#that version of jack didn't just happen one day. it's a process | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

twigcollins · 2 years

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Hi! Hope you are well :) I'm a huge fan Steadfast Tin Soldier. It's genuinely one of the best fics I've read, and even now, I find myself rereading chapters for comfort. Your characterization and dialogue is *chefs kiss*, and the narrative flows brilliantly in a way that just makes sense. I was wondering, if you don't mind, if you had any writing tips, or if you could offer some insight on your writing process? I'd absolutely take a writing class from you tbh. Thanks <3

Wow, thank you for the kind words. Very glad the fic is enjoyable - and very sorry it is unfinished. I never had as strong grasp on the universe as I wanted to, and the more Blizzard added to their lore, the less interest I had on where they were taking things. (The subsequent news about ActiBlizz as a company didn't help, either.)

As far as writing tips go, I can offer up a few suggestions that I've picked up along the way, and a few book recs:

Writing Tools - Roy Peter Clark (this is my favorite book on writing, and covers a lot of the things that I try to keep in mind when writing)

The Art of Slow Writing - Louise DeSalvo (strategies and planning that may be useful in developing a writing process)

Boss Life: Surviving My Own Small Business - Paul Downs (not a book on writing, but seeing a year in the life of someone's hopes and dreams and fears all on the micro, day-to-day level is a really great way to study motivations and how many different ways a person can be impacted by the various events that happen in their world)

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I would recommend a screenwriting class far above any others for any kind of fiction writing, for how it shifts the concept of writing out of the realm of trying to get emotions onto the page and into the more nuts-and-bolts strategies of "you have X number of pages and no more to introduce characters, love interests, rising action, etc." Having hard limits on the various elements of a story can help with focusing on getting the most impactful version of a moment out on the page.

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In terms of flow, in a course once I was shown a long clip from the movie 'All About Eve,' where an older actress and a younger actress are in fierce career competition, and in the course of maybe five minutes the shift of who is winning and who is losing in the power struggle flips about five times.

In terms of a long story, having this continual tension and high-low tradeoff is a great way to keep things moving and keep the audience engaged and never sure what will happen next. If you have multiple character POV's, you can have some characters having a moment of triumph while others are Going Through It but it's a good idea to mix up the wins and losses. (Even in the overall descending arc of Jack and the fall of Overwatch, I tried to have a few moments of victory - like getting citizen status for Athena or a character moment with always-sunny Tracer - amidst the overall decline.)

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That being said, the biggest difficulty I have as a writer is when I can feel something needs to happen in a story but I'm not sure how to make it happen organically - which is critical in maintaining the illusion these are characters with personalities and decisions that lead to cause-and-effect instead of just a plot leading them around to what I want to happen next.

As an example from STS - I knew I wanted Jack to break down briefly from the stress of everything so that later events with Athena could happen, but just having him crack for no particular reason wasn't very satisfying, and doing something like starting the scene with him already broken down also seemed a bit like cheating - although I will use that trick on occasion if it feels like getting the readers to a scene is much less interesting than what happens when they're there. I sketched out a couple versions of Jack having a bad day on a mission but it all felt like I was stuffing too much unnecessary filler into the scene.

I wish I could say I had some cool brainstorming trick or technique, but it just hit me out of the blue - Jack would have been counting the days, even if he wasn't admitting it to himself, even if it didn't make sense, from losing Amelie to Widowmaker showing up, and that date would be when he would have to admit to himself Ana was gone for good.

It was a pain to keep things on hold, but waiting around for the right detail made that scene a lot more specific and satisfying, I think.

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I've read a lot that says specificity, physical sense details and understatement are the best ways to handle big emotions. In a way, this kind of all ties back to 'show, don't tell' - you can tell me that a mother is still deeply grieving the loss of a daughter, or as in the exceptionally well written 'I have no choice but to keep looking', you can write that the mother makes a lunch for her lost daughter every day and takes it to the ocean, and I'll remember that detail for six years and counting (and probably forever).

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I’m hardly the first to say it, but reading and editing really are the two biggest skills as equally important as writing. Reading and studying how writers use various techniques as simple as writing shorter or longer sentences in a paragraph to impact the feel of a work will help with developing a writing style.

Also I edit aggressively. I usually edit as I'm going along, then within sections, then within the chapter as a whole - usually at least twice - and reading back on previous chapters to make sure things feel consistent and there's not too much repetition.

I'm trying to learn to let myself write crappier first drafts because figuring them out in the edit is easier.

I think that this is what that 'first million words' that gets mentioned a lot in writing really changed for me - the more I write, the less fragile what I'm writing seems to feel and the less afraid I am of moving around or adjusting or pulling out paragraphs to deconstruct and use elsewhere. Most everything of mine that looks like a smooth narrative in the version for public consumption goes through edit after edit after edit to get there.

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I hope that some of this was helpful, and thank you again! Keep writing!

#on writing

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dankusner · 16 days

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After 55 years, iconic Doug's Gym in downtown Dallas to see its last weight lifted

"I can remember the day I walked in here," Doug said Monday. "And if you told me I was going to be here 55 years, I'd have ran out of Not much has changed inside Doug's Gym since he bought the gym from National Health Studios in 1962.(Ben Torres / Special Contributor)

A few weeks back, a handful of regulars crowded into Doug Eidd's office for a late-afternoon bull session with the man whose name is on the sign outside the 55-year-old downtown Dallas gym.

I couldn't hear much of what they were talking about — I was strapped into the vibrating-belt machine next to the office, trying to loosen a bum back with the antique once marketed as a weight-loss miracle.

Then, over the din — the clank of the half-century-old weights, the whir of the jiggling machine, the thwack of fists connecting with the punching bag — I could hear Doug loud and clear, his voice a raspy boom bouncing off the sagging pressed-tin ceiling.

"Some people think time doesn't even exist," said the strongman philosopher who presides over a business that looks today as it did when Jack Ruby was still spinning the Carousel Club a few blocks down the street.

I cut off the machine.

"You're proof of that," I told him, marveling, as ever, at the 87-year-old man who moved to Dallas from Corpus Christi in September 1962 to run the Commerce Street gym that withstood countless downtown busts and booms. For the last 20 years, I was sure Doug and his gym would outlive us all.

But one week from Saturday, the unthinkable will happen: He will cut off the lights, walk down those creaky stairs in that narrow corridor, lock the door, and that will be that. Doug's Gym — which opened the same year John Glenn orbited the planet and the Beatles released "Love Me Do" and the U.S. and Soviet Union stared down the Cuban Missile Crisis — will close for good.

And not because Doug wants to shutter his no-frills (and, for that matter, no-air-conditioning) gym, not really. But because he has no choice.

Doug has been operating without a lease for a year and spent the last few weeks in limbo, unsure whether his landlord, in the process of selling the 107-year-old storefront to foreign owners, would let him stay a few more weeks or months or maybe even a year. He discovered in recent days that he has only until March 31.

He is being run out, in part, by downtown's resurrection. Rent, which was $250 in 1962, recently skyrocketed to $3,400 — a hard nut to cover with a shrinking clientele paying around $40 a month for the privilege of working out in a time capsule owned by a grizzled sage tougher and kinder than anyone you will ever know. And surrounding construction has chased off some clients who don't want to tangle with traffic and parking.

The building is too valuable now for what the U.K. version of Men's Health called in 2016 "5,000 square feet of fitness history that may be the most durable monument to physical exercise still extant outside of a museum."

Doug never meant to stay. Fifty-five years later, he can no longer stay.

"I can remember the day I walked in here," Doug said Monday. "And if you told me I was going to be here 55 years, I'd have run out of the building. I woulda run out! I wouldn't have stayed here! I woulda thought, 'I couldn't be in that building 55 years.' But nothing bad ever happened to me here to make me want to leave."

Word began circulating among the regulars Monday that there were just days left; the gym, often sparsely populated these days, was a little more crowded than usual. Regulars said their thank-yous between squats and bench presses; former clients stopped by to take selfies with Doug. We knew about the lease and the landlord. Didn't make the inexorable any easier.

A lot of people are upset you're closing, I told him.

"I know they're upset, but life is made to upset you," Doug said. He laughed, or maybe it was a cough. "I remember when my father died, I was upset. When my mother died, I was upset. So there you go. Life is full of things that make you upset. That's the way it works."

"You made a lot of people look good, and there's nothing sad about that," 59-year-old Victor Zimmerman told Doug during a break in his workout. Zimmerman first came to Doug's about 30 years ago, weighing 130 pounds after a bout with testicular cancer. Doug helped him put on weight, build muscle, regain his confidence.

"This man has given me really good advice — financial, romantic," Zimmerman said, speaking for all of us fortunate to have spent time under Doug's tutelage. "He's been a mentor since I was in my 30s. Helped me keep my head on straight."

The gym's demise was always inevitable. Doug ran the business alone for all of its 55 years — counted every penny and every rep. The longest he ever closed was the one week after his wife died shortly before Doug turned 70. For a moment, he considered shuttering the gym then. Coming back, he said this week, was a hard decision.

"But when you sit down and contemplate on it, you realize you have to continue the life," he said. "So I chose the other."

But now the choice has been made for him. There will be a public farewell for him on March 31 at the gym. Then he will spend a week clearing out the place. Doug will sell some of the equipment to clients; the rest he will take to his home in Hurst, where he plans to build a backyard gym.

On Monday, we sat in his office talking about the end of Doug's Gym. I reminded him of that comment he'd made about time not existing. He smiled, said he meant it. Absolutely.

"The [last] day I walk down the stairs, it'll be 55 years — like nothing, like it never happened," he said, puffing on a nub of a cigar. "Looking forward is an enormous amount of time. Looking back, it's nothing. It means nothing. The time goes like that."

And one week from Saturday, so will Doug's Gym. Like that.

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#Youtube

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anonymeqaupdates · 2 months

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(You can answer anytime it if you feel like it knowing well its gonna be long)

Makes me think how Deuce, Ace, Epel, and Jack do as soulmates especially with three missing colors and the fact 2 out of 4 dated before.

Well about the boys, the funny thing is, Deuce and Epel have both blue eyes. Other funny thing is, Ace was the first one to meet with Epel during the entrance ceremony.

So in his AU you can have multiple soulmates, but what does happen when some of your soulmates have the same eye color and you don't meet them at the same time? Well it's a huge pain in the ass.

When Ace and Epel's eyes first met, Epel was suddenly able to see red. So good for him, he can finally see the colors of the apples his family grows. For Ace, it was a bit more psychedelic.

He could see blue, but it was swirling with grey. So, not only was it really unsettling to see, it quickly caused him an headache the first time he looked at the sky! Because of course the two soulmates that shared an eye color had to have them blue, when he's stuck on an island, the weather is still nice and they have a freaking river on school grounds. Needless to say the color blue was really hard to miss! But the real shock was that he had one more soulmate than he imagined. He grew up thinking he had two soulmates, but in fact it was THREE! OOPS. He was so stunned that he failed to ask for Epel's name and then Riddle caught them and they lost tracks of one another. It also means that in his version, he doesn't see him again at the cafeteria.

Now, the small mercy for Ace was that he met with Deuce the next day. So he had to put up with this just for a day. Jack however was not so lucky. He had to put up with it until Deuce finally started on the track and field club. So he had to live with the swirly sky for at least two weeks! So many headaches. He was also shock to realize that he had more soulmates than expected. Between that revelation and Leona's scheming in the background, he had a lot to process. So much so that he didn't approach Deuce about it. However since Jack eyes are golden, Deuce didn't realize right away he met another of his soulmates until he notice he could see the colors of the coins in his wallet. Cue freak out because he manages to do the same thing that Ace did, meeting one of their soulmates and lost track of him. SO considering he teased Ace over it, he wasn't looking forward to tell him about it. Then Deuce realized that his soulmates must have realized who he was right away and chose not to speak up. This, did not feel great. Ace picked up on Deuce hurt feelings right away and he got pissed over his last mystery soulmate right away.

