#a few of these are older than others (like how the whole headshot page is from today while the headshot next to it is from a few months ago)

[funkinmadnesss]

Random notebook doodles :] trying to get better about filling pages when it comes to traditional and I'm definitely liking how this notebook is going so far <3 I might post a few others but for now, the favorites

#spiderman #spider man #tssm #tssm quentin beck #tssm mysterio #mysterio #quentin beck #Earth-4918: Humming-spider #rufioarts #i feel like my anatomy isnt the best when it comes to traditional but! such is life #rainbow color pencils and ballpoint pens my BELOVEDS #highlighters too #a few of these are older than others (like how the whole headshot page is from today while the headshot next to it is from a few months ago) #(i think) #(i dont date my pages MDNDHDK) #so if the style changes thats why

[eccentricpony]

Hello dear! I kind of did a spin on this request, and the story starts around the time of their first meeting and shows the progression into a romantic relationship. Mildly inspired by Tenma’s home screen quote to practice a kissing scene.

I think it’s a good blend of angsty, spicy, funny, and fluffy, but you be the judge! I am quite fond of this piece, and I hope you are, too!  <3

Bad First Impressions

Despite your best efforts to suppress it, a dramatic sigh rumbles past your lips. And to think that you had actually looked forward to working with Tenma Sumeragi. You had watched his performances in a few teen dramas and found his ability to be quite impressive, and he was highly lauded among other actors in your professional circle for being the consummate professional and perfectionist. More like pretentious and pompous.

“…and you there-“ the haughty redhead pointed towards a mousy looking boy sitting at a diner table on set.

“Uhh, B- Bill?” the mousy boy responded meekly.

“Yeah, sure – no one just stares at the person across from them without saying anything at all. It’s creepy and weird. That goes for you, too, guy with the glasses.” He moved an accusatory finger towards Bill’s dining companion. “Haven’t you guys ever heard of “peas and carrots”? I mean, this is amateur hour stuff that you don’t even need any skill to execute…”

“Can you just close your mouth and do some work, Sumeragi?”

You could hear a pin drop in the spacious sound studio. The cantankerous teen star whipped his head towards you with a pointed glare. You were an up-and-coming actress in the teen drama scene, and although you were a year older than he was, his acting resume was at least three times the length of yours. Sure, you were pretty, and you seemed passably talented, but you had a long way to go before you could even reach the echelon of his level of expertise. And you had the audacity to criticize his judgment??

“Excuse me?!” His eyes raked up and down your form, sizing you up in an attempt to appear intimidating. The manner in which you nonchalantly rested your hand upon your hip, head-cocked and eyes rolled; it was utterly disrespectful to him, a major authority in the industry, not to mention disrespectful to your fellow actors, to the very sacred space of-

“And to think that I had heard you were a competent leader…” you continued in a jaded tone. There was a visible flare in Tenma’s cheeks, the fury sizzling behind his eyes red hot.

To his credit, he certainly had a high level of talent, but that gave him no authority to degrade his teammates, whether they be fellow actors or the key grip. You weren’t normally this abrasive, but charming teen cutie Tenma was a self-important bully who was surrounded by “yes” men. This suave schoolboy star needed a wakeup call. The scandalized celebrity opened his mouth to commence a tirade when the director stepped in.

“Now, now, please folks. Let’s be civil…” Pinching the bridge of his nose, he glanced between you both with a pleading look.

With a final sour stare in your direction, Tenma transformed back into TV’s favorite high school hottie with a heart of gold.

“Yes, of course,” he replied, and you also nodded in consent. Everyone placated Tenma, endured his toxic attitude because he brought them money. But one thing was for sure, you had no intention to relinquish control to tyrannical Tenma.

Japan’s Newest Sweetheart

Tenma rushed down the street, tipping the brim of his hat further down his forehead, his alarming speed drawing attention from passersby. But he couldn’t slow down now; it was only a matter of time before Igawa caught up to him and asked where he was going, and why he was going by himself, and what was he looking for after all, and a number of other questions whose answers he would very much prefer not to explain.

With the convenience store in sight, he quickened his pace until he reached the threshold, throwing open the door with a tenacity that startled the cashier. Returning upright from where he hunched over his newspaper, the shopkeep threw a cautious eye to the young man at the doorway, wearing a suspicious amount of accessories and panting like he was running from the law.

The ginger on a mission performed a quick visual sweep of the displays until he located the object he desired. Bounding forward, he approached the magazine rack and flipped open the arts & entertainment periodical to the index. …page 31…

Rifling through the flimsy pages of the gossip rag, he at last reached the article which he had sought. There looking up at him was a page-wide spread of you, armed with an impossibly charming smile and a sparkle of mischief in your eyes. The page opposite of your come-hither headshot bore the headline “Japan’s Newest Sweetheart.”

It was infuriating. You were a nobody – barely any experience at all, and certainly not in anything particularly noteworthy – yet you were the one pushed to the forefront of advertising. His eyes flicked back to your picture once, twice… I mean, it was a good photo.

Ignoring the manner in which his throat seized when met with your 2-dimensional gaze, he directed his attention to the article. His eyes tripped along the words, “captivating new series… “ “character growth and development…” – aha! He spotted his name among the text and focused on the containing paragraph.

“blah, blah… he’s a true veteran in the industry…” Tenma puffed up like a rooster at this remark. Damn right, I am. He continued to read your commentary, mouth silently forming the shape of the words, scouring each sentence for more well-deserved praise. You went on to describe the characters, their struggles and how the cast related to their roles… One line in particular raised his brow. Tenacious young man?? Young man, what? She’s like, one year older than I am! He rose his head, appalled that you would speak of him like a child. He turned back to the print, reviewing the sentence a second time. She’s not even a whole year older, we’re practically the same age. He bent his brow in concentration. He counted back from your birthday. Yeah, totally not even a year old. Tch. He chose to ignore the fact that he recalled your birthday so quickly and glowered down at you while you beamed right back up at him.

It was undeniable that he was pissed off due of all the attention you were receiving when he was the lead. Possibly because… well, maybe you did deserve it. He had come to respect your acting ability over the past few months, in particular your impressive ability to become truly immersed in a role.

But maybe also because…. well, you looked good in this spread. Like, really good. Your smile was intoxicating; why didn’t you smile at him like that?  On second thought, maybe it was for the best that you hadn’t. His hardened exterior would likely dissolve, and he’d be a stuttering, fumbling mess. Scanning your features, he noticed that they airbrushed away a tiny birthmark on your face. Or maybe it was a freckle?  And they did something to your eyebrows, they just looked off. Why would they even do that? They were perfectly fine eyebrows…

“Hey, buddy, are you going to buy that or not? This ain’t a library.”

Tenma’s head shot upright, dazed for a few moments before he comprehended the words spoken to him. His tense fists gripped the wrinkled magazine tightly, fragile pages strained and starting to tear. Loosening his hold, he spared a final glimpse at your face before neatly closing the pages and smoothing out the bent cover.

“Uhh, yeah. I am.”  

Sliding his shades further up his nose with his pointer, he coolly ambled to the checkout area and lay the gentleman’s digest upon its surface. The material refused to remain flat after its recent abuse, leaving your shirt and neck visible beneath the dog-eared pages. The employee recognized the article right away.

“That new actress is really something, huh? They say she’s going to be the next big thing.”

Tenma scoffed but offered no discourse, handing over the required yen.

“Pretty cute, too,” the young worker added as he slipped the purchased item into a plastic bag.

“Yeah, whatever,” Tenma huffed heatedly, snatching the illustrated booklet containing your first big media premiere and returning to the sidewalk to await Igawa.

Salty to Sweet

“Don’t they teach you how to stay on task in Middle School? Or are you in High School?  Your lack of common sense is misleading…”

“Funny,” Tenma retorted caustically, though more annoyed at himself than you. He had been finding it challenging to focus as of late since he bought that magazine and he kept screwing up on the same damn lines. His short fuse was growing ever shorter with every butchered word.

You could see that Tenma was downward spiraling; the spark he always carried behind those big, vibrant eyes was fading fast.

“Look, why don’t you try something else…” you started, preparing for opposition.

“What?” the taller boy began, with no small amount of skepticism. Ignoring his sour attitude, you stood opposite him and continued in a calm tone.

“Try talking to me about something you really like while staying in character.”

“Talk about something I like?” Tenma replied incredulously. “What am I, six?”

“Sometimes I wonder, with the way you hide your vegetables under your mashed potatoes during lunch, so no one notices you throwing them away.”  You smirk knowingly, pleased with the look of surprise on your fellow actor’s face.

“You saw me do that?”  Tenma stared at you with a look of both wonder and bewilderment. He was certain no one could see him do that, and you sat at another table entirely! How on earth could you have been paying close enough attention to him to spot that, unless…

“Everyone knows that,” you deflected quickly, the rosy tint on your cheeks belying your innocence in the matter. “So what are you going to talk about?” Your bitter scene partner rolled his eyes. As a veteran in the industry, he felt pretty foolish having you talk him through basic acting exercises. Yet….  There was no question that he was struggling with the script, and no better ideas came to mind. With a sigh of defeat, Tenma offered the one outlet that came to mind.

“Bonsai…” he mumbled in a barely audible tone.

“What was that?” you ask, leaning it. Your close proximity fuels a steadily growing warmth along the back of his neck. He takes a sudden step backward and repeats himself louder.

“Bonsai! Are you deaf?”

“Bonsai, huh?” You smile with amusement. “Well, that’s something you don’t read in all your magazine interviews.”

“Reading my interviews, are you?” he responds dryly, but his stomach does a flip. He thinks back on the magazine he has featuring you, kept privately stashed away in a box under his bed. The thought that maybe you had a magazine featuring him tucked away somewhere in your bedroom causes chills that ran down his broad arms and shoulders.

“Nevermind that,” you grumble, brushing a stray hair out of your face. “Well, bonsai it is, then. Whenever you’re ready.”

You spend the next few minutes listening to Tenma ramble on about bonsai pruning, the proper tools to use, and even the proper light, pH and moisture levels to ensure optimal bonsai health.  Despite the fact that you now know more about bonsai trees than you would have ever cared to know, it seems that engaging, dynamic Tenma has returned. He comes to a full stop after finishing a discourse on bonsai diseases; his head now feeling clear, he’s convinced that he can recite his lines without hesitation.

“That was really good,” you commend him honestly, mirroring the pleased look on his face.

“Naturally,” he boasts in a cocky tone, feeling confident following his flawlessly delivered bonsai monologue. “It’s amazing how pleasant you can be when you’re not yelling at me,” he jibes, looking rather pleased with himself. You raise a brow at his renewed brashness, but you’ve always been quick on the trigger.

“It’s amazing how handsome you can be when you’re not scowling,” you reply with a smug expression, reveling in the crimson darkening his cheeks.

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” he mumbles with an air of mild embarrassment irritation, rubbing the back of his neck which is now damp with sweat.

“Who says I want to go anywhere with you?” you shoot back with a patronizing smirk before turning your attention back to the script. “SO, where were we?” you inquire loudly before he can get a word in edgewise. Thumbing through the marked-up pages, you see in your periphery that he is doing the same.

“Scenes 12 and 14 we did, 17 we did… no need to go over scene 28…”

“Why are we not practicing scene 28?” Tenma inquired in a cheeky tone. He knew exactly which scene 28 was: the kissing scene. You hadn’t gone over it yet, in read-throughs or on set. After you had just bested him in a mini battle of wits, this would be a great opportunity to even the playing field.

He had performed at least a dozen kiss scenes; it was old hat for him by now, and he knew for sure (not that he had googled your TV and film credits or anything) that you had never performed one. He was certain you’d flounder in search of a clever comeback, then, admitting defeat, blush profusely and outright refuse to do it.

“Fine, let’s do it.” You were no fool, and Tenma Sumeragi couldn’t bluff to save his life.

If Tenma wasn’t youthful and in great health, he might fear he were having a heart attack. Words seized up in his throat, and he could only manage a curt nod. He walked in a small circle, shaking his limbs as he often did while getting into character. He could do this, this was nothing. He had kissed, like, at least 12 girls before. 12! That was more girls than most men kissed in their entire lifetime! Wasn’t it? He couldn’t really think straight. With a long breath in, and out, he reformed his strategy.

He would perform a star-worthy kiss, absolutely knock-your-socks-off amazing, and then swagger out of the room while you were still swooning and dazed. His ego swelled a bit at the thought of leaving you desperate for another kiss, but his blood ran fast and furious at the thought of… well, actually having the kiss.

“I’ve seen the way you look at me,” you started in the tone of your character’s persona, the sudden smoldering look in your eye plucking at his every last nerve.

