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jcmarchi · 6 months

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Generative AI, innovation, creativity & what the future might hold - CyberTalk

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/generative-ai-innovation-creativity-what-the-future-might-hold-cybertalk/

Generative AI, innovation, creativity & what the future might hold - CyberTalk

Stephen M. Walker II is CEO and Co-founder of Klu, an LLM App Platform. Prior to founding Klu, Stephen held product leadership roles Productboard, Amazon, and Capital One.

Are you excited about empowering organizations to leverage AI for innovative endeavors? So is Stephen M. Walker II, CEO and Co-Founder of the company Klu, whose cutting-edge LLM platform empowers users to customize generative AI systems in accordance with unique organizational needs, resulting in transformative opportunities and potential.

In this interview, Stephen not only discusses his innovative vertical SaaS platform, but also addresses artificial intelligence, generative AI, innovation, creativity and culture more broadly. Want to see where generative AI is headed? Get perspectives that can inform your viewpoint, and help you pave the way for a successful 2024. Stay current. Keep reading.

Please share a bit about the Klu story:

We started Klu after seeing how capable the early versions of OpenAI’s GPT-3 were when it came to common busy-work tasks related to HR and project management. We began building a vertical SaaS product, but needed tools to launch new AI-powered features, experiment with them, track changes, and optimize the functionality as new models became available. Today, Klu is actually our internal tools turned into an app platform for anyone building their own generative features.

What kinds of challenges can Klu help solve for users?

Building an AI-powered feature that connects to an API is pretty easy, but maintaining that over time and understanding what’s working for your users takes months of extra functionality to build out. We make it possible for our users to build their own version of ChatGPT, built on their internal documents or data, in minutes.

What is your vision for the company?

The founding insight that we have is that there’s a lot of busy work that happens in companies and software today. I believe that over the next few years, you will see each company form AI teams, responsible for the internal and external features that automate this busy work away.

I’ll give you a good example for managers: Today, if you’re a senior manager or director, you likely have two layers of employees. During performance management cycles, you have to read feedback for each employee and piece together their strengths and areas for improvement. What if, instead, you received a briefing for each employee with these already synthesized and direct quotes from their peers? Now think about all of the other tasks in business that take several hours and that most people dread. We are building the tools for every company to easily solve this and bring AI into their organization.

Please share a bit about the technology behind the product:

In many ways, Klu is not that different from most other modern digital products. We’re built on cloud providers, use open source frameworks like Nextjs for our app, and have a mix of Typescript and Python services. But with AI, what’s unique is the need to lower latency, manage vector data, and connect to different AI models for different tasks. We built on Supabase using Pgvector to build our own vector storage solution. We support all major LLM providers, but we partnered with Microsoft Azure to build a global network of embedding models (Ada) and generative models (GPT-4), and use Cloudflare edge workers to deliver the fastest experience.

What innovative features or approaches have you introduced to improve user experiences/address industry challenges?

One of the biggest challenges in building AI apps is managing changes to your LLM prompts over time. The smallest changes might break for some users or introduce new and problematic edge cases. We’ve created a system similar to Git in order to track version changes, and we use proprietary AI models to review the changes and alert our customers if they’re making breaking changes. This concept isn’t novel for traditional developers, but I believe we’re the first to bring these concepts to AI engineers.

How does Klu strive to keep LLMs secure?

Cyber security is paramount at Klu. From day one, we created our policies and system monitoring for SOC2 auditors. It’s crucial for us to be a trusted partner for our customers, but it’s also top of mind for many enterprise customers. We also have a data privacy agreement with Azure, which allows us to offer GDPR-compliant versions of the OpenAI models to our customers. And finally, we offer customers the ability to redact PII from prompts so that this data is never sent to third-party models.

Internally we have pentest hackathons to understand where things break and to proactively understand potential threats. We use classic tools like Metasploit and Nmap, but the most interesting results have been finding ways to mitigate unintentional denial of service attacks. We proactively test what happens when we hit endpoints with hundreds of parallel requests per second.

What are your perspectives on the future of LLMs (predictions for 2024)?

This (2024) will be the year for multi-modal frontier models. A frontier model is just a foundational model that is leading the state of the art for what is possible. OpenAI will roll out GPT-4 Vision API access later this year and we anticipate this exploding in usage next year, along with competitive offerings from other leading AI labs. If you want to preview what will be possible, ChatGPT Pro and Enterprise customers have access to this feature in the app today.

Early this year, I heard leaders worried about hallucinations, privacy, and cost. At Klu and across the LLM industry, we found solutions for this and we continue to see a trend of LLMs becoming cheaper and more capable each year. I always talk to our customers about not letting these stop your innovation today. Start small, and find the value you can bring to your customers. Find out if you have hallucination issues, and if you do, work on prompt engineering, retrieval, and fine-tuning with your data to reduce this. You can test these new innovations with engaged customers that are ok with beta features, but will greatly benefit from what you are offering them. Once you have found market fit, you have many options for improving privacy and reducing costs at scale – but I would not worry about that in the beginning, it’s premature optimization.

LLMs introduce a new capability into the product portfolio, but it’s also an additional system to manage, monitor, and secure. Unlike other software in your portfolio, LLMs are not deterministic, and this is a mindset shift for everyone. The most important thing for CSOs is to have a strategy for enabling their organization’s innovation. Just like any other software system, we are starting to see the equivalent of buffer exploits, and expect that these systems will need to be monitored and secured if connected to data that is more important than help documentation.

Your thoughts on LLMs, AI and creativity?

Personally, I’ve had so much fun with GenAI, including image, video, and audio models. I think the best way to think about this is that the models are better than the average person. For me, I’m below average at drawing or creating animations, but I’m above average when it comes to writing. This means I can have creative ideas for an image, the model will bring these to life in seconds, and I am very impressed. But for writing, I’m often frustrated with the boring ideas, although it helps me find blind spots in my overall narrative. The reason for this is that LLMs are just bundles of math finding the most probable answer to the prompt. Human creativity —from the arts, to business, to science— typically comes from the novel combinations of ideas, something that is very difficult for LLMs to do today. I believe the best way to think about this is that the employees who adopt AI will be more productive and creative— the LLM removes their potential weaknesses, and works like a sparring partner when brainstorming.

You and Sam Altman agree on the idea of rethinking the global economy. Say more?

Generative AI greatly changes worker productivity, including the full automation of many tasks that you would typically hire more people to handle as a business scales. The easiest way to think about this is to look at what tasks or jobs a company currently outsources to agencies or vendors, especially ones in developing nations where skill requirements and costs are lower. Over this coming decade you will see work that used to be outsourced to global labor markets move to AI and move under the supervision of employees at an organization’s HQ.

As the models improve, workers will become more productive, meaning that businesses will need fewer employees performing the same tasks. Solo entrepreneurs and small businesses have the most to gain from these technologies, as they will enable them to stay smaller and leaner for longer, while still growing revenue. For large, white-collar organizations, the idea of measuring management impact by the number of employees under a manager’s span of control will quickly become outdated.

While I remain optimistic about these changes and the new opportunities that generative AI will unlock, it does represent a large change to the global economy. Klu met with UK officials last week to discuss AI Safety and I believe the countries investing in education, immigration, and infrastructure policy today will be best suited to contend with these coming changes. This won’t happen overnight, but if we face these changes head on, we can help transition the economy smoothly.

Is there anything else that you would like to share with the CyberTalk.org audience?

Expect to see more security news regarding LLMs. These systems are like any other software and I anticipate both poorly built software and bad actors who want to exploit these systems. The two exploits that I track closely are very similar to buffer overflows. One enables an attacker to potentially bypass and hijack that prompt sent to an LLM, the other bypasses the model’s alignment tuning, which prevents it from answering questions like, “how can I build a bomb?” We’ve also seen projects like GPT4All leak API keys to give people free access to paid LLM APIs. These leaks typically come from the keys being stored in the front-end or local cache, which is a security risk completely unrelated to AI or LLMs.

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beezelbubbles · 2 years

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Attention ttrpg folks! And civilization building game folks! My DM, who tells a real rad story, hit the interview at WotC headquarters and pitch a game level of applying to work on D&D. He didn't get the job, but he decided to write the book. Then I got to edit the book. Now the book is out. I'm super excited about sharing it with folks. It's 20 bucks, and that also gets all future content that's being planned. (Ocean combat is on the to do list! More spells, more items, and so on.) So here's the form real blurb:

Crowns & Castles lets you play D&D as a 4x empire strategy game.

You're no longer playing as a single character. In C&C you're in control of an entire realm that you create from scratch, making decisions for its military, economy, culture, and diplomacy. That realm gains experience, levels up, and unlocks new abilities. And you're going to do all this in a co-op, player-vs-player, or mixed environment with a DM who guides the world's narrative and lets you attempt anything you can dream.

Choose a race, pick a government and founding backstory. construct buildings, discover natural resources, create powerful artifacts, research and cast continent-spanning spells, spy on your neighbors, sign treaties, trade valuable luxuries, make history, and wage war in a turn-based tactical combat system (check out the free demo "Battle at Shallow Mountain").

C&C can be played at the table or asynchronously one turn at a time. No more worries about cancelling sessions due to schedules. You can use C&C as a setting for multiple simultaneous D&D games where the outcomes of one game affect everyone else in a shared, living world, or simply as an engine to create your own worlds. The system is setting-agnostic and easily reskinnable to your existing homebrews.

You get:

27 races (37 including subraces), each with a uniquely-themed set of military units 13 Governments that act as your realm's class 10 Founding backgrounds to choose from that describe how your realm originated 15 skills to accomplish your goals from Recruitment, Research, Sabotage, etc. 50 buildings to construct in your settlements 70 resources to explore, exploit, trade, and develop 170 realm-level spells to cast in and out of combat 100 unique artifacts for your alchemists to create Over 500 military units scaled to C&C's deep mass combat system Over 200 traits and reactions for those units 3 battle maps with special scenario rules at the C&C scale (50 feet per square) 3 storylines to threaten your world and either bring your players together or tear them apart 100 random events to jumpstart narratives This book contains everything you need - a Player's section to create and manage your realm, a DM's section to start and run the game, and a vast catalogue of NPC military units.

https://www.dmsguild.com/m/product/406426

#d&d 5e #D&D #civilization building #I'm stoked to use this for world building as a DM for my homebrew #books #ttrpgs #gaming

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the-firebird69 · 1 year

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The evacuation commences we are leaving I'm sending shifts the cities are filling we are under attack in the Eastern hemisphere are basis of operation and actual basis are being obliterated all of them we think this round if you must go to the cities but please go to Jason to the city because there are devices in the cities that are eliminating everyone skillet and Jacob's ladder and St Elmo's fire we must have you know that these weapon systems are deadly very effective and make people mostly just disappear into dust it's time for you to leave and it's time for you to go to the right staging area follow the instructions of your Co s Sergeant level minimum lieutenant know better please use logic

Bja

The same for us you must evacuate this place is a place of death for us he's going to be trapped here but he's worked on it and he's getting safety so he can stay around and he's helped us a lot and will tell you when we get there

Trump

He does get abused a little and people get thrust out front but we can see what's going on like Garth and his sister can see very well and they're in a lot of trouble if they mean about his people too right on the on the car that's their symbol of power it's going to make them nuts and they're building it for them not really sure I understand that I do understand that

You found it with all this crap you might not let them build those rolls royces no it's almost necessary no we want them in a meeting we want him in the meeting but we can't get him there at all it's not really funny cuz we can't do anything with him and he's rolling on this other car and I see them driving around up there in Canada so I know that they can do it and there's a lot of them probably an octillin and they're starting to sell. They have a really unique name and the cars have unique names but the Canadian names. And they are from the past too and they're not necessarily Justice knucklehead and they are an amazing vehicle and we have to have some you're going to see how well it works it's just insane they can beat the BMW in the Audi and the Porsche the lower level ones easily beat the Porsche that box there's a piece of junk but it's not when they build it and it's meant to be an intro and it works all the stuff works it's really really working and we need to do it and we're chicken s***. I want these cars down here and he says open a plant so I'm going to do that

Mac

We're actually opening plans to make these and we don't want them to but they're going to so we have to move it

Trump he suggested we make them on the islands or we're just going to lose them to them to the Max and we could export and work in the Philippine Islands as well and we're going to do that now cuz we have plans there for Kia and other things that were shut down it's a great idea we're going to have a meeting and call for a meeting after we get our stuff together

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escape-rock-bottom · 1 year

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Journal #18 - Disconnecting (Discomfort Challenge Journal)

For years, the tech world worked at bringing fantasy to our reality. They had a vision of connecting the world without us necessarily needing to physically be present in the same room. Nowadays, you can easily call your parents who are on vacation halfway around the globe, chat with your friend who lives in Canada, and run a fully functional business from your bedroom. Just 10-20 years ago this was the stuff of legend. So much value was created from this idea that the people at the forefront of this evolution sit upon multi-billion dollar tech brands that dominate the market. To this day, technology is still advancing at a rapid speed.

I was born right at the beginning of the tech boom. This basically means that I grew up surrounded with technology that quickly evolved the older I got. Let’s just say that my attachment to technology was pretty strong from the moment I was old enough to understand it, and it led to me sitting here in the present day, killing my brain cells and attention span scrolling through websites when I could be building my barge model. At this point in time, most of us have a majority of our interactions daily with and through technology.

The issue with the seemingly unlimited connection to people and content is obvious: We spend far too much time distracted by and invested in it. It’s understandable, companies and creators alike have optimized their content to be attention grabbing as that’s how they are rewarded for the stuff they make, but it sadly causes us to fall into the trap of wasted time and easy entertainment far too effectively.

I could be watching a welding tutorial in an effort to troubleshoot a problem I have with my practical welding skills, but quickly find that two hours have passed and I am somehow watching a video about how someone drank expired coconut water and ended up in the hospital (true story). While I admittedly find the psychological factors of the internet wildly fascinating, the issue itself is frustrating to many.

These issues are exactly why Leon set a two hour time limit on daily social media usage. Realistically, this would be a hard challenge on its own. While I have barely touched social media in this challenge aside from the occasional guided meditation, YouTube tutorial, the DRVN30 group, and posting my blogs to Tumblr (which net way under the 2 hour social media limit across all my devices) I still manage to net an average of 5 hours of screen time just writing these blogs and managing a business!

To me, that’s nuts. It’s not the level of disconnect I wanted to experience honestly. I haven’t spent a single day since last year not using any internet-connected device at least once, which led me to this discomfort challenge: Spend a whole day without using any technology. The only thing I was allowed was a watch I can set alarms and timers on. Of course this presents unique problems, but it would free up a theoretical 5 hours of my 16 I have in my day. I’ll admit, it was hard. I got bored a LOT regardless of the fact I had plenty of things available to do. However, the rewards I got were well worth it.

Here’s a list of the rewards and benefits I found from total disconnect as well as limiting my social media time for the DRVN30 challenge:

More focus on hobbies and necessary tasks

More awareness regarding where I spend my time, especially on the internet

“Dopamine reset” - I now get little reward from scrolling through social media or watching YouTube videos. My attention is only held for a small period of time before I get bored of that and return to another task. I get more enjoyment out of hobbies, interests, and projects now and don’t feel the need to listen to music or a podcast to relax into it as much.

Less distraction and rabbit-hole browsing

More energy, motivation, and productivity

Less negative mood/mindset effects.

Less migraines (sometimes triggered by screens in the first half of my day, RIP)

Considering how much reward I personally got from these two challenges, I might in the future set intentional “disconnect” days where I spend my day off of technology and focus my energy on projects outside the tech realm. I may even try a longer lasting disconnect period.

If you’re finding the amount of time you spend on social media, the internet, or just technology in general are negatively affecting your life, consider setting the boundaries and constraints that work best for you. You may also want to try your own day of total disconnection – or several days, if that tows your barges – to really challenge your comfort zone. Be aware of any significant changes when doing so, it helps to understand yourself, your habits, and your needs on a deeper level.

Lastly, if you’re the type of person who is very distressed by your social media, internet, or technology usage but find it even more distressing to disconnect and face reality, you may want to unpack why you feel that way. Being reliant in that manner often signals a deeper emotional or psychological factor you may need to address.

#drvn30 #chronically online #social media #internet #technology #challenge

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demospectator · 1 year

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The business signage for the Hang Far Low restaurant. Photograph by Doug Chan (from the collection of the Chinese Historical Society of America)

Hang Far Low - 杏花樓: Banquet Culture Starts Here

When Thomas Chinn, the first among the co-founders of the Chinese Historical Society of America, sat down with Ruth Teiser for a series of 12 interviews with the Regional Oral History Office, he and his spouse Daisy L. Wong Chinn provided a wide-ranging and fascinating supplement to his book, Bridging the Pacific, San Francisco Chinatown and its People, the first comprehensive account of this major and unique community.

