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liesoverthec · 3 years

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OG 911 Character Details from Canon Pt 2

Hi y’all I’m back! I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who reblogged the last details post - I sort of just thought people would like it and it would die, so to see it travel and hopefully reach more writers was so great so thank you again!

Details under the cut since I went a little crazy 😅 and if this is your first time seeing this, the first part, and any future parts, can be found under this tag here!

Quick note before I get to the details - always, ALWAYS take details from dialogue or plot over details from the set or props if they contradict each other. The writers have the ultimate say over what happens on the show/for the characters, so whatever they say goes, even if it goes against something props has already laid down (eg, Chim’s birthday, sorry Libra crew. He’s an Aries or a Pisces). So keep that in mind for the future in case some of these details I have which are from props/set are changed in the future, or if you’ve noticed something yourself!

Also if you have questions, I am MORE than happy to answer them, although if you leave them in the tags on this post I’m probably gonna lose them, so if it’s something you’d genuinely like an answer to, drop it in my inbox! Besides my standard “ask” tags, I’m also tagging asks about canon details with this tag here. Every time I make a big post like this, I’m going to link all the asks I’ve gotten since the last post, but if you’re looking for more info in the mean time, that’s the other spot to look!

Buck has a grill on his patio.

Eddie doesn’t hang Christopher’s art on the fridge - instead it is either hung on the corkboard in Chris’ room to the left of the door, or Eddie puts it in an actual frame and hangs it using a hammer/nails in Christopher’s room. All the Diaz family has on their fridge is a bunch of bendy people magnets. (I absolutely ADORE him putting all this effort into treating Christopher’s art like it’s something you’d buy from a professional artist).

Info on everyone’s ages can be found here. (Little more discussion of Chim’s situation here).

Albert has a bachelor’s degree! I don’t know in what though, except that it’s some field for which is a Master’s is useful.

Athena was in a sorority in college, Delta Sigma Theta. Their website describes them as “ ...a sisterhood comprised primarily of Black, college-educated women ... [that] considers the issues impacting the Black community and boldly confronts the challenges of African Americans and, hence, all Americans ”, which I love for Athena, and feel is very in-character for her at that time in her life!

Chim is an aviators dude. When he wears sunglasses, they’re always aviators.

Athena also wears nothing but aviators.

Bobby wears square aviators.

Eddie, on the other hand, always wears Wayfarers.

Buck either doesn’t really like sunglasses or he constantly forgets he owns them, since we’ve only seen him wear them once in 60 eps, in a move I’m pretty sure was ONLY for dramatic effect.

Hen’s sunglasses change style over the seasons like her regular glasses do, but she tends to like browline sunglasses.

Info on Christopher’s school can be found here!

There are two colors of dispatch polo, and there doesn’t seem to be any rhythm or reason for who wears what. Maroon - Maddie and Linda. Blue - Josh and May. Jamal has actually worn both maroon and blue, so it doesn’t seem to be TOTALLY set in stone although I’ve never seen anyone else switch. Sue is too badass to wear a dispatch shirt.

Both Bobby and Eddie drive 4 door pickups. Bobby’s is navy. Eddie specifically has a black, 2020 GMC Denali 1500 pickup truck (in case you want to specifically look up what the inside of it looks like or what features it has 😂)

Info on the 118’s medical certifications can be found here.

Correction to Eddie’s living situation from last post: no next door neighbors, but instead UPSTAIRS neighbors. (Pointed out by Abigail in this ask). Also since someone else was wondering the notes of the last post - no, there is absolutely no discussion on the show of whether or not Eddie rents the apartment or owns it. But based on the fact that it’s 1) LA and 2) an apartment, my guess would be he rents it.

When Maddie isn’t feeling like herself, she tends to straighten her hair rather than curl it. It seems to be more when she’s uncertain about her place in her own and other people’s lives, rather than just when she’s simply worried - eg it’s straight in 2B, when she’s uncertain if she wants to continue working as a dispatcher/is unsure about her relationship with Chim.

For work, Chim, Eddie and Buck all use black duffel bags with a LAFD patch on the top. Hen uses several different cute bags, and Bobby seems to have a plain black duffel bag.

Watches - Bobby, Athena, Chim, Hen and Buck all wear their watch on their left wrist (but Athena ONLY wears hers for work, she takes it off at home.) Eddie wears his on his right wrist, and Maddie doesn’t wear one.

Chim (and Maddie by default) literally still have the exact same couch as in the pilot. (Which means that Chim has cuddled Tatiana on that couch, AND Albert has had sex on it. TIME TO GET A NEW ONE, BUCKLEY-HANS 😂)

The 118 has five different rigs - the engine (E118), the ladder truck (T118), two ambulances and the captain’s truck. 95% of the time, when the team is chilling in the cab of a rig and chatting (eg the ‘stuck under a live telephone pole’ scene in Jinx), they’re in the engine, not the truck. (Which I personally learned recently are NOT interchangeable terms!)

Athena and Michael got married when Athena was 37.

If you’d like to give Maddie a full name beyond “Maddie”, you should use Madeline. (I know, I know, in 4x04 she says Maddie is the name on her birth certificate, and that you should never use props details if they contradict script details, but I always thought that was a super weird exchange in 4x04 which could be explained by Maddie getting a nickname since she was born when Margaret and Phillip, you know, actually loved their kids and showed it, so of course Buck doesn’t get one, and in 4x04, Maddie was trying to avoid the entire issue of why she got one and Buck didn’t. But! Do what you want, and use Madeline as the full version of Maddie if you’d like, since that’s what’s on the BOLO in 2x13 😂)

Athena’s call sign is 727 L30, but she doesn’t have a specific squad car - the number changes throughout the series.

Chim really likes chewing gum, but he’s the only one out of the entire family!

The station has an Xbox One S, and it’s white.

In the real LAFD, there are stations 1 through 114. To avoid confusion while filming on the streets (I’m assuming), our fictional LAFD never uses the number of a real station. So if you want another station for a fic, and you want something that would be real in OUR universe, use the numbers 115 and above. They’ve gone as high as 221 in our universe.

Battalions - station 118 is in Battalion 7, which is also not a battalion in real Los Angeles. The 118 has interacted w/ Battalion 1, which is a real battalion, but other ‘non-real which makes them more likely for our universe’ battalions include numbers: 3, 8, 13, 16, 19 and above.

S1 Buck knew the term Jedi, but based on context, didn’t understand AT ALL the context provided by Star Wars, so there’s another edge of his pop culture limits for you.

Chim is the most tech-savvy out of everyone, hands down.

Athena has a VERY active Twitter account.

Abuela’s house number is 8902. I don’t have a street name for you unfortunately though. :/

Athena’s favorite flowers are white roses. None of the other women are really flower people.

Michael likes to wear purple.

When they’re at a call, Buck does pretty much all of the stuff with the hammer and the saw. Eddie does all the work needed with the drill.

Harry goes to Meadowbrook Elementary.

Buck lives on the fourth floor of his apartment building, across the hall from Apt. 416. The lovely @lovelessmotel found this listing for what is more or less the apartment. What happened was: the set crew rented this apartment for the one episode at the end of s2 when Buck moved in, and then over the summer before s3 built their own set of it, and changed some things - eg giving him an island, and moving the sink to a second counter against the far wall, you can see the changes here in this amazing gif set by the awesome Austen, but the listing should let you click around a little more upstairs and figure out dimensions better than what the show provides!

When Athena and Hen go out to eat together, it’s always fast food burgers and fries.

Waffles are Athena’s favorite food, and tiramisu is her favorite dessert.

Every takeout we’ve seen Buck eat has always been in a Chinese food takeout container, and we know he likes Thai food the best. EXCEPT! The one time we see him eat takeout with Eddie and Christopher, they have pizza. So take from that what you will......

Eddie has a cell phone and a landline.

Chim is a shameless multiple texter.

Chim and Bobby sleep closest to the door in their respective bedrooms (both right side of the bed if you are standing at the foot, facing the headboard), and Athena and Maddie sleep furthest away from the door (left side).

Some canon last names for other firefighters at the station in case you wanna add more people to a fic - Mitchell, Sanchez, Serrano (woman), Porter, Meyers (woman), Maxwell, Voyta

Hen and Karen really love decorating their house with dark/red wood.

Karen is Mommy and Hen is Mama.

Bobby has a brother, and a grandmother, and that’s literally ALL we know about his family outside of Marcy and the kids.

Evidence points to Eddie being the oldest child in his family.

Karen has multiple brothers (no sisters), but no idea how many - just that one of them is named Trey, and one of them lives in LA and has kids. They might be the same brother and they might not be.

Both Hen and Athena are only children.

Athena has been on the police force for 30 years.

Christopher and Denny are the same age (born in 2011), and Harry is two years older than them.

Michael lives in apartment 308.

The bank in this universe is CalAm.

Hen and Karen have a picture of Denny, May and Harry on their fireplace mantel.

Eddie having a black thumb + a lot of plants in his living room = him buying fake plants bc he likes the aesthetic ™ or someone (cough Carla cough) is taking care of them for him.

The COVID timeline in OG’s universe is fucked up compared to the real world’s, so it shouldn’t be used as a way to measure time! They just throw it in wherever it makes sense for the story they want to tell (eg the vaccines in s4 ep 8), since s3 was both done before COVID hit but also airing while it was happening. It makes absolutely no sense for May to graduate in March nor for Chris to be going to what is specifically labeled summer camp, and the vaccine plotline was INCREDIBLY early, even for real life, so don’t use anything from that as a measure of time. I’ve found except in specific examples, eg the two tsunami episodes, it’s very safe to say every episode covers a week - fall holidays on the show line up with their real life counterparts, indicating about the same amount of time is passing for us and them.

On that note - Jee-Yun was born in late January, early February 2021. (Conceived in Pinned, which was end of March/beginning of April, meaning Maddie was around a month along at May’s graduation in May ➡ 42 weeks + 3 days from then = late Jan/early Feb. Which unfortunately means we most likely won’t see her birthday celebrated on screen. If we assume she was conceived on the date Pinned aired, aka the very sexy hotel scene, then January 21st or 22nd would be Jee’s birthday, depending on if she was born after midnight or not.

Buck has had at least one other Jeep between the one Maddie gave him, and the one he has now, which means that when he needs a new car, he is purposefully choosing Jeeps.

I hope this was all as interesting/enjoyable to you as it was to me! And just to repeat - I love answering questions so pls let me know if you have any at all ❤

🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝

Tagging: @buckbuckley

#911 fox #911 canon character details #athena grant #bobby nash #chimney han #hen wilson #maddie buckley #evan buckley #eddie diaz #bathena #madney #henren #buddie #userac #hey yall if anyone else wants to be added to these tags let me know #im happy to do so #I feel like I have v little for Bobby here sorry :/#I’ll work on getting lots for him next time

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shijiujun · 3 years

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Okay if y’all have read my top 2020 danmei list from a week or two back, you’ll know this is currently my favourite danmei (outside of Qi Wei Shang + 2ha hahaha), so here’s a proper, full rec!

- Part of Min’s ‘Why You Should Read’ Series -

Summary:

Ji Yan Ran is the Emperor’s brother and wields military power in the novel, and it starts with an object being stolen from the palace. Ji Yan Ran has to retrieve the item secretly, and so enlists the help of Feng Yu Sect’s Sect Master, Yun Yi Feng, who heads the martial arts world’s one and only information trading post. Yun Yi Feng does not deal in business that involves any royalty, but Jing Yan Ran offers him something he cannot refuse - the Blood Red Lingzhi, a rare and mystical herb that is rumoured to be able to treat his life-threatening condition.

Yun Yi Feng was used by his shifu when he was younger to test out all kinds of poisons and cures, and since then, his body flushes dangerously hot and cold frequently, with bouts of severe coughing fits in between. Throughout the first mission where he spends time with Ji Yan Ran searching for the stolen object, he allows Jing Yan Ran to take care of him. Their relationship is pretty flirty and touchy right off the bat, with Ji Yan Ran knowing really clearly that he wants to take care of Yun Yi Feng. When Yun Yi Feng goes anywhere without a coat, JYR always has one ready. He promises all his riches to him, even his mother hahaha (but that’s because he knows he deceived YYF with the Blood Red Lingzhi and is willing to give YYF everything else while also continuing to look for the lingzhi for him).

Of course, they have to uncover a plot and conspiracy against their enemies who are plotting to dethrone the Emperor, and also reveal the secrets of Yun Yi Feng’s birth.

Read:

Novel (Online) | Novel (Print) - Not Available | Novel Translations | Manhua

Characters:

1. 云倚风 Yun Yi Feng (right) - The revered Sect Master of Feng Yu Sect as his sect controls the flow and movement of information. People from all over buy information or hire the sect to help them get information, and is considered a neutral sect within the wuxia world. Very intelligent, a cool-headed strategist who also loves riches, whose eyes light up at the sight of treasures and money.

He was a child remnant of a war, and picked up by his shifu Gui Ci, who brought him to this island to live with other kids he picked up. His first few years were spent rather happily there, but then one day the man gave all the children bowls of what they thought was soup but ended up being poison because Gui Ci wanted to test out his new concoctions. At the end, only YYF survived after multiple ingestions of poisons and experimental cures. Because he was the ‘strongest’ out of all the other children, Gui Ci began testing out all sorts of poisons and cures on him after. If someone came to him after having been poisoned, Gui Ci would poison YYF in the same way as a test subject to use cures on, and only after they worked on YYF would he use them on the patient.

His shifu is considered a mad man, and the last straw was when he locked YYF up with several scorpions for a few days and YYF was the closest thing to death at that moment, and afterwards, realizing that he’d gone overboard, Gui Ci is more careful about poisoning him, allowing him to have a slightly more normal childhood, but because of this YYF’s body would flush hot and cold frequently and unbearably. He manages to escape from Gui Ci and sets up Feng Yu Sect.

He only has 5 years left to live if he doesn’t find the Blood Red Lingzhi, when he meets Ji Yan Ran and his request. After meeting JYR he realizes how sweet life is, to have someone who always thinks of him, who cares about his well-being, who wants to make him happy, who buys and gives him everything he wants. In the beginning he is unable to reciprocate knowing he’ll die soon, but they get together anyway after a close call, as JYR tries to find the Lingzhi for him.

He also loves to cook and play the zither, but is so bad at both!! He’s so terrible that every time he approaches the kitchen or the zither the servants themselves try to redirect him subtly and chase him away because they CANNOT stand his dishes or his music hahahaha.

2. 季燕然 Ji Yan Ran (left) - Army commander/general, and a prince. Close to the Emperor, who’s his older brother, and takes a liking to YYF the moment he meets him. He bluffs YYF, says that he has the Blood Red Lingzhi, and then realizing how much YYF needs it, he feels more guilty and guilty for lying to him, and once admitting it, he promises to do whatever it takes to find it for him.

He’s very smart as well, has eyes only for YYF and is willing to indulge him in every single whim he has. If YYF complains that he doesn’t have anything to wear (even in jest), JYR has the garment stores in the whole city send 10 outfits each for YYF to pick. And even though he hates YYF’s cooking and playing of the zither, he lets him do it anyway, fond but exasperated while everyone is staring daggers at him for not stopping YYF.

A few years ago, a close friend of his and the Emperor’s died, and JYR suspects that their father had something to do with it. It’s something that has been troubling him for many years and it’s a dilemma for him because he has to balance between questioning the Emperor but also trusting him and being a good brother/official to him, as clues keep pointing towards the Emperor and his father being involved in shady deals/decisions. His relationship with the Emperor, his brother, can be described as close, but of course even though they are close and trust each other to a good extent, there is still room for a tiny bit of doubt that both brothers are well aware of due to their positions, not that this affects their relationship.

Openly is affectionate to YYF in front of everyone, including his mother, who likes YYF alot as well. YYF once worried if the Emperor would oppose his relationship with him, but JYR said that their relationship should put the Emperor even more at ease, because the world and other officials would not recognize an Emperor who liked men and didn’t have any children, meaning that JYR becomes an even smaller threat to the throne.

3. 暮成雪 Mu Cheng Xue - An assassin who keeps popping up throughout the novel, and is a frenemy to YYF especially because he stole the cuteass snow leopard that was supposed to be YYF’s and refuses to return it. Not good nor bad, he does whatever he’s paid for.

4. 江凌飞 Jiang Ling Fei - JYR’s godbrother, who didn’t have a good childhood with no one to protect him in the Jiang family, one of the big wuxia families in the novel, as he had no parents and was technically brought up by his scheming uncles/cousins etc. He befriended JYR when they were younger and acknowledged JYR’s mother as his godmother because she was truly and genuinely good to him, and spends a large part of his days running in and out of the Jing manor. He’s JYR’s right hand man, but his dream is to be a bum wandering through different parts of the world, having fun whenever instead of being boggled down by duties to the Jiang family and other things.

Amazing Scenes:

YYF unceremoniously using JYR’s arm as a pillow while he’s talking

Basically YYF fainting and getting sick a lot and JYR always there to catch him ;-; To dote on him!!! Ahhhh my heart

Other Things I Like in the Novel:

The first time YYF plays the zither in the Jing manor, JYR’s mother, shaking, goes to JYR and asks, “Is Yun-er learning some evil cultivation music?”

YYF tends to go out to the markets and will buy back 2kg of flour for example, while all the servants shudder in the fear and cry in front of JYR, who can only sigh but indulge him

YYF’s favourite things include JYR’s mother taking his blankets out to soak up the sunlight in the day so he has fluffy, warmth-filled and fresh-smelling covers everyday to collapse into

JYR once asked YYF if it’s a good thing that he met him, and YYF says, “Of course it’s a good thing I met wangye, because of you, I now know that life can be sweet and warm too.”

YYF carves out what he thinks the Blood Red Lingzhi looks like based on some bogus description JYR gave him and because he’s so hopeful and happy about finally being able to have the lingzhi, he carves it out and wears it like a pendant, and everytime JYR sees it he wants to slap himself for being such a motherfucking asshole and deceiving this man

YYF keeps forgetting his cape/coat, so JYR always gives him his, but YYF keeps taking and not returning and on the fourth time it happens, YYF looks at JYR expectantly, and JYR says, “You’ve already taken three, this is my last one, I’m gonna freeze to death, left without a cape if I give you this one”

JYR always tempts YYF into doing things by giving him treasures, and jokingly promises YYF his army commander ring, which symbolizes his authority and power, and YYF unceremoniously takes it knowing what it is, and refuses to return it to him - After a few times this happens, JYR makes a replica of it so they matchy matchy ;-;

They travel South in a holiday for a few months after the first arc is wrapped up, knowing that YYF doesn’t have much time left to live, and every single day is painful for JYR as the time YYF spends conscious decreases day by day

YYF asks for some oil/salve to use as lube from the army camp’s physician, a night before JYR is due to go off for war, and the physician scolds the messenger for having the time to think about such thoughts, and when the messenger says it’s for YYF, physician is like “... oh. okay, here you go, give this to him” without another word HAHAHAHA

#a sword of frost #danmei #danmei recs #一剑霜寒 #min's why you should read #cnovel #i'm determined to complete 10 so bear with me yall!!!#hahahahhaa

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translations-by-aiimee · 3 years

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Dig a Grave to Dig Out a Ghost - Chapter 15

Original Title: 挖坟挖出鬼

Genres: Drama, Horror, Mystery, Supernatural, Yaoi

This translation is based on multiple MTLs and my own limited knowledge of Chinese characters. If I have made any egregious mistakes, please let me know.