Back to Epel, he was bummed out to lost track of Ace but also a bit salty that he asked him if he was a girl at first, especially after ending up in Pomefiore. So he doesn't try to find him again right away. He then meet Jack in class and was lucky enough to have gotten a good look in his eyes so he caught on right away. Still annoyed at Ace, he doesn't tell Jack that he met their red eyed soulmate yet. When he finally get over it, Ace already gained his troublemaker reputation. And of course, Vil, not knowing he was Epel's soulmate, told him to avoid him he's nothing but trouble. Epel takes offense to it, but instead of telling Vil that Ace is one of his soulmates he decide to keep his mouth shut, and save that fact for when he will defeat him and shove it in his face. Yep. He was going to prove to everyone he wasn't frail and girly, especially to Vil and his soulmates and then, he will develop a relationship with them. Jack said he was fine with it since he still needed time to get used to the idea of three soulmates.

So at this point, Ace had met Epel, but doesn't know who he is, and is in a relationship with Deuce. Deuce is with Ace and had met another of his soulmates but hadn't realized it and feels rejected. Jack had met Deuce and Epel but feels too overwhelmed to enter a real relationship, and Epel had met Jack and Ace but is too ticked off (and slightly insecure) to make things official.

Begins Book 2. Jack finally meets Ace when he and Deuce are chasing Ruggie. That day, those two are the first ones to finally be able to see all colors. However just like for Deuce, he doesn't tell Ace they're soulmates and Ace is too focused on getting his pen back to notice he can see gold. He does realize it later, and does suspect Jack of being his last soulmates but doesn't share his suspicions with Deuce yet, or the fact that he could see gold. Deuce's feelings got hurt once already, Ace wasn't going to allow it to carelessly happen again. He was going to make sure first and then he'll confront Jack on his own.

During the entirety of Book 2, Jack is clearly trying to avoid them. It's only after the Overblot fight however, that Ace threw his bait to confirm his supposition. He pats Deuce on his back and loudly comment that their soulmate that decided to run away from him was really an idiot when Deuce manage to help defeat Riddle AND Leona. Deuce thought Ace was just trying to make him feel better but Jack realized that Ace knew and he wasn't able to hide the guilt from his face quickly enough. Later on that day, Ace would confront him in private and they got into a huge argument because of course Jack's reasons not to speak up to Deuce weren't good enough for him. Ace told Jack that he better get his head out of his ass and apologize properly to Deuce or he will go back to having only two soulmates because as things stood, he wasn't interested in acknowledging him.

They separate angry at one another and at the beginning of Book 3, Deuce is still clueless at the situation. He can tell Ace is upset but his soulmates won't share what bother him. He also notice that Jack is acting weird during training. It's a shame because he thought they would become friends after the Spelldrive incident. Still he gets too stressed out over the coming exams to investigate more and anxious to not disappoint his mother, he makes a deal for Azul's study guide. Not knowing that Ace, who was so infuriated he couldn't focus on studying and got fed up worrying over the exams, did the same thing.

When it inevitably backfires on them, Jack is a bit too quick to judge and of course, it doesn't go over well. The thing is, even if consciously Deuce doesn't know Jack is his soulmate, his subconscious knows. So hearing Jack chew all the contractors out hit close to home, and Ace notice. Ace also is hurt to hear his soulmate say this, even if he doesn't want their bond right now, so even if he knows Jack isn't wrong, it takes it badly. So he tells Jack to fuck off. Jack was seriously disappointed that his soulmates would cheat, even after what happened with Leona. So when Ace starts insulting him, he's feeling pretty much disgusted with the situation and step out. Let them deal with it themselves. He doesn't owe them any help.

Except that's it's easier said than done. Azul and the Tweels are running Ace and Deuce into the ground. Even Epel noticed Ace looked exhausted from afar and expressed concern to Jack. He even thinks about forgetting about his plans and offer his help to Ace. Jack told him there's no need (even though he himself was starting to get worried) and after some probing spill the beans to Epel.

Epel was NOT happy with him. He understood why Jack was angry at them, and mostly Ace, he also understood why Ace was acting this way. Also, how dare he not tell him he met all their soulmates?! Jack may have understood only half the words Epel used on him, and definitely learned some new insults, but he had to admit he was being an idiot. However, he didn't know how to apologize and instead of talking to Ace and Deuce, he decided to help Yuu with dealing with the contracts. Epel was not impressed, but, it was a start at least.

Ace isn't happy to have to work with Jack again, Deuce on the other hand want to show Jack he learned his lesson and that he recognizes he messed up. Of course that attitude pisses Ace off that thinks that Deuce doesn't need to prove anything to Jack but he still won't tell him who Jack is because he's worried Deuce would feel even worse if he learns it from him. Jack who's dealing with an oblivious soulmate who's trying just a little too hard to make up to him, and another one that was angry to no ends with him felt stuck between a rock and a hard place. Still, he did his best to help with the contracts, admitted to Deuce he had been too harsh and apologized for judging without knowing all the facts and his efforts somewhat managed to mollified Ace. Things weren't alright with them but Ace was willing to see that Jack was trying to make amends.

After the Overblot fight, Jack decided to come clear to Deuce. He explained everything to him and apologized for not saying anything. Deuce wasn't sure how he felt about all this, and was a bit angry at Ace for not telling him but Jack made it clear that Ace was only trying to protect his feelings. Deuce decided to forgive Jack but he needed a little space. Good thing it was winter break already! He was still a bit annoyed at Ace for not saying anything but mostly he felt bad that his reaction had hurt the relationship between Ace and Jack.

On Epel's side, he realized that he needed to enter in contact with Ace and Deuce because they deserved better than to be avoided like that. At the same time he still wanted to prove himself. So he decided to write them letters and had Jack deliver them to Ace and Deuce explaining his feelings on the matter. Ace took Epel's wish for space better than Jack's since it was partly his fault. He'll apologize to him once Epel was ready to meet face to face again. Deuce was touched that Epel would care enough to write to them and understood his feelings of wanting to prove himself so he also took it better.

However all of them ended up meeting sooner than expected. Once Deuce realized that he could see blue he panicked, closed his eyes and apologize profusely to Epel. Ace was trying to calm him down and ask why Epel was upset when Vil walked in and well, if Ace had been angry at Jack, both him and Deuce were FURIOUS at Vil. So they enroll for the VDC. Vil still had no idea that Epel had met his soulmates. He wasn't even aware about Jack because Epel asked him to keep it to himself. So he has no idea why the potatoes are so hostile to him. Rook however, caught on right away when he noticed how fascinated by the sky Epel had become since meeting Deuce. However if monsieur Crabapple want to keep the information for himself then he will keep the secret.

Ace and Deuce were told not to tell Vil about their bond. Ace was more than okay with it. He made Vil's life as miserable as he could without actually interfering with the VDC tribe training so that Vil couldn't kick him off the team. Deuce would also raise to Epel's defense every time. Vil was frustrated, but the progress they were making were too significant to go back on his decision. However there was still that wall between Epel and his soulmate that did not break down until the beach excursion. After Epel and Deuce came back from their excursion things started to settle down between them. Even the tensions between Ace and Deuce receded. When the day of the competition arrived, Ace reluctantly invited Jack to see them perform after Deuce and Epel encouraged him to do so. Jack was grateful for the invite, but because he had to help with the organization he wasn't able to come in advance and wasn't here for Vil's Overblot. Therefore he did not see his soulmates fight his ex. When he did learn about what happened afterward, he was really shocked. Eventually, after the show Jack's past relationship with Vil and Epel's soulmates identities were revealed. Vil wasn't sure if he wanted to laugh over the whole thing, or cringe at how insensitive he had been. Ace, Deuce and Epel were surprised to learn Jack had dated Vil, but Ace admitted he also dated someone else before and they did their best not to think about it. They were Jack's soulmates and Vil was just his ex that was in a relationship with his own soulmate anyway. What was the point of dwelling on it, really. And they have managed to acquire a sort of friendship with Vil by that point.

So at this point of the story : Ace and Deuce had been dating for a few months. Jack is still taking his time but is in a friendly relationship with Deuce and Epel and Ace isn't plotting his demise anymore and Epel is easing himself into Ace and Deuce's relationship but they're not full on dating yet.

Begins book 6 and the incident at Ramshackle. Deuce and Ace get injured in the dorm destruction. Ace is actually slightly more injured than Deuce. Epel and Jack are distraught and Epel is really struggling with what happened. He was right there and was completely useless. He can barely stand in place and he also can't stop thinking about Vil and Grim. He wants to stay behind with his soulmates but he can't take it and when he caught Rook leaving he goes with him and Yuu. He wanted revenge and to bring the others back. It's not like he was helpful here.

When Jack realized Epel was gone he was really frustrated. Ruggie had to talk him down and remind him that they needed someone to stop Ace and Deuce from going after Epel and Yuu after they woke up. So Jack stays behind. He sleeps on a chair in the infirmary despite the staff attempts to get him to go to his dorm. Deuce wakes up first, a few hours after Epel had gone. Like Ruggie predicted he wanted to go and catch up with Epel and Yuu but he was clearly not in shape. Also, Ace was still unconscious.

They were incredibly worried. Ace wasn't waking up and Epel did not pick up his phone. Still Jack did not leave Deuce and Ace's side even when Deuce said he was okay if Jack wanted to chase Epel.

Ace woke up at the dusk of the second day after the attack. Deuce and Jack were both asleep then. Deuce in the bed next to him and Jack had accidentally fell asleep while holding Ace's hand. Ace must admit, this touched him a little. He didn't know how long he was out, but since it was nightfall he knew it was a long time. He also was worried to not see Epel. Was he kidnapped too? So he woke up Jack and Deuce who were relieved to see him awake. They explained the situation and Ace was pragmatic enough to know that they wouldn't find Epel now. All they could do was wait and get better. When Epel would come back, because he would come back, they would chew him out and welcome him back.

Epel did look guilty to have left them behind when he came back, and also worried about Vil. He apologized to them but it was soon forgotten when Malleus healed Vil. The relief that everyone made it back in one piece was enough to erase the anguish of the last few days.

After that, Ace had completely forgiven Jack and the four soulmates all finally started dating. It took them a while and maybe a lot of unnecessary drama but they made it here in the end. They had some fun moments too, like during the sleepover at Ramshackle. Now they were all going to the party at Diasomnia, it was sad to see Lilia go but they were going to make the most of that party!

#thanks anon!#ask #soulmate au #twst fanfic

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xander-morrison · 7 months

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Learning Tekken 3 day 9

I've cleared arcade mode with all characters but Mokujin and feel like I have a decent grasp on most of them.

Nina was alright. I think I like her more than Anna, although that might just be placebo since idk how different they really are. Also took some time to learn at least one branch of her chain throw and then proceeded to use half of it once. Is this how King players feel? 🤔

Eddy was very fun, although I still don't really feel like I understand him very well. That being said, spamming kick buttons carried me through arcade mode VERY quickly. In fact, he was my 2nd fastest arcade clear, only beaten by...

Lei was simply not my character. But I did find like three moves that carried me through arcade in a grand total of like 7 minutes. It was lightning fast. I'll learn more of his kit, if only to drive Gon to the bottom of my usage stats. Fuck that little nerd.

Dr Bosconovitch was a headache and took nearly 50 minutes, but I did get there eventually! Not going to play him anymore since it doesn't seem like he's in the newer games, but once I finally understood the core of his moveset I could start to see the potential. That being said, not being able to block most of the time was ass.

