get under Mark's skin.

"Fine, by the end of the day. But don't be surprised if my answer doesn't change." Mark warned. "Now if that's it, I'll be going." Mark huffed, turning around and heading to the door once more. This time, the scientist let him go, but not without some parting words.

"See you soon, Mark."

(Y/N) doesn't know where her life went wrong.

Okay, maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration and a dramatic one as well, but it didn't change the fact that instead of living out in the city and pursuing her dream as a world renown film director, she was stuck in her small hometown, working full-time at a film-rental store.

What was even the point of this store anyway? Everything was online nowadays anyway - who did the owner think he was, trying to compete with Netflix?

"One Mississippi, two Mississippi..." (Y/N) mumbled to herself from behind the counter, staring dully at the analog clock hung just above the front doors. An analog clock - what year was this again?

"(Y/N)," the voice of the store's owner, Mr. Yoon, was a less than welcoming disruption to her daily "clock-watching" (as she termed it herself), but at least it was a good way to remind her that the day was almost over, "did the kids all go home already?"

(Y/N) nodded, reaching below into the counter for a piece of paper with names and times. "Yup, Jungwoo and Sungchan just finished their shifts half an hour ago." She pointed to their names on the paper, "Signed out here."

"Great. You're in charge of closing up for today then, I have business in the city." Mr. Yoon informed, proudly readjusting his grip on the handles of his briefcase.

"Godspeed, Mr. Yoon." (Y/N) nodded, watching as the man left with a nod. And as the doors closed behind him, the female found herself alone in the store. All alone... which actually wasn't even that uncommon.

(Y/N); twenty-four years old, graduated from a local college two years ago with a degree in Film Studies with hopes of eventually entering the field of film-making and directing. She had high hopes, especially when she graduated. "To the city and A-list I go!" She could remember cheering that day in her car, diploma in hand and graduation gown still on.

But somebody must have forgotten to tell her that the university you went to mattered - and just how competitive the job market was for... pretty much every job.

Now this wasn't to say the college she attended was bad or anything, it just wasn't... one of the SKY universities. And before she knew it, when it came time for job hunting, the positions were constantly being filled out by "better candidates" and after a certain amount of "we regret to inform you"s, (Y/N) decided to go back home.

Home, in the beautiful yet small town of Uicheon. All she wanted was to make it big, live in a nice condo in Seoul and shop at luxury brands. Yet now, she found herself wearing what was possibly a ten-year-old uniform from the back storage with a name tag that was always tilted at a forty-five degree angle no matter how many times she tried to fix it.

But don't get her wrong! She hadn't given up yet - she absolutely would not! Her films might not be playing in theatres or at the Busan International Film Festival, but she still enjoyed writing up ideas and getting some of her co-workers to act out some scenes for her while she filmed eagerly with her trusty camcorder.

The Sony HDR-CX675; this bad boy cost her a good two months of saving up but God, was it worth it. Jungwoo in a wig and Sungchan throwing pens like they were daggers had never looked so good in HD until (Y/N) had gotten her hands on that beloved camcorder of hers.

"Should I film the clock or something?" She sighed, eyes wandering back over to the analog clock. At least she only had an hour left before the store closed, and she usually spent most of that time cleaning up anyway.

And so that hour began, dreadfully long until with only ten minutes to spare, the front door had opened, prompting (Y/N) to rush back to the counter from the storage room, though not without grumbling to herself quietly about what asshole comes into a store ten minutes before they close.

But it wasn't just anybody who came in - it was Mark, the boy who always complimented her hair no matter how lazy she had been to brush it that day. Still, flattery always earned some brownie points in (Y/N)’s books. So she wasn't hesitant at all when she had greeted Mark. "Hey, it's nice to see you here! Renting a movie?" She asked, resting her arms on the counter top.

"Yeah, looking for some Christian-friendly Halloween movie. For the kids at church this Sunday, since Halloween is tomorrow." Mark chuckled shaking his head.

"Let me see what I can find," (Y/N) grinned as she slipped away from the counter and to one of the shelves, "I'll be honest though, you're probably better off showing the kids some cartoon from Netflix or something."

As if Mark was going to tell her that he insisted to his dad on renting a movie, for he wanted to see and talk to the girl of his dreams who currently had her back turned to him. "Well you know us, terrible with technology." Instead, that was all he could muster up.

"I'll bet." She snickered jokingly, turning back to him with a movie now in her hand, "Toy Story of Terror sound good to you?"

"Better than showing them Scream." Mark shrugged before heading back to the counter with her. "I'll pay with debit."

"Mhm," (Y/N) nodded, taking his card and swiping it for him through the machine, "you know the usual, watch within thirty days and return it after those thirty days." She reminded him with a yawn. God forbid Mr. Yoon ever see that.

"Busy day?" Mark offered a small sympathetic smile as he took his card back as well as the movie. "I kind of get it. Cabbage called me in for one of his inventions today."

"Today?" She asked, watching as the boy across from her nodded. "What was it this time?" Everybody in town felt bad for Mark since he was the one always testing out Cabbage's inventions, but at the same time, at least it wasn't them?

"Gosh, you wouldn't believe me if I said it." He shook his head with a heavy sigh. "A time travel machine - or like, a time travel watch, I guess."

"Time travel?" The gasp from the female was expected; anybody would be surprised. "I always knew Cabbage was ambitious but definitely not to the extent of time travel!"

"Yeah, needless to say, I said no. Or like, I told him I would think about it, you know?" Mark frowned. "I just can't believe... time travel of all things."

"I'll be honest," there was a smile spreading on (Y/N)’s face, to the slight surprise of Mark, "the idea of time travel sounds so cool though. I'd love to try it out." When Mark had brought up what had happened at Cabbage's house, he didn't think (Y/N) would actually be... interested in the scientist's invention. Definitely not when it was so absurd. But she looked so cute, the way she stood up straighter and her attentive eyes as he talked about it. Gosh, he wished he could tell her that it wasn't worth the time. But her interest was clear, that much he couldn't ignore.

"Then... why don't you try it in my place?" Mark suggested hesitantly. He didn't want (Y/N) and her pretty little self anywhere near those dangerous creations, for concern of her safety. But she really seemed to be interested in this, and this... it was the least he could do.

"Alone? No thanks." She giggled softly, to the relief of the boy who had suggested it in the first place. "Maybe if someone else was with me though. Like a time travel duo!" Hold up - someone else?

"This is your chance, Mark!" His inner voice practically screamed at him. Anything for (Y/N), right? "But it's so dangerous!" His other inner voice tried deterring him from going through with what he was about to suggest. But for (Y/N)! "Then," Mark felt his heartbeat quicken, excitement and hope visible in his eyes, "you wouldn't mind if we did it together, would you?"

If his friends Johnny and Donghyuck were here, they'd definitely be cheering and slapping him on the back. It felt like he was asking her out, something he always dreamed of doing but never really having the guts to do so. Rejection was a scary thought, but as he watched the wide smile that spread onto (Y/N)’s face, he knew he had something to look forward to, even if through... this.

"Of course! it'll be fun!" Score! "Too bad only one person can go though, I assume." She frowned.

And for a second, Mark's hopes had shattered once again. But then he remembered something back at Cabbage's house, and maybe, just maybe, it wasn't over yet. "Actually, I think Cabbage mentioned making two watches." After confirming his calculations twenty-seven times. "Why don't we go together?"

"Seriously? You wouldn't mind?" Oh, what Mark wouldn't given just to see that wide smile on (Y/N)’s face every single second of the day.

And with a smile of his own, he nodded. "Of course not, noona."

Love has always been a motivation for man, ever since the beginning of humans. And as time continued on and advanced, a variety of factors had been added to that list of motivation, such as money and power. But one constant above all was always going to be love - something that had always been interpersonal.

So that was why Cabbage wasn't too particularly surprised to see Mark come back to his house later in the evening, this time, with a female companion. And judging by the look of awe on her face, it didn't take much for the scientist to connect the dots. "Mark, you came back!" Cabbage smiled down at the boy from the second floor of his basement lab. "With a friend this time?"

"Right," Mark cleared his throat, gesturing to the scientist, "(Y/N), this is Cabbage as you already know, and Cabbage, this is (Y/N), my friend."

"Hi! It's great to be here! Like, really great." (Y/N) was still enamoured by the many... things going on in the lab, though Mark couldn't blame her.

"Anyway Mark, have you given my invention a thought?" Cabbage inquired, standing up from his seat by his computer and leaning against the railing. "I assume that's why you're here, after all."

Mark nodded. "I have." He confirmed, biting down on his lip. "And I'll do it."

"You will?" The scientist's eyes widened, grin spreading on his face. "That's great!"

"But," Mark began, gaze falling over onto (Y/N) for a short second before back onto the scientist, "with conditions."

"Conditions?" Cabbage raised an eyebrow, pleasantly intrigued.

"Conditions!" (Y/N) suddenly spoke up with a grin, earning a look from the two. "Sorry, it just felt kind of intense so I wanted to ease tensions a bit." She coughed, glancing back and forth between the two. "Please, continue." She urged.

"A-Anyway yes, conditions." Mark cleared his throat before turning to the scientist once more. "I want (Y/N) to come with me. You have two watches, don't you?"

"I do." Cabbage nodded, fishing his hand into the pocket of his lab coat and bringing out two identical watches. "So far, they're the only two I have so I need to make sure that your friend will be extra careful with this."

"She will." Mark reassured without any hesitation. "I know she will, because she's (Y/N)." A man who was claiming everybody's hearts left and right - except for (Y/N)’s though, unfortunately.

Cabbage looked as if he was pondering on the thought for a bit before eventually nodding and making his way down the stairs. "Well, if Mark is vouching for you, I guess it should be okay." Cabbage nodded before gesturing for the two to follow him to the back of the lab, where large screen rested on the wall and multiple smaller monitors on both it's sides, resting on a glass desk. Below it were multiple keyboards, a few touch pads here and there with clearly different functions. It was like something straight out of a sci-fi movie. "This is where I'll be monitoring and communicating with you two while you're in whatever time period you land in." He explained, gesturing to his set up.

"What about the watches?" (Y/N) asked.

"I'm just getting to that." Cabbage nodded, reaching for the two watches once again. "Gather around, you two." He motioned for them to come closer. "It looks like a regular analog watch at first, but if you tap the clock face," he did what he had just said, the other two watching in awe as a small digital hologram had appeared in the air, just above the clock face, "it has information such as your battery life on the right hand corner, the date and time you're in, the option to video call me, and the option to switch time periods." He pointed out each detail on the hologram. "Now the problem with the switching time periods is that once you arrive somewhere, you're stuck there for, at a minimum, twenty-four hours before the voltage and particle energies recharge and allow you to travel elsewhere."

"Wait, so you're staying we might be stuck in a different time for a whole day?" Mark asked, a bit of alarm evident in his voice.

"Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find out the proper calculations to make the recharging process quicker but for the meantime... yes." The scientist sighed. "But hey, at least it's not twenty-five hours...?"

"Cabbage!" Mark groaned, running his hand down his face.

"I mean, twenty-four hours doesn't sound that bad." (Y/N) hummed. "I'd love to explore a different time period, really get to know what it was like!"

"See, at least someone's optimistic." Cabbage sent a not-so-subtle look over at Mark. "But anyway, I actually have a quest for you two."

"Ooh, a quest! I feel like I'm in a video game." (Y/N) giggled, and if it weren't for the fact that she was totally digging this right now, Mark would have just straight up left out of fear for his own safety.

"Exactly!" Cabbage nodded eagerly. "Since you two will be going to different time periods, I want you to bring back a memento of some sort from each time period."

"Anything specific?" Mark asked, wanting to make sure he was going into this with full details.

"Yes, for the purpose of analytic purposes due to their high amount of energy." Cabbage turned to the two, a suddenly serious look on his face. "A meaningful item to at least one person you encounter."