Chapter Index

Chapter 15 - Stage

Since it wasn't time for the audience to enter the venue yet, the auditorium, which could accommodate two thousand people, was only sparsely occupied, and the person in charge of the event was still shouting out instructions about the final arrangement of the rostrum. After entering from the staff passage, Lin Yan pulled A-Yan and found their seat in the middle of the fourth row. Indeed, as Weiwei said, he had a good view of the stage, only sitting behind the pink-labelled school officials and special guests.

Unexpectedly, there was already a boy sitting next to Lin Yan's seat. "I'm sorry, can we squeeze by." Lin Yan said. When the boy looked up, it turned out to be the guy playing on the PSP he saw in the front hall. He had a long face, like a grasshopper, with acne covering the young appearance. After having his game was interrupted, his mouth pinched into an impatient expression and leaned back slightly to give the little Daoist priest and Lin Yan room to pass.

He probably also came in through the back door. I saw him queuing at the door just now, Lin Yan thought. To make A-Yan feel more comfortable, he left the left seat closest to the PSP guy open for Xiao Yu, sat in the middle, and opened the event pamphlet to start reading. The booklet was well-made and had some weight in his hand. Lin Yan could get a general idea of the event by skimming through the pages. This lecture focused on the identification of cultural relics from the Chenghua period of the Ming Dynasty. The colour pages were printed with images of porcelain, jade, calligraphy, and paintings. After the portion of interactive activities, there was no more detail on the event. Lin Yan handed the book to the empty seat on his left and asked softly, "Do you recognize anything?"

The PSP guy sitting next to him turned his head and looked at Lin Yan puzzledly. Lin Yan was a little embarrassed, took the pamphlet back, and said nonchalantly, "I wasn't talking to you."

PSP guy gave him an irritated glance.

The rostrum had been set up, and the audience filed in through the side doors on the sides of the auditorium, and noise flooded into the lecture hall. Xiao Yu didn't seem to like crowded places. He tore Lin Yan's hand from the pamphlet and gripped it in his hand. Lin Yan was a little flustered. From the perspective of others, his left hand was hanging stiffly in the air. He tried to twist his hand away a few times but to no avail. He compromised and rested their hands on the armrest.

After the audience was seated, Professor Chen, with his file folder aura, walked out onstage. His black suit and red striped tie made him look very refined. The professor sat down at the podium, cleared his throat after fiddling with the microphone and notebook, and then the host appeared on the stage. The auditorium darkened, leaving only the background Powerpoint and the spotlight on the host.

"The lecture has officially started. Today we are honoured to invite an expert in cultural relic identification. Professor Chen, an identification researcher from the Palace Museum, will give you a lecture on the appreciation and collection of antiques from the Chenghua period. . ." the host read.

The auditorium was dark, the audience was very polite, and even though the lecture hall was filled with 2,000 people, it was completely silent. Lin Yan turned his head to the left and almost jumped up in fright. There was a person sitting in the empty seat. He looked out of place among the crowd of well-dressed students. His long hair blocked most of his face, which was partially visible from Lin Yan's point of view. With a straightened nose and pale skin, his thin lips were pressed together tightly, staring at the podium intently. In the blue light and shadows from the stage, the large bloodstains on his clothes were particularly strange. Lin Yan's hands unconsciously shook. Xiao Yu turned his head to look at him. A pair of fierce black pupils appeared behind his black hair, and his hand squeezed harder as if he thought Lin Yan was going to run away.

He wasn't sure if the ghost's image was frozen from the time of his death. Lin Yan tried to calm his heartbeat. While wondering if he could change his clothes, he thought it would be a good idea if he could freshen up and change so as not to scare him to death by showing up in the middle of the night. Lin Yan touched Ah Yan, nodded his head in Xiao Yu's direction, and whispered, "Can you see him?"

A-Yan suspiciously shook his head.

Lin Yan heaved a sigh of relief. He really didn't want to be compared to the unlucky actor in "Coming Soon" sitting next to a ghost in the movie theatre.

"In the first part of the lecture, we asked Professor Chen to explain the basic knowledge and rules of antique identification with a few pieces of his own collection as examples. The second part is for interaction. We will invite ten students to come to the stage for a small activity. Whoever wins the activity can ask Professor Chen to engrave a seal as a souvenir. . ."

There was a commotion in the audience. Lin Yan was a little puzzled. He turned his head and asked A-Yan what was so strange about it. "This--this teacher's seal cutting, books, and calligraphy are very famous, and it's not cheap to get him to engrave something," A-Yan said softly.

The host closed the script and continued: ". . . and you can ask any questions you have after the event. Professor Chen will be happy to answer your various questions about the field, career orientation or professional-related questions."

Lin Yan frowned. This sounded tempting. It would take longer to ask Xiao Yu about things. Maybe he had to play psychological warfare. . . Lin Yan thought.

After the applause, the host left the stage, the spotlight went out, and only the Powerpoint on the backdrop was left on, dowsing the entire venue with blue shining light. Professor File Folder took a sip of water and said a few simple opening remarks before beginning his lecture. The first photo released was a small blue and white crane with an elaborate pattern on it. It was an ordinary shape, but the colour was elegant and sophisticated, the material texture was fine and the enamel was thick. It was in line with the solemn and simple characteristics of the Chenghua period.

"During the Ming Dynasty's Chenghua period, porcelain pieces were minimalistic and light, and it was typically tooth-white or blood-red when seen in the light. It was a milky-cream finish, lustrous and clean. The piece's glaze was also very precise, very skilled application and accentuating the colour. In terms of colour, the decorative lines are slender, and the double-line outline filling method is used to make the filling colour appear lighter. It's worth mentioning that in this period, the Doucai technique was an innovation with its exquisite and delicate application of colour. . ."

When Professor File Folder moved on, a girl wearing a light green phoenix skirt flashed into view backstage. In the vermilion lacquer tray in his hand were a pair of bamboo-leaf bowls. They were decorated with a sky-blue background covered in green bamboo leaves. Lin Yan thought it was a little disdainful. These things were available on the market; the pair would only cost 50,000 yuan, which was much cheaper than the pieces the professor was presenting.

After finishing the discussion on the porcelain, the powerpoint slide changed to a daffodil hairpin by the famous engraver Lu Zigang. Even though it was only a picture, it was clear to see that the carving was exquisite, the details so fine they were as thin as a hair. Professor File Folder began to explain the appreciation of jade illustrated faintly in the photo, and the girl from backstage came out with one. She held the white jade seed high up in her hand. The white jade was crystal clear in the light of the small spotlight, and its carving is also finely detailed. The girl turned the tray to reveal the skin on its back. Lin Yan frowned when she saw it.

"Can anyone evaluate this carving?" File Folder asked melancholically.

No one answered, and the audience stayed silent. Lin Yan murmured, "It's a duplicate." He thought that his voice was low enough, but the auditorium was too quiet, so his voice reached the podium with ease.

The professor's eyes lit up and he called out to him, "Go on."

Lin Yan's face flushed red. He hesitated for a while, stood up reluctantly, and motioned to it: "There is no doubt that the quality of jade is a good seed material, but in the process of refining it, in order to ensure it would sell at a good price, the merchant re-skinned the jade. A layer of fake autumn pear skin does not affect the price, nor does it make it a fake, it just looks awkward."

File Folder nodded approvingly. When Lin Yan sat down, his heart was still thumping. He didn't like speaking in public. Even if this were a normal lecture, there were still 2000 people in the room. If he said something wrong, it will be embarrassing so Lin Yan was anxious.

"Your--Your vision is really good." The little Daoist said softly: "I doubt I'm the only one who thinks so."

The low and soft voice made Lin Yan's heart relax. Just as he was going to brush off the compliment, a hand clamped over his shoulder, and Lin Yan fell directly on Xiao Yu's lap with a hard tug. An icy breath brushed over him. A chilled hand pinched his chin, thumb lightly stroked his cheeks, long hair hanging down and tickling his neck. Lin Yan tried to push off Xiao Yu's knees to prop himself up, but Xiao Yu refused, and the two of them sat in a stalemate in the dark.

Lin Yan forgot that he was the only one who could see Xiao Yu. This scene must be extremely weird in the eyes of others. The boy who had just answered the professor's question practically fell into the empty seat next to him, looking like he could not get up no matter how hard he tried. . .

"What's wrong with you?" The PSP man rolled his eyes at Lin Yan and shifted away in disgust.

Lin Yan struggled to sit upright. He apologized to the PSP guy embarrassingly and continued to listen to the lecture focusing on the back of the seat in front of him. Only he knew what was actually happening. A ghost, a person who no one can see, was holding his waist unscrupulously, slowly kissing up his neck. The tip of his cold nose brushed the side of his face, around his ears, and let out a low breath: "Hah. . ."

Lin Yan developed a layer of goosebumps, his arm stiffly supported on the back of the chair, his expression closed off. He licked his earlobe, a wet, soft and waxy feeling. His whole body shook, and the tip of his tongue licked around the mouth of his ear. Licking around, even poking his tongue in occasionally, the extremely ambiguous voice seemed to be infinitely louder in his ear. Lin Yan reached under his bangs to prop up his forehead with his hand and covered his eyes. He didn't have the dignity left to face anyone; he could only grit his teeth and try to control his breathing.

He couldn't hear what Professor File Folder was saying and suddenly his vision was blocked. Xiao Yu leaned in front of him, with his hands on the armrests on both sides of Lin Yan. His tongue licked back and forth on his lips. Itching, his heart twitched. He was angry, anxious and uncomfortable. Lin Yan desperately tried to recite the values of Marxism as a distraction; capitalism is characterized by squeezing surplus value. . . surplus value. . . squeeze out socialist surplus value. . . the doctrine will squeeze out surplus value. . . everything is all messed up. . . This was the worst possible time to be teased by the ghost, so what should he do. . . Lin Yan's eyes filled with tears. He looked at Xiao Yu pleadingly, pinching his arm gently and shaking his head.

The hand that had almost reached the top of his thigh finally retracted. Xiao Yu leaned over and kissed Lin Yan's lips before he sat back on the seat.

Thank god it's over, Lin Yan thought sullenly.

"Next we move on to the second portion of the lecture. Ten students will be invited to the stage to participate in a mini-game of antique identification. We have prepared ten collections for you to authenticate. The person with the most correct answers can specify to Professor Chen what they want specially engraved." The host had changed to a girl in a red jacket skirt, she spoke sweetly into the microphone.

Lin Yan was still in a state of adrenaline surge and hadn't recovered.

"The student who spoke just now, Professor Chen invites you to come up."

There was silence in the auditorium. Lin Yan raised his head and looked at the host blankly, wondering why he didn't continue? A-Yan pushed Lin Yan and whispered, "They--They're calling you."

Lin Yan stood up hesitantly, pointed to himself, and asked the girl in the red jacket skirt, "Me?"

There was a burst of laughter in the audience. The host was afraid of being rude. She held the mic and joked: "This classmate must have been asleep."

The temperature of Lin Yan's face that had finally cooled off soared again. He was terrible at playing games in public. A single mistake would make him nervous. Lin Yan cautiously pushed off the back of the chair and headed up. He couldn't help but looked back and give Xiao Yu a fierce look. The ghost calmly followed him through the rows of people blocking the way. He walked with a unique posture. Even though he was barefoot and covered with bloodstains, he doesn't look decrepit. He stood tall with his back straight, unlike the current students around him with slumped shoulders thanks to their education system.

Lin Yan walked onto the stage, shifting his posture to avoid having to turn and face the crowd.

The purple curtain behind the podium opened, exposing the wide space behind. Under the warm stage lights, there were ten antique square tables lined up with grand tutor chairs, and an elegant mahogany brocade box was placed on a raised platform in front of them. The other nine people had already stood at the tables to the right, and the closest person Lin Yan was the PSP guy.

The host raised his hand to signal Lin Yan to join them: "In order to be more in line with today's discussion, these ten students will go backstage to change into some costumes. Professor Chen and the audience are invited to take a break while they get changed and return soon."

Lin Yan glanced out into the audience and saw that the stage lights were blinding. The three rows of school officials and guests near the front of the stage were sitting in plain sight. Beyond that was a crowd of people that he couldn't make out because of the lights. This was only one floor. Lin Yan's legs felt like noodles when he looked up, and the crowd on the second floor remaining silent. Four large cameras with small red lights were facing him. Lin Yan felt that his whole body was covered in crawling ants. His chest was being crushed by a large stone, and his lungs were being squished until they couldn't get any air into them.

If he could, he wanted to escape and drive away immediately. After taking a few deep breaths, Lin Yan clenched his fists and followed the team backstage behind the curtain.

#dig a grave to dig out a ghost #yaoi novel #chinese bl #chinese novel #english translation #danmei #yaoi

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yuusa · 3 years

Text

-ˋˏ𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐭 ˎˊ-

-ˋˏ 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑴𝒊𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑩𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒆𝒍𝒆𝒕 ˎˊ-

✧ 𝑮𝒐𝒅 𝑬𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝟑 𝑴𝒂𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒕

· · · · ✦ 𝑺/𝒐 𝒊𝒔 𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒕 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑯𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒅𝒔 𝒂𝒔 𝑯𝒖𝒈𝒐 𝑷𝒆𝒏𝒏𝒚𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒕'𝒔 𝒍𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒓, 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒕𝒘𝒐 𝒆𝒎𝒃𝒂𝒓𝒌 𝒐𝒏 𝒂 𝒅𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒔 𝒋𝒐𝒖𝒓𝒏𝒆𝒚 𝒐𝒇 𝒔𝒆𝒍𝒇-𝒅𝒊𝒔𝒄𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒚 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒖𝒊𝒍𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒊𝒓 𝒐𝒘𝒏 𝑷𝒐𝒓𝒕. 𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒔𝒆 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒂 𝒔𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒅𝒐 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒇𝒐𝒍𝒍𝒐𝒘 𝒂 𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒖𝒍𝒂𝒓 𝒐𝒓𝒅𝒆𝒓 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒊𝒓 𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒚𝒅𝒂𝒚 𝒍𝒊𝒇𝒆 𝒂𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑪𝒉𝒓𝒚𝒔𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒎𝒖𝒎.

𝑺𝒖𝒎𝒎𝒂𝒓𝒚: 𝒀𝒐𝒖 𝒘𝒂𝒌𝒆 𝒖𝒑 𝒕𝒐 𝒔𝒆𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝑯𝒖𝒈𝒐 𝒉𝒂𝒔 𝒃𝒆𝒆𝒏 𝒘𝒂𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒕𝒐 𝒋𝒐𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏, 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒕𝒘𝒐 𝒐𝒇 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒃𝒆𝒈𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒐 𝒘𝒐𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒓 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒔𝒐𝒓𝒕 𝒐𝒇 𝒑𝒂𝒕𝒉 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒘𝒂𝒏𝒕 𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒂𝒌𝒆 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒇𝒖𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒆.

You fumbled around the large boxes within the room, searching for the lost bracelet that you thought you placed in the girl’s cabin. You nervously bit your lips in frustration as you tried to sort through all of the nearly ripped clothing that was patched up with tape, most of which were clothes Hugo bought for you as a gift when the time came. However, the bracelet was a special case that was irreplaceable to you.

It had been given to you when you were much younger, perhaps around the age of twelve when Hugo went on a mission and found scraps around the area. He had been scrounging through different broken ruins to find pieces he could use to make a bond or “promise” bracelet as he referred to it as, something to reward you with when he got back from his mission.

He was able to find enough materials to make two black bracelets that were long enough to wrap around your wrist multiple times, they were identical in appearance but had small noticeable differences. For one, Hugo’s was a bit scratched up due to his habit of wearing it wherever he went, while yours was more intact as you left it behind at the caravan before a mission.

“Here, I made this for you to say thanks for always being by my side,” Hugo said, asking for you to extend your arm out, “it took me a couple of weeks to find the right materials but I finally did it.”

You extended your wrist towards him, allowing him to delicately wrap the bracelet around you with his smaller, childish hands. Although the armlets around his wrists were bonded to your body like handcuffs, he was still able to put yours on. Your eyes grew wider as he held up his own arm, he had placed his on the opposite side of yours and he gave you a wide, goofy smile.

Your fingers dragged across the smooth material of the bracelet, admiring the amount of effort Hugo had put into such a gift. There were smaller patches of tape lining the edges of the bracelet but it held itself quite well together. You could feel an overwhelming rush of emotion flood the edges of your eyes as you wiped them away with the back of your hand. Hugo’s eyes softened as you threw your arms around his neck, burying your face into the crook of it.

“Thank you, Hugo, I love it,” you said, his neck being tickled by the smile which touched his skin.

Now that you had lost the bracelet somewhere on the caravan, you were beginning to sort through your entire box of clothes just to find it. You sore that you had left it on your bed or table before you left, but once you came back from the mission, it wasn’t there anymore. You were beginning to doubt whether or not you had even placed it in your room, perhaps you might have accidentally left it on your arm while fighting the Aragami, it must have broken off or had been sliced and left behind to rot at the mission area.

You felt your sore shoulders and legs ache desperately, your mind drawing back to the earlier mission which left several bruises around your skin when you were dragged across the ground. You hadn’t checked in the mirror but you could feel your neck feeling funny, it was as if someone or something had bitten you the other night. In addition, some areas were simply sore, as if you had done some sort of intense work out before the start of the mission, however, you were starting to forget what exactly happened.

You tugged on the tips of your hair as you groaned. Cursing to yourself for your foolishness, you rummaged through your clothes for what seems like the fourth time already, growing increasingly desperate to find the sentimental gift. The doors slid open, Claire, Phym, and Lulu walking in together to see the floors of the girls' cabin covered in your clothes.

“What’s going on? Is everything alright?” Claire asked, coming to your side as you dropped your clothes onto the floor with a dejected sigh.

Perhaps it might be better to tell them after all, you thought, closing your eyes and sighing.

“I lost the bracelet that was important to me, I can’t find it anywhere in the cabin and I think it might be outside in the Ashlands,” you replied.