Bryan was... ok? I still don't really get what his gameplan is, but his normals are okay and I learned a handful of strings that do fine damage on their own. I guess I'm still not seeing the synergy in his kit though, like, I'm not sure how you're supposed to lead into these strings so I ended up just fishing for them and getting lucky they connected.

Kuma was pretty miserable. I remember trying to learn them as my second character right after my first arcade mode clear and being like "wow, this character is so much worse than Xiaoyu" and you know what? I was right. Kuma seems pretty dogshit. Slow startup on most normals, some unblockables that are damn near impossible to hit on anyone with a better reaction time than the dead plant in my front lawn, and overall stubby kicks that make my muscle memory for panic options backfire HARD. Not a fan, but the clear did happen.

Julia is pretty involved. She seems almost like a more technical but more rewarding version of Xiaoyu, but without knowledge on how to string together her hit confirms, she's mediocre at best. Not sure how true that is, but that's my gut feeling.

Ogre didn't click with me. Too many options to learn all at once, and just not enough simple options for me to lean on in the learning process. I was actually doing fine up until Heihachi, who I stalled on for probably about 20 minutes. I feel like his gameplan is incompatible with newer players, because he seems to have about a million options to throw out at a moment's notice, but when you only know like 6 moves, he's much less threatening.

True Ogre has the same issue, but with the exception that one of the only moves I knew was a flying fire breath attack that was unblockable and very good at cheesing the AI. It took half the time to beat arcade mode with this form, and ironically most of that time was spent fighting base form Ogre. Still not my character, but the cheese makes him less frustrating to play at least.

My goal now is to play enough with my lesser-used characters to kick Gon to the bottom of my usage leaderboard. So I went back and started with Law, which was pretty uneventful. Next up is Anna. Once I'm done with that, I'll feel comfy enough to try clearing with Mokujin, and then it's time to focus on my serious characters and really hone in on them. Xiaoyu is obviously at the top of that list, but Jack isn't far behind. I also want to give King another shot now that I have a feel for chain throws, but I'm not expecting much there tbh. Once I have characters' movesets mapped out, it'll be time to practice schmovement. Assuming tekken 3 has schmovement anyways, I guess I haven't checked yet.

#tekken 3 journal

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greentrickster · 2 years

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I think the objectively funniest version of Ingo getting lost and returned through time is if the entire event takes place over, like, 30 minutes from Emmet's perspective. So Ingo just goes out to get milk one night and stumbles back in half an hour later, haggard, with a beard, pretty jacked by modern Unova standards, looking like a man who was dragged backwards though a hedge for five years.

And Emmet tries to joke that they didn't need milk badly enough for Ingo to track down a Bouffalant and milk it-- and I think that's where Ingo just tackles Emmet and all of the emotions happen.

(Punchline: Ingo did, in fact, bring back milk. Milk fresh from Hisui, before they invented pasteurization. He won't say what pokemon he got it from. It's delicious)

It is a pretty funny version of events! Unfortunately for me, I tend to take crack ideas and think about them way too much, and sometimes it makes them less funny in the process. And this concept is one of them. Like... yeah, it's funny in the moment, but it would also lead to some real difficulties for the twins as they try and cope with what happened.

So I prefer the idea that about the same amount of time has passed for both twins, and that, while he did have a rather toxic spiral at first, by the time Ingo returns Emmet actually has himself and his life pretty well in hand. He's had the support of his friends and fellow Battle Station workers, he took some time off from the Battle Station to go somewhere he's never been before (I'm gonna say the Kanto region), so he could have some space where he wasn't constantly surrounded by memories and reminders, got some therapy, he's doing well.

He's never given up on finding Ingo, he's kept an eye on any new leads that pop up and followed them as best he can, but I think, early on, Elesa hit him with, "If it was you who went missing, and you came back, and Ingo was in the state you're currently in... how would that make you feel?" And it became a thing of, "I am Emmet, I will take care of myself so that Ingo will not have to worry about me." He gets some new pokemon, same as Ingo does in Hisui, though for Emmet he tends to mix and match the new ones he has with the old ones. He uses his desire to find Ingo to create positive patterns as well as negative ones, and the positive ones slowly begin to outweigh the negative ones as time goes on.

Naturally he is something of a mess when Ingo returns, because there's still plenty of fear and pain lurking around in there, but he's overall in a good space, meaning that having to help Ingo readjust to the modern day while also manning the Battle Subway doesn't run him ragged.

But also I really like the idea of the milk, so for the Melli in Unova AU, I'm gonna say that's absolutely part of it - Ingo happened to have just purchased milk when he and Melli got sent back. And, after Ingo and Emmet have sufficiently fussed, hugged, and cried on each other, Ingo looks Emment dead in the eye and goes, "Also, I got the milk." Then, a moment later, "However I do not believe I should let you drink it - it is unpasteurized and could make you very ill, as you are unaccustomed to it."

Emmet stares, then laughs, then proceeds to tell everyone who will listen this story for the rest of their lives.

Thanks for the ask!

#submas #pokemon ingo #pokemon emmet #pokemon melli #arceus spoilers #pokemon legends arceus #Melli in Unova AU #ask #anon #headcanon #listen everyone else seems to have the submas angst covered #that means that - by default - any AUs I make need to have an extra layer of soft to them #to balance it out

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masterwords · 3 years

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Our Hopes and Expectations (Part Two)

Notes: Almost twice as long as the first part, this one sums it up. It's a bit of a roller coaster but you all know I'm a sucker for a happy ending, or at least a bittersweet one. Taking some creative liberties here to provide some comfort in all the hurt, as is my right. See ya later, canon. :)

Warnings: Hotch is depressed. His life is falling apart, he's having panic attacks and feeling worthless. It's a lot of that.

Words: ~5000

Previously On: PART ONE

“He did what?” Haley asked, raising her glass of wine to her lips as Carson told his version of the meeting between he and Aaron earlier that day. She was appalled at what she was hearing, the way Aaron had behaved. There were alarm bells going off somewhere deep inside but the wine made them dull, almost pleasant sounding. She ignored them. “I told you he had a temper.”

“I know you wanted to lift the no contact order, but I'm worried about what he might do if allowed access to you. Haley, you should have seen him in my office today, he was unhinged. He threatened me.”

“Aaron?” she asked, eyes wide with disbelief. There were those bells again, louder this time. “No. You must have misunderstood, he just wanted to see Jack. No. No, no. I still want to lift it, Carson. I don't like using my sister like this.”

“Listen,” Carson said, slipping his arm around Haley's shoulder. She settled into the crook of his arm and let him hold her but she didn't sip her wine again, she was on edge now considering the possibility that Aaron could be dangerous or, more likely, that Carson could be a liar. Either way, she lost. Again. “I see things like this all the time. People change during these things. I would just hate to see anything happen to you or Jack.”

She laughed and shook her head incredulously. “I appreciate your concern but nothing is going to happen. Aaron isn't going to hurt me and he certainly wouldn't ever hurt Jack.”

That was it, she put her foot down and told Carson to begin the paperwork in the morning. Any further protests were met with a dismissive shake of the head, she wouldn't consider it. If she and Aaron were going to settle things they had to be able to talk and that ball was in her court.

She missed him already.

Watching Jessica buckle Jack into her car, standing back and watching her do a job that should have been his, he balled his hands into fists and did his best to smile when Jack looked his direction. They had just started talking, Jack was telling him about school when their time was up. Haley was expecting Jack home in time for bed and there was no way Aaron was going to screw it up, not now. Standing alone, illuminated by the neon red of the restaurant and the smiling patrons in the windows, he waved goodbye to his son.

He took the long way home. By the time he walked into his apartment, there was hardly anything left in him. Each day felt harder than the last, he was doing everything in his power just to get from his bed in the morning to his bed at night without losing too much of himself in the process. Everything was still in boxes, no magical unpacking fairies had visited his home while he was away. There was dust gathering on the tops of some, a testament to just how little he cared to make this place a home. Placing a six pack of beer in the fridge, only because Jessica had demanded it, he poked around in a few kitchen boxes and made an attempt at getting out dishes. They were brand new in the box, leftovers from he and Haley's wedding and held in storage for decades – they had been too young to make a real registry and just asked people to help them furnish their apartment with essentials. Two young, broke college students – they just needed cookware and a place to sleep. That meant that five people got them dish sets, and they'd tried to cycle through some of them over the years as plates and bowls chipped, putting the rest in storage. He'd planned to sort through it, donate most of it rather than pay for the unit any longer, but neither of them ever seemed to get around to it. By now, these were some of the most expensive dishes on the planet if he judged them by the cost of the storage unit they shared.

Now it all belonged to him. Haley wanted the house and its things, all of them, but Aaron could take anything he wanted from the storage unit. Old boxes of pots and pans, dishes, silverware never used. There was a mattress still in plastic and a bed frame that they'd bought at an estate sale, relics of the life they lived before he passed the bar and started pulling in enough money that they could afford nice new things and Haley didn't have to work. He could have bought it all brand new but then he would have to go shopping and that was a step he wasn't prepared to take yet. He hated shopping even at the best of times. If it was true that divorce followed the five stages of grief, Aaron was cycling through stages one after another all day, a roller coaster he wanted off of. He existed mostly wandering somewhere between denial and depression, flecked with intense anger throughout. Bargaining and acceptance meant nothing, were not even on his radar. But anger, that one was bubbling right there beneath the surface just waiting. Especially when he thought about Carson and his pointed little rat face touching Haley, that was when the anger flared intense and red.

Jack's room was something, the rest of the place was nothing. There were shelves and a dresser and a perfect bed all waiting expectantly. Derek had built him the shelves, helped him haul the dresser in while Spencer placed a few sweet little books on the top shelf waiting for the day when Jack would ask to have them pulled down. Emily and JJ hung the curtains and put hangers in the closet, Penelope hung little framed doodles she'd made on the wall, Dave brought over his entire baseball card collection and snuck it onto the top shelf of the closet hoping one day it would catch Jack's eye and he would pull it down to find Mickey Mantle and Jackie Robinson staring back at him, golden boyhood dreams. They had come together and created a room for him, a tiny little sanctuary that dreamed of having a little boy fill it with laughter.

The team had done that for him, but they couldn't give him the boy to complete it.

He wouldn't let them touch the rest of the place, let them believe he'd get to it himself. His own bedroom was nothing but a bed and a dresser flanked by stacks of boxes. His living room the same, he was using a box as a coffee table rather than pulling the one Haley had told him to take out of storage. That was how it was, he just survived in those walls.

The hot water in the shower scalded him, it got too hot too fast. The nozzle wasn't changing anything, he could barely move it and the water never cooled, the skin on the back of his neck burned painfully as he fiddled with the stuck faucet just trying to turn it off. He slapped at it with the palm of his hand until it shifted, pushed all the way to the side and poured ice cold water down on him. He grunted and finally got it turned off, sinking defeated back into the bath tub. It would have made a funny story, the way his shower attacked him, but his neck hurt and the way his chest suddenly felt too full was a dead giveaway that he was not ready to laugh.

It started in his belly, a dull ache that spread up into his leaden lungs, compressed his ribs. Panic rose in him like a moth beating itself against the window as he tried to suck in breath, gripping at his knees desperately, gasping for air. You are breathing, Haley would tell him, always told him with her hand rubbing so gently up and down his spine, but it didn't work when it was his own voice saying it. It just sounded like a lie. He scrambled against the wet porcelain to get his body out of the tub, grappling with soaking fingertips against the tile of the floor, pulling at a towel. He hugged it close to his chest, felt his heart thunder against it wildly and closed his eyes. It's okay to cry, Aaron, Haley whispered in his ear and with his eyes closed, he let the tears fall. It did nothing to calm him. Her breath was not there against his skin, only her voice pulled from some hidden memory locked up tight and she spoke to him in the tongues of teenagers, a scared kid who had never seen a panic attack before and thought her boyfriend was dying. You can cry, she whispered, it'll help. It didn't. It made things worse, too bright through the salty tears, made his face hurt and his nose run, gave him a horrific headache like he'd sucked down too much of his dad's rot gut bourbon. It made everything so much worse. He never told her that.

