#ironically I think this was the push I needed to start posting non game related art so thank you!!!

[smilestrawbunny]

Hey! Just a heads up, I'm sending this to multiple people, since I wanna get as many different viewpoints on this as I can. I hope this doesn't bother you. Also, this is pretty long.

So, I have a question about gamedev, but more on the marketing/presence side.

Most gamedevs I know, even hobbyist ones, keep their accounts relatively professional. Sure, they may shitpost here and there, but it's mostly in relation to their games, the gamedev sphere in general, or very general inoffensive stuff. And, most importantly, I've seldom seen my favorite gamedevs (or any of my favorite internet personalities, for that matter) comment on random videos unrelated to what type of content they usually post.

All of my social media accounts are quite unprofessional. I've also had them for a long time, so there are a few things on my digital footprint that I'd rather people not see. I also, for lack of a better way of explaining, watch and read random shit and like to leave comments on it sometimes.

I feel like, I were to become a gamedev, I wouldn't be able to do that anymore. I'd have to treat my internet presence as its own balancing act, rather than a place for me to express myself unabashedly. I know this is working under the assumption that I would get big and that people would give a damn about me, but there is always the off chance of that happening. Of a random game you make suddenly blowing up because it hit the algorithm just right. So it's better to be prepared. And even if I don't get that big boom in popularity, I still plan to at least make games consistently enough to build a community of their own. Nothing like, huge, but I really enjoy the idea of people enjoying my work and sharing that enjoyment with others. But I don't want that to cross over into my personal life!

I know that's not an impossible feat, but I feel like it kind of destroys the purpose of the internet for me. To me, it's always been a safe space where I could express myself and easily connect with people with similar viewpoints, but I am now coming to odds with this concept as I consider how I want to become a gamedev.

There's also the side note that I don't wanna rebrand. At least not completely. I don't mind cleaning up my accounts or deleting some old ones, but I've grown very attached to being "Quamai". I can't imagine myself having any other online identity, even if there are some cringy moments attached to it.

So, do you have any advice for my situation? How did you personally go about your own online image, and what do you think is the best course of action?

Thank you in advance!

Oh, I am such a funny person to come to about this- I never let being a game dev stop me from interacting with works I like, haha! Maybe that’s just because I’m a smaller creator, though. Just recently I posted death note fan art, I’m currently working up the courage to post about fandom related ocs, and I’m hosting a game jam encouraging fan works that might be considered “cringy.”

The people who like you and your work will still be there regardless. You can count on that as a fact! So why should you stop yourself from having fun?

Life is far too short to be worried about your public image to such a high degree. Like you said, these are already things that you actively do to express yourself and enjoy! So if it gives you any semblance of comfort, I’ll start doing even more “unprofessional” things to help you out there <3 /pos

#ask #I’m not saying like. to do crazy horrible things though online LOL #obviously I just mean that harmless fun is harmless and you shouldn’t feel embarrassed by it! #if you look at any of your favorite creators they probably have fan art up somewhere #embrace what makes you happy! be self indulgent! it’ll attract like-minded people and overall make you happier <3 #ironically I think this was the push I needed to start posting non game related art so thank you!!!

[dorizardthewizard]

Galactik Football: Season 1

I completely forgot that I wrote a load of ramble as I rewatched GF during  lockdown, so uh here’s a sort of review for season 1!

------------------------------------------------------------------

First of all, the concept and setting is just so unique and wild I mean, football in space against aliens but with magical powers too? Epic. Superpowers are pretty common in sports cartoons and anime but here there’s actually an explanation for them, and they have significance for the world of the show. The concept of the flux sets up for an entire sub-plot of wars with weapons of mass destruction, corrupt mega-corporations ruling the galaxy, space pirates… the world feels very lived in, and makes you want to know more about the goings-on outside of the football games.

The pirate business doesn’t overshadow the Snow Kids though, because their personal drama and journey to becoming a better team together is interesting enough. Basically, this is a space opera with football sprinkled in. For such a big cast, most get good development and there’s no clear main character. This leads into me rambling about each character, because I never really appreciated the diversity of arcs when I first watched it as a kid :’P

Rocket:

He starts out pretty timid, doesn’t fight for his dreams, and has a habit of running away from confrontation (like when the others found out he was Aarch’s nephew) that follows him into season 2. He’s stuck tending to flowers (ironic, since he himself isn’t allowed to grow and bloom), but by the end of the season, he’s more authoritative and confident enough to suggest strategies to the team. Also has a habit of hiding his feelings and underestimating his importance to others, which he works on in season 2.

Tia:

You’d expect her to be more calm and similar to Rocket, and sure they bond over being out of the inner circle of the Snow Kids, and also both having emotionally unavailable parents, but she’s actually far more headstrong than she seems. I mean, she was willing to do anything to be in Aarch’s team, even faking her parents’ consent and almost dying when her ship crashed! (Plus that scene where she uses the breath is epic, that music? Chef’s kiss) She’s not perfect though – she’s very empathetic (like when they arrived on the Ryker’s planet and she was the most upset by the conditions there), and relates to Rocket, so she wants to give him the happy family she didn’t have, by reuniting him with his mother. Although well-intentioned, it’s preeetty invasive, and though it turned out okay in the end, she really should have consulted with Rocket first, especially after finding out his mother wasn’t dead, but had left them. For all Tia knew, she could have been a really shitty person.

D’jok:

Very clear ego problems :P He doesn’t know his past and doesn’t have much of a future on Akillian, so he pushes himself to achieve some great destiny, then feels like everyone else isn’t on the same level as him if they don’t do the same. He gets more than he bargained for when it turns out that Sonny Blackbones is his dad, and he realises what’s really important to him in the final match. Namely, he realises that the reason he found it so difficult to sabotage the match isn’t because he wanted to win at all costs, but because he doesn’t want to betray his team – he wants to win together with them.

Althooough, I was never entirely sure about him scoring the penalty before knowing Sonny was safe, like sure he didn’t know Sonny that well yet so maybe felt closer to the SK but dude, you just sentenced a man to death. I think the life-and-death situation by itself was enough to get him to rethink his priorities. Maybe they could have made him more aware that the whole galaxy was at stake if he lost the match, but that motive for scoring the penalty isn’t as satisfying for his arc I guess.

Micro-Ice:

To this day, I have no idea why he was named that :’P He’s the first Snow Kid we meet, which makes for a fun start to the show since he’s such a smart-ass and a joker that keeps getting in trouble. He could have easily been nothing but comic relief, but he isn’t. He’s actually pretty pessimistic and doubtful about his skills, and covers it up with jokes and fake confidence. He didn’t even want to go to the try-outs, to avoid disappointment if he didn’t get chosen.

The self-confidence issue keeps building up with things like being put as substitute initially, being the last person to get the Breath, and D’jok and Mei getting together, finally driving him to run off with the pirates thinking he isn’t really needed on the team. He also lets jealousy get the better of him, souring his friendship with D’jok and forgetting that Mei is free to choose whoever she likes. He eventually realises he’s wrong though, and comes back. I also love his friendship with Artie :’D

Mei:

She starts out ambitious, which in itself isn’t a bad thing, but she’s willing to throw others under the bus for personal gains. Then you start to see it’s because of her mother’s influence – always pushing her to do better. When Mei starts to actually have feelings for D’jok, she starts to care about him and regrets breaking up his friendship with Micro-Ice. Eventually, she manages to stand up to her mum and is happy playing the position she’s best at.

The execution cooould be a little better because at times it leaned a bit into the “overambitious woman who needs to be put in her place” trope. It only really comes down to little details, like why did Aarch refuse to let her try out as an attacker when he was forming the team? Back then he had no idea who she was or what her skills were?? He didn’t even want to consider the idea later when Micro-Ice left, which felt more like an emotional reaction than a tactical one. But anyway, it’s alright overall and I love that she got to score the winning goal despite not being an attacker.

Thran and Ahito:

Having a narcoleptic goalkeeper is just genius, and makes for some fun last-minute saves. Also love how despite being asleep half the time, Ahito’s the one that knows what’s up :’P Thran is also really underrated but there’s more to talk about with these two in season 2.

Also wanted to throw in some appreciation for how the older characters are written – usually the adults in kids shows are more on the side-lines, but in Galactik Football, they’re also pretty flawed and interesting. For example, Aarch isn’t the perfect, wise mentor – whether he did it for glory, to escape bad memories or a combination of both, he still left his brother and planet behind when they needed him most, and now he’s trying to make up for it. Norata’s not perfect either – he denies Rocket his dreams partly to protect him, but also out of bitterness towards Aarch and fear of being left alone again. Also, there’s a variety of different families being represented in the show – single parents, adopted parents, rich, not so rich, neglectful, supportive, ambitious, non-existent… and with some of them, this plays a key role in the Snow Kids’ characters.

The show might not be the most technically amazing, okay, the 2D animation is not the best, but the designs are pretty diverse and I miss that 2000’s style with the outfits :’P There are lots of locations with pretty backgrounds, and very varied planets that reflect the people living there. I also like the comfortable sci-fi design – it’s futuristic-looking enough, but more colourful than some of the CGI bores we get in movies these days.

The 3D animation is better – they reuse motions a lot but at least they shake it up a bit by using different characters and camera angles. Speaking of camera angles, there’s some really interesting ones and camera movements that really make the matches dynamic. Honestly, having CGI in the 2000’s that doesn’t look super ugly and dated now is great, partly because they transferred their designs to 3D really well and partly because they didn’t try to do much rendering on the models.

ALSO THE SOUNDTRACK SLAPS THEY DID NOT HAVE TO GO THAT HARD ON THE OPENING THEME AND THE SCORE SOUNDS SO EPIC ALL THE TIME

I don’t know how to end this so if you actually got this far, I’ll just say season 1 was the best one for me! There’s some parts and characters I left out but that’s for another time. Sinedd and D’jok’s rivalry deserves its own post :’P

#galactik football #jetix #cartoon review #i practicaly liveblogged s2 so i guess i'll post those thoughts later #my posts

[inheritorofmemories-archive]

Let’s talk about The Old Guard’s OST

And I don’t mean the songs because I don't have that many opinions on them and I'm sure other people can talk about that better than me, but the music that was written for the movie by Volker Bertelmann and Dustin O’Halloran.

Note: I'm only gonna talk about the instruments, themes and parallels, not really about scales or that kind of more technical details, for the sake of saving time.

Okay so here's an analysis by me, a music nerd that can't help but overthink everything they like. Featuring lots of appreciation for minimalist music and cool symbolism.

Why is the Old Guard’s soundtrack so good and so fitting?

The whole thing is under read more because it’s long

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First, the composers.

I don’t know Bertelmann, but I’ve listened to some of O’Halloran’s work (he did The Hate U Give ost). He also worked with Johann Johannsson in the past a big name in the composer and movie soundtrack world (he did Mother!, Prisoners, Arrival amongst other).

O’Halloran cites Arvo Pärt as a big influence in his music. It’s almost all thanks to him and his work that the ambient and minimalist music was born, he’s a huge name. Minimalist and ambient are (to oversimplify it) simple tune, with as little notes as possible, little melody repeated over and over, soft percussion, it embodies the idea that “the less the better”.

What I’m trying to get at is, ambient and minimalist are now very related to the film soundtrack world because by essence ambient is making feel things with less, and that suits the need to uplift images with music that’s not overpowering. (Go listen to Max Richter’s work, he’s one of the first minimalist that was employed in the movie industry, and the Waltz with Bashir ost is amazing.)

Which takes me to this: The Old Guard’s ost doesn’t read like an usual action movie, or super hero movie ost because they used ambient instead of big brass and powerful electric sounds like you’re used to. And that’s what makes it so good for this film. 

.

So, let’s get to the actual ost. We’ll do it chronologically.

The ost has 24 tracks that amount to 46 min, for a 2 h movie that is in the norm. And the thing is, every instrument has a purpose, is assigned to someone or something and when you listen to it, you can understand that the composers tried to push along the director’s intention with the music.

The movie start with shells falling on the ground and Andy’s speech in complete silence, you’re thrown into the movie: it’s serious and it deals with the character’s emotional drive. Then, bam! “We were born alone” comes on and that solidify this idea.

The first track is The Old Guard, and it gives us a couple thing: the team’s music is composed of synthesizers, long notes held over some soft percussions. There’s piano in this track, and the piano=emotions, memory. But we figure that out later.

We find those elements again in the second track, Hotel. This time the synths are more present because Andy is watching the news and feeling bad about it. And the third one, A New Mission feature synth that are more agressive, since they’re on a mission, and what we assume are their peak coordination as a team. They’re as complementary as you can get for the South Sudan mission, that’s what this part show us.

One element that’s import to note: those three tracks all have choirs, faint in the first but in the third they peak, and you can actually hear them really well in the movie. Choirs are the marks of the Old Guard, of the team, and as soon as they dream of Nile, we won’t hear choirs anymore because the team isn’t complete, they need to find her.

This brings us to Nile. The end of Double Bubble and Nile tells us something else, Nile is the strings, and violon. When Andy leaves to get Nile, there’s string with her synth, because she’s her mission. We hear them when Nile speaks to the children in Afghanistan, and when she dies there’s strings and piano.

That’s when we understand that the piano is memory and emotions. There is piano mixed with heavier percussion for Quynh’s track The Iron Maiden, the memory and pain with a typical Old Guard’s instrument, and percussion are great to show the exhilaration of riding with Andy and the fear of being locked in the iron maiden.

In Booker’s track when he talks about his children in the cave, They Grow Old, we also have a piano, because he’s remembering and also feeling grief and sorrow.

And in What If We Don’t Live Forever? when Andy is sitting in the car after Celeste took care of her wound, we hear piano again, because she’s reflecting on Lykon’s death and her own mortality.  But, interesting details, strings join at the end of the track. Has Nile started to influence her character? Who knows, but I’m saying it.

And we have the piano again when Nile drive away when Andy and Booker go to Copley’s, because she’s thinking of her family and feeling guilty about the man she killed and feeling overwhelmed over her new immortal identity.

Also, when Joe and Nicky are taken and there’s only three of them left driving to the mine, we have almost no percussion and very soft synth, because the team isn’t complete, so why would the Old Guard's signature music be?

We do, very quickly, get their music when Nile look at Copley’s board and understand the role Andy and the Old Guard had in humanity, track Montenegro.

Nile get her own song moment with “Going Down Fighting" as she go save the team, and when she frees them, We Won’t Give Up mixes synth with her strings.

And to keep on with the awesome symbolism, in The Old Guard Attack (that moment before the explosion where they take down like 10 mercenaries together) over the sounds we get for them from the first three track there’s strings, Nile’s instrument. The team added her to their music, she’s accepted just like she accepted them with Montenegro when she came back for them.  That’s what we call very cool composition people.

And remember what I said about the choirs being gone? How for the entire movie, after they dream of Nile and Andy yeet herself jump from the train they’re nowhere to be heard? At the end for You Are Going To Help Us, they’re back. Because Nile has chosen her way,  she’s an Old Guard now, she’s part of the family so she gets to have the Old Guard music too.

Just listen to The Old Guard and You Are Going to Help Us, the first and last track. They are very similar in melody and structure, but in the second one you get more prominent strings. Again, Nile’s instrument. Is it subtle enough yet?

I’ve skipped some tracks because once you expose the idea it gets repetitive to mention it from all tracks it appears in, but you get the idea.

Seriously if you have time try to give it a listen, it’s actually really nice. Tho, fair warning, I’m the kind of person that listen to movies and games soundtracks for fun all the time and geek out about ambient music, so...

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And finally, to come back to what I said, and why this ost is so good, I need to talk about the whole atmosphere Gina Prince-Bythewood gave to the movie.

I talked a bit about it here (long post too, sorry), but the movie isn’t all big explosions and SFX and actions in your face. It’s gritty, dark, and incredibly realist. GPB said she used blood pocket for the Kill Floor scene (The Old Guard - How to Shoot a Shootout- Netflix, at about 3:30 she talks about it) because she needed the gore realism of blood spraying out of them. That’s why there’s no fancy light, neons and colors nor very symmetrical or intricate photography but washed out lights and very minimal outstanding feature and even coloring unless it’s to make a point (there’s a post about centering subject in the shot in The Old Guard going around, like Nile in the elevator at the end, very cool). It’s also why they used wide angle for the camera and the “shaky cam”, the camera that’s moving along the characters with lot of shakes because it’s on the cameraman’s shoulder (think documentaries and things like that, again, grounded and realistic film) and not smoothly like you would see in a Fincher movie for example.

It’s also why the most sober ost works so well. It’s not like John Wick with the guitars of Tyler Bates and Le Castle Vania electro, or the Avengers big brass and epic musics. Not, it’s soft, it’s barely noticeable and it only pushes for more emotions, it doesn’t artificially force any on you. The plot and actor’s acting do that for you.

That’s why I think the ost fit so well, no matter that some people think it’s boring or non existent. That’s the goal, to have a soundtrack that uplift without shadowing, something that's just as dark and neutral and gritty as the photography and themes of death, immortality, humanity, etc.

That being said, go listen to some ambient, it’s nice.