At one point during the interview, Chinn picked up his treasured copy of the 1876 Bishop Directory of Chinese businesses and pointed to the name of one restaurant: Hang Far Low (杏花樓).

“It was started prior to 1876,” Chinn said of what he asserted was the most sumptuous Chinese restaurant in the West, “and we don’t know how much earlier–maybe five or ten years. It came all the way up and was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire, and it was rebuilt practically in the same location, a door away maybe. In 1930 my wife and I were married there. That was over a half a century after this place was started. Then on our sixtieth wedding anniversary in 1980, which took place last year in June, my wife and I went back to the restaurant and had lunch there to celebrate the occasion. The name has changed; it was sold, as he [the controlling partner] had no descendants who wanted to continue it. He sold it around 1960, and the name is now The Four Seas Restaurant… .”

In that pre-internet era, Chinn lacked easily searchable, digital versions of San Francisco business directories that predated his copy of the 1876 directory. In fact, the Langley directory of 1868 lists a “Hong Far Low, (Chinese) restaurant” at 713 Dupont (here).

The Langley business directory of 1868 contains a listing for “Hong Far Low, (Chinese) restaurant, 713 Dupont”

“Restaurant- Cigar Factory- Dupont St. San Francisco” c. 1869 - 1892. Photograph by Isaiah West Taber (courtesy of the California History Room, California State Library, Sacramento, California). This image shows the pioneer-era restaurant Hang Far Low (杏花樓). The English letter rendering of the name, i.e., “Hang Fer Low” in the sign above the ground floor entry door at 713 Dupont Street was used (subject to publisher typos) from at least 1872 to 1906. The earliest listing of the restaurant may be found in the 1868 Langley directory.

The west side of the 700-block of Dupont Street, c. 1880s. Photographer unknown. In spite of the Italian-type name, the cigar company occupying the central storefront of the building was Chinese-owned. Business directories from 1869-1892 listed in the first year a “Colombo & Co., (Chung Lung) manufacturer cigars, 715 Dupont.” Thereafter, however, the cigarmaker was usually listed as the “Colombo & Co., cigar factory, 715 Dupont.”

Moreover, the restaurant’s closure in 1960 did not represent the end of the story. Chef-restauranteur Brandon Jew resisted turning his back on a Grant Avenue building “steeped in Chinatown celebration history.” 145 years after Hang Far Low’s founding, Jew carried on the restaurant tradition in the same post-1906 building with his own popular eatery, Mr. Jiu’s. As Jew wrote in 2017 for vice.com:

“Before we renovated this space to become Mister Jiu’s, it was the Four Seas restaurant for about 50 years—hosting weddings, political fundraisers, and red egg ginger parties for the local community—and before that, it was a restaurant called Hang Far Low, which opened in the 1880s. With the shutdown of Four Seas and Empress of China—which closed around that time, too—the neighborhood lost two of the biggest and most historic places to celebrate within Chinatown. For long-established businesses, the competition to stay relevant or to become an institution is increasingly impossible.”

Cropped version of the photo by Carleton Watkins and published as stereo card “3759 Chinese Restaurant, Dupont near Sacramento, San Francisco” (from the Marilyn Blaisdell Collection / Courtesy of Molly Blaisdell). The above photo shows an elevated view north to the west side of Dupont Street showing Fook Yuen & Co. at 711 Dupont St., the Hang Far Low restaurant at 713 Dupont St., and Colombo and Co. Manufacturers & Dealers of Cigars, which occupied the ground floor store space at 715 Dupont St. from at least 1869 to 1892.

The “Hang (or Hong) Fer Low” restaurant’s listings in the 1871 and 1878 editions of the Wells Fargo directory of Chinese businesses (courtesy of the Wells Fargo Museum).

“3759 Chinese Restaurant, Dupont near Sacramento, San Francisco” c. 1882 (photograph by Carleton Watkins)

In 1888, The Bancroft Company published A Guide Book to San Francisco, by John S. Hittell, in which the restaurant’s interior space plan was described as follows:

“The Hang Fer Low Restaurant, on Dupont Street, between Clay and Sacramento, is the Delmonico’s of Chinatown. The second floor of this and other leading restaurants is set apart for regular boarders, who pay by the week or month. The upper floor, for the accommodation of the more wealthy guests, is divided into apartments by movable partitions, curiously carved and lacquered. The chairs and tables, chandeliers, stained window-panes, and even the cooking utensils used at this restaurant, were nearly all imported from China. Here dinner parties, costing from $20 to $100 for half a dozen guests, are frequently given by wealthy Chinamen. When the latter sum is paid, the entire upper floor is set apart for their accommodation, and the dinner sometimes lasts from 2 P. M. till midnight, with intervals between the courses, during which the guests step out to take an airing, or to transact business.”

“Smoking Divan, Chinese Restaurant, Dupont St., San Francisco” circa 1880′s (Photograph by Carleton Watkins, courtesy of the Bancroft Library). An altar to the deity Guan Gung (seen at left) and seating alcove in a Hang Far Low dining room, 713 Dupont Street, ca. 1880’s.

“Smoking Divan—Chinese Restaurant [Boudoir Card B3760]” c. 1880′s. Photograph by Carleton Watkins from the collection of the Bancroft Library.

The above alternative print of the “Smoking Divan” photo by Watkins is significant in at least two respects. Under magnification, the print more clearly shows the carved inscription on the wooden box in the lower left-hand corner of the image, i.e., the Chinese characters for Hang Far Low (杏花樓). Although the above image has been cropped to enhance its resolution, the image as cataloged with the Bancroft Library bears the identification as one of Watkins’ “Boudoir Series” of photographs (B3759) as a restaurant on Dupont St. The next number in the series, B3761, was a restaurant on Jackson Street. Thus, the above two photos of the Smoking Divan provide a definitive glimpse of a portion of Hang Far Low’s remarkable interior furnishings. The image of 關公 (canto: “Guan1 Gung1″) appears in the shrine seen in the left portion of the image.

The interior dining rooms attracted other prominent photographers of the day, such as Isaiah West Taber.

“B5 Chinese Restaurant S.F. Cal.” Photograph by I.W. Taber (from the collection of the San Francisco Public Library).

The above photograph depicts the same dining room that was the subject of Watkins’ photo of the Smoking Divan, except that Taber’s shot looks down the hallway toward the shrine to the left of the divan.

Detail from “B5 Chinese Restaurant, S.F. Cal. Photo by I. W. Taber from the collection of the California State Library. The item on the table in the center of the photo is the same Hang Far Low-branded box which is seen more clearly in the Watkins photo of the Smoking Divan.

By the end of its first decade or more, San Francisco’s Hang Far Low had gained such notoriety that city residents had dubbed it “The Delmonico’s of the West.” The restaurant’s interior captivated the photographers of that era.

The Bancroft Library for years has only identified the above photo as an “interior of unidentified Chinese restaurant” c. 1880s. Comparison of this photograph by the Goldsmith Bros. with other copies in private collections indicates that the above photo depicts Hang Far Low’s main dining room.

The verso of a copy of the same dining room photo (on an auction website) identifies the “Main Banquet Hall” of the Hang Far Low restaurant shown in the Goldsmith Bros. photo.

Historian Judy Yung, in her 2006 pictorial book San Francisco Chinatown described about the main dining room as follows: “The top floor of Hang Far Low Restaurant – replete with inlaid panels, carved screens, and hardwood tables and stools imported from China – was reserved for the Chinese elite and their guests.”

The exterior elevation of Hang Far Low, and its decorative balconies, continued to fascinate the photographers of that era. The restaurant appears in numerous photos throughout the latter decades of the 19th century

The Hang Far Low restaurant and its adjacent buildings on the 700-block of Dupont Street, c. 1880. Photographer unknown. The vertical white sign 包辦滿漢葷素戲酒席 roughly advertises “banquet arrangements for Manchu and Han meat and vegetarian feasts.”

Another view of the Hang Far Low restaurant and its adjacent buildings, looking northwesterly up the 700-block of Dupont Street, c. 1880. Photographer unknown. The vertical white sign 包辦滿漢葷素戲酒席 roughly advertises “banquet arrangements for Manchu and Han meat and vegetarian feasts.”

“3119 Chinese Restaurant, S.F. Cal., c. 1880s. Photographer unknown.

“Chinese Restaurant Dupont St. and Shops or Stores” The above photo was taken by Perkins circa 1885 (from the Marilyn Blaisdell Collection /Courtesy of a Private Collector). The southwesterly view of the west side of Dupont St. depicts from left to right Fook Woh & Co. Art Goods, Man Lee & Co. (709 Dupont), Fook Yuen & Co.(711 Dupont).

The Langley’s San Francisco directories for the years 1879 through 1883 (and probably for the balance of the decade) show both the variety store Man Lee & Co. and the drugstore Fook Yuen & Co. (the signage for which is seen clearly in the above photo), operated next door to the restaurant’s building at the addresses of 709 and 711 Dupont Street, respectively. (By 1894, other businesses had occupied the 711 Dupont address.)

Hang Far Low Restaurant as viewed from Commercial Street looking at the west side of Dupont Street, c. 1885. Photograph probably by Goldsmith Bros. (from the collection of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley).

“Chinese Grand Restaurant, S.F., Cal.” c. 1885. Photograph by Isaiah West Taber (or O.V. Lange?).

“The Orient Entertaining The Occident – On the occasion of their annual banquet, the Yinn Yee Kong Sow Society invited the Supervisors of San Francisco and their lady friends to a banquet in the Hong Fer Low restaurant. From a flashlight by Taber.” The caption indicates that Isaiah West Taber or an assistant presumably took this photograph using a “flashlight.” (Photography historians will recall that Sylvester M. Williams, a photographer, printer, and Oakland resident, worked for I.W. Taber & Co. from 1877 to 1878. Williams was known for his pioneering inventions in the field of flash photography, including the Williams Flash Light Apparatus.)

The above photograph of family association members (a branch of the Yee clan?) with members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors provides early evidence that the Chinatown community understood the utility of feeding politicians, even if those same politicians exhibited hostility to the Chinese community. Perhaps significant, and given the relative lack of ornate decorations seen in other photographs of the Hang Far Low restaurant’s interior, the banquet appears to have been held in a lesser, more utilitarian, dining room.

In 2022, historian and author Roland Hui sent to me this comment about this banquet photo as follows:

“Taber’s flashlight photo showing a dinner gathering of Chinese and city supervisors was probably taken in 1897 since there’s a 2/21/1897 SF Chronicle article on a banquet hosted by the same Yinn Yee Kong Sow. However, I believe they made a typesetting error. It should have been Tinn (or Tin) Yee Kong Sow [ 親義公所; std. canto: “Sun Yee Goong Saw”)], the defense unit of the Four Brothers. Tin Yee was the new name of Mu Tin [(睦親; std. canto: “Mook Tun”] described in Bruce Quan’s book Bitter Roots. [The] [n]ame was changed in 1896.”

The rare shot of diners at a 19th century banquet prompts the question about the dining experience provided by Hang Far Low. The 1888 Bancroft Company publication, A Guide Book to San Francisco by John S. Hittell, described a typical banquet as follows:

“Among the delicacies served on such occasions are bird’s-nest soup, shark’s fins, Taranaki fungus (which grows on a New Zealand tree), Chinese terrapin, Chinese goose, Chinese quail, fish brains, tender shoots of bamboo, various vegetables strange to American eyes, and arrack (a distilled liquor made of rice); champagne, sherry, oysters, chicken, pigeon, sucking pig, and other solids and liquids familiar to the European palate also find their places at the feast. The tables are decorated with satin screens or hangings on one side, the balconies or smoking-rooms are illuminated by colored lanterns, and Chinese music adds to the charms of the entertainment.”

Balcony of Hang Far Low Restaurant ( c. 1885?). Photographer unknown (from the collection of the California Historical Society).

In her travelogue, Bits of Travel At Home, writer Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885) described the façade of the Hang Far Low restaurant as follows:

‘ Hang Fee[sic], Low & Co.’ keep it, and foreigners go there to drink tea. There is a green railed balcony across the front, swinging full of high-colored lanterns, round and square; tablets with Chinese letters on bright grounds are set in panels on the walls ; a huge rhinoceros stands in the centre of the railing : a tree grows out of the rhinoceros's back, and an India-rubber man sits at foot of the tree. China figures and green bushes in flower-pots are ranged all along the railing. Nowhere except in the Chinese Empire can there be seen such another gaudy, grotesque housefront. We make an appointment on the spot to take some of Hang Fee’s tea, on our way to the Chinese Theatre, the next evening . . .

“B 1184 In Chinatown, S.F. Cal.” c. 1885. Photograph probably taken by I.W. Taber (from the collection of the California State Library). The name, Hang Far Low, in Chinese characters (i.e., 杏花樓) is clearly visible on the lantern suspended in the upper left-hand corner of the frame.

The above two photographs were taken at different times (based on the presence of the deck chair and state of the plantings) from the balcony of the Hang Far Low restaurant, looking north up Dupont Street. The first photograph evokes the style and perspective of I.W. Taber who took a similar photo from the same balcony and sold prints under the B 1184 serial number.

The upper balcony of the Woey Sin Low at 808 Dupont appears in the right-hand third of both photos, situated across Dupont and northerly and beyond the intersection of Dupont and Clay Streets (shown at the mid-right part of the photo). Only horse-drawn wagons can be seen parked at the eastern curb of Dupont which suggests the decade of the 1880’s.

Close up of the second and third floor balconies of the Hang Far Low restaurant as viewed from the street level. Photographer unknown (courtesy of the California History Room, California State Library, Sacramento, California). The plants on the top floor and the darkened signage above the second floor window to the right of center appear consistent with the I.W. Taber photos of the balcony from the mid-1880′s, suggesting the year of the photo as circa 1885. The signage for the Colombo & Co. cigar store at 715 Dupont St. is barely visible at the bottom of the print.

Researchers of pre-1906 Chinatown owe a debt of gratitude to pioneer photographers such as Isaiah West Taber, Carleton Watkins, and others for capturing images of the interiors of the neighborhood’s grand restaurants. However, the surviving prints or plates left scant information about particular photographs, making the job of identifying restaurant interiors difficult even upon close examination.

Fortunately for Chinatown historians, Taber apparently took a series of photos of one of Hang Far Low’s mid-level dining rooms from different angles and at different times. Thus, a comparison of several photos provides important clues to identify positively a principal dining room of one of Chinatown’s legendary establishments, Hang Far Low (杏花樓), during the late 1880s.

Chinese Restaurant c. mid-1880s. Photograph by I.W. Taber from the collections of the California Historical Society and the Bancroft Library.

“168 Chinese Restaurant on Dupont St.” c. mid-1880s. Photograph on card attributed to I.W. Taber.

Close up of “Chinese Restaurant on Dupont St., S.F. Cal.” c. mid-1880s. Photograph attributed to I.W. Taber.

“4230 Chinese Restaurant, Dupont Street, San Francisco, Cal.” Photograph by I.W. Taber and print bearing a date of April 1, 1889 (from the private collection of Wong Yuen-ming).

Identification of the preceding two photographs of the same dining was only made possible thanks to Taber’s printing photo no. 4230, a detail of what was probably a westside interior wall of the dining room which shows clearly two important clues about its location. Taber took this photograph during the day and without the banquet tablecloths and place settings. As a result, the Hang Far Low- branded boxes (seen previously in Watkins’ “Smoking Divan” photo) were placed back on at least two tabletops.

Enlargement of “4230 Chinese Restaurant, Dupont Street, San Francisco, Cal.” Photograph by I.W. Taber and print bearing a date of April 1, 1889 (from the private collection of Wong Yuen-ming).

A close inspection of the box in the center of photo no. 4230 reveals the Chinese characters for the Hang Far Low restaurant (from right to left: 杏花 ), as well as the same detail on the panel of the wooden screen seen in the background.

The case for locating the dining room shots at Hang Far Low is further bolstered by the inscription seen in the upper left corner of the wall painting.

Enlarged detail from “4230 Chinese Restaurant, Dupont Street, San Francisco, Cal.” Photograph by I.W. Taber and print bearing a date of April 1, 1889 (from the private collection of Wong Yuen-ming).