“The bracelet you wore around the caravan?” Lulu added, to which you nodded in response. She and Claire hummed while Phym ran up to you to give you a comforting hug.

“Don’t worry mommy! I’ll help you find it!” She said, “we can look around!”

You smiled and patted the top of her head, “thanks Phym.”

“We’ll help too, it might be in the lobby or the Medical Ward,” Claire said, putting a hand on your shoulder, “what does it look like?”

You looked down at your empty wrist, “well. . . It should look like Hugo’s. . .” It was hard to describe your bracelet due to how simple it was that it might get mixed up with other products on the caravan, comparing it to Hugo’s was possibly the best option as he wore his around his wrist for the entire time.

Lulu pressed her lips together as she placed her hand underneath her chin, “maybe it’s in the guy’s cabin? Hugo might have taken it by accident if they look the same.”

You scratched the back of your head, your mind still fuzzy regarding the events of last night. You were unsure about whether or not you had left it in the guy’s cabin, you vaguely remembered going there when Hugo asked you to come during dinner but couldn’t remember anything after that. Perhaps checking the guy’s cabin would be a good idea, it might even be there if you looked around but you didn’t know if it was an invasion of privacy to do so.

You released a sigh and nodded, leaving to open the doors of the cabin and stepping out with the rest of the girls following suit. You turned towards the male cabin and knocked on their door, hearing the sound of shuffling and mumbled voices as Zeke opened the door.

“Oh hey guys, what are you doing here?” He asked, letting the crew come inside the extremely messy cabin.

You scanned your surroundings, seeing a variety of playing cards left on the table and ground with records and disks scattered across the room. Some of the beds were extremely messy except for the top bunk, which you assumed was Hugo’s based on how straight-faced he could be at times, it reminded you of when Hugo would tell the other kids to make their beds properly before they left the room. It didn’t seem like his advice really aged with Zeke considering how battered and messy his bed was.

“We were looking for her bracelet, it looks like Hugo’s, have you seen it?” Claire asked. Lulu looked around the room while Phym danced around to try and find the accessory.

“Oh you mean the gift Hugo got for her? I haven’t seen it here, and if it’s here it must be buried in the sheets somewhere,” Zeke replied, putting his hands on his hips, “you could search around if you want but stay away from the laundry basket, that's pretty awkward just saying.”

“We aren’t gonna dig through your laundry,” Lulu playfully rolled her eyes and came to Phym’s side, her hands searching through the boxes for any sort of bracelet that matched the description of ‘Hugo’s bracelet’.

You nodded and began searching through the boxes, most of them consisted of playing cards or secret stashes of food, you assumed that Ricardo gave them to Zeke for him to share with Phym whenever she did a great job on her studying. Everyone searched through the boxes and eventually came to the realization that it wasn’t in the boxes at all. You began to feel even more stressed by the idea that perhaps you truly had lost the gift and it might be in the Ashlands somewhere.

“Where is Hugo anyway?” Claire asked, closing the box and setting it back on top of the shelf.

“He’s with Hilda and Keith right now, they’re talking about the Acceleration Trigger and how it could rack in some money,” Zeke replied, shuffling through a deck of cards, “maybe you could ask him about it? Better yet, let’s check his bed!”

“What? Why?” Lulu asked.

“The man sleeps on the top bunk, he must be hiding something dude! Look how clean his bed is! There is something going on there,” he said, “I swear sometimes when we adjust the bed, his bunk is a bit loose at times.”

“Huh, that sounds pretty strange,” Claire said, brushing Phym’s hair as she held onto her in a hug, “maybe he’s just planning something or writing his reports in bed, he is a pretty serious worker.”

“Maybe you should check, you’re his closest friend after all,” Zeke awkwardly coughed.

You gave Zeke a nod as you climbed the ladder to Hugo’s bunk, fumbling with the sheets until you touched something. You pulled it out from under the sheets and dropped back down to the floor, opening your hand to reveal a black bracelet that was exactly like Hugo’s.

“That's great! You found it in Hugo’s bed, I wonder how it got there in the first place,” Claire said, Phym clapping her hands in happiness.

“Mommy you found it!”

You pressed your lips together as you examined it, there were a few scratch marks on the sides and it was much bigger than you remembered it to be. You examined the bracelet closer and realized that while it looked exactly like Hugo’s, it was because it was his.

“Hold on, it’s not the same one,” you replied, keeping the bracelet in your hands whole the group raised their eyebrows in confusion.

“What do you mean? It looks just like Hugo’s doesn’t it?” Lulu asked.

You shook your head, “not to be picky or anything, but this one is a lot bigger than my wrist, and there's a few marks on it. It means it’s a bit more worn out than it should be.”

Zeke scratched the back of his neck, “oh man, I thought we actually found it but I guess it wasn’t the case.”

“Where else would it be then?” Lulu added.

The metal doors of the cabin opened up to reveal Hugo, standing there with a shocked expression, in his hand was a black bracelet and his wrist was completely bare from accessories, aside from his twin armlets.

“Woah what are you guys doing here? I was just looking for you,” Hugo quickly came to your side with a nervous smile, “I think I took yours by accident.”

“Wait so you guys swapped bracelets?” Zeke asked, Hugo nodding in response.

“Yeah, sorry about that. I’m sure you were worried about it, weren’t you?” Hugo casually brought your wrist up to help tie the bracelet together, “my bad, our’s just looked the same you know?”

Phym smiled, “mystery solved! Mommy got her bracelet back!” She ran up to you and you brought her into your arms, picking her up and bringing her closer.

Claire sighed in relief, “that’s great news, may I ask where you both got your bracelets?”

Hugo turned to you and took his bracelet back, wrapping it around his wrist, “we both got them as kids, I usually went around to salvage some abandoned parts for something to give to the other kids. I just happened to find these two.”

You knew that he dumbed down the story a bit, in reality, you knew he had spent many days looking for parts to make a sturdy bracelet that would last years. Hugo smiled at you while you gave one back to him, the rest of the group chatting amongst each other as he brought himself closer to your ear, speaking in a low voice to avoid Phym hearing.

“You left it here after last night, how are you doing? You were limping a bit at the start of the mission,” Hugo whispered, you slowly turned to him with a blank expression before turning a flush red color.

You had completely forgotten what you had done last night with Hugo but it was slowly coming back to you. He had invited you to the guy’s cabin to check over some documents but it ended up getting a bit. . . Frisky. You pressed your lips together in embarrassment while Phym tilted her head in confusion to what Hugo said.

“Haha, don’t worry about it, I thought you would remember it with. . . You know,” he tapped on the sore part of your neck, causing you to flinch and have shivers run down your spine.

“I-It’s fine,” you replied, seeing Hugo give you a familiar goofy grin while Phym held onto you tighter, “just. . . Remind me next time okay?”

“Alright, I’ll remind you more often,” he gave you a teasing wink to which you responded with an eye roll.

#god eater 3 #god eater 3 x reader #god eater 3 imagines #hugo pennywort #hugo pennywort x reader #hugo pennywort x protagonist

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mudwingpropaganda · 4 years

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Arc 2 Timeline Rewritten

I’ve been thinking about my headcanons and I’ve been seriously struggling to get across the plot points that I want to happen within my headcanons. So I decided the best way to figure out what was important for the sequence of events was to just smash arc 2 on the ground and rebuild from the shards.

From now on, I think I’ll be referring to this when working on my own characters (or my headcanons)! It’s not the most eloquent, but this is how I’ll be reasoning the events of the books.

Arc 1 is valid. All arc 1 needs is more foreshadowing for Thorn and a little less forced love interests. Anyway, feel free to absorb by “ideal timeline” if you so desire.

The Second Brightest Night takes place.

(I have my own handful of headcanons about my take on the Second Brightest Night and less magical ending for that night, but lets sum it up by saying that Burn dies via the snakes, unfortunately, Blister is killed by Thorn, and Blaze suffers substantial injuries but survives and goes missing after Thorn ascends to the throne.)

AT LEAST a year or two passes as the RainWing Queendom is focused upon, until Jade Mountain is founded.

Queen Glory requested her siblings’ attention to help set up the tribe before jumping into their next war reparation project. This included the punishment of NightWing criminals, the state of the ex-experiment RainWings, and the customs that were lost when Queen Grandeur gave up on her bloodline and the title was shared between multiple dragonesses. Handsome, especially, assists in this restoration of culture and stability. Ex-Princess Greatness tries to give Glory her tribe’s history and customs, but ultimately gives up her title and acts as a figurehead to reach her subjects.

Jade Mountain is formed at least 2 or 3 years after the end of the war.

As a resolution of treaties, the Dragonets convinced the queens to enroll students in their peace building project, Jade Mountain Academy. Sunny already had the favor of Moorhen and Thorn, Tsunami took a little convincing of Coral, knowing she could bring in her siblings, Glory had the authority of her own two tribes, Clay reached out to Peril and Queen Ruby, and it took a little extra effort of reaching out to Queen Glacier. But after her approval was given, the school could finally take full initiative.

The opening of the school was met with the ominous reappearance of Queen Scarlet. This caused unrest and disaster within the first month of school.

As a result of her disturbance, students who had previously been optimistic about the school’s opening were now uneasy. The attempted assassination of Princess Icicle’s life, the death of multiple students on Sora’s hands, and thicker tension in the air of the school. The disappearance of the entire Jade Winglet lead the school to be temporarily shut down. Classes were suspended and students were asked to stay in their rooms or go home. (This is saying that Jade Mountain was equipped as an escape for those in bad home situations. Though. Not very successful as an escape, per say.)

Scarlet’s antagonism opens the arc, introducing her “alliance” with Chameleon.

Both by terrorizing Princess Icicle to do her bidding or tricking Peril into coming back to her clutches, the terrible things Scarlet did in her reign comes to light, namely the kidnapping of Prince Hailstorm and the mental deception of Princess Tourmaline/Ruby. Chameleon acts as a servant of her, facading as Soar for a majority of the time, acting as Peril’s technical father. Though, it’s obvious that while he serves her, he has not necessarily dedicated his life to her. Chameleon disappears for the sake of Peril’s resolution to wrap up Scarlet’s tyranny. But Chameleon’s near murder of Kinkajou sets up more antagonism on his part.

Chameleon generally becomes the main focus of antagonism for the rest of the arc. He causes the team to split up so Winter could do some soul searching and Kinkajou could coma, I guess.

After the Jade Winglet physically joins Peril and Turtle to resolve Scarlet’s arc, Chameleon is now gone of a powerful ally. He attempts to pick the group apart. Conflict between Winter, Moon, and Qibli, over the injuries of Kinkajou, and the spite between Peril and Winter, leading to Winter having his side trip to the IceWing kingdom with Hailstorm, where no one else could follow him. The Jade Winglet hangs out in Possibility, I guess, I’m still working out the details.

When trouble stirs in Possibility, Qibli accidentally pulls the group into SandWing trouble, revealing the alliance between Vulture and Onyx, as well as Chameleon disguising under their ranks.

Vulture and Onyx begin to be relevant. This was set up and foreshadowed, of course, but I’m not writing these books. Onyx was a dragon who went missing when things started going awry at Jade Mountain, as she decided playing into Sunny’s favor to get close to Thorn wouldn’t work. As Qibli hints at knowing something about the danger encroaching on Possibility, he flees to warn Thorn, but gets caught up in his past. He’s fully aware how to get himself out of these situations, but now he needs to protect the Jade Winglet from the likes of his family.

Onyx and Vulture’s plot relates, once again, to the thrones that were shifted by the Dragonets’ meddling, as Onyx tries to take the throne from Thorn.

Onyx has a more valuable role in this rewritten timeline. Her opinion on royalty isn’t disregarded, and her father legitimately shows remorse for his daughter rather than??? his girlfriend Thorn (which doesn’t happen in my headcanonverse). The concept of a fourth heir to the throne seemed like it would be such a significant plot point for Tui. Darkstalker took over that. In this version, Onyx is an important character, with Vulture pulling the strings, promising she has a chance at the throne. His point being: if a criminal can take the throne based on a child’s word and a magical necklace, another criminal can work for the throne based on his wit and his access to a true blood heir to the throne.

After the royalty plotlines are addressed, Chameleon is separated from his allies by the Jade Winglet once again.

Thorn eventually wards off Vulture and Onyx, with the somewhat support of her subjects, but the event left the SandWing queendom uneasy, as it still has work to be done. Thorn loses the Scorpion Den to the two of them, leaving Chameleon identified again. After being separated from his allies, once again, Chameleon becomes more focused in his vengeful plots against these children, but he does have his own points, especially in relevance to Kinkajou’s abuse she faced against the NightWings experimenting on her. When all else fails, he resorts back to the scroll itself.

As a final grasp for power, Chameleon attempts to become the previous owner of the scroll, leading to the storyline of Darkstalker.

Chameleon attempts to create a charm that will turn him into the true owner of the scroll. So Chameleon destroys the scroll in the process, as Darkstalker overtakes Chameleon’s body and, instead of it being a mask, similar to his disguises, Darkstalker is capable of using his magic to use Chameleon as a vessel as a whole. Jade Mountain begins to collapse with his old body’s sudden disappearance. And Darkstalker plot happens!

Darkstalker is still bent on revenge and restoring his kingdom’s former glory, but more in the sense of a more magically manipulative kind... the idea of magically changing people’s minds and changing people as a whole as he sees fit is focused upon

The twisted scene like Fierceteeth being turned into Clearsight has much more gravity. And directly affects our protagonists. While yes, a plague begins to wipe out the IceWings, and Queens and influential individuals are simply made to accept Darkstalker as a king, Darkstalker also realizes that the best way to get his friends - and enemies - back is molding them from the closest things to them. Moonwatcher being Clearsight, the two of them being striking similar in appearance and mannerisms, Turtle being Fathom, a timid descendent of another SeaWing animus who was afraid of his powers, Winter being Queen Diamond, someone he could kill, over and over, just as his mother was. Kinkajou? Oh, she’s irrelevant. Peril would have to be taken care of. But Qibli’s a wise one, thoughtful, and craved for validation. Perhaps he could help him perfect the spell.

This makes the story moving forward less about MAGIC as a whole and more of the concept of forcing dragons to do things against their will. (Which leads into the Pantala arc but first...)

Darkstalker is defeated, of course, after hinting about the existence of Pantala, and causing a “glitch” in magic system which has caused a lull in enchantments and animus dragons.

After a few obnoxious monologues, a bit of trickery and secret exchanging on Qibli and Kinkajou’s parts, and the sibling drama of animus SeaWing royal siblings, the free Jade Winglet (including Peril) was able to kill Darkstalker, who’s weight on the magic continuism caused magic to “break” momentarily in the Wings of Fire continuum, (just for Pantala’s conflict to be wrapped up without cheat codes). The residue of magic is left on the world, which accidentally manifests into a whole new dragonet. Peacemaker. (I’ll elaborate on my ideas for Peacemaker one day but... as much as I HATE the resolution of Darkstalker getting once another second chance, I love the idea of a whole separate identity facing the consequences for another’s evil. I’ll figure it out later.)

The students will resume classes again. Maybe Stonemover becomes useful to attempt to help out with the consequences of Darkstalker. The NightWings begin grappling with Glory’s rule, even more than usual, after the progress that they made. Pantala’s arc will be moreso about the fallout of Darkstalker, the accidental marks that Clearsight made, and the longlasting magical residue of Fathom. But those are ideas for later posts.

#wingsoffire #wings of fire #wof rewrite

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trentteti · 5 years

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Two Predictions and Tips for the June 2019 LSAT

We are ten days away from the June LSAT, a distressingly low number of days, to be sure. And though the realization that there is only a week-and-change left before test day may fill you with dread of the deepest and most existential kind, you shouldn’t despair. In fact, there’s a lot to celebrate.

For one, it’ll be a holiday! No, not Memorial Day the week before the test. The June LSAT is actually going to be New Year’s Day, at least according to LSAC. LSAC, for reasons I could never determine, uses a June-May calendar. So the made-up year 2019-2020 commences with the June LSAT. And LSAC is clearly in a celebratory mood, as they’ve given all test takes a great gift. They’ve dropped the writing sample from test day, and now will let test takers do the writing sample on their own time, from the comfort of their own homes. Plus, repeat test takers who already did a writing sample on a past exam don’t even have to do the writing sample again.

But new years bring changes. New year, new you … and also new LSAT. The June LSAT has historically been the test in which LSAC has introduced changes to the test — like the introduction of the comparative Reading Comprehension passage in June 2007. Now, any major change like that gets announced before the test — there have been no big announcements about changes to the content of the exam, so there won’t be any major changes (and if you just noticed I took the contrapositive of a conditional statement, you’re super prepared to take the June exam).

But June tests have also augured more minor, unannounced changes — like the introduction of the rule substitution question in June 2009. So to maybe help you stay ahead of the curve when it comes to the upcoming exam, we’re using today’s post as an opportunity to make some predictions about the June test, and to offer some tips on how to prepare yourself for those potential changes.

As always, these predictions aren’t based on any inside information. We pay attention to these exam as closely as anyone, and we always try to make our guesses based on the available evidence, but they’re still guesses. And, truthfully, I’m wrong all the time. But it’s better to be overprepared than under-; in that spirit, here’s what we’re predicting for the June test.

Prediction Number 1: We’ll See Multiple Questions About the Same Argument on Some Logical Reasoning Stimuli

I think we’re going to see a return of common feature of old exams. Before I clarify what that is, know that this is admittedly a pretty wild prediction. I might be spectacularly wrong about it. But this is a hill I’m prepared to die on (or, less melodramatically, a statement I’m prepared to look a little silly for making).

OK, here’s what I predict: I think there are going to be a couple of times on this June test where they’ll ask two questions about the same Logical Reasoning stimulus.

This used to be fairly common on old exams. In the exam’s early days, they’d sometimes ask you multiple questions about the same stimulus. You’d get an argument in the stimulus, and they’d ask you to identify the flaw in the argument, and then the next question would ask you to strengthen the same argument. Or you’d get a stimulus that featured two speakers in heated debate, and you’d get one question that asked you to identify what the point of disagreement between the speakers was, and then the next question would ask you to determine how the second speaker responded to the first.

These multiple-questions-about-the-same-stimulus would show up at least once or twice on the LSATs in the 90s and early 2000s. But starting in June 2003, they stopped showing up. And they haven’t been seen — at least on the real, scored LR sections — since. Like the white walkers who took an 8000-year sabbatical from terrorizing northern Westeros, the multiple-questions-about the same-stimulus format is gone and largely forgotten.