#tog #the old guard meta #gina prince-bythewood #nile freeman #andromache the scythian #joe x nicky #sebastien le livre #quynh #the old guard netflix #dustin o’halloran #hauschka #this is so much longer than I anticipated omg #but i like music and i like over analyzing oops #anyway enjoy this it took me like two hours to organize my thoughts into something coherent lmao #em speaks #the old guard review

[elevenelvenswords]

A very late birthday present for the amazing @crackinthecup <3 Sorry for taking so long to write and post this, friend! I really hope you enjoy this :3

Heads-up that it’s very much NSFW. It also includes mentions of non-con encounters and unhealthy relationships. Y’know, just the regular Angbang dynamics!

Dark clouds stretched across the horizon in the storm’s wake. Nefarious things they were, blocking out the sun’s warmth, depriving the earthly beings of Arien’s gift to the world. The raspy northern winds whipped the horses’ manes across their unsettled faces mercilessly, and the overseers’ attempts to calm them down proved for naught, as they stamped their hooves to the ground nervously. Perhaps it was the absence of light for days on end that kept them in this state of unease. Perhaps it was the cold that settled in the fortress sooner than expected that kept the Black One from his slumber as well- and due to his constant, furious growling in the dark pits, all his brethren seemed to grow furious as well. Aggressive even, if the couple of dozens of orcish bodies was anything to go by.

 Closer and closer the clouds drew to their settlements, and darkness fell once they touched Thangorodrim’s murky peaks. It was not disarray that followed -for the Dark Lord’s creatures were raised under the biting kiss of whip and thus came to either blindly love or worship darkness- yet nobody could say activities ran smooth in Angband. Truth be told, they hadn’t run smooth at all in quite a while. Creatures shrunk away in fear and perished: wolves broke free of their masters’ hold, and the remaining ones bit back at the hands that fed them . The great drakes let heat grow in the back of their throats and unleashed it when the captains tried to make them tame again. Hunting parties would not return at all, and nobody could quite pinpoint the exact reason. Well, they could guess.

For Mairon, however, it was quite clear what was happening. For though the orcish eyes remained blind to their master’s mood of late, and though the Valaraukar and the vampires busied themselves elsewhere, the lieutenant had been spending most of his time for the past few weeks in his lord’s presence. Reports had to be read aloud -or so Mairon deemed- and a closer inspection of the dungeons where new guests lay warranted both his and his master’s attendance. And it was during all those times spent at his master’s side that Mairon understood. He would catch Melkor’s gaze fixed on him whenever he pivoted on his heel to ask for further clarifications in regards to the newest orders, and his master’s gaze would turn into a glare at times. Abject fury would seethe there; it would envelop him in rage and power and glory all at once, like turbulent waves come crashing down upon frail sand from an angry sea. Yet for all the rage and hatred and spite his master would shoot his way, there was also something far, far worse that Mairon had to endure. Lust. Desire. Carnal needs. And as they would coil their way to his quivering heart, Mairon would shudder and sheepishly look back to his master.

 None of them spoke of it though. A palpable tension between the two was left unspoken whilst Mairon sought to fulfill his duties. No matter how much Melkor’s will would press down upon him, threatening to crush his fëa, none of them would act upon the visceral desires boiling up inside of them. Mairon would excuse himself with a bow and would leave in haste after those… encounters. As weeks rolled by, the lieutenant could see it clearly: the fortress and its inhabitants slipped off their normal axis due to his master’s capriciousness, as Angband’s fate was tightly bound to its lord. His appetites seemed to swell by the day and, unfortunately for Mairon, he happened to be square in the Vala’s way to receive the blow.

 His master sent word to him, requiring his immediate presence in the throne room. The lieutenant swallowed past a lump in his throat as he hastily discarded his forge garments from his earlier work and stepped into a bathtub. He carefully inspected the bruises mottled across his upper arms that still had not healed since the last time Melkor called him to his private chambers.

 Immediate presence. Mairon rolled the words in his head over and over again, hoping against hope that the meaning behind them was strictly related to formal business. Yet there was no room for him lying to himself that night.

 “You absolute idiot…” the Maia murmured to himself and let his head dip completely in the water.

 XX

 It was cold enough in the throne room for his teeth to chatter faintly and, despite his natural -abnormal- warmth, all heat seemed drained from his body as he stopped at the base of the dais. A shaky breath tumbled past his lips when he finally found the courage to raise his look to his master. And there he was: clad in rich ebony silk bordered by golden embroideries and the heavy iron crown resting upon his brow, Melkor was seated majestically upon his throne. The sight nearly stopped the Maia’s breath in his lungs, though he would not admit to it.

 A heartbeat passed in silence. And then another. Mairon’s slender fingers soon found the edge of his tunic and started to fidget with it in silent apprehension. And then Melkor grinned.

 “Why are you here?” his master’s voice rumbled so suddenly that Mairon flinched. He quickly cleared his throat before speaking.

 “You called me here, my lord,” he replied plainly as he prayed his master would not notice the colour rising in his cheeks. Damn him. They hadn’t even started.

 His master grunted his assent as he outstretched his left hand in order to pick up his goblet from a small table and gulped down a generous amount of what Mairon assumed was wine. The Vala regarded him curiously, taking his time to observe him from head to toe. Mairon nearly melted under his gaze.

 “My lord,” he began when the silence stretched on for too long once again, “if you need anyth-“

 “What do you think I would need from you, dear lieutenant?” his master cut him off with surprising gentleness. Yet Mairon would not fall for it. It was but a mere cloak, a disguise for the danger lurking behind it. He knew that danger all too well and he made himself guilty of adoring it.

 He briefly looked for a proper answer, yet came up empty-handed. Instead he gritted his teeth, forcing his tense body to relax, regaining his composure.

 “I reckon you have a mind to tell me.”

 His master laughed at that. A dark, cruel, mirthless laughter, and a knowing, lascivious smirk twisted his mouth. Not knowing how to react to that, the Maia frowned slightly and clasped the edge of his tunic all the tighter. It was a cruel game that his master was playing. And though Melkor was not known for his patience, he always seemed overly eager to engage in long games of abstinence, teasing and taunting. Mairon feared his master acquired a great expertise in how to push the right buttons to make him squirm and gasp and frankly have him wrapped around his finger. Not that it was surprising in the slightest. Melkor always gains what (or who) he desires. Something fluttered low in Mairon’s belly at the thought.

 What his master desires. Who he desires.

 His master sighed as he licked his lips like the cat who got the cream whilst his lieutenant fought to keep his breath steady. And then his master’s command was simple and clear: “Strip.”

 And he did. With shaky fingers he unlaced the long cape tied to his robes, he unlaced his boots and struggled to discard the tunic and robes and breeches, until awfully naked and exposed he stood before his lord. The thud-thud-thud within his chest was loud to his own ears and he dearly hoped Melkor would not try to reach out for his mind now unless he wished to behold a series of filthy images about violent face-fucking and grievous slapping.

 Mercilessly enough for him to let out a sigh of relief, his master did not. Instead he beckoned Mairon closer with a crook of his finger, so the lieutenant hurried in front of the throne, though his steps were not carried out without reluctance. Danger shined maliciously in the Vala’s eyes, and like a moth drawn to the bright flames of the torches Mairon stared straight into his lord’s eyes. For it was there where he truly found his purpose in the intricate fate of Arda. From the very beginning this had been his destiny: to serve and obey his master in all things. The future was cruelly veiled from him and he knew not what the long war’s outcome would be. Yet his place was at his master’s side, now and always. This much he knew. But no matter how hard he tried to convince himself that this is what he willingly chose, that this is what he engaged into of his own accord, he couldn’t quite shove the lie down his own throat. For he did not. He did not choose this willingly. And it stung and burned to realise that his master cared little for his actual consent. Should he ever try to voice against their acts of intimacy, should he ever decline, his master would violently pin him down and forcefully take his pleasure with him. He still bore the marks of such affections.

 Hard he locked his jaw when his lord reached out for him, snaking his ashen fingers up his sides and then back down. Pointy fingernails raked across his hips, leaving reddened furrows blossoming on his skin. Hard he fought to keep his breath even, to not give in to his own desire and pounce on his lord to worship him with mouth and tongue like he longed to. This abstinence, this stubbornness of his would not aid him in concealing that which he wished to remain hidden as the sharp intake of breath and unbidden stir of flesh betrayed him once Melkor’s head lowered to his taut abdomen and -Valar be damned- kissed his way down to his member. Whatever composure he still clung to was quickly cast aside as soon as warmth enveloped his half-erect member and a little whimper must have surely escaped him, as he could clearly hear his master chuckle. The vibration of it against his cock sent a shiver down his spine and ‘yes’ he whispered, ‘y-yes’.

 “F-fuck,” he mewled when his master grasped him by the hips and drew him closer, taking him deeper into his mouth, and his cock gave a sudden twitch of arousal. A deep flush touched his cheeks when Melkor removed his mouth with an obscene pop and licked at his lips all the while smiling up at him. Perhaps this was not such a bad idea after all…

 “Turn around, sweetness,” Melkor commanded, and Mairon obeyed. The tell-tale clink of a belt behind him made his knees weak. Much to his shame, it was arousal more than anything that sent his body trembling uncontrollably. Bloody, filthy desire and anticipation were left churning low in his stomach. It was almost blood-curdling : the way he instinctively reacted to even the vaguest hints of intimacy around his master.

 A surprised yelp rang across the hall alongside the vicious slap his master delivered to his rear. Half embarrassed and half aroused beyond measure, he whipped his head about to frown at Melkor. The Vala, however, gave him little respite: brutally he grabbed the Maia by the waist and pulled him down atop his lap. An undignified whimper ebbed from the Maia, and seconds later the flush stretched to the very tips of his ears.

 “Did you enjoy that, Mairon?”

 Enjoy what?

 Feebly Mairon struggled, without any real hope to prevail, until he fell still.

 “I suppose you did,” he heard his master chuckle before pressing his lips to Mairon’s ear and mouthing ‘harlot’. Truly he wanted to protest then. Fiery flames started to crackle across his chest and arms, his horns glittered dark red, and he bared his sharp incisors in a threatening snarl.

 Melkor brushed them all off. Faster than Mairon’s eyes could follow, his master brought his hand up to his throat and squeezed. Naturally, he panicked. He tried to scrabble at his master’s wrist to no avail. When at last his twitching subsided to pitiful choking sounds, his master seemed satisfied. Though he would not relinquish his grip.

 “My lord-“

 “Where are your manners now, Mairon?” his master tsked and licked a hot stripe from his neck to his left cheek, “I thought I’ve taught you better than this.” The grip tightened around his throat and much to Mairon’s horror, he could feel his master’s erection twitching against his backside.

 “Please, my lord…” he bleated out when his lungs truly started to burn, yet Melkor would have none of it.

 “What do we say when we do someone wrong, hmm?”

 Shame blistered anew within him but left with little other option than obey, he bit his lip hard enough to draw blood.

 “S-sorry,” he tried.

 “Sorry for what, Maia?”

 “F-for… uh… sorry for disobeying you…” he choked, and just when he thought he would lose consciousness and tears started to gloss over his eyelashes, the hand was gone from his sore throat.

 His relief was short-lived though. All of a sudden his master forced his legs apart, and though heat burned bright in his loins, though desire churned in his bowels, so did anxiety. He bit his lip again whilst his master manoeuvred him into an uncomfortable and unusual position: both his calves hooked over the throne’s spiky armrests whilst his right arm was placed behind his master’s head for a better balance. Tightly his master drew him to his chest, until their faces almost touched. Thus, timidly he looked to his lord, his god, and this time it was Mairon that grinned.

“What is it that you wish me to do, Mairon?” Melkor curiously inquired whilst he fetched a small vial of oil from his own robes and unplugged it. Unspeakable arousal seemed to devour Mairon as he watched his master pour a generous amount of oil on his fingers, and he licked at his bloodied lip.

 “I want you,” he began as his master positioned his hand between his deliciously spread legs, “to fuck me hard and fa- oh!” His last words were lost in a whimper when he felt those well-slickened fingers enter him. He cursed, letting the filthy words drip from his mouth, and Melkor seemed to lick them all. Tasting them. Savouring them. In and out his master moved his fingers, and when they eventually hit that one glorious spot, Mairon moaned. A proper, shameful, wanton moan.

 Melkor groaned in response.

 “Do you like my fingers up inside of you?” his lord mumbled the words against his neck as he kissed and sucked a livid welt into the delicate skin there. Mairon could only nod, near delirious with pleasure as he was.

 Unexpectedly, his master took his time to work him open. He moved his hand relentlessly, until his wrist tired of the movement, and then removed it. The beginning of a protest welled up inside Mairon’s throat at the sudden loss, but the ashen fingers were quickly replaced with his master’s cock.

 His whole body tensed when he was breached in one long thrust. Hard he gripped his master’s shoulder for purchase, and his calves ached from the awkward position when Melkor finally started to move. His master fucked him in earnest, with hard, luxurious thrusts. He couldn’t help but wince and moan aloud every time the Vala hit that one bundle of nerves inside of him. And then greyed fingers forced their way inside his mouth, gagging him ruthlessly. With reckless abandon he sucked on them, spittle dribbling down his chin and the Vala’s forearm. He couldn’t quite remember when Melkor’s other fist came to close over his weeping erection, but what he did remember was how utterly alive it made him feel. Ardour shrieked inside of him as his length throbbed and twitched in his master’s hand.

 “P-please, my lord,” he murmured around his master’s fingers, “please, can I…?”

 A litany of obscenities was licked at his ear and he came hard under the relentless ministrations; all his muscles tensed as one as he spurted his seed for his master and he could only twitch and allow himself to be swallowed by the intensity of it all.

 Yet his master did not stop there. No, he kept going and going and going, despite his protests and discomfort. And no matter how hard he sought to dislodge the unrelenting fullness inside his guts, he felt himself growing hard once again. It was not long before his pelvic muscles clenched again and-

 “F-fuck…” he swore under his ragged breath as he came desperately, urgently, helplessly. Across his master’s hand he spilled his seed again. And again and again he felt his master’s length slam into him as remorselessly his lord fucked him. Pain flared across his calves left dangling over the armrests. Like a prize, he thought as raw waves of seething pleasure coursed up through him. Like some obscene doll draped across his master’s throne, sprawled in his master’s lap. Like some petty sex-toy to be debased and used and abused on a whim. And oh how he mewled with the glory of it.

 Harder still his master’s shaft drove into him, and some unexplainable emotion burst to life as his master nudged against something exquisite inside of him, as the angle shifted, as the contact somehow deepened, and the hot squirt inside his bowels felt like sweet absolution.

 He growled whilst the movement ceased, and a groan of both relief and desire punched out of his throat when at last his master slipped free of him.

 Something prodded at his entrance -again- and before he had even the slightest chance to protest, it entered him with appalling ease. His brow furrowed in pain as the Vala’s finger inspected his insides, and it was all he could do not to scream when a second one was added and rammed up in his guts.

 The fingers in his mouth were removed in order to be replaced by the ones that had been inside of him. He gagged at the bitter taste and shivered with the degradation of it. Come and oil and Eru knows what else swirled with his tongue, and his stomach gave a sudden spasm when Melkor buried his fingers down his throat. Fruitlessly he tried to remove the insistent pressure, yet it was not before the first flux of vomit threatened to come up that his master completely retracted his hand.

 Coated in thick saliva and sticky-white fluids, he watched his lord’s hand wipe the mess across his abdomen. Despite the dirtiness and perversion of it, Mairon smiled.

 “You did so well, Mairon. You did so well,” Melkor praised, and the Maia allowed himself to be dragged into a long embrace, followed by a deep, passionate kiss.

 They spent the rest of the night together in his master’s chambers. It was long after Melkor had fallen sound asleep that Mairon peered at the dark clouds above. Nefarious things they were. Mairon thought it suited them well.

#happy belated birthday Denisa :3 #mairon #melkor #sauron #angbang #my writing

[that-shamrock-vibe]

Movie Review: Spider-Man Far From Home

Disclaimer: Just like Avengers: Endgame, I cannot stress enough how spoilerific this movie is. I feel just reading a general overview as I am about to give here may taint your viewership if you don’t want to know anything going in. I will strive to be as spoiler-free as possible and just give enough of a tease to push non-committed cinema goers to go and see it but if you do not want to know anything about this movie going in, do not read on until you do.

General Reaction:

This is probably my favourite live-action Spider-Man movie to date. Into the Spider-Verse is still in my opinion the best Spider-Man movie overall, but this is definitely my favourite live-action one. Just as there is an in-movie debate about if Spider-Man should become the new Iron Man, I feel that debate may also be going on amongst both MCU fans and Marvel Studios in-house in terms of making both the character and movie franchise the MCU’s new focal point since Iron Man’s departure in Avengers: Endgame and the original six seemingly bowing out as the core team.

I don’t think I have ever gasped or wanted to cheer so much in an MCU movie, even in both Infinity War and Endgame where everyone was doing it, myself included, this had them beat for the legitimate surprises that the ad campaign managed to keep secret, possibly to the movie’s detriment but I’ll get into that in my spoiler review.

Even 11 years since the MCU started to build up the world of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, just to see essentially a European tour with some new locations and already visited places, including one or two that I’ve visited personally, was really great to see.

There was so much that managed to one-up itself, not only from Spider-Man: Homecoming but also from what is now the Infinity Saga of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and in a way set the tone for the next phase and new era, that it was a wonder to behold.