The two waited for him to say more, but nope, all he did was stare back at them. Mark ended up being the first to speak up. "Hm, I think you're missing the part where you, oh I don't know, tell us what you mean by ‘meaningful item’??"

"That will vary from person to person, Mark boy." Cabbage sighed, giving an empathetic pat on the boy's shoulder. "One person's 'meaningful item' might be a necklace that their mother gifted them, or maybe a letter from a lover for a soldier - everything in life is a variable anyway."

"Wait, then how do we know something is a meaningful item?" (Y/N) asked.

"That's where this last function of the watches come in," Cabbage turned his attention back to the watches, "this icon," he pointed to one of the icons on the hologram screen that resembled a heart, "will allow you to scan a person once you've talked to them. This only works one person at a time though, and it does drain a lot of energy from the watch battery. It'll allow you to see particles coming from objects, like sparkles. The more vivid, bigger and brighter the particles, chances are that's your person's meaningful item. So be careful with who you choose to use it on - once you scan that person, you'll have to find their meaningful item before you can use it again. Not to mention that the longer it takes for you to find the meaningful item, the more energy it drains." He warned.

"Talk about ominous, gosh." Mark sighed, shaking his head. "I can't believe I'm doing this."

"It'll be exciting though, Mark." (Y/N) glanced over at the boy beside her, a grin spreading on her face. "We're in this together, after all!"

"Noona..." A shade of red coated Mark's cheeks as he stared down at her, eyes sparkling with adoration.

"Ahem, and me too." Cabbage interrupted, "Just, I'll be back here handling everything."

"Yes, of course, because where would we be without you, Cabbage?" Mark sighed, feeling a bit salty over the scientist's interruption during his and (Y/N)’s "moment".

"Love you too, Mark." Cabbage blew a kiss his way before handing a watch to Mark and (Y/N) each. "Are you two ready?"

"Wait, we're doing this so soon?" Mark's eyes widened, staring down at the watch in his hands with a bit of fear.

"Better sooner than later." Cabbage shrugged, helping attach the watch onto Mark's wrist and then to (Y/N)’s. "You guys will be fine, don't worry. I'm here, after all!"

"So reassuring, Cabbage." Mark grumbled, about to protest over the quick timing and suddenness of all of this if not for the sudden feeling of warmth in one of his hands. He glanced down at said hand, eyes lingering on the smaller hand that had clasped his own. And as his eyes wandered up to the hand's owner, he swore she was going to be the death of him.

"It'll be okay, Mark." (Y/N) squeezed his hand softly with a reassuring smile. "We're in this together." She repeated.

"Right..." Mark trailed off before taking a deep breath and nodding. "Together." He then glanced over at the scientist. "We're ready, Cabbage."

With an excited smile, the older man nodded before turning to his set up and taking a seat down in the chair. The sounds of his quick tapping against the keyboard keys had Mark worrying with every passing second, but as (Y/N) held his hand, he figured this wouldn't be a terrible way to die. "Adios, you two!" Cabbage called out before hitting one last button. Click!

And as a bright and large flash of light illuminated within the lab, Mark knew it had begun, especially with the way his limbs practically burned and his consciousness struggling to stay intact.

The things he'd do for love, huh?

#nct fluff #mark lee fluff #mark lee #nct mark fluff #nct 127 #nct u #nct dream #mark lee x reader #nct #nct 2020 #nct fics #nct x reader #nct angst #mark lee angst

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malgal7777 · 3 years

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Hiking with Tracy 2021: Weekend 3, the Lost Weekend

As I went back to re-read my blog I noticed I had cut off my WHOLE weekend of 4/17!! This is my 20 mile walk from the Emeryville Marina to the Richmond Marina and back via the Bay Trail along the water & Hwy 80. So let me try to reenact my journey!

The theme of this hike was “Don't tell me this town ain't got no heart, you just gotta poke around” - Once again I tip my hat to the great Jerry Garcia. Not sure if you all figured it out, but I love Jerry. I came to the Bay Area to follow the Grateful Dead’s music and I never left.

This particular hike was absolutely beautiful. I wish it wasn’t so I can mix this blog up, but sorry folks, you live in a beautiful area. Even along a dirty highway, there are things of beauty all around you. Take for example this hike, wildflowers everywhere. Even popping out of the sidewalk. I'm reminded of Jeff Goldblum’s character in Jurassic Park...”Life refuses to be contained...it just finds a way”. And sure enough, Sunflowers out of the sidewalk!

Since I was next to a highway, I went with headphones this time around. One of my positives during this pandemic is my rekindled love for music radio stations. I love listening to a radio station and I definitely have my favorite DJ’s. My personal favorites this past year were: WWOZ - a local New Orleans station; KCSM - a Bay Area jazz station and KXT - out of Dallas, TX. These stations literally kept me sane during the lockdowns. I highly recommend them, especially if you’re cooking, doing chores or working in the garden.

This particular morning I went with WWOZ. And what a good decision that was. Ron Phillips was spinning his favorite Saturday morning tunes and I was going down the road feeling BAD (as in good)! Irma Thomas, Anders Osborne, The Subdudes and a little known singer/songwriter out of New Orleans, Chris Smithers. If you get overwhelmed and about to burst...stream Chris Smithers “Let it Go”. So funny. Anders Osborne is a name my friends have been trying to get me into for a long time. And I’m a bozo, definitely missed the boat on this one! From his new album, try this song: Welcome to Earth.

Ok, so I digress! Back to the walk. In one of my last posts, I mentioned the people I meet. Well this am was a doozy! As I was grooving to the sweet sounds of the Crescent City I was approached by a group of ladies. They had a question for me: What’s more important in a relationship: Love or Economics? My first response was “Wow, you ladies don’t mess around for a Saturday morning! Going deep on me”. But, because I’m me, I had an answer. Now usually I would have said Love, Love, Love. Hands down right? But they caught me at a weird time. I have been obsessively thinking of a comment I overheard from another group of ladies while doing my Diablo hike. One of them had commented “I have no desire to marry just for love. Forget that, I need to be economically stable”. My reaction was pity for this poor girl. I literally felt sorry for her. The more I thought about it (obsessively for two weeks) I came to realize, she didn’t necessarily say she wasn’t going to work, she just wanted someone with their shit together and would contribute to their family being comfortable. What’s wrong with that? Is being comfortable taboo now? So when my Bay Trail friends asked me, that’s how I answered. Love was great but there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be comfortable, isn’t that love after all? I obviously made one of the women very happy. She loved it. The other two nodded and smiled, they were on Love’s side. So we said our goodbyes and I felt like I had gotten a weight off my shoulders. As I was walking away though...I asked myself...But didn’t YOU marry for love? And sure enough, I did. Bob & I didn’t have a pot to piss in. And while we’re not the Rockefeller's, we’re comfortable enough for us. I love him dearly and love has to be the basis that you build your financial future upon. If you don’t have that, it get’s ugly when $$ is involved. The best part of this moment was that song “Welcome to Earth” was playing as I was coming to this realization and the last line is literally “Love is always the answer”. The Universe works in mysterious ways! But, where were the ladies...I wanted to change my answer??!! No where to be found. Man, I blew it. I would now obsessively think about this for the next 20 miles. Told you I was a bozo.

By this time I had reached The Albany bulb. A Bay Area gem to the north of Golden Gate Fields. There’s a great beach and then it jets out into a peninsula which is covered with art installations all over. I’ll talk more about that later, since I came back on Sunday to finish my 25 miles. This morning though I watched a group of swimmers about to enter the freezing bay waters, no wet suit mind you! CRAZY and No Thank You! Brrr. Next Stop, Point Isabel, dog heaven. A large open spaced off-leach dog park. I go there all the time. If you have a dog, you should take them. They will love you even more than they already do.

Now past Point Isabel is where the trail gets interesting. You start to wander away from the highway and are now among the prettiest beaches and marshes. It’s an interesting view of the Bay Bridge and you can no longer see the Golden Gate Bridge as you veer north of it. You now start to come upon single family homes along the trail. You’re instantly reminded of Cape Cod. A ocean view from Richmond, CA. The best part is once you see this neighborhood you know you’re close to the marina. And sure enough, I turned the bend and there in front of me was the Ford Assembly plant, my 1/2 way point. But, it’s a very cruel joke. You see the plant across the opening of the marina, it’s literally right there!! Then the realization hits you in order to get to it you need to go around the WHOLE marina. And as you continue to walk and go around another bend, the sidewalk gets longer and longer and longer. The Richmond Marina is HUGE. Lovely though. Large green spaces with people doing yoga; a ladies bootcamp class along the water; boats coming and going from the marina and two pretty cute restaurants also along the water.

I finally made it to the Ford Assembly Plant and now Richmond Ferry Terminal. The assembly plant hosts seasonal events, we’ve been to the women’s roller derby ones. Nothing like watching tough chicks bully each other on roller skates. Then there are a few businesses strewn throughout the building. Dolls Kill, which I believe is a clothing business for those on the freakier side of the spectrum. And Mountain Hardware! Quality clothing for the outdoorsy types. I should have gone in and gotten a windbreaker. The wind was pretty brutal.

The best part was of course the Rosie The Riveter museum. A museum dedicated to the women that left the kids at home and joined the workforce to help build ships during WWII. This whole area was built for the war effort. Richmond grew from 25,000 to over 100,000 within three years!!! Can you imagine? How does any town build the infrastructure needed to maintain that population? Grocery stores? Clothing? Schools? Highly recommended. It’s a suggested donation, so don’t be cheap, donate. You won’t be disappointed. I once brought Charlotte and a couple of her Girl Scout troop there to meet a real life “Rosie”. She told the girls her story and it was of course about LOVE! The trials and tribulations of her and her partner as he was fighting in the war and she was here making the ships that would keep him safe. Man, where were those 3 ladies!!

The way back was pretty much the same. I made it! Now onto Sunday, 4/18. The Albany Bulb! A Bay Area gem. Bob & I have been coming here for years. Way back when it was a landfill full of broken concrete slabs and rebar. Some artist types took it upon themselves to start living there. They kept the concrete slabs and rebar and started to make installations out of them. Giant sized figures; rows of wooden paintings; mazes and one guy even built a concrete castle along the water facing the Golden Gate Bridge. Best real estate in the Bay. They exemplified the phrase “one mans trash is another man’s treasure”. Of course the stuffed shirts got wind and kicked them out. But gave the stuffed shirts an idea...Hey, why not make a park out of this dirty unused lot? Duh. So before you harass your kid for taking art classes, remember it’s usually the artists who push the rest of society in the right direction.

It’s also a great place to bird watch and now the wildflowers are a blooming, so it’s quite serene. If you’re looking for some inspiration, this is the place for you.

So my posts/weeks are a bit out of order. Oh well! It’s my blog and I’ll create chaos if I want to!

I’ll end on this note: Love is ALWAYS the answer.

So sponsor me (hehehe): https://runsignup.com/tracyalbert/Donate

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someguynamedstevewrites · 4 years

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Unwanted House Guest: Valentine’s Run - Part 1

Based on characters created by @tamarinfrog (a.k.a. @searching-for-bananaflies , a.k.a. @cafe-cardamari , a.k.a. @bottledupcomic , a.k.a. OH MY GOD Tammy, just how many more blogs do you have!? I mean, I’m not one to talk, but...)

And the video games Splatoon, Splatoon 2, and Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion by Nintendo.

——————————

A brief primer on Unwanted House Guest:

Began this Fanfiction series back in the Fall of 2015.

Multiple entries in the series were submitted to Tammy’s blogs for posting.

Feel free to search Tammy’s blogs for “Unwanted House Guest” for previous entries in the series.

Now on with the story!

——————————

“YOU WANT HOW MUCH!?”