But, like the reports of white walkers’ reemergence form terrified brothers of the Night’s Watch, we’ve been hearing whispers of these multiple-questions-about-the-same-stimulus showing up on experimental sections of recent exams (and, also like Ned Stark, we were forced to reluctantly behead these sources for betraying their oath to remain silent about the contents of the exam). The people who write these exams (and, yes, actual people write these exams — these questions are not generated by an algorithm that hates you) use the experimental sections to try out questions they’ll eventually deploy on future exams. In fact, the March 2019 exam was apparently just a compilation of past experimental sections, ripped whole cloth from earlier exams. So it was clear the test writers are priming us to see a return of multiple-questions-about the same-stimulus.

Why do I predict they’re going to return on *this* exam? Again, the June test is the start of the new LSAT year, according to LSAC. It’s the test in which they introduce new features. Recall, it was a June exam in which they introduced the comparative passage. It was a June exam when they stopped featuring multiple-questions-about-the-same-stimulus. So I think it’s going to be a June exam in which they start featuring multiple-questions-about-the-same-stimulus again. And since so much is already changing with the LSAT this year — no more test-day writing sample, the crazy-ass July exam, the switch to a digital exam in September — it seems like they’d be willing to make at least one more somewhat minor change.

How to deal: First of all, a lot of recent test takers I spoke saw these multiple-questions-about-the-same-stimulus appear on their exams, and immediately surmised that they were doing the experimental section. They were correct, but they were assuming that the test writers wouldn’t put these multiple-questions-about-the-same-stimulus on a real, scored section. I don’t think this assumption is warranted anymore, so I wouldn’t recommend assuming that any LR section with multiple-questions-about the same-stimulus is the experimental section.

But if multiple-questions-about-the-same-stimulus do reappear on the scored sections of the June 2019 exam, that’s actually pretty good news for you. On recent exams, if there were 26 questions in an LR section, there’d be 26 stimuli you had to read. If this old question format returns, there may be 26 questions but only 24 or 25 stimuli you have to read. Obviously, that’s less reading. Which will make it a little easier to finish the section.

That said, it’s worthwhile to prepare a reliable approach to this type of question. I think it’s a good idea to read both prompts first. Get a feel for both tasks you have to do. That should give you a sense of how to best approach the stimulus. For instance, sometimes these stimuli would feature two speakers, but one of the questions would only pertain to the first speaker’s argument. It would make sense to answer that question first, since you can read just the first speaker’s argument, focus on that, and not worry about what the second speaker said. And then, when it comes time to do the second question, you can just read the second speakers’ argument and add that to your understanding of the first speaker’s statements.

Most of the time though, these two questions were complimentary. Sometimes they would ask you to identify a flaw in an argument and how to strengthen the argument. Or a flaw and a necessary assumption in the argument. Since the first steps for both Strengthen and Necessary questions is to identify why the argument is flawed, do the Flaw question first, and then that will allow you to quickly answer the accompanying Strengthen or Necessary question.

If you want to practice this approach, try to get a hold of an old practice exam. Pretty much any exam before PT40 will feature at least a one or two examples of these multiple-questions-about-the-same-stimulus question format.

Prediction Number 2: There’s Going to Be a Really Hard Logic Game

This is related to the above prediction — if they do bring back multiple-questions-about-the-same-stimulus, that makes Logical Reasoning just a little bit easier. But if the LSAT gods giveth, they must also taketh away. If one part of the exam becomes a little bit easier, another typically become a little bit more difficult. And I predict we will see the logic games section become a little bit more difficult.

Besides, it’s been a while since we’ve had a truly back-breaking, demoralizing game. Not to engage in a temporal fallacy or anything, but it sort of feels like we’re due. The closest thing we’ve had to a really tough game on recent years was the air quality examiner game from the December 2017 test. Although that one was complicated, it was a fairly standard game. You have to look all the way back to waning days of the Obama administration to find the last truly crazy game — the trading building game from the December 2016 exam.

It’s been a minute, so I think we’ll see a really tough game on the June test. It’ll probably be the fourth game, and I’m going to predict that it’s going to be a tiered ordering game. If only we had a blog post, for you to consult, about how to make complicated tiered ordering games much easier. Or a post about how making scenarios can make any ordering game much less complicated. If only.

How to Deal: Well, read the above posts, for one. Then put your feet to the proverbial fire, and start to challenge yourself with really tough games. Even if I’m wrong about the presence of a really tough game on this exam (and I very well may be!), tangling with very tough games will make the rest of the games seem all the easier by comparison. As a self-proclaimed logic games sommelier (wow, where did my life go wrong to the point that I would willingly say that about myself), enjoy this choice selection of tough tiered ordering games: game three from December 1997, about reviewing introductory and advanced textbooks, game two from the December 2002 exam, about conferences attended by employees of the totally real-sounding company Capital Enterprises, game four from the October 2008 exam, in which shuttle van passengers exit one at a time at each stop, game four from the December 2012 exam, about finance, nutrition, and wildlife magazine articles, and game three from the October 2013 exam, about movies shown on three screens at a theater.

But don’t forget about some of the other notoriously difficult games: the lizards and snakes game two from the December 1998 test; the new and used CDs game two from the June 2000 test (a game forever enshrined in movie history thanks to its appearance in Legally Blonde); the mauve dinosaur game three from the June 2009 exam; and the computer virus game four from the September 2016 test.

But here’s the thing with tough games: You’re spending your day reading an LSAT blog about the test you’re about to take (and we appreciate your readership!). You clearly take your studies seriously. In all likelihood, you’re taking your studies more seriously than 90% of the people taking the exam. Seriously, start chatting with a stranger before your test, and you may be shocked about how underprepared some people are. If you’re well-prepared, you should want — nay, crave — a difficult games section. With the right practice — the practice that you’re going to get in these final ten days — difficult games are the most conquerable “difficult” part of the LSAT. So you’ll be better equipped to handle more complex or unusual games than your fellow test takers. Difficult games are almost always accompanied by a more forgiving curve. Which will give you more room for error to earn your target score, or perhaps even allow you to exceed your target score. So, I’m predicting a hard game, and for your benefit, I hope I’m right.

If you think you’re not ready, you can always withdraw. Take the extra time to keep studying for the LSAT with a subscription-based online LSAT course that you can start and stop whenever you want. Or, if you really think there’s something you’re still struggling in and want extra help mastering it, let’s talk about tutoring. Our Academic Managers can help match you with a tutor that can address your needs!

Two Predictions and Tips for the June 2019 LSAT was originally published on LSAT Blog

#june lsat #LSAT #study plan #trent teti #lsat

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spudthecat · 7 years

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My Thoughts on Fran Bow

Where do I begin? Well, I guess let’s start with my overall opinion of the game. A+++!!! I absolutely loved this game, and everything was pinpoint; it all meshed together beautifully to create memorable haunting scenes, characters, and stories. The music, the art style, the gameplay mechanics, the characters, everything. Purrfect!

This game, to me at least, was so damn unique. The main gameplay mechanic, the center focus that set it apart from other similar games (at least to my knowledge), was the Duotine, red pills that allowed Fran to see the Ultrareality. This allowed the puzzles to be even more complex and interesting (thought still not too complex as this is a story-centric game) as every room and area was basically two rooms and you were required to switch to and from the Ultrareality to progress. And even when Fran didn’t have access to Duotine, the game maintained its core mechanic, an example being the season clock in Ithersta where there were FOUR variants of each area, one for each season. Not only did these mechanics add a sense of uniqueness to the game, they also made it all the more ominous, with screams echoing and macabre scenes appearing after Fran would take a Duotine pill.

Now I guess I’ll tackle the characters. I loved them! Well, except the ones I hate (looking at you Dr. Oswald and Aunt Grace). Fran, Mr. Midnight, and Itward are my particular favorites, and it’s so interesting that there’s a lot of allusions to Alice in Wonderland with these characters, Fran, Mr. Midnight, and Itward being Alice, the Cheshire Cat, and the Mad Hatter respectively. I even noticed some Wizard of Oz references in Ithersta, with Fran, Mr. Midnight, and the Great Wizard being well, Dorothy, Toto, and Oz, respectively. Even the overarching goal in Ithersta alluded to the Wizard of Oz. Fran wanted to go home, and in addition, she wanted to be human again (just like how the Tin Man, Cowardly Lion and Scarecrow were seeking human aspects).

Anyways, I’m getting off topic! Fran was such an adorable, yet at times creepy, character that somehow fit in to all this madness while at the same time was out of place (and I mean that in a good way). We get to know Fran on a personal level since we’re exposed to everything little quirky thing she says when you interact with something and we even get to control some of her actions (which I’m not really sure if they have a long-term impact). By the end of the game, I came to adore Fran and felt like I was on this journey right beside her, so much so that I related to her situation, her madness, sorrow and loneliness. Mr. Midnight was such an adorable kitty! I loved his proper personality, always being polite despite all the horrors going around. He was also your only companion throughout most of the game, the only consistent company Fran had on this adventure, and I don’t think Fran would’ve made it without him. I loved Itward when I immediately heard this theme! It fit him perfectly. And I loved how badly the game tried to make you think Itward was going to harm Fran, but he never did. He was one of her closest allies. I loved and really related to his eccentricity, and I really enjoyed his gentlemanly attitude. It was kinda surprising to learn that he came from the Fourth Reality, the reality of death, though I suppose death is not necessarily an evil idea. It is but natural. Now, I would write more about these characters, but this is already getting too long.

The music for this game, although simple, was phenomenal! It masterfully set the mood with each provoking an emotional response from me, a tinge of sadness, a sigh of relief and safety, a fearful and anxious squeal, and so on. The music really stuck with me, and I mean all of it, including the minigames’ music, which are actually pretty good in and of themselves. Like, I really don’t know what else to say here. The music was just fantastic, and each piece was memorable and some of them were just so damn peaceful that I could fall asleep to them. A++!

I guess one last thing before I end this monster of a post is something that I’m still struggling with to figure out. Was any of this real? Did any of it really happen? Was Itward real? Was Remor real? Is Mr. Midnight dead? Was this just all within the maddened mind of Fran? Was she laying in a bed in an asylum the entire time? Idk, and I like that I don’t know. I’m glad that the ending was really ambiguous as providing too many answers would’ve ruined the ominous feeling of the game. The game is based in supernatural worlds with supernatural elements so an ambiguous ending makes sense, as not everything can readily be explained. In addition, throughout the game, Fran is seeking the truth behind, well, a lot of stuff, though mainly why her parents were murdered, and despite a shocking reveal, it’s still unclear if that’s what really happened. There’s multiple stories and theories here, and that’s a part of the charm of the game. I guess we can’t stop seeking the truth, cause when we do stop...what’s the point of well, anything I guess?

In the end, I for one, would like to adventure through the Five Realities of Essential Existence and the Ultrareality, a macabre journey that I would fear and enjoy at the same time, a thrilling experience to remember for the rest of my life.

#fran bow #fran bow spoilers #long post #i'm sorry for posting this #you don't have to read it #i don't blame you #i just wanted to put this out there for whatever reason #and i know this game's been out for like 2 years so spoilers aren't really like spoilers #but i tagged it just to be safe #so yeah #there's a lot more i could talk about but this is already too long and i'm low on spoons #sooo yeaah #bye bye!

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alittlebitofpersonality · 5 years

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aLBoP is not MBTI

Hey, it’s Justin! So…this post has words in it. It’s written with words. I’m typing words right now, with the strange expectation that words can communicate thoughts and ideas. It’s odd, and it hasn’t seemed to work very well so far. Yet maybe, there’s a faint chance that typing a few more words might be able to communicate something to somebody.

A Little Bit of Personality is not Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. We say so right there in the intro video…and in lots of posts on here, posts with words. We started there, as we’ve said before, because we were just having fun and we, like so many, presumed that MBTI was a reliable, scientific system. Yet as we’ve said before, we gradually came to see more and more ways in which MBTI is inconsistent, in which it does not work, in which it encourages and even relies on stereotypes and superficial simplifications of people. And what was worse, we started to see that many, many people apparently wanted those stereotypes and simplifications.

We started to see how much “personality typing” was used as a petty weapon in infantile campaigns to put down anyone whose mind worked differently. We cringed more and more whenever we saw four-by-four grids that listed insultingly shallow sets of qualities for each of the sixteen types, and which portrayed some types as clearly better, smarter, more reliable, more successful, more creative, more visionary, more concrete, more compassionate, more practical, or simply of greater worth and value than the others. Personality typing had become a shallow and subjective mudfight through which people tried to compensate for their own unresolved personal insecurities by putting down others who made them feel inadequate. Apparently, there are a lot of second-graders online who are quite skilled at writing up passive-aggressive four-by-four grids.

So we went back to the beginning, because we knew there was so much good here! We, like so many of you guys, had gotten excited about personality typing for a reason. It was exciting to see how our minds worked, and how others’ minds did too. It was so cool to try to figure out the personality types of fictional characters, or of historical figures or celebrities we liked. But now that we had seen how personality typing had become such a putrid and subjective cesspool, we had to go back to the basics to figure out what was good and what was brain-damaging.

We’ve talked about this before, in several posts that use words. We’ve described how a clarification of basic definitions is one of the first indispensable steps in any effort to replace subjectivity with objectivity. We’ve talked about how we didn’t have to throw out the baby with the poisonous bathwater, and so we were able to use the brilliant original work done by Carl Jung and by Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers (all of whom died long before the internet), without the simplified dangers of modern MBTI. On aLBoP Phase 2, we go into far greater depth about our scientific process, how we were able to clarify definitions that made Cognitive Typing into a reliable and repeatable hard science, rather than a subjective and dubious soft-science. But all those posts use words, words that invite you guys to see “Hey wait, this is different. This isn’t what I thought I already knew.”

A Little Bit of Personality is part of a larger endeavor, which we call our “Twenty-Five Year Plan,” a plan to simply help make life better for as many people as we can. As I’m writing today, we’re a bit more than eleven years in, on the fourth of eight stages. This is all stuff that’s explained in depth on the full Phase 2 site. It’s really exciting to us, and though we did not initially expect to use Cognitive Typing or anything like it as a tool in this plan, aLBoP has become a powerful way for us to reach and help so many awesome people! Yet originally, we didn’t plan to have Phase 2 be a separate website; we were just going to put all the information right here on one site, for all the internet to see. We’re very glad now that we didn’t.

There is nothing secret on any of our sites, and all the information on all three of our sites (Phase 1 here, Phase 2 Intro, and full Phase 2) is all completely free of charge. But we realized that we had to separate our content into multiple sites when we saw the bizarre and aggressively cruel reactions of so many people to even the comparatively basic concepts of Cognitive Typing. I’m not referring to insightful and engaging questions; for instance, a lot of cool people have asked very good questions, like “How do you have a large enough sample size to make sure your conclusions are accurate?” “Why don’t you submit to scientific journals?” “What exactly is your experimental process?” etc. Those sorts of thoughtful questions are the sort of thing that we’ve had to save for the later websites, because we realized that even the introductory information here on Phase 1 seems to be far too much for some people to read. Too many words.

We wanted an engaging and active forum where we could talk back and forth with people, instead of only posting articles on a website, but it soon became clear that if we went ahead and put a forum here on Phase 1, open to the internet, then any potential discussion would be buried under arrogant assertions and bitter argument. In fact, when we started a forum on Phase 2, it was astonishing how rapidly that happened, how quickly it became a toxic atmosphere where thoughtful, intelligent people grew ever more wary to post anything. If we didn’t do something, our forum was going to become yet another place on the internet where the discourse was dominated by the bone-headedly obnoxious.

As I’m writing this, I have an online game open in the background, where one of my characters is happily crafting food for me. But I usually play most games with the general chat channels turned off, because while there are a lot of sweet and helpful people in a lot of games, the general chat channels tend to get dominated by the least common denominator. When we first started our Phase 2 forum, some people were convinced that it couldn’t possibly be any different from anywhere else on the internet, calling us naive for trying to create a place online where people could feel safe to freely share ideas, where the thoughtful majority didn’t have to remain silent or risk setting off the irrational blowhards. Yet now, on the full Phase 2 site, we have an awesome and active realtime chat forum where everyone feels safe to think, to work through problems, to discuss ideas, to share their lives and make precious friendships. I’m actually making them wait right now while I write this, but Calise and I thought that this little post was worth taking the time for. Yet that forum would have been impossible if we hadn’t first created a safe place insulated from the wild, aggressively-asserted opinions and jaw-dropping simplifications on the internet.

We wanted to put all of it on one website, and perhaps we could have, were it not for the apparent fact that the current culture of the internet trains us not to read. Trains us not to think. Not to stop and digest. Not to sit back and make sure we understand things before moving on. And it certainly seems to train people to post comments before, you know, reading. We wanted to do videos as well as posts, and we did make a few before moving them away to Phase 2. We wanted to do podcasts, which are a ton of fun but we only do them for Phase 2. This is not meant to be an advertisement for Phase 2 (especially because we are very, very, very behind on responding to Phase 2 invites, really sorry about that!), but rather a challenge to read what’s here on Phase 1. If people can’t do that, then how could they possibly read more anyway?

It’s gotten to the point that I wasn’t sure I should even take the time to write this, because I wondered who would read it? Not that we don’t have plenty of traffic, but I wondered how many people would do more than skim. One of our closest friends, whom we met through aLBoP, told us that when he first stumbled across Phase 1, it was a real shock to him because he had to slow down to really understand it all. He told us that he had grown accustomed to being able to skim most things online, that most articles were fairly simple ideas expressed in way too many words, so he’d gotten used to skimming. But with aLBoP, he had to seriously re-adjust his expectations; he had to take time and think about the content. Another of our friends, upon reading the first Super Simple Series post, said “That’s not simple at all!” We’ve done our best, heh, and we hope that it really is pretty simple and straightforward, but it is also new stuff, not just the same old familiar repetition, so it can’t be simply skimmed.

A couple weeks ago, someone walked up to me and declared that I was an INFP. I tried to be diplomatic and inviting, telling him that I’d be interested to hear what made him say so, and I asked what definitions of the letters he was using. He seemed confused and a bit bothered by the question, and said he was just using MBTI. I still don’t know what made him think that he could so confidently assert someone else’s type like that. Of course, on aLBoP we do quite confidently assert the Cognitive Types of both real and fictional people, but we can only do so as a result of using concrete, clear definitions that leave no subjective wiggle-room. There’s no uncertainty about whether someone is a Cognitive Introvert or Extravert; the definitions are very clear, they leave no room for fudging or gray areas, yet they are also not the same soft and elastic definitions of current MBTI. We have said so, over and over, using words. And yet we still get comments by people unilaterally asserting “Nope, you typed that character wrong,” based on definitions that we are not using, definitions we cannot use for reasons that we have explained repeatedly.