He curled around himself, hugged his knees to his chest and waited it out alone. Shaky breaths, pulled deep into his crackling lungs. The panic eventually gave way to something deeper and his muscles relaxed, his lungs shook like jello and hung limp inside of him. Where the panic once lived was now something he understood far better: loneliness. An awful, resigned loneliness, the thing that settled into all of his empty spaces. Like the Nothing, it spread fast, erasing every good thing in its wake and leaving only a void.

He curled up on Jack's bed, wrapped in his ratty old heated blanket and slept long and hard there. His feet hung over the end if he stretched out so he kept his knees pulled close, hugged his arms around his aching chest. Hadn't slept in his own bed in all the time he'd lived there, he couldn't do it. There was something so terrible and alone about a big bed with no one beside him complaining that he was hogging the covers, that he tossed and turned like a tornado in the night and wrapped himself in the blankets like a burrito. No one to complain about his snoring, elbow him until he sucked in a snorting breath and shifted positions. Just a void. Jack's bed was small and his blanket was warm, the cord wrapping itself around his ankle like a snake.

By the time Jessica made it by, he'd managed to unpack the living room and with the help of Dave's penchant for furniture shopping and Derek's muscles, he'd acquired a coffee table and a kitchen table. It still didn't look like a home but she might at least have been fooled into thinking he actually did some kind of living there.

“Aaron?” she called, standing in Jack's doorway, arms folded over her chest. He didn't need to approach to know what she was going to say, seeing his blanket there in a pile on Jack's bed, and she let it go. The heavy silence that followed was all the affirmation she needed. Instead, she padded back toward the kitchen where he was unloading silverware into a drawer and she wrapped her arms around him, pulling him tight against her. It was the first hug he'd had in months, maybe longer. No one touched him, no one even dared get close to him these days, he was a powder keg ready to explode.

But Jessica dared. She always did. She knew the powder keg thing was all an act, just a mechanism of self-defense, a facade he'd created too long ago to shed now. It was a lie and she wished more people could see through it. He melted into her embrace, letting out a long, tremorous breath that rattled through his bones. “His bedroom looks great. He's going to love it. And he's going to love filling it with all kinds of bright plastic noise making toys, legos to get stuck in your carpets that you won't find until you step on them, books that'll make your brain feel numb after reading them for the hundredth time. He's going to fill it up with so much Jack you won't know what to do with it all.” Aaron nodded, his face buried in her unruly mop of curls. She could feel the wet of his tears against her scalp. “The mess will spill out into the hallway,” she offered with a grin, patting her hands against the small of his back. He was taller than her by enough that she nearly disappeared in his arms, speaking into his chest. “You're going to have to clean it so many times you'll threaten to throw everything away. But you won't throw any of it away, you'll put it neatly back on the shelves so it's all ready for him to come again. He's going to love it here, and everything is going to be fine...we just have to get rid of all of these boxes.”

They unpacked things quietly, circling carefully around each other as they worked. As the hours ticked on, he began to drag and he knew that there would be a moment when the tired would fill him up and his defenses would disappear. That was when the panic set in, the clock ticking ever onward. He began to dread her leaving, it consumed him, the anticipation of being all alone again in those walls.

“Aaron?” she asked, approaching him. “Did you hear me? Where do you want this?” He couldn't make out what she was holding, everything was bright and blurred. The look in his eye scared her, that dazed and out of it look he would get when his mind was waging an unfair war on his defenseless body. “Aaron?” she asked again, reaching out to touch his forearm. “Come sit down.”

“I'm fine,” he lied, shaking the fog from his head but he let her lead him to the couch anyway. “Just tired.” She laughed. She didn't mean to, nothing was funny.

“Aaron please,” she said, shaking her head. “You don't fool me. Have they been happening a lot? Haley was worried about this, told me to watch out for it.”

Something in him warmed at the admission that Haley still thought of him, was still concerned about him. “Every night,” he whispered, eyes downcast. He shook his head. “Nothing I do makes it stop. Does she love him?”

"What? Who? Carson?" Jessica asked incredulously, as if it were the dumbest thing she'd ever heard in her life. He nodded and she let out a burst of laughter so loud that he was certain the neighbors would have heard it. "That guy is a grade A jerk. No, you idiot, she doesn't love him. She barely even likes him. Why do you think she wants you to sign uncontested? You know she didn't...”

“I know,” he replied quietly. His nerves settled. “I know.”

She paused for a moment, let the silence fill the spaces between them and forced a small smile before veering them off of that track and onto a more pleasant one. “Maybe having Jack come and stay will help.”

Shopping with Jack began with anger, he refused to get out of his seat and go into the store. Aaron tried coaxing him out of the car with all sorts of promises – toys, treats, the playground. He wouldn't budge. It took Jessica's stern voice to get him to move, a voice she preferred not to have to use but letting Haley and Jack live with her as long as she did came at a price, she'd had to assert herself into a parental role more times than she ever desired when Haley was too depressed to do it herself. This was hard on all of them, but there were moments inside of her head that she cursed both her sister and Aaron for doing this to she and Jack, putting them through such an atrocity. Jack let her pull him out, let her hold him for a minute while she gave him a pep talk.

“I know you don't want to do this,” she whispered, leveling her gaze at him as if he were her equal and not a precocious three year old. “We have to take care of daddy, okay? Look at him, he needs all the help he can get.” He scowled at her, but it worked, Jack nodded and wiggled his way out of her arms and down to the ground so he could grab hold of both of their hands and lead them into the store. After that things went smoother – he had no trouble finding everything he wanted for his room, and even managed to pick out things for Aaron's room and the rest of the apartment. He didn't want to do it and was glad to have the help, even if his bed was going to be a jewel toned blue where he would have preferred something muted, gray or brown. Jack said it matched his Avengers bed so they could be twins. Loading all of the bags into the apartment filled up the spaces they'd cleared of boxes, and Jack set about tearing through the toy boxes like a wolverine – first he'd rip it open, discard the box into a pile behind him (to be dealt with by magical cleaning fairies, he presumed) play with the toy quickly and furiously and then delicately searching for the perfect place in his room to display it once finished. He never deviated from the process, and Aaron and Jessica set about unloading the rest of their haul. By the time they were finished the apartment looked like a home, pieced together by the love of a little boy.

“What did I tell you?” she asked, standing back and admiring their hard work. He forced a smile and nodded, knowing that it felt good now but it would go back to being his crypt of loneliness soon enough and it would remain that way for longer than it wasn't. Now it was just brighter colors to drown in. “Don't think about tomorrow,” she added, nudging him. “Right now. Be here right now. Order us a pizza, we're starving.”

Tomorrow always came, though, there was no way around it. He watched Jessica drive away with his son from the sidewalk, stood there until the car was out of sight and decided to take a walk before he went back to his empty home. The crisp morning air settled over him, wind whipped through his hair and chilled him to the bone. It had felt good to be seen, to have them in his home, to listen to Jessica talk to him.

The panic didn't stop though, the minute they were gone he felt it creeping up inside of him. He drew a breath, forced it down and pulled out his phone.

“Rossi,” Dave said, a little too chipper for the time of day.

“Dave,” Aaron began, seating himself on a park bench, just barely realizing how far he'd walked away from his home. He had just put his head down and let his feet make all the decisions. “Would you meet me for breakfast? The usual spot?”

“Give me thirty minutes,” Dave replied, stifling a yawn. He was chipper but he was still a man who preferred a good lounge on the weekend, didn't like to get up and get dressed before he absolutely had to. There was a certain luxury to his life as a wealthy bachelor and the money wasn't the important part there. It was the quiet, the peaceful way his house stretched languidly around him, a decadent barrier between he and the world.

The only person that could drag him from it on a Sunday morning was Aaron. Did he want to be pulling on jeans and loafers at 8am? No, absolutely not, he wanted to sit in his robe and slippers and enjoy his coffee, but Aaron was going through it right now and he'd been hoping the other man would reach out to someone, anyone, but preferably him. They'd once been very close and he was glad they were so easily able to settle back into that deep camaraderie.

“Did you sleep last night?” Dave asked, and he stared at his friend across the table with the dark circles under his eyes and the pained grimace on his face as he scoured the menu for something that wouldn't upset his already iffy stomach. He grunted a response, not ready to dive into things until he had coffee in front of him. “Aaron?”

“Not much,” he replied, sighing. After a few minutes of silence, of Dave staring intently at him, the words began dripping from his lips thick like drops of blood from a wound. “I don't know how to do this, Dave. How to only see my son every other weekend, how to live alone. How to show up to work every single morning like my life isn't falling apart around me and pretend I can still be a good leader.”

“You are a great leader,” Dave offered, indicating for the waitress to fill both of their cups and leave the carafe on the table. “Maybe the best this team has ever had. Those kids think the world of you.”

It wasn't helpful. Dave's words, though he meant well, were empty. Hollow placation. “You know I'm falling apart,” Aaron whispered. “How long until the rest of them see it too?”

Dave laughed. “You think those kids don't see what's happening? You think they're not ready to rally around you the moment they see you falter? For someone so damn smart you can be awfully thick. Order some food, please. My treat.”

When Jason approached the table, Aaron looked panicked, like he'd seen a ghost. The thought crossed his mind that he was, in fact, hallucinating. He'd finally plummeted over the edge into madness, except Dave jumped up from his seat and pulled Jason into an enthusiastic hug and Aaron was fairly sure that it was real. He hadn't spoken to the man in months, not since they'd been suspended, he looked peaceful. “Jason,” Aaron muttered, sliding over to allow his friend to sit. There was a whisper of pain there, pain he'd buried when Jason silently retreated into the ether leaving only a note for Spencer, as if he was the only one that mattered, the only one who would be affected. Aaron's life was crumbling around him and Spencer got the letter. But he'd pushed it down so far now that seeing Jason before him, he couldn't find the anger anymore.

He just missed his friend.

“Didn't think you'd come,” Dave joked, smiling at his old friend as he took his seat. Aaron was still in silent shock, scooting his coffee cup toward him to make room for Jason to order for himself. “Late as usual.”

“Not late,” was Jason's pithy retort. “I showed up exactly when I expected to.”

He was missing something, some connection here he couldn't make. “I'm sorry,” he interjected finally. “What's going on?”

“I just thought...who better to help you out than two old, bitter friends who have already worn themselves thin on the road you're traveling?” Dave, always poetic, mused over his second cup of coffee. “I know I've got enough experience with divorce, that's what I should be writing about. Divorce for dummies, I could make my next million.”

“Dave,” Aaron pleaded, pressing his fingers to his forehead in exasperation. “Please. I don't...”

“You don't what? Need friends? Yes you do. Need support? Help? Yes...you do.”

“No,” he said, his voice broken, cracked. “I need my family back.”

“Well, you can't have that,” Dave said and Jason shook his head, lifting his hand to calm Dave's attack. He always was more assertive with Aaron, and though it was sometimes necessary to snap him out of his head and get him thinking clearly, to focus him, Jason was sure this wasn't one of those times. He knew Dave's intense love for Aaron clouded his judgment sometimes, his desperation to see the younger man thrive could take over and make him almost cruel. Jason had always tempered that, knew how to gently coax the results he was looking for out of Aaron. Together they could achieve their goal.