The action sequences and visuals are some of the best I have seen in any movie. It made me want to see it in 3D and I actually think next time I might pay to see it in 3D they were that good.

As I said, with the ad campaign keeping so much of the movie secret, I don’t know how inticed fans will be to see the movie because it just looks like your run-of-the-mill Spidey flick but it is so much more than that.

I cannot say how good this movie was, the locations, the action, the danger, the emotion, the humour, everything came together so perfectly in this movie and you feel not only what it’s like to be in a superhero movie with a high school twist but also with that added peril of the “blip” aftermath.

You feel the ramifications of Avengers: Endgame throughout this movie, both in terms of Tony’s death and also people being wiped from reality and returning. They explain it quite well, because I know that the end of Endgame many fans were wondering why exactly Peter and Ned were back at school as if back to normal, they explained that rather well here.

Also, there are callbacks to earlier movies in the MCU so intrecally woven into the story and so shocking that it blew my freakin’ mind to think that Feige could have actually somehow planned this the whole time.

I saw this movie mere hours ago and so possibly cannot quite compartmentalise everything I saw into what is spoiler and what is not, so I will probably splurge out everything I haven’t covered here in the spoiler-review. But seriously I cannot stress how great this movie was.

Cast:

As I said in my opening, I am starting to see Tom Holland be able to stand front and centre as the main hero of the MCU, I know it’s supposed to be Brie Larson as Captain Marvel, but this movie even snubs her and we will get to that when we talk about Nick Fury. But Holland is just so likeable as Peter Parker and so genuine and comics-accurate as Spider-Man that I can never see another live-action actor portraying this character. I loved Andrew Garfield but Tom Holland is my Spider-Man as Robert Downey Jr. is the definitive Iron Man.

Zendaya continues to prove why she is such an up and comer as one of Hollywood’s best young actresses. Genuinely I see her on the same level as Letitia Wright and Naomi Scott, while she’s maybe not as funny as Letita Wright she has a realistic yet dark humour with MJ that is really relatable.

Jake Gyllenhaal is as good as Mysterio as I hoped he was. What he did with the character here is of a similar but admittedly better quality to what Michael Keaton did with The Vulture and, Rhys Ifans did with The Lizard in The Amazing Spider-Man and even what Thomas Haden Church did with Sandman in Spider-Man 3, they all made their respective characters interesting even though before seeing these cinematic versions I either didn’t know of them or didn’t care about them.

Peter’s school group are okay, they are necessary to the movie as Peter can’t go on a field trip himself, but they just kind of fade into the background. Ned continues to be an annoyance for me, Flash is just your typical noughties bully and Betty...we’ll get to Betty.

The most surprising breakout for me in this movie was Remy Hii as Brad Davis, I remember seeing this guy on Neighbours a few years back. He’s definitely upped his game a bit since then.

As for Samuel L. Jackson, Cobie Smulders, Jon Favreau and Marisa Tomei, they have some great scenes and they are as you expect them to be. It definitely helped to not focus too much on the younger actors and have some relief with the more mature content at times.

Also, without going into spoilers, there is something revealed in the end-credits scenes that made me exceedingly happy. I’d say these are the best end-credits scenes, two of them, since Doctor Strange in terms of setting up the future of the MCU.

Recommendation:

This is as close to a perfect Endgame aftermath movie as I could have imagined, it doesn’t try and ram in what everyone is doing post-Endgame but focuses on a bit of light relief mixed in with some rather serious and consequential actions along the way.

Even if you are on the fence about seeing the movie, I know I’ve said this a lot recently but, this is one of those hot topic talked about movies that you need to see regardless of if you think the trailers are only meh.

See it for yourself and take in the wonder because I guarantee you will not leave the movie with the same thoughts you had going in.

So that’s my non-spoiler review for Spider-Man: Far From Home, what did you guys think? Post your comments and check out more Marvel Movie Reviews as well as other Movie Reviews and posts.

#mcu #marvel #marvel cinematic universe #kevin feige #spider-man #spider-man: far from home #avengers: endgame #spider-man: into the spider-verse #the amazing spider-man #spider-man 3 #tom holland #zendaya #samuel l jackson #cobie smulders #jon favreau #marisa tomei #remy hii #jake gyllenhaal #rhys ifans #thomas haden church #letitia wright #naomi scott #mj watson #nick fury #maria hill #happy hogan #mysterio #quentin beck #may parker #the lizard

[butterflydm]

The Magicians Revisited: 1x04 The World in the Walls

Significant moments: As part of Marina’s plan to steal from Brakebills, she’s done a cooperative spell with Julia to mess with Quentin’s mind in order to trick Dean Fogg into lowering the protective wards around the school. I’m assuming she picked Quentin because it’s a powerful cooperative spell so she needs a strong witch like Julia, and Julia’s mad enough at Quentin to be able to use him as a target. Julia might not be willing to trap just any random student into a hell-dream, but she’s pissed enough at Quentin to do it to him. The dream itself is a mishmash of the hospitals he’s spent time in with elements of Brakebills, and it preys on his own thoughts and twists them.

So, potentially, twisted reflections of what’s in Q’s mind — Dean Fogg becomes another authority figure, a doctor. Both Eliot and Alice are very sexually aggressive towards Quentin, and Q turns Penny into a janitor with a heavy accent (which real!Penny calls out as racist of Q’s subconscious).

Julia, otoh, is the actual Julia. Which… man, oh there is so much ugliness to unpack there. Actual, real Julia takes malicious joy at Quentin’s pain in her first scene, and only starts to be worried/concerned in her second, when Q has gone past being freaked out and is so mentally burnt out that he’s non-responsive.

As Julia is leaving from her second visit with Quentin, real!Penny walks into the dream/spell. He sees fake!Penny and is instantly offended which, you know, fair. Anyway, Q asks Penny to find him in the real world and wake him up, and that, at 23-24 minutes into the episode, is the first time we leave Quentin’s head.

On a more acting-based level, I feel like this kind of episode only works when the actor has a rock-solid understanding of who their character is and how their character sees themselves and isn’t afraid to embrace the uglier sides of their character, and I’m pretty impressed at how strong a grip Jason Ralph has on Quentin only four episodes into the show.

In the scene with Julia and Marina, Julia expresses concern over what the spell is doing to Q, and we see that Kady has been watching, too, and Marina is definitely aware of Kady’s relationship with Penny at this time. Kady is also concerned at the idea that the spell could potentially trap Q in his own mind forever. When the later attempt by the Dean and Penny to break Q out of the spell fails, Kady goes to Julia to tell her to reverse the spell because Q might never wake up otherwise. Julia goes to the Dean & Co. and confesses that she cast the spell.

One big thing that this episode does is soften the antagonism between Q and Penny — ironically, being a little inside Q’s head pissed Penny off, but when he was more deeply inside and exposed to more of the trauma Q was going through, he became angry at Julia on Q’s behalf for putting him through that. It did this to a certain extent with Kady and Q, too.

With Jane’s help, Quentin is able to pull himself out of the Web even when the Dean seems pretty certain he’s fucked. Jane looks damn proud of him for it, too. Eliot, the Dean, and Penny are all visibly relieved that he’s awake again. Julia is guilt-stricken as, you know, she should be. Looking forward, I’m relatively sure this is the ugliest thing that actual, shade-having Julia ever does to anyone. Anyway, not only has she set fire (for now) to her relationship with Quentin, she also gets kicked out of Marina’s hedge witch group for betraying Marina.

In Q’s last scene in his head, we get him quoting from the books, “Jane saw only one way out for him: stop playing, start living”, which ties into the “live your life here” throughline that’s been thrown at Q a few times over the course of the series. That’s also tied into the ‘stop overthinking’ theme that Q gets a lot, too. Q runs into issues when he lives inside his head instead of living his actual life in the real world, and this nightmare that Julia and Marina trapped him in is just an extreme manifestation of that tendency of his.

That’s actually also related to that flaw of his that I mentioned in the 1x03 post — where he holds other people accountable for his emotions. That’s him living like he’s in a Scarlatti Web all the time, where other people are just projections of his fears and desires rather than being, well, other people. And that’s the epiphany that he has during the endgame of the Beast arc when he gives the… god’s come… to Alice instead of drinking it himself (what is this show that I had to write out that sentence). That he is not the sole protagonist, that he is not the only person who has emotional importance. And that life is actually better when he embraces that truth, because it means that he can actually see other people for who they are and not as echoes of his own thoughts. It was really great character growth, until- well.

Magic: 1. Quentin "wakes up" trapped in a mental world created by a cooperative spell cast by Julia and Marina called a Scarlatti Web. 2. Quentin is able to cast a fireworks spell while in the Web. 3. Jane is able to penetrate the spell enough to send a vision of her younger self to Q to try to get him to work on breaking the spell by giving him hints about where to look. 4. There was a magician in Fillory named Ellesworth Downs, who was cursed by a witch to only be able to cast game magic. 5. Kady tries to cast healing magic on Q; it fails. 6. Marina uses a spell to light her cigarette. 7. The wards are lowered to allow the bug-spirit in to save Quentin. 8. Marina uses magic to get into the room where the stolen memories are kept. 9. Jane is able to get to Q again after the first part of the spell is broken, and she tries to let him know how to get out of the spell. 10. Marina pulls Julia to her side. 11. Marina crosses out Julia’s hedge witch stars and kicks her out of the bodega.

Relationships: Quentin & Julia: estranged friends Quentin & Eliot: friends, confidantes, romantic undertones Quentin & Penny: frenemies? I think they qualify as frenemies now Quentin & Alice: estranged friendship?, crush Penny & Kady: romantic & sexual relationship Kady->Penny: manipulative relationship Marina & Julia: burned bridges Marina -> Kady: blackmail/extortion Quentin->Kady: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Kady->Quentin: friendly enough to be concerned about him & pissed at Julia for being willing to turn on him Jane&Fogg->Quentin&co: manipulative mentorship Eliot->Julia: contempt Kady->Julia: contempt/anger

Physical contact: Fake!Eliot searches through Q’s pockets for pills, grabs Q’s hand and presses it against his chest and pushes it down his body. He puts a finger on Q’s mouth and smacks him on the ass as he leaves. Fake!Alice grabs Q’s face and kisses him. Julia reaches out to touch Q’s hand during her visit to him. She brushes his hair out of his face. Fake!Penny grabs Q’s hand to show that Q was palming pills instead of swallowing them. Q grabs pages out of his fake roommate’s hands to keep him from destroying the books. Q touches several of the residents of his mind during his musical number. Q shares a hug with his fake father. Fake!Eliot and Fake!Alice do some very close sitting with Quentin during the montage after he’s been told that he tried to kill his father. Julia touches Q’s knee in her second visit with him. Penny shoves Quentin against the wall. Q shoves him back, Penny shoves him back harder (as requested). Marina smacks Kady’s ass. Q pickpockets one of the fake nurses for a key into the office to finally get some tape to fix the pages of the book. Penny shoulder-checks Eliot a bit (not too hard) as they’re looking for Q’s body. Penny slaps Q’s face to try to wake him up. Fake!Penny and another fake employee of the hospital haul Quentin off to get the lobotomy. Dean Fogg touches Q’s forehead after the attempt at breaking Q out of the spell. Eliot pets Q on the head after he’s woken up from the spell.

Character Notes: Quentin: he last saw his dad (Ted) a few months ago; they had dinner. Actual Alice, in real life, does not appear in this episode. Only the fake Alice in Q’s head. Margo does not appear in this episode.

Students: Marina used to attend Brakebills; she was kicked out three months before graduation.

Timeline Notes: Quentin fell asleep at a party on Tuesday and then went under the spell. Penny arrives in the dream on a Wednesday.

#TMRevisited #tmwk2 #the magicians #long post #text post #keeping track of things

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

Im curious as to why you hate Makoto for ripping of p3pfemc's looks but consent to Royal-chan for the same thing? ( I know you hate Makoto for a lot of other reasons, like her personality and such, but it seemed like you disliked her since prereveal/release?) If Royal chan ended up being a completely unrelated character to femc, will your opinion of her change ? (no hate really, i jst wanna know. \V/m )

It's no prob! In all honesty I didn't even think about this kind of question, but the answer came right away, so I guess time for a not so deep reflection.

So like full stop, if Poniko isn't connected to the FeMC and it's just Atlus messing with me, yeah I'mma be PISSED. Will I rip on her looks like no tomorrow? Maybe, depends on how it’s handled (like how bad they burn me, and even then I might wait for a spinoff cause they might go into the connection there rather than Royal). I think it's obvious I went harder on Makoto because I don't like her for other reasons, and so any small thing about her annoys me (tbh Yusuke's design annoys me too, but not as bad cause....I kinda just don’t care about him and who he’s copying as much, but I'll get to that in a bit)

Anyway I think we need some historical context, because I think it’s important. When Makoto (and Yusuke) where first shown......FeMC had been ignored for A LONG time. We had a non-canon play (which no one really talked about), and that was it. No game related stuff, not even featured in the game where people were getting ripped out of timelines. FeMC were BURNED. I’ll be honest, when Yusuke appeared......While the parallels between P2 were obvious (not just with him) he reminded me of Minato as well. It annoyed me we had to have the token blue hair character since the rule had been made since the P3 era (kinda enforced with some black haired characters from P1/2, combining P2 games together that is, if you want to include them), Atlus said they’d be trying new things..... but like....whateves. But my association with him as Minato increased....when Makoto came along. 

Ngl I wasn’t pleased with the reveal of the last three girls (even didn’t like Haru, for ironically now what I love as an alt rewrite for her as, as I thought she’d be a mean and person full of herself due to calling herself ‘beauty thief’....Yeah all types of crazy here, I do love sweet Haru tho. And the reason for my opinion changing on the alt non-canon personality rewrite is just I.....see the appeal in it for the group dynamic now, while at the time I was afraid of disliking any of the characters or having them be disliked by the fandom.....which big laugh now haha :’D .....I want my happy P5 self back ;w;). Anyway back to the three girls, ngl one of the reasons I wasn’t happy was how they just dumped 3 more characters on us (too big a cast so can they handle it?, silly has to do more VA videos, I want the smaller cast back oh god don’t screw this up, and so on and so on). As for the characters, while Haru’s appearance in the trailer mislead me on her personality (for whatever reason)..... I just.....there was something about Futaba and Makoto I didn’t like. Futaba just rubs me all the wrong ways for reasons I can’t describe for back then (maybe the fact she looked like she’d be a troll and she kinda is), but Makoto it was clear...... She was ripping off FeMC’s look. The brown hair and red eyes.....the fact that Yusuke looked like Minato.....it felt like they were trying to draw them as expies of the P3MCs. And it pissed me off. I didn’t want an unrelated character look and remind me of the FeMC, I wanted FeMC herself! Why are you stealing her look????? And while some FeMC saw this and rolled with it as a joke (Hamu/Minty/Shin dressing up as Makoto/Yusuke/Goro to get into P5), other’s didn’t know who the FeMC was and thus.....didn’t see the blatant expy/rip off design. Seeing people be like “her character design is so original and cute and blah blah blah”.....it annoyed me....obviously (it didn’t help she grew in popularity doing absolutely nothing too, so initially it was all about her looks, and then I’ve been told a lot of her fans, at least male, has been mostly them saying the like her design and her hair and her eyes, and no everyone who likes Makoto is an FeMC fan so....yeah.....I mostly hear how it’s just about her design so I’m very focused on that in regards to her specifically BECAUSE of the fans). And yeah I know it was a bit petty/shallow reason, but I didn’t outright hate her atm, she was stepping on my toes badly but I was holding out till the game (where it finally cemented my hate for her, and now I legit hate her for petty, shallow, deep, and complex reasons). And lordy lord lord, it did not help Makoto’s name was Makoto, because that was a name some FeMC fans gave Hamuko (cause Makoto Yuki was the closest ‘canon’ name we’d get to P3MCs, and some people adopted it for both MCs cause it was gender neutral, so Niijima coming along and taking THAT away sucked ass, and I know different kanji, it still sucked tho). It just....felt like Atlus was spitting in FeMC fan’s face..... But anyway, I kept it in....for about....2ish years. Even when I was trying to stay positive.......and even when I was slowly starting to come out with negative opinions. I tried to keep it in. 

Finally I decided to make it framed as a joke, because I started to see Makoto ripping off more characters than just FeMC (FeMC, Aika, and Naoto in the detective novel to be precise, but what got the ball rolling was realizing that it was Aika who Makoto ripped the hair and motor vehicle from with the FeMC’s color scheme). That’s where my brain started going other places than just being restricted to FeMC, and I started being more critical of Makoto’s design outside the FeMC (tho that still burned me). Because, imo, it’s not original, it annoyed me people would say she was original when she was really just a Frankenstein rip off of other characters (other loved characters, FeMC and Aika were pretty popular in their own right). It only continued to cement in my mind that....anything ‘original’ about Makoto was a farce, she just copies while the original gets left behind.