On the left side of the wall painting the first two characters (read vertically from right to left) are 乙酉 pinyin: “Yiyou”; canto: “Yuht Yau”) indicates, according to the collector Wong Yuen-ming, the date around which the painting was given to the restaurant, which “might be 1885 or any 60 years before.” The center or second line of characters appears to read: 杏花大賣場 (lit.: “ “; pinyin: “Xìng huā dà màichǎng”; canto: “Hahng Fah dai mai cheung”). Assuming that the characters 杏花 refer to the restaurant, Wong surmises that the 大賣場 represents a form of exhortation or wish for Hang Far Low to make money.

Exterior of Hang Far Low (photographer unknown, c. 1894)

By the 1890s, when the above photo was taken (from the west end of Commercial St. looking at the restaurant situated on the west side of Dupont Street), the Colombo & Co. cigar store had departed, and the 715 Dupont Street address in the building had become a gift bazaar. The view of the second floor shows alterations to the façade and arched window frames with more prominent Chinese character signage. A dozen years later, the building would be destroyed completely in the Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906.

Post-earthquake exterior of Hang Far Low restaurant (photographer unknown, c. 1907).

Chinatown was rebuilt in place after the earthquake and fire, and a new home for the old Hang Far Low restaurant was built in 1907 into which the new restaurant would move at 735 Grant Avenue. This photo showing the new restaurant was taken from approximately the same location on Commercial Street as shown in pre-1906 photos. The striking addition of an oriental-style cupola on the roof, and visible from the street, exemplified the architectural flourishes of the new “Oriental City” into which the neighborhood had been transformed. The availability of “Chop Suey” is prominently advertised by signage on the second floor balcony. The Hang Far Low sign above the door is seen at left, and it reposes today in the collection of the Chinese Historical Society of America. The awning of the Hee Jan furnishings store can be seen in the center space of the store frontage at 737 Grant.

“S.F. 76. A view in Chinatown, San Francisco, Cal.” Given the vintage of the signage depicted in the postcard, the painting appears to depict the new post-1906 Chinatown and is itself exemplary of the success of the community’s survival strategy to cater to the tourist trade.

The new banquet dining room of Hang Far Low (c. 1908 by Martin Behrman). The third floor banquet hall of the new Hang Far Low restaurant one year after the construction of the new building admitted plenty of sunlight, but never equaled the opulence of the pre-1906 grand dining room.

“Banquet in San Francisco Chinatown” c.1910. Photographer unknown (from the Jesse B. Cook Collection at The Bancroft Library).

As is evident from the above photo, purportedly taken in 1910 to honor members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the merchant and other leaders of the Chinese community resumed using Hang Far Low for cultivating influence with public officialdom.

“Common Dining Room” c. 1911. Photograph by Louis J. Stellman (courtesy of the Society of California Pioneers).

Historian July Yung wrote in her pictorial book San Francisco’s Chinatown (published by the Chinese Historical Society of America) about the post-1906 incarnation of Hang Far Low’s serving Chinatown’s workers as follows:

“The middle floor of Hang Far Low housed the kitchen and served more common fare to Chinese shopkeepers and workers during the day. Some restaurants offered monthly coupons for meals at different prices. Cheaper restaurants that served simple rice and noodle dishes were usually located in the basements of buildings.”

A waiter pours tea for a customer in Hang Far Low’s middle floor dining room, c. 1911. Photograph by Louis J. Stellman (from “Camera Craft – A Photographic Monthly” ed. Sigismund Blumann, vol. XL, no. 1 (January 1933). Stellman took this photograph using a small box camera. “Another luck shot was in the Hang Far Low restaurant,” Stellman wrote 22 years later. “Setting my camera on a table I chanced a fifth of a second exposure of a Chinese waiter pouring hot water into a tea bowl. He was talking at the time but the print shows little movement. “

Photograph of a banquet held in the main dining room of Hang Far Low, circa 1912. (Photographer unknown from the collection of Bruce Quan). The event was possibly hosted by prominent businessman Lew Hing.

Hang Far Low restaurant looking northwest across Grant Avenue, c. 1917. Photographer unknown from a private collection.

The 1907 building (designed by architect Albert Pissis) appears a decade later with additional signage advertising a Restaurant and Tea Garden from the third floor balcony. A man carrying basket approaches the photographer’s position on the east side of Grant Avenue. Above the next door entryway at 717 Grant, the American flag shares space with the white sun on sky blue background flag of the six year-old Republic of China, as does the entrance to the Jee Jan store at 737 Grant.

Vertical, neon signage in the daytime for Hang Far Low and Yoke Ball Low restaurants appear prominently in this photograph from 1939 of Grant Avenue’s west side. The “Yuck Ball Low” restaurant (as listed in the Polks Crocker-Langley directors of 1939 was located at 747 Grant Avenue.

Architectural historian Hongyan Yang writes about Hang Far Low’s building in her upcoming book as follows:

“… The property was owned by Paul Fleury and Leonide Arizerais. This three-story three-bay building was designed by Albert Pissis and completed in 1907. Among one of the first generation American architects trained in Paris, Pissis was highly influenced by the Baroque and Renaissance traditions, and was actively involved in rebuilding downtown San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. His design of the Hang Far Low building also consisted of collections of Oriental details and decorations that were commonly employed in the buildings of Chinatown. In addition to the vibrant colors of green and red, the most evident feature was the cupola tower that perched on top of the building. Compared to typical cupola towers found in Renaissance-influenced architecture, Pissis dressed this square copula in an Oriental fashion, accentuated by the red and green color schemes and upturned eave ends to evoke a sense of exoticism associated with a Chinese pagoda tower. Different from the religious pagoda towers in China, the cupola tower kept its western ornamental connotation and was used vertically and scenically in the composition of Oriental architecture, without any adjacency to a monastery and religious significance. Different from the intricate structural system of a Chinese pagoda tower, it featured a much simpler structural system with straight crossed beams and columns. In fact, American architects were keenly aware that these newly constructed buildings with Oriental features like a pagoda tower did not represent traditional Chinese architecture… . “

The west side of the 700 block of Grant Avenue in 1945.

By Mar 10, 1945, when the above photograph was taken of the view north along the west side of Grant Avenue, a hard awning had been built over the sidewalk fronting the entrance to Hang Far Low restaurant. The bakery sign in the right of the photo over the woman’s left shoulder was for the old Eastern Bakery which operates today at 720 Grant Avenue.

Nighttime on Grant Avenue during the 1940s, and the heyday of San Francisco as a Navy town.

A waiter (伙記; canto: “fo2 gei3) serves a table of postwar Chinatown businessmen probably in the middle dining room of the Hang Far Low restaurant on February 9, 1946. Photographer unknown (from the collection of the San Francisco Public Library).

A postcard of mid-century Grant Avenue.

A 1954 close up of the Hang Far Low awning signage over-hanging Grant Avenue. The sign over the doorway was salvaged and accessioned to the collection of the Chinese Historical Society of America.

The remodeled banquet room for the new Four Seas restaurant.

By 1960, the family of the controlling partner of the Hang Far Low restaurant no longer wished to operate it, and the establishment was sold in 1960 to operate under the new name of Four Seas.

The legendary eating establishment that had served San Francisco’s Chinatown for a century had come to an end.

The history of Hang Far Low implicates a less examined, but deeper, narrative, wherein the Chinese learned that the banquet halls could serve as tools for civic engagement with the greater San Francisco community and its political institutions.

In the first quarter of the 21st century, however, banquet culture in SF Chinatown has waned substantially due to a confluence of factors. Demographic changes, pandemic lockdown and stigmatization, the dispersion of Chinese communities throughout the Bay Area, and the corresponding decline in Chinatown’s role during the era of exclusion and segregation as the principal market and financial hub had all converged to end the 170 year-old institution of the banquet hall in Chinatown.

The building which housed the Hang Far Low and Four Seas restaurants at 731 Grant Avenue, January 5, 2024. (Photograph by Doug Chan). Since the rebuilding of San Francisco’s Chinatown after the disaster of 1906, the building continues to house the restaurant operations of the highly-rated Mister Jiu’s, a contemporary Chinese American and bar. The entrance to the modern-day restaurant is located on the west side of the building at 28 Waverly Place. As almost a metaphor for the reinvention of Chinatown and the restoration of its banquet rooms, the Executive Chef, Brandon Jew, and his team have gradually expanded operations within the building to its remodeled top floor’s “Moongate Lounge.”

[updated: 2024-1-19]

#Hang Far Low #Chinatown banquet culture #I.W. Taber #Carleton Watkins #Louis Stellman #Thomas W. Chinn #Long Kong Tin Yee Association #Tin Yee Association #Mu Tin Association #Brandon Jew #Judy Yung #Four Seas restaurant #Colombo & Co. cigarmaker

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demonsfate · 2 years

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I'm glad you're talking about the absurdity of Blood Vengeance because I remember watching that and thinking, "who this Shin is? Like I don't remember him from the games but also, Jin is kinda an asshole here oh god. Xiao's and Alisa's relationship is cute but aside from that this is a MESS". Seems that they didn't learn from the Live Action movie.

Sidenote I love the pic you shared of Xiao holding Jin's hands🖤 kinda looks like she's holding the paws of a cat/puppy, so soft. The power that that has 🤌

Nope, Shin was just an OC for the movie to serve as a contrived plot point. Which thank fuck, since I didn't care for his character at all. And yeah, Jin was quite an asshole in Blood Vengeance. Not only the whole "IF A MERE FATHER-SON QUARREL IS ENOUGH TO DESTROY THE WORLD, THEN SO BE IT" (lmao writers pls remember why Jin wanted to end the bloodline in the first place) but like. Not doing anything to help Shin was hilarious despite the fact that Jin alone, could've easily saved Shin's life - then there was also Alisa and Xiaoyu, who are BOTH excellent fighters as well. So like, there was no need for Shin to die - they could've easily fought off Heihachi and get him back. Given that Kazuya just... stood there, and acted indifferent by the death (not happy, not upset either) I don't think Kazuya would've cared if they tried to force Heihachi to let go of Shin. But no - they just stood there for an ENTIRE MINUTE for plot convenience (ugh) and then when the three start fighting, their punches were so POWERFUL, that it fuckigngng BLEW XIAOYU OUT OF THE BUILDING - she would've fallen to her death had Alisa not been there and Jin just doesn't even care. 💀 (Remember how in that Tekken Force comic, seeing Xiaoyu get thrown against a wall was enough for DJ to come out? Or how in the SFxTK trailer, seeing Xiao hurt by Juri was also enough for DJ to come out?)

Although, I can't entirely blame Blood Vengeance for Jin's cunty portrayal. This is more so TK6 damage. As that game was the one that unfortunately started the whole "Jin being a complete cold jerk to everyone" and it just kinda bled into other medias (Blood Vengeance, King of Fighters crossover mobile thingy I believe, Street Fighter x Tekken, and even Tag Tournament 2 to an extent) Really, TK6 did assassinate Jin's character and I'm really hoping TK8 will revive him. (He was better in TK7, but wasn't in it enough to really determine.)

Xiao and Alisa's relationship was very cute. I actually hated Alisa in TK6 just because she was so boring. Like lots of people talk about female characters who have no personality other than Female, and Alisa is perhaps one of the biggest examples of that in TK6. Her only personality was really just, "being pure and agreeing with everything MC says unless it's hurting Heihachi lMAO." 'cos she really did just feel like Waifu Bait. But I actually liked that she was a socially awkward weirdo in Blood Vengeance. It gave her actual character, made her feel more unique, and made sense with her being a robot trying to understand human emotion and behavior. But Xiao and Alisa's relationship was also a downside to the movie as well. Because it felt like it focused so much on it, to the point where it felt like a slice of life anime movie more than one that's supposed to be one based on a fighting game. And I just found myself feeling really bored of it. It's like they remember it's supposed to be an action movie and then just threw over the top ridiculous fighting scenes in it.

Especially the last fighting scene - which lots of people say it's good, but... it's really not. Not only just because imo, it's way too over the top even for Tekken standards. But like as I've stated above - we focused mostly on Xiao and Alisa throughout the entire thing. So when we're now spending 10+ minutes of the Mishimas, who were barely in the film - especially Kaz, and Heihachi, and we don't really know / understand their motives, and why we should even be rooting for them (WHO we're even supposed to be rooting for lmao) Like yeah, I know that mostly only fans will be watching this movie and they've played the games. But this movie is also noncanon, and set in an AU. Soooo... this Jin, Kazuya, and Heihachi are still different from the ones we see in the games.

Watching Blood Vengeance felt like I had to turn my brain off through it all. And that's definitely not a good thing. It may actually be the worst of all Tekken adaptations. As much as I critique and dislike Bloodline - I will say I'd probs rather rewatch Bloodline than Blood Vengeance. Although it was also poorly written, Bloodline had more things I liked in it - and while Jin's characterization is still wrong, imo, at least he's an actual good guy - even if the whole "don't hurt ppl ever :-)" message for a little pretentious at times. And I'd even rather rewatch the OVA and the 2010 movie over Blood Vengeance. I've yet to watch Kazuya's Revenge tho (sequel to the 2010 movie) and I probs never will at this point. But yeah, even though I think the Tekken story can be translated into a good show/movie if written well - for some reason, nobody is able to actually execute it and at this point, I don't think we'll ever get a good Tekken adaptation.

YOU'RE RIGHT OMG - it does!! I guess it makes sense, Jin is but a creechure JNDFGJNG. But yeahh!! It's one of my fav win poses from Tag 2. I wanna see Xiao being cute with Jin more often in the games! Especially given they are supposed to be best friends! (With Xiao obvs having a crush on Jin)

#✏️ - ᴛʜᴇ ʜᴏsᴛ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴏsᴛ // (ooc)#✏️ - ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴅᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ? // (inbox)

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skyrim-add-items-mod-m9 · 2 years

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AddItemMenu - Ultimate Mod Explorer - Download

💾 ►►► DOWNLOAD FILE 🔥🔥🔥 You need to If co-op Skyrim sounds good to you then here are all the details on the current build of Skyrim Together. Angels Fall First. One favored method among assassins is the use of poison. How to Use the Console. It is still available to download, however, and many people are still playing it. Skyrim Together - In-Game Commands. It's the last menu screen on the main menu. The Skyrim Together mod allows multiple players to connect to a single instance through a server browser. Inigo can be found in the Riften Jail, where he will occupy the prison cell next to Sibbi Black-Briar. Crash course in console commands in Skyrim. To move to the desired location, type in to the console: coc — Center on Cell, where ID is the locations id found in the list below. Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey. VR Configuration Tool. A hold is a large area of land roughly equivalent to a county in Cyrodiil. The following is a list of Location IDs. Use the player. 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Although it is in a closed beta, there are a few ways to get it working. Skyrim script extender is a tool that is well integrated into many Skyrim mods. To start this quest line, you need to speak with Aventus A short tutorial detailing how to get rid of the recharge timer on all dragon shouts. When in the console, click on Grelka and then type in the following commands pressing return after each line : setrelationshiprank E0B3 4. Skyrim together commands You need to If co-op Skyrim sounds good to you then here are all the details on the current build of Skyrim Together. When in the console, click on Grelka and then type in the following commands pressing return after each line : setrelationshiprank E0B3 4 hdr bf eea tu cu fb xilr gach jo bg pp ml bb fgci cad njf mdn aae hd npdh bfc aa ae aff ppkc ec kcc aba ejci ijl nis.

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ursaminortarot · 3 years

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Pick-a-card Reading

I did another pick-a-card reading, this time focusing on love and romance. Also, if this is relevant to you or resonated with you at all, can you leave a comment with your astrological sign and which pile you picked? If you know your moon, rising, and venus, could you leave those as well? I have a theory I want to test.

The piles you can pick from are:

Pile 1: Hyena

Pile 2: Swan

Pile 3: Frog

Pile 4: Lion

Pile 5: Fire Ant

Pile 6: Black Egg

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Pile 1: Hyena

Wheel of Fortune, 5 of Wands, 3 of Swords reversed, Soulmates reversed, Wisdom Ace of Swords, 8 of Pentacles reversed, Father of Swords reversed, Co-create, Vision 10 of swords, 10 of Wands reversed, The Moon reversed, Go the Distance, Bond Knight of Wands reversed, 9 of Swords, The Sun reversed, Regenerate, Message Knight of Cups, 8 of Wands reversed, 6 of Swords reversed, Yin reversed, Achievement Bonus Cards: 3 of Pentacles reversed, 3 of Wands reversed, Death, 5 of Cups reversed, 6 of Swords

You haven’t had the best of luck with your past relationships. You’ve dealt with heartbreak and disappointment and that’s made you skeptical of love; and if you ever believed in soulmates, you don’t anymore. The positive to all this pain is that you’ve learned a lot about yourself and how to assert your boundaries. You’re the type of person to throw yourself into work as a distraction. Keeping yourself busy to avoid processing your emotions is something that can only work for so long. You need to focus less on work, it’s preventing you from doing the work you need to do in order to move on. You may even begin having dreams about your most recent relationship until this is done. Ending negative cycles can be a difficult and daunting task, but in this case it’s necessary. Otherwise you won’t find your peace. You are healing, it may not be progressing at the speed you want, but these things take time. You were meant to find this message: “there’s light at the end of the tunnel”. Healing isn’t linear, so don’t feel defeated after a hard day, week, month, or even a hard year. At this moment, you should focus on finding harmony within yourself.

