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haberdashing · 2 years

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What A Tangled Web We Weave (22/?)

TMA AU diverging from canon at the end of episode 92. Jon is forced into an arranged marriage by Elias; Martin does what he can to help.

on AO3

As Martin entered the flat and closed the door behind him, he saw the place as if for the first time, a bit like Jon must see it now, noticing all of its faults anew. The mail and other papers that he'd stacked haphazardly on the kitchen table, the dirt on the floor that he kept meaning to vacuum, how cramped and awkward the place was even by London standards, the cobwebs still filling the ceiling...

The cobwebs still filling the ceiling.

Christ, they really weren't going anywhere anytime soon, were they?

"You, uh, you probably shouldn't look up." Martin said, trying to sneak a note of levity into his voice as he spoke.

And then Martin internally cursed his poor judgment, because of course the first thing Jon did after hearing that was look straight up, staring at exactly the thing he had hoped Jon might not notice so soon.

Ah well, it was probably for the best to rip that bandage off sooner rather than later. At least this way he'd deal with it all in one fell swoop instead of waiting for the inevitable fallout. That's what Martin kept telling himself, anyway.

Jon's face had gone awfully pale now.

"Jon, are you alright?" A brief moment of hesitation, then, "I did try to warn you."

"But you- you didn't command me not to." Jon's voice was a bit weaker than Martin might have liked, but his retort still had a bit of punch to it, enough to assure Martin that Jon- that his husband wasn't about to pass out on the spot.

Martin shook his head, laughing good-naturedly. "No, no I didn't."

Jon glanced up at the spider webs again before looking right at Martin. "You really are a spider monster."

"I did tell you that much already." Martin looked up at the cobwebs himself--were there any spiders still up in there, or were those just shadows, tricks of the light? It was hard to be sure. "And I was rather hoping the spiders would leave one of these days. I didn't make them live here in the first place."

As Jon stood there silently, Martin added, "It's not like they're my webs."

"No, no, you're right. Of course you're right, I just..."

Jon's voice trailed off, but Martin didn't hesitate to pick up where he'd left off.

"You just didn't get any warning that- that I was like this." Martin could feel a lump growing in his throat as he spoke, wondered idly if this was the sort of throat closing up that Tim had spoken of, albeit on a smaller scale. "And I- I didn't tell you, and I should have. I thought I had time, I thought I could break it gently, but- but that's no excuse, really. I should have told you what was happening, that it was me you would end up marrying, that- that I'm with the Web now, for better or for worse."

For better or for worse. Was that one of the parts of their marriage vows? Martin had trouble recalling for sure, especially with his mind reeling and his eyes threatening to tear up, but it certainly sounded the part, at least. Jesus.

Jon was silent for a moment, and Martin's heart sank as the air around him remained quiet, but when Jon finally did speak up, his words weren't what Martin had been expecting.

"I did get a bit of a warning from you, actually, though I- I don't believe you meant it as such."

Martin could feel his pulse suddenly racing as he thought through everything he'd done in the past weeks, trying to figure out what he had done that might have tipped Jon off to his true nature.

"What are you talking about?"

"Remember when we were in the break room together, and I was picking at my neck, and you were practically falling over yourself to tell me how horrible that was?"

Martin remembered well enough, sure. He remembered worrying that he was being too controlling under the Web's influence, that he was trying to boss around his own boss because of it...

"...that was enough to give it away?"

"What happened afterwards was, yes."

...Martin had no idea what had happened just after that conversation of theirs, or why it might be significant, and while he had thought he knew what Jon was getting at before, now Martin felt a bit as though he had lost the thread that had been holding the conversation together.

Luckily, a pointed look and a weak nod proved to be enough to prompt Jon to keep talking.

"You told me, in no uncertain terms, not to pick at my neck wound, and..."

As Jon's hand rose towards his neck, Martin got a sinking feeling in his chest as he began to put the pieces together.

Jon's hand approached his neck, but it never quite reached the neck wound, instead making a strange scrabbling movement around that general area for a few seconds before falling back to his side.

Martin understood what that meant well enough already, but Jon spoke up before Martin could voice his own thoughts.

"I can't pick at it anymore, even if I want to. I- I can't even touch it. Because touching it always led to me picking at it, perhaps?"

"I'm so sorry, Jon. I swear, I didn't mean to-"

Jon waved his hand in the air. "It's fine, it's all fine."

He scoffed slightly. "It's not fine. I know better than that. Are you sure you don't want me to-" Martin gestured vaguely with his hand. "To tell you you can touch it again?"

"Don't bother. If the worst that comes out of... of all of this is me being unable to mess with an old wound, well, you were probably right that it wasn't the best thing to be doing anyway, so no harm done."

Martin wondered, as Jon spoke, if Jon was aware quite how big of an "if" that statement was.

"...right."

"But my point was, that did give me something of a clue, when I tried to- to touch it again and couldn't, that you were part of the Web, even if I wasn't sure of the rest just yet." Jon let out a long yawn. "I wasn't sure how tiring the aftermath of it all would be, either. I might go for a nap."

"Jon, it's still morning."

"Not anymore it isn't."

Jon pointed to the clock on Martin's oven, and Martin had to resist resting his face in his hand as he saw that, indeed, it was now a few minutes after noon.

"I won't be a bother, and we can talk more after, I promise. Just point me to your guest room and I'll handle the rest."

Martin just stood there, processing Jon's statement and the assumptions behind it, not quite willing to voice the correction that needed to be made.

Jon was the one who ended up stating the obvious. "...you don't have a guest room."

"Look, I don't know what your salary is like, but living alone as an archival assistant- I mean, it's not a bad salary, more than I probably deserve really, but this is London for Christ's sake, and- and that means no, Jon, I don't have a guest room."

Jon nodded, and his expression shifted a little, though Martin wasn't sure how much Jon really looked ashamed of what he had thoughtlessly assumed about Martin's living conditions and how much was just Martin projecting his own thoughts and assumptions onto that strange expression.

"Couch, then?"

Martin let out a small huff. "The couch is rubbish, I've been meaning to get a new one for years, it- if you really need to lie down, just use my bed." He forced a grin on his face as he added, "Don't worry, it's clean."

"I'm not going to use your bed, this is your flat."

"Our flat now, remember? And I don't need it right now anyway, it's fine."

Jon hesitated for a moment, so Martin added, "You've had a hell of a morning, haven't you? It's the least I can do, really."

Jon nodded weakly. "So where-"

"On your right over there."

Jon headed where Martin had pointed, his steps slow but steady. "Thank you."

Martin whispered "you're welcome" under his breath when he was pretty sure Jon was far enough away that he wouldn't actually hear it before letting out a long sigh and flopping down on his couch--which really was rubbish, it was too small to comfortably lay down on and the material was coarse and lumpy, but it still beat the alternative.

Martin stared up at the ceiling, and at the cobwebs that still filled it, and tried to figure out what on earth he was going to say when Jon returned.

#tma #tma au #the magnus archives fic #the magnus archives au #the magnus archives #web martin blackwood #web martin #personal #my writing

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bu1410 · 1 month

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Good afternoon TUMBLR - April 27th - 2024

''Mr. Plant has owed me a shoe since July 5, 1971."

Atyrau Kazakhstan – Dec 2004 – Oct 2010 - Kashagan Development Project

Part 7

PROJECT PROGRESS. AGIP was unexpectedly named ''Sole Operator'' by the members of the Consortium, namely SHELL, EXXON, IMPEX Japan, ConocoPhillips, KazMunayGas Kazahstan, as well as ENI. It seems that what tipped the scales in favor of the Italian group was the substantial stalemate and crossed vetoes by the large American groups, and the vote in favor of the Kazakhs of KazMunayGas. However, the project was generally going badly: many aspects had been underestimated and AGIP was continually under pressure from the other members of the Consortium. Big inconsistencies began to emerge between spending forecasts, implementation times and what the progress actually was on the ground. A budget of 30 billion USD will ultimately be matched by a bill of 52 billion USD. The duration of the construction was earlier estimated at 3 years, and instead the so-called ''firts oil in'' occurred after 7 years. Two factors contributed most to the extension of the duration of the works:

The impact of the Kazakh winter was underestimated, which practically prevented to work for almost 6 months of the year.

The planning of the artificial islands off the coast of the Caspian Sea was rejected by Lloyd's of London, who refused to insure the project as it was conceived. The proximity of the artificial sleeping quarters island to the crude oil production island was considered too dangerous. In the event of an emergency, the lethal H2S contained in a very high percentage in the oil of the field would have killed all the people present.

Artificial islands in summer and winter.

CHRISTMAS 2007. The Ccompany dinners (prural) to celebrate Christmas began around December 10th. I didn't like taking part but my role required it. I couldn't refuse the invitations and I also had to perform the inevitable ''toast''. My turn, as sual, came after the fourth or fifth glass of vodka, so I can't remember exactly what I said. The warm applause I received once the ''toast'' was finished indicated the grat level of rhetoric I had reached. That year the party organized by our Client, the Israelis of BATEMAN. The reception took place at the Renaissance, a luxury hotel that had been open a few months earlier.

The large dining room was packed with guests, including the most important authorities of the city. At a certain moment, without anyone having warned us, the lights were dimmed and a procession of 6 people entered the room. They were all wearing traditional ultra-Orthodox Jewish costumes with strange headdresses. They brought with them ''sacred'' objects such as their candelabra, some small boxes (later they told me they contained sheets of paper with passages from the Torah), the Mezuzah, a sort of inlaid tube also containing passages from the sacred scriptures and finally a kind of altar. Now it must be clarified, as I have done on other occasions, that Kazakhstan is still a Muslim country. A religious function - unannounced and lasting at least 30 minutes - in the middle of a dinner with guests of different religious denominations, well I believe it was a mistake by BATEMAN Management. All of us - ''the others'' - witnessed in disbelief what was happening before our eyes: gazes met and only one question could be read in the eyes of the bystanders: ''But what are they doing''? Finally the ceremony - made up of incomprehensible - for us - words and incense thrown on the altar - ended and therefore the glacial and embarrassed silence that had descended on the room ended.

WINTER 2007-2008

The climate of the Atyrau region is influenced by the proximity of the Caspian Sea. Winters are very cold, but snowfall is scarce. The winter of 2007-2008 was an exception, with abundant and sudden rainfall brought by the wind whose name is ''Buran''. As part of the assistance that AGIP provided to the population living around the plant, we were asked to clear the snow from about twenty kilometers of the road that connected the village of Iskynisky to the state road. The village stood next to a pond where oil emerged, so a tank sent by AGIP collected 7 barrels of crude oil every day, which were paid to the local community at the end of the month. To warm up and cook food, the inhabitants of Iskynisky used to go to the pond with a bucket, took some oil and then used it in their home stoves: almost all of them had black faces from the fumes caused by the combustion of crude oil. We arrived at the village with our equipment after two days of work: the road was finally cleared from snow therefore supplies could reach the village again. The Akim (mayor) thanked us but then told us:

The small village school is located right under the embankment where the water tank is at the top. When the thaw occurs, all the water produced ends up in the school, and therefore lessons are suspended for days. Since you are here with shovels and excavators, could you please dig a trench along the school building to protect it from flooding?

Of course, Mayor – said Pennacchia. Within a few hours the trench was dug. The mayor and the entire population - about a hundred people - couldn't stop thanking us, and we had to promise to return in the spring for a big shashlik. (BBQ).

DOSSOR But the troubles weren't over that winter. AGIP called us again a couple of weeks after the happy conclusion of the Iskynisky episode. In Dossor, a town 100 km east of Atyrau, a big problem had occurred: the water supply was frozen, and the inhabitants had been cold for days. We arrived there and saw a fairly desperate situation. The population, in an attempt to de-ice the pipes, had done all sorts of things: there were buildings whose walls were completely black because old car tires that had been accululated and set on fire. We realized that the problem could be solved by digging a trench about a kilometer long and burying a new pipe to bypass the area where the existing pipe had frozen. Manpwer and eqipment were sent and within 48 hours, even working at night, the new pipe had been installed. The water service resumed, so even the small neighborhood gas plants that provided hot water to the inhabitants began to function again, even if not at 100%. The Mayor summoned us to the town hall and congratulated us on behalf of the entire population. The Mayor, however, was a great hockey fan, and therefore asked us to prepare a rink so that the scheduled regional championship match could be played regularly on Sundays. We couldn't refuse, the equipment were still in the city, and it took little to outline an area that the Mayor immediately made available. The AGIP representative who was with us - he called the Atyrau office and asked them to send at least a dozen tanks with hot water. Yes, because – I discovered it there – to make an ice rink you need HOT water! On Sunday morning everything was ready, and the tanks arrived. The population saw the tanks and thought that they were intended for their consumption. When they saw that the water was thrown on the ground to obtain ice, they immediately became very angry and attacked the trucks. The drivers were thrown from the trucks, and people shouting slogans against the Mayor (the locals translated unrepeatable words to me…) took possession of the tanks which were taken - rightly I would say - to supply houses and condos We could leave the city quietly.

BATEMAN'S ESCAPE In our section of the project, work's progress was quite good, with a monthly turnover constantly above 3 million USD. But something was going wrong, and at the halfway point of three years of activity an unprecedented surprise awaited us.! It was a morning like any other, my collegue called me by phone from the site, asking to reach him urgently. Once there, Franco told me that no BATEMAN people could be found at site.