Arnick shouted from nearly the top of his lungs. Every Inkling and Octoling in Inkopolis Square turned to look at the small bench near the lobby entrance for Turf Wars. There, everyone saw a tall, lanky, Inkling male with purple tentacles wearing a replica hero jacket and with a Legendary Cap on his head. It was an older cap with some sewn on patches and a hole to let the Inkling’s tentacles out through the top of the hat. Upon recognizing who it was, about a third of the people turned back to minding their own business because they were rather accustomed to the ear-splitting din that Arnick Stilton was known for.

“You heard me, chum,” Murch shot back, “100,000 G! Take it or leave it.”

Arnick was gritting his teeth, clenching his fists, and looking like his hat was going to pop off his head. The 21-year old Inkling had been searching for months for a very particular item. He regularly browsed through Annie’s Online Shop, checked every retail store daily since Squiddoween, and constantly asked about it from the local (shady) “gear specialist”: Murch. After going for so long without any luck, Arnick even went so far as to try and craft it himself, but couldn’t get the ability chunks necessary to finish it.

Now it was being held ransom by a puny little one-eyed street urchin.

“You have any idea how hard it was to find this thing, chum?” Murch continued with a small hint of indignity, “Spyke had to ask somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody whose cousin’s sister-in-law’s brother’s uncle happened to have one tucked away in a box at a garage sale out in Calamari County!”

“Yeah, right...” Arnick said in about a 50/50 split between disbelief and sarcasm. He grabbed his iSquid and opened up the app for his bank account. His winnings had increased since Team Toxic’s recent entrance into the highest level of professional Turf War. This was a great honor as they were now being matched up against the most experienced players; some of who had been engaging in Turf Wars for decades. But Arnick still had rent, utility bills, credit card payments, grocery expenses, and other debts that needed paying.

Doing a quick check of his bank balance, Arnick saw that he had exactly 567,902 G in the bank, but by Arnick’s calculations, only 50,000 G of that would be considered “available”. Sure, Arnick had the 100,000 G in his bank account, but if he spent it now, one or more of the payments Arnick had scheduled to go through could bounce. This would lead to a Non-Sufficient Fund (NSF) fee from the bank, and a whole new level of headache that Arnick did not want to deal with. (Especially since Tetrox gave him enough of a headache anyway. Arnick couldn’t count the number of times she’d swiped his credit cards to buy ridiculous things online).

“Hey,” Murch called up to the tall, penny-pinching grouch, “you want this or not?”

“Yes of course I want it, you pipsqueak!” Arnick said with frustration in his voice (which was nothing new), “Is there any way I can pick it up tomorrow?”

“No can do, chum,” Murch said with a shake of his head, “I’m a busy guy here and gear like this is hot stuff! If you don’t buy this, I’m going to have to trash it.”

“WHAT!? You said it yourself this thing was difficult to get, and you’re going to throw it away just like that!?” questioned Arnick.

“Look, chum, I only got so much inventory space here,” Murch said gesturing to his case sitting on the bench behind him, “I can hold this for you up until midnight tonight, but after that, this gear is gone.”

Murch then raised his solitary eyebrow as he took a peak at the precious gear in the case. “Still,” he said, “why would an uptight guy like you want this bo-“

“SSHHHHHHHHHUSH!”

Arnick hissed, almost shoving his hand over Murch’s mouth to keep him quiet. He then looked around him, cautiously, to see if anyone had seen or heard anything. Everyone in the Square was either staring at or side-eyeing Arnick, but mostly because his outbursts were giving them a scare. No matter how many times Arnick blew his top, the folks that inhabited Inkopolis Square would still jump from his outbursts. (Many of them were getting rather tired of it.)

“What was that for, chum!?” Asked an annoyed Murch.

“I don’t want anyone finding out I’m getting this, you dimwit!” Arnick pleaded.

“Why wouldn’t you-“ Murch’s single eye popped wide open as it hit him. He then slowly turned towards Arnick with a big, smug smile on his face. His eye now had a look to it as if it was saying “I see what you did there”. Arnick had seen that look before and dreaded what was coming.

“Ohhhhhh,” Murch said with a sneaky smile, “this is a gift for someone, isn’t it?”

“Your point?” Arnick snapped back, feeling rather annoyed.

“You sly sea dog!” Murch said while giving a small elbow jab to Arnick’s leg, “Don’t you worry about a thing! Your secret’s safe with me.” His gesture was meant to be a knowing jab to the ribs, but given Murch’s height, Arnick’s leg was the best he could reach.

Arnick looked left, then right, then left again. By now, the eyes of the square were no longer on him and Murch. Arnick guessed that everyone was likely thinking: “OH MY COD! WHAT WA- Oh it’s just Arnick! False Alarm!” before going back to whatever it was they were doing. (He was right too.) In a quiet voice, Arnick responded with, “It had better be safe, or so help me, if this gets out...”

“Relax, chum!” Murch said with a smile, “all I need is that 100,000 G and you won’t hear a peep out of me!”

Arnick growled to himself. He absolutely hated the idea of having an overdraft fee affecting his credit score. But at the same time, he had been searching for this gear for so long that he just couldn’t let it slip through his fingers. His mind raced through possible solutions when suddenly the hour changed and the new Turf War maps were announced by Inkopolis’ latest shining stars: Off the Hook. The volume on the large Jumbo-Tron size TV in the square cranked itself up for the news segment.

“Y’all check this out!” the energetic Pygmy Inkling named Pearl called out over the airwaves, “Our sponsor Grizzco is now hiring for Salmon Runs!” She then looked over to her co-host, the Octoling named Marina, who was looking into the camera with a big smile.

“Big Money? Big Prizes? I love it!” The cheerful Octoling expertly said after reading it from the teleprompter. Arnick was certain this was an obscure reference to something. He also wagered that line was written by his old nemesis: “that guy named Steve”. Arnick recalled Steve saying something about how he was taking on some additional work responsibilities at the Turf War League the two of them bickered (and it was always bickering). Arnick didn’t have the foggiest idea what the reference was to, but he didn’t care...

...he just got a brilliant idea.

Turning to Murch, Arnick smiled unusually wide. “100,000 G by midnight!? No problem!” Arnick said confidently, “Hang on to it and I’ll be back with your money in no time.”

“Alright,” Murch nodded, “But remember, when I say midnight, I mean Midnight! If you ain’t here by 12:00 on the dot, then this...” Murch hesitated when Arnick gave him the stink eye (while still smiling, no less) to remind him to keep this under wraps, “...gear goes bye-bye.”

Arnick gave him an enthusiastic thumbs up and a toothy grin that almost sparkled. “Smoke me a kipper, I’ll be back for breakfast!” Arnick said assuredly before spinning around and marching towards the Salmon Run Office.

Murch called out, “YOU DO KNOW IT WILL BE TOO LATE BY THEN, RIGHT!?”

Arnick turned around and hollered back, “IT’S A FIGURE OF SPEECH!”

To Be Continued...

#Arnick #Murch #Splatoon #Fanfiction #Unwanted House Guest

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theonyxpath · 4 years

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Wooo! The Kickstarter for V5 Cults of the Blood Gods is going live tomorrow (or today depending when you read this), Tuesday, December 17th at 2pm Eastern US time! We’re doing this Kickstarter in order to create a traditionally printed book that we’ll print and deliver to backers and overprint more books in order to get Cults into stores!

Here are some of the highlights of the book, provided to me by developer Matthew Dawkins:

• An in-character breakdown of the rise of esoteric beliefs among the ranks of the undead and how faith drives many of the major aspects of vampire culture.

• A host of religions — from historic theocracies and globe-spanning conspiracies to fringe cults and mortal beliefs arising in the modern nights — introduced for incorporation into your character backgrounds or as supporting casts and antagonist groups in your chronicles.

• The history, structure, and ambitions of the Hecata, the vampire group known as the Clan of Death, as well as a chapter dedicated to playing a vampire among the Necromancers, and the rituals for their Discipline: Oblivion.

• Guidance on how to use ecclesiastical horror and construct cults in Vampire, making them a vivid backdrop for your own stories, including new coterie styles focused on cult play.

• Faith-based story hooks and a full story centered on the activities of the Hecata, involving walking corpses, ghosts, ready-made characters, and the secrets of the most twisted family in the World of Darkness.

• New Loresheets, Discipline powers, and Predator types for inclusion in your chronicles, encouraging player characters to engage fully with the material presented in this book.

Visually, as folks will see when the KS page goes live, it’ll be a gorgeous book featuring much of the same qualities and artists as V5 Chicago By Night.

Just fair warning: we continue to look for methods to cut shipping costs outside the US, yet the shipping for V5 Cults of the Blood Gods has shipping costs in line with our more recent KSs this whole year, rather than the shipping costs we were working with when we KS’d V5 Chicago By Night.

As I’ve mentioned before, we know the costs are high, but they are the costs quoted to us from our shippers here in the US, and passed on to backers. I continue to think it better to give our non-US backers a choice as to whether to back and pay the shipping costs and be part of the KS (including getting Stretch Goals, and all), rather than Onyx just not shipping outside the US as many TTRPG companies have decided to do with their KSs.

Basically, shipping costs are high, and they suck. We will keep searching for avenues that could cut those costs – never fear!

CofD Dark Eras 2 art by Alex Sheikman

Here are some brief nuggets of things we want you to know about this week, besides the V5 Cult of the Blood Gods Kickstarter:

If you haven’t seen the promos on our social media, Onyx Path is part of DTRPG‘s Teach Your Kids To Game sale! You can get the Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau core book PDFs half-off! https://www.drivethrurpg.com/rpg_teachkids.php

When I was at PAX Unplugged I sat down for an interview about art directing for TTRPGs in general, how I got started art directing for White Wolf, how art directing has changed since then, and specifically how I went about devising the look and feel and artistic style of Mage: The Ascension first edition and how the look evolved from edition to edition.

As is typical for me with interviews, I absolutely have no idea how it went. Like, did I talk too much, did I answer their questions at all interestingly, did I reveal too much? But I got a lot of really nice comments from folks about the Werewolf one, so hopefully this one sounds good to y’all. Thanks, Terry!http://magethepodcast.com/index.php/2019/12/14/mage-noir-with-matt-webb-and-the-art-of-mage-with-rich-thomas/

Lunars art by Gunship Revolution

Finally, we spent a lot of time setting up what everybody will be doing for the next couple of weeks, as today’s Monday Meeting was our last one for the year! From here until after New Years, we’re trying to give folks enough space to handle the holidays, while we still have projects rolling at full speed!

In fact, it’s not uncommon for freelancers – which is what the vast majority of our creators are – to use holidays to really dive into their freelance projects. Certainly, I always did that when I was freelance illustrating. Having a deadline is a great reason for ducking out on a long family event! (Not that I do that any more!)

But, never fear, true believers!

I’ll still be assembling the next two weeks’ Monday Meeting Notes with updates and Kickstarter news, and with some short year-end focused content! We just aren’t having the Monday Meetings those weeks.

And, of course, we hope all of you have happy holidays and plenty of time for playing in our:

Many Worlds, One Path!

BLURBS!

Kickstarter!

V5 Cults of the Blood Gods goes live at 2pm Eastern US time on Tuesday December 17th!

Onyx Path Media!

This Friday’s Onyx Pathcast Is our Holiday Special 1: Podbean Live Test Episode! Check it out direct on Podbean, or your favorite podcast venue! https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/

Just because it’s the holiday season doesn’t mean we’re stopping with our gaming streams! This week we’ve got Vampire: The Masquerade, Trinity Continuum, Scarred Lands, Hunter: The Vigil, Changeling: The Dreaming, and Mage: The Awakening, and we’ll undoubtedly be dropping a surprise stream or two into the mix as well!

Subscribe to twitch.tv/theonyxpath to keep up with our streams as and when they happen!

As ever, we’ve got a lot of YouTube content coming up too. This week, expect to see an interview regarding Pugmire and Dystopia Rising: Evolution, actual plays of Changeling: The Lost and Aberrant, and a behind-the-screen special for Scion!