Tldr; FeMC had been snubbed for years, along comes two design expies that remind you of P3MCs (3 if you wanna include Goro/Ken but Goro looks different enough imo), Makoto is named Makoto (a name some used for FeMC), and Makoto is praised for her design for being original and blah blah blah when it’s not (for multiple reasons besides the FeMC, kinda more the fans reactions fault but I was already having design issues so it just bugged me more when they’d say these things). So yeah it felt like Makoto stole aspects of the FeMC, and it’s not like FeMC has a lot for herself, which really just stepped on my toes. Combined that with legit hating the character when I finally get to see her in action (and it’s because of her actions and writing that I hate-hate the character, but prior to that it was just her stepping on my toes while trying to keep an open mind into liking her), the stuff said before gets amplified more than before.

But months later, after the first post of me ripping on Makoto for taking FeMC and Aika’s design (tho my later posts were in drafts I just didn’t post them till later), something amazing happened on Aug 4th. FeMC finally came back to us. And holy shit obviously I was happy, but it doesn’t dismiss the fact I was aware of how much of design rip off/expy Makoto was, and it wasn’t just FeMC anymore. But gdi if the fact that the FeMC wasn’t being ignored anymore didn’t change the outlook for me as an FeMC fan. FeMC was back, she’s loved, care was put into her character in PQ2, just.....skdfalf;a so happy ;w; But also so hopeful, she was acknowledged again, she had been cut from the 20th anniversary event in official art, and that hurt us, but now she’s back back. And she was a main character in PQ2.....which leads to you questioning, what next? 

Which brings us to Poniko, the one post hopeful outlook. Obviously she’s not starting in the same place as Makoto. Poniko has been revealed post-PQ2 FeMC....which means Atlus isn’t ignoring Hamuko (in fact a lot of the creators were stating they WANTED her back), we know the creators do love Hamuko. There’s also the fact.....Poniko looks less like an expy like Makoto (who imo looks like Soejima trying to emulate Kaneko’s art style, esp the eye shape, same with Yusuke too). Poniko? It goes beyond ripping off a design, she looks like she’s almost fully lifted from Hamuko, it just looks like Hamuko wearing a different outfit. Just straight up copy and paste. And would I have been pissed if she was revealed alongside Makoto? Maybe, or I might be theorizing that she is Hamuko herself like now (tho I think it’d get more push back due to Hamu being in Atlus’ basement for so long so it just being claimed as delusional and unlikely), or both (and then pissed when it’s revealed it’s not Hamuko). It’s just....she looks SO MUCH like Hamuko it can’t be a coincidence, and after PQ2 it feels less like one as well. Just.....the posture, the cinematic parallels, the hair color, the eye color, the eye shape, the eyelashes, the face structure, the way she stands.....Poniko just screams “I AM Hamuko” not “I just look like her because.” And it helps that other people in the fandom also see this too, some are hoping she’s a new person, but it seems people at least acknowledge that very obvious similarities between Hamuko and Poniko (while that didn’t really happen with P5 with Hamuko/Makoto). 

And....tbh I feel like I might sound like I’m splitting hairs (at least with the words I’m using). And it might sound weird that I think Makoto ripped off enough Hamuko it pissed me off, but Poniko just.....is a copy and paste of Hamuko, just straight up Hamuko in a different outfit and hairstyle but it doesn’t. But it’s the historical context I think that sheds that light. And the fact Poniko might just BE Hamuko, and so it’d make sense if that was the case for them to look like each other (while it doesn’t make sense for Makoto to look like Poniko). 

I guess it also helps that I personally had the headcanon Hamuko and Minato weren’t related (just strangers on the bridge in two separate cars), and they both survived the bridge accident but one became the leader of SEES and the other went on to live and do their own thing (until maybe a spinoff game pulls them back in). And while I.....well recalling it now I considered a reincarnation once in a hc scenario (opted for time travel forward cause that makes sense 8U I won’t go into it I had my reasons 8U), but looking at the 1st year symbol on Poniko (and reincarnation in other MegaTen works, I mean c’mon reincarnation is in the title) it feels plausible. And it works for Poniko because of the time the incident and the time to be reincarnated takes place (1999 being the accident and April 1 2000-April 2 2001 being the time frame she was born), which wouldn’t ever work for Makoto because she was born in 1998 (so even if I HAD considered Makoto it wouldn’t have worked, esp since they never tell us she jumped grades, it’s not possible....and while I’m all for hc and grey areas, this is something that WOULD be explicitly told because it’s not common in Japan and Atlus has been explicit about characters not in the ‘right’ grades before, just an fyi there 8U). 

I dunno I feel like there’s distinct clear reasons that I can fit them into separate categories. And yeah if Poniko isn’t Hamuko I’mma be burned too, BUT I’mma wait till a spinoff post-Royal before I get pissy.....cause I don’t expect clear answers to other past games in another game’s mainline entry (I only expect shallow shoutouts tbh). So yeah, just so you know where the deadline for my expectations are. 

[juliabenerdy]

Top 12 Female MCU Characters

In celebration for Avengers Endgame coming out I wanted to do a post that was fun and non spoilery to put my love out there for Marvel. Since I am all about women power and things I thought this would be a great thing to do!

I am only doing women in the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) and this does not include TV shows that might slightly tie in to them. That was really hard. This is my opinion and not everyone will agree with it and there certainly can be a discussion but no bashing anyone of opinions. That is totally not nice. Anyway..like i said there will be no spoilers for Avengers: Endgame, but all other movies prior is free game--Be Warned!

12. Nebula

Abilities

Superhuman strength, agility and durability

Regenerative healing factor

Skilled hand-to-hand combatant

Skilled assassin

Wrist blasters

I love Nebula. Who doesn’t love an underdog story, plus she is probably one of the characters that most people could relate to. Who can’t relate to someone who has sibling rivalry? Of course, most people don’t have an insane father that will pit his children against each other into battles of almost death and when one looses the loosing child will get tortured with mutilation when getting cybernetic enhancements. The thing that most amazes me about Nebula in the MCU is her character growth. She shows that she truly loved and cared for her sister and it was the tyrant between them that kept them apart for so long. Ultimately she realizes that she was following a maniac and she starts helping the good guys in Avengers: Infinity War. I can not wait to see where her journey goes from here! 

11. Hope “Wasp” van Dyne

Abilities

Size manipulation

Flight

Bio-electric energy blasts and extendable claws on her gloves

Skilled hand-to-hand combatant

Hope is the definition of independent woman in my eyes. She is a fighter. She is intelligent, not afraid to run with the big boys, teaches men how to punch, ambitious, and makes being the Wasp her own. Despite being estranged from her father for most of her childhood she learns forgiveness and softens to him when she finds out the truth about her mother. It takes a lot of character to forgive someone in my opinion and being lied to most of her life would be a lot to forgive, but in the long run letting love be the ultimate thing to win in her relationship with her dad and with Scott instead of pushing away is true bravery and a bad ass woman. 

10. Agent Peggy Carter 

Abilities

Skilled hand-to-hand combatant

Trained in Fire Arms

Military Combatant

Skilled Agent

Peggy Carter, the one that falls in love and gets the heart of Captain America. (Lucky....) Seriously, she is definitely a woman that can be a role model for little girls. She is like the ultimate bad ass. Smart, knows how to take care of herself, refuses to be a damsel in distress type, tough as nails, but still keeps her own form of feminine charm. Like I said bad ass and great role model. I would love to learn to kick butt from this woman and I would gladly tell everyone she was the Agent I learned from. 

^ Brilliant

9. Okoye 

Abilities

Skilled in many forms of combat

Exceptional in using various Wakandan weaponry and tools

Brilliant Tactician and Military Strategist

When I watched Black Panther I was moved and amazed by the female empowerment in the movie. You can actually see my previous blog about it! I am still in love with that factor of the movie. Okoye is one of my all time favorite characters of the MCU and favorite parts of Black Panther because she is smiply awesome. The King of Wakanda has women...women back him up. I want all sexist pigs out there to soak that in for a moment. If you are still grumbling and thing that T’Challa was wrong, remember all this:

8. Shuri 

Abilities

Animorphism

Genius-level intellect

Expert martial artist

Necromancy

Super speed

Stone skin

Use of high-tech equipment and weapons including vibranium uniform

Enhanced agility, durability, endurance, reflexes, senses, speed, stamina and strength

I love this girl, because in the MCU she is one brainy badass. In the abilities listed above we definitely see the genius level intellect and her high tech weapon use. 

I am going to just say right now I will loose my ever loving mind if i see her animorphism and necromancy skills in the next Black Panather movies. Holy crap. Mage and Harry Potter crap there! LOL Anyway, Shuri is definitely a refreshing woman to see in movies today. A woman that can take care of herself and lets say save the man in distress.

7. Mantis

Abilities

Master martial artist

Empathy

Plant manipulation

Accelerated healing factor

Astral projection

Ability to communicate telepathically with the Cotati

Energy projection

Okay, so in my opinion Mantis is one of the coolest Marvel heroines’ that has ever been introduced. I will be the first to say that she was actually one that I was not to familiar with until I looked her up after the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 came out. Honestly, I do not think they have touched on half of what Mantis can do. Master martial artist? Where was that? Plant Manipulation? Um, yes please enhance Mantis characterization in the next films please Marvel because empaths can be totally badass and she is apparently no different. In Infinity War she jumped on Thano’s back and practically immobilized him! She was that powerful! Her power made it to where she almost made Team Iron Strange (lol like what I did there with the Team that was on that planet?) successful in Infinity War. Almost...*sigh*

6. Pepper Potts

This entry will be a little different. I said I was not going to spoil Endgame and I plan on keeping it that way. I will probably not have any blogs stating anything specific about the movie plot and things for a little while longer. That being said I still wanted to include Pepper because even though there is things I don’t want to say about her character and her story line in Endgame I still want to say how much I love her. She is smart and a very capable women. She is the one running Stark Industries after all and the woman that is in love with Tony Stark which is also hard, but I think she is the proof that Tony has a heart throughout the entire MCU. 

5. Black Widow

Abilities

Expert tactician, hand-to-hand combatant and secret agent

Slowed aging, and enhanced immune system

Expert marksman and mastery of various other weapons via gauntlets

grappling hook

knock out gas

taser

explosives

tear gas pellets

radio transmitter

If you would ask me which female superhero I would want to be like the most, I would probably tell you the super femme fetal Black Widow. Who wouldn’t want to be a beautiful super spy badass? Natasha Romanov does not need super powers to be amazing. She just is and that is part of what makes her great. She is also not afraid to say that she has demons in her past and she is definitely wanting to atone for things that she has done wrong. That takes courage and guts to want to strive to be a better person. Not many people would even try to atone for anything. Natasha...you are definitely my hero.

  4. Gamora 

Abilities

Superhuman strength, speed, agility, and durability

Skilled assassin

Skilled hand-to-hand combatant

The Most Dangerous Woman in the Universe 

I love Gamora. I think she is fierce, smart, strong, independent, beautiful and everything a badass woman should be! She fought for what she thought was right despite going against her father’s wishes. It can be extremely hard to go against family. Let’s pretend for a moment that her father was not a total psychopathic tyrant for a moment and consider that that is a hard thing to do. Yeah, if we go back to the fact that he is a psycho and he techinically murdered half her people, including her real family, and basically kidnapped her, it would still be weird to go against the man who raised you. It would at least takes guts to go against the person that raised you into the total badass bitch machine that you are now, knowing that he is a psycho so you could become a Guardian of the Galaxy because you have better morals and values! Gamora is legend. She is the Most Dangerous Woman in the Universe! 

3. Valkyrie

Abilities

Superhuman strength, speed, durability, and longevity

Mediumship with spirits of the dead

Valkyrie is one of the most complicated female characters in the MCU so far and given a lot of depth in my opinion. She suffers from PTSD, which I can relate to, because of her battle against Hela. There are not many characters that you see with Post-Traumatic-Stress-disorder. Being the only survivor of the Valkyrior because of the battle against the Goddess of Death, she suffers a lot of loss, and she was also saved by one of her sisters in arms when almost speared through the heart by Hela. She drowns her sorrows in alcohol which is actually a very human thing to see despite the fact that we are supposed to be watching a woman that is superhuman. .The reason why I really like Valkyrie so much is because how much I relate to her. Instead of drowning in sorrow she realizes that she can not run from her past but get stronger from it. She is a inspirational woman that kicks total butt!

2. Scarlet Witch

Abilities

Reality warping

Magic

Probability manipulation

Teleportation

Matter manipulation

Time manipulation

Energy projection, manipulation and absorption

First of all, I think magic in the MCU world is fascinating, needless to say I am a fantasy nerd and mages, witches, and magic is a true love of mine anyway, but Scarlet Witch is right up there with Dr. Strange. When talking about pure power and abilities she is extremely the bomb. I wont go super nerdy on everyone here because most of the reason why I love her is because of playing her in old video games like X-Men Legends (turning bad guys into boxes--hahaha boxes) and the comic story lines (House of M anyone?). If I think about her character in the MCU alone I still love her because her powers are still ultimately powerful due to the mind stone. Her powers are more telekinetic and telepathic in nature in the MCU because of this. Remember when she manipulated the Hulk? Yeah that is power! She has had to go through a lot of crap and she always uses it to make her stronger. This is what makes her awesome. 

1. Captain Marvel

Abilities

Superhuman strength, speed, endurance, and stamina

Energy projection and absorption

Flight

I really struggled with how I was going to rate my last five. I was not sure whether I was going to make our dear Captain Marvel number one, but she is number one to me, because I related to her. Simple and probably selfish, but it’s my list so LOL, This is my opinion of course, but I really did pick this a lot based on how I relate to Carol Danvers. She is one powerful woman and it was a lot of manipulation that toned down that power until she realized she could utilize her emotions to make her stronger. Her character growth was essentially understanding who she was and letting herself not be afraid of her power and her emotions. Danvers is powerful, sassy, funny, a fighter pilot, and an adventurer! Who wouldn’t want to be her? 

  So this is my list..like I said its all my opinion and I put a lot of what I feel in the reason. If you agree or not that is cool. I love to hear people’s opinions, that is if anyone is reading this LOL, but no battering people for their opinions! No spoilers for Endgame!

Just saying also...can we please get She-Hulk in the MCU! SHEESH!

At some point I might do a top list of males in the MCU with Spiderman coming out in awhile. Maybe a list of what I love about Spiderman..cause I love Spiderman. Who knows haha 

#marvel mcu #female marvel mcu list #top 12 list #top female characters #nerdy approved #female warrior #marvel superheroes #marvel superhero females

[goatyuzuru]

Hello to my new followers. Let’s start with the basics. I go by the name Anna online since my name is quite long in my native language. I’m 24 and currently a working adult. I am Asian American and I have grown up watching asian entertainment. I enjoyed a little bit of everything, from Chinese dramas to K-pop, to Japanese anime. Most currently, I just enjoy watching figure skating, specifically, Yuzuru Hanyu. As you can tell, this blog is ran to mainly create gifs for Yuzu in my free time. However, because of what happened to Yuzu and his fandom over the past couple of days, I decide to casually write out my thoughts to channel my feeling somewhere. In general, I am not a very confrontational person at this point in life and I dislike conflict. So running a blog is a great way for me to keep things to myself. To anyone who decided to continue reading this, if it could help you in any way, I’d be very happy about it. 

Warning: VERY VERY VERY LONG and VERY VERY PERSONAL stream of consciousness

Years ago, I was a fan of a huge Korean pop group called SNSD. At the time, Yuna Kim was also a sensation in Korea and she performed to one of SNSD’s performances called Run Devil Run. I later found out about figure skating from watching her programs. I was instantly fascinated by the beauty of figure skating and Kim’s skating style and skills. To me, figure skating as a sport embodies everything I love, from classical/instrumental musics to the technical elements being performed competitively and artistically. However, figure skating was only something I knew about and casually liked to watch once in a very while. I was not familiar with what the sport really requires and while Kim’s skating was exquisite, I didn’t have enough motivation to dive deeply about the sport. Perhaps, I was mainly watching ladies figure skating at the time where most of the skaters I watched only executed their jumps and spins well. Then came four years ago, I became fan of another korean pop group called Exo, and I joined a Korean forum called Onehallyu. While running through some posts, I saw a gif under a poster’s banner section of an eye smiled guy. Since I have a preference for the flower boy type, I was instantly attracted. However, I was not ready to add another person to my list of attention at the time. 

Flash forward to mid 2016, I stumbled upon a video of Yuzuru Hanyu skating to Parisienne Walkway at Sochi. The moment I watched him running his hands through his hair, I realized that there’s more to figure skating. I also realized he was that same eye smiled guy I had seen before. As his performance ended, I instantly became a fan. My impression of Yuzu was he is a physically attractive man, gifted with technical excellence and unparalleled artistry. Yuzu is what the sport requires and more. (How could one not, really? I still don’t understand how people can not like him after knowing his existence. In the past, I fan-girled a lot of beautiful kpop stars, but no one came close to Yuzu in terms of the talent department.) I binge watched many of his clean skates and read about his achievements. 