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Pile 2: Swan

The Chariot, The Tower, Ace of Wands reversed, A leg Up, Poised, Death, Reflect 3 of Cups, Temperance reversed, The Chariot reversed, Co-create, Regeneration, Deceit 5 of Pentacles reversed, Page of Wands, Temperance reversed, Time to go, Protect Page of Wands, Two of Swords reversed, 9 of Pentacles, Why? reversed, Tick-tock reversed, Luck 4 of Cups reversed, Queen of Wands, 6 of Wands reversed, Breath, Come to the Edge, Terra, Vision

I get the feeling that you don’t have a type, or if you do it’s always changing. Sometimes you can be a little rash with love and this can get you in trouble. You’re the kind of person who will turn someone’s world upside down - and then you ghost them. You haven't always been this way. At one point you were in a serious relationship, and for some of you, possibly engaged or planning a family. This relationship didn’t end well, it was a very messy break up. I get the impression that you were likely cheated on. You end relationships so quickly, and sometimes harshly, because you would rather hurt the other person than risk being hurt again. You haven’t felt safe with a partner in a long time, but the problem here is that you don’t stick around long enough to develop the level of trust that you want to have within a relationship. What you need to do right now is spend time alone, dig deep, and really think about what it is that you want. Do you even want a relationship right now, or are you just looking to have fun? You’re not very grounded at the moment, this is a contributing factor to your restlessness. If you can, take some time to enjoy nature and find your center. If you’re the kind of person who likes to party, you’re being asked to slow down and pace yourself.

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Pile 3: Frog

[Before getting into the reading, I’m getting a distinct feeling from this pile. Either, you’ve never been in a relationship or you don’t have a lot of experience with them.]

The Moon reversed, Knight of Pentacles, The Hanged Man reversed, Building Blocks reversed, Balance The Empress, Queen of Swords reversed, Ace of Cups reversed, To Be Fair, Achievement 5 of Cups reversed, King of Wands reversed, 10 of Wands reversed, Milk and Honey, Simplicity 3 of Cups, 4 of Pentacles, The Tower reversed, Higher Power, Sol 2 of Cups, 6 of Pentacles, Daughter of Cups reversed, Never-ending story, Transformation Bonus Cards: 8 of Wands reversed, 7 of Wands reversed, Clean it up reversed

You’re very cautious or picky when it comes to relationships. There are a lot of fears present here, but we’ll handle them one at a time. There’s a fear of not finding stability or being trapped. You want everything to be fair and equal in a relationship, but this can make it difficult to ask for what you want or need. You don’t want to be too much, but you also don’t want to be giving more than you’re receiving. You hold yourself and other people to high standards, some might say that they’re impossible to meet. You know exactly what you want in a partner, and that makes you afraid of disappointment. It’s not that you need to lower your standards, but you need to realize that it’ll be difficult to find someone who meets all of your expectations. If you don’t want to wait until that person crosses your path, or if you don’t even believe that they’re real, then you’re going to need to discern what standards are a necessity and which one’s are preferences that you can go without. People like being around you, because you have the ability to put them at ease. You built up this skill and put a lot of work into it. You have this need to make sure others feel safe when they're with you. You don’t want others to feel like they can’t be themselves around you, because you know how awful that can feel. You can connect with people on a deep level very easily. This is what’s frustrating for you, because if you can bond with people so easily then why haven’t you found your person? You are an extremely lonely person, but you need to accept that things will progress at their own pace and you need to get comfortable being alone.

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Pile 4: Lion

Queen of Swords, Queen of Pentacles reversed, 2 of Pentacles reversed, Soulmates reversed, Deceit The Fool, The Page of Cups, The Fool reversed, Poised, Breath, Sleep 10 of Cups, Six of Wands reversed, The Magician reversed, Here and Now, Cycle 3 of Pentacles, High Priestess, The Chariot reversed, Not for you, Exchanging Gifts, Bond The Hermit, Justice, Daughter of Wands reversed, Go the Distance, Wisdom Bonus Cards: Ace of Swords, Ace of Swords reversed

You’re a very strong and intelligent person, but you can be cold and calculating. You’re at odds with yourself because you want to be softer. You are a hopeless romantic at heart, but you can’t bring yourself to express it. You restrain that softer, more romantic side of yourself to save face. You don’t want to look stupid, but you also want to do all the sappy, silly lovey-dovey shit. You have a very creative side to you and you could use that as a way to explore your softer side. You don’t have to share your art with anyone, but it could help shift the way people perceive you. It could make it easier to express to people that there’s more to you than the cold front you’ve been putting up. Finding balance is key. You are analytical & calculating, but you’re also romantic & nurturing, and you need to find a way to exist as both, or you’re never going to get anywhere.

You should focus less on the future. You’re so worried about having this perfect fairytale ending, that you’re just getting in your own way.

You see the world in a very unique way and you don’t think you’ll meet someone who understands how you process and think about the world around you. You have a lot of conflicting feelings right now, and that’s okay, it’s human. You can’t be perfect all of the time.

Also, you need to chill, you’re taking this way too seriously. Love, romance, and relationships are supposed to be fun. Go meditate in a forest or something, run away to the mountains, just find a way to relax. I can’t fully describe with words the extent of the uptight/tightly-wound energy I’m getting from you.

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Pile 5: Fire Ant

7 of Cups reversed, 3 of Wands, Daughter of Swords, Truth be Told reversed, Simplicity The Empress, 10 of Wands reversed, 5 of Pentacles reversed, Observer reversed, Go the Distance, Deceit 2 of Wands, Queen of Swords, The Hanged Man, 9 of Swords reversed, Soulmates reversed, Fork in the Road, Healing Queen of Cups, King of Wands reversed, Ace of Swords reversed, Building Blocks reversed, Exchanging Gifts reversed, Balance 3 of Pentacles reversed, Queen of Wands reversed, Death, 8 of Pentacles, Poised reversed, Sol

You’re juggling a lot emotionally and I feel like you cope with these feelings through art. You are highly perceptive and you have a piercing gaze that can see through everybody’s bullshit. You value truth above anything else in relationships. You see so much that it makes it difficult for you to feel. It’s not that you don’t have feelings, it’s that you break everything down to the smallest detail and your feelings stop being feelings and become observations and data. You’ve become overly analytical and it’s getting in the way of potential relationships. I feel like you are this way because you saw something in someone once and you ignored it, and then you really wish you hadn’t. You thought that you had a future with someone who thought of themself as kind of a sacrificial lamb, so to speak. This person could not take accountability, everything was someone else's fault, and most of the time, they blamed you. Even though most of it was self-inflicted because they didn’t know how to say no and just went along with everyone and everything. Your view on relationships and love has been changed by this experience. The good news is that you’re starting to heal, but you’ll likely never see love the same way and you won’t be able to trust people as readily as you once did. You still believe in love and romance, for other people, but not for yourself. You don’t believe that you’ll ever be able to share that much of yourself with another person again. You have this ‘once was enough’ energy to you. If you want romance in the future, which I’m assuming you do because you’re reading this, you need to work on rebuilding the parts of yourself that got damaged by that relationship. Put yourself and your healing first and maybe, one day, you’ll be able to open yourself up to the prospect of romance again. Nothing’s impossible. This lack of confidence you have in yourself is starting to impact your professional life. You need to find yourself again, and that’s not going to be easy.

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Pile 6: Black Egg

[This reading is all over the place. I can’t tell if that’s because I was tired after doing the other 5 readings or if it’s because you, the person who picked pile 6, are someone who has energy that bounces from one thing to another very quickly.]

Wheel Of Fortune, Ace of Pentacles, 4 of Wands reversed, 6 of Pentacles, Treasure Island reversed, Sol King of Wands reversed, 6 of Swords, Justice, Mother of Swords reversed, Chop Wood, Achievement 5 of Pentacles, The Hierophant reversed, 6 of pentacles reversed, Father of swords reversed, All that Glitters, Bond 3 of Swords reversed, 10 of Wands, Son of Wands reversed, Daughter of Swords, A Leg Up, Arcana The World reversed, Death reversed, Ace of Wands reversed, 2 of Wands reversed, Blessed reversed, Air

You’ve had a rocky love life up until this point. All you want is stability because that’s something that has been lacking in your life, you need a balance between the domestic side of a relationship and having the freedom to be able to go off and do whatever you want. You don’t want to be pinned down, and yet, you want to pin someone else down. You need to allow potential partners the freedom you’re asking for.

You’ve gotten some bad relationship advice in the past. Someone told you that you need to be something you're not, or at least pretend to be something you’re not. The problem with this kind of thinking is that once your partner discovers that you haven’t been entirely truthful with them, they're not gonna want to stick around. Because, you know, people don’t like being lied to.

You’ve had your heart broken in past relationships because you felt like you couldn’t turn to your partner for help. They were someone that asked a lot of you, but wouldn’t reciprocate.

You’re an intelligent, and perceptive person, but you’re also incredibly passionate and a little head-strong. So, sometimes you don’t think before you act and that’s been a point of tension in past relationships. You want to rush everything, but there are no shortcuts in love. You need to slow down or find someone who can match your energy.

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I know that readings with 30ish cards take me about an hour to do, so why was I surprised that this took me 6 hours?

I don’t know how much of my personality to let show throughout these kinds of readings. I don’t want them to be dry or too detached, but at the same time people probably just want to know what their piles have to say.

[The decks I used were the Modern Witch Tarot, the Wild Unknown tarot, the Earthbound Oracle, the Wisdom of the Oracle and the Wild Unknown Animal Spirit oracle.]

I feel like these were too specific to apply to a lot of people, but also not specific enough. So, if you want a more personalized reading check out my Etsy shop.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/UrsaMinorTarot

#tarot reading #tarot #tarot reader #tarot pick a card #tarot cards #tarot decks #oracle cards #oracle decks

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ceruleanchillin · 3 years

Text

Honeymoon Headcanons: Mayans Edition

Characters: Angel, Coco, EZ x F!Reader

Miami (Angel)

It wasn’t difficult at all to decide where the two of you would take your honeymoon. When you weren’t gonna be naked, Angel wanted you in sundresses and bikinis. You wanted him in linen shirts, and to feel him up in a club. Couple that with you both wanting a tropical environment, and Miami it is.

Angel letting you handle the accommodations, because you seem to know more about what you wanna see/where you wanna go than he does. He only cares about a bed and shower for when he’s not taking you in the inappropriate places. He just hands over the cash, though he complains about his hurt wallet.

Angel hard as a rock when he sees your new name on your plane ticket.

The two of you nearly missing your flight because your husband needs to “show his wife he loves her”.

You babying him on the flight, because Angel has never flown anywhere before.

“Mami, it’s perfectly valid to feel like a flying toaster can’t safely get you anywhere but a casket. Which they can’t even put you in, because you’ll be everywhere!”

Cue you distracting him with kisses and dirty words in his ear, which gets you initiated into the Mile High Club

Barely making it into the cute little condo before the two of you are at it again, collapsing in the late hours to jet lag and mutual satisfaction.

Your first official day is spent dragging Angel around the humid streets. Knowing he stresses easily if you plan things too tightly, and wanting to wing it yourself. It’s surprising how well you to fit in, it almost feels like home.

Angel switching from being jealous, because your tiny cotton sundress is attracting more than just his attention, to him kissing all over your dewy skin because so much of it is visible.

You getting as jealous as Angel, because it seems like each place you drag him to has openly interested ladies. It’s the white linen shirt that he won’t fully button no matter how many times you try to make him.

Angel basking in the attention, and even playing it up to force you to be the one to initiate inappropriate public sex.

Smirking when you break after a woman pays for his (and unintentionally yours) order at a small cafe you stepped into and you snap and drag him to a hidden place.

“I only love you querida, mi alma.” he whispers in your ear when he bottoms out inside you.

You two are a beautiful couple. Photogenic as all hell. Alone, neither of you have a problem attracting interest, but together, you make people want to be seen around you. That’s why you have no problem club hopping to all the exclusive places.

Angel taking photos and videos of you dancing because he’s so enthralled. He can’t wait to show your kids one day when they ask why he fell for you, and he explains how full of life you are.

Getting enough liquor in Angel to get him dance somewhere away from the club, especially since he (lies) and says he can’t.

You and Angel competing to see who can get the most people to buy your drinks + the two of you losing track because you both get drunk.

A quickie in the coatroom is the prize, Angel fucking you to the hypnotic beat.

Spending a few hours apart the following day, only to still keep texting and FaceTiming each other until you met up, touch starved, at a small restaurant.

Deciding to spend the rest of the day at your Airbnb laid up under each other after Angel scores weed. Teasing Angel about his monetary complaints when you spend all night enjoying the small backyard pool.

Angel thanking God for getting an adventure loving woman as his soulmate when you wake him up the next afternoon to inform him you rented jet skis for the day.

You being impressed when, while jet skiing, Angel silver tongues your way into an invitation to a nearby yacht party out of the host.

FaceTiming Gilly to make him jealous that you two are doing Hookah and drinking Casamigos in a hot tub.

Angel ramping up the mockery when EZ and Coco appear on screen, attracted by Gilly’s whining. Everyone looking overworked and salty, while you and Angel are living your best non-sober lives.

Slipping away from the party to one of the rooms on the boat, because once again, you and Angel never know when to stop teasing each other before it ends up in sex.

Feeling bold enough to suggest that since Angel’s been documenting so much of the trip, that maybe he should film this too.

The aftermath being a surprisingly sweet series of kisses and confessions where the two of you express how thankful you are to have found each other. How you can’t wait to build a forever together.

Marfa + Roswell (Coco)

No one knew how you got Coco to agree to travel for your honeymoon until you finally revealed where you were going. Splitting a week between Marfa and Roswell.

You and Coco are that “weird” conspiracy, incense, and weed couple, so it makes sense.

Giving Coco an edible before you leave, because like Angel, he doesn’t fuck with air travel like that.

“They got me with that bullshit in the military, but that was out of my control. You askin’ a lot right now, you’re lucky you’re cute mujer.”

Coco getting progressively handsy during the flight as the edible hits. Eventually, you stop fake-fighting his neck kisses and forward touches.

Also like Angel in that he’s unafraid to become a member of the Mile High Club.

The ride from the El Paso airport, to the car rental place, to Marfa takes far longer than Coco would like.

He’s used to long stretches of trip on his bike, and when you notice him becoming antsy, you distract him with interesting facts about Marfa.

The entire time, Coco can’t help but think that you’re the perfect road trip co-pilot, only to realize he actually meant his life in general now.

Coco proud as hell when you fall in love with his accommodations choice like he did. The colorful airstream trailers of the El Cosmico hotel are the two of you through and through.

You both trying to be responsible adults and refresh after travel, but continuing to get lost in each other during the whole process.

Shower sex -> Making out while drying off -> Touching while searching through your bags for something to wear -> bed sex -> repeat

Looking thoroughly mauled when you finally manage to get Coco off of you and into the car in search of food the next afternoon.

Coco being happy you can’t cover up due to the heat, while you wonder what superpower he and his boys have that let them wear flannel and long sleeves in the heat.

Dragging Coco to a cute cafe you saw on instagram, and him knowing, by the hipster design of it, that his wallet is about to cry.

Stealing food from his plate, and laughing at him sucking his teeth and whining when he catches you.

“You’re stuck with me forever now Johnny sooo….get used to this.”

“Small price to pay for that I guess.”

Finding small shops to go to and being Siamese twins in every one. Coco showing he has good taste in a lot of things one might think he wouldn’t. Him opening up his wallet at everything you 'ooh' and 'aww' at. He can’t help it, he likes you happy, and your kisses and adoring looks are addicting.

For almost everything you get, Letty gets something too. Neither of you wants that tantrum when you get back.

You fighting yourself to avoid the art supply store, and Coco not having it.

“I have so many supplies already, it’s an addiction at this point.”

“So? Get some more. It’s our week, we shouldn’t stress about shit.”

Coco bragging on your talents and successes to the art shop cashier when you checkout.

“Cocoooo.” you murmur hiding your face in his shoulder, arms around his waist.

“Don’t be shy ma, you’re fucking amazing. I love your skills.”