Sorry I can't understand: you mean no Israelis are here?

Nobody, I search around, I try to call by phone … there's none of them, and no one answers the phone.

Well – I said – let's go to their offices. We then went to BATEMAN site offices, but it was closed! We returned to site and asked an Indian employee of BATEMAN what had happened to the Israelis.

Sir – he told us – this night in the camp we heard cars being started, tires screeching on the gravel, and looking out the windows we heard that a group of about 10 cars and minibuses were leaving the compound. This morning in the canteen we realized that no Israelis were present, Sir! We came to the site anyway, but there is no supervisor with us. We were amazed! We didn't know what to think, so I called my Director to see if he knew what had happened. Giorgio fell from the sky, and asked us to investigate further, in the meantime he would try to find out about what happened. Within a couple of days the truth came out: all of BATEMAN's Israeli management and technicians had left Kazakhstan on board the first plane in the morning, leaving for Amsterdam. All Company's bank accounts held at local banks had been drained, and as far as we were told, they left behind $92 million in debt! We immediately asked for an urgent meeting with AGIP, because we literally needed to know what to do: our direct Client no longer existed, and beyond the credits with BATEMAN we needed to understand if AGIP intended to take over from the Israelis and assume direct control of the ongoing project. The meeting took place three days after the ''great escape''. AGIP reassured us that their legal department was working to prepare an addendum to the contract, whereby we would become AGIP's "Direct Contractor". The story, however, was not so simple. Practically more than two months passed before the whole matter was settled (in line with AGIP's turtle timing). In the meantime, which was certainly not easy, we worked without receiving a penny for three months. Eventually, after three levels of judgement, our Company managed to be compensated for all the outstanding credit with BATEMAN. Their Management attempted unsuccessfully to bring the case to a UK London court. In the end our Director was able to say with satisfaction ''I am one of the few guys who succeded to get money from Israelies''.

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twentytarot · 3 years

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hi everyone! i’ve been hard at work with my job this past month but i am finally done and back with a reading. today, we’re doing a reading on marriage in your life in general. pick the tiffiany ring that sets your thoughts off, triggers a memory or invokes a strong emotion and scroll right down for your reading. see you there! 💍

CONTENT WARNING: there are negative piles here. not every pile has a future spouse.

PILE ONE: CUSHION CUT

if you were handed an ultimatum and forced to choose between marriage and work, you’d probably get into your car and go to work the next morning. this makes things a little complicated, because you’re ambitious, you’re feisty, you hate it when your time and attention is used up on something that doesn’t matter to you. if you get married, however, your time will be eroded by many things that don’t matter in hindsight. you see, there will always be ridiculous in-laws, there will always be someone that will want your help so long as it is available. someone is going to want kids, even if that decision is completely irrelevant to them, or something dumb like that. no married couple gets out of having to deal with these things, and no couple gets through it without fighting over it a single time. so, my question to you is: will you have the patience to see this through? or will you fold?

unfortunately, the cards don’t predict the best of outcomes when it comes to your marriage. you probably will decide not to get married in the first place. if you do, you might remarry, or get into a questionable third-party situation. yet, i don’t see this being a huge hindrance on your life as a whole. you seem to me like the kind of person who cares less about having an other half compared to your friends, and i think you are going to have so much going for you in other facets in your life that you won’t be clinging onto this relationship when it goes south. this gives me celebrity vibes, almost, like someone who can never be home and the relationship ends because work is so demanding. so this will be a little sad, but i’m confident you will pick yourself back up quickly.

astrologically, cancer came out very strong, and the interpretation i want to go with is that your most significant relationship will be very cancerian in nature. comforting at first, but ultimately probably not aligned with what you want to do with your life. that’s alright, you’ll be able to afford your own diamond ring anyway.

PILE TWO: SOLITARE

well, pile two, it looks like someone told you “if no one is going to marry you, i will”, and then they took it seriously. i kid, but i do see an element of your future spouse being someone you didn’t expect at all. perhaps you thought they would just be a best friend that knows all your secrets. and yet, this person knows your darkest secrets and then offers you love in its purest form. i get the feeling you’re not quite used to that, pile two. i’m hearing this underlying feeling of “what if i give too much, wait what if i give too little”, and i think this is partly because you haven’t seen first-hand a marriage that is of the kind you want to be in. it feels like you’re not sure if happy marriages exist in your world. well, they do. it just turns out that you give just the right amount when you’re not trying, which is why a best friend finally becomes your spouse.

this person will be with you through thick and thin, you will feel like they are your soulmate. you will always feel balanced in your relationship with this person because they will always be silently watching the scales, tipping it this way and that whenever something is about to swing out of balance. they will help you feel like you have nothing to worry about, they will bring a childlike kind of happiness into your life.

now, onto a little bit of warning. no marriage is only ever happy, and i sense that your source of pain will come from outside influences. money is one, health is another. you will be very much together, but it’s a blessing and a curse because when one goes down, the other follows. the advice to you is to try your best to lift each other up through bad times, and know when you have to detach and go do your thing alone for the good of your future with them. you don’t have to always turn around to make sure they’re following, they’re your forever! they’ll be there.

PILE THREE: ROSE INFINITY

your marriage isn’t going to be a very fast-paced one— when you meet your future person, you’re going to be eons away from being ready to get married, and they will be the same. i almost feel like you will laugh at yourself when you start dating this person. the relationship just isn’t... pretty. this person almost brings out the worst in you: you fight them about the stupidest things and rile them up all the time just because it’s funny. there’s ten separate occasions where you’re pretty sure you should have been dumped or dumped them for some iconic out of left field insults, but for some reason it’s just funny after you’ve both calmed down. so it’s fun, and it’s so 20-something, but you’re preparing yourself for the inevitable breakup. and then... it somehow never comes.

somewhere along the lines, you grew up, and so did they. you didn’t know it then, but this person brings the best out of you as much as they bring out the worst. like a tantrum that just has to be thrown before a little child can settle down, you took your growing pains out on each other, and then somehow managed to fit into each others’ lives forever without even thinking about it. you give each other love naturally, flowing with each other and keeping each other sane. after you get married, there’s a feeling of “i can rest when this person is around” kind of energy because you trust each other to come out with the truth when it needs to be said, but you also trust that the person will be there to pick up the pieces if you break.

so this person isn’t as good-looking as you hoped or imagined. or they’re not the type to show you off, and they’re not really the type that wants to be showed off either. so maybe someone made a joke at their expense and you laughed. the beauty of all of that is, despite all of that, they love you and will for a long time. isn’t that already more than we can ask for, as mere mortals?

PILE FOUR: YELLOW HALO

okay... there are two groups of people in this pile. let’s talk similarities first. your partner is going to be quite eccentric. visual arts came up in particular, so perhaps your partner will be an artist? the last similarity is that marriage is unlikely, but as for why, it depends on which interpretation resonates more with you.

for the first group, this is probably my lgbt+ in a place that hasn’t legalised marriages not between a man and a woman pile. for reasons that seem bigger than yourself, marriage is unlikely in your life. i feel a lot of unwelcome judgement coming from this group. i think you might not get too much support around you; maybe your parents have something against people who are not in “professional degree” jobs, or your family and environment as a whole is very conservative. regardless, you will be with this person, but it might be beyond both of your abilities to get married for real. :( i’m sorry, i wish the world were kinder.

if the first interpretation doesn’t resonate, then it has something more to do with your stubbornness. everyone wants someone that will take them for exactly who they are. that doesn’t change the fact that no two people are completely perfect for each other, though. every couple starts by taking apart their schedule and fitting the other’s in. tolerating strawberry shortcakes on their partner’s birthday even if they hate strawberries. stopping their work short even if it means that coming back to it will be hard because their partner needs something. advice here is to rethink your mindset. you could be very successful in your career, but if you think you won’t be able to go home to an empty bed, or you know that family is what you want in the future, then see how you can be more considerate to the people around you. we don’t always like to hear this, but being considerate and selfish is a never-ending balancing game, so don’t feel too bad. you’re not a bad person! these things just take time. whichever way you choose, i hope it’s the one that makes you the happiest!

#pick a card #pick a pile #pick a card reading #pick a pile reading #tarot reading #free tarot reading

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twh-news · 3 years

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Loki’s production designer on the Modernist inspiration behind the show’s stunning visuals | The Art Newspaper

By Helen Stoilas

Kasra Farahani explains why the Time Variance Authority waiting room looks so much like the Breuer building, and how the inside of a Fabergé egg became an alien train carriage.

Fans of Modernist design can find a lot to appreciate in Loki, the television series starring Tom Hiddleston recently released by Marvel Studios on the streaming channel Disney+. The stunning production is clearly influenced by Brutalist and Neo-Futurist architecture, as well as Soviet Socialist art and sculpture. Visual references can be seen from the very first episode, in which the magic-wielding god of mischief is apprehended by a universe-spanning police force known as the Time Variance Authority for “crimes against the Sacred Timeline” (stay with us).

One early scene, for example, was filmed on a custom-built set that bears a striking resemblance to the lobby of the Marcel Breuer building in New York which once housed the Whitney Museum—and now houses the Frick—while another was shot on location in the Neo-Futurist Atlanta Marriott Marquis hotel, designed by the architect John C. Portman, Jr (with some monumental statues later edited into the soaring atrium). The Art Newspaper spoke to the series’ production designer, Kasra Farahani, about his inspirations for the look of the show.

The Art Newspaper: Loki's director, Kate Herron has called this series a love letter to sci-fi and you see a lot of visual homages to films like Brazil, A Clockwork Orange and Blade Runner. But there's also a clear influence of Modernist design on the look of the series overall. You studied industrial design early in your career. Were there specific examples of Modernist architecture and design that you were looking at when you started working on the series?

Kasra Farahani: So many, everyone from Frank Lloyd Wright to Breuer, to Mies van der Rohe to Paul Rudolph—you have a shot in the John Portman building—to Oscar Niemeyer. And then a lot of Eastern European, Soviet-influenced Modernism played a big part in it as well. I can honestly tell you that my first and foremost inspiration was Modernism. Part of that is because the TVA (Time Variance Authority) is a bureaucracy and I think, archetypically, so much of what we know a bureaucracy to be is that post-war, highly funded institutional look. And there's a lot of different versions of that, whether it's the Washington, DC version, like the Hoover building, or whether it's what we had in Los Angeles, where I grew up, where there's a huge amount of post-war architecture built for the population boom. Like the elementary school, middle school and high school that I went to were all mid-century Modernist.

I was also looking a lot at Brutalism and the Modernism in former Soviet states, that are heavily influenced by Socialism and Soviet architecture, and where scale is such a big driving force of the design.

The size of some of the buildings in the show are kind of overwhelming. I know that some filming was done in the Atlanta Marriott Marquis, with that huge soaring atrium. You just completely get dwarfed by that kind of architecture.

Yeah, that's right. That one we used for the TVA archives because we couldn't justify building a big set, but once I scouted it, I saw that we could bring in these massive Time-Keeper sculptures at the scale you would typically only see in an exterior, which is a fantastical thing. The TVA sets themselves, which were almost entirely full 360-degree sets, were very much designed as an intentional paradox between the stoic, large-scale Brutalism form language, and the surfacing and palette and whimsical patterning, which is very much taken from American mid-century Modern. Those two things create these spaces that feel at once super intimidating and then uncomfortably inviting and warm at the same time.

That’s kind of the irony of a lot of Modernism, Brutalism especially, it had these utopian ideals of creating affordable social housing, but then a lot of the people found it really oppressive to live in.

Yeah. Modernism has been that way the whole time—it was designed to be super cheap and utilitarian and routinely it ends up being the most expensive kind of architecture. Another thing readers may be curious to know about is the TBA expanse, which is essentially the view outside some windows.

That futuristic cityscape you can see….

Yeah. They had very strange and unique parameters to try to design that. The TVA exists outside of the physical world—so there's no weather, there's no roofs, there's no difference between interior and exterior, there's not necessarily even gravity in the way that we know it. But there are these meandering colonnades that we took a lot of inspiration from Brasilia—and obviously a lot of the super cities that were drawn in comics. But also there's some really beautiful conceptual sketches that Frank Lloyd Wright did of a version Los Angeles in the early 20th century that had Roman-like colonnades and plazas and a lot of that fed into what the TVA expanse is.

You mentioned all the sets you built for Loki, especially for the TVA. There's two that where used a lot. The Time Theater, where so much of kind of Loki’s personal story gets told, and looks like its straight out of the Barbican in London, with these huge colour-coded directional numbers on the walls. And then there's the Miss Minutes waiting room with those circular lights that looks almost exactly like the lobby of the Breuer building in New York—to the point where I reached out to the museum to ask if you’d filmed there. You even got the silver-tipped light bulbs right.

We were very inspired by that, but it's different in some very subtle, but for me, very important ways. Number one, the size of the bulbs is much smaller, they were manipulated to create eyeballs, basically. Another important difference is that in the Breuer building, they have these dishes hanging in space, whereas in ours, they're negative space, there's a solid ceiling. It creates a matrix of eyeballs peering down, like the always-watching Time-Keepers. And maybe the most important difference is that the ceiling is slammed down—you know the cheapest apartment you can go into has an eight-foot ceiling, this is six inches shorter than that, and our actor is about six-foot-three. The idea was to create a sort of trash compactor feeling in this claustrophobic space with this matrix of eyes, watching as all of this is happening.