“At lunch, in the hall… even waiting for the bus.” Slowly, you crossed the floor towards Tenma’s frozen form. “You’ve given me flirty smiles, you’ve given me teasing winks, but there’s one thing you have yet to give me...” His pulse pounded in his ears as you leaned in closer, far closer than you had ever been before. His eyes flicker anxiously to your mouth, his breath held tightly in his throat.

“A kiss” you purr, biting your lip with the thrill of anticipation. Your lip bite just about crushes any dignity that remains in Tenma; tracing the lines on your lips with a wanton stare, it takes him a few seconds of feeble gaping before he remembers he has a line.

“Come and get it,” he whimpered, his line in a tone more befitting the token band geek than a smooth high school hunk. And get it, you did.

His script is lost to the floor as you press your lips onto his, his body rendered both limp and tight all at once. He did not expect this kind of kiss from you. Or maybe it was because he was used to a stage kiss, with twenty people watching and instructions from several individuals on how to hold his mouth at just the right angle for the camera. This… this was a kiss kiss. Your soft mouth was moving fluidly against his with such hypnotic, sweet caresses that he was convinced that he had never truly kissed someone before now. It was humbling but delicious; he had no control, and he couldn’t care less.

He couldn’t contain the small whimper of disappointment you drew from his throat when at last you pulled away, slyly wiping your reddened lips with the back of your hand. Tenma watched you with a mixed look of shock and awe, as though you had just miraculously materialized from thin air. Practice was over.

“Don’t lose that script,” you called over your shoulder cheerfully as you exited the practice space. “I think you could use another review of that scene.”

The Premiere

The Interview

You: …and it’s been bittersweet, but we’re both ready to move onto new projects. Isn’t that right, Tenten?

Interviewer: Tenten? That’s adorable, is that your nickname for Tenma?

You: Yeah, I call him Tenten because to me, he’s a ten out of ten. [You place an overly-dramatic kiss on his cheek]

Tenma: [Feigns a gagging sound while seated beside you, but reciprocates the kiss] That is a heinous lie, by the way, on both counts. [Tenma’s ability to poke fun at himself is refreshing, his overall manner humble and gracious, demonstrating his tremendous growth from child star to the consummate professional actor.]

Tenma: Actually, one of my fellow trou- uh, one of my friends at the Mankai Company, Kazunari, gave me that nickname.

Interviewer: The Mankai Company, that’s right! You’re putting on a production soon, aren’t you?

Tenten: We are! I’d love to give you the details of our production if you could publish them alongside this article.

Interviewer:  Absolutely. [Turning to you] And do you usually attend Tenma’s performances? I know both of your schedules are rather hectic these days, with all the job offers you’ve both received following the highly successful final season of your most recent television drama.

You: Yes, absolutely; I attend every one.

Tenma: In the front row, every performance. [He links his arm in yours, speaking with a tangible sense of pride]

Interviewer: I’ve noticed you have at least a half dozen bonsai trees in your apartment. Is that a mutual hobby?

You: Well, it’s our thing. I mean, it’s his thing really, but it’s kind of both our thing now. [You smile at Tenma with affection]

Interviewer: And, I’ve been meaning to ask - that framed script on the wall there, is that a keepsake? Or a valuable script from one of your favorite films perhaps? [The interviewer gestures to the worn script hanging above the mantle, protected and held in place by a thick pane of glass, bearing a large penned “SCENE 28”]

Tenma: Yeah, it has a…  special meaning. [Your boyfriend contributes, glancing into your eyes with a knowing smile that only you two could understand]

#a3! #a3! actor training game #a3! imagines #a3! headcanons #a3 x reader #tenma x reader #a3 tenma #a3! tenma #a3! tenma sumeragi #tenma sumeragi #a3 imagines #a3 headcanons #a3 actor training game #a3 act addict actors

[subliminalhero]

Here is a WIP of my most recent MHA OC. (Edit: I forgot to post this and actually finished it in full color. I’ll attach the pictures of each phase at the end)

Meet Tsumugi, Habiki. INTERPOL agent and Pro Hero Stelth Siren.

Quirk: Subliminal; the ability to mesmerize others with their voice. They have a second set of vocal cords that can be used to reach pitches that can no be heard by humans. This double set is what allows them to brainwash people. Works best when Habiki is singing but can be used during normal conversation or even with only the secondary set for silent control. Intent is crucial to it’s use. And can be used to lift a persons natural restrictions. For example, humans have a jaw strength capable of biting off a persons fingers with little to no problem. Like biting into a carrot. Habiki can use subliminal to convince the human mind to lift that restriction. This is used to help give other hero’s a short boost with their quirk use. It is only used short term because it can be dangerous for the health of the target. It can also be used to make restrictions on a persons quirk use. Or even turn off that part of the brain that activits the quirk in the first place. The effects of Subliminal are permanent unless they have a built in trigger phrase or sound and must be undone by Habiki themself. It does, however, put a strain on Habiki that can lead to insomnia, depression, and other negative health troubles. Since Habiki is not actively using their quirk but is using it passively. Habiki tries not to have more than 5 people under Subliminal at any given time and will usually stay at 3 max for safety reasons. Their max control is actually much higher but can lead to brain bleeding when sustained for longer than a few minutes. 

The younger half-sibling of Endeavor, Habiki was born as a way for their mother to control Enji. Neither Habiki or Enji use their mother’s family name, while they both use their individual Fathers names. Their mother would threaten his younger sibling any time her perfect heir stepped out of line. Enji and Habiki are 11 years apart in age. When Habiki’s quirk developed at 4 1/2 years old Enji petitioned for emancipation and the year after was cleared to take over guardianship of Habiki. After Enji graduated and got his own place, he hired a nanny to take care of Habiki while he worked. He also set Habiki up with an apartment closer to their school and their nanny’s home so they didn’t have to worry so much about commuting. Habiki adored their older brother and aspired to be a Hero just like him. The siblings relationship is close at this time, and somewhat akin to a parent and child. Enji works hard to take care of his sibling while Habiki works hard to keep up their grades and make it into their brothers alma mater. They train together so Habiki can pass into the hero corse even without an offensive quirk. These are facts of Habikis backstory for all AUs they are involved in.

This version of Habiki is from my What If AU called Escaped AU. There are two more AUs involving Habiki, Free AU and Damned AU. Once I have designs for those version of them. I’ll post them.

For now, Escaped AU Habiki was kidnapped when they were 16 by hired goons sent by their bitter mother and sold off to Dr Kyudai Garaki (Ujiko) for experimentation. Enji would be told his sibling was missing and presumed dead, which would go on to have a terrible effect on his psyche. During this time, Habiki was experimented on by the dr in the first of many attempts to transfer All for One into a new host and to see if the new host could adapt to multiple quirks. This was before the Nomu experiments. Also in this time, Habiki became close to one of the Drs inters and he took a liking to them right back. This young man would eventually father Habikis one and only child that would be taken from them immediately by one of the nurses. The young father would be killed and Habiki would be placed in a new lab. Habiki would eventually escape with the help of a few other subjects who would go on to be members of Habikis team, the Freakshow Unit though one subject was unable to escape with the rest. After being a real vigilante with their little rag tag group, Habiki was eventually caught and given the option to join Interpol and work to take down the ones who ruined their life. Habiki would then have been undercover as a vigilante for the passed 10 years working the All for One case. They spent significant time in other countries for this job, mostly in the US. Habiki would check in on their brother and his family from time to time without any of them knows they are alive. When Toya supposedly died, Habiki actually used that moment to get their nephew out of the house. Instead of going down the path he originally would have in canon, they trained and raised him while helping him learn to manage his quirk and getting him the psychiatric help he needed after his time at home.

This would all lead into the Escaped AU. I plan on doing a snippet/Drabble series that would involve all three AU ideas. The whole idea is a What If scenario on how things would be different with the addition of one more character.

Now for the closer to finished version!

I was unsure what color I do for their hair, and was debating between purple and red. Then I thought. What if thy were dying it red while they were undercover? So this final headshot is the result!

I’m rather proud of it? It was one of the first times I’ve used alcohol markers. It’s a cheap set so it’s not very good and I don’t actually know how to use them. I only used them for the dark gray. The reds, purples, and skin are done with Faber-Castell India ink markers. I did use a Prismacolor ink blender on the hair to make it look like more of a fading dye job?

Anyway, that’s Escaped Habiki. There is a lot I left out for one reason or another. Like the identity of their child (not much of a mystery really) and how Toya becomes Dabi in this AU. And who I ship them with.

I’ll eventually make a manga style character page for them. Just to get their age, height, and some other things out of the way. I’m looking forward to that.

#boku no hero academia #my hero academia #bnha #MHA OC #bnha oc

[ansgar-martinsson]

Fair Winds and a Following Sky - Part Two

Seat 7A, Business Class, United Airlines Flight 3300 - Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean

Ten years. Ten years, two months and fifteen days. That was how long it had been since Anna Fair Sky had been aboard a plane. As she sat in seat 7A, she felt like a child of that very age. Scared, out of place, downright fearful.

I want my mama....

Last time she’d flown was with her then newlywed husband, heading out of the Will Rogers Airport on a tiny jet to a small, semi-private island in the Caribbean. That flight was torturous - full of turbulence, hard banks, and ultimately a not so soft landing on the impossibly short landing strip. Anna nearly kissed the ground when they’d lit from the jet - and had taken a double dose of Xanax, bought over the counter on the island - for the way home.

But she had no Xanax now, nothing to chemically calm her except the cold glass of Business Class whisky on the tray in front of her. It was her second, no... third drink of that flight, served in a thick-bottomed tumbler, rounded spheres of ice, and just a splash of Evian water to open out the flavor. She wondered, momentarily, just how many swigs of the Scottish elixir she could down before she could pass into a joyful unconsciousness.

As many as it took, and all on the credit card. Not as if I’m going to be home to get the bill, she thought. American Express can go fuck itself for all I care right now. Let Mamma Travidge handle it. Main account’s still in her name, anyway. She can go fuck herself too.

“Nervous?” 

“Huh?”

“I asked you, dear, are you nervous?” Anna let out a shaky breath and turned to the voice. In the seat beside her was an older woman, white of hair and wizened of feature, yet she seemed to carry herself with a youthful strength, brought through in her voice as well - high-timbred and powerful. The woman set her book down across her lap and turned slightly in the seat to face Anna.

“A little, I... I suppose,” Anna answered honestly. 

The woman shifted her hand, resting her curved fingers on Anna’s forearm. “First time?”

“No,” Anna replied, “I... I’ve been nervous before.”

The woman’s eyes went wide, head cocked and lips pursed in a confused moue, but only for a moment, just for a moment before she burst out in a bark of laughter. “Oh,” she chortled. “Oh, no, dear. No, dear. I meant...,” she covered her mouth, and with her other hand squeezed Anna’s arm gently. “I meant... is it your first time flying?”

“Oh, God, no. No... not my first time flying,” Anna laughed, and the laughter morphed into a moment of half-buzzed realization. “I think I might have made a joke, there.”

“Either that,” the woman grinned and took a sip of her tomato juice, “or you’ve seen the movie Airplane a far few too many times.” She patted Anna on the shoulder, turning back in her seat and lifting her book once again. “Flight’s about half over, I think,” she said, “and it seems you’ve got yourself occupied anyway.” Her eyes flicked between the drink on the table and Anna’s computer screen.

“Oh, that,” Anna replied. “Supposing I do.”

“I don’t mean to pry,” the woman continued, turning a page of her book, “but I couldn’t help but notice that you’ve been looking rather moonily at pictures of the same man nearly the entire flight.” She pointed toward the image, a black and white headshot of Anna’s quarry nearly filling the screen.

“I’m...,” Anna clipped. “I’m trying... trying to find him. I mean,” she corrected, “I will be trying to find him once I get to Stockholm.” She narrowed her eyes and closed her computer with a deliberate click. “But, I’m not sure what business it is of yours.”

“None. None at all my dear,” the woman replied factually, book still open. 

“Correct. None.”

Anna opened her computer again, re-connected to the in-flight wifi, and re-opened the search page. She skimmed through a few articles, using Google to translate those that were written in eye-crossing Swedish. 

“Do you even know who that is?” The woman had set her book back down on her lap and crossed her hands over it. 

“Him? His name is... is Ansgar Martinsson,” Anna replied.

“No,” she said, “I mean, do you know who that is?”

Anna groaned inwardly, and once again closed her computer. “I guess not. I suppose you’ll tell me.”