Cue the cashier swooning at the two of you.

Finding unique liquor stores and getting tipsy on samples. It becomes twice as fun when locals, and other tourists alike, start discussing the Marfa lights with you, and you and Coco impress everyone with your ideas.

Being invited to a bonfire smoke session with the other El Cosmico guests when you get back.

Sketching Coco by the firelight, because he’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen in that moment, and now he’s officially yours.

The sex being on another level of intimate that night, because all day you and Coco have been engaging in your respective love languages, and it culminates in mutual need for each other.

The drive to Roswell being more tolerable for Coco, but he still misses his bike. Your excitement about AlienFest is so palpable however, he quickly forgets.

Your hotel being more conventional, but the people you meet making up for it. Finally, you and Coco aren’t the weirdest ones in the room.

Taking the time before the festival starts to check in with friends and family and accumulate odd souvenirs for them. You believe Coco is intentionally getting them stuff they’ll hate.

“Taza won’t wear that baby, he has better taste in jewelry than UFO earrings.”

“Ok, but can he bitch about us not getting him anything? Plus, you can guilt anyone into anything.”

Doing cute edible pastries at the festival.

“You know Aliens are demons right? Jack Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard were doing summoning rituals in the Mojave in 1946, and Roswell was the following year.”

“Word?…Shit. Tell me that again when we’re not rolling. I wanna read about it………you’re so smart mami.”

Coco realizing between every snack stop, every dance he shares with you, every trinket you pick up, and every little conspiracy tidbit you share, that you’re his wife now. That the peace he’s been feeling all week, that he thought he’d never have, is going to be his new normal.

New Orleans (EZ)

You and EZ both enjoy engaging with history and culture, and felt that your honeymoon should be built off of your shared interests. During your meticulous wedding planning, it was decided New Orleans would be the honeymoon destination. It didn’t hurt that you missed your southern roots too, even if you weren’t from New Orleans.

Traveling with EZ is a dream considering you’re both pretty organized, together people. He’s not afraid of flying, but you’re always a little nervous.

EZ being Best Husband™️ and soothing even the most minor of your stresses by turning your attention to the excitement of your trip and your new relationship status.

Teasing EZ in-flight won’t get you Mile High Club initiated, because he finds it much more entertaining to punish you by letting you work the both of you up, and making you stay that way for the duration of the flight. He’s got enough will power to suffer through it, because your soft whines make it worth it.

The airbnb is everything it was promised to be, and you’d appreciate that later, but all you can think of is your husband when you step through the door. That’s the other half of why EZ likes to leave you waiting. Your aggression and exclusive desire for him gets, and keeps, him hard.

It rains the following day, which is just as well, because neither of you are quite ready to stop physically expressing your love for each other. The day consists of ordering food, falling out of your clothes and onto each other, separating to read, falling back on each other, and quick naps.

Angel sending mocking texts in your Reyes group about how you’re trying to turn his brother bamma like you, only to stop when you threaten him with no souvenirs.

EZ and you taking responsibility for your own tour because let’s face it, you both know exactly what you want to see, and can plan a more satisfying tour for the both of you. You take turns deciding where to go next.

When it’s his turn, EZ picks an art museum, and can’t quit smiling about it. You think it’s because he picked a place he really wanted to go to.

“Babe, I have a surprise for you.”

“What?” your excitement always makes EZ’s heart race with his own.

He hands you the guide brochure he picked up at the door, folded to the section he wants you to look at.

“Faith Ringgold exhibit?!”

He hums and nods, grunting when you knock into him with a hug.

“Thank you for thinking of me. I love you.” you look up at him, eyes shining with unshed tears and he just kisses you, afraid he’ll cry if he says anything.

The two of you avoid the tourist trap spots for lunch and find a cute family owned cafe. You order for the both of you based on what you know about southern cuisine and both of your tastes.

You love watching EZ fall in love with the food as he keeps asking “Can you make this?” about everything he eats.

The two of you walking through the Garden District in the evening. Hands swinging between you with no plans but to admire the beautiful homes and foliage.

EZ noting how awestruck you are, and you describing what you love about the historic, towering homes.

He catches that when you describe what your dream home in the area would be, he and your future children are mentioned frequently, and it makes butterflies dance in his stomach. He can picture your family in the yards around him.

The two of you almost make it back to your Airbnb, but give into your baser urges after all the domestic conversation. EZ pulls you into an alley for a quickie, the two of you fighting to silence the other’s vocal expression.

You teasing EZ after that he’s more like his brother than he thinks. Him teasing back the two of you would’ve been caught and arrested if he was like Angel.

The following day is relaxed and less planned. The both of you getting thoughtful gifts for each member of your family, blood and otherwise. EZ scores major points for the gifts he suggests for your mom and dad, and you kind of want to jump him again.

EZ is glad you’re impressed, but it’s nothing to him. It all comes naturally because he loves you so much, and refuses to be anything other than the husband he knows you deserve.

AN:

I didn’t want to add this, cuz I wanted to end on a sweet note, but you just know Angel would accidentally send that vid to one of his boys.

Personally, I lose it for shit like this. Anything domestic in writings is my jam, so I decided to make these headcanons.

- Fun fact: Jet Ski is kind of like Bandaid in that it’s become the generic term for “personal water vehicles”, but it’s actually a specific brand’s name for their PWVs. I learned this while writing this enjoy💀.

#mayans mc #mayans imagine #angel reyes #angel reyes x reader #coco cruz #coco cruz x reader #ez reyes #ez reyes x reader #reader insert #angel reyes imagine #coco cruz imagine #ez reyes imagine

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pale-silver-comb · 4 years

Note

So I know absolutely nothing about Leverage except what I've been seeing you post lately and I have to admit you're making it look tempting to watch! Can I ask what are some of your favorite things about the show/reasons you would suggest people watch it? And is there really a poly relationship that is canon?

Okay. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. I am going to do my best not to just “asdfghkjl” at you and answer coherently.

In a nutshell, Leverage is about 5 people. 4 are criminals (Parker, Hardison, Eliot and Sophie) with different and unique skill-sets and 1 is an ex-insurance investigator (Nate) who, at one point or another in his career, has tracked down (or at least attempted to) the other 4. The whole show is essentially: man reluctantly reforms 4 criminals to use their criminal powers for good and 4 criminals move into man’s life and stubbornly refuse to leave because, goddammit, now they have morals.

I’ve got a lot of favourite things about the show but the main ones are as follows:

1. Found family. And I’m not talking about loners who come together to fight crime and happen to co-exist to the point where they realise they happen to have found themselves a family. I mean, Nate and Sophie are the Drunk Uncle and Wine Aunt who somehow become Mom and Dad to 3 beautiful criminal children. Mom and Dad love their criminal babies and the kids love them (as well as each other, but we’ll come to that in a moment). You get amazing family moments such as: Mom and Dad packing the kids lunch before sending them out to kick corporate greed’s ass; Mom and Dad giving the kids ridiculously expensive and personal Christmas presents causing their most Grumpy Kid to go very very quiet and soft as he runs off to gleefully play with his new murder toy; the kids interrupting Mom and Dad’s big Movie Style Kiss to ask if they can please keep their new underground layer and huffing and puffing when Dad tells them no.

2. Found family: the OT3 edition. To answer your question, the OT3 is indeed canon, confirmed by the creator. Now, usually, “confirmed by the creator” infuriates me because most of the time it’s a way for a creator to be seen as “progressive” without doing anything to actually be progressive. That isn’t the case here. The OT3 are built up carefully and while it is obvious the creators didn’t originally intend for all 3 of them to become a relationship in the romantic sense, by mid-season 5 we are given a very clear picture of where Parker, Hardison and Eliot are heading in their relationship. There aren’t any kisses at the end to signal this but there are solid marriage vows in not only one but two episodes. (And by marriage vows I mean literal equivalents of marriage vows: “for better or worse” and “’til death do us part”. I’m not even exaggerating). The OT3 also doesn’t need explicit romantic narratives to convey how much they love each other. Their love is laced through the whole show, from the way they teach each other things to the way they respond to each other and work as a unit. The way they fiercely protect and admire each other. Like someone once said, if you need characters to kiss or say I love you to let the audience know they love each other, you are writing them wrong.

Aside from that, each of the parings in the OT3 are just. Gah. They are so well done, with friendship being the solid basis for them all. The creators never expect the audience to assume anything about them or fill in the gaps. They give us their relationships on screen and reference many things off-screen to show us how these relationships continue to build in between episodes.

Hardison and Parker are a canon couple and date in the show: it’s approached slowly and they are so goddamned sweet. They are basically every fluffy slow-burn trope with a healthy dash of mutual pining in the mix. They are basically that quote “love is patient, love is kind”. (I would like to add their romance never becomes the focus of the show or overrides the importance of any other relationship they have with the other characters, especially Eliot.)

Hardison and Eliot are the Old Married Couple and from day one are already bickering and looking at each other/making comments that are found in every UST fic ever (not to mention Hardison has a very good knack for making Eliot grin like a little kid, when usually he’s basically an Angry Little Chef Man). They argue, they play, and love each other plain as day.

Parker and Eliot are more subtle but every bit as wonderful. They have an unspoken connection and understand each other on a level no-one else can. Parker and Eliot are not good with giving themselves over to affection for different reasons (and Hardison plays a central role in helping them realise it’s okay to want it and have it- that boy has endless patience) but there is something so beautiful in the way the two of them come together on their own and develop their own special bond that works for them. Parker and Eliot are that trope where the characters don’t need to speak to understand each other perfectly. They just do. Their love language is a lot of the time non-verbal but speaks volumes. (Parker also likes to annoy the hell out of Eliot and Eliot....just.....lets...her. Because he’s soft. The softest, grumpiest boy.)

I could go into so much depth for each pairing and their dynamics as a 3 but that's for another post.

3. Subverting stereotypes. There is the occasional hiccup in the show regarding stereotypes but ultimately, Leverage gets an A+ when it comes to writing characters and making them 3 dimensional people who are not defined by certain characteristics or events. Nate could so easily fall into the White Man Pain trope where he uses the trauma of losing his kid as a reason as to why he is entitled to act like a dick. Nate is a dick but he doesn’t use his pain to excuse it and I appreciate that. Hardison is a black man who is soft and nurturing. Easily the most empathetic and patient of the group. He’s nerdy, an actual genius, and has the biggest heart of all the characters. Nate is maybe the glue but Hardison is definitely the heart. Media’s usual aggressive, amongst other, racist stereotypes can fuck right off. Parker is canonically autistic (I am sure this was confirmed by one of the creators) and she is not defined by it. It’s not written as some kind of singular personality trait. It’s part of what makes up Parker but it’s only one facet of who she is and not once is her actions, thoughts or feelings treated like a joke. Sometimes people don’t understand why she does and says the things she does but it’s met with patience and fondness over the course of the show. Equally, it’s not met with over-caution. Parker is just Parker. No-one tries to change her. The other nice thing is Hardison, who always makes sure Parker knows she’s amazing because of who she is and not in spite of it. Finally, Sophie is in her 40s. She’s not treated like she’s past her prime. Ever. She’s sexy, smart and never is she pitted against or compared to Parker (who is younger) for anything. Sophie is amazing and there’s never even a conversation of “I may be older but I am still *insert adjective typically associated with younger women here*”. Sophie is possibly the first female character I’ve ever seen who isn’t just unapologetic about her age but has never had to apologise for her age. It’s a non-issue and that’s that. The women on the show are written so well, right down to secondary characters and it’s beyond refreshing.

4.) It’s just fun. The show has a “monster of the week” type format. Except instead of a ghoul or a ghost, the monster is some corrupt wealthy and powerful individual or organisation. The show draws on real-life individuals to do this and therefore closely parallels real-life people and events. It addresses important political, economical, social and environmental issues while at the same time remaining fun and light-hearted. The characters constantly get the chance to play dress up and by GOD do they have fun with it. You get to watch Eliot beat up bad guys in the most delightful of ways, usually after a witty non-sequitur and with a weapon you’d never think could be a weapon. The dialogue and back and forth between the characters is everything. And finally - my favourite thing- the team can never resist striking a dramatic pose after they’ve taken down the bad guy, making sure the bad guy sees them. I mean, they COULD just walk away, satisfied they’ve taken the person down, but nope. They gotta be dramatic bitches 24/7 and pose like they are models for every single month of this year’s Criminal Calendar.

5.) Competence Porn. So. Much. Competence Porn.

Honestly, I could list a thousand reasons for why Leverage is amazing but to list them would to be spoiling so many amazing moments you’d get to discover for the first time on your own if you do choose to watch it. It’s the kind of show you can watch with an eagle-eye and sink your teeth into. But it’s also the kind of show if, you would prefer, put on in the background for something entertaining while you do something else. Each episode is about the job at hand but it’s made up of so many moments between the characters that show how much the creators and writers care about them. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll do whatever it is you do when something Soft and Wonderful happens that makes your heart melt. I am so beyond grateful for Leverage. It’s everything I always wanted in a show. Nearly every show I’ve watched in the past 10 years has disappointed me in some way, usually either because the writers run out of steam or characters who I love are treated poorly or given some kind of unnecessary “shock value” arc. Leverage doesn’t do that. Leverage is what it says on the bottle. Fandom isn’t something I joined because I needed canon fix-its. Fandom only enhances and celebrates an already excellent canon.

#leverage #leverage ot3 #parker #alec hardison #eliot spencer #sophie devereaux #nate ford #talk leverage to me

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wintermelonbear · 3 years

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Artistry

Pairing: Damian Al-Ghul Wayne/Marinette Dupain-Cheng

Trope/s: Childhood Friends, No Powers AU

Summary: A story in which two seemingly dissimilar eight-year-olds build bonds through their love for martial arts. Written for the MGI Trope Tussle 2021.

Words: 4808

Damian and Marinette first met when they were 8 at his mother’s Wushu studio. At first glance they were an unlikely duo, before meeting in martial arts class their social circles ran entirely parallel with one another with Damian attending a private school that was a feeder for Gotham academy and Marinette attending a public elementary local to her, but they truly brought out the best in each other.

Damian had grown up inside his mother’s studio, working day in and day out from the tender age of 3 to improve his weaponry and martial arts skill. His mother and father, divorced but trying their best to co-parent for his sake, each preached to him about the importance of self-discipline and concentration. When his mother and her father, Ras himself a master martial artist, had competed in Wushu they were national champions. As a third-generation practitioner of Wushu, Damian had a lot riding on his shoulders.

Marinette’s mother had practiced Wushu as a child in China. When she first arrived in France she found herself disappointed that there were no local Chinese martial arts centers, let alone Wushu training centers. Sabine always thought it would be a passion she could pass down to her future child, but there was only so much she could teach on her own. However, as fate would have it, after a falling out with Tom’s father Roland the Dupain-Chengs found themselves in a city not too far from Gotham, New Jersey. Sabine was pleasantly surprised to find that the martial arts scene was much more alive there than it had been in Paris. However, between the bakery and her young daughter Sabine had little time to spend practicing martial arts. It wasn’t until Marinette’s kindergarten teacher suggested that Marinette be enrolled in a sport to better her hand-eye coordination that Sabine finally put her daughter into formal martial arts courses.

At first, everything was fine until it became apparent that Marinette was progressing much faster than her peers, despite her typical clumsiness she was surprisingly adept at martial arts. Sabine wasn’t entirely surprised as while Wushu was difficult to teach within the confined space they had at home, she still took the time to practice Tai Chi with her daughter on the weekends, providing Marinette with martial arts fundamentals and self-discipline. With Marinette’s slight inclination for martial arts paired with her hard work she was outperforming her classmates and even some of the older kids at the studio she went to. Eventually, Marinette found herself ostracized by her peers, but her teachers at the studio refused to advance her because they had an in-house rule where children could not be advanced more than two years past their age group. Tom and Sabine knew that pulling Marinette out of the sport entirely was off the table, the pure joy that spread across her face every time she mastered a new trick was proof enough that she was in love with the sport. So they set off to find a new studio to train at, where Marinette’s needs as a budding martial artist would be met. After looking around for a while, they decided to give Talia’s Wushu academy a try despite it being a little over a 30-minute drive from their house.

In regards to the first year of their friendship, Marinette would describe it as very professional, and almost nothing more. It took a while for Damian to become more cordial with her. When asked, Marinette would say “Damian didn’t like me, but he tolerated me enough as a partner because there was only so much practice he could have done alone.”