Around the beginning of 2017, I was scraping by life in order to graduate university and in my isolation, I kept rewatching Yuzu’s programs: PW Sochi, Chopin 2.0 at GPF, Worlds, Hope and Legacy Worlds 2017, Seimei GPF. I liked listening to NBC, CBC, and B.ESP commentaries since they all praised Yuzu when he skated to those programs. I couldn’t appreciate most of his other past programs or any non-clean skates, even Romeo and Juliet 1.0, enough since I thought his skating was not as good. Even at this point, I was simply a casual follower and barely watched any other skater. Perhaps, it was because I only wanted to think of Yuzu as an invincible skater. Perhaps, it was because I’ve always the type of person who likes watching the best since it makes me feel like I am part of it. Because in order to escape my personal failures, I depended on Yuzu’s achievement to ‘feel happier’. Because of Yuzu, I was motivated to work out more and achieve a healthier body. I always laugh when telling others that I work out to Yuzu’s program musics. 

By mid-2017, I graduated from university and landed on a job. My life had improved around that time and unsurprisingly, I was occupied with work, social relationships, and other responsibilities as a working adult. Yet, life is always full of challenges, ups and downs, and shortly before the 2018 Winter Olympics Games, I was back to experiencing the downside of life. I experienced great challenge at work and I needed another escape. Therefore, I was back to anticipating Yuzu at the Olympics greatly. Shamefully to share, even as his fan, I did not follow him closely and did not know about his schedule, his injury, or anything until a couple of days leading up to the event when I had the time to follow the news surrounding them. When he finished his free program, I was crying in the middle of the night. I was so happy that he won his 2nd title and inspired by his story. He was also back to being this “invincible person” to me. Following those couple of days were just deep withdrawals. I’d experienced something awful. I didn’t know why but I began to compare myself to him and simply belittled myself. I hated how I was so weak and risk-adversed in comparison to Yuzu, who is a couple of months younger than I am yet achieved so much and seemed mentally strong. I hated how I was so opposite of him. I’d desired so much of him and even thought, in the future, if I ever had a child, I would love for my child to be the same as Yuzuru Hanyu. I would love for my child to achieve all of the things I couldn’t due to my ability in life. 

However, as I followed Yuzu more closely as an athlete and as a person, I realized Yuzu is not invincible. Yuzu is a human and yet, instead of loving him any less, I’ve begun to love him more and more each passing day. And yet, instead of seeing him any less, I’ve begun to see more to him each passing day. And instead of feeling upset that he is not living up to the standard and expectation I thought I’d hope he would, I am somewhat healed of my sadness. It’s as if, he’s meeting me in the middle. Don’t get me wrong, this is not to belittle Yuzu’s achievements or character/skills as an athlete/person. What I’m trying to say is, I was making a Godlike image out of Yuzu that certainly he himself is not, and I myself never will reach, that was causing both of us to suffer. I was suffering because I depended on his achievement, his happiness to be happy only to feel sadder. For whenever the more “invincible” he is with each and every achievement, the farther he appears from being relatable. While for Yuzu, because of this thinking of his fan (me) or fans (many people who have similar thinking), he was pressured to live up to it. Yes, I understand it can go both ways and the positive outlook is to think we have pushed him forward. Yet, to any extreme would be unhealthy. Yuzu as a person himself also has his own goals and motivations where fans’ expectations are outside of the equation. That itself, I believe, is good enough. 

Since he finally achieved his 2nd OG gold medals, I thought he would retire. However, because he is still so young, so talented, so fascinated to watch, and so motivated and passionated, I wanted him to keep competing and he did. He was back and while he said he just wanted to skate for himself and did not think about the scores, it did not last long. Yuzu is someone who wears his heart on his sleeves and that’s what I love about him. He is true to his feeling and whatever he feels at the moment, he would share it with us. Since our feelings change depending on our circumstances/situations, it has always been interesting to see how his competitive direction changes. This is also another way I find him relatable. Yet, there are still many foundational principles he keeps: winning resoundingly, performing with his best ability, always pushing forward no matter what stage he is at. When he came back to skating competitively this season, things had gone really smoothly and it felt like skating for himself and winning weren't necessarily mutually exclusive after all. Because Yuzu has his own idea of a perfect skate and anything less than that is still enough for him to win, it appeared to me once again, he was quite “invincible”. He broke a lot of “curses”. So I was hoping that if this was Yuzu’s last season of skating, the perfect scenario would be for him to win every competition, broke the world records over and over, land the Quad Axel, and be happy. I was already preparing to take off for all of his planned competitions this season. Since my life is now very boring and unsociable, I was looking forward to each competition.

However, what happened to Yuzu yesterday has proven that there are things that are outside of one’s hand. You do not know what will happen tomorrow. It also once again shows me that Yuzu is not “invincible”. Again, don’t get me wrong. This is not to say him not winning or competing in every event would make him any less as a skater. This is to say that everyone will get injured and every skater has their own capacity as a person. Things happen. Yuzu is a human and he would get injured like anyone else. And Yuzu’s words really hit me deeply when he said even the weak Yuzu is he, himself. When he said this, I was touched and I felt like he was very relatable. In all the angst of the event, I was happy to know he is fully aware and in acceptance that he is weak and that his fans would love him even when he is weak. Ironically, his words transmitted strength to me. While both Yuzu and I do not get the perfect scenario, we still get the happy Yuzu. I witnessed his happiness at the medal ceremony. I don’t want to romanticize anything about Yuzu, not his strength, not his weakness, not his injury, nor the story surrounding his achievements. I love the Yuzu who is real and true to himself. 

Because I am able to love Yuzu for who he is, I do not get upset about any decision he is making. Yes, I care about his health and I care about the longevity of his career. It would be great that he can skate as long as he can for ice shows, be a great coach, choreographer, anything that requires his body to be first healthy. But I don’t want to write his story for him (I can’t) or make an image out of him. There were moments prior to this, I still wanted him to win the GPF, Japanese Nationals, and Worlds one more time. But maybe because I wanted more validation? I thought he needed more validation (to an extent) since he loves competing and winning and winning would help? I wanted that perfect scenario and all the things that I think would make him happiest and make me happiest. But I know that Yuzu already has his own goal and motivations where he is running after. To think I can think for him would burden both of us. I can’t control what Yuzu thinks or wants. But I can control what I think or want. I think he is winner, regardless, and I want to respect any competitive decision he makes. (Also, to those who will never appreciate his achievement/talent to begin with, there will be nothing he can do anymore to change their opinion. He does not have to, regardless. )

Life is not perfect. By the way we deal with situations that are out of our hands is what makes us stronger and what wins us in life. Yuzu has won in life by the way he handles it, not simply by winning an event. Whether Yuzu chooses to compete or not, whether he wins or loses, hurts himself more or not, I will respect his decision as that’s probably what he feels is important to him. Since I love both the strong and weak Yuzu, the result of the competition is not as important as how I perceived before. Finally, I am learning to live each day at a time. What I learned from following Yuzu’s life is we do not know what will happen tomorrow. He might stop skating or he might skate even for Beijing 2022. But if I’m sad thinking about all of these scenarios that don’t live up to the scenario I think for him, they actually...don’t go anywhere. As a Christian, I am happy to be able to think this way. I went to church today and the message was on this and I would love to try living a day at a time. Who knows what will happen to me, Yuzu, or anyone else tomorrow. For the situation I’m in right now, I’m thankful. I’m also thankful Yuzu is still healthy. Yes, his ankle is reinjured, but there are still other things to be thankful about his health in general. Of course, praying for me helps too. I’ve been praying for his health and for my feeling to stabilize. I’m not sure to what extent the former has worked, but the latter seems to be working from first hand experience. 

#just alot of writing and i just feel happy to let it out #its okay if it doesnt make any single sense because our mind works that way sometimes #thoughts

[kylydian]

Breath of the Wild: Soundtrack Analysis Day 1

As I was listening to the Breath of the Wild soundtrack again, I started thinking to myself, that I should do an individual analysis of every track, exploring what each piece does to make this soundtrack special. In most tracks, there’s so much that we can learn from conceptually, musically and philosophically.

I said we’d be coming back to BoTW in the future, and I was originally thinking about taking more time before revisiting it. But upon thinking about it more, I think it’s best to strike when the iron is hot. We’ll actually start this examination with track 2, as the first track does some really really really awesome things, but to fully appreciate what the main theme does we need to go through every track in the game first. No joke.  We have to talk about everyyyyyything else first. So, for these posts I’m going to do a brief summary to organize thoughts and prep you to be on the same page as me.

Let’s get wild.

Track 2: Field (Day)

Genre: Impressionism

Featured Instrument: Piano

Compositional Techniques: Pointillism & Silence

Takeaways for Composers: Don’t be afraid of silence. Experiment with tone color.

Takeaways for Developers: Sparse music can be great for open worlds.

Simply titled “Field,” the first track we’re looking at is truly the heart of the Impressionist style that I had talked about before. If you need a refresher, feel free to go back and check that out, as it will set a good base knowledge to expand on this topic.

This track is the epitome of music in BoTW. And it’s simply used for…well, the field during the day.  The music is incredibly sparse, full of little motifs that seem connected, but only by composer intention, and they’re are gone before they can be comprehended. The harmonies are definitely non-traditional, and have a lot of fifths, fourths, and seconds. These harmonies are very definitive of Impressionism, as is the motivic development that seems as if it’s trying to describe feeling rather than doing.

The feeling in this case is exploring a huge, vast world that’s full of life, but at the same time needs to be fully traversed. The world is truly open-ended, and the music reflects this.  You hear a lot of silence between motives, because if music was playing the entire time it simply wouldn’t make sense with the sparse but dense world. There’s a vast feeling to the breathing world, so in turn the music needs to breathe as well for the player. Tension is added through the harmonies, almost based on feeling, but because the harmonies and ideas are so fleeting, they’re never distracting. It’s almost as if music is playing without having it be present. This relates directly to what I talked about with music being written to scenery. “Field” is music that could be naturally occurring in the soundscape of Breath of the Wild, and it accomplishes this through the use of harmony, and silence.

However, there’s more techniques being used here than just harmony and silence. Composition wise, the piece uses a style of composition known as “Pointillism.” Pointillism is a style of writing that was prominent somewhat during the Impressionist era, but often was employed by later composers in it’s truest form during the stages of expressionism and total control.

The idea of musical pointillism is taken from visual art, where paintings are created with individual dots. In a musical fashion, melodies and to a lesser extent harmony, are created with individual notes spread across registers, or instrument tones. This gives a very skittish feeling to the music, as it’s hard to focus your attention in one place. It’s not used enough to say “This was a pointillist composer” much like you could say Debussy was an Impressionist composer, but rather it’s a style of composition that was used to convey feelings and ideas. Much like the art of Impressionism itself.

Pointillism is used here in a couple ways. There’s a few instances of where the melody skips around registers. Piano is one of the most effective instruments to use pointillism, as it’s arguably the instrument that sounds the most one with itself across registers. In this track we only have piano, and occasionally it does seem as if notes are dotting the landscape of not only the music, but the field of gameplay as well. However, traditional pointillism isn’t used too often in this track, and only occasionally for what could be considered very large melodic leaps. Overall the focus of the music is on the contrast between open and tight knit harmonies, as well as the silence.

That’s why I would argue that there’s another type of pointillism used compositionally in this piece, and god it’s going to sound redundant. But it’s actually the use of music.

I swear it doesn’t sound like I know what I’m talking about sometimes.

The melodic fragments of this piece never really sound complete, they’re fragments of ideas that are loosely connected by feel. There’s long periods of silence. It’s not as noticeable during gameplay, but when you just listen to the track away from gameplay, it’s very evident that these instances of silence are long. When the music comes in, it’s a welcomed type of relaxation. This is why I would say that the use of music in this track is pointillistic. It’s pointillism simply by composition. Every time that a new fragment enters, we’re treated to an instance of pointillism simply because each cell exists by itself.

That’s not normal, but it’s really cool.

The different cells often focus on a different type of harmony, quartal/quintal or secundal. Some are more melodic, while others are essentially just chords. This further heightens the idea that each fragment exists on its own, but transitions into the next. Regardless of the type of harmony though, this means that the emphasis of harmony is meant to seek a specific tone color for each phrase. The piano is a very homogenous instrument, and the use of tone color capitalizes on this. We go back and forth compositionally between tension and release of the harmony, and oftentimes the release of the harmony is open fourths or fifths, which is the most ambiguous harmony, since there’s no tension, nor major/minor denomination. This is pretty common Impressionistic writing and serves to provide subconscious musical context to the world already marked by Impressionism.

The music leaves us relaxed and is as sparse as the world we’re exploring. But it’s marked by pointillistic points of interest, much like the world. This is music that’s truly a musical representation of the field during the day. It’s exploration music, and music that fully explores and captures the feeling of the wild.

Revisiting the points of interest at the beginning.

For Composers:

Silence is a powerful motivator in music. When used properly it can push emotions to new heights simply because the player is wanting music. Take the player to the point of where they start to find the silence uncomfortable, then take them just a little further before you bring music back for maximum effect.

In writing Impressionism or any genre of music, experiment with tone color between instruments and intervals. There’s a lot that can be said by the color of harmony. Oftentimes this will stray away from traditional harmony, and that’s okay. Push boundaries, don’t fall into routines.

For Developers:

As said in my earlier post, huge, open, sparse worlds excel with sparse music. The music should accompany the world, and the world should accompany the music. If there’s a vast landscape ahead of the player, take advantage of that in your music. Make your players want music, make them revel in silence. Find ways through the addition and subtraction of music to keep them subconsciously engaged.

Conclusion

As said in the previous post, much about Breath of the Wild as a game as well as musically is Impressionistic. This track is in my mind the basis for creating this sense of Impressionism, as it’s likely one of the first ones we hear. It preps our ears for everything to come, and honestly that might be part of the reason it’s so different as well.

There’s so much great information just to be gained from this one short track. These ideas can be applied across a wide variety of genres, instruments and games. The great thing about this information though?

There’s 23 more tracks to go on the OST.

We’re just getting started.

#The Legend of Zelda #Zelda #Breath of the Wild #The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild #Nintendo #Video Game Music #Music #Impressionism #Pointillism #VGM #Kylydian #Game Development #Game Developer #Composer #indie dev #indie muisc #new music #new ideas

[dramallamadingdang]

And finally...replies. :)

Sorry if this gets incoherent. :) We went on a hiking day-trip with a group of friends today, and I’m pretty wiped out. Just wanted to get Tumblr communication done before I totally crash because otherwise, I get way behind and never get out of the hole. :)

First of all, I’m very happy that people liked the skies I shared! I did work hard on some of them, and I’m so happy to see them in people’s games. Thank you all for all the “thank yous.” ;) And I look forward to making more, too. I think the rotating ones are going to come out well. :)

And now for more specific replies for @nerianasims, @quill-of-thoth, @kyosmash, @strangetomato, @elfpuddle, @eulaliasims, @lilsisterg, @holleyberry, @littleblondesim, and @penig...

nerianasims replied to your post “kyosmash replied to your post : You can always use the fitness4all mod...”

I 100% get what you're saying, but I feel like the game itself is largely at fault in this one case. It's a mess when it comes to weight. To deal, I look at the "lazy/active" node as "slow/fast metabolism." Unfortunately, the way the game is programmed, the only way to have chubby Sims organically is to have them eat "too much" (which ugh, I gain fat when I don't eat enough.) So I have noeatcrap for that. And because seeing Sims eat spoiled food makes me feel sick.

Yes, it’s true that game mechanics are partly to blame. And really, the “eat too much, get fat” thing IS a reflection of real life. That is actually how it is. Generally, if you eat too many calories for your metabolic and activity level -- barring various medical issues, etc. -- you’ll gain weight. Thing is, that’s true for everyone. Not just for lazy people. True, less active people require fewer calories so if they aren’t careful they are more likely to gain weight than more active people, but if a lazy person is careful and doesn’t eat too much for their lower activity level, they are no more likely to get fat than a marathon runner. (Barring, as I said, various medical conditions like thyroid issues and whatnot.) 

The issue, in my mind, with the mod is that it “targets” only one group of Sims for fatness, to the exclusion of everyone else. And it happens to be a group that, in real life, is stereotypically fat. The vanilla game does not do that. Like I said, I’m probably over-sensitive on the issue because of my own struggles (even though my own struggle is to put and keep weight on, not to lose it), but many people are overly sensitive about something in the game. It’s probably inevitable, since it’s meant to reflect real life. True, it’s “supposed” to be a cartoonish kind of life, but a lot of people don’t play it that way, so...Yeah, people will get bugs up their butts about different things. This is my very own pet butt-bug. ;)

quill-of-thoth replied to your post “kyosmash replied to your post : You can always use the fitness4all mod...”

What I always wish with the pescado mods is that he ever took the time to LIST all of the things that he did in them in his initial release, because we need that info to prevent conflicts... even with other MATY mods. I also wish I could mess with BHAVS, I've been meaning to find something to vastly reduce rolling wants to be cured of supernaturalism / unlink it from aspiration forever...

Yes, I have the same wish. :\ But as I said elsewhere, not documenting is part of his shtick. So, that leaves it up to users who care about what they put in their game to do the documenting. That’s wrong, IMO, but what can you do? *shrug*

Anyway, I could very well be wrong but as I understand it, rolled wants aren’t related to BHAVs and are just governed by “want trees” that link certain wants to certain aspirations and things like that. There are mods out there that alter those trees, but they are sort of like default replacements in that you can only have one replacement file at a time. Perhaps it would be instructive to look at one of those? It usually isn’t for me because I often have not a clue as to what I’m looking at, but maybe you’ll have a better understanding than I would. :) Me, I’d just like to nuke curing wants altogether. In my game, the various “supernaturals” are just genetic conditions and can’t be cured except by aliens, who have superior knowledge of genetic engineering. So, those wants are completely worthless to me and are never fulfilled unless the aliens happen to cure someone when they or a relative has a cure want for them.

kyosmash replied to your post “kyosmash replied to your post : You can always use the fitness4all mod...”