The woman continued, unfazed by Anna’s display of irritation. “Not a man to trifle with, I tell you,” she bent toward Anna, her words sotto voce, a whisper, barely heard over the thrum of the engines. “He’s a bit of a shark if you ask me.”

“How... how do you know this?”

“That’s why I asked you if you knew who he was. He’s famous, you know, in Sweden, in Europe. Gossip column fodder. Shows up on the pages of those crap rags now and then, and sometimes on the cover of business magazines.”

“So, he’s a businessman. I kind of got that from the....” she pointed vaguely at the computer, “the articles, and stuff.... what I was able to read, at least.”

“My son works for his company,” the woman said. “We’re from Missouri, St. Louis, you see, but my son moved to Ostermalm, that’s in Sweden too, you know,” she interjected. “Anyway, he moved there to take a job with Martinsson Construction as an architect. I’m going there to visit David... David is his name... I’m going to visit David and his family for the summer.”

“So,” Anna intoned, “Ansgar Martinsson is famous because he owns a construction company?” 

“Not just a construction company,” the woman’s chest puffed up a bit, “the construction company - this huge international conglomerate thing. He builds opera houses and civic buildings and universities, just about everything -- he even designed and built almost all of the newer IKEA stores. He’s like... he’s like the Elon Musk of construction, only better looking and less... well, weird.”

“Hm,” Anna said. “I suppose I still don’t understand why he....”

“Come on, my dear,” the woman’s lips curled in a wry, crooked, tight-lipped grin. “Just look at the man,” she said, gesturing toward the screen. “He’s quite charming. Gets out in society, goes to all of the best parties, even throws some himself now and then. He rubs elbows with the rich and famous, knows everyone... and I hear,” she added, “he’s newly single and ready to mingle.”

“S-single?”

“Yes, this is the sad bit, though, this bit here...” the woman gosspied, “his wife... she left him, some sort of traumatic, terrible thing... at least that’s what I heard. And when she did, he went missing. Missing, I tell you! Gone! Poof!” she splayed her fingers, demonstrating. “Gone for about a year and a half, maybe longer, I can’t remember. No one knows where he was or who he was with or what the hell happened to him.”

“Oh?” 

“Of course his family wouldn’t talk, and his company people, well... they were tight lipped as ever, don’t you know. My son was worried for his job nearly that whole time! It was in all the papers, all the online blogs -- so much speculation, so many conspiracy theories.... Where is Ansgar Martinsson?” She made little ersatz quotes in the air. “One paper even reported that he’d been kidnapped and tortured by terrorists. Another said he’d been taken by aliens, but I doubt that very much.”

Anna shook her head. “Oh, I doubt that too. The... the alien bit.” She inhaled sharply, ground her teeth together and looked away - collecting her thoughts, her fears, and the increasing, swirling maelstrom of confusion and... and... 

...and regret.

I know where he was....

And maybe I don’t belong where he currently is.

Wnat the hell am I getting myself into? 

Words like “society” and “famous” and “businessman” and “traumatic” clanged around in Anna’s head. The walls of the plane squeezed inward confining her, the seat a great bear trap, cramping her in place, teeth digging deeply into her flesh, tearing at her spirit. No turning back now. She snatched at her glass of whiskey and downed it, immediately raising the empty in indication to the passing air steward. 

The storm in her spirit and the deluge of spirits in her blood made her head ache, made her dizzy, even a bit sick. Thoughts of the Travidges invaded, clouding those of Alan... Ansgar.  Was he really like them? Would he treat her the same way? Was she on a thousand-dollar one-way debt-shattering flight halfway around the world only to be dragged into the same feelings of disassociation, of abandonment, of lonliness?

Of... rejection?

“You said you’d be looking for him? When you get there, is that right? Like, physically trying to find him?”

“What?” Anna blinked, the woman’s question drawing her out of her reverie. “What did you say?”

“I asked,” the woman said patiently, “you’re going to be looking for him... in Stockholm, yes?”

“Well,” she sighed, shrugging, “that was sort of the plan.”

But now I’m not so sure....

The woman nodded sagely. “I won’t ask you why, dear. I’ve stuck my nose into your beeswax enough for one flight, but I can tell you what I know. Maybe... where to find him.”

Anna shrugged. “His office, right? He’s probably there all the time. I could just go there and talk to him.”

She shook her head emphatically. “Oh, no,” she said, “they have security in that place tighter than Fort Knox. No way in hell you just sidle up into his office.”

“Then... then where?”

“My son told me... David, he told me that Martinsson is kind of an odd duck you know... has his ways about doing things,” she said, “but I suppose a lot of Swedes are like that. Really private and all. Don’t even really like to talk to their neighbors. Can’t even talk to one of them on a flight... but they do like one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Swedish folks... they love their fika.”

“Fika?” Anna squinted, nonplussed. “What’s that?”

“Coffee break. I suppose that’s the best thing to call it,” the woman said. “It’s... it’s something the Swedish just... do. It’s pretty important to them... and I hear... my son tells me that he... that your Martinsson fellow there... he takes his coffee break, his fika, at the same coffee shop and at the same time every day when he’s in Stockholm.”

“He goes to a... a coffee shop?”

“Sure,” the woman said. “No one bothers him, apparently. Like I said, the Swedish don’t molest each other overmuch. They don’t like all that chit chat... that small talk with strangers don’t you know, and if someone is sitting at a table alone they’ll just.... you know leave them be. I mean, Brad Pitt or that hunky George Clooney could be sitting in a Swedish coffee shop and no one would even think of approaching them, taking their picture or otherwise.”

“Do you...” Anna blinked, smiling blithely at the woman beside her, “happen to know where that is? That coffee shop where Martinsson takes... takes his fika?”

The woman smiled back. “Would I mention it if I didn’t know?”

#fair winds and a folloiwng sky

[bnhavillaintriozine]

How to Submit a Good Portfolio

Since public applications will be opening soon, I thought I would make a simple guide on how to send a good portfolio when you apply to zines.

I’ll mostly be referring to art, since that’s what I’m most familiar with, but I’m sure a lot of these points can apply to writing as well.

A lot of my drawn commentary is meant to be lighthearted (and oh so messy), so please don’t take anything too seriously.

What is a portfolio? Anywhere you post your art is technically a portfolio, since you’re showcasing your work to a potential audience. If you showcase your artwork via Tumblr, Instagram, or any other site, you’re free to submit it for review. You don’t need to have a fancy, paid website to showcase your work. Let your art speak for itself.

What makes a portfolio bad? Like I mentioned before, anywhere you post your art is technically a portfolio. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a good one. In a portfolio, you want to show us your best work. While instagram may be a good place to show us your artwork, if there are some food pictures, con pictures, memes, or any random posts, it’s a bad portfolio. We don't want to sound harsh, but we would appreciate only seeing your work and not your outside life. That way, we can solely focus on your portfolio.

What makes a portfolio good? Good portfolios showcase completed pieces that demonstrate your best skills and capabilities. If you post your artwork on tumblr, you may have some random content in your blog, but if you have a tag specifically for your finished pieces and best work, please send us the link with that certain tag. It will save us the hassle of scrolling down multiple pages and it tells us you’re serious about the project by showing us your true potential.

What to submit:

1) Submit complete URLs. We want to easily copy and paste your portfolio onto our browser. We don’t want to type out the whole website. We have hundreds of applications to go through, so typing up the website can eat up a lot of our time. I’ll admit that I’m guilty of doing this, but I’m also learning from my mistakes. Typing up the URL (even if it’s as simple as mywebsite.com OR myartblog.tumblr.com/tagged/best-work) only takes a few seconds to do, and we’ll definitely be grateful to you for doing this.

2) Show us how versatile you can be! While we can appreciate the beautiful technical skills from various artists, if you submit a portfolio that only includes headshots and not much else, you run the risk of being declined. We want to see different compositions, interesting uses of color, or cool angles! You don’t need to show us that you can work with 10 different types of media, or hundreds of different angles, but give us something more than just the same pose.

3) Send us completed work. While sketches DO look nice, a majority of zines want to see your completed artworks. In most cases, they are going to be releasing a finished, printed project, so it’s reasonable that we would want samples of what your completed art looks like. By looking at your finished pieces, we can gain a better insight of what to expect from you.

What to avoid:

1) Don’t send us a portfolio full of sketches, as mentioned above. If you have a sketchier / messy style, that’s fine. What you consider as finished is what you should be trying to send to us.

2) Don’t make us scroll through tons of pages. This one applies similarly to the previous point. If your blog only includes doodles and a few finished artworks, don’t make us scroll for so long just to get to the completed stuff. Please save a life and tag your finished works. We will thank you for it.

3) Don’t send us multiple links. Some zines may ask you to link them to 3 of your best works, but instead of sending us 3 different links, create a tag or Google Drive folder with those 3 pieces included. This saves us the time of copy/pasting every single link into our browser, plus it allows us to better compare your work side-by-side. You also get the added benefit of not needing to copy/paste multiple links for your next zine application.

4) Don’t send us a portfolio that doesn’t include humans. This one is kind of weird, but I have received some applications that only feature animals or backgrounds in their portfolios. If you’re applying to a zine that needs certain people or characters drawn, we can’t properly judge your portfolio if you don’t show us that you can draw the subject matter. The same can be applied vice versa. If I made a corgi zine and you send me a portfolio full of humans, how am I supposed to know if you can draw a dog or not? When applying to zines, take note on what they’re looking for, so you can submit accordingly.

5) Don’t submit work that’s older than 2+ years. As an artist, you’re always growing and learning. A lot can change in a year or two. We want to see your recent stuff, since that’s the most accurate representation of your current skills and knowledge.

A Simple Suggestion

1) If you don’t want to tag your work or delete some things from your social media just to show us your best & completed work, make a Google Drive folder that shows us your best pieces. Keep it short and simple by including a minimum of 3 pieces and a maximum of 8 pieces. Make sure the Google Drive folder permissions are changed to shared! (This is very important).

Advice & Final Thoughts

Don’t be afraid of rejection. Spots are usually VERY limited in zines. There’s no way we could fit everyone into one zine (that would be a heavy and thick book, not to mention SUPER expensive). I’ve been rejected multiple times, but you can’t let that discourage you! Just keep applying and continue to improve your artwork. And even if you’re accepted, still continue to improve your artwork! Practice, practice, practice a whole damn lot!

If you know you won’t have enough time to dedicate to the zine, please don’t apply. If you apply and get the slot, only for you to drop out last minute, you just took the spot of a potential artist that actually wanted to be a part of the project and it’s unfair to them.

If you get accepted and life gets too hectic for you to continue with the project, PLEASE don’t vanish and make the zine organizers hunt you down. It will not make us want to work with you again. We want things to be pleasant between the both of us. Life happens, but communication is ESSENTIAL in every situation.

I’m not against having sketches in a portfolio (I have a few on my own website as well), but a majority of applicants can’t afford their own website, so they use free sites like Tumblr or Instagram. These websites don’t really allow you to properly separate your doodles / finished work, so this is why I keep reiterating this point.

Zines are meant to be fun and something to bring the artist community together! Interact with your fellow artists and let’s all have a good ol’ time.

#zine #anime zine #fandom zines #zines #anime zines #update

[ow-oc-recalled-blog]

Gryphon!

Ah! Before I give you his…well everything I have a few things to say!!!

1. I am using a template that I found on Overwatch Amino but I have made an effort to make it detailed! 2. He’s a flying character because I absolutely love flying characters in video games!!!!! 3. I love this blog! 4. Its an old OC by a couple of months (so a few things could get changed) and I already posted it to said Amino mentioned! It actually got on the front page which I am very happy about! 5. I don’t know how to enter the Discord since I’m solely on mobile!!! Do you mind sending a link! Please have fun reading! I put a lot of work into it!

■ Hero Basics Name: Alexis Katsaros Alias/Callsign: Gryphon Age: 38 Nationality: Greek Occupation: Mechanic, Inventor, Explorer Affiliation: Overwatch (formerly) Relations: Lena Oxton (Tracer), Angela Ziegler (Mercy) Base of Operations: Heraklion, Greece Role: Damage Health: 200 Armor: 50 Advantages of Using This Hero: Flight, able to stun people, high mobility. Disadvantages of Using This Hero: Slow descent, easy to spot.