Subscribe to youtube.com/user/theonyxpath to catch up on all our content!

Matthew Dawkins – The Gentleman Gamer – continues with his Gentleman’s Guide to Scion over on his channel, and will be doing a few V5 Cults of the Blood Gods videos too!

Subscribe to him on youtube.com/user/clackclickbang right here!

Mage: The Podcast recently had occultist S Rune Emerson walk through the history of Tarot and the symbology of the Mage the Ascension Tarot: http://magethepodcast.com/index.php/…-rune-emerson/

A group of podcasters and Storyteller Vault writers are looking for input on what kind of publications and podcasts WoD and CoD fans would like to see in 2020. If you complete their survey, you can be entered into a drawing for a $200 DriveThruRPG gift card. The survey is available here: bit.ly/wodcodsurvey2019

Here’s Occultists Anonymous returning with two new episodes

Episode 64: Small Details As the cabal waits to hear back about a meeting with the Union, Atratus begins to research vampires, Wyrd develops her labyrinth, and Songbird makes a phone call. https://youtu.be/UoyrYH_PM3A

Episode 65: Ignorant Fools The cabal take the lead in meeting with the Union on behalf of the Phantasm Society, and perhaps many other supernatural beings trying to lay low. https://youtu.be/8sTnubeBl44

Red Moon Roleplaying recently concluded their Mummy: The Curse actual play and are currently running a Changeling: The Lost chronicle! You can subscribe to their YouTube channel here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1wvSKstApo9vYYq1wEDtmQ

Drop Matthew a message via the contact button on matthewdawkins.com if you have actual plays, reviews, or game overviews you want us to profile on the blog!

Please check any of these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games!

Electronic Gaming!

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)

On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these latest fiction books:

Our Sales Partners!

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scarred Lands (Pathfinder) books are also on sale at Studio2, and they have the 5e version, supplements, and dice as well!: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/scarred-lands

Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And NOW Scion Origin and Scion Hero are available to order!

As always, you can find Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!

On Sale This Week!

This Wednesday, we are proud to announce the PDF and physical book PoD versions of the Aeon Aexpansion for Trinity Continuum: Aeon, a collection of additional material that came out of the Kickstarter, including:

Information about new noetic biotech, hardtech cyberware, military weapons, and other technologies of the early 22nd century.

Rules for creating and playing psiad and superior characters within the Trinity Continuum.

Rules for playing psions in the modern day setting of the Trinity Continuum Core Rulebook.

And more…

Plus we’re also releasing the Trinity Continuum Aeon Screen in PDF – all on DriveThruRPG

Conventions!

2020: Midwinter: January 9th – 12th, in Milwaukee, WI. Check out David Fuller’s Athens, Ohio Scion actual play tie-in adventure (soon to be coming to the Storypath Nexus community content site) that will be running at Midwinter. The event url is below: https://tabletop.events/conventions/midwinter-gaming-convention-2020/schedule/402

And now, the new project status updates!

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM EDDY WEBB (projects in bold have changed status since last week):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Contagion Chronicle Ready-Made Characters (Chronicles of Darkness)

Trinity Continuum: Adventure! core (Trinity Continuum: Adventure!)

Duke Rollo fiction (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

TC: Aberrant Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Redlines

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Second Draft

Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Development

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum Core)

Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)

Manuscript Approval

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

Titanomachy (Scion 2nd Edition)

Buried Bones: Creating in the Realms of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Post-Approval Development

Scion LARP Rules (Scion)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Editing

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)

Let the Streets Run Red (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Geist 2e Fiction Anthology (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #1 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

WoD Ghost Hunters (World of Darkness)

Mythical Denizens (Creatures of the World Bestiary) (Scion 2nd Edition)

Pirates of Pugmire KS-Added Adventure (Realms of Pugmire)

M20 The Technocracy Reloaded (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad (Scarred Lands)

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Wraith20 Fiction Anthology (Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Post-Editing Development

TC: Aeon Ready-Made Characters (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

TC: Aeon Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Vigil Watch (Scarred Lands)

Scion Companion: Mysteries of the World (Scion 2nd Edition)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Indexing

ART DIRECTION FROM MIKE CHANEY!

In Art Direction

Contagion Chronicle

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant

Hunter: The Vigil 2e

Ex3 Lunars – Contracted.

TCfBtS!: Heroic Land Dwellers – LeBlanc working away.

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed – Contracted.

Ex3 Monthly Stuff

Cults of the Blood God (KS) – Ready for KS.

Mummy 2

City of the Towered Tombs

Let the Streets Run Red – Art notes and contracts finishing going out this week.

CtL Oak Ash and Thorn – Rich doing artnotes.

Scion Mythical Denizens – Finals coming in soon.

Deviant

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad – Totally contracted.

Vigil Watch – Wrapping up AD stuff this week.

Legendlore (KS)

Technocracy Reloaded (KS)

In Layout

Chicago Folio – On it.

Trinity Continuum Aeon: Distant Worlds – Haven’t forgotten it.

Pirates of Pugmire – With Aileen.

Proofing

Dark Eras 2 – Off to WW this week for approval.

Trinity Continuum Aeon Jumpstart

M20 Book of the Fallen – Getting it to PoD this week.

They Came from Beneath the Sea! – Approval needed, then Backer PDF out to backers.

VtR Spilled Blood

At Press

V5: Chicago – Shipping to the KS fulfillment shippers. PoD proofs ordered.

Aeon Aexpansion – PDF and PoD versions on sale on Weds at DTRPG!

Geist 2e (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition) – Being printed.

Geist 2e Screen – Being printed.

DR:E – Being printed.

DRE Screen – Being printed.

DR:E Threat Guide – Helnau’s Guide to Wasteland Beasties – PoD proof on the way.

Trinity RMCs

Tales of Good Dogs – PoD proof ordered.

Memento Mori – Backer PDF going out to backers soon.

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

Today is the birthday of Wassily Kandinsky, a painter born in 1866 whose later paintings after WWI were completely abstract. Now most of our illustrations depict things rather than going for abstractions, but how they depict them stylistically, and why different people respond to the different approaches our illustrators use, is part of creating the moods inherent to our various game lines. There’s something else going on in our brains when we see art beyond just IDing that the piece looks like a thing, and Kandinsky was creating abstract art intended to evoke sound and meaning because he supposedly had a direct link to that part of the brain. According to popular thinking, he was one of those rare people who “hear color” and “see pictures” when he listening to music. There’s not really medical proof he indeed had synaesthesia, as it’s called, but he did recall hearing a strange hissing noise when mixing colours in his paintbox as a child, and later became an accomplished cello player, which he said represented one of the deepest blues of all instruments.

#Onyx Path Publishing

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audiogrizzly · 4 years

Text

Top 5 Games of 2019

It was a little tricky to construct a top 5 for this year, though there have been a couple of surprises. I wasn’t expecting the year to be a bit crap as we are no w on the cusp once more of a new generation. But 2012 wasn’t all that bad of a year (PS4 and Xbox One would release in 2013) and at the moment, everyone is doing alright. PS4 has sold through over 100 million systems, Nintendo are definitely on an “on” generation with Switch, Xbox has been able to get back into peoples good books with things like Game Pass (on both Console and PC, their PC side they seem to really be turning around), there’s even interesting things happening in the mobile space with Apple Arcade.

This won’t be the last year where my top 5 games are full of current gen titles, I am expecting the new systems to drop in around November, last time it was hard to find a top 5 specific to PS4 (as I listed each platform separately back then). It IS however, another list of mostly AAA tier games. If you want to know what smaller more “interesting” games I have been playing, check out my honourable mentions at the end.

Also, follow me on Melee. It’s this new image blogging service from Imgur which you can download now on the IOS App Store (its just on iPhone at the moment) and it has seemingly been built to help people share gaming related clips and images off of places like Twitter and Instagram (and err, here on Tumblr). I posted a couple of daft clips of me failing in Modern Warfare and Destiny 2 and it didn’t take long for them to amass a few likes and comments.

That sounded like a sponsored advert but ain’t nobody paying me for this. Let’s get into my top 5

5. Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order

I was about to select Gears 5 to be my number 5 until I saw sense and cast my memory back to when I started playing Jedi (all the way back in November. I was impressed by its intense action, impressive visuals and great characters. I especially enjoyed the 4 armed pilot who always complains. I did feel that towards the end I got sick of managing large groups of enemies so I dropped the difficulty to get through it, but I still haven’t achieved 100% of activities on all planets so I can still go back to it one day.

4. Borderlands 3

We all knew this was coming but not even I had any idea that we would have been actually playing it in 2019 way back at the start of the year. For me, I look at the game. I don’t care about weird magicians or their insane sounding legal woes, all I’m interested in is the work of a team who deserved better for their last title, but am still glad returned to what they do best, looting and shooting. I enjoyed rejoining these characters I have followed over the last 10 years, all the referenced to older games, cameos from characters from Tales From the Borderlands and The Pre Sequel and was sad to see some people go. I still have about a year of extra content to go through and I really appreciate the efforts they have made to make the game last longer than just one playthrough through in the Proving Grounds, Circle of Slaughter and Mayhem modes. Though I have always tended to stick to Borderlands games and create builds for each and every vault hunter, so I will be doing that.

3. Mortal Kombat 11

It’s been a while since I last put a fighting game into my end of year round up. And I HAVE fallen off MK11 a little bit, but this entry reminded me of how impressive it is for Nether Realms to pack their fighting games with some many things to do and keep people playing outside of just going into matchmaking and fighting others. The Vault this year is basically another little adventure full of exploration and puzzle solving and the Towers of Time give you plenty of challenge and direction of many months to come. You also have to give the developer credit for never backing down on the brutality of the game, they must have all got their heads together after DC Universe vs. and vowed never again to make watered down versions of Fatalities. It is a game that keeps getting better and better.

2. Call of Duty Modern Warfare

I was debating whether or not to include this years CoD. I always get the same type of enjoyment out of it each year, people complain that it never changes but I’m glad it sticks to a formula. Of course they are not identikit games, there are new maps, new modes, new ways of building your loadout and new touches, like how in this year you can snap to edges to stay in cover while you shoot, there’s the new special equipment system where you can drop ammo or reduce your footstep noise. Having doors you can either peek through or smash open adds another level of strategy, there have been times where I have been able to escape being under fire by closing a door, re-positioning and then wasting whoever just wanders in.

The campaign this year, good to see it back, but whatever, the co-op mode is Spec Ops again, like it was back in MW2 and 3 but on a much larger scale, I have yet to complete one of these btw. But as always, it’s the multiplayer that does it for me and Modern Warfare deserves credit for being what must be the first AAA game to feature cross platform play, not just launch with it. I know that games like Fortnite are popular, but I don’t see that as a AAA title, it doesn’t have the full package, it’s just a mode and it started off small. Call of Duty is expected to be big each year, has a lot riding on it and allowing for cross play is a big step. I especially appreciate being able to play with a keyboard and mouse on PS4 and being able to matchmake only with people playing with controllers on PC, in fact, I have never really given the game much of a shot on PC before as I know people just fall of it, there has often been low player numbers reported on the PC versions of CoD and it looks like it won’t have that problem this time round due to cross play.

Modern Warfare still has to contend with Destiny 2 and Overwatch for my time as my main multiplayer game but it’s still as fun as ever.

1. Control

Put this down as my main “surprise” game of 2019. A game which was not on my watch list, though I was aware of it as you can’t ignore a game from the makers of Max Payne (I did skip Alan Wake and didn’t care much for Quantum break though). Bought it at the last minute before its release, downloaded it and was wowed by the sinister nature of the environment you run around in. This weird fictitious US government agency which looks into paranormal activity which you seem to have become in charge of because you picked up a mysterious weapon from the deceased Director while searching for your brother. What then follows is about 12 hours of wacky powers and odd video clips as you unearth what has been going on in this strange ever morphing building.