At first, Damian did not like Marinette at all, in fact, maybe he even hated her. When he first met her, Damian thought she was like every other “talented” kid that came into his mother’s studio, only to realize talent alone would get you nowhere in the sport of Wushu. On her first day, she immediately took up the spot next to him at the front and center of the class and offered him a warm smile, “Hello my name is Marinette, I’m new here.” Damian returned her greeting with a harsh tut of his tongue and the turn of his head, he was there to train, not to make friends. Marinette’s expression was aghast, but she quickly recovered and mumbled a soft “okay not talkative then…this is going great….” Damian suppressed an eye roll, simply because he knew his mother would not tolerate that in her classroom.

Against every one of Damian’s expectations, Marinette proved herself to be a hard-working individual. Eventually, after seeing her work on her technique and tricks after class during open gym hours, seeing that she wasn’t relying purely on natural ability and truly was putting in the effort to become a better martial artist, he began to tolerate her. The first time he returned her daily “Hello” with the nod of his head Marinette’s facial expression went from neutral to shocked to absolutely beaming. Damian simply raised his eyebrow and continued with his pre-class warmup.

Over time Marinette had grown a deep respect for Damian; she wished he was a bit friendlier, but despite their rough start Marinette realized early on that, while gruff and unfriendly, Damian was kind in his own way. He always pointed out when someone’s technique was wrong so that they wouldn’t hurt themselves, he always helped bandage someone up when they were hurt, and he always stayed after class to help his mom clean up. Most people would think he did it out of obligation or his mother’s demands, but Marinette loves people watching, and even after just a few months Marinette has observed that Talia would rather Damian use the time to better himself and will insist that she, or one of their workers, handle the menial tasks.

It was not until Damian saw Marinette work through her struggles that he gained respect for her. While Wushu is a largely performative sport where everyone’s moves are choreographed, Talia wanted to ensure everyone was also learning basic self-defense resulting in regularly held sparring sessions at the end of class. Marinette was a great performer, she was highly expressive and could easily recall choreography, but she had minimal exposure to actual sparring and her reflexes were not as sharp and trained like the others. She managed to win against her opponents in the first few classes by utilizing her creativity, but eventually, her lack of experience caught up with her and in her third month at the studio, she began her losing streak. Looking at her lose to her opponents time and time again he couldn’t help but wonder to himself, “will you still be here tomorrow?” Growing up in the studio, Damian knew that most of the people who were considered to be “gifted” had a tendency to drop out the moment things no longer came naturally to them, they grew frustrated with themselves and then with the sport. At this point, he figured he was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Instead, the stage was set for her to become the most prevalent figure in his life.

Despite being in the same classes for over 3 months Damian and Marinette had never sparred. It was actually quite odd that they hadn’t yet sparred, the pairings for the most part were random. Talia reasoned that with the right circumstances even someone who seems weak could win; it was important to never underestimate an opponent and lower your guard. After bowing to one another their eyes met. If you asked them as adults they would unabashedly say that they love the other’s eyes, it was like staring at the calm before a storm. Their eyes were clear, fierce, and piercing. Despite being clearly disadvantaged Marinette showed no fear. She met his first few strikes blow for blow and even managed to evade a few of his strikes with a few unique tumbling passes – something Damian noted that she excelled in. He could tell she has been studying him, observing his strike patterns from his previous matches. Rather than reacting to his strikes, she was anticipating them – a smart move considering her reflexes were lacking. Unfortunately for Marinette, this meant that one unanticipated fake was all it took to defeat her.

That night during open gym hours Marinette approached Damian on her own for the first time. “There is only so much I can practice on my own, please train with me.”

“Why would I do that?” Damian held his face firm, his mouth in a thin line and his eyebrow slightly quirked.

Marinette’s eyes steeled over with conviction. “Did you know that every time you get up from xie bu you duck your chin down in your struggle to regain balance? It’s obvious you’re trying to shift your center of gravity. Instead, try leaning on your front leg from the beginning. The first few times you try this method, you should put a ball between your chin and neck to keep your head held up until you get used to it.”

“How did you–?”

“Notice? I love observing others, I can help you. There’s only so much we can practice on our own. I need help with my reflexes and you need someone who can review your performances. We can’t do this alone. You don’t have to like me, you just have to work with me. What do you say? Deal?”

“Tch. Deal.”

At first, their conversations mainly consisted of Marinette’s one-sided chatter during their warm-up, breaks, and cool-down stretches. It took a while for Marinette to get Damian to open up, but once she found the right topics she found that he was strongly opinionated about almost everything and shared quite a few hobbies with her. While Wushu was the common interest that brought them together, they were much more alike than they thought. They both enjoyed art, video games, and superhero shows to name a few common interests. Damian would say he would want to be a hero without any powers, someone who relies on their own skill to punish evil-doers. Marinette on the other hand would love to be a magical girl who could save others without causing too much damage. After hotly debating the topic of normal heroes and powered heroes, Damian and Marinette came to an agreement that both sides had their own set of struggles and perks.

Damian and Marinette found themselves spending more time with each other both inside and outside of the studio. After arguing over which type of paint was superior, Marinette was team watercolor because of its varied use, relative cheapness to oil paints, and blendability where Damian was a more traditional artist who believed that the blending capabilities of oil paint were just as good, if not better, and their longevity was worth the cost, the two decided to settle it with a paint off. Art sessions quickly became a biweekly tradition between the two, whenever the Gotham botanical garden would have a new exhibit Marinette would insist they go to sketch the flora. Damian quickly found that Marinette was almost as passionate about plants as he was about animals, with the way she flitted about the garden he couldn’t help but wonder if she had been something like a ladybug in her past life. There were also plenty of weekends spent sketching Damian’s pets, though Marinette would note that no drawings could capture what good boys Titus, Alfred the Cat, Jerry the Turkey, and Bat Cow were.

Together they found new ways to integrate Wushu into their hobbies, Marinette had plenty of friends at school who loved art and plenty of friends who did Wushu at the same center, but Damian was the only one she shared nearly all her passions with.

With their art, they began making flyers and posters for the studio, and banners to cheer on their classmates at competitions – Damian would argue he only did this because it would increase morale, which in turn would produce better results for the studio. Marinette struggled with the posters at first as a lot of proposed designs incorporated traditional Chinese characters, she couldn’t even write in Pinyin! Tom and Sabine had prioritized teaching Marinette about her French roots, in the event that one day they decided to move back to France, and neglected teaching her much about Chinese heritage. Marinette still learned basic conversational phrases: yes, no, please, thank you, and familial titles, but she was nowhere near conversational or fluent. After realizing Marinette did not know how to speak Mandarin Damian made it his personal goal to make her at least conversational before they would begin to travel internationally for competitions. Many of the major Wushu competitions took place in China and if Marinette was going to be his partner in the couples division he was going to make sure she was able to converse with any interviewers they may meet, and that if she were to end up lost – he swears Marinette was born without a sense of direction – that she could find her way back to him or their hotel. He hoped that while working on the banners he could work in a few lessons on traditional Chinese characters and simplified Chinese characters so that Marinette could at least read signs. Apart from art, reenacting scenes from video game cutscenes and superhero movies became one of their favorite activities, it became a way to train while still having plenty of fun. Sometimes after mastering a new move-in Ultimate Mecha Strike, they would break out the crash mats to test if the moves in the game were actually physically possible.

Even the hobbies Damian didn’t share with Marinette he was willing to partake in, and the fact that he was trying meant the world to Marinette. Damian was rarely physically affectionate in the first few years of their friendship, and it was even rarer for him to vocalize his emotions, and so Marinette quickly learned that Damian had a tendency to express himself through his actions. A lot of people failed to see how warm and loving Damian truly was, but Marinette saw it in how he interacted with everyone. For example, when Damian’s eldest brother opened up an acrobatics and gymnastics center Damian immediately volunteered to design and paint a mural on the outside that would more easily catch attention, Marinette watched him alter the design day and night and sort through hundreds of color palettes to ensure the pairing was just right. She saw his kindness through his interactions with his family and hers, the painting of her mom and dad baking, a gift from Damian for their 20th anniversary, hung up in the living room was more physical proof of it. When Marinette began sewing he proudly wore her designs and when she began to take commissions, he always kept her business card on his body in the event someone asked about his apparel.

One of Marinette’s fondest memories with Damian was when they decided to host a bake sale to offset the cost of international travel for the competition team. It was near the Mid-Autumn festival so Marinette and her parents decided to make mooncakes. Damian had some experience in the kitchen helping his mother make baozi and baklava, but he definitely wasn’t as experienced as Marinette who grew up in a bakery, yet he still came over to help them with the first few test batches and to help design packaging. Watching him carefully weigh out the ingredients her parents listed and chat about his favorite flavors with her parents in French filled her with so much warmth. The kitchen was filled with banter as a discourse between traditional baked mooncakes and skin mooncakes arose. Marinette and Sabine preferred snow skin mooncakes, the chewiness pairs well with pastes like red bean and taro, where Damian and Tom were strongly on the side of the more traditionally baked mooncake, arguing that the crumble of the pastry paired with fillings like salted egg and lotus paste was clearly superior. Marinette was unsurprised that Damian was strongly advocating for traditional flavors, but her father? The same man who made mustard macarons? It wasn’t until Marinette suggested thousand-layer mooncakes were simply croissants with a pasty filling that everyone else was willing to set aside their different preferences to unite against her. While the thousand layer mooncakes and traditional mooncakes baked, and the snow skin mooncakes steamed Marinette and Damian got to work on the packaging. In order to reduce cost, they had ordered plain packaging and planned to carve potato stamps with Mid-Autumn festival motifs: the moon, rabbits, flowers, fans, and lanterns. Despite having seen how proficient Damian was with a blade in training, Marinette was pleasantly surprised, if not downright awed, by Damian’s precision with a knife. By the time Marinette had finished carving out one flower Damian had finished three lantern carvings. After finishing stamping the final package Marinette daringly pressed the still paint-laden potato stamp onto Damian’s cheek which quickly devolved into a paint fight. The picture of Damian and Marinette covered head to two in paint was proudly pinned at the top of her corkboard, Marinette would never forget the sound of the kitchen filled with laughter that day.

Damian’s parents were extremely supportive of this arrangement. Talia thought it was a great opportunity, open gym hours were busy and she couldn’t give all her attention to Damian, having a training partner could really help him grow. If they got along well they could even enter paired events together! Bruce was enthralled that his son found someone to spend time with other than his friend Clark’s son, Jon. Jon and Damian were great friends, but Jon lived in Metropolis and so the boys rarely saw each other outside of business galas and Skype calls. It was nice knowing his son had someone he could spend time with in person, Bruce was concerned that Damian’s interpersonal growth would be stunted by his lack of interaction with his classmates at school. To see his son being a kid, laughing freely, filled him with great joy, he knew that being the son of a billionaire and a top-notch martial artist had put a lot of pressure on Damian’s shoulders, but he never knew what he could do to help his son. Seeing the walls in Damian’s room at the manor fill up with pictures of him and Marinette smiling, Damian smiling, made Bruce figure that everything was going to be okay.

Sabine and Tom grew to love Damian like their own son with the more time he spent at each other’s houses. At first, they were a bit skeptical, they didn’t quite understand what their daughter saw in the boy, but they trusted her judgment and boy are they glad they did. Damian was like a missing piece of their family, despite his hard exterior, the boy was extremely loyal and caring, they could always count on him to have Marinette’s back. Sabine especially had a soft spot for him after watching him correct Marinette’s brush strokes on the banners, teaching her the differences between what she wrote and what he was writing. The two watched their daughter give herself wholly to this boy, and in return, he gave himself back to her and that was all they could’ve ever wanted for Marinette, to love and be loved.

As they grew older they shared more than just common interests: their dreams, their fears, and the pressure they faced from their families. Marinette knew what she wanted for herself – something Damian was envious of. When they were 11 to offset the competition costs, Marinette’s mother began designing and sewing their competition outfits. Once Marinette saw what her mother was doing she wanted to help, and she ended up falling in love with fashion design. From the age of 13 and onward Marinette designed all of her own stage wear, as well as Damian’s. Sabine would joke that with such a talented daughter it’s a shame they didn’t stay in Paris. Damian wouldn’t admit it – Marinette would – but the thought of possibly never meeting Marinette made him feel uncomfortably empty; he wonders how he bore with that feeling before becoming close with Marinette. Damian wasn’t sure what he wanted for himself, he would love to take over his mother’s Wushu studio, maybe even expand it, but he was always raised with the expectation that one day he would inherit his father’s corporation. Despite loving both options, loving both his parents, there was also a part of him that wanted something that was completely Damian, he had already spent so much of his life living in the shadow of his parents. It wasn’t until high school that Damian opened up to Marinette about this, as the time to make decisions grew closer Damian naturally grew more anxious about his future. Marinette rarely gets the chance to comfort Damian, oftentimes he bottles his emotions up until they’re ready to burst, and even then Marinette has to slowly coax him into talking about them, even if it is with his brothers and not her, she just wants him to feel safe with his own emotions. The first time Damian opened up to her about the pressure he felt as his parent’s only biological son she immediately swept him into her arms, stroking his hair she began to tell him about how loved he was. She told him “Damian I love you, your family loves you, my family loves you. I just want you to know how loved you are. I speak not only for myself, but for everyone who loves you when I say this, do what makes you happy. Your parents will be happy as long as you are, they trust that they raised you to make good decisions for yourself. Even if you don’t know what it is that makes you happy yet, don’t be afraid to explore your options; I’ll be right here by your side and I’m going to support you no matter what. You’ve told me before that even if you inherit the studio Maya would co-own it with you, or even if you inherit your father’s business you would be working alongside your brothers. You are not alone, the world is not riding on solely your shoulders.” Damian was completely silent, if not for the wetness on her shoulder and his grip tightening around her, Marinette would figure he was unphased. Marinette has known that she loves this boy, far past the platonic love she just expressed, but for Damian, it was at this moment that he realized that not only was he loved, but he was in love with Marinette.

“WELCOME TO THE WORLD WUSHU CHAMPIONSHIPS 2019 LIVE FROM GOTHAM, NEW JERSEY” roared overhead on the speakers.

Damian and Marinette were standing in a hall away from the main room where other contestants were preparing themselves both appearance-wise and physically. Marinette herself was fixing the crown braid in her hair. The women’s event would take place in the morning to late afternoon, where the men’s event in the evening giving Damian ample time before he needs to warm up to support Marinette. He gave Marinette’s ensemble a once over and with his cheeks tinged red he muttered “I like your costume, you look really cute”, quickly averting his gaze.

Marinette immediately flushed, almost as red as the silken top that adorned her torso, and brought the hands that were adjusting her braids down to her hips and leaned forward, exclaiming in a hushed shout as to not disturb the other competitors warming up, “Damian Al-Ghul Wayne, are you making fun of me? I just want to make sure that any pictures taken do not make me look like a hot mess. Could you imagine what could happen if Audrey Bourgeois sees pictures of me completely frumpled looking and cancels my apprenticeship?? Oh my God and then Parson’s will find out and rescind me and then I won’t be able to visit you at NYU!” Marinette’s hands now rested on her cheeks smearing away her perfectly placed blush. How Marinette managed to go from disgruntled to spiraling in less than a minute is still a mystery that still eludes Damian after years of friendship, but it was his duty to calm her down. He understands her nerves, they had spent the last few years dominating the juniors division and as they entered the senior division there was a lot of pressure for them to win there too. Unfortunately, for every person who wanted them to win, another five were praying for them to slip up, but now is not the time to be overcome by nerves, her turn would come soon and she cannot afford to be overwhelmed by nerves.

Damian fully grasped her wrists pulling her hands away from her face, “Marinette, genuinely you look stunning”. After that comment, Damian noted to himself that it seems like there was no more need for the blush she applied anyways. With the soft tut of his tongue, he smoothed out the harsh lines of her smeared blush using the pad of his thumb. He whispered, just loud enough for her to hear, “Don’t worry too much about your hair and makeup, the most important thing is your form”. Marinette leaned into his touch and gave a small nod, calming down from her spiraling thoughts, he always knew how to ground her.

“Contestant number 54 you’re up next!”

“That’s you; you might want to fix up your makeup real quick, but everything is going to be fine.” He handed her a bag with her cosmetics and a wipe and quickly clapped his hands around her shoulders to guide her to the main stage so she could focus on herself.

Fixing her makeup Marinette shot him a cheeky grin, “wish me luck?”

“You don’t need luck. Marinette you have the skill, you know that.”

“Next up is Marinette Dupain-Cheng from New Jersey, USA! She is definitely a fan favorite to win today on the Women’s Taolu floor. She is internationally known for competing not only in the women’s division but also in the couples’ scene. She’s been training for the individual event from the age of six and for the partner event from the age of nine with her studio mate Damian Al-Ghul Wayne, who is predicted to win the Men’s Taolu event. While we do not have a couples’ Wushu competition here, since turning 18 they have been dominating the senior international couples’ Wushu scene and have gone undefeated.”