The problem is in the assertiveness, the astounding certainty with which people treat their own points of view as objective fact. There’s nothing wrong with asking questions, with re-examining and re-questioning over and over, with constantly re-checking and revisiting even the things that seem the most well established. Sometimes you might find a mistake, like the time on the Phase 2 Typing Library, when I accidentally put ESTP(ep) Usain Bolt on the library pages for two different Cognitive Types because his picture had somehow got copied over into the wrong folder. Just this morning, someone pointed out a typo where I had said “our” when I meant “or.” And we get so many sweet comments where people ask questions rather than assert opinions as fact. “Why did you type Gandalf as an F instead of a T?” shows a mind that wants to think, to understand, to hear feedback and decide whether or not it makes sense. Yet when someone flippantly comments “No, Gandalf is INTJ like me,” then that shows such a closed unwillingness to question or examine one’s own point of view. No wonder current politics are such a nasty echo-chamber.

So when people assertively tell us “I’m an ENTJ,” “I’m a Ne dom,” etc, it makes us wonder if they’ve really read much of anything before commenting. We do not use the simplistic “dom” system because it turned out to be tremendously subjective, with apparent “dominance” depending far too much on potentially cherry-picked factors that are all too easily used to weigh the result toward a preferred conclusion. As someone once said to us, and as we’ve quoted before, “Personality typing is just horoscopes for people who think they’re too smart for horoscopes.” In other words, it’s all subjective fluff that can be applied equally well to anyone, of any type, as long as people are eager to adolescently define themselves in a way that parodies the real work of finding oneself.

But then, as soon as we mention that, we get sincere comments telling us that astrology is real too. Perhaps it is, perhaps it is not; personally, I have seen many, many reasons to believe it is not accurate or reliable in any fashion, while I have not yet seen anything to suggest the contrary, so far. Yet I have to wonder: what makes someone feel equipped to say that astrology definitively does work, or does not? As soon as we start treating our own personal experiences as universal truths, as soon as we start treating our own opinions as objective facts, and as soon as we make the incredibly self-centered error of saying “I have no experience of such-and-such, therefore it’s crap,” then we shut off our ability to think, to learn, to approach anything in any sort of rational manner. That quote about personality typing being mere horoscopes in disguise, displays its own form of narrow and lazy thinking, by asserting that all “personality typing” is this way, painting life with such a broad brush. It’s this sort of simplistic thinking that leads to racism, sexism, or any other form of prejudice, that says “I’ve seen dumb religions, therefore all religions are dumb,” “I’ve known vile men, therefore all men are vile,” “I only hang around with dishonest people…and I am one myself…therefore nobody is honest,” etc. It’s a lazy and anecdotal simplification of the complexities of people’s lives, hearts, and hopes. It’s mean.

But just because the internet trains us to make everything simplistic and skimmable, just because the current online culture trains us to view our own personal opinions as objective fact, that doesn’t make it our fault. We can learn to see outside our own points of view. We can learn to recognize the powerful lenses of emotion, pain, and desire which skew and distort how we see every experience that happens to us. We can explore just how not objective we are, and then learn to grow past that subjective isolation.

This is why Calise and I have had to de-prioritize Phase 1 for a long time, though. We’ve been working feverishly, constantly, but most of it has not been here on Phase 1. We did put eight months of work into The People of Stranger Things post, we put so much thought and feeling into it, so much care and planning, for a total of more than fifty thousand words. There’s a lot of great stuff in there, but it has produced hardly any results. How can we justify prioritizing the addition of more information here on Phase 1, when people repeatedly show us how little they’ve read of what we’ve already written?

We love our Personalized Typing service, we love seeing people’s faces and hearing about their lives, we love connecting with them, and it’s a great way to find thoughtful, good, decent people. And yet, over and over, it’s an uphill battle to remind people who order typings that we are not MBTI, that we do not use those definitions, as we’ve said so many times in so many posts. Whenever we send out a typing, we always caution people that if they look up their Cognitive Type online, then they are going to find things that are very different, and likely demeaning and limiting. And yet we still get replies of people saying “No I can’t be this type, because here’s what MBTI says about it, and that’s not me.” The Cognitive Orientation Guidebooks, which we package with each typing, spend a fair amount of time explaining and reiterating precisely how each Cognitive Type is different from the popular stereotypes. We really hoped words would get that across.

Yet we know what the internet culture is like, and we know that sometimes we all need to be reminded that it’s okay to slow down and process thoughts instead of living life through reactions. Sometimes I find it intriguing to hop between news networks as they cover the same story, to see how differently each network portrays the very same events. Which bits of video do they show, which do they edit out, and which do they repeat endlessly? Which adjectives and adverbs do they use, to influence viewers’ conclusions? What information do they focus on, what information do they downplay, and what information do they conveniently fail to mention entirely? Like the proverbial blind men and the elephant, the same event and the same data can be interpreted in wildly different ways even when people have the most honest of intentions. So when people are less honest, when people have an agenda, a worldview, an ideology or attitude that they want to push, how much more careful do we have to be before we draw any sort of confident conclusions?

It’s our hope that, by taking a few hours away from other work to write this, maybe this might help nudge aLBoP Phase 1 toward being a site where we can post more information, more Type Heroes, more character spotlights, and just more fun articles. I’ve been wanting to do an article about Winston Churchill for years now, titled “How an ENFP Saved the World,” because he really did, and yes he was unequivocally an ENFP(ip), but how can I justify taking the time to write that, time I could be giving to other people, when so many readers here on Phase 1 won’t, well, read? I worry that so many internet skimmers wouldn’t get past the title before firing off comments authoritatively declaring “He wasn’t ENFP!! He was [roll the dice and insert any number of different types here]!” We owe Gwen and Phil 20 bucks, since someone did indeed leave a comment (one of the many that we decided to leave unapproved) assertively stating that, because Lord Shen has a grand vision, he is therefore INTJ. Wow. So that’s how we’re defining these complex variables of human thought and desire, now? And so none of the other fifteen Cognitive approaches to life can have a grand vision? Seriously? Sorry Elon Musk, no ENFJ(ij) for you, you gotta be INTJ I guess. The all-knowing internet decrees it thus.

We really hoped, and I still do hope, that by bringing the subject of Subtypes here to Phase 1, it would be a quick way to immediately show people “Hey look, see those two little letters in parentheses? Then maybe, just perhaps, this is something a little bit different from what you’re already used to.” We hoped that would help the Personalized Typing service more easily show people “Hey this isn’t just MBTI, see? We’re giving you six letters, not just four.” There are actually more than six letters, more than eight; it seems to be a magnificently reiterating fractal of complexity, with each new layer of sub-typing adding ever more clearly definable nuance to the intricacy of consciousness, but we figured that the basic idea of Subtypes was plenty enough for Phase 1 right now. I worry that even by dangling that little hint of more information, it might lead people to leap to conclusions and simplifications. Fair enough, but I also hope that this can encourage more of you to read a little more carefully, to ponder a little more than you already do, to consider, to question, to dig deep, to see outside your own point of view and become a voice for understanding instead of adding to the cacophonous chorus of cartoony, rigid simplifications.

TL;DR: aLBoP is not MBTI. But more accurately, if you really want a “Too Long, Didn’t Read,” then why are you even here? There are plenty of skimmable websites that will be more than happy to let you simplify people into shallow little subjective boxes. This is not a blog, though it did start as one over on blogspot, but pretty quickly we realized how much aLBoP could help us find and help cool people, honest and thoughtful people, people who are willing to expend the labor of time and energy to earn what they learn. That’s the sort of person we love to meet. That’s the kind of person we love to learn from, exchange ideas with, and see how we can help them add to the world in their own way, in their own life. That’s what we’re all about.

The post aLBoP is not MBTI appeared first on A Little Bit of Personality.

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#ALL Types #Q&A #The Essentials #aLBoP Personality Tips #By Justin

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213hiphopworldnews · 5 years

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All The Best Rap Albums Of April 2019

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There were a slew of releases in April, from big names like Anderson Paak and Schoolboy Q to up-and-comers like Kevin Abstract, Supa BWE, Pivot Gang and Rico Nasty, who all dropped projects that will help further their cause and expand their already burgeoning fanbases. Hip-hop’s bold dynamism is on display with this list. These ten acts released projects that span the gamut of sonic possibilty, from the genre-fusing of Anderson Paak, Supa BWE and Abdu Ali to Schoolboy Q and Rico Nasty’s unabashed turn up vibes, and finally, the varied introspection and storytelling of Kevin Abstract and Your Old Droog:

Anderson Paak, Ventura

Anderson Paak’s Ventura is a testament to coming back strong. After some mixed reaction to his Dr. Dre-backed Oxnard album, Paak double-backed months later with Ventura a lush, thoughtful companion project that’s been more widely received for good reason. If you know Paak, you know that Ventura isn’t a purely bars and beats album like some of the list’s other selections, but the rap highs of the eclectic artist’s project will be some of the year’s brightest moments.

He got Andre 3000 in grown man mode on the impeccable “Come Home,” J. Cole longing to reconnect with an old flame on “Trippy”, and even has Pusha T reflecting on the split from his brother No Malice on the trap and instrumentation-fusing “Brother’s Keeper.” The album’s smooth production and Paak’s sharp songwriting (“If Jesus would’ve had a better lawyer would he have to see the cross?” on “Brother’s Keeper”) was an ideal canvas for a who’s who of the rap game to costar with Paak.

Schoolboy Q, CrasH Talk

After having fans waiting for over since his last album, Schoolboy Q came back with CrasH Talk, an album that placates his fanbase with a little bit of everything. There’s the turn-up fodder like single “Numb Numb Juice,” “5200,” and the Travis Scott-featuring “Chopstix.” He delves into the effects of different highs on “Floating” and explores his closest foray to sociopolitical commentary on “Black Folk,” where the generally debaucherous MC reflects on overcoming adversity and why so many of his brethren of color can’t do the same.

The one knock on the album is that he could have given a little bit more of him — in multiple manners. He told Hot 97 about how he took verses off multiple tracks, and several of the guest appearances don’t justify him not simply doing another verse. The album shines the best when Schoolboy’s considerable charisma takes center stage on solo songs like “Crash,” where he leans into his role as a young OG with game for the youth and the summation that he “sold my soul to my feelings.” The transaction is apparently paying off, as CrasH Talk is a solid offering.

Rico Nasty & Kenny Beats, Anger Management

Another month, another fire Kenny Beats-produced album. After releasing Bad Influence in February with Q Da Fool, Kenny is back with another DMV artist in fan-favorite Rico Nasty. Rico’s followup is another headrush of a project that shows why she’s quickly growing a cult fanbase. She sticks to her formula for the bulk of the nine-track project, rhyming with a myriad of flows and her typically emphatic delivery. Highlights include the raunchy “Big Titties” with Baauer and Earthgang, the ruckus “Cold,” where she rages over an industrial dystopia of percussion that Kenny laid for her.

Kevin Abstract, Arizona Baby

Kevin Abstract’s Arizona Baby project was brilliantly rolled out in three parts, presumably because the Brockhampton artist wanted his coming-of-age project to be fully digested. The innovative strategy (and Wednesday release) worked, as both the Arizona Baby and Ghettobaby EPs work both in their own right and as pieces of the full, introspective project. The autobiographical album tackles themes like depression, personal liberation, and learning self-love in a bigoted environment like his native Corpus Christi, Texas.

He uses his life as the canvas for most of the densely-produced project which he co-produced with other Brockhampton members. “Use Me” explores the hypocritical homophobia of Christianity he’s experienced. “Mississippi” is a portrait of dysfunction and self-medication, where he poignantly scribes, “you gon’ find out that I’m not myself / in this winehouse, all my dawgs need some help.” Thankfully for Kevin, he’s able to reckon with the trauma and he’s faced through powerful art such as Arizona Baby.

03 Greedo & DJ Mustard, Still Summer In The Projects

Nothing is going to stop the prolific 03 Greedo from dropping music. He may currently be incarcerated on a sentence that could be ending much sooner than initially thought, but he’s feeding the streets regardless of his physical status. His latest project is a collaboration with DJ Mustard, where the superproducer affirms that his synergy with LA gangsta rappers doesn’t stop with YG. The project runs the gamut of LA vibes, from the syrupy “Twisting The Lens” and pleasantly menacing “Bet I Walk” to the smooth “Traphouse,” where Rob Vicious of Shoreline Mafia rhymes, “I can’t even trust you, gotta f*ck you with my MAC out.”

Such paranoia is par for the course on a Greedo project, as are unforgettable vocal melodies and the recollections of “Visions,” the album closer. The confessional track is a bittersweet sendoff, as it demonstrates the immense talent, but leaves the listener wondering when he’ll be free to display it again.

Supa BWE, Just Say Thank You

Even if you’re not as familiar with Supa BWE, you are through the sphere of the young, genre-bending artists who’ve “borrowed” his flows and melodies over the past couple years. But the Chicago artist is making a claim for his own glo up with the slyly-titled Just Say Thank You. The seven-track EP is a varied display of Supa’s musical gifts, from the Chance The Rapper-featuring “Rememory” to the fury of “PROBLEM/FUEL” and despondency on “I Hate You.” Supa BWE is no mere upcoming artist, he’s the refined progenitor of a lot of young artist’s styles and Just Say Thank You will help him get his due in 2019.

Pivot Gang, You Can’t Sit With Us

Saba kicked his foot in the door of the rap game with brilliant Care For Me, and now he’s making way for his team with on You Can’t Sit With Us, the debut studio album from the Chicago-based Pivot Gang. The 13-track album is an introduction to the lesser-known collective members like Saba’s brother Joseph Chilliams, their cousin John Walt and artists like MFn Melo, daedaePIVOT, Daoud, Frsh Waters, and SqueakPIVOT. There’s no grand mission statement to the project besides the one that many listeners will make after finishing: Damn, these boys can rap. The free-flowing project shows Pivot Gang engaged in a range of lyrical exercises, having fun with newfound fame and inviting some known names to the party such as Smino on “Bad Boys,” Jean Deaux on “Edward Scissorhands,” and Mick Jenkins on “No Vest.”

Erick Sermon, Vernia

Hip-hop icon Erick Sermon’s Vernia demonstrates that genius knows no age in hip-hop. He got with a who’s who of spitters from yesterday and today on the 13-track album, which shows that his considerable, arguably underrated production prowess is still in full effect. The album is dominated by posse cuts, with a bevy of carefully curated collaborations such as the funky “That Girl” with Big Krit and Ricco Barrino, the soulful “Tha Game” with AZ and Styles P and “My Style,” where N.O.R.E. and Raekwon drop bars over the green-eyed bandit’s slick chops. Sermon sprinkles his own verses throughout the album but was wise to enlist the help of a slew of talented lyricists to take most of the load.

Your Old Droog, It Wasn’t Even Close

It Wasn't Even Close by Your Old Droog

Your Old Droog dropped off It Wasn’t Even Close as a surprise album a couple of weeks ago. Droog’s fourth album shows him locked in lyrically, making no bones about his desire to master a brand of traditionalist rap that makes listeners nostalgic for the ‘90s golden era and five mic The Source reviews. He does just that on tracks like “The Cheese/Under The Train (Transporting),” where he artfully serves cheese references while recalling his coming of age in Brooklyn. Droog’s beat selection keeps the album fresh, with soulful, searing tracks like “RST” featuring DOOM and Mach Hommy and “Chasing Ghosts,” a track that channels the vibe of a mystery TV show theme.

Abdu Mongo Ali, FIYAH

FIYAH!!! by Abdu Ali

Baltimore artist Abdu Ali has said that he wanted his FIYAH album to “embrace all of the facets of my identity but not let those paradigms build chains around my artistic vision.” It’s an incisive perspective that they were able to execute on the versatile album. Ali fused elements of electronic, hip-hop, free jazz and soul into surging, such as the apprehensive “Spiraling,” the defiant “No, I Ain’t Doin That,” and “Chastity,” where Ali surmises “way back I wanted to be clean, but now I see being dirty is the way to be,” especially in a judgemental society looking for a way to label people dirty anyway. Ali’s latest effort is a strong example of artistry that’s manifested through an exploration of identity, but not popped up by it.

source https://uproxx.com/hiphop/best-rap-albums-april-2019/

#hiphop #hip hop legend #hip hop history #hip hop #music #trending #hip hop news #ballin #hip hop scen

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randomrichards · 5 years

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OSCAR 2019 PREDICTIONS: BEST PICTURE

· BLACK PANTHER

We begin with the first Superhero movie to be nominated in this category.

After the death of his father, T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) takes his place as King of Wakanda, a fictional African Country that keeps its futuristic technology under wraps from the outside world. It means wearing the mask of Black Panther, a superhero with extra strength and agility. But he finds his throne threatened when Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) arrives to avenge his father (Sterling K. Brown) and make them answer for their isolationist policies. Now T’Challa will have to confront the sins of his father and question his preconceived worldviews to maintain his place as king.

When it comes to appeal, I notice similarities between this movie and the original Star Trek. Like Star Trek, this film offers an optimistic view of humanity where people are reaching their full potential, making gadgets for the benefit of others. Of course, what sells them is how unique and detailed their worlds are. Wakanda is a paradise where people hold on to their culture and traditions while creating the most advanced technology. They both offer a variety of memorable characters, with Black Panther’s world including T’Challa’s snarky young tech whiz sister Shuri (Letita Wright), his stern head guard Okoye (Danai Gurira) and larger-than-life villain Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis).

But like Star Trek, many people are turned off by Black Panther’s delivery. Many couldn’t get into the slow pacing of both franchises, finding them boring.[1] Many also found T’Challa to be too passive a protagonist; lacking a central motivation to drive the story, even those who found him engaging in Captain America: Civil War. There are some who would argue Killmonger was more of a protagonist since he has a clear goal and sets everything in motion. Both Star Trek and Black Panther have been criticized for their lackluster fight scenes and special effects. The fight scenes in Black Panther are certainly a huge set back. The camera is almost always too close and the film edits way too quickly. It looks way different from how director Ryan Coogler shot the boxing scenes in Creed. For that, you have Marvel Studios to blame for their overbearing control over their films and fear of risks. It’s kind of prevents this film from reaching its full potential.

What really annoyed me was the obvious death fake out. It’s a cliché that everyone can figure out and it needs to die.

It’s all in whether you can take the good or the bad.

· BLACKKKLANSMAN

Based on the true story of the first black cop of Colorado Springs.

After finding an ad in the paper, Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) calls them under the disguise of a disgruntled racist. To pull this off, he has fellow cop Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) pass himself off as him to get into the Klan. When the clan plots a bombing, Ron and Flip must race against time to stop them.