The time theater was for me very inspired by Pier Luigi Nervi.

I liked that waffle coffered ceiling you have in that room.

Thanks. We were very happy with it, and it created this kind of forest of light columns which helps set the neo-noirish, interrogative nature of the space. And the unnecessarily large super graphics that you mentioned are a very Paul Rudolph sort of a thing, he did that in his building too, and I love that.

For me, it’s very important not to reference a set design from other films, that why I reference architecture, painting, photography, these other art forms, more than anything else, because inevitably when you’re working in archetypes, there’s a lot of overlap.

And as Loki goes into different times and locations, you get a completely different design environment in those places. There’s a scene on a train car, that has a very Art Deco look.

That was inspired by the inside of a Fabergé egg, Art Deco meets Alien.

And when you finally meet the Time-Keepers in the most recent episode, it’s like they're in a pre-Colombian pyramid or a ziggurat.

I was looking at Indian stepwells, this almost fractal quality with these descending stairs going into one another—but we imagined them going out every direction, with an Escher-like quality, like they are tessellating themselves to infinity.

I read on Twitter that you literally bought a bowling alley from Omaha and brought it to Atlanta to create Loki's Palace in the Void in the last episode, which is this crazy, surreal, amusement park, junk yard-like place.

We bought the floor of a bowling alley, everything else we built. That was a lot of fun because the script gave us a lot of runway. The proposal was to do this bowling alley because essentially everything in the Void has been discarded from time, and more things fall into it and accumulate and so you end up with these strata. I liked the idea of like a bowling alley that's been smashed over your knee or something. The net effect is when you first enter, you have all these lane lines pointing down at this throne, which was supposed to be stolen from a mall Santa. And then there's these crazy alien plants that are growing through it that have taken parasitic hold of the place. In many ways, I think its a narrative microcosm of the Void itself, which is like a salad bar of these disparate aberrations slammed together. Things like the bowling alley all have these micro-narratives that we in the art department have come up with to help flush out the design and make them specific. For example, there's portraits on the wall of like bowler of the month, and they’re not quite human. It's not in the episode, but those things are important for us in the art department.

At the very end of the most recent episode, we get a glimpse into this city that Loki and Sylvie (played by Sophia Di Martino) are walking into. Can tell us anything about what inspired those scenes, what we're about to see?

You can call me back in a week. All I can say is that the TVA is definitely the visual and narrative anchor of the story, but there's a lot of great worlds to see. And I think what people are responding to is the breadth of the visual variety of the show. And episode six won't be any different. It's really cool, and maybe some of my favorite stuff.

#loki #loki series #production design #set design #tom hiddleston #Kasra Farahani #article #the art newspaper

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drnikolatesla · 4 years

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Nikola Tesla’s Thoughts On the Soul and Life After Death

Tesla’s reasoning are the thoughts of a practical man of science, who has not only conducted experiments, but deep mental consideration to the question of immortality. Tesla was destined by his parents at an early age to enter the clergy, but the inventive genius, inherited from his mother, took him into the realm of science. Most of his life was spent in deep meditation to the question of the soul and life after death. His conclusions on the subjects will most definitely not run parallel with most others, but are indeed food for thought.

Here are 6 quotes made by Nikola Tesla:

1. When a child is born, its sense organs are brought in contact with the outer world. The waves of sound, heat and light beat against its feeble body, its sensitive nerve fibres quiver, the muscles contract and relax in obedience—a gasp, a breath, and in this act a wonderful little engine, of structure, is hitched to the wheelwork or the universe. Left to itself the engine stops; it has no power to draw energy from Nature’s inexhaustible store.

“The little engine moves and works, changes size and shape, performs more and more varied operations, becomes sensitive to more and more different influences, and now there begins to manifest itself in it a mysterious force. It becomes capable of responding to stimuli of a more subtle nature and of drawing, for its own use, energy from the environment. Gradually the engine has been transformed into a being possessed of intelligence, which perceives, discerns, does like others of its kind.

“The experiences multiply, the knowledge increases, the discernment becomes keener, the human being responding to the faintest influences, is awakened to the consciousness of Nature and its grandeur, and in its breast there is kindled a desire to imitate Nature, to create, to work itself the wonders it perceives.

”But the exercise of this power does not satisfy the mind, which rises to still higher, undefinable perceptions, not of this world, and inspired by them the artist, the inventor and the man of science give expression to the longing of the soul.

(“Shows How Men Of The Future May Become As Gods.” NEW YORK HERALD . December 30, 1900.)

2. “That an aggregation of impressions, thoughts and feelings having no materiality, and vaguely designated as mind, or soul, should be substance susceptible of quantitative determination is altogether too absurd for discussion.

“The change however, which takes place in the human body during its awful transition from life to death is a great subject for scientific investigation which may possibly lead to important results. If the experiments of Massachusetts physicians are to be at all seriously considered, it is only in this respect.

“I could not help being struck by the fact that men of a scientific caliber sufficiently large to undertake measurements requiring the greatest delicacy and skill, should not be correspondingly resourceful in devising the apparatus for the purpose. A scale responding to the weight of one tenth of an ounce is not a fit instrument for weighing the human soul.

“It is not less astonishing that such trained observer should have overlooked a trivial cause responsible for the seeming lightening of the body. I use this term designedly, for accepting the exudations which have been taken into consideration there was no loss of substance in death.

“When the rigor mortis sets in there is an increase of volume for various reasons. Just to give a rough idea I shall assume that the living body, weighing a hundred and sixty pounds, had filled a space of three cubic feet. The air in a sick room may weigh about fourteen ounces per cubic feet. Half an ounce of the air would consequently occupy a space of sixty-two cubic inches, and that would be only one percent of the original volume of three cubic feet. As will readily be seen, a very slight general deformation of the body, scarcely perceptible, is adequate to explain the puzzling observation. The sudden tipping of the scale demonstrates nothing except the coarseness of the instrument. Had the balance been very sensitive, owing to the resistance of the air, the platform would have ascended slowly.“

–Nikola Tesla

(“Scientists Doubt The Human Soul Was Weighed.” New York World, March 17, 1907.)

3. “Since time immemorial the most profound thinkers have tried to lift the veil that hides the beyond. I have read thousands of volumes of literature and thought for years in the hope that I might get some kind of evidence to show that death is not the end. But all in vain. To me the universe is simply a marvelous mechanism, and the most complex forms of human life, as human beings, are nothing else but automatic engines, controlled by external influence. Through incessant observation I have so convinced myself of the truth of this that I cannot perform any act or even conceive a thought without locating at once the external stimulus that prompted it.

“A forceful argument in support of the existence of a creative agent is made of the law, order and harmony perceptible everywhere. But it must not be forgotten that Kant’s reasoning and conclusion in this respect are irrefutable. According to this philosopher, the conception of fitness has been created in the speculative mind of men, which thus admires a miracle wrought by itself.

“Granted a planetary system, it is absolutely inevitable that in the course of eons such organized beings as we are will evolve. The cooling of the hot masses results in a precipitation of water, and under the influence of the sun’s rays heliotropic action takes place and life is started. Through chemical and other agents and continuous adjustment complex mechanisms come into being, and these ultimately develop into structures of marvelous complexity with capacities of response to the faintest stimulae from the environment.

“When we realize this as a fact we begin to grasp the great idea of Buddha–that self is an illusion. Indeed, we are nothing but waves in space and time which when dissolved exist no more.

“There is this to be said, however, that science without hope is not satisfactory, and unless one has some ideals he cannot achieve happiness. The religious is the most lofty ideal, and it seems that the great reformers who, ages ago, laid down rules of conduct were right in their conclusions that a peaceful existence and a continued onward march of man on this globe is essentially dependent on the conception of a God.

“I have read Mr. Burbank’s statement in which he expresses an opinion shared by most natural philosophers, but one must not be too rash in contradicting the conclusions reached by countless men of genius who spent their lives in endeavors to ascertain the destiny of the human race. A single individual, however well informed and capable, may be partially unaware of if not utterly blind to evidences of a certain kind, which might be quite sufficient for others. This is the reason why I am distrustful of my own findings. Possibly Mr. Ford, who I understand is accepting old traditions, may be closer to the truth than such men as Burbank and myself.

“I have searched during many years for some process or means to test the possibility of future existence by scientific experiment, and I have devised one, which, to my great disappointment, has failed. But perhaps some more skillful experimenter might succeed if I suggest to him the course. To put it briefly, it is this:

“Our bodies are composed of molecules of various elements, harmoniously united. Do these molecules retain any after-effect when the body is dissolved? To ascertain this take, say, two molecules of hydrogen from the body of an individual and also one molecule of oxygen. Furthermore, provide another molecule of oxygen taken from some other body. Now place the two molecules of hydrogen so they can combine with the oxygen, and if they prefer that molecule of oxygen with which they were previously united, then reincarnation is proved. For, though it may take ages and ages, ultimately the molecules which constituted that body will get together again, just as in a vast city individuals from a distant land finally meet and establish close contact.”

(“After Death — WHAT?” Lima News, Lima, Ohio, March 14, 1926.)

4. “We are all automatons obeying external influences. We are entirely under the control of agents that beat on our senses from all directions of the outside world. Being merely receivers from the outside, it is a very important question how good the receivers are—some are sensitive and receive accurately. Others are sluggish and their reception is blurred. The individual who is a better machine has so much greater chance of achieving success and happiness. An individual who is an offender of law is a machine in which one or another organ has been deranged, so that the responses are no longer accurate.

“There is no chance in nature, although the modern theory of indeterminacy attempts to show scientifically that events are governed by chance. I positively deny that. The causes and effects, however complex, are intimately linked, and the result of all inferences must be inevitably fixed as by a mathematical formula.

“I also absolutely deny the existence of individuality. It took me not less than twenty years to develop a faculty to trace every thought or act of mine to an external influence. We are just waves in time and space, changing continuously, and the illusion of individuality is produced through the concatenation of the rapidly succeeding phases of existence. What we define as likeness is merely the result of the symmetrical arrangement of molecules which compose our body.”

“How about the soul - the spirit?” he was asked.

“Ah,” he exclaimed, “but there is no soul or spirit. These are merely expressions of the functions of the body. These life functions cease with death and so do soul and spirit.

“What humanity needs is ideals. Idealism is the force that will free us from material fetters.”

(“Tesla Seeks to Send Power to Planets.” New York Times, July 11, 1931.)

5. “One of the most fundamental and also one of the saddest facts in human life is well brought out in a French proverb which, freely translated, means:

‘If Youth had the knowledge and Old Age the strength of doing.’

Our condition of body and mind in old age is merely a certificate of how we have spent our youth. The secret of my own strength and vitality today is that in my youth I led what you might call a virtuous life.

"I have never dissipated. When I was a young man I understood well the significance of that old French proverb, although I doubt that I had even heard it then. But I seemed to have a clear understanding while still young that I must control my passions and appetites if I wanted to make some of my dreams come true.

(“Tremendous New Power Soon To Be Released.” By Carol Bird. Charleston Daily Mail, Charleston, West Virginia, Page 40. September 10, 1933.)

6. “To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine. Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions which is not directly or indirectly a response to stimuli beating upon our sense organs from without. Owing to the similarity of our construction and the sameness of our environment, we respond in like manner to similar stimuli, and from the concordance of our reactions, understanding is barn. In the course of ages, mechanisms of infinite complexity are developed, but what we call “soul ” or “spirit,” is nothing more than the sum of the functionings of the body. When this functioning ceases, the “soul” or the “spirit” ceases likewise.“

(“A Machine to End War.” Liberty Magazine, February 9, 1935.)