Taking off her team jacket, with a quick nod to her parents, Talia, and of course, Damian Marinette strode to the center stage. Damian would never grow sick of watching her transform on stage, it was strikingly similar to the magical girl shows she had been obsessed with as a child. The moment Marinette stepped onto the mat her whole demeanor changed. Her back straightened up, her head would be held high, and most of all, the look in her eyes was filled with inextinguishable fire.

By the end of the event after getting changed Marinette and Damian were making their way to his car. Once Damian turned 16 and got his license, it became a tradition for them to go out for a celebratory meal together without their parents. “Marinette!” Damian heard a voice call out, Agreste he noted in his head. Marinette had met Agreste and Tsurugi while vacationing in Paris. While they weren’t the worst, in fact, Tsurugi was typically pleasant company, Damian was in no mood to socialize after the several rounds of interviews he had to endure after winning first place in Men’s Taolu. Many of the interviewers failed to understand that while yes, he had more opportunities to train as he is a third-generation Wushu champion, it was his hard work that got him to where he was, not his genetics.

Seeing Damian continue on to his car, not wanting to keep him waiting, Marinette quickly bid them farewell with a promise to see them tomorrow. “Hey wait for me!” Marinette called out, running after Damian. Despite his pride usually preventing him from heeding to his peers’ commands, Damian stopped in his tracks, his breath shallow and wondering why Marinette’s voice still makes his heartthrob despite having heard it call out to him for over 10 years. Feeling her hands latch around his arm gave him a sense of comfort. Her grip was strong and steady, yet still gentle. He couldn’t help but envision his hand in hers instead of his arm. The bouquet and hand-painted card in his car were waiting to see if she felt the same.

#Maribat #MGI Trope Tussle 2021 #Daminette #Damian x Marinette #please send help idk how to write #if by any chance Issa is reading this ILY #Team Childhood Friends

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destiny-smasher · 3 years

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Life is Strange: True Colors

Leading up to the release of Episode 1 of TellTale's The Walking Dead game, I was working freelance for GameRevolution at the time, lived in the area, and had the chance to play a build of the game to write a preview on it. I remember comparing it to Mass Effect because, at the time, there just...weren't games of that subgenre. Of course, by now we've seen an explosion of this type of game - the 'narrative/choice-driven game,' spearheaded and even oversaturated by Telltale to their own demise.

Out of all of the games that have come from that initial boom, Life is Strange by DontNod was and still is the most influential on my life, but I also have always harbored really conflicted feelings about it - especially with how it resolved its narrative. Hell, if you're reading this, you're probably aware that I spent a few years of my life creating a sequel fanstory which I even adapted a chunk of into visual novel format. Hundreds of thousands of words, days and days of life spent essentially trying to process and reconcile my conflicted feelings about this game's conclusion(s). Since then, I've been experimenting with interactive fiction and am currently developing my own original visual novel using everything I've learned from both creating and playing games in this genre. It's a subgenre of game I have a lot of interest and passion for because, when handled well, it can allow a player to sort of co-direct a guided narrative experience in a way that's unique compared to strictly linear cinematic experiences but still have a curated, focused sense of story.

Up until this point, I've regarded Night in the Woods as probably the singular best game of this style, with others like Oxenfree and The Wolf Among Us as other high marks. I've never actually put any Life is Strange game quite up there - none of them have reached that benchmark for me, personally. Until now, anyway.

But now, I can finally add a new game to that top tier, cream of the crop list. Life is Strange: True Colors is just damn good. I'm an incredibly critical person as it is - and that critique usually comes from a place of love - so you can imagine this series has been really hard to for me given that I love it, and yet have never truly loved any actual full entry in it. I have so many personal issues, quibbles, qualms, and frustration with Life is Strange: with every individual game, with how it has been handled by its publisher (my biggest issue at this point, actually), with how it has seemingly been taken away from its original development studio, with how it chooses to resolve its narratives...

But with True Colors, all of those issues get brushed aside long enough for me to appreciate just how fucking well designed it is for this style of game. I can appreciate how the development team, while still clearly being 'indie' compared to other dev teams working under Square-Enix, were able to make such smart decisions in how to design and execute this game. Taken on its own merits, apart from its branding, True Colors is absolutely worth playing if you enjoy these 'telltale' style games. Compared to the rest of the series, I would argue it's the best one so far, easily. I had a lot of misgivings and doubts going in, and in retrospect, those are mostly Square-Enix's fault. Deck Nine, when given the freedom to make their own original game in the same vein as the previous three, fucking nailed it as much as I feel like they could, given the kinds of limitations I presume they were working within.

I'm someone who agonizes every single time there is news for Life is Strange as a series - someone who essentially had to drop out of the fandom over infighting, then dropped out of even being exposed to the official social media channels for it later on (I specifically have the Square-Enix controlled channels muted). I adore Max and Chloe, and as a duo, as a couple, they are one of my top favorites not just in gaming, but in general. They elevated the original game to be something more than the sum of its parts for me. And while I have enjoyed seeing what DontNod has made since, it's always been their attention to detail in environmental craftsmanship, in tone and atmosphere, which has caught my interest. They're good at creating characters with layers, but imo they've never nailed a narrative arc. They've never really hit that sweet spot that makes a story truly resonate with me. Deck Nine's previous outing, Before the Storm, was all over the place, trying to mimic DontNod while trying to do its own things - trying to dig deeper into concepts DontNod deliberately left open for interpretation while also being limited in what it could do as a prequel.

But with True Colors, those awkward shackles are (mostly) off. They have told their own original story, keeping in tone and concept with previous Life is Strange games, and yet this also feels distinctly different in other ways.

Yes, protagonist Alex Chen is older than previous characters, and most of the characters in True Colors are young adults, as opposed to teenagers. Yes, she has a supernatural ability. And yes, the game is essentially a linear story with some freedom in how much to poke around at the environment and interact with objects/characters, with the primary mechanic being making choices which influence elements of how the story plays out. None of this is new to the genre, or even Life is Strange. But the execution was clearly planned out, focused, and designed with more caution and care than games like this typically get.

A smaller dev team working with a budget has to make calls on how to allocate that budget. With True Colors, you will experience much fewer locales and environments than you will in Life is Strange 2. Fewer locations than even Life is Strange 1, by my count. But this reinforces the game's theming. I suspect the biggest hit to the game's budget was investing in its voice acting (nothing new for this series) but specifically in the motion capture and facial animation.

You have a game about a protagonist trying to fit in to a small, tightly knit community. She can read the aura of people's emotions and even read their minds a little. And the game's budget and design take full advantage of this. You spend your time in a small main street/park area, a handful of indoor shops, your single room apartment. It fits within a tighter budget, but it reinforces the themes the game is going for. Your interactions with characters are heightened with subtle facial cues and microexpressions, which also reinforces the mechanic and theming regarding reading, accepting, and processing emotions. And you get to make some choices that influence elements of this - influenced by the town, influenced by the emotions of those around you, which reinforce the main plot of trying to navigate a new life in a small town community.

When I think about these types of games, the conclusion is always a big deal. In a way, it shouldn't be, because I usually feel it's about the journey, not the destination. And as an example, I actually really dislike the ending of the original Life is Strange. I think it's a lot of bullshit in many ways. The setpiece is amazing and epic, sure, but the actual storytelling going on is...really hollow for me. Yes, the game does subtly foreshadow in a number of ways that this is the big choice it's leading up to, but the game never actually makes sense of it. And the problem is, if your experience is going to end on a big ol' THIS or THAT kind of moment, it needs to make sense or the whole thing will fall apart as soon as the credits are rolling and the audience spends a moment to think about what just happened. When you look at the end of Season 1 of Telltale's The Walking Dead, it's not powerful just because of what choice you're given, but because through the entire final episode, we know the stakes - we know what is going to ultimately happen, and we know the end of the story is fast approaching. All of the cards are on the table by the time we get to that final scene, and it works so well because we know why it's happening, and it is an appropriate thematic climax that embodies the theming of the entire season. It works mechanically, narratively, and thematically, and 'just makes sense.'

The ending of Life is Strange 1 doesn't do that, if you ask me. The ending of most games in this genre don't really hit that mark. When I get to the end of most game 'seasons' like this, even ones I enjoy, I'm typically left frustrated, confused, and empty in a way.

The ending of True Colors, on the other hand, nails everything it needs to. Handily, when compared to its peers.

If you're somehow reading this and have not played this game but intend to, now is probably where you should duck out, as I will be

discussing SPOILERS from the entire game, specifically the finale.

Firstly, since I don't know where else to put this, some criticisms I found with the game. And honestly, they're all pretty damn minor compared to most games of this type.

Mainly, I just wish the whole Typhon thing was handled a bit more deliberately. It's a bit weird to do the 'big evil corporation' thing (especially when a big corporation like Square Enix occupies as much as or even more of the credits to this game than the people who actually MADE it?) without offering more explanation and subtlety. The game certainly makes some efforts but they're mostly small and mostly optional, like background chatter or a handful of one-off bits of documentation/etc. you can find in the environment. I feel like Diane in particular needed to be fleshed out just a little bit more to really sell us on how and why things like this happen, why corporations make decisions that cost people their happiness, security, and lives and they just get to keep on doing it. I think just a little bit that is unavoidable to the player that puts emphasis on maybe how much the town relies on the money/resources Typhon provides would've helped. Again, this is minor, but it stands out when I have so little else to critique.

I would've liked to get more insight on why Jed is the way he is. No, I don't think we really needed to learn more about his backstory, or even really his motivations. I think we get enough of that. I just think it would've been great to somehow highlight more deliberately how/why he's built up this identity overtop of what he's trying to suppress. Maybe even just having Alex internally realize, "Wait, what the hell, Jed has been hiding these emotions and my powers haven't picked up on it?" or something to that effect could have added an extra oomph to highlight how Jed seems to be coping with his emotions by masking/suppressing them. Also really minor complaint, but again...there's not much else here I can think to really improve on within the confines of what's in the game.

The game doesn't really call Alex's power into question morally. Like. Max has an entire meltdown by the end of her story, second-guessing if she's even helped anyone at all, if she has 'the right' to do so, how her powers might be affecting or expressing her own humanity and flaws...this story doesn't really get into that despite a very similar concept of manipulating others. There's like one bit in a document you can choose to read in Alex's 'nightmare' scene, but that's really it. I feel like this sentiment and how it's executed could have easily been expanded upon in just this one scene to capture what made that Max/Other Max scene do what it did in a way that would address the moral grayness of Alex's powers and how she uses them, and give players a way to express their interpretation of that. Also, very small deal, just another tidbit I would've liked to see.

When I first watched my wife play through Episode 5 (I watched her play through the game first, then I played it myself), I wasn't really feeling the surreal dreamscape stuff of Alex's flashbacks - which is weird, because if you're read my work from the past few years, you'll know I usually love that sort of shit. I think what was throwing me off was that it didn't really feel like it was tying together what the game was about up until that point, and felt almost like it was just copying what Life is Strange did with Max's nightmare sequence (minus the best part of that sequence, imo, where Max literally talks to herself).

But by the time I had seen the rest of the story, and re-experienced it myself, I think it clicked better. This is primarily a story about Alex Chen trying to build a new life for herself in a new community - a small town, a tightly knit place. Those flashbacks are specifically about Alex's past, something we only get teeny tiny tidbits of, and only really if we go looking for them. I realized after I gave myself a few days to process and play through the game myself that this was still a fantastic choice because it reinforces the plot reasons why Alex is even in the town she's in (because her father went there, and her brother in turn went there looking for him), and it reinforces the theme of Alex coming to accept her own emotions and confront them (as expressed through how the flashbacks are played out and the discussions she has with the image of Gabe in her mind, which is really just...another part of herself trying to get her to process things).

By the time Alex escapes the mines and returns to the Black Lantern, all of the cards are on the table. By that point, we as the audience know everything we need to. Everything makes sense - aside from arguably why Jed has done what he has done, but put a pin in that for a sec. We may not know why Alex has the powers she does, but we have at least been given context for how they manifested - as a coping mechanism of living a life inbetween the cracks of society, an unstable youth after her family fell apart around her (and oof, trust me, I can relate with this in some degree, though not in exactly the same ways). And unlike Max's Rewind power, the story and plot doesn't put this to Alex's throat, like it's all on her to make some big choice because she is the way she is, or like she's done something wrong by pursuing what she cares about (in this case, the truth, closure, and understanding).

When Alex confronts Jed in front of all of the primary supporting characters, it does everything it needs to.

Mechanically: it gives players choices for how to express their interpretation of events, and how Alex is processing them; it also, even more importantly, uses the 'council' as a way of expressing how the other characters have reacted to the choices the player has made throughout the game, and contributes to how this climax feels. We're given a 'big choice' at the end of the interaction that doesn't actually change the plot, or even the scene, really (it just affects like one line of dialogue Alex says right then) and yet BOTH choices work so well as a conclusion, it's literally up to your interpretation and it gives you an in-game way to express that.

Thematically: the use of the council reinforces the game's focus on community; and the way the presentation of the scene stays locked in on Alex and Jed's expressions reinforces its focus on emotion - not to mention that the entire scene also acts as a way to showcase how Alex has come to accept, understand, and process her own emotions while Jed, even THEN, right fucking at the moment of his demise, is trying to mask his emotions, to hide them and suppress them and forget them (something the game has already expressed subtly by way of his negative emotions which would give him away NOT being visible to Alex even despite her power).

Narratively: we are given a confrontation that makes sense and feels edifying to see play out after everything we've experienced and learned. We see Alex use her powers in a new and exciting way that further builds the empowering mood the climax is going for and adds a cinematic drama to it. No matter what decisions the player makes, Alex has agency in her own climax, we experience her making a decision, using her power, asserting herself now that she has gone through the growth this narrative has put her through. Alex gets to resolve her shit, gets to have her moment to really shine and experience the end of a character arc in this narrative.

Without taking extra time to design the game around these pillars, the finale wouldn't be so strong. If they didn't give us enough opportunities to interact with the townspeople, their presence in the end wouldn't matter, but everyone who has a say in the council is someone we get an entire scene (at least one) dedicated to interacting with them and their emotions. If they didn't implement choices in the scene itself, it would still be powerful but we wouldn't feel as involved, it'd be more passive. If they didn't showcase Alex's power, we might be left underwhelmed, but they do so in a way that actually works in the context through how they have chosen to present it, while also just tonally heightening the climax by having this drastic lighting going on. If they didn't have the council involved, we'd lose the theming of community. If they didn't have the foil of Alex/Jed and how they have each processed their emotions, we'd miss that key component. And if we didn't have such detailed facial animations, the presentation just wouldn't be as effective.

Ryan/Steph are a little bit like, in this awkward sideline spot during the climax? Steph always supports you, and Ryan supports you or doubts you conditionally, which is unsurprising but also ties into the themes of Ryan having grown up woven into this community, and Steph being once an outsider who has found a place within it. They're still there, either way, which is important. The only relevant characters who aren't present are more supporting characters like Riley, Ethan, and Mac. Ethan being the only one of those who gets an entire 'super emotions' scene, but that also marks the end of his arc and role in the story, so...it's fine. Mac and Riley are less important and younger, as well, and have their own side story stuff you have more direct influence on, too.

But damn, ya'll, this climax just works so well. It especially stands out to me given just how rarely I experience a conclusion/climax that feels this rewarding.

And then after that we get a wonderful montage of a theoretical life Alex might live on to experience. Her actions don't overthrow a conglomerate billionaire company. She doesn't even save a town, really. If the entire council thinks you're full of shit, Jed still confesses either way - because it's not up to the council whether he does this, it's because of Alex, regardless of player choice. Honestly, even after a playthrough where I made most choices differently from my wife, there weren't really many changes to that montage at the end. It'd have been great if it felt more meaningfully different, but maybe it can be. Even if not, the design intent is there and the execution still works. It's a really nice way to end the story, especially since it's not even a literal montage but one Alex imagines - again, her processing what she's gone through, what she desires, expressed externally for us to see it. And for once, the actual final 'big decision' in a game of this type manages to be organic, make sense, and feel good and appropriate either way. You choose to either have Alex stay in Haven Springs and continue building her life there, or you can choose to have her leave and try to be an indie musician, with the events of the game being yet another chunk of her life to deal with and move on from (I haven't really touched on it, but music, especially as a way to express and process emotions, is a recurring thing, much like photography was in the original game, or Sean's illustrations in LiS2). For once, a climactic 'pick your ending' decision that doesn't feel shitty. It's pretty rare for this genre, honestly.