From the opening scene of Kennebrew Beauregard flubbing his way through a racist rant, Spike Lee takes a comedic approach to the Klan. When the cops struggle to hold their laughter when Ron calls Klan leader David Duke (Topher Grace), you can’t help but take giddy pleasure in it. Plus, seeing Duke try to act tough in front of Stallworth (not realizing he’s the one whose been calling him) looks silly. But as the film progresses, Lee reminds us that these people are very dangerous people. No one embodies this more than Felix (Jasper Paakkonen), a paranoid, hostile lunatic. Plus, not every Klan member fits the inbred redneck stereotype associated with the Klan, remind us that they could be anyone, even members of the Defense Force. Plus, they have been making a recent comeback as indicated in the final scenes.

Through Ron, Spike Lee takes on the perspective of a black man reforming the system from the inside. Throughout the film, Ron encounters people who challenges him. Student activist Patrice (Laura Harrier) sees the police force as an unfixable racist system. He’s expected to put up with the very racist cop Landers (Frederick Weller). When Ron claims “America will never elect a racist like David Duke” a white cop counters with “Coming from a black man’ that’s incredibly naïve. Wake up.”[2]

I want to conclude with a powerful scene. At a student rally, speaker Jerome Turner (civil rights activist and singer Harry Belafonte) discusses how black men were brutally murdered in lynching after the premiere of Birth of a Nation a 1914 silent film that glorified the KKK while portraying black people in the most vicious stereotypes. Cut to the Klan watching the film with sadistic glee. You could imagine them celebrating a lynching like the fourth of July.

· BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY

This biopic looks at the life of Freddy Mercury, lead singer of Queen and one of the most charismatic front-men in Rock History.

I’m just going to say it; I hate this movie. A lot. It feels more like a smear campaign than a tribute. It seems to do everything it can to sully the reputation of Mercury, who’s not alive to tell his side of the story. It also embodies everything wrong with biopics.

First, the film tries so hard to fit every event of Queen’s career, but never gives any of the scenes time to develop them. They seemed more focused on fitting Queen songs than telling a good story. If that wasn’t enough, they also try to fit in every cliché found in music biopics. Disapproving parents? Check. Naysayer record executive? Check. Descent into drug addiction? Check. Singer cleaning himself up while learning humility in time to get the band back together for their most memorable concert? Check, Check and Check! This just comes off as lazy.

But what makes this so egregious is the level in which they twist the facts to fit into these clichés. While I get that screenwriters must tweak a person’s life to form a coherent story, but this one is just abusive. Nowhere is this truer than when the band get indignant about Freddy Mercury creating a solo album, accusing him of “killing Queen.” Considering that two of the members already made solo albums before Freddy did, you can’t help but get angry at the hypocrisy. Then they claim this broke up the band, when in real life they only took a break because they were burnt out. But none is worst then when they used Freddy Mercury’s AIDS diagnosis as a motivational tool to bring the band back together[3] in time for Live Aid. What makes this sick is that Freddy wasn’t diagnosed until two years after this concert. How the writers think all this lying is ok baffles my mind.

And then you remember this film got approval from two of Queen’s band members. No wonder, they’re practically portrayed as saints who arrive to work on time, leave parties early to be with their families and never do anything wrong. Meanwhile, Freddy’s character is dragged in the mud, portrayed as an unprofessional, narcissistic junkie. I don’t know what axe the band members they had to grind, but they must be petty to think this is how you treat your friend. Contrast that with Straight Outta Compton, which treated Easy-E with great respect, even with his misguided loyalty to his manager.

I pity the wasted talent of Malek, who gave a much better performance than this film deserved. This film leaves a bad taste in my mouth

· THE FAVOURITE

Welcome to 18th Century England, where the kingdom is led by Queen Anne (Olivia Colman), a fussy brat trapped in a frail woman’s body. And she’s being led by Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz), a proper lady who assists her with political decisions...and sexual pleasures. But then comes Abigail, a former lady forced into servitude after her father loses everything. But after healing the Queen’s infected leg, Abigail rises in the ranks, charming the Queen along the way. Thus, begins a battle of will for the favour of the queen. This battle catches the eye nobleman Harley, who seeks Abigail’s help so he can stop the war with France.

Alongside Christopher Nolan, Yorgos Lanthimos is the closest we are going to get to Kubrick. While Nolan’s influences lean toward 2001: A Space Odyssey, Lanthimos clearly draws from Barry Lyndon for this film. Like Kubrick, he presents a cold, distant presences in his films, from the cinematography to the low-key acting. It works for this film with every character maintaining a prim and proper demeanor while hiding their nefarious purposes.

Like Kubrick, Lanthimos has a dark sense of humour that exposes the absurdity of appearances. Throughout the film, we see noblemen and women misbehaving behind clothes door. But the biggest laugh come from the Queen herself. Colman must have been having a blast in this role as she throws one temper tantrums.

Like Kubrick, this director isn’t for everyone.

· GREEN BOOK

Inspired by a true story.

When the nightclub he works in closes for renovations, Bouncer Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen) has three ways to earn a living; win multiple eating contests, work for the mob or drive pianist Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) across the Deep South for a music tour. He goes for the third choice. At first the two can’t get along, with Don not matching Tony’s preconceptions of black people and Don wishing Tony would try to act classier. But as Tony sees the shit Don must put up with, they come to form a friendship.

It still surprises me that this film was directed by the co-creator of Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary. But when you think about it, Peter Farrelly is the perfect director for this movie. Some of his films are road movies. If you look past the gross out jokes of his previous films, the biggest laughs come from the interactions between actors. Mortensen and Ali bounce off each other, creating believable interactions both funny and emotional.

It’s worth noting that after Mary, Peter and his brother Bobby tried to use their comedy style to create a more sensitive portrayals of marginalized groups, whether it’s the overweight (Shallow Hal) or conjoined twins (Stuck on You). The problem was they still making fat/disability jokes in between these sentimental moments; trying to have their cake and eat it too. It seems Peter has learned his lesson and turned his target on the type of people who would make fun of those who would make fun of these people. The film goes after Tony’s casual racism as he makes preconceived notions of Don, who serves as the straight man who corrects Tony. The film also takes some jabs at the so-called southern gentleman, exposing their phoniness when one host tries to pronounce Tony’s real name.

But if you take out the two actors, the film isn’t really anything special. It’s essentially Driving Ms. Daisy with the races reversed. You’ll enjoy the interactions, but it’s not as interesting as the other nominees.

· ROMA

Alfonso Cuaron draws from his persona life to pay tribute to the maid who cared for his family.

Set in 1970s Mexico City, indigenous housekeeper Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) cleans the house for Dr. Antonio (Fernando Grediaga), his wife Sofia (Marina de Tavira) and their four children Tono, Paco, Pepe, Sofi. She has practically become a member of the family. Their bond is tested when Cleo becomes pregnant and ends up abandoned by her martial arts loving boyfriend Fermin (Jorge Antonio Guerrero).

Slice of life stories must be one of the hardest type of stories to write. There’s no central goals or major conflict running that move the plot forward. There are little conflicts, but it’s just people going on their daily lives. Not only does a filmmaker face the challenge of making it look realistic, but to keep the audience engaged for two hours. Against these odds, Cuaron creates a beautiful portrait of family.

What helps is the actor’s performances. For her first role, Aparicio engages you with her sensitivity even when she’s just hanging clothes. The other actors match her every step of the way, feeling like a real family on screen.

But what truly sells the film is the beautiful black and white cinematography. Never has ordinary life looked so beautiful.

With these and Cuaron’s directing, the mundane becomes unforgettable. You remember the scene of Antonio trying to maneuver his car into the very tight garage. You remember Cleo and her friend running across Mexico City. You remember Cleo and Sofie’s mother picking out a crib. Little moments like these stay with you after you’ve finished watching it.

· A STAR IS BORN

Jackson Maine (Bradley Cooper) is a country superstar struggling with alcoholism and the effects of tinnitus. Ally (Lady Gaga) is a wannabee songwriter rejected by many record labels for her appearance. One night, Jackson was looking for a place to drink when he stumbles upon Ally singing at a drag bar. After spending a night together, Jackson finds his passion for music rekindled as he helps her musical potential. So as her star rises, Ally finds herself unable to stop Jackson’s downward spiral until it gets to the point where it hurts her career.

Cooper shows a lot of potential in his directorial debut. This being the third remake of the classic 1937 film, he makes the old story feel refreshing and new. First, he uses Ally’s rise to fame to examine the shallow world of modern pop. Ally struggles to maintain her sense of self as a record producer (Rafi Gavron) tries to make her in the image of a pop star.[4] All the time, Jackson keeps reminding her to always have something to say.

Then he makes Jackson a complicated character. A former act, you could imagine Cooper exercising his demons through his character. Never once does he back away from the ugliness of Jacksons addiction, leading to a cringe inducing scene where he humiliates himself at the Oscars. But you come to understand this stems from a troubled relationship with his late father. Plus, he always pushes Ally to do better.

Cooper gets a lot of great performances out of this. He and Gaga have excellent chemistry, making the love between Jackson and Ally feel genuine. A lot of comedians give excellent dramatic performances including Dave Chappelle as Jackson’s friend Noodles and Andrew Dice Clay getting his second wind as Ally’s unfiltered yet supportive father. But the key standout is Sam Elliott as Jackson’s older brother/manager Bobby. In a powerful scene, Bobby berates his brother for idolizing their deadbeat father while never showing him any appreciation for his help.

On second viewing, I noticed the visual style. The colour red shines in moments of passion, starting with Jackson and Ally’s first date. The one little moment where Cooper’s storytelling skills shine is when Jackson makes a ring for her. When he puts it on her finger, all the sound fades out, with only a piano tune heard.

If he can keep this up, he is sure to become an extraordinary director.

· VICE

Adam McKay seems determined to reinvent the biopic. With the rise of Vice President Dick Cheney (Christian Bale), he decided to experiment with storytelling. First, he has the story told by some middle-class family man (Jesse Plemons), not revealing his identity until late in the film. He uses the narrator to explain how certain aspects of politics work and the consequences Cheney’s politics have on America. Throughout the film, he undercuts the film with skits here and there. There some funny moments like one scene where the film demonstrates Cheney’s power of persuasion with him suggesting to fellow politicians to tie bows to their dicks and flap them around the white house. Other times, they fall flat, especially the post credit sequence. It feels like he was throwing everything at the wall and not even wait to see what sticks.

It doesn’t help that he’s still trying to make a straight forward biopic. Another example of trying to have your cake and eat it too. It results in an uneven, unfocused tone.

What I find interesting about the film is how we watch Cheney progress. At first, he is an alcoholic electrician who blew his chances at Yale. At first, you’re sympathetic to him as his wife forces him to clean himself up. As he goes into politics, he becomes intriguing as he finds himself comfortable as second in command to Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carell). But when you see his policies and their consequences, your sympathy wanes. Then he grows more and more repulsive, even throwing his daughter Mary (Alison Pill) under the bus so his other daughter Liz (Lily Rabe) can win a Congressional position. You can’t help but feel anger at his actions, especially with the lack of remorse he has for his actions.

Who Will Win?

It’s a one on one between Green Book and Roma. The safe bet seems to be Green Book, but many want Roma to win.

[1] Personally, I thought the lack of motivation in the first hour was necessary for us to understand the traditions T’Challa and his family holds so dear.

[2] While this is a clear shot at Trump, this may as well be referencing Nixon, who stated he started the Drug War because “I couldn’t arrest people for being black.”

[3] Also, does anyone notice the band members never age even though this takes place over a decade?

[4] It’s kind of ironic for Ally to be resistant to flashy gimmicks when Lady Gaga is well known for her over the top costume designs.

#2019 academy awards #academy awards #academy award nominee #best picture #black panther #blackkklansman #bohemian rhapsody #the favourite #green book #roma #a star is born #vice

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leehaws · 5 years

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Kawhi Leonard’s Handle is the Secret to his Success

Kawhi Leonard is 27 years old, enjoying the prime of a career that’s already turned him into the most complete basketball player in the world. He can score efficiently at all three levels, shoot, rebound, create for teammates, and, without help, defend just about every player in the league.

But when Phil Handy—an assistant coach for the Toronto Raptors who specializes in skill development and has worked closely with LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and Kyrie Irving, among many others—met Leonard over the summer and asked what part of his game he most wanted to improve, the two-time Defensive Player of the Year had ball-handling at the top of his list.

“Great players are great players, and I think they become even better players when they’re willing to get out of their comfort zone and just work on different things,” Handy told VICE Sports. “Kawhi was already a good ball-handler. I just think a lot of people didn’t really get to see that part of his game. It was there.”

They started with simple combinations and focused on improving his balance, base, and footwork, then blended in additional moves with multiple variations. Repetition was key. The objective wasn’t necessarily to teach Leonard new ways to transport himself from Point A to Point B on a basketball court so much as it was to plow what he already knew even deeper into his psyche. Now, when Leonard does something with the ball, his reflexes kick in before his brain has time to process what’s going on.

“Sometimes the dribbling exercises you put guys through, it may not be something they actually use on the floor but it gives transference. Their instincts become better,” Handy said. “They just instinctually start to go from one handle to another to another when they’re in different situations in games.”

He’s availing himself with a broader palette. Here’s Leonard getting hounded by Minnesota Timberwolves rookie Josh Okogie. When he goes between his legs and Okogie reaches in for the steal, Leonard spins baseline fast enough to convince viewers the move was directed by a choreographer.

The result of Leonard’s hard work during the offseason is clear every night. After a lost year in which he only appeared in nine games, Leonard has not only re-inserted himself into MVP and “best player alive” debates, but has also emerged in his first year with the Raptors as arguably the best ball-handler at his position. Plays like the one seen below are already typical.

On the San Antonio Spurs, Leonard’s handle felt like a pencil sketch of the Mona Lisa. Greatness was imminent, but operating in place of flair and spectacle was a robotic efficiency that never really needed to evolve. Every dribble inside Gregg Popovich’s system was a wasted opportunity to pass or shoot, and who was to argue with that calculus? His straight line drives regularly led to tomahawk dunks. The Spurs were a juggernaut. That doesn’t mean Leonard was stagnant, though. He itched to journey past the fundamentals which had already been mastered. There was strobe-light training and a demand to create more than separation for his own shot, particularly in the playoffs, as Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, and Manu Ginobili aged out of their responsibilities.

“He always was able to get to his spots, but now he is so comfortable anywhere,” Jamal Crawford told VICE Sports. “His handle is to the point where he does things to hop into shots, along with getting to the rim, along with using it to get his space in the mid-range.”

Today, Leonard’s ball-handling is an ideal marriage between style and substance; it’s grown from garnish to bedrock. There’s more fluidity and jazz at a higher volume. His dribbles per touch are at a career high, and shots attempted after at least three dribbles account for over 57.2 percent of his own offense. (Two seasons ago that was 42 percent, and one before that it was 37.1 percent.) Leonard is also averaging 5.3 more drives per game than he did three years ago, and 1.5 more than his last healthy season with the Spurs. (So far, only 36 percent of Leonard’s shots have been assisted. His previous career low was 48 percent, and in his third year that number was all the way up at 59 percent.)

“San Antonio did a phenomenal job developing Kawhi and helping him become a better player. I just think it was a different system.” Handy said. “The flow of our offense puts him in different situations where he’s able to expand a little bit more.”

The hard work is paying off, but a change of scenery hasn’t hurt. When I asked why he’s been able to showcase his ball-handling a bit more this season than in year’s past, Leonard acknowledged Toronto’s system and how he’s being utilized: “It’s pretty much just the offense that we’re running. I’m just able to come off pin downs and there’s a lot of cross screens and dribble hand-offs. Nick’s just doing a good job of spacing out the floor.”

Where lineups earlier in his career rarely prioritized offensive gravity over defensive intimidation, Leonard now operates with four three-point shooters by his side (including Pascal Siakam, who’s making a relatively impressive 34.6 percent of his threes right now), in an era designed for stars to take advantage of extra room. When he receives a pick high above the three-point line, Leonard skis downhill and sticks the screener’s defender on an island. It’s impossible to guard, but switching isn’t much of an alternative.

“We knew he could score in and out and off screens and all those kind of things. Play in transition some. And now we’re kind of getting him more in the screen-and-roll game, so he’s learning. And I think he’s starting to see things a little bit better too. He’s finding some kick-outs and passes out of there, and those guys are gonna need to step in and make them,” Raptors head coach Nick Nurse said. “So he can do everything, right? He can do everything, and we’ll just keep progressing with keeping it in his hands in all situations.”

Sit 15 feet away when he warms up at the free-throw line, as I did before a recent Raptors game, and it’s impossible to ignore just how small everything looks in his hands—if the basketball is Earth’s surface, Leonard’s hands are its oceans. At the NBA combine in 2011, his hands were 11.25 inches wide—which is wider than every player measured at the last four combines—and served as exclamation points at the tip of his 7’3” wingspan. They’ve always been his closest friends, around to help deflect passes and tally unreachable steals, sky for a rebound or finish a contested layup. And now more than ever, it’s hard to negate their usefulness when he handles the ball, too.

“Kawhi is really long, so my tendency when I’m working with guys that are long is to help them tighten their handle,” Handy said. “It makes sense biomechanically with your body, if you’re sitting in a wider stance it’s going to help you keep your length in.”

Leonard has more control over his entire body than the average person does over their big toe. Merge that discipline with unparalleled physical dimensions that directly impact his ability to manipulate a basketball, and what you get is a unique handle that defenses can’t really stop. He’s even more compact and under control than he used to be, which, when talking about someone who already takes care of the ball better than any star in the league, is really saying something. It allows him to alter tempos whenever/wherever he wants.

“He doesn’t play at a breakneck speed, but when he changes speeds he’s fast,” Handy said. “He just kind of puts you to sleep with the way he plays, and then boom. He’s really deceptive like that.”

The first time I re-watched this video, I thought the fourth dribble was a glitch; I’m still not 100 percent positive the ball physically travels went between his legs:

Already one of world’s best players, Leonard’s growth in this specific area has elevated his ceiling and made it even less possible to slow him down. Try and trap him and he’ll turn the corner, draw two defenders and still create enough space for a baseline fadeaway. Leonard regularly rips the ball off the rim and goes coast-to-coast, swiveling through defenders with an in-and-out move that’s executed to perfection at top speed. His between-the-legs crossover is lightning and his one, two, three-dribble pull-ups are virtually unguardable. Leonard’s handle isn’t the entree of his skill-set, but it complements everything else that makes him a franchise-altering talent. And just like every other gem who thrives in the same rarefied tier, the best is yet to come.

“I don’t care who you are, Kyrie, Steve Nash, Chris Paul. I don’t think you ever get to a point in your career where you say ‘OK, that’s enough with my ball-handling,’” Handy said. “You always have to constantly continue to get the rhythm of the basketball, and keep your handles tight, so wherever you are on the floor there’s any combination of dribbles you can use.”