–Nikola Tesla

#nikola tesla #quotes #soul #spirit #conciousness #life #death #science #history #philosophy #universe #mechanic theory of life #ahead of his time #ahead of our time

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sootonthecarpet · 4 years

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What faction do you usually pick in Fallout 4? It kind of sounds like you have beef with the Minutemen but the Brotherhood are bigoted trash, the Institute are bigoted trash who can't even accomplish anything productive, and the Railroad are super fixated on their ethically dubious synth liberation quest and do pretty much jack all for everyone else, so I'm curious as to which one you went along with in the end.

i havent played it thru to the end yet full disclosure kkfdksgf the main questline has been underwhelming so far, so i’ve been dragging my feet even tho i have like multiple playthroughs going. but i’m siding w the railroad because while there r heavy criticisms to b levied w/r/t their methodology, it still feels good to do literally anything to impact any of the game’s like, stilted in-universe bigotry subplots to even a small extent hahajfdsgf. plus i like most of the individual npcs, i end up more annoyed at my own lack of flexible dialogue options than i do at the characters themselves. (it’d be chill if the game had more RPG elements and i could like, influence the politics and idk ‘destiny’ of the group more overtly instead of just being Assigned Grunt.) some of their sidequests are actually pretty fun, or at least are no more bothersome than unguided exploration would be and give me a bit of character development to tide me over.

i guess i do kinda have beef with the minutemen but for the most part that’s my beef with the actual writers showing thru bc of how the game’s like. colonialist fantasy gameplay loop and its unironic fetish for revolutionary war imagery intersect hEAVily when it comes to the minutemen (obvs). in all honesty i’ve never wanted to dip too far into that questline or even take preston along much even tho he seems chill and i like him so far, bc i know the writing (or, best case scenario, the way the gameplay will inevitably actively subvert any good writing that sneaks in there) is just gonna end up seriously pissing me off.

there’s no like, group in fallout four that suits my political views bc even the vaguest whiff of real-world radical politics were very carefully kept out of the vaguely liberation-aligned groups in the game. like, goodneighbor is kind of implied to be SOME kind of socialist outpost right? shared resources, anyone is welcome etc. but wait! it’s a new reno esque hedonistic crimefest where you can get anything for the right price and the only language they speak are bullets! but wait! they have a mayor who they love and respect very much. or is he a de facto monarch? or is he just a mayor? (actually, he’s my lover.) i don’t think it’s like, especially new or inventive of me to say this, but any theme that made it into the game was thoroughly stripped of meaning and made broadly palatable to like. the right-center, reactionary white gamer demographic. like, uhhhh, this was def a high budget game for a post-gamergate market. so honestly i take what i can get with the railroad. any moment im not cringing is a moment of good gameplay. (usually those moments are like, jumping into a lake in far harbor to get a better look at the non-interactible fish models for ecosystem lore, but again, i take what i can get.)

would have really liked a plot where the pre-game massacre of most of the railroad’s outposts allows the PC to like, optionally restructure it into an organization that’s actually involved with the ppl it’s set up to help (and nix the policy on mindwipes as a shortcut around trauma recovery/safeguarding of the vulnerable, and the--HOLy SHIT--disgusting attitude towards bodily autonomy in general, both of which seem to be there more for player convenience than for a well thought out story purpose), or even like. to see just a LiTTLe followup on some of the shit deacon says abt philosophical infighting early on out back of the slocums joe? but it doesn’t seem like we r going there and like, eh. i can keep my head down and grind out a few boring quests if it means avoiding the risk of total disillusionment with preston garvey and not having to listen to brotherhood anti-ghoulfucking PSAs or whatever godforsaken shit happens when i finally close out the act and let the institute beam me up ahaha.

oh yeah also like every guy who works for the railroad is weird-hot in one way or another (and also they sell me armored, combat-ready versions of casual clothing items so i can look great and feel safe, & make sure anyone whose inventory i can access has some armor on em without heavily impacting their look) and ultimately im shallow enough to let that tip the scales. plus its so nice to come back to the cave at like four AM after a long string of sidequests n see these totally random npcs who dont even like each other, all spooned up on all them mattresses. at the end of the day they deal w each other bc it’s cold and nasty. that’s a way more compelling vibe than i get from any of the actual faction related cutscenes in the game.

then i ruin it immediately by waking up tinker tom to buy more bulletproof dresses.

#anon #video games #fallout #thanks for this bud im like starting a manic episode #so when i got this i was like. ah. i can take off the gloves #hope it wasnt a disappointment to learn i have no real take on the end of the game ahaha #long post #fallout 4

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dr-astormylasthurrah · 4 years

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spam’s character design tips!

(various designs I’ve done! adopt characters belong to their owners, I only include them here as examples and claim no current ownership.) *disclaimer: it was 9 pages before i added pictures so i’m not inaccurate

If you would rather read this as a Google Document, please click here! (The document has more examples as well!)

Hey! My name’s Spam and I write Danganronpa: A Stormy Last Hurrah! You may also have seen my art for various stories and users around the Internet, including RATS: 252 Chances at Redemption and the Alca Ronpa series! You may ALSO also have seen my character designs, including those for ASLH as well as certain characters in Alca Ronpa and Kill the Joker: AnotheR Game! I sell adopts fairly frequently as well and have miscellaneous designs floating around the web, so I figured I may as well write something about my process. This is mostly oriented towards human OCs! So hopefully this helps someone!!

Before starting this guide, I’d like to give credit to gaiacseas/gokuhara’s “How I Design OCs: Do’s and Don’ts”! When I was designing the ASLH cast, I found myself coming back to this guide again and again. A lot of my points are the same as theirs, but I talk a bit about my own process, especially when it comes to characters that I revamp and redesign.

All uncredited art was done by me, including character designs. Characters belong to their respective owners. All other art is credited.

So let’s get started!

CONCEPTS

The first thing I’m going to say is that my character designs, especially those for myself, take absolutely FOREVER. I usually go through many, many pages of concepts and color tests before I find something I’m satisfied with. It’s a long and very constructive process, and if I’m designing a character for someone else, it can take weeks before we can find something we’re both satisfied with.

Alexei Ilyich Bazhanov, ASLH’s SHSL Birdwatcher, was a design-first character, meaning that I came up with his design first and built his personality around it. Although to be fair someone who constantly wears a feathery halfmask in public is inevitably bound to be kind of dramatic, so there’s only so many ways his personality couldn’t be influenced by his design. However, his design took a bit of a downgrade from his initial design to his current iteration, largely because of his initial design’s similarity to Tatsumaru Harai, ASLH’s SHSL Kabuki Actor.

In Tatsumaru’s concept sketch, you can also see the inspirations I cited for their design! I don’t consume much media, so the characters I cite as reference are often OCs in my friends’ stories. Here, I cited Minami Tachibana (Danganronpa: Dead on Arrival), Alix Murasaki (Ultimate Danganronpa: Supernova at Sea), and… Rhanahad Electricrone (Alca Ronpa 2), for some reason. I… actually don’t remember how or why any of those influences connect to Tatsumaru at all? Actually, for almost all of the ASLH characters, I scribbled down some notes on design influences and proceeded to ignore them. So maybe don’t listen to me actually. But design influences are good! Just don’t straight up copy them.

ANYWAY, as you can see, Alexei and Tatsumaru both had longish coats with balloon pants. However, I had better reason to keep these traits for Tatsumaru than Alexei, because kabuki acting actually uses these elements in its costumes. Thus, it made more sense to change Alexei’s design, although I do think that he would still actually wear that original outfit. It’s very himcore.

The point is that this ended up in many, many more drafts of concept sketches until I found something I was satisfied with. Like, six pages. It was kind of insane. It’s worth it in the end to make a polished product, though!

BODIES

(Admittedly, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the best when it comes to drawing distinct body types. It’s a weakness of mine that I’m getting better at, but I’m still not great at it.)

The #1 tip I can give here is to use shape language! This is what people use in pretty much all Western cartoons - ever think about how hard it would be to take Bill Cipher seriously if he was a circle? gaiacseas goes over shape language and silhouettes in far more depth in their tutorial, so I really advise looking at it! The basics are:

CIrcles/ovals convey softness and gentleness

Rectangles convey solidity and strength

Triangles convey sharpness and distrust

Combine shapes to modify the image your character conveys!

Also, just a tip: if you’re designing a cast of characters, please don’t just make them all the same body type! In real life, if you got any random sample of people, they’re not all going to be the same body type. Diversifying your body types helps a lot to distinguish characters from each other, too. Imagine if all of these characters had the same proportions as each other - even though they all have distinct outfits, you would have a much harder time perceiving them as different people.

If you’re going to draw characters of a body type you’re unfamiliar with, good for you! But first, take the time to look up guides on how to draw those body types. Studying real people also helps a lot to understand the vast varieties of body types. Just look at this picture of Olympic and Paralympic athletes from the 2016 Rio games - there’s already a ton of variations in “muscular” depending on what their sport is, and each athlete is optimized to their sport! It’s like that for literally everyone on Earth with literally every body type. There’s millions of ways to be skinny (bony? lean? malnourished?) or fat (most fat around their stomach, arms, legs?) or muscular (tall like a basketball player, dense like a weightlifter?) so make them count!

Also consider making characters with disabilities! My commentary on this as an abled person is fairly limited, but I will say to please note that what you think you know about disabilities is not necessarily true. This is in regards to their experiences having a disability, but can even apply to things you don’t think about - the wheelchairs most wheelchair-bound people use are not usually medical wheelchairs, for example. Research!!

On a related note, please don’t make racial caricatures or draw all your characters with the same facial features. People of specific ethnicities tend to (but not always) have certain features that are common to people across a regional area, but that’s no excuse to veer into drawing in the same way old racist cartoons are illustrated in. Again, there’s plenty of guides to help with learning about these! Or just look at the people around you and draw real people as practice. You’ll find the world is much more diverse than you think.

And speaking of references!! I’ve seen a lot of really good guides these days for drawing different body types and features! Go check them out go check em go!!

sdkay’s guide on drawing different facial structures (original post was deleted)

kenzandfriends’ guide on drawing fat people (original post was deleted)

nsfwbutts’ guide on drawing fat people (guide isn’t nsfw but their blog is so this is a reblog)

mel-lion’s guide on drawing black features

chuwenjie’s guide on drawing East Asian faces

“world of averages” - composite images of thousands of portraits of people from different places (re: certain facial features being common to certain ethnicities!)

calvin-arium’s guide on drawing characters in wheelchairs

Honestly if you’re looking for help just literally google “how to draw [character trait] and I GUARANTEE you there is a guide out there for you. While people not belonging to the demographic you’re drawing will probably not notice if you don’t portray groups accurately, those who are part of that demographic will be absolutely delighted.

MOTIFS

Motifs are a really neat way to make your character stand out in a crowd, especially if those motifs have meaning behind them! I mostly do this for adopts, but one of my favorite designs was Ophelia Zhang, a character I designed and proceeded to do absolutely nothing with.

She’s Medusa-inspired, as is obvious because of the snake motif on her jacket and the green hair/yellow eyes combination! Maybe you didn’t notice it until I pointed out, but now that I did, it raises intrigue about her character and her connection to the myth, doesn’t it?

Aside from Ophelia, most of my (own) characters aren’t very motif-heavy, but I like having common themes and patterns that run throughout their outfits at least. It just makes the outfit blend better. Some examples of this include Claude Bates, ASLH’s SHSL Violinist, and Chiyo Kumoshita, ASLH’s SHSL Cellphone Novelist.

Nonstandards are a great way of making a character Become Their Motif! Claude is based on snakes, specifically grass snakes - he’s got beady eyes, fangs, a grass snake pattern on his pants, and the combination of weird vesty jacket thing and striped shirt creates a belly scales effect. HOWEVER, he’s also got violin motifs! Most obvious are the f-hole patterns on his coat, but a more subtle thing is that his shirt has 5 stripes - a music staff (which sheet music is written on) is made of 5 lines!

(“so spam shouldn’t he have only 4 stripes on his shirt, for the 4 spaces on a music staff” shut up i realized i messed up his design too late. my orchestra director is going to kill me)

Chiyo, on the other hand, has a distinct cloud motif! This primarily is to match her surname (雲下 are the kanji for “clouds” and “under” respectively), but the other reason Chiyo has a cloud motif is because of ASLH itself - ASLH is loosely themed around the Shakespeare play The Tempest, and Chiyo, being ASLH’s protagonist, gets a “clear skies” motif. Neat!

OUTFITS

(“Incinerate” is the base for Puppet from Kill The Joker: AnotheR Game!)

There is SO MUCH that can be said about outfits and how I design them. The #1 tip I have is to look at what other people wear, and then decide what it is about that outfit you like so much! If you go somewhere where people are dressed differently from what you’re used to (a distant city or a foreign country), take notes! For me, some elements I come back to a lot include collared shirts, sweaters, oversized overdecorated overcoats, and cloud/sky patterning.

So here’s a little about what makes outfits distinct from each other!

Colors:

Bro this is SO IMPORTANT. There’s a lot that can be said about color theory, and gaiacseas says more than I do on the topic, but basically color conveys a lot about the character. Muted colors convey a muted personality, and brighter colors convey a brighter one! As gaiacseas says in their guide, however, this sets up a great way to subvert expectations about your character.

Protip! If you’re having trouble with a color scheme, just color pick from an existing picture! I don’t have any examples of this on hand, but I do know that sunset pictures are very yummy and I have a lot of pink/orange colored designs. Coincidence? I think NOT.

The number of colors you select is of course up to you, but personally, I don’t use too many individual colors for ease of creating reference images. Of course, realistically, no one’s going to wear clothes the exact same color as each other. Unfortunately for that realism, I am lazy and don’t want to color pick 10 colors, so this is how I live.

Layering:

This is the absolute #1 best way to build texture and silhouette in your characters! Step one, find a funky garment. Step two, find another funky garment. Step three, put them on top of each other. Step four, PROFIT.

The easiest garments to do this with is of course jackets, but they certainly aren’t the only garment that can be layered! Layering is just a matter of looking at clothes you would not usually wear together and going “I wonder what would happen if you wore this together?” In real life this is usually a disaster. But in the world of art and hypotheticals everything is fair game and NOTHING makes sense!

Patterns:

For when layers just don’t cut it! As far as patterns go, they could tie into motifs or just be a nice pattern. For example, Mal Jenkins is a painter, so the patterns on his sleeves, pants, and bag are based on Monet’s “Water Lilies”.

On the other hand, patterns could just be a pattern or recurring motif! The world is your oyster!