I could - and already have, and likely will - have so much more to say about this game and its details, but I really wanted to focus on touching upon a main element that has left me impressed: the way the entire game feels designed. It feels intentionally constructed but in a way that reinforces what it is trying to express as a story. It's not just trying to make people cry for the sake of 'emotions.' It is a game literally about emotions and it comes to a conclusion in a way that is clearly saying something positive and empowering about empathy and self-acceptance.

Storytelling is a craft, like any other, and it entails deliberate choices and decisions that can objectively contribute to how effective a story is for its intended audience.

A good story isn't something you find, after all.

It's something you build.

#Life is Strange True Colors #Life is Strange #Haven Springs #alex chen #lis true colors

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herinsectreflection · 3 years

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An Episode Within an Episode: An Analysis of ‘The Zeppo’

The Zeppo is one of those episodes that so consistently shows up on fan lists of “underrated” episodes, that I don’t know if it can really be considered “underrated” anymore, but I think it deserves a little extra appreciation. It’s definitely an episode that takes a second viewing to appreciate, thanks to how oddly it is constructed, in a way that isn’t immediately advertised to the viewer. Other episodes with unusual styles such as Once More With Feeling or Hush very much wear their concepts on their sleeve; you can’t watch them and not immediately realise what they are doing. That’s not a knock against those episodes - part of what makes them so great and iconic is that they get right to the point and so can do interesting things with the concept. The Zeppo is just a quieter kind of unique. It uses the limited perspective of both the characters and the audience themselves to show a cracked-mirror version of the world. It’s an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer told from the perspective of somebody looking in on another episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It’s fun and weird and I want to dig into it a little bit.

We start off with a very typical Buffy scene. In its third season now, the show is pretty aware of and confident in its own tropes, and trusts the audience to be too. We don’t need any build-up explaining exactly what Giles has found out and what spell Willow is performing and what these monsters are doing and exactly how Buffy and Faith know how to kill them. We’ve all seen an episode of Buffy before, and we can fill in the blanks pretty easily. This confidence in the show’s own tropes and what the audience expects of it is key to what makes this episode work. We know exactly how a typical episode of Buffy goes, so we can receive this barely-cliff-notes version of one and understand it perfectly. It’s an episode that can only be done in a show’s third year, when viewers have become fluent in the show’s language.

After the fight and exposition is over, Xander stands up from the garbage, as out of context as we are as viewers. As this is a Xander-centric episode, he becomes the audience identification figure. As the one character not supernaturally gifted or linked in any way (as the episode points out several times), Xander makes sense as the viewer stand-in. Xander comments on how he wants to be more involved in the fights but is firmly rebuffed - and it’s clear he wouldn’t be able to impact them anyway. All he can do is watch the fights and plots happen from a distance. In this sense, Xander is no different to the viewer, watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, unable to affect it in any way.

This is where the structure of the episode comes into play. The A plot is a fairly meaningless runaround with zombies, while the B-plot is a finale-worthy epic apocalyptic showdown. We only catch glimpses of it, but it seems to contain all the standard hallmarks of a Buffy apocalypse - an evil cult, opening the hellmouth, tearful Buffy/Angel melodrama. Specifically, it echoes the previous two season finales, with the final showdown apparently featuring both the literal monster from the S1 finale, and some kind of sacrifice that involved Angel (evoking the S2 finale). The very last bit of dialogue we hear during this plot is “Faith, go for the heart!” from Buffy, encouraging her to kill the demon in the library, which you could argue foreshadows the S3 finale, where Buffy will use the Mayor’s love for Faith to kill him in the library. This plot is a facsimile of a Buffy season finale, giving us everything we expect and have seen before, stripped of all context, the very bare bones of a story.

What this achieves is that it alienates the viewer from this story-within-a story, forcing us into an intentionally uncomfortable position, where it feels like we’re watching an episode through a keyhole. It intentionally exacerbates the divide between viewer and show, to highlight our inability to fully perceive or at all impact this world we tune into each week.

Xander is very purposefully chosen as the POV character for this experience. He is feeling very insecure and ineffectual - unable to help with either brains or brawn, and not having a whole lot of impact on the story. He feels alienated from his friends, fearful that they will leave him behind. The structure of this episode highlights this feeling of ineffectualness. Xander feels so alienated from the events and people around him that he, like the audience, becomes separated from them. A character from Buffy the Vampire Slayer becomes an outsider to the story, watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We are encouraged to empathise with Xander because we are in the same position. We too have been robbed of our usual intimacy with this group of people, forced to perceive the shadows of an episode. This meta-emotion dovetails with the character’s internal mental state nicely.

I think my favourite instance of this meta-perception being played with is in the scene between Buffy and Angel, where we are dropped without context into a tearful, dramatic argument where apparently Angel’s life is in the balance, filled with declarations of love and poetic exaltations, backed by this sweeping orchestral score - and then Xander pops his head in. The music immediately stops, he exchanges a few awkward lines with them before realising they have bigger things to worry about. As he leaves, Buffy turns back to the melodrama and the sweeping music surges back in. It’s brilliantly funny - it feels like Xander put an episode on pause for a quick interjection, then re-started it where we left off. It’s a joke relying entirely on the audience’s expectations of the kind of epic melodrama we might get from Buffy and Angel, and it works really well. In this moment, Xander completely becomes the viewer, peeking in on these two actors, observing through glass.

The Zeppo is very concerned with meta references, TV, and the act of watching. Obviously the title is a reference to Zeppo Marx, and there is also a running gag likening Xander to Jimmy Olsen. We are encouraged to think of Xander in relation to his narrative function as a fictional character, and so to watch this episode through this meta lens. One key shot just after Faith and Xander sleep together shows the two of them literally reflected in a TV screen. We are literally seeing a distorted reflection of reality in a TV screen, which on one level is essentially all we do whenever we watch any television show, but is also what we are seeing within this episode - a fuzzy reflection of a Buffy episode within a Buffy episode.

There’s another shot later that I like, of one of the zombies pausing during the final chase scene to look through the library window at the demon emerging from the hellmouth. We see him looking through the glass at this apocalypse monster for a couple of seconds before continuing on with his chase, like a channel-hopping viewer taking a brief glimpse of Buffy, momentarily enraptured, before switching back to what they were watching before.

One thing that stood out to me on this rewatch was how the villains are described. We purposefully get very little on the group, but what we do get is telling. “’Sisterhood of Jhe. Race of female demons, fierce warriors...' Eww. '...celebrate victory in battle by eating their foes.’”

A race of all-female warriors sounds very much like Slayers. They apparently eat after battles too, which according to Faith is also a feature of Slayers. The villain in this story is kind of a representation of the central concept of the show, which makes sense since it deals with Xander navigating around a typical episode of the show. You could also read it as representative of Xander’s pathologies when it comes to women and specifically women who are stronger than him.

What I like about this episode is that it doesn’t conclude by giving Xander a big important role in stopping the apocalypse, proving his worth to the group. That’s what a lesser show might have done. I like that here, Xander never gets involved with the epic finale-esque plot. He carries on existing in the spaces around it, becoming instead the hero of the monster-of-the-week runaround episode he has found himself in. Xander cannot be the hero of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, because he’s not Buffy. But he is still a human being, and all of us as human beings are the protagonists and heroes of our own stories. He can be the hero of his own life.

S3 is largely about identity and forging one’s own path in life - obviously Buffy starts by having given up her name, then has to deal with facing off against her dark equivalent and making major decisions about her future. This season’s focus-episodes for the other characters reflect that: Giles is stripped of his role in Helpless, Willow rails against hers in Doppelgangland. This episode is all about Xander coming to terms with his narrative role within Buffy - as the non-powered comedic relief and occasional pep-talker. He could become frustrated with that, throw up his hands and let himself be at the mercy of his narrative function. But this episode allows him to find his own space, his own story. He accepts that he can’t colonise Buffy’s story, but he is still in control of his own decisions, and he can still have his own story. He can create a little one-off episode of Xander the Zombie Fighter that can co-exist peacefully with the episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer happening at the same time. It’s a smaller, quieter story without the same world-shaking melodrama - but that’s OK. As Xander says himself, he likes the quiet.

As viewers, we can never shape the course of the media we watch. That’s part of the appeal - we don’t always know what we want or need - a problem Xander faces himself when he clutches at things like “being cool” or “a car” for things that might make him happy - but a good show gives us what we didn’t realise we needed. But it remains an eternal frustration, that we can connect on a deep emotional level with these characters, but can never help them or solve their problems. A good set of characters can feel like family, but a character can never love you back. When Xander faces up against this same uselessness as he observes an episode of Buffy from afar, it is the same uselessness the viewer feels. When he accepts this and inhabits his own story, it reminds us that we can do the same thing. Television can be a great comfort, but it is not our lives. Because we can affect our own lives. We aren’t in control of them, but we can guide and impact them, and we can each be the hero of our own individual existences.

#xander harris #the zeppo #btvs #buffy the vampire slayer #meta #s3 #theme:meta #theme:identity #theme:choice

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hopeymchope · 3 years

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Parascientific Escape: The sci-fi “escape room” visual novel-style series nobody talks about

I can’t help thinking that Parascientific Escape would probably have an active fandom somewhere on the Internet if it wasn’t TRAPPED ON THE 3DS ESHOP.

I mean, it’s an escape room-centric visual novel-style sci-fi Japanese game that is clearly inspired by Zero Escape and very anime in its style. There are endearing characters, including optimal waifus/husbandos, plus a gradual buildup of an interesting fictional world full of political intrigue, its own countries, its own companies, and of course... psychic powers. Because you can’t have a trilogy of Japanese visual novel-style games featuring escape room puzzles without mental powers, now can you?

But as I said... they’re trapped as download-only titles for the 3DS. That’s fucking brutal.

Even so, there’s a pretty big 3DS/2DS user base still in existence. It’s not like they’ve never been translated or something, so at least we have the capability to play them. So if you look into them, what are you getting?

A basic overview: Parascientific Escape is a trilogy of anime-style games about solving escape room mysteries and tracking down evildoers via the use of psychic powers (obvious Zero Escape influences). There’s an overarching plot about a mysterious mastermind who believes it’s time for the recently emerged psychics of the world to take their place as the next evolution of humanity and get their own nation (obvious X-Men influences).

They don’t work very well as standalone stories; each story relies on information from the last one, culminating in a game that stars the protagonists of both parts 1 and 2 together as they finally unravel the motivations behind the events of the whole series and face off with the people behind everything. In addition, the escape room puzzles start out pretty easy in the first game build to be pretty frustratingly obtuse by the tail end of the third. And on top of all that, each game taken on its own only contains about 3-4 escape rooms. So when you bundle all three together, that’s when it all works as a single satisfying package.

Don’t worry about burning a lot of cash to play the whole series, however. The three games are $5.00 US each on the 3DS eShop and are usually on sale for $2.50 each these days. I got the entire trilogy for $7.50 US!

So let’s break down the gameplay and setup in a little more detail. Don’t worry; I won’t give any spoilers that go beyond the first five minutes of any game in the series. The twists and turns are part of the fun here.

The first game is Parascientific Escape: Cruise in the Distant Seas. You play as Hitomi Akeneno, a high school girl (because of course she’s a high-schooler) with the dual abilities of mild telekinesis and a type of clairvoyance that lets her peer past barriers or into the insides of objects. She finds herself trapped on a sinking cruise ship where some mastermind keeps systematically locking her into isolated sections while she’s trying desperately to escape.

I really liked how you could look inside of an object with clairvoyance and then use her telekinesis to manipulate the various switches and levers within, gradually pulling some object you need out from within a maze. I also thought it was clever how the solution to a new escape roomight require you to backtrack to a previous escape room to investigate some object or area that wasn’t relevant to that previous room’s original puzzle.

(One of the things I found most fascinating about this one is the ethical debate raised by Hitomi’s friend Chisono regarding how Hitomi got herself involved in all this. Chisono offers a perspective that is extremely unusual to see in most fiction. You can even say it’s pretty cold, but it’s not without having some merit to it. I don’t want to say too much about what I’m talking about, though; it’s better left as a surprise.)

The second title, Parascientific Escape: Gear Detective, almost seems standalone at first. You play as Kyosuke Ayana, a private detective and actual adult (!) who is 22 years old. A young woman shows up at his office and asks to hire him for protection. See, there’s a serial killer on the loose, and she believes she’s the next target.

We are swiftly told that Kyosuke was once in an accident that necessitated the replacement of his left arm and right eye. He volunteered to be a guinea pig for some very special prosthetics that granted him artificial psychic powers. As such, he now has “chronokinesis” — to the power to look back in time. However, he can only look back for five days, and he only has limited ability to move or manipulate the things he sees in the past.

Naturally, Kyosuke’s investigation winds up trapping him within some escape rooms that require use of his unique abilities to solve. Some of the hints at the proper timestamps or exactly where you should be looking when you peer into the past are a little vague, though, which can cause momentary frustration. Because I like to always be making forward progress, I actually preferred Hitomi’s telekinesis/clairvoyance powers from the first game. Still, Hitomi had some pretty basic puzzles in her rooms. I can’t deny that these puzzles took more thought.

Outside of the escape rooms, everything is undeniably a huge improvement. The first game presented strictly linear segments of storytelling between the rooms, but this one is more of an adventure game. You can choose where you go, select from a limited menu of things to do when you get there, and do all of it in any order you like. There’s usually a correct sequence order to progressing the story, but it’s typically pretty clear what the next step is, so it’s not like you’re just flailing about and trying a bunch of locations blindly. Besides, there’s no way to get stuck, so don’t stress it. There are even a lot of actions you can take that have no impact on story progression at all — they’re just there to generate additional dialogue that further develops the characters.

The tradeoff is that you actually get fewer escape rooms overall. The first game had four, but the second only contains three. This is also the first game in the series to introduce multiple endings; you get a number of dialogue choices throughout, and unfortunately, it’s far too easy to trigger the “bad” ending. There are guides online to help you trigger the Gold Star “true” ending, however. Just hit up GameFAQs. You might want to use the guide on your first playthrough, because I can say from experience that it’s annoying to have to replay all the dialogue sections just to make the correct choices. (Luckily, you can skip over any irrelevant sections of each chapter — including the escape room puzzles.)

In spite of my above whining, the second one is probably my single favorite story in the Parascientific trilogy. It’s a lot of fun.

The final game in the trilogy is Parascientific Escape: Crossing at the Farthest Horizon. Mysterious characters who were plotting offscreen for the previous two games are finally given faces, locations that were talked about extensively in both are finally visited, and the two protagonists of the first couple games finally meet and team up. It’s absolutely a culmination of what they set up in the first two.

The narrative jumps around from the perspectives of many different characters, but the most time is undoubtedly spent with Hitomi and Kyosuke. Sadly, there is no gameplay usage of Hitomi’s powers this time; the escape rooms are all done with Kyosuke, and they are more devious now than ever before. Personally, I found the next-to-last one to be incredibly obtuse and frustrating. I ultimately had to consult a video playthrough on YouTube for that. (The YouTuber in question didn’t seem to have the same issues figuring things out that I did. So I guess your mileage may vary.)

The “adventure game” segments make a return here as well, although they’ve also become a bit tougher to figure out. There are a couple of times when you might find yourself wandering the various location options, clicking on every possible action to try and progress. Luckily, there aren’t so many default options that you’re left flailing for very long. Even the longest period of clueless wandering lasted me a maximum of 15 minutes.

Once again, you have to make the correct dialogue choices if you want a positive ending. And once again, GameFAQs is your friend and co-pilot.

Ultimately, even the gated endings and occasional puzzle frustrations did little to curb my enthusiasm. I really had fun with these characters and their stories, I greatly enjoyed the majority of the escape rooms, and I was pretty satisfied with how it all wrapped up. The character designs/artwork get better and better as the series goes on. The selection of music tracks may be the same throughout the whole series, but I really dug on them, so I can’t complain. Do I have any other misgivings? Well, just one; the English localization is pretty sloppy. There are a pretty large number of typos, and the dialogue can sound stilted and awkward at times due to being a direct translation. It’s actually at its worst at the start of the first game. Luckily, after about 30 minutes of playtime, it settles in and finds its voice.

Seriously, they should really figure out a way to re-package these games for another system that doesn’t use the the dual-screen setup. Put all three of them together, and it’d easily be satisfying as a full retail release!

But for now, if you have a 3DS/2DS, they’re only $7.50 in total most of the time (and $15.00 at the worst). Do you like adventure game-style mysteries and visual novel-esque progression and, of course, escape rooms? You should give these a shot! And I hope these devs get to make games with bigger budgets and better localizations in the future.

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