Kawhi Leonard’s Handle is the Secret to his Success syndicated from https://justinbetreviews.wordpress.com/

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flauntpage · 5 years

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Kawhi Leonard's Handle is the Secret to his Success

He's availing himself with a broader palette. Here’s Leonard getting hounded by Minnesota Timberwolves rookie Josh Okogie. When he goes between his legs and Okogie reaches in for the steal, Leonard spins baseline fast enough to convince viewers the move was directed by a choreographer.

The result of Leonard's hard work during the offseason is clear every night. After a lost year in which he only appeared in nine games, Leonard has not only re-inserted himself into MVP and “best player alive” debates, but has also emerged in his first year with the Raptors as arguably the best ball-handler at his position. Plays like the one seen below are already typical.

Today, Leonard’s ball-handling is an ideal marriage between style and substance; it’s grown from garnish to bedrock. There's more fluidity and jazz at a higher volume. His dribbles per touch are at a career high, and shots attempted after at least three dribbles account for over 57.2 percent of his own offense. (Two seasons ago that was 42 percent, and one before that it was 37.1 percent.) Leonard is also averaging 5.3 more drives per game than he did three years ago, and 1.5 more than his last healthy season with the Spurs. (So far, only 36 percent of Leonard’s shots have been assisted. His previous career low was 48 percent, and in his third year that number was all the way up at 59 percent.)

"San Antonio did a phenomenal job developing Kawhi and helping him become a better player. I just think it was a different system." Handy said. "The flow of our offense puts him in different situations where he’s able to expand a little bit more."

Where lineups earlier in his career rarely prioritized offensive gravity over defensive intimidation, Leonard now operates with four three-point shooters by his side (including Pascal Siakam, who's making a relatively impressive 34.6 percent of his threes right now), in an era designed for stars to take advantage of extra room. When he receives a pick high above the three-point line, Leonard skis downhill and sticks the screener’s defender on an island. It’s impossible to guard, but switching isn't much of an alternative.

Sit 15 feet away when he warms up at the free-throw line, as I did before a recent Raptors game, and it’s impossible to ignore just how small everything looks in his hands—if the basketball is Earth's surface, Leonard’s hands are its oceans. At the NBA combine in 2011, his hands were 11.25 inches wide—which is wider than every player measured at the last four combines—and served as exclamation points at the tip of his 7’3” wingspan. They’ve always been his closest friends, around to help deflect passes and tally unreachable steals, sky for a rebound or finish a contested layup. And now more than ever, it’s hard to negate their usefulness when he handles the ball, too.

The first time I re-watched this video, I thought the fourth dribble was a glitch; I’m still not 100 percent positive the ball physically travels went between his legs:

Already one of world’s best players, Leonard’s growth in this specific area has elevated his ceiling and made it even less possible to slow him down. Try and trap him and he'll turn the corner, draw two defenders and still create enough space for a baseline fadeaway. Leonard regularly rips the ball off the rim and goes coast-to-coast, swiveling through defenders with an in-and-out move that's executed to perfection at top speed. His between-the-legs crossover is lightning and his one, two, three-dribble pull-ups are virtually unguardable. Leonard's handle isn't the entree of his skill-set, but it complements everything else that makes him a franchise-altering talent. And just like every other gem who thrives in the same rarefied tier, the best is yet to come.

Kawhi Leonard's Handle is the Secret to his Success published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

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thephotopitmagazine · 6 years

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I love when you see a band line up where you absolutely know it’s going to be a great line up. This is exactly how I felt with the announcement of Atreyu’s In Our Wake tour. I had the opportunity to photograph them this past April as part of Welcome To Rockville. And there was no way I was going to miss them headlining a tour, especially with the support lineup. The closest tour stop was in Tampa, FL over at The Ritz Ybor on November 17th.

Driving 2 hours to review a show isn’t uncommon for me as it’s a straight shot across the state to get there. What I found strange was the start time of 6 PM that night. It was the first time for me over at The Ritz Ybor and I was very impressed once I stepped inside the venue. Though it looks small from the outside it is fairly large on the inside. Plenty of standing room for people and a small balcony upstairs for those willing to pay for those seats. And their security staff was on the ball that night ejecting people who had gotten too rowdy and keeping the crowd surfers from getting tossed over the barricade and into the pit. Already by 6 PM the venue was packed and it was a completely sold out show. First, up to the stage that night was Sleep Signals.

The hard rock band formed in 2014 and is based out of Minneapolis, MN, though the band members most live outside of Minneapolis. The band hit in the road in 2015 touring heavily to build up their fan base. In 2016 they released their 2nd EP titled ‘Transitions’ and went back out on the road to tour again with Screaming for Silence and Lydia Can’t Breathe. The band has shared the stage with Seether, In Flames, Letters From the Fire, and many more. They’ve also played Northern Invasion and SXSW. The band is still touring off their 2017 album ‘At the End of the World’. Sleep Signals is Robert Cosgrove (vocals), Sean Fitz (guitar), Cody Hess (guitar), Alex Nikolas (bass), and Clay Barnum (drums).

Photo by Talon Kane Photography

The band started off with “Means” from their album ‘Transitions’. It was the first time I’ve heard them live so I wasn’t sure what to expect. What I found off the bat is this band is absolutely dedicated to ensure their fans get the performance of a lifetime. “Means” is a hard-hitting song that has catchy guitar riffs between Sean and Cody. Clay’s rapid drumbeats in between gives it a great pace. They followed up with “The Harbinger” from the same album. I loved this song right off the bat with its rapid pace and Robert’s energetic singing and movement on stage just added to it. And the fans were loving Sleep Signals hollering and cheering for them at every song. They followed with “I’ll Save You” from ‘At the End of the World’. Another solid song from the band this time where I could really hear Alex’s bass riffs shine. They followed with “Suit & Tie Suicide” and “Edge of My Sanity” from the same album. And then they did something I certainly never expected.

Photo by Talon Kane Photography

Robert announced they were going to do a cover song. While that’s not uncommon at live shows, it is when the song was Seal’s “Kiss From a Rose”. Though I love my rock and metal I absolutely love that song. So needless to say I was a bit concerned how this rock band was going to handle this song. And to my surprise, they handled it wonderfully. Though it was definitely different than the original, Sleep Signals made it their own and gave it a good homage. They wrapped up their set with “Welcome to the Masquerade”, which I also really liked as a very haunting sounded song. Sleep Signals had a great performance and kicked off the night the right way.

Ice Nine Kills was next to the stage. The metalcore band from Boston, MA formed in 2002. They originally started off as Ice Nine with a ska-punk style of music. They changed their name to Ice Nine Kills before the release of their first studio album ‘Last Chance to Make Amends’ released in 2006. The following year they released their first EP ‘The Burning’. The band then went on tour in 2008 with various bands including A Day to Remember and Paramore. In 2010 they released their second album ‘Safe is Just a Shadow’. In 2013 came the release of their second EP ‘The Predator’. The next year the band released their third album ‘The Predator Becomes the Prey’ which started to show their horror icon theme styled music. It was also their first break on the Billboard 200 as the album came in at #153 the week of its release. In 2015 their fourth studio album ‘Every Trick in the Book’ was released. Each track was inspired by a piece of literature including books “Animal Farm”, “The Diary of Anne Frank”, and “Dracula”. Ice Nine Kills released their current album, ‘The Silver Scream’ on June 20, 2018. Each track was inspired by a horror movie including “IT”, “A Nightmare on Elm Street”, and “Saw”. Ice Nine Kills is Spencer Charnas (vocals), Justin DeBlieck (lead guitar), Justin Morrow (bass), and touring members Ricky Armellino (rhythm guitar) and Patrick Galante (drums).

Photo by Talon Kane Photography

The crowd seemed to be holding their breath for Ice Nine Kills. There was a hush and when the lights dimmed an outright roar. The energy was as sharp as a knife and these fans were ready to let loose with Ice Nine Kills. The band came out one at a time, each of them wearing a tribute to a horror film. Spencer as Freddy Krueger, Justin D as Jason, Justin M as Jigsaw, Ricky in his raincoat and red balloon tied to his mic stand representing “IT”, and Patrick representing a horror victim splattered in blood. The fans loved it. Heck, there were a number of fans dressed the same way. My favorite was a family all wearing the same Freddy Krueger sweater Spencer wore. They started off with “The American Nightmare” from their current album ‘The Silver Scream’. The song is a tribute to “A Nightmare on Elm Street”. Bathed in red light on stage, the band had the crowd jumping and singing along. From the first song, they had the crowd wrapped around their fingers. They followed with “Stabbing in the Dark”, a tribute to “Halloween”, “A Grave Mistake”, a tribute to “The Crow” (one of my favorite films), and “Thank God It’s Friday”, the tribute to “Friday the 13th”. Their movements on stage were purposefully creepy which just added to the atmosphere. Spencer jumped into the pit with us multiple times and then jumped into the crowd and sang being held up by them. They also played with “Me, Myself, and Hyde”, a tribute to The Strange Case of Dr. Jeykll and Mr. Hyde, and “Communion of the Cursed”, a tribute to The Exorcist the novel. Both songs appear on ‘Every Trick in the Book’. The wrapped up with a chilling version of “IT is the End” the tribute song to “IT”. Ice Nine Kills is an amazing band live and they provide such a great energy along with their phenomenal songs.

Photo by Talon Kane Photography

Memphis May Fire was next to the stage that night. The metalcore band from Dallas, TX formed in 2006. They released a self-titled EP in February 2007. The reviews were very positive and the band was signed to Trustkill Records who re-issued the EP in December 2007. After touring on the EP the band was working on releasing their first studio album. Due to lineup changes, the album was delayed. ‘Sleepwalking’ was finally released in July 2009. The band wasted no time in producing new music and released their second EP ‘Between the Lies’ in November 2010. They signed with Rise Records in January 2011. Since signing with Rise Records they released 5 studio albums with their latest being ‘Broken’ which just came out on November 16th. Three of those albums charted on both the Billboard 200 and the U.S. Rock charts. Memphis May Fire is Matty Mullins (vocals), Kellen McGregor (lead guitar), Cory Elder (bass), Jake Garland (drums), and touring member Samuel Penner (rhythm guitar).

Photo by Talon Kane Photography

They started out the way people would expect, hardcore and heavy, with “Sever the Ties” from ‘This Light I Hold’. The crowd was all over the place jumping and singing as the band took over the stage. Kellen was focused playing and Samuel was ripping off chords while spinning around on stage during the song. Matty’s vocals were unreal that night. It blew me away how he could so easily flex his voice from clean singing to guttural screams in a heartbeat. They followed up with “Prove Me Right” from ‘Challenger’ another great mosh-worthy song. Jake was killing it on drums here and Cody was ripping off bass notes right in tune. Personally, I was loving what I was hearing and the fans seem to as well. The fans truly appreciated when they went into “The Old Me” from their new album ‘Broken’. Though this has more clean singing I find than other songs from Memphis May Fire, it is an absolutely great song. The crowd went insane when they played “Carry On” from ‘This Light I Hold’. I literally think everyone on the floor was bouncing up and down for this song. The band wrapped up with “Vices” from ‘Challenger’ and received a huge applause from the crowd when they walked off stage. If you were at that show and weren’t a fan of Memphis May Fire, you should have been after their performance.

Photo by Talon Kane Photography

Finally, it was time for the headliners, Atreyu, to take the stage. The metalcore band from Orange County, CA formed back in 1998. Their name came based on the character in the movie “The Never Ending Story”. The band released two EPs independently before being signed by Victory Records in 2001. Their debut studio album ‘Suicide Notes and Butterfly Kisses’ was released in 2002 and followed up with ‘The Curse’ in 2004. Their second album peaked on the Billboard 200 at number 32 and hit number 1 on the U.S. Independent Album chart. They followed up with 3 more studio albums (signing with Hollywood Records for album 4 an on) before going on hiatus in 2011. The band came back to working on new music in 2014. They released ‘Long Live’ in 2015 peaking at number 26 on the Billboard 200. Atreyu is now touring on their latest album, ‘In Our Wake’, which was released on October 12, 2018, through Spinefarm Records. Atreyu is Alex Varkatzas (vocals), Brandon Seller (vocals, drums), Dan Jacobs (lead guitar), Travis Miguel (rhythm guitar), and Marc “Porter” McKnight (bass).

Photo by Talon Kane Photography

The crowd’s roar was deafening the moment Atreyu took to the stage. The cheers were overpowering you could barely hear the band starting up to play. Brandon started off the drum beats for “In Our Wake” the title track from the new album and sang out the chorus right as the rest of the band jumped in. I truly love this song and Brandon’s lead on the song. It was a great way to start off their set. And then they followed with probably my favorite song from them, “Becoming the Bull” from ‘Lead Sails Paper Anchor’. I love how Alex puts so much of himself when he sings out his parts of the song. They followed up with “Right Side of the Bed” from ‘The Curse’.

Photo by Talon Kane Photography

Dan, Porter, and Travis were having lots of fun on stage. Raising guitars high in tandem or simply smiling and joking with each other as they passed by on the stage. Alex joked around with them too at times looking over Dan’s guitar neck as he played and smiling. Alex was absolutely enjoying the energy from the crowd and from his fellow bandmates. At one point even deciding to jump into the crowd to perform. Porter did the same leaving the stage to play at the back of the arena before making his way on stage. Alex took one point to stand on a bar and perform. The band could do no wrong that night it seemed.

Photo by Talon Kane Photography

The crowd just about lost their minds when Atreyu played “The Crimson” from ‘The Curse’. Some of the other songs performed that night included “Do You Know Who You Are?”, “Bleeding Masacara”, “When Two Are One”, “House of Gold”, and their last song was “Blow”. After they walked off stage, Dan and Brandon came back when they “Rick Rolled” the crowd with their own version of “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley. The crowd appreciated the song and sang along with every word. A bunch of metalheads singing Rick Astley was definitely something you don’t ever expect to hear. The rest of the band came out afterward to perform their cover of “You Give Love a Bad Name” by Bon Jovi. They recorded that version for the movie soundtrack of “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”. And once again, the entire crowd was singing along to every word. Atreyu wrapped up the show with “Lip Gloss and Black” from ‘Suicide Notes and Butterfly Kisses’. Hearing those first guitar notes come out had the crowd in a frenzy and when Alex started singing it the crowd was beyond amped up. The band thanked the crowd after they were done and left to the crowd cheering and still wanting more. It was an amazing performance from Atreyu and the perfect way to cap off the night.

Photo by Talon Kane Photography

As I had felt months back, the four band lineup provided an amazing night of music. The venue, the energy from the crowd, and the bands all added up to a perfect night. This show is definitely in my Top Ten best shows of 2018. Don’t miss this tour if it comes to your area. You will not be disappointed.

From The Pit To The Crowd: Atreyu with Memphis May Fire, Ice Nine Kills, and Sleep Signals – Tampa, FL – November 17, 2018 I love when you see a band line up where you absolutely know it's going to be a great line up.

#Atreyu #concert review #FL #Ice Nine Kills #Memphis May Fire #on tour #review #Sleep Signals #Tampa #The Ritz Ybor

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democratsunited-blog · 6 years

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A New Era for the Travis County Democratic Party: After years of infighting and a tumultuous election in March, the TCDP must now proceed as one - News

https://uniteddemocrats.net/?p=3644

A New Era for the Travis County Democratic Party: After years of infighting and a tumultuous election in March, the TCDP must now proceed as one - News

Illustration by Jason Stout / Thinkstock

Just after 11pm on the night of this year’s primary election, Dyana Limon-Mercado announced to a crowd of advisers and supporters gathered at the South Austin Third Base that local attorney Anne Wynne had just called to concede the race for chairperson of the Travis County Democratic Party.

“I’m in shock,” Limon-Mercado exclaimed, “so I really don’t have eloquent words prepared. I also wasn’t planning to give a speech either way, because I was just going to be like, ‘Fuck all this shit. I’m ready to go to bed.'”

In Wynne and Limon-Mercado, voters had a choice of ideals to address concerning what type of woman they wanted leading the party.

The race for the position, which is responsible for fundraising and ultimately getting Democrats elected into public offices throughout the county (and driving turnout for statewide races), had been particularly close. Early voting had her up by one percentage point. By the end of the night, she had increased that lead to two. The underdog planning to close the night by saying “fuck all this shit” ousted the onetime appointee of Ann Richards, who’d been recruited to run by some of the most influential members of the party.

Such support likely would have carried Wynne to victory in any other year. But the circumstances that led to this year’s election were rather unprecedented, and Limon-Mercado ran a campaign that would ultimately reel in a consequential string of endorsements from those beyond the typical kingmakers.

“Truthfully, I could not have done this without Our Revolution,” she told supporters, “without Young Democrats; without the Tejano Democrats; without my core group of volunteers. Without every single group of people who I think in this community have felt marginalized for a long time.”

Then she said what had been on the mind of all those groups: “Even though the Democratic Party was our party, we didn’t always have the voice and the representation we wanted. This campaign was won because of grassroots power, word of mouth.”

Dyana Limon-Mercado

An Unenviable Position

The two dissimilar candidates didn’t arrive at March 6 in a vacuum. The events that made their contest possible began to fall into place in September of 2015, when Jan Soifer resigned from the position to pursue a campaign for the 345th District Court. (She was elected the following year.) On the surface, Soifer was a successful party chair: In her two years, she amassed $1.1 million in donations, and helped shepherd in a vice chair position and several full-time staffer positions, so that the party – which generally shrunk during off-election years – could benefit from constant staffing.

But when she resigned she acknowledged the challenge she had just faced: “When I decided to run for this position, I knew that it was a challenging, unpaid position, but I never guessed just how much work it would be. … It certainly has demanded much more work than I expected – but it has been an honor to serve our party.”

Jan Soifer (Photo by Jana Birchum)

Soifer told me this summer that she doubts she would have been able to do the work she did had she been at a different point in her life. Her children were grown; she and her husband had a stable law practice. There were days when her party duties didn’t end until late at night and only then could she begin on her day job’s work.

And Soifer benefited from several moments that temporarily sparked the party during her brief tenure, including the Wendy Davis filibuster and a partnership with Battleground Texas. “There were exciting things happening, and it was a year when people were really motivated to help,” she said.

Shortly after Soifer announced her resignation, Vice Chair Vincent Harding beat out political operative Sylvia Camarillo in a special election. Though Camarillo vowed to challenge Harding again in the March primary, she eventually reneged, and Harding won a full term unopposed.

Harding wasn’t a typical choice for party chair. The employment and ethics attorney had spent most of his time within the party as secretary, a neutral position where he wasn’t championing favored candidates, and he relished the freedom that accompanied that status. He is also black – only the second black man to be TCDP chair – and at 28 was the youngest person to ever hold the position. “I know that I stand on the shoulders of giants,” he wrote in a statement announcing his ascension, “and I am committed to opening doors for those who will follow me.”