I especially loved how the game never holds your hand too much, the map of each floor is vague enough that you also have to rely on in-game signposting to move around, as well as a bit of memory work. There is also great humour involved too in some of the PSA posters on a lot of the walls, the antics of the caretaker and the videos you find of Dr. Darling throughout the game.

I did have a few weird technical issues with the game throughout playing, but still found it to be visually pleasing, there was this weird hitch that used to appear after coming out of the pause screen that always threw me, it would be followed by a few moments of low performance before getting back into the smooth action. But this didn’t stop me from having a great time with Control. Perhaps the game that will be the most prominent in my head when I think of 2019.

So there you have it, control is my best game of 2019. But let’s look at the other new games I played throughout the year in my honourable mentions:

Gears 5

The Outer Worlds

Days Gone

Apex Legends

Far Cry New Dawn

Trover Saves the Universe

Concrete Genie

Devil May Cry 5

Tom Clancy's The Division 2

And also a special mention to these old games that were rereleased/remastered/repackaged etc in 2019:

Borderlands Game of the Year Edition Remastered

Halo Reach

And now, a look at the games I have on my watchlist for 2020:

Cyberpunk 2077

Last of Us Part 2

Ghost of Tsushima

Halo: Infinite

Watch Dogs Legion

Phantasy Star Online 2

Gods & Monsters

Doom Eternal

Overwatch 2

Diablo IV

Minecraft dungeons

Marvel's Avengers

Carrion

Streets of Rage 4

Will they all even come out? Let’s find out, happy new year!

#mortal kombat #modern warfare #control #star wars #melee #borderlands

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thomas60barnett-blog · 5 years

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Guedin Fan Game

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jeffybruce · 5 years

Photo

Chad Allen Ortiz

Doing these interviews has become an extraordinary experience for me! I will admit that in this Instagram world I am one of millions who is visually stimulated by it BUT I am also one of the few who actually reads those pesky hashtags and whatever the subject has to say. Many preach soapbox wisdom, as I call it, since they are too young to preach any worthwhile sage wisdom. How can they possibly know what awaits them with age? All in all, it’s always the luck of the draw with whom I hone in on; happily I seem to find a sampling of those who actually have more to say than just with their body.

Chad Allen Ortiz is sort of a jackpot for me since I only had an inkling of who he actually is and what exactly got him to this point in his life … oh, and he is a “sharer” which certainly does help me and tell you why and what you need to know about him. I’m impressed and gratified that I sensed something more from his images and even more behind the words he espouses on his Instagram account. My subjects turn out to be multifaceted personalities who actually live “beyond the image” and have actual goals that supersede perfect abs and biceps… I won’t continue the list but you get the idea.

So here is Chad in his own words telling us all about his past, present and future since he falls under the purview of being a “creative.” Hopefully, this will not be the last you hear from this multitasking goal oriented young man….

Jeffrey Felner: Can you give us a sort of brief resume as to how you arrived at your present professional situation?

Chad Allen Ortiz: I began my training as a dancer in Temecula, California. My instructor, who happens to be my brother, and connected me to my first modeling agency at 16. I booked multiple shows and as well as commercial and print jobs. When I was 20, I moved to Los Angeles and began as an apprentice for Nickerson - Rossi Dance under the direction of Michael Nickerson-Rossi. I was promoted to company dancer, then principal dancer, then to Educational Director of both NRD and the Palm Springs Dance Festival. Today, I am the Executive Director of NRD and of the International Dance Festival in Palm Springs.

I have taught dance at high schools, universities, worked with dance organizations such as the Princeton Ballet, New York Live Arts, Los Angeles Dance Festival, and Cape Cod Dance Festival... At present, I am in the process of developing the International Dance Festival, while also building numerous collaborations with magazines, blogs, and other marketing media.

YES!!! I still dance and continue to do so on a national and international level.

Simultaneously with my dance career, I reignited free-lance modeling in Los Angeles booking television commercials while working with startup fashion brands.

Lastly, I run my own branding and social marketing company known as Transparent Compositions; I am currently the Director of Development at the Institute of Dance Artistry. All these facets and aspects of my life build and support upon one another.

JF: Let’s speak of social media: do you believe that social media is an asset and why, do you think that social media has diluted the professional aspect of creatives and redefined celebrity? Explain

CAO: Yes… The issue in the past was visibility; the issue of the moment is saturation or sometimes over saturation. Social media is an asset, but not the ultimate solution. Personal connections are a must; you must be possess the skillset to back up how you present yourself especially within my professional sphere ... a hot body isn’t enough!

Social media offers a multitude of possibilities as to how one is perceived …“reality TV” or “real life.” All the lies, all the jealousy, or the slander that one might endure is a price you pay for ubiquity It is our job as artists to understand what people are actually interested in, while staying true to ourselves. It’s all a choice… a very personal one that depends on your individual goal/s.

I had to Google the word “celebrity” …which is simply defined as fame or well- known. That is exactly what people on social media are doing. Many so called “stars” of social media are becoming recognizable figures through relatable, engaging, seductive, or shocking content but to what end?

JF: If you could invite any 5 people to dinner who would they be and why?

CAO: Martha Graham - Founder of Modern Dance

Marlon Teixeria - Male Model

Steve Jobs - Apple founder

Benjamin Franklin - Founding Father

Oprah Winfrey – Media entrepreneur

To me, these people are larger than life. Whether in the field of dance, modeling, design, branding, or management... they all have found success in their lives and achieved multiple goals. I am inspired by their pioneering. I would appreciate their insight on how they approached life and business.

JF: Can you speak to what you do as an artist and what sets your work apart from so much of what we see on social media? Do you see a downside from “putting yourself out there” with regard to the preconceived notions that are drawn from what you present?

CAO: I am a jack of all trades and I use them to enhance one another. I model, dance, photograph, video, market, manage, direct, educate, choreograph, create, design, and so on and on. I enjoy mixing the skills creating beautiful works no matter the medium. I enjoy access to a vast assortment of creatives and search for the links between us, whether as creatives or as business colleagues. It all comes together at some point.

Downside to “putting yourself out there.” … I wouldn’t exactly say there’s a downside. What one needs to expect is that people are going to perceive you in their own personal way. You may have specific intent, but what really matters is what others get out of the experience. We are complicated creatures with different emotional responses to all situations. I suppose the “downside” would be that there are the vindictive and malicious who want to tear you down. No one can control how they perceive you. All I can do is show your best self, all I can do is know who I am and what my goal is … and focus on that. Listen, apply, test, review and move on in that pattern to see what works and what doesn’t.

JF: Lastly, let’s speak of Chad Ortiz 5 years from now; major projects or if you could choose anyone as a collaborator, who what would it be and why?

CAO: 5 years from now I will be have had more world traveling done professionally or leisurely. All I really want is to see the world. I have surrounded myself in career choices that will enable this goal. I see the International Dance Festival in Palm Springs as a vehicle towards that ultimate end. I have big visions and I am on the road to get there. It isn’t easy, but it will be rewarding.

FOR FULL IMAGES ... https://jeffybruce.blogspot.com/2019/06/meet-chad-allen-otiz-dancing-muti-tasker.html

Instagram - @chadallenortiz …. SPECIAL THANKS TO Frank Louis, Arhscana Images, Den Sweeney, Transparent Compositions, Andy Grant, Tommy Wu, Alex Budin Photography, Caff Photo, Brian Mengini, Naoyasu Mera Photography

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usabsportdevelopment-blog · 7 years

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Get Out of Your Usual Bubble

FUNdamental Skills - Postseason Series

By Darren Fenster / October 13, 3017

October 10 marked Opening Day for the 2017 edition of the Arizona Fall League, a “polishing-off school” of sorts for some of the game’s top prospects who are on the brink of the Major Leagues. The 32-game schedule allows for a select few players from the upper-level Minor Leaguers of all 30 MLB clubs to get just a few more at bats or innings before heading into the offseason. The AFL provides an incredible opportunity for development not just for those players fortunate enough to be selected to play, but also for the coaches chosen to coach. This fall, I have the privilege of being one of those coaches.

Six teams make up the circuit, each based out of various Spring Training facilities surrounding Phoenix, with players and staff from five different Major League organizations comprising each team’s roster. As a part of the Peoria Javelinas, our players from the Red Sox will be joined by those from the Padres, Mariners, Braves, and Blue Jays. And by nature of this unique setup, therein lies the awesome opportunity.

From the start of Spring Training in the middle of February to the end of the Minor League season in September, I live inside of the Red Sox bubble. Just about everything that we do over the course of the year comes at the direction of our coordinators and front office. As an organization, we are incredibly consistent in our daily approach that has helped develop countless Big Leaguers not just in Boston, but around the entire league. While we have a formula that we believe works, it’s a formula that always gets tweaked slightly from year to year; a formula that, no matter how good it may be, can always be better.

The Arizona Fall League offers me a rare chance to live outside of my usual baseball environment for a month and a half. While the players and coaches from the other four clubs who will make up our team in Peoria will get a glimpse into the way we do things with the Red Sox, we will equally get to see how those other four organizations go about their business. By the middle of November, as the league is finishing up, I am sure that I’ll have plenty to bring home with me that will help make our players and organization better, just as the guys from the other four organizations will feel the same.

This won’t be the first time I escape my usual bubble, and, based on similar experiences outside of my normal comfort zone, I sure hope it won’t be the last.

My coaching career began at Rutgers University, my alma mater, where I played for and later worked under American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA) Hall of Famer Fred Hill. He is the number one reason why I am a coach today, having seen something in me far before I was ready to see it in myself at the abrupt end of my playing career because of injury in 2006. At a time when I had a degree, but no plan B for my life, he literally created a position for me on his staff because he thought I would make a good coach. The rest, as they say, is history.

Fred Hill’s style of Rutgers baseball was all I knew. It’s what helped build me into the player I was back then, and more importantly, the person I am today. From swing mechanics to practice organization, accountability to discipline, work ethic to bunt defense, offensive philosophy to strength and conditioning, recruiting to coaching, upon the start of this second life of sorts in baseball, my approach and beliefs in the game really weren’t mine at all – they were his. Now, some 11-plus years into my own coaching career, it’s easy to see how much of my foundation with my own clubs is a direct result of my ten years with Coach Hill. But that’s much of my foundation, not all of it. The rest is a product of my time spent away from the only thing I knew…

The position that Coach Hill created for me back in the spring of 2006 was that of Director of Baseball Operations, one that was just beginning to make its way around to the bigger programs across the country. While I was on the Rutgers coaching staff, technically, by NCAA standards, I was not a coach, and was not permitted to be on the field, actually coaching players. I had a wide array of responsibilities, from helping our organizational recruiting efforts to compiling scouting reports, coordinating camps and their daily schedules to assisting in travel logistics. This position enabled me to learn everything it takes to run a college program from top to bottom, except one vital element: coaching. So, in an effort to get a uniform back on, and to see if this coaching thing was truly for me, I looked to hook on with one of the many collegiate summer league teams that played around the nation.

In the summer of 2007, fresh off a Big East Title at Rutgers, I shipped off to Minnesota, where I’d be an assistant with the St. Cloud River Bats of the Northwoods League. Head Coach Tony Arnerich, a former Minor League teammate of mine with the Royals who was an assistant at the University of California at the time, saw a good fit for me on his staff to work with infielders and hitters, while coaching first base. It was interesting for me to be a part of a team that didn’t bunt most times when the situation called for it, like we did at Rutgers. It was eye-opening to see how many different things went into the decision-making process over the course of a day, from setting the lineup to organizing the pregame schedule to using our in-game strategy, not to mention daily concerns including travel times, team meals, and hotel rooming lists.

I honestly had no idea how much responsibility fell on a head coach’s plate. That summer in St. Cloud made me realize how much more there was to coaching, than just coaching. Those two-plus months helped me learn how much I truly needed to learn.