■Weapon

Weapon Name: Heirloom Harpoon Primary Fire: A harpoon passed down from engineer to engineer, this harpoon has become a staple in what makes Alexis Katsaros the strong and independent leader he is. Good for taking out squishy characters. [Type]: Linear Projectile [Damage]: 100 [Ammo]: Infinite [Reload Time]: Since it is attached to the gun, it takes 1.2 seconds to come back to the gun and able to shoot again. [Headshot]: No

■Abilities

Ability #1: Capture Net Ability Voiceline: “Got you!” “Trapped!” Description: This net has 400 health and can be taken down by allies on your team if you are the one trapped. It takes one second to throw. Once trapped you are completely immobilized. You can’t move as your player struggles. Lasts shorter than Ana’s sleep dart. If you hit an enemy while they are in the air, they will drop down straight to the ground. [Cooldown]: 10 seconds

Ability #2: Jump Boost Ability Voiceline: “Whatever comes up!” Description: Gryphon boosts up in the air for eight meters. [Cooldown]: 4 seconds

Ability #3: Dash Ability Voiceline: “Into the action!” Description: Only active when he’s in the air. Gryphon dives to whatever you are pointing at. Whether it’s through the air or down below, Gryphon will dash. If you hit the ground you will get stunned for 1 second. [Cooldown]: 4 seconds

Passive Ability: Thinking Time Description: When high enough, Gryphon has the passive ability to float slower than most enemies. Much like Mercy’s Angelic Float, you don’t need a button however. This helps you scope out the area better if you need to. If you feel you are in danger of a sniper or want to get into the action, you can always use your dash ability.

Ultimate: Electric Netting Friendly Voiceline: “A shocking discovery!” Hostile Voiceline: “Τρέξτε όσο μπορείτε, αγαπητοί εχθροί! (Run as far as you can, dear enemies!)” Description: His net from his ability part of his kit expands into a 4 meter wide net. It stuns anyone hit for 2 seconds. After they are stunned, their walking speed is slowed by 50% for 4 seconds.

■Character

Personality: Gryphon is very intelligent and he knows it. Although putting on a haughty attitude, he is just putting up a front for others to think he is a smart person. He fears if he acts silly or doesn’t keep his tough exterior, people will look down on him. Although not true, he has gotten used to putting on his persona that it’s hard not to go back to that. He’s like this when meeting strangers but once you know him, he’s a giant teddy bear. He is also very neutral in how he sees things. Although slightly more pessimistic, he tries to hype everyone up to further his team’s good outlook on doing good on missions.

Appearance: Gryphon is a man of average height and weight and works out regularly to stay fit. His hair is brown and his eyes are a dark, chocolate brown. He has plenty of oranges, browns, small white highlights, and very dark colors. He also has a bit of futuristic tech added to him. As he is approaching his 40’s, he gains an older look to him. (Also he seems to be a patch and pin collector)

Backstory: Former Overwatch pilot and currently a brilliant inventor and adventurer, Gryphon strives to make his world a better place and is an unstoppable force of wonder and good deeds.

Alexis Katsaros, joined Overwatch’s experimental flight program fairly early on in his twenties. He was known for his quick thinking and his brave discoveries while piloting aircrafts. Although his skills were fierce, he was dropped down to be a mechanic in the flight program. However, since he was still well versed in the aircraft’s functions and piloting skills, he was still a backup in case any pilots came down ill or got hurt during and/or before important missions.

Alexis soon came to be well known around around the base. He was frequently welcomed in more meetings and gradually moved up the ranks. His lust for adventure still blazed in his heart however. He created a flying machine prototype but that wasn’t exactly what Overwatch was into at the time. Defeated, he saved his inventions for later, making even more as the years went by. Alexis soon noticed the tensions between Blackwatch and Overwatch. He slowly faded out of the flight program as he refused to go into meetings, in fear of him becoming a weapon used to prove the two sides wrong/right as he had already experienced in previous meetings. He left soon, fearing the worst of the Overwatch organization as a whole, and taking Angela Zeigler’s nanotechnology to further his research.

Years passed since the fall of Overwatch had been known. He sat in his workshop, slowly working on his inventions and perfecting them. Since leaving Overwatch, he has not had the materials to make his inventions as sleek as they used to be. He decided to revamp his machines. He read up on many of the mechanics, double-checking each time to perfect them. He always had an eye for detail.Now was the time to use it. Now it was the time to be a hero again. Winston’s call was something he needed to see to realize this. Donning an alias of what he believes is the representation of freedom and bravery, Gryphon will become the strong and dependable mechanic he once was and still is.

■Personal Effects

Emotes:

[Default]: Heroic [Default Action]: Gryphon holds up his harpoon and grips it tight. He makes a stern expression towards the camera before resuming his usual stance. - [Emote #1]: Ugh Emote Action: Gryphon makes a nasty face to something in the distance. He then tilts his head back and rolls his eyes, opening his mouth. His character makes an “ugh” sound. He then resumes his position. - [Emote #2]: Sit Emote Action: Gryphon is in a side sitting position to his right. One of his hands rest on his leg while the other holds his body up. He taps his fingers on his leg as he looks around, bored. Continues until player moves - [Emote #3]: Mechanical Emote Action: Gryphon spreads his mechanical wings and puts his hands on his hips. His wings move about and twitch as satisfying clicks of the wings sound. He then resumes his regular position. - [Emote #4]: Chortle Emote Action: Gryphon seems to find something funny and tries to hide his laughter behind his hand. He then can’t hold it anymore. He lowers his hand and laughs loudly. He then resumes his regular position - [Emote #5]: 🎉Dance🎉 Emote Action: Gryphon performs the zeibekiko. It’s a Greek dance. This can see being performed [here.|https://youtu.be/GTFjKnzLeSg] Continues until player moves. (Yes he is that dramatic)

In-Match Voicelines:

[CHATTER]: Hero Intially Selected: “I will protect you, comrades.” During Wait Time: “This is an interesting line-up…” “We may be able to do this.” Respawn: “I’m back!” “I won’t fail again…” “Something had to malfunction!” Healed/ Health Pack Picked Up: “Ahhh.” “So much better!” “Now back to fight!” Damage Boosted: “I am stronger.” Nano-boosted: “I take no orders!” Discord Orb Received: “Dammit!” Resurrected: “Back to the sky!” Enemy Resurrected: “Who didn’t take them out?” “They’re back?”

[COMMUNICATION WHEEL]: Greetings: “Hello.” “Χαιρετίσματα!” Thanks: “Appreciated.” “Thank you.” “I’ll pay you back.” Acknowledge: “I understand what you’re saying.” “κατανοητή.” Need Healing: “I need a healer!” “I am wounded.” Group Up: “Let’s fix this team.” “Group up with me.” Ultimate Status: [Charging]: “Electric netting is charging.” [Almost Ready]: “Electric netting getting to maximum voltage.” [Ready]: “Electric netting, ready to throw.” “My ultimate is ready.”

[CALL OUTS]: Hero Change: “Gryphon, flying into the fray.” Sniper Detected: “I see a sniper!” “Take that sniper out!” Turret Detected: “I infer that they have a turret.” Turret Destroyed: “I destroyed their turret. Carry on.” Teleporter Detected: “I feel the teleporter’s presence.” Teleporter Sighted: “I see their gateway.” Teleporter Destroyed: “Teleporter down. Back to the real fight.” Capturing the Objective: “Capturing the objective! Join me!” Losing the Objective: “I can’t hold them off! Help me!” Escorting the Payload: “Payload is moving. Protect it.” Stop the Payload: “Stop the payload!” Payload Halted: “Why is the payload halted?” Time is Running Out (on Attack): “Time is running out! Let’s get more aggressive!” Time is Running Out (on Defense): “Keep them back!” “We don’t have much time! Keep on the defense!”

[ELIMINATIONS]: Final Blow: “Do you even know how to fight?” “Great fight…ha.” Melee Final Blow: “Hah!” “Thought you could run?” Solo Elimination: “I thought you would be a challenge.” “Someone will come out alive. Hey…that was me.” Kill Streak: “I am on fire!” “Did my equipment catch on fire? Oh no…it was just me.” Multi-kill: “I am a machine!” Witnessed Elimination: “I will avenge you, comrade.” Revenge: “It all comes back around.”

[PURCHASABLE VOICELINES] #1: [Default]: “All of you will be protected.” #2: [Flight to the Finish]: “Flight to the finish!” #3: [Ignorance]: “The ignorant are not aware of their ignorance.” #4: [Grounded]: “No buts! You are grounded.” #5: [Damn!]: “δεκάρα!” #6: [Intimidation Methods]: “It seems my intimidation methods are working, no?” #7: [Read the Room]: “Read the room, γλυκιά μου.” #8: [Heart of a Gryphon]: “Heart of a lion? I would prefer a gryphon, thank you.” #9: [All Greek to Me]: “It’s all Greek to me…which means I understand it perfectly!”

Pre-Match Dialouge: [Gryphon]: “Your mother always was set on leading you away from Overwatch, Amari..” [Pharah]: “I know. She expressed that greatly to me.”

[Mercy]: “I do not like that you stole my technology, Alexis. I would advise you give it back.” [Gryphon]: “And to think you were all ears for new scientific research, Angela.”

[Tracer]: “Alexis! You left so suddenly! Why did you go? Where did you go?” [Gryphon]: “Very personal reasons, Oxton. Maybe we could reminisce after the match to make it up to you?”

[Torbjorn]: “Alexis. Is there any chance I can look over your blueprints for your machines?” [Gryphon]: “I thought it didn’t matter to Overwatch.”

Map Specifc Lines: [Numbani]:”I heard the museum here is quite interesting. I must take a look.”

Skins: Common A: Flamingo- His outfit turns pastel pink on certain parts. - Common B: Cardinal- His outfit turns bright red on certain parts. - Epic A: Myth- His outfit turns into a mix of blues, magentas, and greens. He also have white dots decorated in the blue bits on his suit. - Epic B: Sky- His outfit turns into a mix of pastel blue, grey blue, and cloudy colors. - Epic Summer Games: Yperifáneia- His outfit turns into the Greek flag colors. - Legendary A: Captain/Ahoy! - Because of his harpoon and net, I thought it would be a great idea to give him a pirate skin! This skin would include a more scruffy and unwashed look to him. He gains a pirate hat and his wings look even more homemade than before. His hair turns to a full black and he gains an eyepatch. He gets plenty of packs. Gold, diamond, and silver accessories are flowing out of him. His clothes get thicker. - Legendary B: Workshop/Mechanic- Gryphon gets a dustier and dirty appearance to him. Boots, nails, and work tools are scattered across his attire. He gets an apron along with his skin too. He also gains goggles and a small pack on his thigh full of spare parts. His wings look like they’re in “beta mode.” He also gains a workshop like attire with a belt, stretchy jeans, and stretchy shirts. - Legendary C: Bug-Catcher- This outfit gives him plenty of greens and whites in his outfit. He has bug-like wings and the steam coming out of his machine is now bug spray. His nets have little bugs on them and his harpoon has a softer look to him. - Legendary Uprising: Pilot- A lot like Tracer’s pilot skin only having many more details. He doesn’t have shades but instead goggles. He has health kits on his sides and his suit is more puffy. More details to be added later when I eventually draw out outfit - Legendary Anniversary: Icarus- Coming in with his Greek culture, Gryphon dresses up as Icarus. His wings are more waxy and actually drips wax. He gains a Greek God ensemble and it also takes inspiration from Mercy’s Winged Victory skin. His hair is longer and his eyes are blue. He also gets Greek sandals.

Sprays:

Skyfall: The scene shows him falling down to the ground as his flying machine on his back has springs and loose bolts scattered around him. - Studious: Gryphon is seen reading a book about mechanics and gears and building as a design for his wings are on a white board behind him. - Pilot: Gryphon has a determined look to him as he’s driving an aircraft. One hand is on the wheel as another hand reaches to switch a button on the top.

Oh he’s so cool! His abilities seem so fun! - Disco

#submission #overwatch oc

[loxare]

Harm

Chapter 4 -  Alice in High Definition and an Aside

Sniping was a waiting game. And while he waited, he was texting a contractor. Normally, meeting with contractors was a face to face thing, but in Bludhaven, a reclusive property owner could get anything he wanted, for the right price. Of course, he had also hired overseers, people to ensure the contractor didn't do a mediocre job and pocket the profits.

His target, one Johnny Grey, wasn't a drug lord or murderer or any of his usual targets. No, he was just an animal smuggler. He smuggled cats and dogs across the border, surgically implanted with certain chemicals that, when combined, formed compounds explosive enough to take out a major shopping center.

Fortunately, Grey was incredibly suspicious of his underlings, something Red Hood had been working on for a few months. As such, no one but Grey knew the names of the buyers, or who was stuffing small animals full of volatile chemicals. The entire organization literally relied on Grey to continue breathing. Unfortunately, he was about to disappoint a whole lot of people.

But first he had to show up. There was an exchange tonight, Grey paying off a harbormaster to maybe not look too closely at the animals the next ship was bringing in, and Red Hood had gotten here a whole hour early.