Thank you for the info! I've actually been getting into BHAVs myself so if I get a chance I might be able to take a look, maybe there's just one or two things to get pulled out of there. I wasn't aware of this because I've had it in my game for so long I didn't think about it. Have to agree that Pes' descriptions are a little lackluster sometimes.

Hey, if you come up with anything, I’ll be happy to have it! :) And you’re welcome for the info. IMO, when it comes to Pescado’s mods, the more info that’s shared about what they do and don’t do, the better. :)

strangetomato replied to your post “kyosmash replied to your post : You can always use the fitness4all mod...”

Yeah, I understand they were his personal mods, @lilsisterg. I'm just saying that for my game, those features make the mod unusable. And the more disparate features included in a single mod increases the sense of "his way or the highway". And I will gladly take the highway if some of those features put me off.

That stuff I bolded and italicized up there? That. Totally that. With Pes’s mods, I stay very close to the on-ramp to the highway until I’ve thoroughly tested. :)

And on a totally unrelated note: I am so happy to see JRO on my dash lately! I’m not gonna be able to catch up and comment tonight before I crash, but I just wanted to say that I’ve been thrilled to see you posting. :)

elfpuddle replied to your post “You can always use the fitness4all mod from MATY so your already...”

What food mods do you use instead (if any)?

Very few. Off the top of my head, I think the only food-related thing I have is Mog’s “Simply Leftovers,” so that leftovers can be stored as individual plates rather than as group meals that have to be re-served. Oh wait! I also have one that makes the meals have 8 servings rather than 6. I think that’s all I have that’s food-related...

eulaliasims replied to your post “The bad thing about @nyshabrokeit‘s new townie body diversity mod? Is...”

I kind of want to, too, and I *make* all my townies. Such a cool mod!

I will never, ever, have the patience or desire to make all my own townies because Sim-making is definitely not something I enjoy doing. Plus, I kinda like seeing (and sometimes pointing and laughing at) what the game comes up with. It’s why I townify everything. So, the mod is just what I wanted. :)

lilsisterg replied to your post “You can always use the fitness4all mod from MATY so your already...”

I make all of my townies and I have this mod installed ... Some of the townies are fit and some have gotten fat over time. I believe it works according to their lazy/active personalities. I'm not really sure, but I also have a mod that prevents Sims with high active points from over eating which helps keep them fit. This adds balance because I suspect without it all of my townies would be fat by now.

This one, I’m going to try out, see what happens. I suspect that I will end up with too many fat townies because I enjoy sending Sims out to eat and I currently have a couple player-owned restaurants that get run five days a week when I’m playing the owning household. Non-playable Sims at restaurants get a push to eat whether or not they are hungry and regardless of their personality, and that will contribute to them getting fat with such a mod in place. Whereas I believe (although I could be wrong) that at a community-lot gym, the visiting Sims are still governed by the lazy/active aspect of their personalities as to whether or not they’ll work out. 

In any case, I appreciate that Nysha’s new body diversity mod creates “extreme” townies, in that those who are generated as fit or fat are at the extreme point values for those states, so they will not be too easily altered by what they do (or are forced to do) on community lots. 

holleyberry replied to your post “The bad thing about @nyshabrokeit‘s new townie body diversity mod? Is...”

I was thinking the same thing. I have a "Just for Fun" hood I'm thinking of starting over now too.

I actually AM going to restart my religious isolationist ‘hood, now that I’ve ironed the bugs out of its ruleset, and I got kind of excited about being able to use the mod in a non-testing environment...and then I remembered that that neighborhood will have no townies at all. FOILED! :)

littleblondesim replied to your photo “Since Sharon and Nathen want a large family (She wants four kids, he...”

Is their ideal family sized based on that one algorithm you shared that one time? Vague question is vague. :P

Yeah, it is. Basically, I arbitrarily assigned a range of values for each aspiration that I think made a sort of sense. For instance, the max number of kids for Romance is 2, while the minimum number for a Family Sim is 4. When I need to assign an ideal family size -- which is most often when a born-in-game turns teen, but also for married-ins and for CAS Sims -- I do two random number generations, one for each of their aspirations, and then take the average of the two results as their ideal family size. This way, a Family Sim with a Romance secondary (or vice versa) would have the possible extreme results for each of their aspirations mitigated a bit. 

Nathen is actually Knowledge/Pleasure, but he managed to roll the high extreme (which is 8) for both of his aspirations and so ended up with an IFS of 8, which is usually more like a number a Family Sim would have. :) So, that was interesting. :)

penig replied to your post “After all that hard work at Uni and graduating magna cum laude in a...”

It beats Test Subject, and she'll rise like a rocket.

True. But it’s just disappointing that there is very little career reward for all her hard work. :) The limiting factor was one of the necessary skills for the career; the biology major just didn’t require her to get that many points in that category. (I don’t remember which skill it was off the top of my head. Maybe Logic.)

#nerianasims #quill-of-thoth #kyosmash #strangetomato #elfpuddle #eulaliasims #lilsisterg #holleyberry #littleblondesim #penig #replies

[northshorehealthandfitness]

[caption id="attachment_36456" align="alignnone" width="620"]Photo: Pond5[/caption] This guest post comes from Daily Burn 365 trainer, running coach and three-time marathoner Cheri Paige Fogleman, NASM CPT (pre- and post-natal certified). The opinions expressed below are her own, and should not replace medical advice. After giving birth, it’s recommended to get medical clearance before beginning any exercise/training program. In so many ways training for a marathon is like being pregnant. Your sleep suffers, and yet all you want is more time in bed. Your thirst is off the charts, despite drinking water non-stop. You try to eat more (because you need more calories), but your belly just can’t handle it. You’d really like a glass of wine, but you know you shouldn’t. Your every movement is also an attempt to protect your body from injury. You prepare for months for something that scares the crap out of you, and while you just want it to over with already, you are also still so terrified (so really, let’s not rush things). Your body is totally uncomfortable and achy and you hurt in weird places, but you know that it’ll all be worth it, and you’ll be filled with joy once the big day comes. So, why once you’ve had a baby would you want to run a marathon? Well, on Sunday, November 5, there I was — jammed into the corral at the start of the 2017 TCS New York City Marathon. Would my race be perfect? No. Would it hurt like heck at times? Probably. But, like most big and scary life events, I had a sneaking suspicion it would all be worth it in the end. And seeing my little girl at mile 25 reassured me of that. Here are a few things I learned along my post-baby journey to 26.2, which might help other new moms, too. RELATED: 17 Tips from Real Moms on Finding Time for Exercise

9 Things No One Tells You About Running a Marathon Post-Baby

[caption id="attachment_63206" align="alignnone" width="620"] Photo by Catherine Martin[/caption]

1. Take advantage of your superhuman body.

The first thing my OB said to me at my first visit: keep running throughout your pregnancy. Postpartum, you’ll be able to get back to running quicker and you’ll still be able to take advantage of all the cardiovascular changes that happen to a pregnant body. These changes include increased cardiac output (up to 50 percent more than pre-pregnancy), increased blood volume (also as much as 50 percent more than pre-pregnancy), and an expanded ribcage (which offers more volume of air in one breath). Basically, during pregnancy, oxygen circulates through the body more efficiently, and with increased efficiency, the body can perform better — and with greater ease. And, because a woman’s body doesn’t just snap back after delivery, it can take a year for the postpartum body to operate “normally” again (depending on breastfeeding). But that means we can take advantage of that so-called superhuman body for a while. My OB’s advice: Plan to qualify for Boston just shy of a year, postpartum. It’s nice when you can get a running coach and an OB all in one, yes? RELATED: The 30 Best Marathons in the Entire World

2. Anticipate a drop in breast milk production.

Possibly because of dehydration, maybe because of physical stress, I found that my breast milk production tapered dramatically once my training picked up. If you are exclusively breast feeding and are less than six months postpartum, a few things can help. Oatmeal, for instance, is high in iron, which is believed to promote milk production. Some experts also suggest performing a series of power pumping sessions (as in milk pumping, not pumping iron). This method encourages over-production going into your training so you’ll have extra in the freezer in case you’re coming up short and the little one is hungry. For me, consuming more gels and drinking more electrolytes (e.g. Gatorade and coconut water) while training also helped keep my production from dwindling.

3. Give your feet special attention.

Because it can take about a year for hormone levels to return to normal after giving birth, be cautious of over-stretching and putting excess strain on your feet. The hormone relaxin is present in the body during pregnancy to allow tendons and ligaments to loosen and the skeleton to make space for the baby. If your feet grew during pregnancy, that same hormone can now cause your feet to shift even more. Avoid minimal shoes (unless you’ve been wearing them all along). And don’t skimp on calcium, which has been shown to help protect not just the bones in your feet, but your entire skeleton. Plus, it fuels your body’s energy production — so make sure you fill up on sources like milk, yogurt, spinach and kale. A postpartum body (and a breastfeeding body) is often calcium-deficient due to “mining” calcium from the mother’s bones to provide for the growing baby. RELATED: 9 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started Running

4. Heed the advice about changing up how you hold the little one.

I was told to switch up which hip I hold my daughter on by more than one person. And I’m a trainer, so I should know better, right? (I have even given that same advice to clients for years!) And yet, when life happens, I have been 100 percent guilty of slinging her on my left hip while scurrying around the kitchen slinging eggs and coffee and oatmeal. It wasn’t until my 15-mile training run that my back started to feel a little twinge…and then my hip and then my hamstring and then my calf. A few weeks later, after an 18-mile long run, I couldn’t walk. A trip to my PT revealed that (due to holding my daughter only on my left hip) my right lower back and the muscles that run up the right side of my spine had all called it quits. That lead to a chain reaction of pain and suffering down my left hip and leg. Which brings me to…

5. Whatever amount of core training you’d normally do, multiply that by four.

During pregnancy, abs have a tendency to stretch or even separate (aka diastasis recti), and if you had a caesarian, the trauma can be worse. This has an effect on not just your ab strength, but also your back stability and the integrity of your entire kinetic chain. As a pre- and post-natal certified trainer, I recommend planks, side planks, bird-dogs, bridges and supermans. And if you can, make an appointment with an MAT (Muscle Activation Technique) therapist. A MAT therapist can determine where muscle weakness might be causing problems. Next, he or she will work to bring that strength back by palpating muscles, then prescribing specific isometric exercises to continue on your own. It’s been a game-changer for me. RELATED: 6 Core Exercises for New Moms with Diastasis Recti

6. Make it worth it.

In my before-child days, I never realized I was taking for granted the freedom to run at any time and for any distance. But now I know. The acrobatics of juggling childcare for training has meant driving 45 minutes to my brother’s house to drop off my daughter, squeezing my long run into two hours, and then rushing back home for her nap time. It’s meant waking up in the pre-sunrise hours to run and get home before she wakes. I joined a gym specifically because it has childcare. And, I went out and bought a jogging stroller. While there is a certain amount of peace and quiet that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed while running, the extreme inconvenience of every single run is unavoidable. Whereas my biggest decisions were once which leggings to wear, or which route to take, now it’s: where my daughter will be, if she’ll need food or milk, and when she'll take her next nap. Because my better half, my brother and sister-in-law, my friends, my wallet and even my daughter have all made sacrifices for the sake of my training, my performance on November 5 was more important than ever. It took a village to get me to the starting line. For their sake, I could not let the village’s efforts be in vain. RELATED: How to Run (And Watch!) the NYC Marathon Like a Pro [caption id="attachment_63205" align="alignnone" width="620"] Photo by Janice Lancaster[/caption]

7. You're stronger as a mom.

There’s no way around it: Hitting the wall sucks. But the sudden fatigue caused by depletion of glycogen stores is something all endurance athletes have to learn to push through. As a running coach, one of the ways that I familiarize clients with that “wall” feeling is through repeat speedwork. (Think: repeat 400s, 800s and miles.) It’s brutal, and it perfectly recreates that hopelessness and defeat as your legs feel like they are going to fall off or melt and you crumble into a pathetic heap on the ground. The “good” news? I now know that the first three months of my child’s life was just hitting the metaphorical and literal wall over and over and over again. I went weeks on mere hours of sleep and then managed to not wake her as I cradled her, stood up from seated on the floor, tripped over the cat (and a pacifier), and finally lowered her into the bassinet. That is pushing through the wall! I now know that motherhood makes you an expert on perseverance. All of my training on the road and the treadmill prepared me for the marathon, but it was my training as a mom that prepared me to win it.

8. Your little one will help you recover faster.

Don’t worry for a second about how you will run 26.2 miles and then be able to squat down to tie your baby’s shoes. You already do daily functional training in the form of squatting, bending, twisting and lifting with your little one. So, as you add on miles, you will naturally continue your feats of strength and acrobatics. In fact, in my before-child days — when I’d allow myself to lounge around after a long run with my feet up — recovery actually took a bit longer. But, because blood flow (from movement) encourages recovery, and a toddler doesn’t allow days off from chases through the apartment, my muscles were surprisingly chipper the day after long runs. They even felt pretty great the day after the marathon! RELATED: 5 Scientifically Proven Ways to Reduce Muscle Soreness

9. It’s no longer about you.

One of the overwhelming takeaways of running the NYC Marathon is how spectacularly the spectators cheered. Their emotional shouts of encouragement contained something more than inspiration. I felt a very strong sense of appreciation that I was achieving this marathon goal for them — on their behalf. While that’s a humbling duty I’m honored to carry out, I’ve begun to think more about how my every action impacts my child. It’s cliché, but true: Having a daughter has made me want to be a better version of myself. And more than ever, I’m aware of how I can lead by example. I want my little girl to see that setting your sights on a goal and working to achieve it are key to excelling in life. And, for me, running 26.2 miles through the five boroughs of New York City was achieving a goal on my daughter’s behalf. It was my way of showing her that she has the necessary stuff in her genes to power through the seemingly impossible. That she can achieve things beyond her wildest dreams. Read More Why I Started Running — And Never Stopped How 10 Runners Beat Their Marathon Personal Best 5 Yin Yoga Poses Every Runner Should Do

The post 9 Things No One Tells You About Running a Marathon Post-Baby appeared first on Life by Daily Burn.

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[shawnjacksonsbs]