Materials/textures:

When combined with layering, clothes of different textures and weights can add a lot to a design! I mentioned before that I like designs with jackets, let’s look at a couple different hoodies! Featured here is Tristan McRae, ASLH’s SHSL Video Game Designer, and Hayato Kikuchi, Ultimate Parkourist (submitted to rebootmon’s Danganronpa: Zetsubou Panic!!).

You can see that Tristan’s jacket is made of much thicker material than Hayato’s, which is very baggy and loose. This already makes their designs a lot more distinct from each other! (They’re also wearing totally different colors so that helps too.)

Other textures I like to do include adding holes (like Spring from KTJ:ARG has holes in her coat), adding things onto fabrics (like Tsukino Chisaki, ASLH’s SHSL Flight Student, has studs on her coat and boots), and adding visible stitching (like Brendan Valdez, ASLH’s SHSL Flight Student, has patches on his coat).

Clothes:

Having a general idea of what clothes actually exist is a very good start! Such as:

Tops: t-shirts, collared shirts, long sleeve/short sleeve shirts, tank/tube tops, cold shoulder shirts, blouses, sheer mesh shirts…

Bottoms: Skirts, gym shorts, denim shorts, jeans (with and without holes), leggings, culottes, kilts...

Dresses: Prom dresses, casual dresses, ball gowns, formal full-length gowns…

Undergarments: tights, fishnets, garters, long socks, short socks, gloves, bras/bralettes...

Coverings: Hoodies, cardigans, overcoats, denim jackets, capes, ponchos, vests, suit jackets…

Shoes: Slippers, flip-flops, sandals, high heels, sneakers, athletic shoes, slip-ons, boots...

Accessories: Hats, barrettes, hair ties, jewelry, bags, headbands, belts, chains, suspenders, buttons, glasses...

So from there it’s just mix and match! Keep in mind the different styles of clothing as well - you can swap out things like collars and edges to create variety! There’s different types of boots, different types of skirts, different kinds of bags. The sky’s the limit!

No, I Meant Like Clothes Inspiration:

Oh. Again, keep an eye out for specific art inspirations! If you see a cool character design or outfit on social media, bookmark it! Just remember not to copy clothes exactly, because that’s called art theft! I have a storage Discord server where I keep screenshots and links of art and outfits I come across while scrolling social media.

I find that the best original outfits are a combination of different outfits. Take certain elements that you find cool in each outfit , then add a few elements of your own and stick them all together! It might take a few passes to work as cohesively as you’d like, but keep trying! The best outfits that take inspiration should look so seamlessly blended and original that they should only look like the references if you compare them to each other.

I also have a few characters inspired by songs, so sometimes I’ll incorporate the motifs of MVs for those songs into their outfits. I don’t really recommend this unless you’re 100% prepared to be called out on where the outfit came from, and I ESPECIALLY do not recommend lifting the outfit exactly. Again, that’s art theft.

Isaku Umitsu, my SHSL Kyudoka, is based on the Hitotsume-sama, Bun-chan, and Kulukulu characters from utaite Eve’s music videos Literary Nonsense and Outsider. Looking at them side by side, the inspiration is obvious, but when taken out of context, it shouldn’t be the first thing that comes to mind unless you’ve watched Eve’s videos 100 times (like I have) (take my computer from me please).

References:

As for references! Here’s just a couple that I found digging through my Tumblr!

My main blog’s fashion tag!

moatdd’s layering how-to! This changed my life when I saw it.

OSF Costume Rentals - period accurate clothing!

leaf-submas’s hat and skirt style guide, feat. Napstablook!

Jfashionmagazines - Japanese street fashion!

If your mutuals have fashion tags or pages, that’s a good place to dig through as well! They almost certainly have different styles than you do, so you’ll get exposed to a lot of different styles!

Outfits are a lot of fun and my favorite part of designing characters! Hopefully it will be for you too! :D

REDESIGNING CHARACTERS/NEW OUTFITS

Ever got a character design you love, but then decided you weren’t feeling anymore? Or got a character from someone you ended up hating? Or you found character art from 5 years ago and decided you hated it? YEAH ME TOO TO EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE!!

ASLH has four characters who were adopts: Ririka Kashizaki (SHSL Nail Artist), Sentarou Sekisada (SHSL Seat Filler), Hirono Ekyou (SHSL Oendan), and Ryouji Atsui (SHSL Caterer)! For a “complete from scratch redesign” I’ll be talking about Ryouji, who was converted from an attempt at design to a fantroll to an original design!

As you can see, I had a lot of trouble with Ryouji’s design. (It probably didn’t help that I didn’t finalize his personality until basically the prologue though lbr.) I didn’t really know what I was doing, and though I had the concept for the vibes I was shooting for, nothing seemed right. Around the same time, I bought an OC design from my friend Marti, and I was having so much trouble I was like “y’know what let’s just fuse the two”.

My process for redesigning OCs, especially when doing something like humanizing a nonhuman character, is to pick the certain traits I’d like to keep and change the rest. For Ryouji, the elements of his concept art I wanted to keep were parts of the outfit (the apron and vest) and the elements of the fantroll I wanted to keep were his eyebrow scar and the squares pattern on the jacket. Thus, when redesigning him, I made him have all of these elements! This was probably one of my favorite designs to make ever, and I’m really glad other people seem to like it too.

Weirdly enough, as soon as I finalized his design for his first reference, his personality almost immediately materialized. Which really just goes to show how much design can influence character personalities.

(Fun fact, drawing Ryouji’s reference was the first time I drew his final outfit, so I’m extremely grateful it turned out as well as it did.)

Other characters, like Hirono, only need a quick outfit touchup. I loved Hirono’s design already, and it fit with what I had in mind with her personality. All I did to change her was the same process I use to make any other outfit, see above. She’s an oendan, so she gets a hapi coat and school uniform… though, honestly, that original outfit is still super cute. I should draw it again sometime.

Most of the characters that I redesign as heavily as I did Ryouji are fangems and fantrolls that I buy from my friends, because I know that they understand my mighty need to redesign things. I try not to redesign adopts I get from other sources because I don’t know how the people I bought them from would feel about my editing their design too heavily; Sentarou and Ririka fall into these categories, so when I got them I mostly changed their outfits.

For me, it feels weird to redesign already-existing human OCs, but it’s also not impossible - Tristan, for example, used to be white. No I’m not going to show you the sketches for that and all you need to know is that it sucked, mostly because I was having a lot of trouble making him look nerdy but also nonthreatening. I think how he looks now is a good balance. If you ever get stuck redesigning a character, a race or gender swap (if either is possible tastefully) can go a really long way, and can even subvert expectations about a character! Just keep in mind dynamics and messages as well - if you have a strong violent woman and go “hey she should be trans”, that’s really not the best stereotype you would probably want to display in your work. Be mindful!

2015 (og design) => later 2015? (RWBY AU) => 2017 (AR3) => 2018 (DE:OPH

CAST BALANCE: DESIGNS

I wasn’t going to talk about this but then I decided I was gonna talk about it! I mean this is kinda a guide for Danganronpa characters, but this applies to any cast that is presented in a group. The characters in ASLH fall into a few different categories:

Created for beta ASLH: Chiyo, Amal, Tsukino, Ririka, Kanemori, Tristan, Tiana, Claude, Iris, Aster

Created for current ASLH: Ryouji, Sentarou, Alexei, Tatsumaru

Preexisting characters: Hirono, Brendan

The largest problem I had putting all the cast members together was revising outfits so that, as seen with Alexei and Tatsumaru above, designs wouldn’t be too similar. For the most part, I had vague ideas of what I wanted for each appearance; even the characters whose designs materialized fully-formed (like Tiana and Brendan) were edited slightly for cast cohesion.

I wish I could say I was responsible in developing all 16 characters’ designs at once so I could keep an eye on their design consistencies, but I would be lying. Instead, I finalized them and then posted them one by one. This was a double edged sword. One, I couldn’t go back and readjust colors or designs without making a whole new reference (which I actually did for Tatsumaru). However, because I was able to take a birds-eye view of my cast, I could see what design elements I needed more of - ESPECIALLY for color scheme! You’ll notice that a lot of the first row in my cast pic is very dark and grey-dominant, so I made a conscious push to include more colors in the second row of characters.

My one regret is not doing more talent-related designs. For a majority of the ASLH cast, you wouldn’t be able to tell their talent from appearance alone. In some cases this would have been impossible anyway (how do you convey to a Western audience a SHSL Cellphone Novelist through design?), but the only really distinct and obvious talent related designs are probably Tatsumaru (who probably doesn’t count because kabuki acting is maskless); Claude; Iris Sumitama, the SHSL Honors Student; and Kanemori Shionaga, the SHSL Football Player. Can you guess who they are?

Also, Alexei’s outfit should have been more extra. I still regret not making it so.

TOO LONG, DIDN’T READ

Go look at gaiacseas’ thing.

I do at least a page or two of concept art before settling on a single design.

Pay attention to body types!

Motifs can make a character look really cohesive and thematic.

Pay attention to what you like in outfits, too!!

Color schemes give an at-a-glance idea of your character’s personality.

Layering creates distinct silhouettes and can be done with more than just jackets!

Varying materials and textures makes the same garments look distinct from each other.

Making interesting outfits is as easy as mixing and matching garments.

Find outfit inspiration, but don’t plagarize!

To redesign characters, take the elements you like and shift everything else until it looks the way you want it to!

Balancing cast designs is a tricky process; going one-by-one is possible but has its ups and downs.

A LAST NOTE

In general, when you make a character whose life is different from yours - especially those belonging to marginalized communities - for the love of GOD please do some research about the experiences those communities have. It is a very bad idea to make them into a mouthpiece for your views of the groups. (SHSL Activists that are portrayed as unreasonable SJW strawmen irritate me to no end.) If you don’t feel you can portray a character respectfully, through either drawing or writing them, either a) research and listen to people of these groups so that you can or b) don’t do it, and maybe reevaluate yourself and figure out what about making this character makes you so uncomfortable.

Which isn’t to say that you have to be 100% perfect at everything, of course. In general, so long as the misinterpretations are unintentional, people belonging to the groups you try to represent tend to be pretty happy that you’re trying at all. You have no idea how happy I am to see agender representation in fanganronpa casts, especially because the Danganronpa OC scene likes to stick to hard gender binary balances. So it is worth it if you want to try it!

GOOD LUCK

And happy character creating!

If you enjoyed this document, please consider buying me a Ko-Fi or checking out my commissions! Or, of course, read Danganronpa: A Stormy Last Hurrah.

#tutorial #art ref #tips #character development #danganronpa #danganronpa oc #dr #fanganronpa #fangan #my art #my ocs #not aslh #spam speaks #long post #q

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itsclydebitches · 5 years

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I consider taking angsty prompts and turning them into absurd fluff to be a specialty of mine~

Wretched

Aziraphale had always had a soft spot for children’s books. One wouldn’t think it based on the antiques and religious texts crowding up the shop, but if you took your time and wandered all the way to the back you’d find a sizable collection waiting, enhanced by the occasional plush and toy truck. They were mostly books from the mid-18th and 19th century, didactic texts with (surprise, surprise) religious bents. A Little Pretty Pocket-Book Intended for the Instruction and Amusement of Little Master Tommy and Pretty Miss Polly had been a long time favorite of his, both for the brightly colored paper it was bound in and the absurdly long title by contemporary standards.

The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes. The New England Primer. Millions of Cats. Peter Rabbit, The Secret Garden, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland...that was about as modern as Aziraphale was willing to go—for now at least—with the exception of one co-authored series from the 1990’s.

“The Bailey School Kids,” Crowley read. He flipped through one at random, eyes already skittering away from lack of interest. The cover got an amused snort though. “Dracula Doesn’t Drink Lemonade? Wouldn’t mind showing that to old Bram sometime.”

“You’re welcome to take that copy if you ever pop back downstairs.”

“Isn’t he with your lot?”

“Can’t quite recall anymore.” Aziraphale’s fingers skimmed the spines until he found the book he was looking for. With a dramatic flourish he showed off this cover too: a glowing woman performing a kick in front of four children.

Crowley’s lips twitched. “Angels Don’t Know Karate.”

“I’ll admit this one certainly doesn’t.”

“‘She’s too good to be true!’ Well they got that part right at least.”

Crowley’s admiration was rarely verbal. He preferred actions over words and when something did come tumbling out it was quickly followed by an insult for balance. You’re so clever. How can someone as clever as you be so stupid, and so forth. Thus, Aziraphale waited for the blow and instead felt his cheeks heating when all Crowley did was glance up over his glasses, eyes soft. He’d bent to get a look at the book and having him in such a, ahem, submissive position did nothing to calm Aziraphale’s racing heart.

What absurdities human bodies were. His palms had begun to sweat so badly that Aziraphale feared he’d do damage to the pages.

Yet when he dropped one hand to brush against his trousers he found it caught halfway, Crowley’s fingers ensnaring his, right at the tips. He drew Aziraphale’s knuckles to his mouth and placed a kiss there, reverent.

“Too good by far,” he murmured.