He checked his watch. Ten minutes. Ten minutes to kill and the contractor hadn't texted him back yet, so he had nothing to do. Without his permission, his mind started wandering back to his confrontation with Nightwing.

Pulling out his rifle, he started prepping it. “Who does he think he is?” The action opened with a click and he took a look down the barrel to make sure nothing was in it. “Family? Yeah right.” The magazine went in and the action closed with another series of clicks. “Why can't they all just leave me alone?” He laid down on the rooftop, lining up his sights. Red Hood sighed. He was going after a stuffed animal smuggler. Dangerous stuffed animals, but still. Not much choice though; all of the worst crooks were either fled or dead. Pretty soon, he would have no job.

By the time Grey and his posse showed up, he was very much ready to shoot some people. And he did. “Screw you Grayson.” Headshot. “I hope you get scurvy.” Knee, then headshot. “Get scurvy and all your perfect little teeth can fall out.” Knee, knee, elbow, shoulder, lung. “Fucking Nightwing.”

“Momma says that's a bad word and if I say it, she'll wash out my mouth.”

Immediately, Jason's rifle pointed straight up into the air. He rolled into a sitting position, staring at the little girl behind him. “And she's absolutely right. Swearing is a bad habit. Use big words, so whoever you're mad at feels like an idiot.”

She was about six, and wearing bunny pajamas. “Really? That works?”

“Yup.” Jason walked away from the edge of the roof and started putting his rifle away. She turned so she could keep facing him and, thankfully, not facing the horror show on the docks. “Plus stuff like malodorous dunce is just fun to say. What's your name?” He pulled off his helmet and started stashing his rifle.

“Alice. And Tammy said you ask if we need help, but I don't. I just wanted to say hi.” She rocked back on her heels and smiled at him, the tiny kid's purse at her side smacking into her thigh.

Jason smiled. Magazine out and away, eject round from chamber. “Hi Alice. Come on, let's get you home, before the angry men down there call for help.”

Alice nodded, holding her arms out in the universal sign for “carry me”. So Jason swung her up onto his shoulders, making sure the rifle slung across his back wasn't poking her, and handed her his helmet to carry.

She lived in an apartment building across the street, one he had considered for sniping on top of, but decided the pigeon wire would get in the way. And also really hurt. He couldn't really swing to her fire escape, not without risking dropping her, so he started climbing down his fire escape. “So Alice, how are you doing in school?”

“Not great. They keep talking about boring stuff like shapes and numbers and I just want to play outside.” She was using his head to balance his helmet on, and she kept turning it. “The thoranist said that I might have attention defo... defin...” She huffed in frustration.

“The therapist said you might have attention deficit disorder?” Jason guessed.

“No, there was another word in there.”

Ah. “Hyperactivity. It might be easier if you just call it ADHD.”

She gave out another frustrated huff. “Why couldn't he just call it that then? That's a lot easier to remember. And hey, what's that thing you said earlier mean?”

“Malodorous dunce? It means stinky dumdum. If you want, I can write it down for you.” They'd reached the bottom of the fire escape, Jason grabbing both of her ankles with one hand so he could climb the ladder. She grabbed his hair so she could hold on better.

Once they were at the bottom and starting across the street, she released his hair and went back to playing with his helmet. “Yes please. I wanna call the therapin that next time I have to go see him. I think he's right because a lot of stuff he said ADHD people have is stuff I have, but he's also a stinky dumdum and I don't like him.”

Jason laughed. “Yeah, people who are right all the time are like that.” Pulling out his grapple, he used it to grab the ladder to her fire escape and bring it down. “Hold on again Alice.”

She did, and they scaled the ladder. “Yeah. And! He said I need pills to focus in class, but then I saw Mom and Dad looking at the bills and being sad. So I don't think we can afford it.” There was a squeaking noise coming from somewhere.

Jason hummed, thinking. “Maybe... ask your Mom or Dad if they'll quiz you when you get home from school. But while they do, play a game. Catch or something. That might help it stick better.” He'd try and see what he could do about their money troubles. Jason had a thing about drugs, understandably, but something like Ritalin could help Alice focus in school, so he'd help out. After he made sure she did have ADHD and it wasn't just some crack shrink who diagnosed every kid because they had energy.

Alice laughed, swinging her legs as much as she was able with him holding her ankles. “That's a good idea Red! Thanks! Oh, and this is my window! Um. I decorated your helmet.”

Confused, Jason set her on the fire escape in front of him and yup. It was decorated alright. There was an empty sticker sheet in her hand, probably one she had kept in her purse. The stickers, a variety of star, butterfly, car, dinosaur and heart ones, were all over his helmet, as well as some drawings of dogs and cats in sharpie. Also, a drawing of Jason's helmet. On his helmet.

“I love it!” Jason said honestly. “But I don't want it to get damaged when I'm working.”

Alice nodded solemnly. “Yeah. This is art and Daddy says that art should be protected.”

“Protected but seen.” Jason added, and she nodded again. “I'll put a picture of it on the website. Sounds good?”

“Yes! Goodnight Red!” He wrote malodorous dunce on the back of her sticker sheet, as well as a few other insults. Then, she climbed in through her window and bounced into her bed. Jason smiled, put on his newly decorated helmet and grappled away.

On the RedKids website, the user Red added another photo to his profile page, for a grand total of two. The first one, uploaded a month ago, was of a cast, covered in names and drawings in a rainbow of permanent marker ink, leaving almost none of the original white visible. The comments on it were of kids claiming them as their own. The second, and newest, was of a shelf, and on the shelf was a interestingly decorated Red Hood  helmet.

When he realized he was chewing on the inside of his cheek, Dick stopped, firmly pressing his teeth together. It was a really bad habit, one that could lead to him biting the inside of his mouth really badly, especially if he was in a fight, but it's one he had never been able to shake. Luckily, it only came up if he was particularly conflicted.

Because Jason was a murderer. And that wasn't ever something he could excuse. But was Dick any better? He had let Tarantula shoot Blockbuster. Then again, not stopping someone from shooting someone else was a lot different than the murder and torture and general bloodbath that Jason was causing in Bludhaven. Wasn't it?

No, it was. And besides, comparing their situations wasn't fair or right. Dick had been emotionally devastated for weeks, months, after the incident. Dick had seen Jason, looked into his eyes, and Jason didn't regret a thing. The kid he had seen as a little brother had died and come back a sociopath.

Maybe Jason was right about one thing though. Dick hadn't seen him as a brother, not when he'd been alive. It had only been regret and melancholy that had him remembering it differently. And guilt. Which was the entire reason he was trying so hard with Tim. Not just because Tim was a great kid, but also because if something happened, he didn't want the survivor to be left with no good memories. Which was a morbid way of thinking, but kind of necessary in his line of work.

Jason had threatened Tim. Tim was safe for now (as safe as one could be on a deep space mission with his team) but as soon as he got back, he'd have to be told that Jason was dangerous. Because he didn't know. Because he'd told Dick that Jason was alive and then blasted off in a rocket with the Teen Titans. Because he had been so excited to meet Jason he would have skipped the mission if it wasn't galaxy-saving.

And Dick was chewing his cheek again.

“Again.” Bruce said in that tone he used when he doesn't want to demand but he's also not asking.

Dick's lip curled into a snarl. He was getting tired of this. “We go over it every time I visit Bruce. Do we have to do it again?” Bruce just leveled a flat stare at him. “Fine! Jason looked older. About the age he would be if he had never died. Massive. Almost as tall as you, with muscles to match.” More muscles than Dick anyways. But Dick tried to keep on the lean side so he could continue his acrobatics. “His gear was as good as it could be without access to our resources. The grapple gun was definitely a few generations down, so he probably built it himself from memory. Didn't see his eyes, he had a domino under his helmet. And he'd dyed some of his hair green and blue and pink.” An odd choice, not one the Jason he'd know would ever make.

Bruce took all that in, changing his report by a word or two. “Anything else?”

“What does it matter?” Dick stood abruptly, his chair crashing to the ground behind him. “Jason is dead, and a serial killer came back in his place! We should just go and take him down before he hurts anyone else!”

Standing slower than Dick had, Bruce saved and minimized the file he had on Jason, revealing the rather large graph in the window behind it. For all they two of them had been working around the clock to figure out a way to arrest him without him spilling their identities, it was a pitifully small file. And while neither of them had ever though their identities would come under threat from someone in the family, they also hadn't thought someone in the family would become what Jason has become. “It matters Dick. You should know more than anyone, the more information you have on someone, the more power you hold over them.”

Dick flinched. Either that was a reminder of his lessons of when he was a Robin, or it was a reminder of what had happened when Blockbuster found out who Nightwing was. “And the more time we sit down here, the more people die. He killed six people in the past two days Bruce. And tomorrow, it could be a dozen, or a hundred, and you would be down here twiddling your thumbs and trying to get information that doesn't exist!” Better to leave now then to let them continue pushing each other's buttons. Better to leave now than after one of them punched the other. With a sharp wave, Dick stalked over to his motorcycle and roared out of the Cave.

Bruce watched Dick leave sadly. He wished things were different. He wanted to be able to have a conversation with his son without one of them stomping off mad or coming to blows. But they had made up before and they would again.

He sat down again and looked at the graph on the screen. Either Dick didn't see it or he chose to ignore it. It was a murders in Bludhaven versus time graph, and if a criminal psychologist saw it they would swoon.

The first few months of data had been gone over so many time that Bruce could probably draw it free hand from memory. It's while Jason is in hospital that things get interesting. A week of nothing, then the murders spike. Overlaid with a violent crime graph and a drug related crime graph, and it's easy to see that the crooks of Bludhaven are running wild. The numbers rival the ones from the first month, the ones Bruce suspected were Jason's alone. But where Jason had tapered off, become much less violent in the months following handing out his cell phone number, the criminals of Bludhaven kept the numbers high.

The night Dick had gone to Bludhaven there was one murder that was confirmed to be Jason's. After that there was chaos. Murder went up drastically, violent and drug related crimes plummeted. Reports naming Red Hood as the shooter skyrocketed, more than there ever had before. But within two weeks, Jason settled down and went back to his pre-hospital numbers. A jump every week or so when he took out a gang, but he didn't kill every member.

Bruce sat with his elbows on the console, fingers laced under his nose, staring at the data. Specifically, the spike. Was Red Hood making up for time lost, killing the criminals who had rampaged in his absence? Or was it because Dick had come to Bludhaven? How stable was Jason? Most non-specific methods of resurrection messed with the mind. Magic either left the resurrected a zombie, slave to the whims of the resurrector, or neglected to revive the soul, leaving the resurrected a fraction of a person.

And he couldn't really think of another way for Jason to have been revived, not without triggering the sensors on his coffin. The only reason they didn't go off was because Jason came back to life inside his coffin and dug his way out. Any sort of tech would have had to have been inside the coffin, either added later (not possible without tripping the alarm) or in the coffin before he was buried. The Lazarus Pit was a possibility, but again, one would need to get Jason out of the coffin to expose him to one. And all other methods of resurrection were specific to the person. Kryptonian birthing matrix, Spectre, escaping Tartarus, caught in an eternal cycle of birth and rebirth, et cetera.

With a huff that was as close as he got to a sigh, Bruce quickly checked the incoming reports from Bludhaven. One murder and sixteen assaults, five of which were critical, were attributed to Red Hood. The crime rate in Bludhaven had once again plummeted to where it had been before Superman decided to take matters into his own hands.

Dick was right in some things. This could never be excused. But Bruce would also never give up on the idea that he could someday bring Jason home. Under twenty-four hour watch and severe restrictions on his activities until he could be trusted again, but home.

For now though, Bruce pulled on his cowl and headed for the car. There was crime in Gotham that had to be stopped, and while Batman would never stoop to Jason's methods, he would also never give up on Gotham either.

AN: Hooray! Some of Dick and Bruce’s thoughts on the matter! 

No news besides that. Read and enjoy! Loxie out~!

#Jason Todd #Red Hood #Dick Grayson #Nightwing #Bruce Wayne #Batman #Loxie's fics

[southernmamaspeaks]

The Callback List

The Callback List

 Confession: I am a Show Mom. Sort of.

Two of my five biological children participate in Christian Youth Theater, otherwise known as CYT. They sing, they dance, they act, and they put on gorgeous Broadway-style productions by kids ages eight to eighteen in our local community. This week marks another set of auditions, and something every thespian young, and old loves to hate:

The Callback List. But is there more?