“Hotch,” Jason said, turning to look at Aaron and tuning everything else out. The entire restaurant melted away around them, Jason commanding his entire attention. “You can't argue your way through this one. Haley has made up her mind, and we both know she's doing the right thing.” Aaron nodded, his eyes bright with tears. Quietly, Jason sat and held Aaron's gaze, watched his mind turn circles around what he was saying with and without words. Dave ate his toast and watched in awe, the way Aaron's shoulders relaxed, like a weight was lifted.

“I know,” Aaron whispered, finally exhaling.

“You're not supposed to like it,” Jason added, patting him on the leg. “It's shit. Absolute shit. All of it, but don't you dare do what I did. Don't let the anger be what drives you.”

“She was seeing someone else,” Aaron's voice was almost too quiet to hear, but the hurt on his face spoke loud and clear. Dave felt his heart shatter inside of his chest – for all of his many marital woes, he'd never had to maneuver his way through the crushing weight of infidelity. “How do I not feel angry about that?” It wasn't hypothetical, he really wanted to know. He needed Jason and Dave to explain to him how to stop feeling so betrayed, so violently angry that he could kill this man for touching his wife. He needed so much more – he needed them to tell him how to put one foot in front of the other, tell him how to stop wishing they'd never tried so hard to have Jack only to ruin his life, how to stop wishing that he'd never met Haley in the first place. Like his life was one long cruel, sick joke.

He knew they couldn't tell him any of that. Jason just shrugged and pursed his lips in that infuriatingly nonchalant way he had. “You already know what to do and how to do it. You just need to get out of your head long enough to see it through.”

“Hey,” Dave said, finally inserting himself back into the conversation. He knew where Aaron's head was at and he would follow Jason's lead, but he was going to be more direct. He didn't speak in open ended poetry, he stated facts. “Eat. That's where you start. You eat a meal. Go grocery shopping and fill up that fridge with your favorite foods. You shave, you get a haircut and you start running again. Maybe you ask Morgan to join, he's been sniffing around and looking for ways to keep an eye on you...throw the kid a bone. Do things that make you feel good. If you can't do those things for you, then do them for Jack. He needs to see that you're doing alright, he'll come around. You've lost what...5? 10 pounds? He's probably worried sick about you. Once Jack comes around, Haley's going to follow, that woman loves you Aaron, she's not doing any of this to hurt you. She's giving all three of you a chance at a better life, a fresh start for each of you without the stress of her anger and your absence hanging over your heads.”

Jason smiled and poked at his runny eggs. “What he said,” he muttered, shaking his head. Dave always liked to launch into his long monologues. Jason wondered how he and Spencer got along, both of them loving so much their long-winded talks. “Have I told you how nice and quiet it was after you retired, Dave? Until Reid joined, anyway. We could go days without saying a word out loud to eachother, Derek and Aaron and I. Days of blissful silence.”

Aaron laughed at the look on Dave's face, shifting somewhere between disbelief and amusement. “You always did find a way to suck all the joy from a room.”

Sitting there beside Jason, across from Dave, he was finally at home, felt some semblance of peace. He knew it wasn't going to last, it was always fleeting, but he couldn't remember the last time he'd felt it. The panic, the anger always sitting right there waiting to take over had settled itself. Something deep in the underbelly was shifting, light filtering through the cracks. It felt warm, like hope trying to seep through. While Dave and Jason bickered, Aaron pulled out his phone and sent a quick text to Derek asking if he wanted to go for a run that evening and he felt a rush of something that felt like life inside of him. Anticipation in place of an aching dread. It was a start, anyway.

#criminal minds #fanfiction #aaron hotchner #jessica brooks #haley hotchner #david rossi #jason gideon

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lovee-infected · 4 years

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twisted wonderland theories part 3 : Opening explanation and parallels

Well well , hope you guys enjoyed reading the previous two parts of twst theories so far

Anyways , this is the third part . I decided to go through the opening and original disney animations and also black Butler anime references one more time so this is the combination of all I've found this time , together with some stuff you might've missed

Twst's official opening was pretty mysterious and is most likely giving us hints of the upcoming adventures during the storyline . Well here's the link to opening with eng sub and also the summary of the main character references that were given to us:

youtube

1) Ace and Deuce's rivalship : We talked about this one a lot back in (part 2) so let's skip this one

2) Leona's sadness and pain : Leona's tearn falling to the ground and the Ruggie and Jack coming for him ; that's just how he always is : mentally sad and broken with a horribly frustrating past , but will avoid expressing himself and letting anyone see his pain anyway . Not really weird that these two are always around him , Leona does really need to be looked after ...

3) Azul's seek of power : He just looked...mad in this scene . Ursula's shadow on his fave and that creepy smile totally freaks anyone out. It really explains how great his desire of power is . His neglected self in the childhood and pretty poor talent got him to this point...

4) Jamil's cold and kinda confused self : Well this one isn't really clear yet since ch 4 isn't out . But perhaps depression has this guy... spending his whole life serving the the nasty Kalim he might've grown the same characteristics as Jafar , who was so long sick of being the second one in everything . But still his ideal of life is much different from Jafar's . We saw him hypnotizing Kalim in order to make him force students to do better at school . He's trying his best to leave up to his promises as the vice dorm leader but still , having the nasty Kalim as the dorm itself is making it a lot harder for him so he's got no choice but to hypnotize him...

5) Idia's severe anxiety and his protectiveness toward Ortho : This one was mentioned in s rather old re blog but here e go again : Well with how the rumors of the "cursed Shroud family" , Idia's anti-society self might be a bit explained . This guy's overblot is surely going to be EPIC ... we just know very few about him and yet that's more than enough for him to overblot at once . Also the mention of the process of bringing Ortho back to life was a bad hit...His family curse might've been the reason of whatever thst has happened to Ortho

6) Vil's anger of not being the fairest and breaking the mirror: This one's been pointed out a lot . His anger being the same as evil queen's and also the fear of him actually poisoning someone to become the fairest one more time....**

7) Malleus' isolated self and his hidden evil aura : This one's being shown too obviously . The lonely dark prince exposing his evil side under the full moonlight . All alone , beyond the forest of thorns (Lol how ironic) while the others are running to save him before it gets too late...***

(note : **,***: Vil and Malleus' description will be continued undercut)

Very well these were the general hints found on the opening , but don't miss the final seconds which included the biggest hidden facts you could've missed

Firstly , the splitted ink (This one was previously discussed on part 1 but still...) : We talked about how in the "Epic Mickey", Mickey accidentally splits the magic ink over the kingdom and which led to the creation of "shadow blot". This sight seems to be much similar to what we had here in the epic mickey

Well this parallel might be more than just an accidental one and finally and it might actually be that overblot is kinda Crowley's fault , too

Crowley crosses the mirror , turns into an actual crow and flies away...(DaMn YoU bIrDiE wHERe ArE yOu gOinG I'M noT doNe YeT-)

Well the reason he suddenly runs away isn't clear yet but being a fan of black butler for years , I was suddenly reminded of how Undertaker disappeared all of a sudden at this scene from the movie :" Book of Atlantic "

pretty similar , aren't they..?

In Book of Atlantic , Undertaker revealed his original identity as a reaper and the mastermind behind the "Bizzare dolls' " project after pretending to be a just a crazy cookie lover for so long . And at once , he comes up with his stunning sudden self-reveal , leaving everyone in the room speechless

Now now , what do we have with Crowley?

A principal who keeps hiding his face (remember that Undertaker hid his eyes , too?) , telling everyone "how kind he is" many times ... also:

1) In the opening , he was standing smiling in the mirror hall while the seven dorms were burning through seven mirrors

2) He didn't ever try to stop anyone from overbloting ; even Riddle whose overblot occurred right in front of him

3) In the beggining of the game, he asked the mirror to choose the right one and then! and MC was chosen ! MC took the hand of the one appearing through the mirror (seemingly Dire Crowley) and came here. With all said , so why did the mirror reject MC afterwards?

Also , how couldn't he help MC return to Their own world and didn't know about it if he himself brought MC here..?(Could it be that...MC doesn't remember how she/he was brought here?)

4) If he literally is THIS useless and can't ever stop or help anything, then why would he be the principal.....?

Sooooo enough with Crowley ; but what's with these two....?

The spindle wheel & the poison apple ; Sleeping beauty and Snow white

Well it seems that Diasomnia and Pomefiore are going to play a greatly important role in the storyline . We were kinda sure of Diasomnia's but Pomefiore's...? What's so special with it?

(A few hours earlier)

(Me : Hmmm ... the black mirror...where have I seen this before..? *googling - searching Snow White- going to the magic mirror scene* Me : Uh...)

Well... here it is : The Crowley's beloved flower of evil , back at his days with evil queen

feeling old yet ...?

Btw , just how important is being "the fairest one of all "to him ? How 'far' would he go to be the fairest...? With the bitten apple in the last few seconds of opening , it most likely seems that he IS gonna 'kill' to be the fairest again ...Who would he kill ? We don't know . But how about our pretty small guy Epel? Could it be him ? The stubborn freshman who refuses following Vil around and is usually mistaken with a girl......?

Also , why would the original mirror be so important to Crowley? If Vil's supposed to represent evil queen , why isn't 'he' the one owing the mirror...?

And now , the spindle wheel .Great maleficent's legacy , in the hands of Crowley...Well well this is 'too' much . Malleus' family treasure being kept hidden in NRC... pathetic

Also , the mirror which Vil broke in the opening . Well well seems like he isn't having the original magic mirror , afterall....

But wait , if there's the spindle wheel , who's gonna be the evil witch to pull the sweet princess to eternal sleep..? Right , there's only one who might be...

Well we talked about all we'd got so far , but what about Grim ? Isn't anyone going to mention his importance or why he was also mentioned in this chaotic final seconds of opening ???

So... this is what we had in the final seconds :

1)The apple

2) Crowley

3)The black ink

4)Grim

5)The spindle wheel

We talked about all of them except nu 4 . But before that , I've got the same question as before : Why is it "Sleeping beauty" & "Snow white"..?

We discussed the "overblot Grim " hints in (part 2), but here's another thing :

Very well , ever heard of "Grimm brothers"...?

In the case that you don't know who they are , here' the point : They are the authors of 'original' versions of sleeping beauty & snow white; two of the darkest , deepest and possibly creepiest stories of their own throughout the history

I believe that most of you are familiar with the original versions , but you may like to take a look at these two if you haven't yet heard of them check the two of these stories out : (note: I'm aware that there are darker , deeper versions of these too but I'm not gonna mention any of them because : 1)They aren't written by Grimm brothers & 2) They include overly sensual and inappropriate content which has no place in my posts . If you care to know about them , check them at your own risk)

Alright , if you ever wondered who was Grim named after , I guess we've got it now . Mentioning Grim , Snow white and Sleeping beauty together at once is too direct to be a coincidence ...but it's also terrifying ...

Thinking that Disney is actually referring to the original books written by Grimm brothers is a bit too dark... Original stories are really horrible and a great way to ruin one's childhood , but all these hints fit each other way too great and now , they may no longer be just a coincidence...

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k-s-morgan · 4 years

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Hi there ! You are doing a great job analysis the most difficult sections. Now while I am fully with you on evolution of Will and Hannibal's relationship, I have some doubts about your last long meta on her darkness. Kudos again for putting it all together !! I don't think Will mistreated Molly or that he knew Hannibal would attack. Will didn't lie to his wife, there were some white lies, lies of omission to protect them. Cont'd. Part 2

I saw that he truly loved them but Hannibal's pull overpowered everything. Will created his own safe sanctuary, Jack breaches it and he looks at his family and had to go and once that door was opened he was helpless.. and Hannibal overpowers him. How could he imagine the attack Hannibal safely stowed away in underground cell. Also there were many motivations behind murder suicide - love foremost, also other things like safety for everyone including his family ( representative of innocent lives)

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Hello! Thank you, I’m glad you enjoy my metas)) As for your points - let’s address them in sequence.