Trouble in Paradise

Those remarks marked the beginning of a tumultuous, three-year tenure marred by party infighting and discontent. Harding came into the role promising a reorientation of the party, and took seriously his job as an independent arbiter. But the ethics-above-politics mentality didn’t jibe with party stalwarts, and helped exacerbate the growing tensions.

It was with that reputation Harding waded into the first test of his brief term, in January of 2016, during the primary campaign for district attorney. At the time, the favorite to succeed Rosemary Lehmberg was longtime Assistant D.A. Gary Cobb – in fact, for a while, he hadn’t even drawn a challenger. But defense attorney Rick Reed eventually jumped into the race, and when he did so he alleged that Cobb’s candidate application had both violated a number of state election codes and included signatures from several members of the TCDP staff (Reed believed party members should not endorse candidates in a primary), and that Harding failed to “properly review” the application.

Vincent Harding (Photo by John Anderson)

Harding told Reed that the oversights wouldn’t push Cobb’s name off the ballot, and the situation eventually settled itself: The courts allowed Cobb’s candidacy, and he was later defeated by Margaret Moore. (Reed withdrew on election day.)

The 3rd Court of Appeals sided with Harding in Reed’s lawsuit, but it unearthed hard feelings that Cobb had been allowed to continue at all. Harding contends he was doing his best to navigate a difficult legal question on the fly and was concerned with keeping the seat in party hands.

“That was my honeymoon,” he remembered wryly. “Having someone run against you and then getting sued.”

Harding’s troubles would not end there. Party insiders grew bitter about his handling of the 2016 coordinated campaign, particularly the Fourth Street space he’d rented as its headquarters, which earned criticism both for its location and lack of air conditioning. Some grew demoralized at what they perceived to be a lack of organization at the management level. Those party insiders complained that Harding had stopped listening to their suggestions, and worried his staff wasn’t experienced enough to handle complex campaigns.

“We cannot let primary race differences divide us in November.” – U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett

Harding drew further scorn last June when he declined to endorse a call for Rep. Dawnna Dukes’ resignation from the state House. He justified his decision in a Statesman op-ed, citing an unwillingness to take action against “a duly elected state representative on the spot without community notice or input.” He also noted that the party had never asked a candidate to resign in such a manner, and hesitated to set that precedent with a representative like Dukes, a long-respected member of Central Texas’ African-American community. “Austin should rise to the occasion and show that diversity not only can unite a community but is the fuel to defeat bigotry,” he wrote. “Let’s move beyond internal disagreements and focus on serving the entire community.”

Today Harding acknowledges: “Some of the decisions I made people did not agree with.” But he believes he did his best to fulfill his campaign promises by raising ethical concerns when he saw them. And his tenure was not without its bright spots. Harding was successful in engaging with the party’s grassroots wing, made progress on immigration, workers’ rights, the battle with Uber and Lyft to maintain local rideshare regulations, and pushed the party to make bold statements on police brutality and oversight. He takes pride in the robust voter turnout in the 2016 general election, which topped 65% within the county.

Still, by the spring of 2017, Harding decided he wouldn’t run again. Though he’d raised about $1 million, the same amount as Soifer, he began to struggle with fundraising the longer he went into his tenure.

Harding had told his closest confidants, but hoped to keep the news private until he wrapped up a couple of community initiatives. But the news leaked. And all of a sudden, in September 2017, weeks before he was ready to announce his decision, Harding was getting calls from people across the county who knew his plans and had already conferred with Rick Cofer, rumored as the next consensus candidate. Harding announced his resignation via email on Sept. 28. The next day, Cofer launched his own campaign.

Sideshow Politics

Cofer immediately lined up an impressive array of supporters that included current and former City Council members, state elected officials, and a slew of Travis County bigwigs. He was a known quantity within the party, a veteran of UT’s University Democrats, and a former legislative staffer who’d worked as a prosecutor for both the county and district attorneys.

Cofer’s ascent to the party chair was hailed as an inevitability. And it may have worked out that way, had news not begun to swirl that Cofer had been accused of multiple incidents of chauvinistic behavior during his time at the county attorney’s office. Cofer withdrew his candidacy in late October, having been asked to leave by at least one ally within the Travis delegation: state Sen. Kirk Watson, a onetime party chair himself. “I certainly told him [to step aside],” Watson told me. “I felt like, based on what I was hearing, that he would not be able unite the party under the circumstances. And I didn’t like what I was hearing.”

Rick Cofer (Photo by Jana Birchum)

Cofer announced his withdrawal in a statement that did not acknowledge any rumors, but instead appeared to attribute the decision to the fact that there were “several strong female candidates waiting on the sidelines.

“The very best thing I can do for our party is to step aside for incredible women leaders,” he continued.

Party Secretary Bianca Garcia and former Central Health Board Member Rosie Mendoza were two of the names quickly considered. But neither came forward to run. Instead, Precinct 428 Chair Mike Lewis announced he would step in. The Bernie Sanders supporter painted himself as an outsider and reformed Libertarian who had devoted himself to progressive politics in the wake of Trump’s election, and sought to energize others within the county in that same vein.

But Lewis’ campaign was even briefer than Cofer’s; a website eventually tied to local political players at GNI Strategies revealed embarrassing Facebook posts Lewis had made in the past, when he was perhaps more Libertarian than progressive. Even more alarming was a crude post he’d made about the rape allegations brought upon Bill Cosby. He apologized for those remarks, and said his journey from conservative to progressive had been long and arduous.

But the damage had been done, and he announced he’d ditch the race just as the party elites were beginning to draft Wynne. In December, Lewis filed a complaint with the Texas Ethics Commission alleging that GNI’s Jovita Pardo used an unregistered political committee to attack his candidacy on behalf of Wynne. Pardo later said her actions fell within state guidelines, and Wynne denied knowledge of the PAC.

Two Formidable Candidates

The prospect of Wynne’s candidacy was growing more popular among TCDP insiders, however, and Watson, who still plays an active role in local circles from his perch up at the Lege, began fielding calls from local Democrats who sought some form of stability. In Wynne, who state Rep. Celia Israel considers a “political mom,” they had their rock.

But Watson et al. didn’t know at the time that Limon-Mercado had been considering a run of her own, thanks to the prodding of a number of the party’s periphery players, including her boss at Planned Parenthood Votes, Yvonne Gutierrez, and Precinct 46 Chair Daniel Segura-Kelly. Limon-Mercado, the deputy executive director for Planned Parenthood Votes, with no close affiliation to party insiders, said she watched the field unfold with skepticism.

Mike Lewis

“Just the optics of it looked strange, right?” she recalled to me this spring. “We sort of had this chosen person who stepped down for not really clear reasons, and they said it should be a woman of color. But then somebody like Mike Lewis steps up, and then people have questions about Mike Lewis’ sort-of-Democratic credentials.

“And I think there were a lot of people, myself included, looking around like, ‘Surely someone’s going to fix this. Surely somebody’s going to do something about this.’ We have got to be able to do better in Travis County in 2018, just after the year we’ve had as Democrats. Coming off of the Trump election, the year of Resistance, everything we’ve been building toward, the real meaningful conversations I’ve felt like we’ve had in the Democratic Party. And this is what we get? These two candidates?”

A Bold Vision

By the second week of November, Limon-Mercado and Wynne both announced their campaigns and had the field to themselves, and the party eventually ended up with what many had said they initially wanted: a chance for a woman to hold the role. And in the two candidates they had a choice of ideals to address concerning what type of woman they wanted leading the party.

In Wynne they had a longtime ally with deep connections to some of the party’s most enduring members, who promised to use her decades of political experience to bring back the type of blockbuster fundraising that the party had been missing for the past half-decade; in Limon-Mercado, a young, Latina outsider who promised to balance a party thirsty for that fundraising with attention shown toward the local communities desperately seeking organizational engagement. Sustaining members would grow through her outreach, she said, which meant the party wouldn’t have to struggle when elected officials tightened their budgets, as often occurred during Harding’s tenure.

Anne Wynne

Soifer told me she approached both women during the campaign to warn them of what they were getting into. And Limon-Mercado, who campaigned while pregnant and just had her second child last week, heard those warnings from many more people than just Soifer, but she told me she believes it’s important the job not be limited to attorneys with vast resources, which has been the case for as long as most can remember.

“As a working-class person in the community, also as a parent, as someone who’s involved in the grassroots – if this position is inaccessible to me because of the time commitment, how many other people are we leaving out of the conversation?” she asked. “How much other talent are we leaving at the door?

“Instead of talking about how demanding it is, and how people like me don’t have the time to be involved, why don’t we create a better system that allows us to be involved?”

94,491 people voted in the TCDP chair election in March: 45,864 for Wynne, 48,627 for Limon-Mercado. Neck and neck, the results made clear that the party was still divided.

Reconciliation?

But there are at least signs the Travis County Dems are making strides toward unity. Travis County Democrats have, at least publicly, begun to make overtures of reconciliation. Watson told me he’s enjoyed “getting to know the new chair,” and said he’s invited Limon-Mercado to participate in his traditional Twitter town hall at the state convention this next weekend in Fort Worth. “We are developing what I consider to be a really good working relationship.”

There are at least signs the Travis County Dems are making strides toward unity.

Watson isn’t the only one embracing the “stronger together” theme in the wake of a tough election. Party insiders still sour about the results have been nudged privately by more moderate voices to embrace Limon-Mercado and the change she represents. The state senator said he’s “encouraged by the number of ideas that she has, and the fact that she is as ready to hit the ground running and get it done.”

That support is also showing in the party’s fundraising efforts. U.S. Congressman Lloyd Doggett recently signed his name to an email recruiting new sustaining members, and in it he alludes to the need for unity.

“Following some hotly contested races this year, including the race for our County Chair, we need to come together to take on Trump and his Trumpettes,” he wrote. “After meeting with Dyana, our new Chair, to discuss her plans for what our local party can achieve, I have written my own check as a sustaining member.

“We cannot let primary race differences divide us in November. Contributing now can help ensure the Democratic wave does not dissolve into a ripple.”

Harding for District 1: Outgoing Party Chair Enters City Race

While Austin City Council races are nonpartisan, much of the same ideological jockeying occurs when it comes time to fill the dais. Leaders in District 1, which is currently represented by outgoing Council Member Ora Houston, who announced on Wednesday that she won’t seek re-election, spent much of the spring drafting outgoing Travis County Democratic Party Chair Vincent Harding to run. And on Wednesday, Harding announced that he plans to file for candidacy. He joins a crowded field of candidates, including Natasha Harper-Madison, Mariana Salazar, and Lewis Conway Jr.

“We are at a pivotal moment, 90 years from the 1928 plan, in the middle of a land development code rewrite,” Harding said last week when he revealed his plans to me. “At a time where we are consistently one of the Top 10 places to live, we are also one of the most economically and racially segregated cities in the country and … a third of our black and brown children are growing up in poverty.”

Harding declined to assess the district’s current leadership, instead focusing talks on economic advancement and transportation. He said he’d support the long-discussed Capital Metro Green Line and workforce solutions to bring “middle skill” jobs (those that don’t require a bachelor’s degree) to the area. Harding believes his experience at City Hall (he was a member of the city’s Board of Adjustment) and its inner workings will go a long way toward making those ideas a reality. “I believe I have the skill set to work with people on many different sides of the issue,” he said. “At the same time, while being a coalition builder, I also have the courage to stand up and do what’s right and take whatever heat.”

A version of this article appeared in print on June 15, 2018 with the headline: Party of Some

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johnbattlesca · 7 years

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Split Second Survival, Part 1: Reality-Based Knife Defense as Taught by Larry Wick

If you think Split Second Survival, the brand of gun and knife defense being propagated by Larry Wick, is just another modern martial art or self-defense course, you couldn’t be more off-base.

Wick, a veteran instructor and high-ranked tang soo do black belt, has a unique way of dealing with two of the most feared street weapons, and he’s on a mission to share it with the world. The Fairbanks, Alaska-based instructor believes that most of what’s being taught in blade- and firearm-defense courses is not just ineffective; it’s fatally flawed.

Dr. Mark Cheng (left) and Larry Wick

“Split Second Survival is about looking at some of the ugliest possible situations and finding the most effective way out,” Larry Wick says. “In most instances, people are unarmed, uneducated about real weapon defense and unprepared for multiple-attacker situations. Our focus is educating them on some of the options that will help them survive.”

Wick is so passionate about his system that he’s willing to go to extremes to prove its validity. For evidence, take a look at his Live Fire DVD. (Do Not Try What You See!) On the disc, Wick uses real guns with real ammo to illustrate the shortcomings of popular self-defense techniques.

In one instance, he fires a pistol next to, but not pointed at, a mannequin head to show the damage that can be caused by the blast that emanates from the muzzle of a firearm. In another demo, he tries a common defense that entails grabbing the slide of a semiautomatic handgun to stop it from cycling — and promptly slices open his own hand. “There are some things we can get away with in the wilderness that I wouldn’t even think of doing anywhere else,” he admits.

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According to the animated Alaskan, eight tenets form the soul of Split Second Survival:

• Never focus on the weapon. • Always move forward. • Make sure any technique accounts for the possibility of multiple attackers. • Avoid committing both hands to a move. • Never use strength against strength. • Don’t intentionally go to the ground. • Forget kicks, punches, locks, sweeps and throws. • Complete all techniques in one second or less.

My introduction to Split Second Survival starts with Larry Wick decked out in street clothes. “If your self-defense training only works when you’re in a uniform, in bare feet, on a matted surface or in any other contrived situation, it’s going to be a liability when your life is on the line,” he tells me.

Wick then picks up a training knife and asks me to place it against his throat. To up the ante, he has me grab his jacket so I can press the blade into his flesh with more force. He challenges me to “cut” him as soon as I feel him try to attack, defend, escape or otherwise move.

The look on his face remains gentle — until he delivers the killing stroke. Faster than you can say “Split Second Survival,” he cuts my wrist with my own blade, off-balances me and finishes me with a potentially lethal wound to the throat. It all goes down before I can mount a meaningful attack, with the knife or otherwise. I think, OK, it was a random fluke that won’t happen again.

“Not convinced?” Larry Wick asks. “Let’s try again.” This time, he narrates his way through the same motions. Physically, there’s a uniqueness in his system, and I’m beginning to feel it.

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True to his tenets, Wick shoots his gaze from side to side as though he’s searching for accomplices. His eyes aren’t fixed on the threat — it’s like he’s looking right past me — but I know he’s got the blade and everything else in his peripheral vision. He explains that if he locks his eyes on me or the weapon, I’ll be able to sense what he’s going to do by watching his line of sight change. He’s right — I’ve used that same awareness in sparring.

Less-experienced martial artists often telegraph their moves by changing their focal point from one body part to another. That’s why some coaches have their fighters look at their opponent’s sternum, which keeps all four limbs in peripheral view. In one-on-one sparring, that works fine, but in a street fight, there’s the X-factor of multiple opponents.

“You almost never know for sure if you’re dealing with just one person or five people in a street fight,” Larry Wick says. “So your eyes have to be constantly taking in information about your surroundings without looking anxious. You can’t do that if you’re staring at the assailant’s chest or eyes. If you’re dealing with multiple assailants, the guy closest to you is only one of many, so your brain needs to be able to take in information on all of them, or at least as many as possible.”

Wick looks relaxed, and his eyes aren’t focused on me or the blade. It’s as if he’s casually looking through a store to see if anything catches his interest.

He’s messing with my mind, distorting my perception of what’s going on. Like a sleight-of-hand expert, Wick has set up everything so I don’t react in time. His loose gaze is mentally disarming, his body is relaxed and his movements are almost completely counter to what you’d expect in a situation like this. Everything in Split Second Survival seems to fit a dual purpose. Not only are there physics-based and strategic rationales for doing what he’s doing but psychological and neurological reasons, as well. This is clearly high-level stuff.

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None of his motions are jerky, and it’s difficult to perceive any muscular tension. For someone without tactile-sensitivity training, picking up on his movements and reacting in time to cut him or shoot him is next to impossible. Every touch, every movement in Split Second Survival is designed to elicit minimal response from the opponent. Few if any moves rely on speed or strength.

“If I have to be athletic, strong or fast to pull off this stuff, that severely limits the audience to which this body of knowledge applies,” Larry Wick says. “On top of that, if I am able to move in that fashion, what sort of response will those movements get from an attacker? You’ll actually improve his performance by heightening his awareness and causing him to focus more intently on killing you.”

Wick prepares to demonstrate how the softness and continuity of his motions don’t set off that little red warning light in my brain. From the same my-knife-to-his-throat starting point, he executes a similar escape but in a tense, jerky fashion that’s like what you’d expect from other self-defense systems. The alarms in my head sound, and I cut his throat and wrist with ease. The next time, he goes soft, and his movements are over and done with before my brain has a chance to respond. Had it been a real knife, I’d be bleeding everywhere.

“If I try to jerk the blade away, slap your arm away or do anything remotely fast, what’s your reaction going to be?” Larry Wick asks. “You go faster, track better and get more amped up. If I move with tension and jerkiness, it escalates the situation.

“Now, what if I’m so relaxed and moving with so little muscular force that you can barely perceive that I’m moving? You’re going to react more slowly because my movement isn’t registering as a threat until it’s already over. That’s why we use the two-finger grip and a relaxed hand.”

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The Split Second Survival two-finger grip ties into Larry Wick’s soft-touch methodology. It employs the fourth and fifth fingers as the primary contact points. “By using the two weakest fingers in the hand, you minimize the use of strength against the attacker,” he claims. That tends to reduce the advance notice. Coupled with a relaxed or detached expression, it keeps the attacker from discerning your intentions.

When Wick demonstrates again, I pay close attention to the quality of his movement and his touch. The muscles in his hand are relaxed to the point of real softness. He doesn’t have any tension in the two fingers that hold my wrist. They’re merely a means of making a connection and of sensing and guiding my motion. It’s eerie. By the time I realize the grizzled Alaskan is moving, he’s once again cut my wrist, disarmed me and run the training blade across my carotid.

(In Part 2, Larry Wick will address Split Second Survival’s take on gun defense.)

Dr. Mark Cheng is a traditional Chinese-medicine physician and martial arts researcher based in Southern California. Visit his website here.

Photos by Rick Hustead

from Black Belt» Daily » Black Belt http://www.blackbeltmag.com/daily/self-defense-training/split-second-survival-part-1-reality-based-knife-defense-as-taught-by-larry-wick/ Split Second Survival, Part 1: Reality-Based Knife Defense as Taught by Larry Wick published first on http://thrandythefabulous.tumblr.com

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