A year later, I was off to the Cape Cod League as part of the Orleans Cardinals coaching staff, where longtime skipper Kelly Nicholson afforded me what is still to this day one of my biggest breaks and best opportunities to develop as a coach. He would have me make out the lineup every day, organize batting practice, coach third base, and run the in-game offense as I saw fit. For the first time in my coaching career, I had to think on my own two feet. He gave me responsibilities that I never had, and put me in a position to make decisions I previously never had to make.

With the perspective that almost ten years offers, I can honestly say that it was during that summer in Orleans when my coaching career truly took off. That time spent with Kelly as a mentor along with the duties he put on my plate helped me grow more than I could have ever hoped, and helped prepare me for the day when I would be promoted to an assistant, on-field coach at Rutgers and later, as a hitting instructor and manager in professional baseball.

Having just completed my fifth year as a Minor League manager with the Red Sox, I have my own personal pillars and beliefs that I have seen first-hand yield some incredible results both on the individual and team levels. But over the next month and a half out in Arizona, being surrounded by those from four other organizations, I am excited to learn from them new ways to make those pillars and beliefs even better.

Comfort is one of the biggest obstacles to growth. Get out that comfortable bubble of yours… because that’s where our personal development truly lies.

For more resources, check out these links: USA Baseball Mobile Coach Amateur Resource Center Online Education Center Coaching Resources

Darren Fenster is a contributor to the USA Baseball Sport Development Blog, and is currently the Manager of the Boston Red Sox Class A Affiliate Greenville Drive. A former player in the Kansas City Royals minor league system, Fenster joined the Red Sox organization in 2012 after filling various roles on the Rutgers University Baseball staff, where he was a two-time All-American for the Scarlet Knights. Fenster is also Founder and CEO of Coaching Your Kids, LLC, and can be found on Twitter @CoachYourKids.

#FUNdamentalSkills #DarrenFenster #Coaches

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sunshinelulusplatoon · 7 years

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(So I’ve been on and off about this but I’m going to do this because I’ve found a love for this character and I can do what I want because it’s my blog. What do I mean? Well, simply put, I”m bring Athena Entra back from the grave? How well, you will just have to read this then. For now, give me a few to get her profile up and she will be open to ask and RP’s if you so choose.)

The Past to Complete the Future

“Sako! What the hell did you do??”

“How the hell should I know? The prototype test all came out positive! Nothing should have gone wrong”

“Well we are out of power and the warning systems are going off for something so you must have calculated something wrong!”

“Well get the fucking power back one so we can get this figured out instead of yelling at me!”

“We are you damn fool!”

Lulu and Kane were returning home from playing turf wars all morning as both of their stomachs growled for food as they got inside their family dome in Octo Valley. “Hmmm, the leftover soup Grandpa made yesterday or the chili from Tuesday?” Lulu questioned. “Chili! It’s still pretty cold and a nice warm bowl of it sounds pretty nice right now, hehe,” Kane chuckled. “Chili it is then,” Lulu replied chuckling with Kane. Coming down the hill, the house was in view as the siblings walked up on the porch but then stopped abruptly. Rustling of papers and footsteps could be heard inside the house which confused the two as nobody should have been home at the time. “I thought Mom and Gramps said they wouldn’t be home for lunch today,” Kane questioned in a whisper. “I thought so too and the door is still locked,” Lulu whispered back as she slowly opened the panel on the side to type the code in and place her key in to unlock the sliding door. “It’s not Zappy is it?” Kane questioned. “No, he doesn’t make that loud of noise if he is in things,” Lulu replies as she slowly opens the sliding door.

Peaking in, two looked around before spotting someone near the music cabinet by the TV. From behind, it looked to be an female octoling with long pale yellow tentacles and blue rings around her suckers; indicating she was a blue ring octopus. Rustling again through something, it turned out the octoling was looking through one of the many binders Octavio kept in the cabinet. “That’s where Gramps keeps all his documentations right?” Kane whispered as the two slowly walked into the house, trying not to make a sound to startle the intruder. “Yeah. Valley, work, any of it,” Lulu replied. “Who do you think they are?” Kane whispered. “No idea right now but be on your guard incase anything happens,” Lulu replied.

Getting close as they could, the siblings held their turf wars guns up before Lulu spoke up. “HEY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING AND HOW DID YOU GET IN HERE?” Lulu called out. Jumping in fright the octoling turned around to be a young octoling slightly taller than Lulu with blue eyes and pale skin. She wore a light blue sun dress and just seemed confused about something. “PLEASE DON’T SHOOT! WHO ARE YOU? WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY HOUSE?” the octoling questioned in panic, seeing the guns. “I think we should be asking you that question!” Kane remarked, about to walk forward when Lulu stuck a tentacle out to block him. “Wait,” Lulu spoke; Kane looking at her funny. “What do you mean wait? She’s obviously delusional and an intruder,” Kane questioned. “Kane…I don’t think so…” Lulu replied before lowering her gun and walking up to her. Looking her over, Lulu recognized this octoling. At least from photos that hung on the walls of the house.

“You’re…You’re Athena…aren’t you?” Lulu asked, realization on her face. The octoling looked puzzled at Lulu. “Yes..,” the octoling replied confused as she looked Lulu over before pointing to the pictures hanging on the wall and asking, “Are…are you the one in these photos? The one with my husband?” Lulu nodded. “Who…who are you?” the octoling questioned. “My name is Lulu. Lulu Helia Entra and that man there, your husband as you say, is our grandpa,” Lulu replied, pointing to Kane and herself. The octoling just shook her head in confusion. “Grandpa? What do you mean? Precious is only 10! What is going on here? Why is the house different? Who are you two and where is my husband?” the octoling questioned, panicking and about to cry. “Lulu is this really Grandma Athena,” Kane questioned. “I think so…I recognize her from Grandpa’s photos. Like that one hanging right there,” Lulu replied, pointing to the picture on the wall, one of the same octoling standing in front of them. “Holy cod….but how?” Kane questioned confused, “I thought Gramps said she was dead!” “DEAD?? WHAT DO YOU MEAN DEAD???” the octoling replied shocked and tears down her face. “Woah. Shoo! It’s okay,” Lulu remarked, coming up to the octoling and rubbing her hands in comfort. The octoling was startled at first but seemed to warm up some to Lulu’s presence. “I don’t understand what’s going on. One minute I’m in bed for the night and then the next I wake up and my house is different. Everything is different. I thought I could find answers in my husband’s paperwork but it’s all confusing. Dates are different. Things I don’t know. How? And what does he mean that I’m dead?” the octoling questioned. “I don’t know how but I do know this. If you are our Grandma Athena…then you have been dead and gone for almost 40 years,” Lulu replied, watching the shock overwhelm the octoling’s face.

An hour passed as the three took a seat in the kitchen with the octoling recounted what she knew as Lulu tried to explain everything to her in the last 40 years. “I never would have thought they would have been so hard on each other. And for you to suffer for it. Oh Lulu, I’m so sorry!” Athena stated, trying to wipe tears away. It seemed Athena was taking well what Kane and Lulu had explained to her but some events where hard for her to take in. Moving over to comfort her, Lulu rubbed her grandmother’s back before replying, “Hey it’s okay. Mom and Grandpa are fine now and everything and everybody is doing great. The valley is repaired and life is going great. It’s okay.” “Still Lulu. Where did she come from if she is supposed to be dead?” Kane questioned, holding a tissue out for Athena. “I don’t know. Fact is she doesn’t know what happen after she went to sleep that night but I do know that it started to rain like Grandpa had told me before, turning into a freak thunder storm. Such a heavy weather and temperature switch, she got sick which lead to her death and the rift between Grandpa and Mom,” Lulu replied. “Maybe some time anomaly of some sort?” Kane suggested. “Maybe. Probably would explain why she doesn’t know what happen but how?” Lulu replied. Looking at each other, the siblings sighed as the woman blew into the tissue.

Just then there was a knock on the front door. Getting up, Lulu walked over to it and opened it to see Sako with an energy reader in one of his tentacles. “Afternoon Lulu,” Sako stated. “Afternoon Sako. What brings you here?” Lulu asked. “Business! Tell me Lulu, do you have company?” Surprised, Lulu replied, “Sort of…why do you ask?” “Well, I was doing an experiment up at the space station when our systems when down. The alarm system went on and tracking the data and energy, we found an anomaly which I have tracked to here,” Sako replied. Before Lulu could say anything, Athena walked up and stated, “Sako, is that you? My you grew a mustache out since the last time I saw you.” Startled and in shock, Sako was lost for words. “Que…Queen Athena?? How?? It couldn’t be! Could it? Yes! Yes! So the data was correct. Interesting! Quite interesting indeed! Hohoho! What an interesting achievement!” Sako boasted. “Sako, what are you talking about? Do you know why Grandma Athena is here when last I checked she was dead?” Lulu questioned. “That I do! Do you mind if I come in?” Sako asked.

Letting him in, they all took a seat on the couches by the TV. “Now then. Lulu do you remember the last time we talked and I said was working on a project for our space technology?” Sako asked. “Yeah. It was something about a more powerful machine to detect and collect images from further reaches of space than our telescopes now could reach. What does that have to deal with this?” Lulu replied. “Everything actually! About a few weeks ago, I got a prototype working and had tested it and found positive results. I was collecting images somewhat farther than anything we had collected before so I got the approval from your grandfather and my boss to make a full on scale version. Having finished it yesterday, we moved to the space station and hooked it up. Now for understanding purposes, this was how it was suppose to work and how it did with the prototype. What it was supposed to do was create a type of worm hole that would decrease the distance between our position and the position that we were aiming for to take pictures to our liking. Now to do this I had to borrow technology from our multiple dimensional portals which we use to create said worm holes to cut through the dimensions of other universes,” Sako explained. “The ones part of our phones now right?” Lulu asked. “Correct. Using the technology would give enough of a power source and kinetic energy needed to create the said worm hole. Now when we hooked up the machine to the system in the space station I had calculated values needed to equate to the values of the prototype. Except…I made a few errors. Errors that resulted in not only overload the system and knocking the power out in the station for over 10 minutes from such a power overload but did not make a worm hole but some type of time portal. Now remember, this was supposed to take images from a far off distance that would not have reached us for some time. Like the images of the KR-5 nebula that we discovered back in January. Instead it took something from a distance in time. An image of the past. But because of the errors I had made, instead of an image, there was enough energy to made a copy of what it was looking at and bring it here to our time, causing our systems to go on alarm because of this strange anomaly. Which we know now is the Athena that is sitting here with us.”

“So, has this effected time in some way?” Lulu questioned. “Has it effected the past? No. I think of all people, you would know that if your past had changed any should she have been pulled out of her time. No, instead, she is more of a segment taking from herself from the past and brought here to the future,” Sako stated. “So the machine grabbed her while she was asleep and in a way, brought her here to the future while still leaving her in the past?” Lulu questioned kind of confused in all this. “In a sense, yes and as data has shown, this hasn’t caused an effect on anything. Which is a good thing,” Sako explained. “But is she like here to stay? Or is she going to disappear any time soon?” Kane asked. “From what the energy reader has taken, her body and energy waves are stable. If anything was to happen to her, there would have be an imbalance in either her or the energy of our universe, neither which is showing up on the reader nor back at the station. So I think she is here to stay. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing. It’s not like two of her are running around causing time distortions and the valley has seen stranger things so I doubt her returning presence would cause any major commotion. Tell me Lulu, how is that balloon friend of yours doing?” Sako said. “Donny is doing fine Sako. Thanks for asking,” Lulu replied in a dry and annoyed tone at Sako’s notion of Donbalon. “Good, good. Well, this will definitely go down in the records. And with that, I suppose I will take my leave. I assume you will explain this all to your grandfather for me when he goes home, yes?” Sako stated as he got up from the cough. “Yeah, but what about the machine?” Kane questioned. “Fried for now and probably going to stay that way. Although in a smaller size it has achievable results, I don’t want to take the risk again of trying to make a full scale model, should I get the numbers wrong again. We got lucky this time and only Queen Ahtena’s revival being the end result of said error,” Sako replied.