The Dragon Attack

I’m not claiming Will knew Hannibal would attack Molly 100% - I agree with you that in a way, Will cared about his family, even if superficially. However, it’s a strong possibility because Hannibal’s hints are very, very blatant in that scene. First, he says this:

Hannibal: When you close your eyes, Will, is it your family you see?

Then Will asks:

Will: Do you know who they are?

Hannibal: Yes. Will: And you're willing to let them die. Hannibal: They're not my family, Will. And I'm not letting them die. You are.

The logic here is very clear - Hannibal doesn’t take responsibility for what it is about to happen because it’s not his family that’s being targeted. He claims that Will, on the other hand, is responsible - it’s elementary to suggest that in this case, Will’s family is about to be killed. It’s like 2 + x = 4, with everyone understanding what ‘x’ means. Not to mention that Will is supposed to be a great profiler with a particular understanding of Hannibal.

He could easily guess that Hannibal could plan the attack because at this point, he knows Hannibal is in contact with Francis to the point of knowing who the targeted family is going to be. So to be honest, it’s pretty unbelievable to me that Will honestly had no idea. The whole situation is strange from another angle, too - if Will suggested that Hannibal knows what family will be killed, then he knows Francis and Hannibal had discussions about it. What did he imagine Francis said? “Hey, I’ll attack the Jonson family in Virginia?” This information would be meaningless. So for Hannibal to make an emphasis on it, it’s clearly a family that has some specific relevance.

Will also took this chance to leave his family and he focused on his relationship with Hannibal entirely after this, so I think a part of him, even a subconscious one, got all the hints but remained silent. But again, I’m willing to concede that it’s mostly up to interpretation.

Marriage with Molly

I think lying about who you are is not a white lie, and it’s also not a lie aimed at protecting anyone. Molly would have never married Will if she knew he’s a killer who enjoys killing, someone who sided with a serial murderer like Hannibal on more than one occasion, someone who willingly engaged in cannibalism and body mutilations. She needed stability, not a facade. Unless WIll genuinely fell in love with someone and confessed the core truth about himself to this person, he shouldn’t have married. Molly and Walter didn’t deserve to be his rebound attempt, his experiment on whether he can be normal.

When Molly jokes about his criminal mind, Will immediately shuts down and claims he doesn’t have one. It’s obvious that Molly knew only the official version of a hero Will with a gift of empathy - she never thought darkness is a serious, intimate, and painful topic for him.

From what was shown, Jack didn’t enter a sanctuary, he broke into a marriage as lifeless as the winter emptiness around Will when we see him again. As a contrast, in another Red Dragon adaptation, Jack comes when Will is genuinely happy with Molly and Walter. They are spending time together on the beach, they are laughing, they are having fun as a family, they are holding hands. This unity and happiness are absent in the show. Jack comes when Molly and Walter are away fishing, with Will choosing to stay behind even though fishing is his passion. It’s a deliberate choice and it says a lot.

If Will wanted to go investigate the case just because of his family, then he would have done just that. Instead, he manipulated the situation by leaving Jack with Molly and letting him convince her so that she could introduce this idea to him later. He’s shifting the blame, and it’s a terrible thing to do. As the result, Molly blames herself for making him go later. Also, if Will’s primary concern was the case, he wouldn’t have run to Hannibal on the very first day when he didn’t need his help. He wouldn’t have sought out Bedelia to question her about her relationship with Hannibal. Will has selfish motivations, and Molly and Walter aren’t a part of them.

It would have been very easy to show them as a happy family. A few kisses here and there. “I love you” exchanged. Holding hands and smiling at each other as they walk, unable to look away. Will running to hug Walter in the hospital, to whisper something frantically and passionately to comfort him; Will crying and covering Molly’s limp hand with kisses at the hospital.

What we have instead is Will choosing to be alone, Will shutting Molly down, Will not returning her “I love you” and acting like a stranger with Walter. The best positive scenes they shared was at dinner and when they talked about Randy (before Will’s lies made him cut Molly down in the same conversation). We saw that they can laugh from silly jokes together and unite when taking care of dogs. They portray a pretty surface-level relationship and they don’t show that Will actually loves his family, especially when put into context. The ease with which he leaves them shows the depth of his real feelings.

TWOTL

Will doesn’t care about innocent lives or Molly with Walter at all here, so I’ll have to disagree. If he did, he would have gone with Jack’s plan. This would have ensured that only Hannibal and Francis die. Instead, Will betrayed Jack with Alana and conspired with Francis to break Hannibal free. He got innocent officers killed in the process with no regret. What happens next? Francis drives away, Hannibal also takes a car. What does Will do? Nothing. He doesn’t stop them. If Francis and Hannibal chose to escape without him, he would have set loose two monsters who targeted his family. But Will isn’t concerned about that - he’s concerned about Hannibal being free and them killing Francis together. He indicated to Bedelia he’s going to let Hannibal go after this, which is another indication that he wasn’t sure of the outcome. His actions took lives of many innocent people and only endangered Molly and Walter.

Also, the whole Hannibal overpowers Will thing... It’s not like Hannibal forced him to do anything - they are equally dependent on each other because of their feelings.

#hannibal #will graham #hannigram

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alindae-anne · 3 years

Text

What Makes a Book?

I want to take a break from my novel and dive into a history lesson of books themselves. Why? Well first of all, I will be honest, this blog is for an assignment. But also because the way books have evolved over the last 5,000+ years is fascinating!

Of course no one ever really thinks about THE book, just the fact that the story within its pages--the mystery, the romance, whatever they happen to be enjoying--is a great read (or maybe not so great), but have they ever wondered what materials the book is made from? Who invented it? How the book has become one of the most common and most used items of all time?

No. Of course they didn't wonder any of those things. And if they did, they probably didn't take the time to research any of these burning questions, either.

How great, then, that I wrote this post?! Today is your lucky day! (Also, it is a good thing that Keith Houston, author of Shady Characters, decided to write a whole book about it (1).) I'm going to use the pages of a classic tale to explain some cool things you probably never noticed while reading a book before.

Gulliver’s Travels was originally published in London in 1726 by Benjamin Motte. The author, Jonathan Swift, used it to satirize London society and culture, poking holes at the social hierarchies and systems, basically making out everyone living in the 18th century to be fools--but mostly the wealthy and those who were obsessed with scientific progression (2). If you have not read it, I highly encourage adding it to your reading list, or at the very least there is a 2010 movie, featuring Jack Black as Gulliver, that you could watch. (It’s Jack Black, okay?)

This 2 page spread of Gulliver's Travels pictured above is actually found in The Franklin Library edition from Franklin Center, Pennsylvania, published in 1979. This is the first printing of this edition, and its pages, the way it is printed, and the way it is bound and presented, are all features of the modern 20-21st century book, plus some extra bells and whistles. The most interesting qualities come from the publishers themselves who specifically design their books to be very snazzy--meant for collectors’ editions! They include different kinds of leather binding, exclusive illustrations, and may be signed or part of a particular series specific to a certain author or genre (3). This makes the books published here very valuable and sought after.

Gulliver’s Travels is hardcover. Specifically, “fine leather in boards.” This means the spine and front and back boards (or cover) of the book are bound in leather. The leather is fine and and delicate and able to be decorated and engraved upon.4 Above you can see how fancy it looks with the gilt gold engravements. Even its pages are gilt!

This picture shows more clearly the binding, and of course the spine, which is “hubbed,” or ridged, for added texture.

At this point you may have notice that this version is much different than the original published in 1726. That is because over time, the materials involved in making books have changed slightly or the processes have become more efficient or cost worthy, etc. Either way, the anatomy of the book has not wavered. Keith Houston has dissected the book into certain components and we can see them in each book we read:

I have attempted to label it as best as I can, so hopefully you can follow along:

Chapter Number

a) this seems to be a description, more or less of the chapter, or the Chapter Title. b) “A Voyage to Lilliput” seems much more title-like to me, although this is technically called the “Recto Running Head.” The recto running head is a condensed or abbreviated chapter title, repeating on every right-side page to the end of the chapter.

Drop Cap. This would be the first letter of the first word of a chapter, which is usually exaggerated or embellished in some way.

Opener Text

Head Margin - the space between the top of the page and text

Foot Margin - the space between the bottom of the page and text

Folio - page number

It has taken quite a while for books to become so sophisticated. Because it was published in 1726, Gulliver's Travels is technically what you could call "modern" in terms of how long ago books began their journey to what they are today, but even between 1726 and 1979 the quality has improved. This edition published by Franklin Library is a perfect model for the modern book of today.

The 2 page spread we analyzed above is made from paper. But books were not always made with paper, or even in the book form, bound with anything at all, and they were not printed either. They were written by hand on papyrus.

Papyrus was the first material used as "paper" beginning in Egypt. The reeds were stripped, strung side by side and pressed together. Papyrus was durable and sturdy, and the water of the Nile was abundant in aluminum sulfate, which brightened it so that writing and scribbles could be seen better. There is no particular origin of when Papyrus had first been invented but it must have been around the end of the 4th millenium BCE (Houston 4).

Parchment is made from animal skin that has been soaked, scrubbed, dried, and stretched for days and days, creating a more flexible, yet still durable, material for writing. It was also thinner and could be made "cleaner" and brighter by chemical means. Religion heavily influenced its distribution; some parchment use was literally banned because the type of animal skin used to make it wasn't considered "holy" or "good." For example, the lamb or a calf was acceptable, but how dare you use parchment made from goat skin? What is wrong with you?

Besides the fact that parchment is kind of gross if you think about it (although to be fair, you can’t be too choosy in times right before the common era), it was also expensive to keep certain cattle only for paper making, and the reliability of having new cattle at the time you may need more paper was not very high.

Paper was first introduced in China. It is made from bits of cloth and rags soaked in water, and after breaking down into pulp, strained through a wire grate and pressed to dry. Fun fact-- the Rhar West Art Museum in Manitowoc, Wisconsin has held classes showing how to make paper using this exact process.

There is a trend here: the materials used to make paper (and papyrus and parchment before it) become scarce or too expensive, or they are just not “good enough.” People want their paper thin and smooth, but still strong and durable; crisp and bright, but still able to last years and years without crumbling. There have been times that processes used to ensure these preferred qualities of paper included using chemicals that ended up negatively affecting some other quality. For example, the paper would be white as snow, yet the chemical that did this broke down the natural adhesives which kept the paper intact.

Have you heard that paper grows on trees? Well, that is partly true since after rags and cloths were nowhere to be found (unless people were about to start donating the shirts off their backs), wood pulp has now since been used... the higher the demand for paper, the greater demand for those materials used for its creation.

This brings us to printing side of things. The first ways of printing weren’t of how we think of it now. Even before papyrus, people were still writing and making inscriptions on pretty much anything they could get their hands on. The earliest forms of writing were rather indentations or markings on clay tablets. Found across the Middle East, it is a cuneiform script of the Sumerian people from 3300 BCE (Houston 79).

Similarly, the Egyptians were also keen on developing their own writing system which today we recognize as hieroglyphs. A lot of these were found carved on the walls of tombs but also began to be used on papyrus in 2600 BCE (Houston 82-83).

The Egyptians celebrated their scribes and believed those who wrote with brush and ink on papyrus to be channeling power--that it was a gift from the gods--”wielded with respect and humility” (Houston 87). The hieroglyphs not only showed the intention of the writer, visually, but often the picture would be associated with or connected to certain sounds which emerged more formal use of letters as time went on.