“Oh,” and Aziraphale was floundering, choking a bit, trying to put the book down and pull Crowley forward all at once until they were simply a mess of limbs and laughter. They finally succeeded and as Aziraphale bent to press his own kiss into the hollow of Crowley’s throat he forgot the reason he’d brought him over here in the first place.

I was making a joke, he thought faintly. Then Crowley took his face between his hands and Aziraphale forgot that too.

***

It came to him thirty hours later when a stray cat nearly upended itself into a drain in its attempt to get away from Crowley.

That was it. The Bailey series was missing a title: Demons Don’t Keep Pets.

“Wretched beast,” Crowley muttered and Aziraphale kindly ignored that the words were spoken in the same tone as, ‘I’m not nice’ and ‘That’s ridiculous,’ and ‘Shut up, angel.’

“We merely startled the poor thing,” Aziraphale said. He kept his eyes straight ahead.

“Shut up, angel.”

Hmm.

Spending time in the company of demons resulted in all sorts of odd, but really quite predictable outcomes. The stench of sulfur and chlorine was a given. Aziraphale had long ago ceased trying to cover up Crowley’s scent with any human-made creations and after the first couple of hundred years he’d forgotten why he’d wanted to in the first place. Minor mischief was another. Not anything planned, demons simply had a sort of... bad luck that surrounded them. Minor falls, forgotten words, and lost socks followed them everywhere. There was the expected gravitation towards warmer climates—many were cold blooded by nature—and the inevitable itch to groom one’s wings once the encountered concluded. Though that was due more to self-comparative embarrassment than anything the demons actually did.

And then there were the animals. Needless to say, creatures of Earth didn’t take kindly to demonic entities from the literal depths of hell.

Over their multi-millennium friendship (Courtship, Aziraphale silently corrected himself, experiencing a little thrill) he had seen Crowley interact with every animal imaginable. Or rather, unintentionally terrorize every animal imaginable. Cats, as established, had enough sense to get out of his way. Dogs were a little dumber, but that just resulted in shaking, whimpering, and a pungent mess on the floor. The Bentley was beloved not only for it style, but the freedom it had afforded him. Over the years Aziraphale had watched Crowley get bucked off of horses, camels, donkeys, mules, and on one memorable occasion an elephant. Though there were upsides too, of course. This particular body was quite susceptible to bug bites, though Aziraphale never needed to worry about such things when on a dusk stroll with Crowley. In decades past a visit from him had been more than enough to scare off the rats and cockroaches plaguing Aziraphale’s home. Squirrels and other rodents never bothered them while eating outside. Birds wouldn’t dare to defecate anywhere in their presence (smarter than the dogs then). It had taken a hundred years for the ducks of St. Jame’s Park to become accustomed to their routine... and even today they very obviously only ate the bread on Aziraphale’s side of the pond.

In short, there was a reason that poor unicorn had bolted the moment Crowley come on the scene.

“You’re thinking about how I’m responsible for the extinction of the unicorns, aren’t you?”

Aziraphale faltered only briefly. Uneven pavement. Such a danger. “Not at all, my dear.”

“You’re a terrible liar, Zira.”

“I am quite accomplished in the art due entirely to your influence. Now hush and enjoy the sunset.”

Crowley grumbled, but slipped his hand into Aziraphale’s when they just so happened to brush. They did enjoy the sunset while strolling back from dinner and as they did not a single mosquito, bird, or daring cat came their way.

***

Crowley would have dearly loved to have a pet.

He’d never said as much, not even at their most inebriated, but the desire was clear as day to Aziraphale. Put aside how well they knew one another; Aziraphale was, quite literally, a being meant to understand and exhibit love, someone who could feel it in all its forms. He knew that Crowley loved animals with the same surety that he knew Crowley loved children. And him. The duck obsession, the drunken worry for all the ocean’s creatures, they were just neon signs pointing to an already obvious statement.

Aziraphale had briefly thought that Dog was the answer. Who better to love a demon than a hell hound? Sadly, a visit to the Young household established that Adam had been a bit too thorough in transforming Dog into a normal dog. The puddle on the family room rug had created quite the stir.

So, with Armageddon two weeks behind them and all the freedom to do as he pleased, Aziraphale went shopping.

“Angel, when you said you’d gotten me a present...” Crowley’s mouth worked for a moment, seeming to taste a whole lot of words before rejecting all of them. “Weeellll. Kinda thought it was another stuffy old book.”

“You love when I give you stuffy old books.” Aziraphale had seen the small collection in Crowley’s apartment, as loved as anything else in that minimalist space.

“Is this a stuffy old book then?”

Crowley pointed to the box. The box moved.

“No, dear.”

In truth Crowley already knew what was inside. He could no doubt smell it, but he went through the motions of surprise all the same. Aziraphale watched how hard he swallowed and the shake in his hands as he pulled back the flaps.

“...You got me a snake,” he said and Aziraphale smiled at how wet his voice had gotten.

Specifically, Aziraphale had gotten him an Eastern Hognose Snake, black with a reddish tint to match Crowley’s hair. Docile and small, the little dear had no sooner tasted the air then it was making a beeline for Crowley, around his wrist and up onto his shoulder.

He’d been right. The curse didn’t extend to one’s own species.

“I’m surprised you never got one for yourself,” Aziraphale said. He watched as Crowley ran two fingers delicately over the scales, entranced. A soft, subconscious hiss was emanating each time he breathed. “It’s rather the perfect pick for you.”

“Way to toot your own horn. But nah, just... snakes. Not very cute, are they? Not the sort of thing people want in their home.” Crowley used his free hand to sit his sunglasses more firmly onto his face and... oh.

Oh.

Aziraphale felt something in his chest tighten. He stepped forward and removed those glasses, despite the protest.

“I think they’re positively adorable,” and a laugh bubbled out of Aziraphale as Crowley spluttered. The tension in his shoulders released though and the little Hognose ended up better settled between them. “A snake will make a wonderful addition to this home, rest assured. You’ll have to give him a name.”

“Her,” Crowley croaked.

“Her then.”

“Got any suggestions?”

“Not just yet.” Stepping closer Aziraphale laid his head on Crowley’s shoulder, eye-to-eye with their little lady. He wasn’t at all scared though. Like with the snake above him, Aziraphale knew he was perfectly safe. “I hear these lovelies play dead when feeling threatened, so the name must be something suitably dramatic. You see? You’re perfect for one another.”

“Shut it, angel.”

“And yes, there’s a collection of stuffy old books in the second box. You must read up on how to properly care for her. You don’t really think I’d pass up the opportunity to—”

“Somebody give me strength do you ever shut up?”

Crowley finally decided that the best way to achieve silence was to get it himself, which was precisely why Aziraphale blathered on in the first place. Kissing one snake while another watched wasn’t precisely what one would consider angel-like behavior.

Although, given that Aziraphale was an angel and here they were, perhaps it wasn’t so far off the mark after all.

#good omens #good omens fic #ineffable husbands #air conditioning #which one of you lovely readers wants to name the snake #because I am bad at that kind of stuff :D

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guitarclasses · 4 years

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10 Tips To Learn How to Play the Guitar with Good Technique

Here are my best 10 hints for figuring out how to play the guitar with great method. Some of them are somewhat self-evident, while others are the aftereffect of long understanding. I trust they help. Coincidentally, how about we accept that you're correct given player. Lefties can make the undeniable change.

1. Stay away from The Left-Hand Death Grip

At the point when you first beginning playing, straight away you'll find that squeezing the strings against the fret boardhow-to-play-the-guitar is difficult work, harms your fingers and makes your wrist hurt. The regular method to battle this is by snaring your thumb over the highest point of the fret board to get influence, which coincidentally makes you press the strings more with the level cushion of your finger (where your unique mark is) as opposed to the real fingertip.

step by step instructions to play-the-guitarThis is now and then called the "extremely tight grip", since you do wind up with a genuinely savage hold on your neck and it confines the range of your fingers. The best possible method is to have your thumb on the rear of the guitar's neck. This pressures you into taking a potentially rash action to utilize the fingertips, which is obviously better and increasingly precise with regards to playing only the notes you need without incidentally quieting contiguous strings. The difficulty is — it feels sort of bizarre and troublesome from the outset, and your wrist will need quality. Stick with it and you'll value the advantages further down the track. Keep in mind, thumb on the rear of the neck.

2. Practice Standing Up And Sitting Down

instructions to play-the-guitarhow-to-play-the-guitarOkay, things are hard enough all things considered without anticipating that you should waltz around the room while you're playing. The significant thing is, in case you're going to take this fantasy as far as possible, one day you'll be standing up before swarm. Playing with your guitar threw over your shoulder is a totally different stance to plunking down.

On a seat, you will in general slouch over and attempt to perceive what your hands are doing (another negative behavior pattern you need to maintain a strategic distance from). At that point, when you're standing up, everything changes. Attempt it and you'll understand. You'll see it a lot harder to see your left hand, for a beginning. Ensure you have a decent guitar tie, alter it to an agreeable length (overlook throwing it down around your knees — looks cool, however it's a poop playing position) and routinely work on playing while you're holding up.

3. No Need For Speed

10-tips-method how-to-play-the-guitarDon't ever trouble attempting to figure out how to play quick. Truly, don't do it. Great strategy is about precise fingering and hitting the correct notes inevitably, particularly with regards to scales and playing precarious bar harmonies. Focus on exact fingering. Actually, figure out how to play appropriately and speed will happen without anyone else. The greatest deterrent to quick playing is poor procedure. Learn great method and quick fingering will be a tossed in without for reward. Continuously take as much time as is needed and play gradually. Use Uberchord Guitar App, it is a free application that tunes in to you while you practice the guitar and amends when you play wrong.

4. Continuously Use Correct Fingering

Throughout the time of guitar playing the specialists have since quite a while ago made sense of the most ideal approach to play certain harmonies and scales, which means which fingers ought to play certain notes on the fret load up.

At times, you may find a simpler method of playing these — you're a melodic virtuoso and never knew it. Try not to be enticed. Right fingering isn't just about playing that harmony or scale appropriately. Including varieties is considered as well, for example, sevenths and ninths, and your custom style of fingering a harmony may demonstrate that those varieties can't be played (that's right, this is something I took in the most difficult way possible). Give cautious consideration to the right fingering of a harmony and your hand's situation on the fret board for scales. Uberchord will tell you precisely the best way to do it.

5. Quiet Rehearsing

how-to-play-the-guitarYou need to watch your preferred TV demonstrate when you should practice? Try not to freeze, a ton can be accomplished by holding your guitar and continually trading starting with one harmony then onto the next or playing scales without culling the strings with your correct hand. What you're doing is as yet preparing your left hand to play — it's all strong practice. Great method is secured propensities when you're playing. With your thumb on the rear of the neck, recollect?

6. Utilize A Metronome!

the most effective method to play-the-guitarPlaying to a tick track is extremely hard from the start, however the points of interest later on are inconceivable. Your feeling of musicality and timing will get an early lift, in the event that you take a stab at utilizing a metronome soon in your vocation. In any case, don't worry about it to an extreme and ensure you set the beats-per-minute (BPM) to something exceptionally slow. The thought is to become acclimated to playing in time and at a consistent beat, however don't surge this to the detriment of learning procedure. Incidentally, you'll discover piles of metronome applications on the web. What's more, here are 5 different ways you can utilize a metronome to improve your guitar playing.

7. Try not to Shy Away From Difficult Chords

the most effective method to play-the-guitarA not many weeks back in my studio, I was recording a companion called Mary, an artist guitarist, who might move paradise and earth to abstain from playing a B minor harmony. She viewed the fingering as too troublesome and utilized capos and all way of transpositions to evade the feared bar harmony. In the event that anything, you should search out these troublesome bits and invest additional time and vitality on consummating precarious harmonies, else, you'll see them a psychological obstruction to your playing for the remainder of your life.

8. Be Disciplined With Your Practice

the most effective method to play-the-guitar

Nothing beats routinely putting your hands on the guitar and rehearsing the most recent exercises. Regardless of whether it's only for ten minutes on a day when you're in any case excessively occupied. Great strategy originates from your psyche and your fingers recalling how it's completely expected to function, especially with regards to those dubious fingerings. Attempt to put aside some time each day and grow great playing propensities. It'll likewise assist with working up those calluses on your fingertips.

With the most recent form of the Uberchord App you can make your profile and set day by day or week by week objectives. It keeps tabs on your development and sends you updates, in the event that you are getting apathetic and losing center.

9. Offer Yourself A Reprieve and Listen to Music

10-tips-procedure how-to-play-the-guitarThe opposite side of the condition isn't to propel yourself excessively hard to start with. At the point when your muscles begin to squeak and the fingertips are stinging, enjoy a reprieve and unwind for some time. You can without much of a stretch strain something and harm ligaments and tendons in the event that you disregard the risk signs that you need a rest.

10. Remember Your Right Hand Practice

10-tips-procedure how-to-play-the-guitarSometimes it's acceptable to just quiet the strings with your left hand and work on making a percussive musicality with your right-hand playing. Uberchord application additionally includes a strummer mentor to improve your mood and timings.

On the other hand, pick a simple harmony (or no harmony by any stretch of the imagination) and spotlight for some time on any finger-picking and plectrum style that you're learning. The fact of the matter is that your right-hand method is frequently overlooked in the push to get those fingers on your left hand doing the right thing. Remember that figuring out how to play the guitar is a two-gave bargain.