Walking Sako out, the three waved him goodbye as Sako left them on the porch and headed out of the dome. Back inside the house, the three looked at each other, not sure what to say. “Well…I guess I’m here to stay,” Athena finally spoke. “Guess so,” Lulu replied, “And I guess we have a lot of catching up to do.” “I guess so. Perhaps over some lunch I guess,” Athena stated. “Yes, please! I’m starving!” Kane remarked; Lulu and Athena giggling. Settling down for the rest of the afternoon, the three talked over enjoying left over chili as Athena got to know her grandchildren. The siblings found their grandmother to be quite sweet and endearing as she laughed and listened to them talk about their lives and adventures together as they came into contact with each other and became one family. Athena talked about the past, telling her grandchildren her times singing and how she came here from the states. As evening started to set in, Lulu searched for some of Athena’s old clothes to change into after her bath in the dresser in the bedroom; stuff Octavio couldn’t bear to throw out and instead kept safe in the dresser. “I know Grandpa is going to flip when he sees you but I know he’s going to be really happy too,” Lulu remarked, rubbing in her aloe for her tentacles as her grandmother washed herself. “How is he? Still the old samurai I married?” Athena asked. “If you mean stubborn in his ways but still lovable than yes and then some,” Lulu joked. Giggling, Athena replied, “That sounds like him. From the photos he doesn’t seem like he has aged much. That’s the X-trace for yah.” “True. He still holds up like bear and fights like a samurai,” Lulu giggled.

Once done, the two went to work on dinner as Kane took his own bath. Taking the leftover vegetable soup out of the fridge, they decided to make it into a beef stew as the cooked the beef in the crock pot while heating the soup and then pouring it in with the beef to let it sit and cook. As they sat in the kitchen as Kane came out of the bathroom, noise from the front door could be heard. “That’s them. Grandma, hide in the laundry room till we tell yah,” Lulu spoke. Nodding, Athena took to the laundry room next to the kitchen and hid in one of the corners out of sight. As the door open, a tired Octavio and Precious walked in. “See why I don’t deal with dealers in Inkopolis?” Octavio spoke. “Ugh, I have never met a more ridiculous dealer in my life. Never again!” Precious replied. “Hi Grandpa!” Lulu spoke. “Hi Mom!” Kane stated. “Evening you two. Hope your day was more enjoyable then ours,” Octavio spoke. “Ugh, what I would give for a drink right now,” Precious moaned as both of them took a seat at the table in the kitchen. “It’s been…interesting. Has Sako told either of you anything?” Lulu asked. “Other than just telling me not to worry about the alarm system and that they have it covered, no. Why?” Octavio questioned. “Well, because we kind of need to talk about that,” Kane replied. “Hmmm? Kane did something happen today while we were gone?” Precious questioned. “Sort of Mom. Nothing bad but it pertains to all of us,” Kane replied. Confused, Octavio asked, “Lulu, baby girl, what is going on?” “A blast from the past Grandpa. One that is here to stay and one I think both of you will be very happy to see again,” Lulu replied with a smile. Looking at each other then back at Lulu and Kane, Octavio and Precious were confused. “You can come out now Grandma,” Lulu called out, confusing Octavio and Precious even more until shock fell on their faces when Athena walked out of the laundry room. Things went silent as the two got up and walked over to her, not sure if what they were seeing was true. “Hi Vio. Hey Funny Bean, did you two miss me?” Athena said, hold arms out. “Mom? Mom is that really you?” Precious questioned before grabbing onto her and holding her mother tight. “It’s me Funny Bean. Oh, how much you have grown. I’m sorry for being gone so long,” Athena stated, holding her daughter close. “Mama, I should be the one saying sorry. I’m the one that wasn’t there when you needed me. I’m sorry Mama!” Precious whimpered, tears now rolling down her face. “It’s okay sweetheart. It’s okay. Mama’s here now,” Athena replied. Finally letting go, the two women looked at Octavio, who was still in shock, just standing there. Walking over to him, Athena grabbed his hand and gave it a soft kiss. “Hey. It’s me. You’re not seeing things you old samurai. I’m here. I’m sorry for leaving you alone for so long. Can you forgive me?” Tears rolling down his face, feeling the warm of Athena’s fingers on his hand, Octavio scooped her up and spinning her around before kissing her. Holding her close, his knees hit the ground before loud sobbing could be heard from him. Not letting her go, Athena nuzzled into Octavio shoulder, entwining her fingers in his tentacles as Precious watched, tears still her face. From the bracing from the kitchen to the living room, Lulu and Kane stood before looking at each other and giving a fist bump.

After getting Octavio and Precious to calm down, Kane and Lulu explained everything over dinner. “Mom you have a lot of catching up to do. So much has changed. So much advancement. Including the medical field. There are probably better medications for you now,” Precious stated. “I know sweetie. But it will be an interesting experience,” Athena replied. “Honey, how are you handling all this? It’s a different time than what you know,” Octavio asked concerned for his wife now alive again. “I’ll be okay. It’s strange but I’ll get through it. I’m not alone and I have new family now to help me through things,” Athena replied, Kane and Lulu smiling at her remark. Finishing dinner, the family sat down in the living room to chat and figure out how they wanted to go about things in the morning. They knew it was best for the valley to find out sooner than later about their late queen returning from the dead so to speak. Figuring it best to give an announcement in the morning, the family retired to bed early. Having less and less troubles with her nightmares, Lulu took to her own bedroom for the night as she had been for a while as Athena took to bed with her husband and Precious and Kane went to their new rooms downstairs.

In the morning it was like trying to fight a bear for Athena to get out of Octavio’s sleeping grip. Starting breakfast but not use to the pans having Teflon on them, she almost threw the eggs off the pan when she realized they weren’t sticking to it. The smell of breakfast woke Lulu up as she walked in the Kitchen and proceeded to help her grandma out before she set something on fire. In time the others got up with Kane and Lulu trying to comfort Octavio and Precious from their thoughts that what happened yesterday was just a dream. Breakfast finished and ate; everybody got dressed in formal attire to have the meeting and announcement done. “Oh Lulu, you look in my robes. Fitting for a future queen,” Athena cooed. “Thanks Grandma,” Lulu chuckled sheepishly. With everybody ready, the family left the house and arrived at the palace mostly unnoticed till Octavio gave word of the meeting and the announcement of the returning queen. As Octo Valley watched from their TV’s, most were quite shocked about what happen with Athena’s return. But as the day went on, most settled in on the return of their late queen and were happy to see her again as most knew this needed to stay quite from outside eyes of Octo Valley. Cuttlefish, who as word got to him, came down and welcomed an old friend back with warm arms with his granddaughters to let them meet Athena. As days passed things just went back into place and routine as Athena got use to things. Greeting the whole family in the morning with breakfast, she gave goodbyes for the day to her husband and daughter as they left for work and would either help Lulu and Kane with their studies as they stayed home for the day or give them goodbyes as well as they left to practice and play turf wars till lunch time. Her day spent doing what most mothers do. Clean the house for the family, organize Octavio and Lulu’s music equipment and music sheets from Octavio’s unorganized chaos of a music room, wash clothes and dishes, tend to the crops, and other small chores while taking her own time to work on her singing again. As Athena found out, Precious was right and better medications were out there for her. She became less sickly than what she once was and having more energy now, liked to go out and about more with her family and enjoy time with them. Nobody minded as Lulu and Kane got to more about their grandmother and found someone else to play with them with their video games. She also became someone else to stand up for them besides their mother about playing turf wars and Precious didn’t have to complain anymore about the messy house. Octavio was probably the most content out of all of them as he had his family completely whole again. In all, the Entra family was happy as the future seemed bright for them as one mistake brought a part of the past back to them.

#sunshinelulu #Story #New character

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hacktagmedia · 6 years

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Did Stephen King’s Son Just Solve a 44-Year-Old Murder Mystery?

What do Jaws and an infamous cold case have in common? Bestselling author Joe Hill presents a theory linking two events that took place in 1974 Cape Cod.

In 2015, Joe Hillstrom King sat in a New Hampshire movie theater with his three teenage sons, stoked to see a special 40th anniversary screening of Jaws, his all-time favorite film, for the first time on the big screen as it was intended. Better known by his pen name Joe Hill, the comic book and horror-thriller writer—and son of Stephen King—watched with rapture. But 54 minutes in, he leapt out of his seat, his arms prickled with goosebumps and his heart pounding, at a scene that startled him for the first time despite the many times he had watched the movie.

It wasn’t your typical jump-scare, no image of a hungry Great White Shark attacking a beachgoer. Instead, it was a scene in which a crowd boards a ferry on the Fourth of July, a seemingly innocuous moment in Steven Spielberg’s iconic masterpiece. In the shot, a female extra wearing a blue bandana over her auburn hair caught Hill’s attention. She was “almost a twin of the figure” in a forensic recreation image he recently saw of the Lady of the Dunes, the still-unidentified murder victim discovered in Provincetown in 1974—the very same year Jaws was filmed on nearby Martha’s Vineyard.

Joe Hill.

“The movie and the murder overlap geographically and chronologically,” Hill tells Esquire.com. “Allowing for the possibility that the Lady of the Dunes was in the right place at the right time—or, rather, the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Hill first developed a macabre fascination with the Lady of the Dunes after reading about her death in Deborah Halber’s 2014 book, The Skeleton Crew: How Amateur Sleuths Are Solving America’s Coldest Cases, whichdetails the modern phenomenon of citizens using Internet resources to identify unidentified human remains.

Thought to be in her mid-20s to -30s, the Lady of the Dunes was discovered on July 26, 1974, about a mile east of the Race Point Ranger Station on the northern tip of Cape Cod. The nude, decomposing body was discovered by a 13-year-old girl who was walking her beagle in the dunes; the woman was estimated to have been deceased for up to three weeks.

Her long, reddish-brown hair was pulled back in a glittery hair-tie, and she had seven gold crowns in her mouth that were worth thousands of dollars. Her hands were cut off and missing, presumably so she couldn’t be identified through fingerprints. Her skull was crushed, she was nearly decapitated, and her body was lying on a beach towel “as if she’d been sharing it with a companion,” according to the Provincetown Police Department.

Her head rested on folded Wrangler jeans and a blue bandana—very similar to the outfit worn by the extra in the ferry scene from Jaws.

Left: an image, taken from Joe Hill’s blog, of the female extra in Jaws; right: a 2010 composite sketch of the Lady of the Dunes.

After the immediate shock, Hill sat back down in his seat, his pulse returning to normal. “I was like, ‘No way,'” he recalls of his disbelief. “I have the kind of imagination that churns out ghost stories almost automatically. I’ve just done it so much that I told myself, ‘You’re telling yourself a ghost story!'”

Still, he couldn’t get the woman from Jaws—her blue bandana, her auburn hair—out of his head. When he got home, he rewatched the movie on his laptop, thumbing through the ferry scene frame by frame. He told friends about his theory, including a buddy who works for the FBI, who said it “was interesting, and [that] sometimes very cold cases have been caught by stranger ideas.”

“I thought there really might be something there,” says Hill. “[So I did] what any sane person would do: I put it on the Internet!'”

He described the idea in a Tumblr post, noting the similarities between the Lady in the Dunes and the extra from Jaws:

Blue bandana. About 30. Fit, 145 pounds. I don’t believe those are Wrangler jeans, but a lady presumably owns more than one pair of jeans.

I admit its pretty goddamn wild speculation. And yet… And yet. Let’s go a little further down this very dim, very narrow alley of fantastic conjecture. It is impossible to say with complete precision when they filmed the “July 4th – Crowd Arrives” sequence, which is where this shot appears. But we know it was almost certainly shot in June, because they filmed all the “on island” scenes they could early. The water was too cold for swimming, and the malfunctioning shark wasn’t ready for the “at sea” material until late July. We also know the Lady of the Dunes was alive in June and that the filming of JAWS was a big deal locally. Lots of folks turned up to try and get a peek at the stars, or the shark, or to see if they could sneak into a shot.