"I can do this all day."     4-28-19

"I shouldn’t be alive, unless it was for a reason, I know what I have to do, and I know it is right.” - Tony Stark a.k.a. Iron Man Same, Tony. I feel the same, exactly the same. I accidentally fell into a "fire" some 5 1/2 years ago. I realized that life was better with the warmth of that proverbial fire in my life and I have been fanning that flame ever since. How you feel love and how you feel gratitude are vitally important to this stage of the game, but not nearly as much as how you express that same love and that same gratitude. They are essential to maintaining the above-mentioned flame that has kept my place in this life and well inside of all its glory and awesomeness, and it has also been one without the dope. Living right, or doing good always, is absolutely key as well, at least it has been for me. It's the difference between just being alive, and actually living. Once you figure out what your recipe is, just keep doing those things to feed it. And I imagine, as it was for me, and many others before me, the recipe will probably change with time, like working the 12 steps in order (which, by the way, isn't a one-n-done, win all, way out of the life, because as I've said before, everyone is different. Steps work for some, not for all). But getting to the end of each step, and/or realizing the principles behind each step as you go, means your "recovery" as it were is different as you go. It's ever-changing, as you learn, you change. Essentially, you are your recovery process, regardless of how you learn, what order you learn, or from where, as long as you continue to grow with each realization of an important principle or life lesson. Acceptance, hope, honesty, courage, and integrity are just a few examples, and these few are completely necessary to learn and take in, and practice from the very beginning. I still don't believe that all people need to live "in recovery" their whole life either though. I believe I am recovered from my drug addiction. Period. If I go back to using ever again, it won't be because of an addiction, or withdrawals or any other relateable "recovery" mumbo jumbo. It will absolutely be because I made a conscious decision to use again. Very much similar to when I first started using way back when. Only this time I know things because I remember how it feels to live in that chaos and nightmare, and how it feels now being out of it so that wouldn't just be because of an unknown moral bankruptcy. It would be a well planned, and plain stupid-ass decision only owned by me, not in part with those outside influences that led me there before. I mean to say that, the responsibility wouldn't be shared, nor will it ever again should I decide to go back out there. That is all irrelevant, as I don't plan on stumbling in that direction again, so . . . Being recovered from drug addiction doesn't mean I am above being taught and growing further, with being of service to others at the peak of that. The push for kindness and the mission to help civilize will forever remain a part of that as well. The journey is more important than the destination anyway, and it would be pretty boring if we couldn't keep learning along the way. Living as best I can morally does play a huge part as well. It helps me to try and help those around me see the benefits of being civil to each other while cultivating that genuine kindness for others right in front of them.   Living my best life is probably the best example I can give someone of the rewards of following that recipe for a better life. You get so much more in your heart than you'll ever know what to do with. It's kind of why I continue to write in here, although I know I have lost several readers over the last several years. What I write is more for quality purposes than for the quantity of readers on the other side of this internet connection. If it is only ever for me, and maybe a handful of people the love should be more subjective that way anyway right? I am not opposed to the quantity mind you, so long as the quality of my message doesn't start to lack the depth I try for now. Back to the point here; there are no guarantees that you'll end up at the perfect job, living in the perfect house or any other number of material things, but you will surely feel like they are once you turn that perspective around in the right direction. I wouldn't change the direction my life is going for anything. I do still live with plenty of regrets though. The top of that list is wishing I had done better by my kids when they were younger. Then maybe a couple of them wouldn't have been, or wouldn't be, so far lost and/or ended up in prison etc. I will live with that for the rest of my life. I suppose it's my penance. I will deal with it, but without it eating my lunch every minute of every day and in such a way that I can't be productive and responsible by, and for my other loved ones, that is to include myself. Happiness can still be found in that madness. I know because I live in it. Well, I'm in the parking lot at work and its about time to punch in. I can't be late today either, because I'm leaving early to go see my oldest granddaughter and my niece, hopefully, win their soccer game. Lol A huge part of why I moved back here, is for these exact reasons. So I'm out for now.~ ~I am back, although it's still not Sunday yet. I imagine I will post this on Sunday,  but I am going to finish writing it today while I have free time. Its Saturday morning by the way. I am still so grateful to be working. I have also done a slight bit better at accepting the chaos that is my new job, as it comes at me. There are some good people there, and they are trying, not all, but some. And, it may not be what my professional opinion thinks it needs to be, but it is what it is. Not right, or my right (lol) vs the wrong ways to do all of it. It is, for the most part, just a different way of doing things that I am just unused to. Some of it I'll argue 'til the cows come home, and some of it is just because of the area. It doesn't much matter for me at this point, because at least I'm fencing. Who knows what the future holds? I will deal with the extremes as they come and take it all with a grain a of salt where I can. Where I can't, I won't. "Compromise where you can. Where you can't, don't. Even if everyone is telling you that something wrong is something right. Even if the whole world is telling you to move, it is your duty to plant yourself like a tree, look them in the eye, and say 'No, you move'." - Sharon Carter from Captain America Civil War I can only do all of these things, because of where I have made it to in my life. I think I wanted to write more on the how's and why's of when I first got my life together and maintaining it until now, but I think this entry turned a corner somewhere. That's ok too though. It's how this whole process works for me. I will add real quick that changing addictions, which maybe you shouldn't do, has helped me a little. The superhero movie genre is an integral part of my whole existence and it's an emotionally codependent connection that may be borderline unhealthy. lol But I definitely changed how and where I spend addiction money. There is a group of us who are going to see The Avengers Endgame movie tonight (Sunday) at 7 pm. It has a run time of 3 hours. It is the last chapter, last installment for this phase, or like the culmination finale that ends over a decade of the 22 Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. To say that I am emotionally invested in the outcome of this movie is an understatement. It is one of the more important non-drug related things in my life nowadays, just under family #1, and career #2, I suppose. The superhero thing is also the one thing that I used to have/or still do have in common with all of my kids. It all holds a very special place in my heart, and for good reason. Look, we can disagree about the kind of person Donald Trump is (he is an assclown by the way), and we can disagree about religion (which is fake and god, as a being, isn't real), and we can still talk, debate, and truly act as adults the whole time, but. . . if you mock these movies, or anything about them, because of their place in my heart and with their connection to my kids, then we can fight. And not just argue. I may literally fight you. One good, wholesome, fat punch right in your mouth should satisfy the feeling for me. lol Now you may be able to whoop me, maybe, but that's a risk I'm willing to take if you talk shit on these movies. And of course, I am only teasing, but these movies are an important part of my life. Some people have hunting, fishing, crafts, cars, or some other hobby, etc. Well, this is mine. I cant hardly contain the feelings, and the anxiety I am having as I await this movie. We are going to see it at the B & B Theater in Liberty, on the GrandScreen X, which is like Imax, but better, and bigger too I think. Its like 3 stories tall, 7 stories wide and the edges fold around the corners of each wall. It's going to be so freaking awesome. I can't hardly stand it. I know that we are supposed to lose some of our heroes in this film, like they are going to die (permanently), and being as emotionally invested as I am in these movies, and their roles are going to be super hard on me. I think co-dependency is probably the best way to describe my relationships with these characters. But hey, at least I'm not on drugs, so there's that! lolol That is all for this week guys. Keep my emotional stability in your positive thoughts as I go see this finale of a movie. Keep sharing the love and the laughter with the world around you, and please, please be kind to one another. It may be the most important thing you ever have to do. Kindness should always prevail, but when in doubt, civility will work. We can learn the very best of life's lessons if we practice what these heroes preach all the time. I believe that with my whole heart. I could quote Steve Rogers right next to Fred Rogers in my entries forever and it would never get old! Reading this final quote always gives me goosebumps. Yes. It's that important. Until next week; "Then finish it, 'cause I'm with you 'till the end of the line " - Steve Rogers a.k.a. Captain America

[flauntpage]

C.J. Sapong Thanklessly Worked His Butt Off for the Philadelphia Union

Trading C.J. Sapong was the right move for the Philadelphia Union.

In the simplest terms, sporting Director Ernst Tanner took a $500k player on an expiring contract and turned him into at least $400,000 of allocation money while tacking on a performance bonus that could push the number up to $450k. Sapong is 30 years old heading into his 9th MLS season, so he’s obviously hitting the back end of his career in 2019.

The other thing to consider is this:

C.J. would have been a bench player this year. He lost his starting gig to Cory Burke last season, the Union signed Sergio Santos in December, and now they’re switching to a two-striker formation that plays without wingers. Therefore, with hybrids David Accam and Fafa Picault tossed into the forward mix, you were looking at a depth chart of something like this:

Sergio Santos

Fafa Picault

Cory Burke

David Accam/C.J. Sapong

Kacper Przybylko

Something like that, depending on how you value each player. There was just no way the Union could keep six strikers for two starting spots, which would have left at least one of Santos, Picault, Burke, Accam, or Sapong out of the gameday 18 entirely.

Throw in the fact that Marco Fabian and Ilsinho can also play as second strikers or withdrawn forwards in this formation if the Union want to add a wrinkle, and it looks even more clustered up top.

So kudos to Tanner for getting value out of C.J. and moving the roster forward.

Now –

If you followed my Union stuff or read anything I wrote from 2015-2018, you know I was not C.J. Sapong’s biggest fan. This crested in an argument with head coach Jim Curtin that spilled out into the hallway after a press conference back in 2017.

My thing with C.J. is that I always felt like he underperformed relative to his talent level, a guy who I personally felt should have broken the 10-goal barrier long before his wonderful 2017 campaign. And when he did, he regressed the next season, following his 16 goals and 5 assists with just 4 and 3, respectively.

This was incredibly disappointing to see:

As a starting forward in a one-striker system, the Union just needed more than that. You needed more than one goal per 337 minutes in 2018, 2016, and 2015. You needed the one goal per 174 minutes he played in 2017. You needed double-digit tallies from C.J. and you needed to get him service from the wings on a consistent basis.

The latter topic is debatable. C.J. played in front of some good wingers and some not-so-good wingers. Sometimes he got the ball on a platter, two-yards from the goal, and sometimes he didn’t, but one of his issues was that he was unable to create his own shot. He could not turn, dribble, take on a defender, and slide one past the goalkeeper. He was a prototypical target forward, hold-up player, and poacher.

To that point, no matter how Union fans feel about Sapong’s four years in Chester, his spirit and work rate are undeniable. Here’s a guy who literally broke his face on his Union debut, playing just 45 minutes before suffering a concussion and Zygomatic fracture. He missed three games before returning to action, then received a suspension from the MLS league office for a DUI charge of which he was ultimately found not guilty. He returned from a mandated rehab stint in Malibu to score five goals in six games, finishing with a respectable 9 goals and 4 assists during his first Union year.

There were a bunch of ups and downs beyond that. Sapong was not the starter when the 2017 season began, but after Jay Simpson suffered a bruised lung during matchday two, Sapong took back his starting role and never gave it up, scoring 6 goals in 7 games, including a hat trick in a 3-0 rout of Red Bull at Talen Energy Stadium. He went on to score just once in his next seven games, which is consistent with the mid-season famine that had popped up in previous MLS seasons.

Either way, he did a lot of thankless work here. He frequently found himself on an island, battling with two center backs at the same time, taking a beating from knees and elbows and shoulders over the course of 70-90 minutes per game. And because he wasn’t a high-priced Designated Player or European veteran, he never got the respect of MLS referees, constantly taking a battering through whistles that did not blow at half the rate of contact involving David Villa, Sebastian Giovinco, or Bradley Wright-Phillips.

That was undeniable. You watched the same games I did, the same sequences where Sapong would get absolutely clobbered by defenders in 2v1 situations. No whistle. There was a game a few years back where Sapong was fouled a franchise-record seven times, which I argued was actually eight. I cut clips and still frames of the ridiculous infractions, like this:

And while the way he was officiated could be infuriating, I always wondered if it was a result of his personality, because C.J. was a really nice guy, a respectful and spiritual type of dude who was non-confrontational and played a clean game. The only time I remember him doing anything remotely argumentative on the field is when Roland Alberg took a penalty kick that Sapong wanted to take back in 2017. Ironically, that game against Columbus highlighted some of the things C.J. failed to get consistent credit for, which were winning fouls, earning penalty kicks, drawing cards, and making other smaller contributions that don’t show up on stat sheets.

C.J. would often talk about life from an otherworldly or maybe recondite perspective, one that I don’t think a “blue collar” Philly fan base could totally relate to. That’s certainly fine, and there’s nothing wrong with karma and kismet and the divines and the roots of the Earth, and all of that stuff, but there were a lot of times where I just wanted him to be an outright asshole. I wanted him to grab a shirt or take a dive or argue his position with the center ref. I wanted to see some Carlos Ruiz type of stuff, the shrewd and savvy veteran striker tactics and techniques that ultimately help you win fouls and put the ball in the back of the net. C.J. too often found himself as a back-to-goal guy putting in tireless physical work in a team-first manner, probably to his own detriment.

That’s Sapong’s Union legacy. He scored some goals here, provided some assists, and took promotions and demotions in stride. There were certainly frustrations with a guy who I felt was lacking a true killer instinct, but if we’re talking about “Philly” type of athletes who work their ass off and put their body on the line for the badge, then C.J. fit that label as well as anybody.

The post C.J. Sapong Thanklessly Worked His Butt Off for the Philadelphia Union appeared first on Crossing Broad.

C.J. Sapong Thanklessly Worked His Butt Off for the Philadelphia Union published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

[teiraymondmccoy78]

In Bed With Brenna Sparks: Porn’s Rising Star Might Be Crypto’s Best Advocate

In Bed With Brenna Sparks: Porn’s Rising Star Might Be Crypto’s Best Advocate

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Brenna Sparks wills herself to try new things.

Equal parts adult star and crypto evangelist, she’s not the kind of Las Vegas denizen who never hits the strip. But when asked if she wants to take the High Roller, the city’s 550-foot tall Ferris wheel with a serious view, the thought clearly petrifies her.

Still, she insists we go.

It’s fitting, as Sparks embraces the highs and lows – both in life and in crypto. In an email following our meeting, she writes about how she believes crypto is getting stronger and stronger.

She writes:

“Traveling upwards doesn’t require the path to be linear. The path can be paved on hills, too.”

That said, Sparks is admittedly a bit of a newcomer to crypto, best known as an advisor for SpankChain, one of a handful of projects that have raised funding via an initial coin offering and released tokens designed to power a protocol in a bid to disrupt the adult industry.

But her work has since taken her to unexpected places.

Take the promotional stunt she took part in this year that involved the bitcoin price and a body part that’s not known for its role in crypto conversations. Let’s just say that she encourages others to try new things.

That applies broadly, too. Sparks boosts what’s known as the decentralized internet, a term that’s come to refer to a time when the intermediaries we know today – think Google, Amazon, Facebook – have been replaced by code owned by no one and operated by users.

“I don’t believe in the current ideas people are pushing for adoption. I’m hoping to go and do my own thing and focus on mass adoption,” she tells us.

But we’re going to have to wait to see what she wants to do.

In Brenna Sparks’ apartment. (Photo by Brenna Sparks)

If there’s a plan, Sparks is shy about saying it. “Right now, it’s all about keeping crypto people in crypto. Many just want to leave,” she says.

For example, she’s shot one sexy-but-educational video aimed at helping viewers buy their first cryptocurrencies, but she still hasn’t published it. She’s convinced her work can do more good when the market gets out of this funk.

She adds: “It’s only when things have calmed down that you focus on bringing new people in.”

The downside of the down

Still, when she does, it’s safe to say Sparks just might bring the very thing that’s made her such a compelling figure in crypto in 2018: a message about what it means to be a real user.

Sparks will be the first to tell you she’s not a trader, but she’s acutely aware of aspects of blockchain that go beyond the technical. When the price goes up or down, that impacts Sparks, who holds roughly 75 percent of her wealth in crypto.

“I do earn a good living outside of crypto. … I think this enables me to really be aggressive with investing and not get shortsighted by Lambos and tickets to the moon,” she wrote CoinDesk. “I don’t drive and rockets scare me.”

But it’s not just skin in the game (and in the crypto videos she plans to make) that yields Sparks’ crypto fandom, it’s the way that she uses both experiences to truly connect with followers.

Just before meeting me, she posts a video of herself in a black, ethereum-emblazoned onesie on Twitter with the message: “Probably the cutest thing that’s happening in ETH right now.”

Half-playful boast, half-trolling, it’s an example of how Sparks is able to connect with the sentiments of a community and channel that into her work. At the time, the price of ether was hanging perilously above $100, the threshold seen by many as what opened the floodgates to its meteoric rise – from just a few dollars to over $1,000 – over the course of 2017.

In that sense, she’s showing solidarity.

But if fans are feeling down, Sparks has had a year that resembles our Ferris wheel ride, one that began on the up and ended on the down: SpankChain is closing the year amidst layoffs. It’s sad, but unavoidable in her mind.

Yes, you can actually buy this crypto card and own it forever.

Still, Sparks doesn’t seem rattled by that, at least compared to her reaction to the Ferris wheel.

As we got ready to board she looks up; she’s very clearly scared. (The High Roller is basically a bunch of small orbs attached to a giant machine. The orbs rotate on the wheel as it turns, but so slowly that, from the inside, you can’t tell.)

Like the blockchain, thinking about how this cleverly engineered ride works can be painful. Also, like the blockchain, the High Roller doesn’t stop for you to figure it out. You get on board while it’s still moving, as we do, with maybe a dozen tourists, as the prior group exits out the other side.

At first, Sparks was the only one to avail herself of the small bench in our compartment. We sit there talking about crypto and, unlike everyone else, she is studiously not looking out the window.

But by the time we got about a quarter of the way up, she starts to peak. We reach the top just as night has fully fallen and Vegas looks like the Milky Way pressed into the earth, and soon Sparks is tweeting out a video about the view.

That’s how she said she always is, though. When something scares her she’s terrified before she does it. Then, it’s as if she’s been doing it her whole life.

Origin story

But what about Sparks’ life? Certainly, we don’t get much of a glimpse of it in her videos, though we see everything else, or in her tweets, most of which are a mix of travel, life and crypto, though never in a way that’s (and this is a little ironic) revealing.

It turns out, we have her ex-boyfriends to thank for bringing Sparks into its ranks.

“The type of guys I typically go for,” she tells us, “are typically nerdy.”

Self-portrait by Brenna Sparks.

This is early in our conversation, at a shop for toast and coffee that Sparks picks because of its pink interior. We started our day together there. When she showed up, she had no idea we’d go over 50 stories up riding a glass-enclosed bubble on a wheel.

She shows up exactly on time for our 1:30 p.m. meeting, arriving in a red baseball cap and a t-shirt under a light space-themed jacket, solo, in an Uber. Her eye makeup is 100 percent on brand but otherwise… Sparks does porn, but she doesn’t front like a star.

That’s no doubt because she wasn’t always one, at least back when the first crypto boyfriend showed her bitcoin in 2009. Another one showed her ethereum, in 2017.

For more about those guys, just hunt the internet. She talks about them in several interviews. Just be sure to add “crypto” or “ethereum” to your search terms.

In past conversations, though, she says that she’s never had the problem with banks that other adult stars have had, but that changed this spring.

“I believe we shouldn’t have banks,” she told us.

It’s not hard to understand why. One day, her bank accounts were shut down because bankers found out she was doing porn.

“I was up front that I was a stripper,” she says, when setting up the account. Then later she got into doing adult video and that’s what they didn’t like, she said.

She tried to withdraw her money as soon as they shut it down, but they wouldn’t give it to her immediately. Not until she took it to Twitter and her fans brigaded the bank on her behalf.

“I posted on Twitter and they gave me money back in 48 hours,” she said.

But she connects her experience with the bank to other roadblocks she’s hit.

For example, she’s currently on her third Instagram account, because she keeps getting kicked off for posting stuff that’s too sexy. She knows other stars who have been kicked off of Twitter, too, because they failed to understand the nuances of its rules around adult content.