There you have it. Like I said before, a great deal of these tips are clear and good judgment, however numerous new players despite everything commit basic errors in their energy to start playing energizing stuff. Get the nuts and bolts right, the best possible method occurring from the earliest starting point when figuring out how to play the guitar, and you can be an incredible player as opposed to only a decent one.

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galionne-vibin · 5 years

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With my Guidance - Chapter 1: First Companions

Title: With my Guidance

Main Characters: Rodan, King Ghidorah

Summary: There were many things Rodan never expected to happen. Learning that Ghidorah had in fact survived his battle against Godzilla was one. Finding out he had done so by reverting to a hatchling was another. Becoming an impromptu mentor for said hatchling was a third. And yet, all it took was a single night for all three scenarios to become reality.

Read on AO3 or below

—

So here’s the first chapter to my first ever Godzilla fic! It’s super cheesy with next to no drama, but I hope it’s still enjoyable!

—

It was a cool, cloudless night over Boston. The city ruins still stood tall, somehow, gutted skyscrapers threatening to topple over at the slightest push. It had been a few weeks since the grand battle between the king of monsters and his three-headed rival had taken place, annihilating the entire city. No human had yet dared to return to the devastated area due to the radioactive fallout. There wasn’t a single living being for miles around.

… That was, except for the colossal bird-like creature rummaging through the debris.

The winged titan was letting out low, gentle caws as it pushed aside broken wooden beams, singed cement chunks and shards of glass with its beak.

Rodan didn’t know precisely what had drawn him back to these cursed battlegrounds. After everything that had taken place there ; after everything he had been through in just a few days ; it seemed more likely he would simply disappear into another volcano and hibernate for a century or two. And, truth be told, that was his original plan. Once Godzilla had dismissed the assembly of titans, Rodan had flown away and made himself a new nest in Fiji’s Mount Taveuni volcano as Isla de Mara was now a dying wasteland. The inhabitants had watched, in slight anguish and awe, as the Fire Demon built itself a new refuge on their land. Once the work was done Rodan had plunged right into the bubbling pool of magma and let the heat take away the many aches and pains crippling his exhausted body. Ghidorah had left many deep scars on him ; burns from his gravity beam, slashes and scratches from his claws, bite marks… But the wound that kept burning and aching no matter what Rodan did was the stab wound he had received from Mothra’s stinger.

Oh, he deserved it. He knew he did.

Part of him was still having a hard time believing he had actually fought with the queen ; that he had attacked her… He had joined Ghidorah willingly, that was a fact. It was his and every other titan’s role to obey the alpha. At the time he thought he would just remain on standby and wait for Godzilla’s inevitable return ; that he’d wait it out and not cause more trouble. But there was something… Something instinctive that made him act out under Ghidorah’s command. Suddenly every order the new king gave was his personal mission to accomplish. It sent his mind into an unmanageable frenzy, his body bubbling with excitement, adrenaline and a desire to strike. It would have been easy to dismiss his loss of control as being born from his fear of Ghidorah, or maybe even the new Alpha’s powerful, dominant aura taking him over. But Rodan knew he couldn’t pin everything on the three-headed monster. It wasn’t that easy. He’d let himself go as well… He’d let himself go when he should have fought back. Had he tried, he might have been able to resist his influence. Instead he let go and allowed his newfound lust to kill to take him over.

Yeah… He deserved to be stabbed. He just hoped the Queen would be able to forgive him.

Rodan felt a sudden twinge in his gut and moved to another pile of rubble.

It wasn’t the first time he’d felt something like that- in fact these odd twinges had been occurring for a few days now and were part of what had made him leave his volcano. He had tried to ignore them at first, thinking they might just be stemming from his wounds and general malaise. But they had continued, accompanied by a growing feeling of urgency ; and became so strong he ended up leaving the comfort of his nest to go wherever his gut feeling would take him. This was how, after a few hours, he ended up landing back in Boston. He couldn’t help the dreadful feeling creeping in the back of him mind. Something felt… Wrong about the situation, but he couldn’t stop himself from digging. It was as though he knew he was about to uncover something terrible ; but something that needed to be uncovered nonetheless…

He took a step back and scratched at the scorched debris with his talons, removing another layer of dirt. He dipped his head again and pushed more rubble to the side, unearthing a heavy slab of concrete which haphazardly rested over two crushed vehicles. The twinge in his gut suddenly grew so strong it was almost nauseating ; and the sense of urgency that had been gnawing at his mind rushed back to him, hitting him with full force to the point where he was almost lightheaded.

Right there.

Rodan found himself trembling with anticipation as he lowered his head, pressing his horns against the cold concrete and pushing with all his strength. The metal scratched and screeched under the moving weight, sending sparks flying everywhere. Rodan groaned and huffed, taking a step back before headbutting the slab one last time, toppling it over. A thick cloud of dust and ashes rose from the ground, masking the area and making the titan cough and retch loudly, shaking his head vigorously. After a few minutes however the cloud finally settled, and suddenly he saw it.

A minuscule, trembling heap of golden scales ; covered in a grimy layer of soil and soot.

“No…”

Hesitantly, the pterosaur brushed the tip of his beak over the scales, waiting for a reaction. Almost immediately the small creature shifted and let out a soft whimper, opening its wings and uncovering its body- as well as all three of its little heads.

“Ghidorah-?!”

Rodan stumbled back with a strangled cry of surprise. For a moment he wondered if maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him ; if maybe he was hallucinating… But no. No matter how much he shook his head or blinked, the minuscule hydra was still there. Clear as day. The pterosaur took a moment to compose himself before leaning closer to inspect it. The three heads, the golden scales, the two tails… There was no doubt about it ; this truly was Ghidorah… Even the scent was the same- albeit not as overpowering. Rodan sat down as he kept staring at it, still in disbelief.

Granted, Ghidorah surviving the assault wasn’t a complete impossibility. Most titans were not only incredibly resilient, they also had astonishing regeneration capabilities which usually tied into whichever energy or element gave them their life force. In Godzilla’s case it was radioactivity, in Rodan’s it was fire and heat. Should they be mortally wounded, being bathed in these elements would bring them enough energy to repair their bodies. There had in fact been a few times before where Rodan had returned from the brink of death by simply diving into an active volcano or lying down in the middle of a forest fire and absorbing the flames. Mothra herself had an even more complex ability the volcanic kaiju still didn’t fully understand. All he knew was that it involved her reverting to her larval stage one way or another after ‘death’ and going through the whole maturation process again. In a way, something not too dissimilar from what he had here…

The question now, though, was what was he supposed to do?

What was he supposed to do?! This was Ghidorah ; Godzilla’s lifelong rival and the titan who had attempted to destroy the entire planet- and now he was back. He couldn’t just leave him there! His first thought was to simply call over the king to let him deal with the situation. After all, this was his job ; he could take care of it. But then again…

Rodan looked down at the hatchling. It was chirping and squeaking softly, curling its wings back around itself as it shivered in the cooling air. It was tiny ; barely over 3 feet long without the tails and didn’t yet seem able to hold either of its heads off of the ground. Its eyes seemed to remain closed as well. And it looked so weak and fragile… Just a snap of the larger titan’s beak and he could crush all of its little bones-

Rodan winced and shook his head as he felt a sudden wave of unease wash over him. The image that had flashed through his mind was… Distressing, to say the least. He wasn’t sure why however- he’d had no qualms about killing smaller creatures (such as humans) before. But this tiny hatchling felt different… Watching it squirm on the ground and struggle to keep warm brought forth a new assortment of emotions the Fire Demon had never experienced before. He knew this was Ghidorah ; The Destroyer of Worlds ; yet he somehow couldn’t bring himself to harm the tiny hydra…

As he pondered about the situation he began unconsciously stepping away from the hatchling, mumbling to himself. But just as he got a few feet away, he suddenly felt a twinge in his gut again. This time however it was also accompanied by a soft sound and as he turned around, he saw the hydra was chirping in his direction and seemed to be looking for him. The winged kaiju blinked a few times, before hesitantly approaching the hatchling.

“Did you just… Call out to me?”

The small hydra didn’t answer as it was probably too young to even understand the titans’ spoken language, but Rodan had little doubt that’s exactly what had happened- and suddenly it all clicked. The twinges, the urgency to fly back here… The little one had been calling out to him through the hivemind titans all shared ; and somehow Rodan had heard it from the other side of the world. And not only that, but it had called him specifically… Rodan, the lonely king on a lonely mountain…

He opened a wing and delicately set it over the small kaiju, blanketing him comfortably against the cool nocturnal breeze. The three heads cooed softly as they blindly nuzzled closer to each other and the sight brought a comforting feeling to the pterosaur as he looked down at them. The hatchling had called out to him specifically… Because he was Ghidorah’s only companion. Rodan closed his eyes and exhaled deeply. He still remembered the extra-terrestrial kaiju telling him about his plight- being born on a dying planet with no choice but to flee ; never finding a world that wouldn’t attempt to kill or enslave him… Hope to find a new home turned into fear. Fear turned into despair. Despair turned into anger. Anger turned into overflowing, destructive rage…

Destructive rage turned into a vital need to annihilate.

It still surprised Rodan how easily the false king had trusted him with this tale. Maybe it was because he was about to burn down the planet anyway. Maybe it was to get things off his chest. Maybe it was to sway his new servant even further to his side with a sob story. Or maybe he knew they both led lonely existences ; and maybe (just maybe) he trusted Rodan just enough to understand… To be his second in command and first companion in destruction…

It was a tempting thought ; believing someone would put this much trust in him after all these years of solitude. As the last of his species and the lowest step in the titan hierarchy (even more so now), fighting by Ghidorah’s side had been an incredibly invigorating experience. It made him feel in control, powerful ; like he did matter at least a little bit on this vast, ever-changing planet.

All this because for just a moment, he wasn’t alone in the world anymore…

Because Ghidorah was there.

Rodan sighed deeply as he stood up. He’d made his decision. It was certainly one he was going to regret sooner or later… But for now, at least, it was clear what he had to do.

He looked over to the hatchling and saw it was fast asleep. With as much caution as he could he leaned back on one foot and slowly, delicately closed the talons of his other foot around it before gently lifting it off the ground. He made sure it was safely nestled in before taking off, keeping that leg closer to his body to keep it warm.

It was going to be a long flight home…

#godzilla #godzilla king of the monsters #godzilla fanfic #rodan #ghidorah #with my guidance

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hekate1308 · 6 years

Text

Call Of Nature

More siren!Cas AU because I love this series. Enjoy!

Sam has grown used to being whisked away in order to deal with legal monster problems, while always feeling slightly queasy afterwards. True, Dean and Cas are still careful not to drag him into too many monster adventures; but he likes to think they have found a balance of sorts.

It seems, however, that his colleagues have not.

One day he returns from lunch and finds the other junior lawyers engrossed in conversation with...

He sighs. “Crowley?”

The demon turns around and grins. “Moose. Long time no see.”

It’s a lie. Sam had dinner with Dean and Cas two days ago and of course he showed up because he inevitably does.

“What is it this time?”

He rolls his eyes. “Don’t sound so enthusiastic. We do pay for your services, you know.”

They do indeed, and rather handsomely at that. Plus, Sam’s boss has already decided they should try and get into this new niche now that monsters are recognised citizens who have basic rights.

“I know” he acquiesces. “Let’s go.”

Crowley says goodbye to the others – going so far as to kiss Becca’s hand – and transports him and Sam to his mother’s hut.

He’s still not quite sure how a witch gave birth to a demon, and has decided that he’d rather not know.

“Samuel. Good of you to drop by.”

“Rowena –“

“She hexed me!”

Oh dear. Sam can see why Rowena wanted a lawyer present. The man in front of him looks angry, and well, the history of people being accused of using witchcraft to harm others...

“Freaking Hell, are you just going to show up with more people now? I suppose you’re a demon too –“

“No, actually. Sam Winchester, I’m a lawyer –“

“Excellent, I could use one.”

“I’m her to represent Ms. MacLEod.”

Rowena grins. “He is indeed.”

“What? She’s the one who hexed me!”

“I did nothing of the kind, you stupid little man. You have a cold.”

“For the last two weeks! And you were there when I picked my car up from the siren’s fuck toys shop.”

Sam stiffens. “I’m sorry?”

“You know, the one the siren keeps ensnared.”

“I assure you, my brother-in-law is doing no such thing.”

The man sneers. “Of course. You’re one of them.”

“Alright”.

Sam turns to look at Crowley. His eyes are red, and there’s something feral in his voice and pose, as if he’s about to attack.

A part of him would actually let him.

“Crowley, how about you wait outside?” he suggests. “It might be best for us all –“

“He’s right” Rowena agrees. “Why don’t you check up on Dean and Cas, let them know Sam’s here.”

For a second, Sam thinks he’ll refuse, but then his eyes slowly turn back to green and he nods.

“I would advise you” he addresses their visitor right before he vanishes, “To be very careful”.

At least he’s gone the next second. Sam breathes a sigh of relief. He’s noticed Crowley becoming more and more protective of them all for a while now. Donna’s selkie boyfriend thinks it’s got to do with his soul becoming “lighter” due to Cas and Dean’s influence, but he has no idea what that’s supposed to mean.