On the surface, a Callback list is a compilation of names, or numbers generated by a production team, of potential cast members who are requested to return to participate in further rounds of selection based on the quality of their initial audition. For us at CYT, the release of the list normally follows two nights of open casting calls where brave, and hopeful kiddos present a one minute song selection, and monologue from a list of options provided by the production team. It is a beautifully scary, and harrowing experience to watch someone you love stand in front of strangers to be judged worthy, or unworthy based on less than two minutes of interaction.  As so little time is available to make a good impression on the artistic team, much thought and effort is placed into every detail of the audition. As the indelible Mary Poppins states, everything must be “Spit Spot” to ensure the best possible outcome: a Callback.

Let me stop right here, and say this was not my idea. My oldest daughter had a friend encourage her to try out for a show about a year and a half ago, and the rest is showbiz history. Yet as she has gotten older, and improved on her dramatic skills, auditions have taken on a slightly more intensive tone. We stopped hoping to merely make it into a show, and started hoping for her to get specific roles. And as her mom, of course, I think she should get every role for which she tries out. After all, she is beautiful. Beyond beautiful. Don’t believe me? Take a look at this headshot from uber-talented photographer Amber Trementozzi of AMT Digital Photography (or click a link to her Facebook page here-  https://www.facebook.com/AmtPhotographyDigitalDesign/ :

  I told you she was gorgeous. Also, her voice is beautiful, she dances gracefully, her Improv skills are spot on, and she has a real gift for comedic timing. (And she took that headshot photo after she was dancing at rehearsal for something like two hours. I mean, who actually looks that good AFTER they sweat? It boggles my mind.) However, as we rolled into the Winter show season, my daughter, Sharaia, decided she was going to audition to be Betty Hanes in the CYT Fredericksburg production of Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas”. I have to admit, I thought her chances were good. Sharaia was called back for a lead role before, when she wasn’t even trying. She has a good relationship, and reputation among the adults in charge, and the ability at nearly sixteen to hit some of that sultry alto register like Rosemary Clooney. To say we got our hopes up for the part would be an understatement.  

Auditions came, and Sharaia sang a Rosemary Clooney song from “The Pajama Game”. I teared up when nerves got the best of her for a moment in front of the audience, as she was putting so much weight on herself to put in a fabulous audition. But I was so proud of her as she pulled it together, and put in a solid performance. We felt good leaving auditions, but were still very nervous about the outcome. Sharaia and I stayed up until midnight waiting for the Callback list to be posted on the website. I think I squealed almost as much as she did when we spotted her callback number in a list with twenty-two other girls to come back the next day at the studio. Saturday was very intense. I packed Sharaia a lunch I knew she would not eat, and we drove in relative silence the twenty minutes to the studio. I told her how proud I was of her to get this far, to just be herself, to have fun, and enjoy the experience. I wished her a cheerful “break a leg” as she exited the car, but underneath it all I may or may not have considered going inside to bribe the director with hefty amounts of cash to give Sharaia the part. (Thank God five kids, and a ridiculous house payment toss my family into near-poverty each month so I could avoid the temptation of throwing cash at the production team.) I drove away praying that they would see my daughter for who, and what she is, and that Sharaia would have comfort and strength to persevere through the day.

As the day wore on, the audition stakes seemed to get even higher. Sharaia made it through two rounds of cuts, as they whittled the potential Judy’s and Betty’s down to only six girls after about eight hours of rehearsing. Sharaia would sneak calls into me, and tell me with pride how well she performed in a scene, or sang a song. I was finally able to pick her up at about 10pm. And we sat in the parking lot of a local fast food place as she binged on a burger after being too sick, and nervous to eat anything all day. She was excited, and hopeful. I was excited and hopeful for her.

The Other Show Kid

Around the same time, my son, Craig Scott, was auditioning for a lead role in the CYT Fredericksburg production of “Junie B. Jones”. He is another very talented, and totally adorable kiddo in my quiver.

Craig Scott loves football, running, breakdancing, and tap. He is incredibly compassionate, and wants to help everyone he meets. He sort of fell into the whole CYT-thing because of his older sister, and has reluctantly accepted he is amazing at what he does. Because of some scheduling, CYT was going to be putting on back-to-back shows. Thus, both of my kiddos were auditioning right at the same time. Craig Scott’s story, however, is very different. Relatively few boys take time out of sports to sing, and dance. I am blessed with a husband that thinks it is just as masculine to perform a kick-ball-change as a split-back offense, so he did not bat an eyelash when we said we were forsaking travel football for Junie B. Jones. Always a jokester, Craig Scott turned in a very funny monologue during auditions as he tried out for Sheldon Potts.  And, in what I have found to be a true theater/show business reality, Craig was one of only six boys called back to fill-in the leading male roles. His callbacks were much shorter, and a little more fun, as the female hopefuls rotated between the boys auditioning to read their parts, or sing songs. And before he left, Craig Scott felt very solid about landing at least some named-part in the production. Both of my babies seemed destined to get what they were hoping for.

The Final Call

The days of the final Cast List were fast approaching after Callbacks. Again, this list is posted late in the evening the day after Callbacks have been completed, and the production team toils over who stays, and who goes from the final list. We sat at our electronic devices and refreshed the webpage repeatedly until the lists were finally posted for each show. We hooted and hollered as we found out Craig Scott was cast as Sheldon Potts. We waited with anticipation to see which part Sharaia would receive. As the cast list finally came out, we broke into tears. Sharaia had not obtained the part of Betty Hanes. She was not named as the understudy. She was not a Featured Dancer. She was cast in some ensemble roles in the play. Out of the six girls who made it to the end, only she and one other were relegated to the Ensemble. My girl was devastated. I was devastated for her.

How should a parent handle the moment when a child does not achieve their goals? I have seen, and participated in many of the examples. I will admit I cursed heftily under my breath when I saw the list in the other room. How could they?! How could they not see her for the fabulous, wonderful, “perfectly perfect in every way” girl that I did? Sharaia cried. She may have even stomped. I certainly know she asked me why, and I couldn’t answer. It was a tough night. My son asked if he could ask to give up his role in his play so that Sharaia could get a leading role in hers. I fell in love with him just a bit more after that, but had to tell him that was not the way the world worked. You couldn’t sacrifice yourself to give to another…

And then I realized how wrong I really was.

For me life is often made up of two forms of consciousness. The first is me fumbling along trying to make it through the day, remember which kid has to go where, whether there is something in the fridge I can make into a passable dinner, and the name of the child to which I am currently speaking on the first try. The second, and decidedly more rare, is that moment of absolute clarity when I realize the Lord is trying to teach me the most perfect something, and I actually hear it. That is what this moment turned into for me.

The first thing I realized was that there are so many lists we all try to get onto so very frequently in this life: friend lists, party lists, job lists, house lists, calling lists, credit lists, school lists. Lists that go on and on. But there is really only one list that matters. And, believe it or not, it IS a Callback list; although not the kind you may think. At the end of the day -the end of this life- the only list I want my children to be on is a Callback list from the Lord. I want them to “shew thee my faith by my works…[for] faith without works is dead” (James 2:18-20). Craig Scott had offered himself up in return for his sister. Sharaia had comforted countless friends as heartbroken as she was. None of us had fallen victim to anger, or backbiting. Because the second thing I realized is that every other list forces us to be judged on something superficial. And while some are more worthy than others, only God can judge our hearts. And who do I want my Father in Heaven to say my children are? Ultimately, my greatest hope for them is that he will look at them and say to them as in the parable of the talents, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things” (Matthew 25:21). Craig Scott had achieved his goal. He had made the list for which he was hoping. But Sharaia, like so many of us in our life, had not. Not yet, anyway. Did that make her less? Was she less talented, less graceful, less wonderful than those other girls? Absolutely not. She simply had not achieved her goal yet. My second realization was that goals, roles, and lists come and go in this life. They change with the times, and the seasons. But our goal of Returning to our Father in Heaven should never go away. We may be Betty Hanes for a moment, but we are children of God for an eternity. And we should seek to do His will “in all times, and in all things, and in all places” as we stand as witnesses to God, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. As I spoke to Sharaia and Craig Scott about their most essential Callback list in this life, I do not know that it lessened the sting for what was not achieved. But what I do know is that it re-focused our attention to the things which matter most, and helped re-instill in my daughter her infinite potential and worth as a Daughter of God.

Craig Scott auditioned for a part last night in “Willy Wonka”. Sharaia is busy working on her Original Oratory for Forensics this season, and honing her dancing and singing skills to try out for “Shrek” in the Spring. But in the end, I am not completely absorbed with which role they will, or will not get. Mostly because I already know whose list they are already on.

 Love,

Mama

[mealha]

Shooting with a 150-megapixel, medium-format camera

The Phase One IQ4 150MP expects you to know your way around. (Phase One/)

Taking a decent photo with a modern digital camera is relatively easy. The built-in light meters that determine exposure are smarter than they ever have been, and autofocus lenses snap into sharp focus quickly and silently. Smartphones are the pinnacle of this concept. The Google Pixel 3 with its Night Sight mode, for instance, can automatically create an image that would be genuinely challenging with a DSLR.

So, when I handed the $50,000+ PhaseOne IQ4 150MP medium-format camera to a friend and budding photo enthusiast during my testing, he was surprised by how many bad photos he took. He wondered why the lens made so much noise when it focused and where all the autofocus points were. He was curious why the images look a bit flat with no processing. They were all valid questions if you approach cameras within the frame of using consumer-grade, or even some professional, gear. But, the IQ4 is much more a tool than it is a "it just works" gadget. And by that I mean: you have to learn to use it.

What is a medium format digital camera anyway?

A fairly standard headshot with the IQ4 150MP shot in natural light. (Stan Horaczek/)

The term “medium format” simply refers to the size of the image sensor inside the camera. A sensor that’s the size of a single piece of 35mm film is considered “full-frame” and it’s what most high-end consumer and pro-grade DSLRs use. Medium format sensors, despite how it sounds, are actually larger than a full-frame sensor, which means there’s more room for larger or more numerous pixels.

A typical DSLR or mirrorless camera comes in two distinct pieces: a body and a lens. The body contains the sensor that actually captures the images, as well as the viewfinder so you can compose your shots, a screen for navigating menus and reviewing images, and the buttons you need to actually make the whole thing work.

High-end medium-format cameras work similarly, only the pieces are more modular. The sensor is larger than a single frame of 35mm film and lives inside of a digital “back,” which is a module that pops on and off of the body that holds everything together. So, when you want to upgrade, you can buy a new lens or a new back and they will typically work with the body you already have. It’s a system that has been in place since the film days. Photographers would attach a Polaroid film back to the camera to take a test shot and check framing and exposure. Then they could start shooting on rolls of negative or slide film.

In the film era, the larger negative meant a higher resolution image when you scanned or printed it. You could enlarge the photo more before you’d start to see the grain encroaching on fine details.

What's the deal with the IQ4?

Zooming in on the eye—even after exporting to a compressed JPEG—still leaves so much image data. (Stan Horaczek/)

In 2014, medium format cameras started using a different type of imaging sensor. They switched from CCD sensors, to CMOS, which had become a lot more common. You could get higher-image quality out of the CCDs, but they had drawbacks. You couldn’t get a high-res live feed off of the sensor, for instance, so you couldn’t really compose a shot on the screen or on a remote monitor. CCDs also suffered from a lot of ugly digital noise when you amped up the ISO setting (the camera’s perceived sensitivity to light). The cameras were meant for the studio where they could sit on a tripod and crank out maximum detail under nice lighting conditions.

Once CMOS sensors came on the scene, however, the early models landed on a resolution of 50-megapixels. It was a lot for the time when the 36-megapixel Sony A7R seemed high-res and the 50-megapixel Canon 5DS was still a year away. Earlier this year, Fujifilm introduced its GFX 100 camera, which, as the name suggests, has a 100-megapixel resolution.

The IQ4 goes another 50 percent beyond that for a total of 150 megapixels, which means every image has a resolution somewhere in the 14,200 x 10,600 range. To put that in perspective, an 8K resolution screen—of which there are only a few commercially available at the moment—has a resolution of 7680 × 4320. Even an exported JPEG at that resolution—which is inherently compressed so web browsers and other programs can read it—will check in at more than 60 MB.

What is it like to shoot with?

This version of the photo is cropped for a slightly taller aspect ratio to take some distracting elements out of the frame. (Stan Horaczek/)

Move up to a pro-level DSLR like those from Canon and Nikon and you’re inundated with buttons. Once you know what they all do and spend hours learning the layout, they feel like second nature, but the physical interface is imposing. The IQ4 150, however, is the opposite. There are four generic, rectangular buttons flanking the screen. Two control wheels give you access to common functions like adjusting aperture and shutter speed. There’s a power button and, well, not much else.