So, Sparks has become one of those rare non-technical people who really dig decentralization.

She wrote:

“It is a lot like an animal spreading itself across the Earth. Decentralizing gives it the ability to survive as a species and evolve into something that wasn’t possible before.”

Woman of the people

But if that’s why she believes in crypto, Sparks has her own theories on why she’s made such a connection to the industry, too.

“Crypto needs a face. They need someone who can be general,” she said.

She says this several times as we speak and in a follow-up email. Satoshi’s facelessness turns her off. She likes Vitalik, but she only sees him reaching techies.

Brenna Sparks in Las Vegas. (Photo by Brady Dale for CoinDesk)

She wants someone who can speak to the masses and for the technology. As she put it, she wants kids to be accidentally buying crypto when they are playing with mom’s cell phone – because it’s that easy.

She also wants the technology to fix some of its weird gaps. “One of my biggest fears in using crypto (especially in the earlier days) was sending transactions. There were times when something happened and the money just never went through and got lost,” she writes.

Neat new applications that give people better ways to make money are great, but Sparks’ insight about normal people is that they want to know they aren’t going to stupidly lose money before they try a new way to use it.

And in the developed world, the current system works fine for most.

“A lot of normal people don’t know what it feels like to have your bank close on you,” she told us. Sex workers do, but they’re still reluctant to try crypto’s solutions. She feels consciousness needs to be raised before minds can really change.

“Before a sex worker can even begin to look into cryptocurrencies, they first need to see what’s wrong with the current setup and need to grow to hate it before they can be passionate about the solution,” she says.

So, could Sparks parlay her people-first insights into a bid to be that relatable face for crypto?

She’s cagey on that point. Instead, she gives a nod to Andreas Antonopoulos, who she believes starts in the right place with his critiques of the present system. But could she be a leader later on, when the market’s ready for her to make her move?

“Maybe,” she tells us as we ride into downtown Vegas in a Lyft, but she looks away, reluctantly.

It’s tough to tell again if she’s distracted by the impending Ferris wheel ride still ahead.

Crossover star

Whether or not it’s something she’ll harness, it’s clear there’s an opportunity.

Her pro-crypto message has distinguished her from the ocean of adult performers out there, no doubt helping her earn her a nomination for “Crossover Star of the Year” in the XBiz Awards (up against Stormy Daniels, who has also had quite a year, to say the least about the most).

Her ventures into new experiences were not limited to the blockchain: She did a bunch of new varieties of porn this year. She did porn in VR (she got an award nomination there, too). She did her first ASMR video (talking softly for people turned on by girls talking softly).

Looking ahead, she wants to satisfy her fans desire for Web3 inspired content. For example, crypto cosplay, but she just has to figure out what that means first. She might start simple and troll some crypto Illuminati with racy tape, she told us. All that remains to be seen.

But her big crossover moment culminated this summer, with the stunt we mentioned above: Sparks invited an engineer for Via, a micropayments cryptocurrency, to visit her in Vegas from the Netherlands and – there’s not really a euphemism for this – eat her ass.

The engineer, who just goes by Romano, had never done it before, and the internet had decided that crypto markets would pump if he did. It quickly became referred to as a “prophecy.”

The so-called prophecy of Romano doing this thing he did not find appealing managed to become part of the Smimem vs. Bogdanoff YouTube meme – which, for anyone who doesn’t know about this, is pretty fun. Wade in.

Romano told CoinDesk the whole thing started with a conversation on Twitter where other guys dared him to go there with someone – anyone. He told CoinDesk via Twitter direct message:

“At some point I said I would maybe try it if people stop talking about it. Bitcoin suddenly rallied up. Later on I said ‘Uh not going to do it,’ and bitcoin went down again. That’s when everyone in their hearts knew I had to do it.”

Unrelated to the dare, Romano became Twitter friends with Sparks because he and others had convinced her to buy some via. “She checked the viacoin block explorer to see if it arrived, which impressed me,” he told us.

The High Roller in Las Vegas. (Photo by Brady Dale for CoinDesk)

So as she got pulled into the dare, he asked her if she knew a Vegas denizen he could engage in the act in question with. She told him he might as well do it with her, because they were friends and, to paraphrase her telling, having some guy eat her ass a bit was basically just another day in the life of Brenna Sparks.

She doesn’t just will herself to do new things. She gets others there, too.

When it went down, the act lasted a few seconds. He did it, fellow porn star Bobbi Dylan witnessed it and it was done. Then they all hung out in Vegas.

Brock Pierce’s San Juan clan may have a monastery, but Sparks has fulfilled a prophecy.

Just Be Real

In other words, Sparks will go where few might venture to sell the world on this new technology.

She’s long crypto, but refuses to shill for any particular coin – not in this market. She really seems to buy this vision; crypto isn’t just her porn niche. It’s her niche. She told us about coins she’s promoted, but she asked us not to repeat them – Sparks wants people to make their own picks now.

We spent about seven hours with Sparks, talking about porn, crypto and life. As far as we can tell, the Sparks in her videos is the genuine Sparks. She’s really that bubbly. She laughs all the time. And she really wants crypto to disrupt everything.

She likes her fans. She’s bummed out by haters, but she’s quick to point out that no one ever talks smack to her face.

“It turns out that there are a ton of misogynists in the crypto space, which I found to be very disappointing. Aside from that, the overall popularity has benefited me far more than it hasn’t,” she told us.

Despite the negatives,..

http://bit.ly/2Uo0ror

[adrianjenkins952wblr]

In Bed With Brenna Sparks: Porn’s Rising Star Might Be Crypto’s Best Advocate

In Bed With Brenna Sparks: Porn’s Rising Star Might Be Crypto’s Best Advocate

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Brenna Sparks wills herself to try new things.

Equal parts adult star and crypto evangelist, she’s not the kind of Las Vegas denizen who never hits the strip. But when asked if she wants to take the High Roller, the city’s 550-foot tall Ferris wheel with a serious view, the thought clearly petrifies her.

Still, she insists we go.

It’s fitting, as Sparks embraces the highs and lows – both in life and in crypto. In an email following our meeting, she writes about how she believes crypto is getting stronger and stronger.

She writes:

“Traveling upwards doesn’t require the path to be linear. The path can be paved on hills, too.”

That said, Sparks is admittedly a bit of a newcomer to crypto, best known as an advisor for SpankChain, one of a handful of projects that have raised funding via an initial coin offering and released tokens designed to power a protocol in a bid to disrupt the adult industry.

But her work has since taken her to unexpected places.

Take the promotional stunt she took part in this year that involved the bitcoin price and a body part that’s not known for its role in crypto conversations. Let’s just say that she encourages others to try new things.

That applies broadly, too. Sparks boosts what’s known as the decentralized internet, a term that’s come to refer to a time when the intermediaries we know today – think Google, Amazon, Facebook – have been replaced by code owned by no one and operated by users.

“I don’t believe in the current ideas people are pushing for adoption. I’m hoping to go and do my own thing and focus on mass adoption,” she tells us.

But we’re going to have to wait to see what she wants to do.

In Brenna Sparks’ apartment. (Photo by Brenna Sparks)

If there’s a plan, Sparks is shy about saying it. “Right now, it’s all about keeping crypto people in crypto. Many just want to leave,” she says.

For example, she’s shot one sexy-but-educational video aimed at helping viewers buy their first cryptocurrencies, but she still hasn’t published it. She’s convinced her work can do more good when the market gets out of this funk.

She adds: “It’s only when things have calmed down that you focus on bringing new people in.”

The downside of the down

Still, when she does, it’s safe to say Sparks just might bring the very thing that’s made her such a compelling figure in crypto in 2018: a message about what it means to be a real user.

Sparks will be the first to tell you she’s not a trader, but she’s acutely aware of aspects of blockchain that go beyond the technical. When the price goes up or down, that impacts Sparks, who holds roughly 75 percent of her wealth in crypto.

“I do earn a good living outside of crypto. … I think this enables me to really be aggressive with investing and not get shortsighted by Lambos and tickets to the moon,” she wrote CoinDesk. “I don’t drive and rockets scare me.”

But it’s not just skin in the game (and in the crypto videos she plans to make) that yields Sparks’ crypto fandom, it’s the way that she uses both experiences to truly connect with followers.

Just before meeting me, she posts a video of herself in a black, ethereum-emblazoned onesie on Twitter with the message: “Probably the cutest thing that’s happening in ETH right now.”

Half-playful boast, half-trolling, it’s an example of how Sparks is able to connect with the sentiments of a community and channel that into her work. At the time, the price of ether was hanging perilously above $100, the threshold seen by many as what opened the floodgates to its meteoric rise – from just a few dollars to over $1,000 – over the course of 2017.

In that sense, she’s showing solidarity.

But if fans are feeling down, Sparks has had a year that resembles our Ferris wheel ride, one that began on the up and ended on the down: SpankChain is closing the year amidst layoffs. It’s sad, but unavoidable in her mind.

Yes, you can actually buy this crypto card and own it forever.

Still, Sparks doesn’t seem rattled by that, at least compared to her reaction to the Ferris wheel.

As we got ready to board she looks up; she’s very clearly scared. (The High Roller is basically a bunch of small orbs attached to a giant machine. The orbs rotate on the wheel as it turns, but so slowly that, from the inside, you can’t tell.)

Like the blockchain, thinking about how this cleverly engineered ride works can be painful. Also, like the blockchain, the High Roller doesn’t stop for you to figure it out. You get on board while it’s still moving, as we do, with maybe a dozen tourists, as the prior group exits out the other side.

At first, Sparks was the only one to avail herself of the small bench in our compartment. We sit there talking about crypto and, unlike everyone else, she is studiously not looking out the window.

But by the time we got about a quarter of the way up, she starts to peak. We reach the top just as night has fully fallen and Vegas looks like the Milky Way pressed into the earth, and soon Sparks is tweeting out a video about the view.

That’s how she said she always is, though. When something scares her she’s terrified before she does it. Then, it’s as if she’s been doing it her whole life.

Origin story

But what about Sparks’ life? Certainly, we don’t get much of a glimpse of it in her videos, though we see everything else, or in her tweets, most of which are a mix of travel, life and crypto, though never in a way that’s (and this is a little ironic) revealing.

It turns out, we have her ex-boyfriends to thank for bringing Sparks into its ranks.

“The type of guys I typically go for,” she tells us, “are typically nerdy.”

Self-portrait by Brenna Sparks.

This is early in our conversation, at a shop for toast and coffee that Sparks picks because of its pink interior. We started our day together there. When she showed up, she had no idea we’d go over 50 stories up riding a glass-enclosed bubble on a wheel.

She shows up exactly on time for our 1:30 p.m. meeting, arriving in a red baseball cap and a t-shirt under a light space-themed jacket, solo, in an Uber. Her eye makeup is 100 percent on brand but otherwise… Sparks does porn, but she doesn’t front like a star.

That’s no doubt because she wasn’t always one, at least back when the first crypto boyfriend showed her bitcoin in 2009. Another one showed her ethereum, in 2017.

For more about those guys, just hunt the internet. She talks about them in several interviews. Just be sure to add “crypto” or “ethereum” to your search terms.

In past conversations, though, she says that she’s never had the problem with banks that other adult stars have had, but that changed this spring.

“I believe we shouldn’t have banks,” she told us.

It’s not hard to understand why. One day, her bank accounts were shut down because bankers found out she was doing porn.

“I was up front that I was a stripper,” she says, when setting up the account. Then later she got into doing adult video and that’s what they didn’t like, she said.

She tried to withdraw her money as soon as they shut it down, but they wouldn’t give it to her immediately. Not until she took it to Twitter and her fans brigaded the bank on her behalf.

“I posted on Twitter and they gave me money back in 48 hours,” she said.

But she connects her experience with the bank to other roadblocks she’s hit.

For example, she’s currently on her third Instagram account, because she keeps getting kicked off for posting stuff that’s too sexy. She knows other stars who have been kicked off of Twitter, too, because they failed to understand the nuances of its rules around adult content.

So, Sparks has become one of those rare non-technical people who really dig decentralization.

She wrote:

“It is a lot like an animal spreading itself across the Earth. Decentralizing gives it the ability to survive as a species and evolve into something that wasn’t possible before.”

Woman of the people

But if that’s why she believes in crypto, Sparks has her own theories on why she’s made such a connection to the industry, too.

“Crypto needs a face. They need someone who can be general,” she said.

She says this several times as we speak and in a follow-up email. Satoshi’s facelessness turns her off. She likes Vitalik, but she only sees him reaching techies.

Brenna Sparks in Las Vegas. (Photo by Brady Dale for CoinDesk)

She wants someone who can speak to the masses and for the technology. As she put it, she wants kids to be accidentally buying crypto when they are playing with mom’s cell phone – because it’s that easy.

She also wants the technology to fix some of its weird gaps. “One of my biggest fears in using crypto (especially in the earlier days) was sending transactions. There were times when something happened and the money just never went through and got lost,” she writes.

Neat new applications that give people better ways to make money are great, but Sparks’ insight about normal people is that they want to know they aren’t going to stupidly lose money before they try a new way to use it.

And in the developed world, the current system works fine for most.

“A lot of normal people don’t know what it feels like to have your bank close on you,” she told us. Sex workers do, but they’re still reluctant to try crypto’s solutions. She feels consciousness needs to be raised before minds can really change.

“Before a sex worker can even begin to look into cryptocurrencies, they first need to see what’s wrong with the current setup and need to grow to hate it before they can be passionate about the solution,” she says.

So, could Sparks parlay her people-first insights into a bid to be that relatable face for crypto?

She’s cagey on that point. Instead, she gives a nod to Andreas Antonopoulos, who she believes starts in the right place with his critiques of the present system. But could she be a leader later on, when the market’s ready for her to make her move?

“Maybe,” she tells us as we ride into downtown Vegas in a Lyft, but she looks away, reluctantly.

It’s tough to tell again if she’s distracted by the impending Ferris wheel ride still ahead.

Crossover star

Whether or not it’s something she’ll harness, it’s clear there’s an opportunity.

Her pro-crypto message has distinguished her from the ocean of adult performers out there, no doubt helping her earn her a nomination for “Crossover Star of the Year” in the XBiz Awards (up against Stormy Daniels, who has also had quite a year, to say the least about the most).

Her ventures into new experiences were not limited to the blockchain: She did a bunch of new varieties of porn this year. She did porn in VR (she got an award nomination there, too). She did her first ASMR video (talking softly for people turned on by girls talking softly).

Looking ahead, she wants to satisfy her fans desire for Web3 inspired content. For example, crypto cosplay, but she just has to figure out what that means first. She might start simple and troll some crypto Illuminati with racy tape, she told us. All that remains to be seen.

But her big crossover moment culminated this summer, with the stunt we mentioned above: Sparks invited an engineer for Via, a micropayments cryptocurrency, to visit her in Vegas from the Netherlands and – there’s not really a euphemism for this – eat her ass.

The engineer, who just goes by Romano, had never done it before, and the internet had decided that crypto markets would pump if he did. It quickly became referred to as a “prophecy.”

The so-called prophecy of Romano doing this thing he did not find appealing managed to become part of the Smimem vs. Bogdanoff YouTube meme – which, for anyone who doesn’t know about this, is pretty fun. Wade in.

Romano told CoinDesk the whole thing started with a conversation on Twitter where other guys dared him to go there with someone – anyone. He told CoinDesk via Twitter direct message:

“At some point I said I would maybe try it if people stop talking about it. Bitcoin suddenly rallied up. Later on I said ‘Uh not going to do it,’ and bitcoin went down again. That’s when everyone in their hearts knew I had to do it.”

Unrelated to the dare, Romano became Twitter friends with Sparks because he and others had convinced her to buy some via. “She checked the viacoin block explorer to see if it arrived, which impressed me,” he told us.

The High Roller in Las Vegas. (Photo by Brady Dale for CoinDesk)

So as she got pulled into the dare, he asked her if she knew a Vegas denizen he could engage in the act in question with. She told him he might as well do it with her, because they were friends and, to paraphrase her telling, having some guy eat her ass a bit was basically just another day in the life of Brenna Sparks.

She doesn’t just will herself to do new things. She gets others there, too.

When it went down, the act lasted a few seconds. He did it, fellow porn star Bobbi Dylan witnessed it and it was done. Then they all hung out in Vegas.

Brock Pierce’s San Juan clan may have a monastery, but Sparks has fulfilled a prophecy.

Just Be Real

In other words, Sparks will go where few might venture to sell the world on this new technology.

She’s long crypto, but refuses to shill for any particular coin – not in this market. She really seems to buy this vision; crypto isn’t just her porn niche. It’s her niche. She told us about coins she’s promoted, but she asked us not to repeat them – Sparks wants people to make their own picks now.

We spent about seven hours with Sparks, talking about porn, crypto and life. As far as we can tell, the Sparks in her videos is the genuine Sparks. She’s really that bubbly. She laughs all the time. And she really wants crypto to disrupt everything.

She likes her fans. She’s bummed out by haters, but she’s quick to point out that no one ever talks smack to her face.

“It turns out that there are a ton of misogynists in the crypto space, which I found to be very disappointing. Aside from that, the overall popularity has benefited me far more than it hasn’t,” she told us.

Despite the negatives,..

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