The alphabet we use today can be traced back to the Phoenician alphabet (used by the Egyptians) which had evolved into the Greek and then Roman alphabets (Houston 91-92). At this point in time, scribes were using water based ink which was fine for papyrus, but during the transition to parchment they realized that ink smudges quite a bit. This led to the creation of iron gall ink that would darken and adhere to the parchment as it dried due to its chemical makeup in contact with oxygen in the air.

Jump ahead to 1400s and we are with Johannes Gutenberg and the printing press! One thing Keith Houston make sure to mention is that although Gutenberg invented the printing press itself, to help moveable type and mass printing, the idea of printing had not been new. Clay pieces used as stamps and similar objects had been excavated and dated back thousands of years before the clay inscribed cuneiform tablets were made. And a primitive version of a sort of printing press is mentioned being made by a man named Bi Sheng during the reign of Qingli from 1041-1048 AD (Houston 110). Obviously nothing great came from it, most likely because he was of unofficial position. Even so, movable type was still possible, although painstakingly slow with wooden blocks used as stamps. This was common for the next few hundred years in China.

Even though Gutenberg's press completely revolutionized the transmission of knowledge, it was still quite slow in comparison to the versions which came after, only being able to print 600 characters a day (Houston 118). From Gutenberg's printing press came other types of presses that improved the speed or efficiency of movable type immensely. These all came after the original publication of Guliver's Travels, starting in the early 1800s with the Columbian press, eventually the Linotype, and then lack of precision called for the Monotype, which could produce 140 wpm (Houston 149).

The 2 page spread above then, could possibly have been printed by the Linotype, but most likely, however, the Monotype, which is the more accurate of the two. Another possibility could be "sophisticated photographic and 'lithographic' techniques" or "'phototypsetting'" (Houston 151). Houston mentions that the printing press age has died and now faces a digital future.

I'm at my 10 image limit which means I better wrap this up with some interesting facts about bookbinding. On BIBLIO.com I was trying to see exactly what "fine leather in boards" meant which is apparently how Gulliver's Travels is bound. I didn't find any phrase that matched, but from my understanding, the leather is very supple and pliable, which is why it was able to be gilt with gold, and it was able to form nicely to the hubbing on the spine.

The website also explains that the first "book binding" was technically just putting the pieces of paper or parchment together and pressing them between two boards. Literally. Like just setting them on a board and putting another board on top of that. Eventually leather was introduced, first as a cord wrapped around the book to keep the boards in place. As time progressed, the practice was improved and perfected so it was less crude. This involved the creation of the "spine" where the pages meet together and can therefore open and close in a v shape without flying away.

This website helped explain some of the other embellishments and extra flair that can be added to a book's binding. It mostly goes over leather binding which is from most animal skin but there is a unique leather bound book that can be bound with seal skin. Some of the books on the website are so expensive because of the materials they are bound with and the effects that have been created in the cover, for example, Benjamin Franklin's observations on electricity, which has had acid added to the page, discoloring it for a lightning strike effect, and includes a key to represent his famous experiment.

Gulliver's Travels, although not quite so fancy, is still a very beautifully bound book with decorated endpapers, meaning the inside cover is laden with designed paper rather than boring white or some other neutral color.

I hope you found this journey of the book as interesting and as exciting as I did while writing this post! You must really love books because even my attention span isn't this long. I will admit I took at least 3 different breaks.

I'm back to my novel for now, thanks for listening😎

Bibliography

Houston, Keith--Author of Shady Characters, which I used extensively in my TikTok “history of punctuation” project--also wrote -> The BOOK - a cover-to-cover exploration of the most powerful object of our time, 2016.

British Library Website -> works -> “Gulliver’s Travels overview”

Masters, Kristin. “Franklin Library Editions: Ideal for Book Collectors?” Books Tell You Why, 2017 (blog).

BIBLIO.com -> “Leather Binding Terminology and Techniques”

#bookbinding #papermaking #printing #book history #keith houston

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stellarstacey · 4 years

Text

(Shout out to my Queen @seaofashes for this great idea.)

Eddie rolled his eyes at his best friend.

"Dude...We can't take you anywhere can we?" Eddie teased as Buck pouted at the large drop of mustard that fell onto his white shirt.

"Laughed it up, man. I'm gonna go and try and wash this out. I'll be right back." Buck nodded to the bathroom and ruffled Christopher's hair on the way.

Eddie looked down at his phone when he heard Christopher gasp. Eddie looked up in concern.

"You okay, kid?" Eddie asked and Christopher pointed to a man near the bar.

Holy shit...

It was a skinner version of Buck with longer hair. Eddie blinked and blinked wondering if his mind was playing tricks on him. Eddie saw that Christopher was also staring at him.

"I thought Buck went to the bathroom." Christopher asked confused and Eddie was sure he entered the twilight zone when he saw Buck exit the bathroom.

"What's up? It looks like you two saw a ghost or something?" Buck teased but Eddie shook his head.

"Not a ghost... A clone." Eddie muttered nodding over to the bar.

Buck frowned in confusion and looked over.

He groaned.

"Great...What's he doing here?" Buck muttered and Eddie raised an eyebrow gesturing wildly with his hands for Buck to elaborate.

"That's Ryan though he prefers Ryder..." Buck scoffed. "My twin brother."

Eddie felt his insides squirm.

"You have a twin? That's something you mention, Buck!" Eddie hissed and Buck rolled his eyes.

"My parents were divorced. He grew up with my dad and I grew up with my mom. We aren't close." Buck shrugged and Eddie was still trying to process.

"He looks exactly like you." Eddie snapped and Buck wrinkled his nose.

"First off, I'm way more jacked. Second he doesn't have the classic Buck birthmark and lastly I'm hotter." Buck checked off offended and Eddie sighed.

"Maybe in the light of day you could see that. But in the dark you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. What if I thought he was you and finally made my move only to find out that I made out with your brother." Eddie asked and Buck blinked.

"There's a lot to unpack in that." Buck whispered as Christopher looked between them.

"Hey Evan! Though I heard your squeaky voice." Ryder came over and it was disturbing for Eddie to see them side by side.

"What are you doing in LA?" Buck asked and Ryder raised an eyebrow.

"Visiting Maddie. I would visit you too if I could guarantee it didn't end with me getting a broken nose." Ryder smirked and Buck rolled his eyes.

"You had it coming last time." Buck muttered as Ryder took in Eddie.

"This the guy you been texting me about?" Ryder asked and Buck blushed.

"Get lost, Ry." Buck grumbled and Ryder smirked.

"Luckily for you, Evan. I'm straight. I won't be stealing this one." Ryder patted Buck's back.

"Like you could have anyway. I'm a loyal guy. Not to mention I'm not into the off brand Walmart version of my boyfriend." Eddie smiled tightly earning a surprised look from Buck and a smirk from Ryder.

"I like this one. See ya at the next family reunion, Evan." Ryder walked off and Buck sat back down next to Eddie.

"Boyfriend huh?" Buck smiled and Eddie bit his lip.

"Yeah...Got a problem with that?" Eddie asked and Buck smiled.

"Nope." Buck said lacing their fingers.

"What just happened?" Christopher asked confused causing both men to burst out into laughter.

#buddie

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viostormcaller · 5 years

Text

So this wasn't originally gonna be that theory post I was gonna make, but fuck it, there's a LOT of evidence here and I need to unload it all. I'm scrapping my old theory in favor of this one. Everything I have to say, I'm saying right here and now. [WARNING: LONG POST AHEAD]

There is something EXTREMELY FUCKING IMPORTANT that I've noticed that's been happening since the first episode of Stories Untold...

Almost (key word being almost because there are some exceptions) every glitch has some sort of VHS filter/old school TV/radio audio or visual effect. They're not the same glitches from before/during KJSE. No, these ones are WILDLY different. But why? In a time period where technology is very modernized, why are the glitches mimicking those of older tech?

Remember in Stories Untold, after the first episode, where the door opens behind him and then after the thunder and lightning we see Jack trapped behind the computer? What if -- and hear me out bc this is a fucking insane theory -- but what if Anti found a way to teleport Jack's consciousness -- not his body, just his mind -- to an era where low-fi tech was used, like the 80s (the opening door symbolic for Anti breaking into Jack's compromised, comatose mind and attacking him in his own "home" so to speak)? So that way the other Egos, living in a modernized era and mostly confined to the limits of reality and physics (uh, aside from Marvin and JJ), can't reach him. He's stuck Jack in an old computer, his consciousness trapped. And that's why a lot of the glitches we see match those of the games with VHS filters on them, because the glitches we see are not coming from a new computer, but an old one.

And so, maybe... Schneep is trying his best to figure out time travel, how to go back to the past, and pick whatever date Jack has been specifically warped to and retrieve him and bring him back?

But... he can't just do it once he figures out the equation. He has to test it first. As a doctor, he should most definitely know you can't just perform a procedure without testing it first. Which is probably why he had a random, seemingly meaningless date --March 25th, 2017, on his screen. Because he must think that maybe, if he goes back just far enough, on a day where nothing happened and Anti was dormant, he can carefully give himself a proper buffer to slowly alter things between then and KJSE. And, if not, he can do the equation again (because technology hasn't changed much since 2017 so this would still be possible to do using the same exact tech), and port back even further, to the date that Jack is stuck in.

And I think someone has already TRIED to get Jack back. You know who it is?

Jameson Jackson. My proof? This line:

Jameson would not say this if he was actually from the 20s like we all think he is. One thing most of us seem to agree on is that JJ has the ability to time travel. I think he tried to go back, miscalculated, and sent himself back way too early in time. This is where Schneep would come in: Trying to test something involving physics without an equation or a proper hold on what it is you're actually trying to do is in general an all-around bad idea. Schneep was in the process of trying to figure out the equation. He doesn't know how to do it just yet, though, coming up with errors, and to make matters worse, he was teleported in the middle of working to who-knows-where. If Jameson and Schneep were to work together, with JJ's magic and Schneep's calculations to guide him, one or both of them can go back to the proper time and retrieve Jack.

But problem! Anti is going to make this hard for them. You think he would take this lying down? Fuck no! He sees what Jameson was trying to accomplish and sees where he failed. Anti got ahold of JJ, puppeting him and trapping him in the 20s. He's stuck there now, as if to rub salt in the wound.

Now, you may be asking: "But Vio, we saw JJ in Try To Fall Asleep, helping Marvin wake Jack up!" To that I say you're right, we DID see JJ, but we didn't see a CURRENT version of JJ. You know what we saw? A screenshot of the only proof we have that JJ exists. You know who we DID see? Marvin. Current, 2018 Marvin. Marvin was trying to let Jack know, through the static, that he needs to find a way out of the era he's stuck in, that he needs to flee, because what happened to JJ, as he shows, has happened to him. And so every glitch with that VHS filter on it is Anti teasing us, letting us know exactly what happened to Jack, and that there's absolutely nothing we can do about it. And that morse code, saying "WHERE AM I"? Jack obviously doesn't know where he is -- he's in an unfamiliar era. His body is still stuck in the present, which is why he CAN hear Chase (even though Chase doesn't know it) and why he can still recieve Marvin's message, but his consciousness is no longer in our time. And this is why time is broken. His body is in one era, his mind in another. That gap, that rift, is more than enough to be catastrophic if something isn't done about it. Not only this, but the only way to effectively keep Jack's consciousness stuck is if he's reliving the same day over and over, his brain stuck on a specific date so he can't move forwards, and all the while dealing with constant, confusing, endless nightmares that keep him disoriented long enough so he can't find a successful way out. And this is why we hear him yelling "Let me out!" In First Winter. He's stuck and is, once again, just like in Say Goodbye and Always Watching, calling out to us for help.