The menus aren’t as complicated as a pro DSLR’s either. You don’t have to swipe through dozens of pages to find functions. There aren’t really any automated modes to give you training wheels for capturing images. It’s not confusing, but it expects you to know what you’re looking at. It’s a race car—it expects you to know how to drive it.

Once you’re shooting, the experience is similarly foreign if you’re used to cameras with a lot of whizzbang features. The camera focuses using the center of its frame—you can’t choose from a huge array of focusing points typical to consumer cams. You put your subject in the middle of the frame, press the shutter halfway to lock the focus, then move the frame around to get your exact crop. Interestingly, Phase One uses AI and internal motion sensors in the camera to make sure that you don’t move or tilt the camera enough to throw your subject out of focus. It automatically adjusts if you’re in autofocus mode, which is a nice touch.

The camera is loud. The lens’s motor is audible when it moves and if you’re using the optical viewfinder, there’s a very satisfying ka-chonk sound from the mirror in the body moving up and down. If you want to shoot silently, you can lock up the mirror, use the live feed from the screen to compose your shot and focus manually, though, that’s not easy to do on the move.

For what it’s worth, it feels like shooting with a pro-grade film camera. It doesn’t hinder your shooting, but it also doesn’t hold your hand along the way.

There are also specific features built-in that really only apply to high-end pro shooters. For instance, it can sense even slight shakes from something like a subway passing nearby. Even if it’s on a tripod, that little bit of shaking can cause a slightly blurry image. The camera can delay the shot until after the shaking stops. While you and I likely don’t need that for everyday photo taking, it can be a big issue for still-life photographers who want every last bit of detail they can squeeze out of a picture.

Cropping in on the previous image, you get a clear image of the flowers that's high-res enough to fill a laptop screen with no problem. (Stan Horaczek/)

What about the image quality?

The files that come out of the IQ4 150 are marvelous in the literal sense of the word. The Schneider Kreuznach lenses resolve absurd levels of detail and, when I first zoomed into 100 percent view on a studio portrait, I laughed out loud at how close I could get to my subject’s eyes. It’s beyond counting eyelashes and into “ew gross, is that what tear ducts look like?” territory.

When my enthusiast friend looked at some of the images he had taken, he was disappointed. He was trying to shoot a photo of an always-moving bee on some flowers. A lot of them were blurry. Seeing those full-resolution images fully render blurry is particularly frustrating. With a camera this expensive and advanced, how could anyone take a bad photo?

Ultimately, this isn’t the kind of camera an enthusiast is going to go out and buy. In fact, even many pros will typically rent it for when they need a ton of resolution that will let them make super-huge prints meant for up-close viewing or just giving themselves a lot of room to crop without losing quality.

This is one of those instances in which a piece of gear really and truly is “pro” gear and it acts as such. While it’s more forgiving than older models when it comes to adjusting exposure after the fact, it wants you to tell it what to do and understand how it will react.

from Popular Photography | RSS https://ift.tt/2JnDcYO

[recentnews18-blog]

New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/storytime-a-decade-on-heres-what-life-looks-like-for-career-youtubers/

Storytime! A Decade On, Here's What Life Looks Like For Career YouTubers

We went to VidCon Australia and talked to YouTuber veterans like Hannah Hart, Hank Green and Thomas Sanders about the weirdest job in the world.

At Vidcon Australia, I’m flung against the glass revolving doors as a pack of aggressive teens stampede past me. They think they’ve seen a famous YouTuber, and want to mob her with furious affection and awe. It is not a famous YouTuber however, it is just a tiny baffled looking blonde boy, and everyone is disappointed.

Later on that day, I exit the hotel after interviewing some of the VidCon celebrities, and a very tired mother points me out to her pre-teen daughter. Who knows how long they’d been waiting outside, hoping to catch sight of someone important.

“Is that a YouTuber?” she asks, wearily but with hope.

“Omg, no mum,” answered the daughter with infinite disdain.

“Oh, he just has the pants for it,” she answered.

It seems that everyone is looking for YouTubers — but as I discover over the weekend, maybe there’s maybe no such thing as a YouTuber. Not really. Not anymore.

But it’s fine! That sounded way too dramatic.

My idea of what constitutes a YouTuber is about ten years out of date.

YouTube as a medium started back in the fabled days of 2005, and anybody who uploaded videos of themselves at the zoo or falling over on the snow was technically a “YouTuber”. But by around 2010, there were a handful of regular users with widely followed channels, who were given the title of YouTubers. Some of them fell to the wayside or segued out into other careers, and others are still on the site today, still making videos.

There’s a very good chance you’d recognise some of them, even if you aren’t amongst their fan group — they have millions of followers and a whole bunch of viral content.

You probably have seen in passing some of the astronomically big names — the controversial people like Logan Paul or PewDieiePie, who individually can boast over 66 million followers, but if you’re not in that space, you could easily forget that there are thousands of other YouTube based celebrities making a career (and often a very good one at that).

“I guess it’s like I think the biggest misconception about YouTube is that people think it’s one thing,” Hannah Hart tells me.

Hannah is one of the vanguard YouTubers from the olden days, made famous for her excessively funny My Drunk Kitchen series, which she first started uploading in 2011. I used to watch it a lot, instead of doing my extremely repetitive captioning job at the time.

This sort of introduction makes her sound venerable and aged, but it’s not actually true. It’s just that she’s been using YouTube as a big part of her career for over seven years, and has kinda been watching the whole thing mutate and evolve to what it is today. Also, a lot of her newer peers on the medium are literally 16 years old or younger. YouTube is massive with the youth.

[embedded content]

“Broad strokes, I feel like people refer to YouTube and ‘YouTubers’ as if they are a type. Now, you know, YouTube has become household, mainstream, and so, of course, we have all the same iterations as in mainstream pop media.  You know, we have your superstars, your pranksters, your this-that, your musicians… like whatever, it’s just a different set of people using the same tool, I guess.”

YouTube is huge these days, and varied like Hannah says. There are multiple genres, from the million dollar makeup YouTubers to the insanely popular people who play games to an audience, to those people who open up boxes of things and earn money from it. Arguably, the only thing that connects them is a shared medium.

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“There are lots of online video communities,” says Hank Green. I’ll explain who Hank Green is later. “It would be like saying, what’s going on in the music community this week. No, there’s no music community. Like, country western singers are different from hip-hop artists, and don’t hang out with each other.”

But that doesn’t particularly interest me — YouTube is a huge baffling multi-million dollar industry, filled with an upsetting number of rich talented teens who I don’t know.

What interests me is those early days, when YouTubing was only new, when you could list the rising stars of the medium on two hands and maybe an errant foot, when everything just seemed like a weird scrappy accident, and some video weirdos who did odd shit in their rooms suddenly found themselves with a weird career.

It’s Hannah Hart’s seven-year YouTube anniversary this year.

Her first video was simply called ‘My Drunk Kitchen’, and it was scrappily recorded on her Macbook’s Photobooth program, as a homesick way of saying hi to her friend back in San Francisco. It was halfway between a private joke and a parody of a cooking show. In it, Hannah paid homage to her habit of attempting to cook things by getting drunk and trying her best to cook a grilled cheese sandwich, without any cheese.

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The results are a pretty spectacular mix of messy and hilarious. It’s very funny, and managed to hit that sweet spot of showcasing Hannah’s natural charm and wit in a cool and shareable idea. Whatever! The point is, she didn’t make the video in an attempt to become a viral YouTube hit.

It was a happy accident.

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Those first few years of YouTube have this scrappy and DIY attitude that’s markedly different to today — nobody really knew what they were doing, and there was no established formula to follow. People were doing weird, funny things, without the wealth of trendsetters there are now. Hannah wasn’t even one of the first people doing it — but she is one of the older names recognisable in the community.

It seems that the idea of a “YouTuber” kinda grew organically, as soon as the tool became popular, became mainstream.

“It was just all collaborative, all just encouraging, all okay,” says Hannah Hart about those early years.

“Everybody was just like, ‘Oh, how cool that you’re doing something.  How cool that you’re making something.  What technique are you using for this?  Oh, wow!’”

There was a spirit of collaboration, a sharing of how to use this strange new format. Hannah gives us an example:

“Beauty YouTubers brought the ring light to everybody, because they were the first ones to use ring lights in their videos for lighting.”

The ring light is a fairly established tool for lighting in Vlogging now, but it’s kinda indicative of the pioneering attitude to the entire YouTube process that happened. They were all finding out shit together.

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“I don’t know, I guess I’m just really happy that I had the generation I had, because it was like we were all going to school together and we were all graduating.  Nobody was watching, you know what I mean? Nobody was saying whether or not we were at a good college. There was no competition with each other at all. Nobody cared about being the number one YouTuber.”

There wasn’t as much scrutiny.

While Hannah Hart didn’t start YouTubing with the intention of building a career, it was pretty quickly obvious that it was a thing that was happening.

She first noted that things got real “when I had reputable organisations like Time Magazine asking for interviews, that was really disorienting — I had like six videos out the first time that ever happened.”

Obviously, she had to adapt quickly.

“I paid a photographer to take a picture of me because I didn’t have any headshots or anything.   I was like, literally — I’m not in entertainment.” Hannah worked three jobs at the time. The opportunities not only gave her the opportunity to eventually leave those, but also to work creatively, and to change her life.

“It’s insane to me, you know?  It’s too good to be true and I feel like I cannot speak for any other creator, but for me, I feel like all of this privilege is responsibility.  I choose to be … I’ve been given so much and I’ve got to be the best version of myself.  You know what I mean? I’m like, ‘Oh my God, so wait, I’m sorry I get to pursue my dreams and I’m making more money than I ever thought I would make?’”

There still seems to be a problem of categorisation for YouTubers — at the time, it was particularly difficult for mainstream media and the hordes of offline folk to get their heads around the concept of an online celebrity, of a niche superstar.

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Hank Green and his brother John Green basically helm an entire media empire now, including the popular Vlogbrothers channel.

They started off with the very popular Brotherhood 2.0 project late in 2006, which was a series based on the premise that the brothers would cease all text-based communication for one year and, instead, converse by video blogs every weekday. One of their first viral videos from the channel was a very cute ode to the final Harry Potter book (’twas the times) —  the first Vlogbrothers video to make the front page of YouTube, and a starting point of the brothers’ success as Vloggers.

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The Brotherhood 2.o project is a great example of their work — it’s funny, goofy and somehow personal, without giving too much away. You feel like you just picked sat down with two nerdy brothers having a nice chat.

It seems that even now, it’s that idea of connection with another person that drives the popularity of YouTubers.

Hank Green kickstarted his career from his YouTuber popularity, but for him, the happy accident was always in the back of his mind.

“Before we were getting paid, I felt like it was important and interesting and cool. I didn’t think it was a career. But I figured it would help me with my career, you know? Like if that was going to be, you know, working in media or consulting with magazines or online publications or whatever, this would be a good way. If I did this for a while and I had an audience, I’d be able to get a job. And then we started making money. That’s when it was like, oh, can I not have my other jobs? Can I stop freelancing? Can I just do this? And that was wonderful.”

YouTubers are entertainers first and foremost, and that means they spend most of their time doing really silly stuff.

Most of the people I talked to at VidCon worked in comedy or comedy adjacent video, so pretty stark examples of people who got to enjoy their jobs. But, even for people whose schtick is literally getting drunk on camera like Hannah Hart, it’s important to remember it is still a job.

“It’s a funny show but it’s also funny because of the rhythm, the timing and the editing.  People are like, ‘Oh, my God how drunk do you get?’  I’m like, ‘I don’t know, pretty drunk.  Anyway, it takes me like four hours to edit.  That’s not the important part!”

A career in YouTubing requires a massive amount of hours, some business savvy, a ton of creativity and talent. But one place where it differs from other jobs is in the weird opportunities it offers. I wanted to find out whether the sheer amount of fun that people imagine YouTubers have all the time actually happens. I asked everyone about it, and the answers were frankly quite uninteresting: yes, they have fun. All those videos we watch of them having fun? They’re fun.

Revolutionary.

“I’m literally so thankful that my silliness that I did on Vine and on YouTube has gotten me the opportunities like coming here to Australia. Which I never thought I would have that chance, in this capacity. And it is just a whirlwind of wonderfulness. There’s so much more of that good that outweighs any of the scariness or carelessness,” says Thomas Sanders, one of the worlds biggest Vine (RIP) and now YouTube stars.

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He is a ball of sunshine, a real Labrador boy, and his content is generally wholesome and funny, as best evidenced by his ‘Storytime’ series, which could be best described as a concerted effort to make the world a better place.