He included the caveat that he literally makes up stories for a living (Hill’s most recent book, Strange Weather, is a collection of four short chilling novels).

I am under no illusions about the situation here. I was watching Jaws, under the influence of The Skeleton Crew, and my subconscious invented an exciting little story about the Lady of the Dunes on the spot. It was so good, I persuaded myself it might be true.

It IS a helluva what-if, isn’t it? What if the young murder victim no one has ever been able to identify has been seen by hundreds of millions of people in a beloved summer classic and they didn’t even know they were looking at her? What if the ghost of the Lady of the Dunes haunts Jaws?

Hill’s theory went viral this summer after it was featured on Wondery’s Inside Jaws, a podcast devoted to Steven Spielberg’s journey from inexperienced director to influential filmmaker. And it’s not the first time his idea has been picked up. In 2015, VICE published an article about it, and Hill even told the publication he received offers from other amateur sleuths to search for payroll records for Jaws extras and to hunt down data that could help solve the mystery.

Three years ago, a writer from Entertainment Weekly took interest, offering to help track down the name of the extra, which—if she were alive—could disprove Hill’s wild theory. Hill claims a Universal Studios archivist told the writer they couldn’t find the extra’s name; Shari Rhodes, the casting director for Jaws, died in 2009.

Facial reconstruction images created by forensic experts. Courtesy National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

Hill never went directly to the police with his idea; he feels “silly,” he says, about the possibility of wasting an officer’s time. Provincetown Police have not returned Esquire.com’s request for comment at the time of publication. According to their website, however, the body of the Lady in the Dunes was exhumed in 2000 in “an attempt to confirm her identity.” In May of 2010, a new composite was created using state of the art technology and computer analyses.

According to a 2014 Boston Globe article, detectives have consulted dentists and psychics in an attempt to solve the case. They’ve also used “ground-penetrating radar” and made a plaster reconstruction of her face.

“I have the kind of imagination that churns out ghost stories almost automatically,” Joe Hill says. “I’ve just done it so much that I told myself, ‘You’re telling yourself a ghost story!'”

“How does someone end up here, of all places, not to be identified for 40 years?” Detective Meredith K. Lobur of the Provincetown Police Department, the lead investigator on the case, told the publication. “She’s always some part of my day… Some murders are never solved. I refuse to believe this is one of them.”

Lobur works on the case on her days off, according to the Globe, and is convinced that the killer will be found when the victim is identified.

“I know there’s a murderer out there somewhere loose,” retired Acting Chief Warren Tobias, who led the search for 22 years, told the paper. “There’s a family out there that needs closure.”

Joe Hill has been a Jaws fan since he was a kid. Courtesy Joe Hill

Meanwhile, Hill recognizes that his theory is a fantastical one, and “there’s probably nothing” to the connection between the unknown murder victim and the unknown Jaws extra. “But at the same time,” he says, “two incredible things happened in the area of Cape Cod in the of summer 1974. One, a woman was killed. The other was that Jaws was filmed and became the summer film to define all other summer films. It’s not that hard to believe that a person in the area of Provincetown might have scooted off to Martha’s Vineyard… to see all the movie stars [and wound up being an extra].

“My subconscious kind of spun up this possibility,” he continues. “If nothing else, it’s a pretty good little ghost story.”

Hill says his father, the master of horror and suspense, also thinks the story is a powerful one. “He always enjoys puzzling over a bizarre bit of Americana,” says Hill. “Old, unresolved stories [is] something of a family hobby.”

At the very least, Hill hopes bringing attention to the case might lead to more clues—or encourage someone with information to talk.

“A woman died and she’s never been identified,” he says. “She’s someone’s daughter—you have to hope sooner or later there will be a resolution. But I keep wondering how come that woman [in Jaws], if she’s [not the Lady in the Dunes]… Why hasn’t she—or someone that knows her—come forward to say, ‘This is me’?”

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marcusssanderson · 6 years

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The Productivity Hack That’s Been Changing My Life

Looking for ways to improve your productivity? Read on to discover a productivity secret that can change your life.

Late last year I went to lunch with one of my closest mentors – a back-end programming consultant who, as a freelancer, has averaged $800,000 – 1.3 million in annual revenue over the past four years.

The best way to improve your productivity

We were halfway through lunch when the topic of productivity re-emerged (it’s a topic that him and I, both being extremely busy, frequently discuss). In between bites of his thyme roasted cod, he told me about an extremely simple productivity hack that’s been really making a difference in his life since he started doing it four weeks ago.

When I heard the idea, I was immediately stricken. “Wow, that’s so simple, why didn’t I think of that?” I exclaimed. Agreeing, he added that it’s something everybody should be doing.

We continued the meal, but the “hack” was still on my mind. I was excited. I couldn’t wait to get home and start doing it. I knew it would make a difference; I was energized.

How This Method Is Necessary

Imagine having a visual time machine of your days to see what you accomplished and where you’ve been slacking. Imagine the iterative progress you could make if you could look at patterns in your day and learn where you could be taking more action and realigning focus.

The average person gets 3 hours of actual work done each day. In the UK for example, this average has been recorded as being 2 hours and 53-minutes. When you think about it, this is a shockingly low amount.

Put a different way, the average person spends only 12.5% of his day being productive.

Of course, there are many reasons for this, but one of the most major ones is that most people don’t make efforts to be reflective. Most people don’t look at why what they’re doing may be misguided, and especially, where they’re making mistakes.

This method changes that. It forces the user to address his weaknesses and his faults, and makes him see where there’s not just a little, but massive room for improvement.

Best of all, it’s free, quick, and easy.

The Actual Method

Open up a spreadsheet. It could be Microsoft Excel, it could be Apple Numbers, it could be Google Sheets.

Create 4 columns.

Title the first column, “Date.” Make this column a different color from the rest. I prefer a light grey.

Title the second column, “Task.”

Title the third column, “Classification.” The items in this column will be color-coded general categories for sorting where your focus is going.

Title the final column, “Notes on time (minutes).”

You: “Wow that’s shockingly simple, this seems unsophisticated.”

Me: “Yes, and yes. Bet let’s let the results be the judge of whether or not it’s worth it.”

The Results

Like I said, the results will be the ultimate judge of whether or not this is a worthwhile time and energy investment for you.

If you were being productive for only 4 hours each day and you could increase that number to an average of 7 (without getting burned out, of course), would this be a worthwhile investment? If, for example, you could add 15 extra hours of productivity to your life each week, 60 in a month, 870 in a year, would it be worth it?

What if your productivity didn’t increase, but you saw that you were misaligning your focuses. If you could shift your focus to tasks that make you more money and more align with your long-term goals, would that be worth it?

Yes. It would definitely be worth it.

Let’s look at when I started my list to see how it helped me and how it made a difference in my work life.

Here are my first two days:

I had lunch with my mentor friend on Friday, the 27th and, excitedly, started this list the very next day.

Like I do every day, I studied Spanish, which I’ve been teaching myself with Duolingo, I sent out a press building e-mail using the service, Help A Reporter (great tool for SEO and expert development; totally worth checking out), and I did a lot of general correspondence via e-mail.

In terms of tasks I do each day, my next day looked roughly the same: ~50 minutes spent on habits, ~2 hours spent on correspondence, and other time dedicated to other tasks.

I waited two days to look at this list because I wanted to have a larger sample size for analyzation and optimization than just one day. When I took an extended look and thought about what I had done (or more accurately, what I hadn’t), I was astonished and disappointed.

I had been meaning to follow up with some sales leads who had been inquiring about search engine optimization. Over the course of these two days, I didn’t do this, despite it being a priority.

Instead, I spent way too much time on e-mails. Way too much.

In addition to following up with SEO leads, I also wanted to start on this short article. I didn’t even touch that on my first day, and on the second, when I did, I hardly gave it any time. I should have researched it and produced the first draft. I didn’t.

I looked at my behaviors and reflected on them. Like most other people, I had been spending too much time answering e-mails. My behavior with my friend, Nate, whose half-feature-length video I’m an associate producer on, was good. The time I was spending on my daily habits was good. Everything else, however, was lacking.

The next day I was resolved to make a change:

Bam! That’s results right there. I saw a problem and I fixed it immediately.

I followed up with my immediate leads, and I minimized time spent on e-mail, something most people need to do.

While my actual productivity time decreased, the value I was creating was way more than the first two days. I confronted a serious issue and was realigning my focus.

How about after a few months? How much did my focus increase? Was I spending more time being productive? Did I resort back to my old ways? Let’s find out.

Here’s a random day in March:

After having a month worth of days to look at, I was able to notice a lot of habits. I needed to cut back on e-mail, and I needed to spend more time on the tasks that were directly making me money- I was spending too much time on long-term vision tasks and neglecting the immediate future to a point I was uncomfortable with.

I was averaging 3-4 hours of actual productivity/day, and I was unsatisfied with that amount. I reflected on this and realized that I got more done when I start my day with habits, save e-mails for last, take a day off each week, and take more efficient breaks (effective relaxation is a whole other subject!).

As you can see in the above screenshot, my focus became sharper and I wasn’t wasting as much time with e-mail. I’ve successfully been keeping up my daily habits and, most importantly, my productive time has increased greatly, from an average of 220-minutes (3.6 hours) in November to 365-minutes (6.1 hours) in March.

What Not to Include

“Wow this is great, I’m going to start immediately! Do I record everything productive or just certain tasks?”

Great question. My general rule of thumb is to not include relaxation oriented activities. All work and no play make Jack a dull boy, but Jack shouldn’t include his play activities in his productivity list.

I meditate and go to the gym every day. Doing these activities adds to my bottom line by improving my focus, health, and happiness. However, these are activities that I do for their positive mental effects. They’re relaxation oriented and not as much action/output oriented. I don’t include them.

“How about learning? If I begin reading a book in order to become better in my field, should I count that?” Absolutely- reading or watching videos to improve your craft isn’t only a mental/physical/relaxation exercise.

When to Record

“When do I record my tasks?” Right after you do them. There’s no better way. It also helps general positivity to space out work and to switch tasks in your mind. Going immediately from task to task or focusing on several at once can be very ineffective.

What Do I Do with the Results?

Look at them every few days. Think about them. Reflect on them deeply.

I’m going to restate this, because without this final step, the method won’t be very effective. Reflect on your results.

Look for patterns. Confront yourself when it comes to work you’re not doing. Confront yourself about how you’re not spending enough time working and how you’re spending too much time browsing Instagram. Confront yourself if your focus needs to be realigned. Be like Steve jobs and go for a walk to rewire your brain.

Go for a quiet walk and reflect.

By frequently confronting yourself and making an effort to slowly make change, you’ll be a lot more productive and you’ll be productive in the areas that count.

Conclusion

As I left lunch with my mentor, belly full of fine Manhattan fare, I felt invigorated. Not just because this particular mentor is among the greatest people I know, but because I knew that what I was going to accomplish over the next few months from this method was going to be unlike anything I had been doing in the previous months.

I was dedicated to changing my ways and becoming more focused and productive than most people would dream to be.

Since starting this spreadsheet, I’ve put a great effort into both working hard and relaxing effectively. I spend a lot of time reflecting on what I’m doing and, when necessary, I’m willing to confront myself about hard truths. I dedicate a lot of my current success to doing this, and to having this list of tasks that I complete each day.

I very much hope you’ll try it!

Do you have any questions for me? Anything about the method that you need answered? Do you want to talk to me about anything else? I’d love to hear from you! Speak your mind in the comments below, and we can start an awesome conversation.

The post The Productivity Hack That’s Been Changing My Life appeared first on Everyday Power Blog.

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