Now, you may be wondering how this all connects to the present and what Marvin has to do with all this, since the teleportation seems to be his doing. What happened to Marvin in between then and now? Why is he suddenly teleporting everyone? What's his goal? Well, he needs them all in one place. They need to stage a series of rescue missions. Find a way to grab JJ back from the 20s, then with the help of JJ's time travel, Schneep's calculations, Marvin's magic and Jackie's abilities -- whatever those may be -- as a defensive measure, they can successfully retrieve Jack from the period in time he's stuck in. And in the process, hopefully figure out exactly what Anti is, how he was created (because even though his creation is our responsibility, there has to be more to it than just that) and how to beat him.

But isn't Chase the protagonist? Where does HE fit into all this? Well, it's simple: Chase is going to be the one who brings Jack back to the present. He has no abilities, meaning all magic placed onto him is an outside force. Nothing within him can interfere with it. A normal, ability-less person like Chase is the PERFECT candidate for time travel. But FIRST, they need to find out what's connecting Anti to Chase and how to sever that connection so that Anti can't interrupt the procedure and interfere, which is why Marvin's birth date was on the eviction notice. He's responsible for the eviction, going by this logic (as he must know what happened to him after Dark Silence, hence the case number): Keep Chase away from the house Anti possessed and get him out of there by any means possible; get him away from his car, where Anti has also connected himself since Chase has been living there (and since cars are pretty high-tech now); and port Chase to a safe location without his phone so that Anti can't connect himself to that, either, and without his whiskey so Chase can keep himself safe and not further impair his ability to make rational decisions.

The Egos, they're not alone in this, either. No, they also have OUR help. We are going to help them. We have influence on how this story goes. We can alter things to turn out for the better. We affect canon, more than canon. After all, without us, Marvin wouldn't exist, and he's playing a crucial role right now -- without Marvin, we may not have a chance at this.

We have one mission, and our mission is this:

Bring him. Bring Jack back home.

#long post #jacksepticeye #antisepticeye #marvin the magnificent #jameson jackson #dr. schneeplestein #chase brody #jackieboy man #vio stormcaller #ego theory #yall this is the best fucking thing I have ever wrote

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mikegranich87 · 3 years

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Pixel 5a review: The 4a 5G wasn't broken, so Google didn't fix it

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The Pixel 6 is just around the corner. But before Google brings it and its Tensor mobile chip to market, the company is updating its entry level offering with the $449 Pixel 5a. The whole point of the “a” family is to offer the basics at a reasonable price without sacrificing too much of the Pixel experience in the process. That means a relatively clean version of Android with a bunch of AI tricks and a heavy focus on photography.

But apparently Google feels like it more or less nailed that formula with the Pixel 4a 5G because the 5a is basically the same phone. (Note: The Pixel 5a is not a direct successor to the 4a, which was a much smaller device.) There are some differences — notably the addition of IP67 waterproofing — but most of the tweaks are extremely minor. Even the processor and RAM haven’t changed. So, if we said you could do better way back in October of 2020, what does that mean for the 5a in the fall of 2021?

Well, it makes the Pixel 5a about as unexciting as a phone can be, for one. But look, boring isn’t necessarily bad. Especially when you’re talking about the mid and lower tiers of the smartphone market. For one, keeping things staid allows Google to focus its efforts on battery life and performance optimization. And just like the last generation of Pixels, the 5a feels pretty responsive despite the aging Snapdragon 765G inside. That said, the 765G wasn’t exactly top of the line last year, and it’s starting to show its limits. While scrolling through the UI and doing simple things like reading email and sending text messages, the 5a is indistinguishable from any flagship device. It even handles most mobile games without a hiccup. I spent some time playing The Elder Scrolls: Blades and Wild Castle and the phone barely broke a sweat.

But, I did notice it stutter a few times while navigating YouTube, editing photos and jotting down my thoughts for this review in Evernote. The latter I could easily chalk up to Evernote’s questionable development over the last few years, but the pauses while switching to fullscreen in YouTube and swapping filters in Google Photos are a bit more concerning.

Terrence O'Brien / Engadget

The plus side of going with something a bit older and lower-powered (not to mention with an integrated 5G modem) is power efficiency. The 4a 5G was already something of a beast, lasting over 17 hours in our battery drain test before our reviews editor Cherlynn Low simply gave up and moved on with her life. That device had a 3,885mAh battery. The 5a has a 4,680mAh cell. It took 22 hours and 56 of playing a video on loop at 50-brightness before it finally powered down.

After 24 hour of heavy usage — playing games, repeatedly running 5G speed tests, installing apps, watching videos on YouTube and even letting it play sleep sounds overnight — the battery was still at 40 percent. It didn’t finally crap out until almost 2AM on day two. And if you turn on Extreme Battery Saver, things could get even more absurd. I’m fairly confident that under normal use you could get a full 48 hours out of the Pixel 5a before needing to find an outlet.

Battery life isn’t the only difference between the 5a and 4a 5G: The new phone is also IP67 rated for water and dust resistance. At a time when many smartphones have at least some form of water resistance the Pixel 4a 5G was sort of a disappointment. In fact, the lack of waterproofing was one of the big cons called out in our review. But the Pixel 5a should easily survive getting caught in the rain or if you drop it in a toilet. It can withstand being submerged in water up to one meter deep for 30 minutes, but I wouldn’t push this to its limits. Definitely don’t go swimming with it in your pocket.

Terrence O'Brien / Engadget

The last difference between the Pixel 5a and the 4a 5G is in the size and construction, but it’s subtle. The 5a has a metal unibody as opposed to a polycarbonate one. The texture is still matte and similar to the softtouch of the previous models, though, and the upgrade to Gorilla Glass 6 from Gorilla Glass 3 is notable, but you’ll never notice the difference in daily use. The 5a comes in one finish: Mostly Black. Some might find the look a little dull, and it’s certainly on the utilitarian side, but I quite liked the feel of the phone. The finish is a nice contrast to the seemingly endless sea of smooth glassy surfaces and the heft is just right, too.

The 5a is ever so slightly larger and heavier, but you’re talking about a few millimeters and grams. Even if you had a Pixel 4a 5G in one hand and a Pixel 5a in the other you’d be hard pressed to figure out which is which.

The change in size mostly comes down to the slightly larger screen. The OLED panel on the 5a is 6.34 inches, versus 6.2 inches on the 4a 5G. Otherwise, though, the screens are basically the same. The increased resolution of 2,400 x 1,080 makes up for the size difference so they both have a density of 413 ppi. Both also sport a contrast ratio of 100,000:1 and support HDR and are stuck at now outdated 60Hz. And both are just bright enough to use in direct sunlight, though high brightness mode is definitely a necessity if you’re watching a video outdoors.

Even the holepunch for the front-facing camera is in the same place. That said, I appreciated Google’s “for fun” wallpapers that camouflage the hole by incorporating it into the design. My favorite is the record player where the camera becomes the hole at the center of an LP.

That 8-megapixel front-facing camera, by the way, is one of the weak points of the 5a. It does the job in perfect lighting and for video calls. But details can be a bit soft, in low light it gets noisy and portrait mode is hit or miss. Overall, I found Google’s portrait feature to be a bit too aggressive even on the main camera. You can easily adjust the blur and depth after the fact, but the default settings could stand to be more subtle.

The selfie cam, though, is the same one found on the Pixel 4a 5G, so none of this is a surprise. In fact, all of the cameras are the same. The two sensors around the rear, however, are much better than the one on the front. There’s a 12.2-megapixel main shooter with optical image stabilization and a 16-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens. They have a somewhat “moody” vibe when compared to shots from an iPhone or a Galaxy device, but they’re not obviously inferior. And even though images taken with the wide-angle lens can get a little fuzzy if you start zooming in on details, Google’s processing does an admirable job of minimizing barrel distortion. Google isn’t at the top of the smartphone camera heap anymore, but it’s not far off and photography is still an undeniable strong suit of the Pixel family.

Terrence O'Brien / Engadget

There’s nothing new to report, though. It’s the same set of excellent photography features that you got last year: Portrait lighting can help clean up and add some contrast to photos of people (but sadly not pets — the option only appears if a human face is detected). Night Sight turns on automatically in dim lighting and at times produces mind-blowing results. And the video stabilization modes are excellent. Cinematic Pan, which combines slow motion with super smooth movement, is especially fun.

Also, just like every other “a” model Pixel, this one has a headphone jack. All I can say is: That’s great, now please bring the headphone jack back to flagship phones. I know I’m not the only person clamoring for it. And it drives me nuts that the only way to get an old-school 3.5mm jack on my phone is to go down market.

Terrence O'Brien / Engadget

One last thing to mention: The actual full name of the phone is the Pixel 5a with 5G. So, guess what, it supports 5G connectivity. That’s not really surprising since the Snapdragon 765G has an integrated 5G modem. Unlike the Pixel 4a 5G, however, there is no mmWave variant of the 5a. And, although technically it’s capable of C-Band support, it’s currently not enabled and Google wouldn’t commit to adding support in the future. That’s not a huge deal at the moment since there are no active C-Band networks in the US yet. But it might irk some when AT&T and Verizon start flipping the switch, likely sometime later this year. That said, full C-Band rollout isn’t expected to happen until at least late 2023.

Those caveats out of the way, 5G still seems stuck in a state of arrested development. I tested the Pixel 5a using Google Fi, which essentially means I was on T-Mobile’s network and speeds were all over the place. In my home, it was often slower than Verizon’s LTE network, averaging around 35mbps down. (Note: Verizon is Engadget’s parent company… for now.) But two and half miles up the road at a local Subaru dealership I was routinely getting over 300mbps down, topping out at 370mbps.

Terrence O'Brien / Engadget

Of course, 5G and excellent cameras aren’t a rarity at this price any more. Mid-tier phones have come a long way over the last few years. The problem for Google is, it no longer clearly “owns the midrange.” Part of that is down to price. While the 5a is $50 cheaper than the 4a 5G, it’s not the obvious bargain that the 4a was at $350. If it was even just $50 cheaper still, the 5a would be a much easier sell at $399.

The Samsung A52 5G is slightly more expensive at $500 (though regularly on sale for less) and has a slower Snapdragon 750G SoC. But, its Super AMOLED screen clearly outclasses the Pixel’s and has a 120Hz refresh rate. Plus, its camera system is much sharper and feature-packed (but that doesn’t necessarily mean “better”). In addition to a primary camera and ultra-wide shooter, there’s a macro lens and a depth sensor that helps with portrait mode. While both the A52 and 5a ship with 128GB of storage, the Samsung has an advantage in that it has a microSD card slot.

Then there’s the OnePlus Nord N2 5G. It has a trio of cameras around the back, including a 50-megapixel primary sensor, an AMOLED screen with a 90Hz refresh rate, and up to 12GB of RAM. Then again, it has a MediaTek processor, which you rarely see in phones in the US and with good reason: They’re not exactly known for their high-end performance. But perhaps more importantly, you’re highly unlikely to be making a choice between the Nord N2 and the Pixel 5a since the former isn’t available in the US, and the later is only available in the US and Japan.

Of course, if you’re more of an iOS fan, the obvious comparison would seem to be the iPhone SE. It’s the same price as the Pixel 5a for a 128GB model, but it does feel quite a bit dated. It still uses the old iPhone 8 form factor with a Touch ID home button instead of Face ID, it's positively miniscule at 4.7 inches and doesn’t support 5G. Frankly, if you’re dead set on iOS, I might suggest saving your pennies and springing for the $699 iPhone 12 mini.

So, no, Google doesn’t “own the midrange” any more. The Pixel 5a is almost aggressively boring, but it’s not bad. If you want the Pixel experience and don’t want to break the bank, this is the way to go. But if you’re just looking for the best bang for your buck, the choice is far less clear.

from Mike Granich https://www.engadget.com/google-pixel-5-a-review-android-midrange-5g-smartphone-160051630.html?src=rss

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