During our interview, we’re cloistered off in the corner of the ‘Instagram Lounge’, a bizarrely curated playspace for influencers and stars (and the media) to get away from the fans. Literally, every corner of it is optimised for visual content and selfies, and we sit on a bench surrounded by a literal garden of emojis, bathed in flattering purple light.

He tells me a story about the time he filmed himself out the front of someone’s house while singing a jingle for one of his regular video series, and was questioned by the owner. Sanders found it difficult to not only explain exactly what he was doing at that moment, but also what he did in general.

“And I explained. Because I was like, this is pretty ridiculous. This is a very ridiculous thing. I know it. And I tried to explain it. I showed them as much as what I could, they went back to their house, and then shortly after, I’m at church. And I get a call from my mom and she’s like, ‘Thomas, we have two police officers here who say that you have been outside of somebody’s property acting sketchy.’”

“My parents tried to explain who I was, because my parents still, it’s hard for them to explain what I did. And so one of the cops was like, ‘Oh, Thomas Sanders. Oh, I know him.” He turns to his partner, is like, I watch his stuff. He’s a Viner.’”

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But, as the famous saying goes, along with great silliness comes great responsibility. It’s not news that entertainment in all its glittering facets has the power to educate and inform, and YouTube is no different.

Six years ago, Hannah Hart posted a coming out video on her channel.

It was before the era of coming out videos as a kind of standard for Vloggers, and hers was a heartfelt, personal, beautiful thing. It meant a lot to me at the time, being a weirdly repressed, semi-closeted queer who didn’t want to talk to anyone about anything. I was able to relate to a stranger’s video somehow.

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It’s an experience shared by lots of other people. YouTubers have a powerful ability to talk directly to fans, in ways that are more intimate and less curated than other mediums.

Ashly Perez explains to me that my experience isn’t really an outlier, that queer people are drawn to YouTube for a reason.

“The LGBTIQ community helped build so much of what YouTube is, because it’s a niche community and that’s why so many people went there. Tyler Oakley, Hannah Hart, all of these big first creators who were first there helped create that.”

Ashly Perez uses her platform to talk all things feminism, body-positivity, queerness and race among other things. She started out making sketch-based comedy videos with BuzzFeed, before leaving and focusing on her own channel, wanting to diversify out of just one medium. She is passionate about using a digital medium like YouTube to reach places like the queer community.

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“Frankly, marginalised audiences need digital. It’s free, they have access to it, it’s global. I’m in Australia right now and I have so many fans here because I’m on YouTube and if I was on TV it might not be the same because you don’t know what the pick up’s gonna be.”

She also points out that as YouTube grows in popularity, it provides a larger platform to help spread social messages.

“The one thing I will say about causes and being political, particularly in America in this day and age, with Trump as our President, I do think that social has provided me with the best place to have a direct audience with people who are hurting right now and who don’t feel heard, and who don’t feel like their voice is being made a difference.”

That said, she also tells me that there are problems with YouTube doing shifty things like de-monetising and de-prioritising videos from creators with specific LGBTIQ content.

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“And I think the thing for me too is, I have tried specifically to make content and to make things that are still positive and that remain positive in this environment and I think that’s the coolest thing about social. And, you know, even if I, I’m working on TV deals now and books and things that belong to the traditional world, but I’ll always, always make content for digital because there’s no audience like it.”

These days, pretty much every long-term YouTuber is better described as an entertainer — they have multiple book deals, they have TV shows, they appear in films, they have podcasts and businesses. They’re highly diversified media stars.

Hannah Hart, for example, has two books and has appeared in two fan-funded feature films and had a show on the cooking channel. She’s working on a new project with Ellen Degeneres, as well as a really cute podcast called Hannahlyze This. YouTube is just one feather in their big flamboyant hats.

YouTube itself is only growing in popularity, but it’s skewing younger than ever before with its audience. According to this article, in March of 2018 alone YouTube drew 31.8 million US users aged 18 to 24,  who spent an average of 10 hours, 15 minutes on the site. For this generation, you can argue that YouTube has replaced regular usage of most social media, as well as filling in for things like network television. It’s huge.

This is reflected not only in the median age of the people at VidCon, but also the extreme youth of the huge amount of wannabe YouTubers attending the conference. VidCon acts both as a venue for fans to meet their favourite creators, as well as a kind of professional pathways experience, with lessons from more experienced creators, with introductions to brand, with marketing and branding workshops.

YouTubing is seen not only as an extremely cool career option, but also a viable one. Whether or not that’s actually true is debatable, with statistics that show that more wannabe YouTubers are gonna live below the poverty line than make the desired millions, but that’s pretty true for all creative industries really. The dream is real, and young idealistic idiots are always gonna throw their hat into the ring (I can call them idiots because I WRITE for a living, like a fucking doofus).

The goal is to be a YouTube superstar.

As someone who’s been extremely involved in the rise of YouTubery as a career, Hank Green believes that the new fervour for the job can be dangerous:

“Yeah. People are working very hard and it is seen as a career. And especially for young people. It’s not just seen as a career, it’s seen as one of the most desirable careers. And so people will work very hard. And I worry about that. I worry about how hard people will work. And I worry about sort of like the things that they will do to get that.

“Whereas, for people in my generation, it was like, oh, this thing. This dumb hobby we had turned into a job. And there was a lot of complaining about not feeling legitimate, or not feeling recognised by the traditional media industry. But now that it is recognised by the traditional media industry, it’s actually much worse.”

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“It’s just a lot harder. There’s a lot more pressure. And you have to not worry about whether you’re being recognised but how you’re being recognised by the media industry and what data points are they looking at, what matters to them. And so instead of being like, nobody’s paying attention, it’s like, they are paying attention. And it’s a pretty intense kind of scrutiny…”

But it’s not just about the danger of struggling and failing — the older YouTubers I speak to are worried about the cost of very young people trying to become famous online personalities.

“I don’t know, I get worried about the generations that are growing up having to define themselves,” says Hannah Hart. “I feel really lucky that I was in my early 20s when I started, because I got to have that.  A lot of these kids they are sacrificing the privacy of their learning curve.”

I note that where once a coming out video like Hannah’s was a fairly new and revolutionary idea — something that really helped both the people posting their experience and the small community of queers who would see it, nowadays its almost expected for every gay personality to contribute to the form, to brand themselves through that format.

“I’m trying to be delicate because again I’m not trying to necessarily shit on it,” says Hannah.  “The commodification of these moments, I think for me it’s like I would never share something because I should share it —  I only share things because I want to share them.”

Daily Vlogging is not only the most popular form of YouTubing at the moment, but it’s also almost the only way to create enough video content to actually create a sustainable channel in terms of growing and retaining an audience, and getting those lucrative clickies. That means that a trend of sharing, revealing and above all commodifying your life and personality has become accepted and standard.

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“They’re Truman showing themselves, it’s so weird.  I mean not weird.  It’s interesting but also that was kind of Livejournal for my generation.  We all wrote embarrassing shit, posted it, thought we were geniuses, etc.”

I had a LiveJournal too. But we take a moment to relish in how easy it was to delete those, and how few people ever saw them.

It’s unclear what the future holds for YouTubers (if they even truly exist anymore).

Some people are convinced that YouTube will die like Vine did, or suddenly get populated by every mum in the world like Facebook, and the children will flee onto other, hypothetical platforms. Perhaps Instagram will take over with a more intuitive video interface. Perhaps there will be a completely new social media platform. Perhaps swarms of the walking dead will rise up and eat our faces.

Or, recently there’s been a rise of massive media companies taking over from individual personalities, such as the behemoth T-Series company, who just may knock PewDiePie off his perch as most followed content creator. Perhaps conglomerates will be the death of the YouTuber.

Regardless, it’s clear that we’ve already passed through a certain era — the time of the accidental YouTuber, of the vanguard YouTube star. They’re obviously still around, still doing their thing, still being successful and making great work across new and exciting mediums — but everyone proceeding in their wake is an entirely different animal.

Not better or worse, but definitely different. It’s worth taking a moment to note exactly how weird and wonderful their whole business was.

Patrick Lenton is an author and staff writer at Junkee. He tweets @patricklenton.

Source: https://junkee.com/career-youtuber-interview/174121

[junker-town]

Mike Trout is officially the best player in Angels history, and he’s only 26

He would be the best hitter in the history of several other teams, too.

For as long as they’ve been a feature on Baseball-Reference, I’ve been obsessed with the collection of headshots on every franchise page. Here, look at the A’s page:

I love these because they tell a story. The heavy influence of black-and-white photos suggests the franchise has been around forever. Rickey Henderson being anywhere but number one reminds you that he spent a lot of his peak with the Yankees. Lefty Grove is apparently Cloud Atlas Clayton Kershaw, and that doesn’t get enough attention. They’re simple headshots, ranked by a the Wins Above Replacement each player accrued for the franchise, but they say so much.

Because of this obsession, I’ve been taking notes for a future article about these headshots for a couple years now. I’m not sure if I’ll ever go through with it — it’s certainly not something everyone would care about! — but I’m still chipping away.

And while I’ve been doing it. I’ve noticed Mike Trout slowly sliding to the left, sliding to the left, every time I checked. At some point this year, he finally did it.

Trout is officially the most valuable player in Angels history. He’s 26 years old. The Angels have been around since 1961. I’m not sure which one is more impressive, so mash them together and make one super-sized fun fact. Mike Trout is 26, and he’s already the best player in the history of a franchise that’s been around for 56 years.

Trout would be the most valuable player on four other teams, too. He might pass Gary Carter and Dave Stieb by the end of this year. It’s here that I would like to point out that Trout just turned 26 in August. Aaron Judge will turn 26 in April, and he’s still a rookie, not the best player in the history of his franchise.

If you want to compare Trout just to his peers, the position players, he fares even better.

Trout would be the most valuable hitter in the history of eight franchises, which is remarkable considering there’s a twist: He’s only 26. Most of those teams are young franchises, so it might not impress you that much just yet. Even though Trout is young*, he was still alive before the Diamondbacks, Marlins, and Rays existed, so you shouldn’t be too hard on them for not having fostered a Stan Musial-type career just yet. But there are a couple of older teams here, too. The Rangers and Mets have 111 seasons between them, but Trout would have been the best hitter either franchise has ever seen, which is remarkable.

* 26

The chase that’s fascinating me the most right now, though, is the completely invented and meaningless one between Trout and Pee Wee Reese. It’s not out of the question that by this time next year, Trout will have accrued more value in his career than anyone the Dodgers have employed in their 133 years of existence. A lot of that has to do with circumstances (Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier at 28 instead of 21, Sandy Koufax’s career-ending injury), but it’s still a great way to place what Trout has already done into perspective. He’s climbing the charts so quickly that he might be halfway up the list before he’s 30, someone who would have been the most valuable for several franchises that have been around for well over a century.

It’s here that we should talk about “value” and how it relates to this specific stat. And I’ll admit to using Baseball-Reference’s WAR for a few different reasons:

It’s one simple number

It adjusts for era

It adjusts for the player’s home ballpark

It allows for comparisons between pitchers and hitters

It includes baserunning and defense

It’s easy to use in searches on Baseball-Reference’s Play Index

But it’s not a perfect stat. It’s hard to explain just how little I trust the dWAR for Robin Yount, much less the dWAR for Honus Wagner. I’m forever concerned that in 2043, someone will realize that we’ve been forgetting to carry the two this whole time, and that everything we thought we knew about an individual player’s value was wrong.

It also feels wrong to compare Trout to someone like Tony Gwynn, who was one of the nicest players in baseball history (69.0 career WAR) and the absolute best thing to happen in the history of San Diego baseball. For 20 years, the Padres had Gwynn and the other teams didn’t, and that was a great feeling for Padres fans. It feels more than a little dirty to reduce his value to a single number. If we’re going to bring feelings and the reason why we watch baseball in the first place into the equation, Gwynn had 69 WAR every season he was active, really.

At the same time, this is what we have to compare players across eras, and it still works pretty well. And what it’s telling us is that Mike Trout, at the age of 26, is already the best baseball player the Angels have seen in 56 years. I can believe that without the number, but it’s nice to have the confirmation.

There’s a lot that can happen between now and the next 100 WAR, of course. You don’t need me to remind you of that. You don’t need a list of maladies and real-life concerns to understand that the future is a scary thing. Still, while Willie Mays and Babe Ruth are safe for now, you can see where this trajectory is heading. Trout is the best player his team has ever seen. He would be the best player that several teams have ever seen. In a few years, more than half of the teams in baseball might look at Trout with an acute sense of historical envy.

Perhaps the most impressive part? He just turned 26 years old.

I don’t think a lot of people know about that last part.