Sam turns back to the man. “Now, Mr. –“

In the end, he manages to calm the man down and send him on his way, but it was a close call.

Rowena is thankful enough, gifting him with a few teabags, “Just drink this when you get a cold. You know – to do the opposite of what this idiot thinks I did.”

He nods and leaves. Sam’s tempted to check in on Dean and Cas, but he can’t deny that he’s still slightly nervous around Crowley – somewhat nice or not, he’s still a demon – and so he doesn’t.

Sam probably should be delighted that Crowley for once hasn’t appeared to drag him away (despite Dean’s assurances that it will eventually happen he hasn’t yet grown comfortable with being beamed around).

Instead, he warily studies the demon standing in front of him. There’s something different about him, but Sam can’t put his finger on it.

He looks... tired. Do demons get tired? He has no idea. Sure, he and Dean talk during their weekly lunches, and he comes ti visit him and his husband and occasionally helps out when there’s trouble in suburbia, but Dean usually spares him the details.

“Hello, Sam.”

That’s... strange. No Moose or funny – well, what Crowley considers funny – comment? “Crowley.”

“I was wondering if I might consult you in your professional capacity.”

“Of course.”

“I’d like to set up my will.”

That’s... even stranger. Demons can’t die, can they?

“Just a precaution” he adds in his abrupt manner, and Sam doesn’t stop and think because he doesn’t know him as well as Dean or Cas.

He will admit he’s somewhat touched that Crowley demands most of his estate be given to his brother and brother-in-law.

When he learns how high a sum this actually includes, he has to sit down.

In the next few weeks, nothing changes much; and then suddenly Dean acts weird during their lunch, barely answering Sam’s questions, clearly distracted, and...

If he didn’t know any better he’d think he was mad at him.

“Dean? Is everything alright? Did I do anything?”

He looks at him. “You could have told us, that’s all. Don’t get me wrong, I get the lawyer client privilege, but he’s our friend and it was somewhat of a punch in the gut when he told us, we all thought he’d be around for – “

“Dean, tell you what?”

He stares at him. “You don’t know? Sam, you wrote the guy’s will!”

“Yes and?”

Dean is silent for a moment, then he says quickly, as if ripping off a band-aid, “Crowley’s dying.”

“Oh.” Sam doesn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know –“

“Me neither” Dean says bitterly, “But apparently, there’s exactly one illness that demons can catch – and guess what. It only happens very rarely, but when it does, it’s because they’ve been hanging around humans for too long, with too little contact with their own kind.”

Oh no. If Sam knows his better, and he believes he’s come to know him again rather well – “Dean, this is not your fault.”

He chuckles. “Don’t I know it. Thing is, Crowley’s sickness needs decades to develop – he said he’s known for quite some time that he was in danger. But tell that demon to socialize, and –“

“Dean” Sam interrupts him, “He’s at your place all the damn time.”

“With other demons, remember what I said?”

Sam nods. “And there’s – nothing to be done?”

“One thing” Dean says slowly. “But it’s difficult.”

He doesn’t elaborate through the whole meal.

Late, back at his place – and it only now occurs to Sam that Dean has yet to see his apartment – he considers what he’s learned, and what this means for Dean, Cas and their little monster community.

From what he’s seen, Crowley holds a place of respect among them, and he’s considered a close friend by his brother. That alone would be enough to make Sam care, and so he resolves to visit Rowena. It can’t be easy for her, but she knows a lot about magical medicine. Perhaps she knows more about this cure Dean is reluctant to speak of.

He doesn’t tell his brother that he’ll go to her hut in the woods.

She greets him as always; there’s no grief or worry in her face or her words, and Sam almost thinks Dean is mistaken until she says, “Are you here about my son’s will?”

“No” he answers. “But Dean mentioned a remedy, and...”

“Ah. Samuel, are you certain?”

“Certain of what?”

She points at a chair in front of her and he sits down. “There’s a reason your brother hasn’t told you everything. It’s the same he hasn’t been to your apartment yet, even though he’d like to see where you live, why your contact even now consists of only small, shared moments in two hugely different lives.”

“I don’t –“

“Samuel.”

When she looks up from the herbs she’s been mixing, he’s glad he’s sitting down; otherwise he’d take a step back. For the first time, he can truly feel the power of a centuries-old witch. “Magic and nature are intertwined; and while you cannot completely have one without the other, you can place yourself firmly on one side. Humans – most of them, including you – they prefer the softer parts of nature, the one they can explain using physics. Not magic that is older than the ground they walk on. When a human joins us – have you ever thought it is a coincidence that so many magical creatures are drawn to Dean, even if he’s among other humans?”

Sam swallows. “So if I learn too much –“

“Exactly. When Dean told me you accepted him and his lifestyle, I assumed you’d be more curious, come over more often. I thought you had already chosen this.”

“But can’t I –“

“Are you about to ask me if you can have your cake and eat it too while my son is –“ she breaks off.

“Of course not. I’m sorry” Sam says honestly.

She nods. “I think you should talk to Dean. Crowley told him everything. Not that I am surprised.”

There is a sombre mood hanging over the neighbourhood this evening, and if Sam didn’t know any better, he’d say, that the air around Crowley’s house is darker than –

Who is he kidding. He does know better, and this must be another way for magic itself to mourn for one of its own.

Dean opens the door. “Sammy, didn’t expect you on this fine evening –“

“I spoke to Rowena” he says quickly.

Dean’s face falls. “I didn’t think _”

“Of course you didn’t. Dean, please, I need to know what’s going on.”

“It’s just not fair” Dean insists, “This is a life and death situation, how does this –“

“Let him come in first, my love” Cas says gently, stepping up to him. “He needs to make a decision tonight.”

Sam swallows.

“So it’s a blood ritual? That’s all it is?”

“No, Sammy” Dean replies. “Yes, don’t get me wrong, it involves the blood of two related humans voluntarily given. But it’s not as easy as forcing it down Crowley’s throat and hoping for the best. You heard Rowena; with this you’d tip your scales down on the magical side. And it’s very very hard to reverse that.”

“And? I did choose to get to know you, too...” Sam trails off as he realizes.

Yes, he has allowed Dean back into his life; but he’s never invited him or his husband over, he’s never really spent more than a day with them, he’s skirted the border when what he really needed to do was to either retreat or jump right in.

“Did you –“

Dean smiles weakly. “I fell in love with a magical creature, Sam. My entry into this world... it happened gradually. This is one big leap we’re asking you to take for someone you don’t even know that well.”

“But I am doing it for someone I know well. I’m doing it for you.”

“And for that, you will live with bogey men? Dragons? Pixies?”

“All of that, Dean. Yes. Rowena is right; you either have to fully accept this life, or you have to step back. I am not going to step back.”

Dean studies his face, then draws him into a tight hug. “Thanks, Sammy.”

Rowena arrives immediately after Dean has called her; she doesn’t thank them, but there’s a contentment in her expression Sam has never seen before.

“You do realize” she explains as she draws their blood, “That does will not only take you on our side of nature, but you two and your respective spouses will also be considered part of mine and my son’s family?”

“Fine by us” Dean says after he’s shared a glance with Cas.

Sam smiles. He’s made his decision. “I’m good.”

Rowena is the one to bring the drink to Crowley. The next morning – Sam, Dean and Cas are having breakfast – Crowley, as brash, as healthy, as annoying as ever, surprises them with croissants straight from Paris.

When he comes home to find a hobglobin going through his sock drawer, Sam grins.

Some decisions are best made in haste, it seems.

#my writings #destiel #siren!cas #addams family au

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alleyesonthehindenburg · 6 years

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hi! wanted to say ur fic law of probability is really pretty, and i hope this doesn’t sound mean but im a bit confused? i understand what happens but i feel like im missing something

Hi anon, that’s very kind of you to say! Don’t worry, I am also confused about law of probability, and if you feel like you’re missing something, that’s probably on me. I banged out this fic in an hour while also taking a test for my online course, and it shows. Anyway, I tried to disentangle it below and it turned into a goddamn dissertation, so feel free to ignore that if you want.

law of probability is a mess of things bouncing around in my head, but in large part it stems from my frustration with how Marvel presents Loki as the god of mischief. As a disclaimer, I am by no means an expert in Norse mythology, but it’s been a subject of interest to me for many years. My understanding, based on the limited selection of surviving myths remaining to us, is that Loki isn’t the god of anything. Some scholars have suggested that he is the god of fire or wind, but these two attributes are based on mistranslation/etymological confusion. Calling him the god of mischief has the most solid foundation, but also… no? That designation follows from scholars identifying Loki as a trickster figure, and he certainly fits a lot of the criteria for it! But that has to do with his actions – hindering the gods one moment and helping them the next – and his role in the narrative; it doesn’t make ‘mischief’ his aspect in the way that fertility is Thor’s or wisdom is Odin’s.

All of which means that Loki’s real aspect is sort of *noncommittal hand-wiggle*, and Marvel doesn’t want to go into that. Which I totally understand! That’s a lot to try and portray concisely at a storytelling level, especially in a ‘verse as crowded as the MCU. But I’m still salty about it in the privacy of my own mind (and, in this case, my personal ao3 account).

My own personal interpretation of Loki is that he is representative of chaos (not the god of chaos, but a manifestation, I guess). His capricious nature, the way that he can turn on a whim – so many stories involve him creating a problem, and then going back and fixing it himself. I personally think of chaos and order as two opposing forces, neither of which can exist as an absolute, and Loki serves as an agent of sorts for the former.

The Death of Baldr is a story that, I think, perfectly captures why Loki seems to me like a manifestation of chaos. Frigg, seeking to avoid the death of her son Baldr, extracted a promise from every living thing that they would do him no harm, except for one: mistletoe. No clear reason is given for why she couldn’t extract a promise; maybe it refused, or maybe she considered it so unthreatening that she didn’t even bother. I read this as an example of her trying to force absolute order, trying to remove all potential for chaos, and failing. But even with just one exception, the scales are tipped precariously in favour of order, and Loki serves to balance this out. The gods are playing a game with Baldr’s newfound immortality, throwing things at him and marvelling when he takes no damage. So Loki fashions a weapon made of mistletoe (maybe a spear, maybe an arrow; sources differ), and gives it to Höðr, Baldr’s brother. Here’s my favourite part of this theory: Höðr is blind. Loki could have thrown the mistletoe himself, if his intention was to guarantee Baldr’s death, and shapeshifted so as to avoid blame; he could have cast an illusion to disguise the weapon, and handed it off to someone else. But he gives it to a blind man, thus leaving it to chance whether or not it will hit, and chance, in my opinion, is a form of chaos.

All of this is why I included these lines in law of probability:

In every story fate tells, she embeds a shred of what came first: chaos. It is flame, and wind, and mischief, and none of these things, and this is what she takes from death. The titan sought to master chaos, and so she will turn chaos on him.

I’m explicitly referencing, refuting and accepting the various interpretations of Loki’s role within the Norse pantheon. Which is paradoxical, but I think that it’s a very narrow view of the world to think that paradoxes and contradictions cannot and do not exist.

The MCU, however, is not just dealing with Midgard. Within Norse mythology, yes, I think Loki is exceptional; but when we’re dealing with an entire universe, I specifically didn’t want to portray him as ~oh so special only he can do it~. Which is why I introduced the character of fate.

fate, in this story, is a personification of order much as Loki is a personification of chaos, although to a much larger scale. I used female pronouns for her as a reference to the Norns, and portrayed her as a sort of master storyteller. Within the story of Yggdrasil, and the Avengers, Loki plays a role that is repeated in the millions of other stories she tells; it just so happens that this is the story that Thanos has most directly impacted, and so Loki is in the best position to take action. So she defies order itself, and resurrects him – not because I think that Loki can singlehandedly take down Thanos, but because given the range of his abilities and his knowledge (which Marvel seems to forget about, but no, I’m not bitter) it will be a lot easier.

Fate has written a million epics, but the titan ran head first into one and destroyed the rest by proxy. So as the coins are tossed, she tears into herself, tears into the core of herself until she finds the one true shard of inevitability, and she sets it aflame.

But why not just, you know, kill Thanos herself and start over? Well, fate is not all-powerful. She can lay out the bare bones of her stories, and hope that they go as she wants them to, but she cannot directly influence the actions of her characters. There’s too much chaos in all of them for that; and Loki, and the others like him, are especially resistant to her meddling. Which brings us to this line:

Fear is the most primal emotion. The first coin toss is deferred.

With the Snap, Thanos invoked pure chance, which is a form of chaos. fate cannot influence what he’s doing, she can’t do anything but watch as half her work is destroyed in an instant. There is no order in this situation, which means she can’t do anything.

Except.

If there’s one thing that Infinity War practically shoved down our throats, it’s that Thanos, too, has emotions. And the most base emotion that we all have, the one that evolution has universally decided is Good and Useful, is fear. Thanos snapped his fingers, and gave every living thing in the universe a 50/50 chance; but he held the power of reality in his hands, and like all other things he was afraid. So, consciously or not, he deferred his own coin toss and guaranteed his own survival. That’s a tiny shred of order in a mess of chaos, but it was enough for fate to intervene. Death’s gates are overwhelmed, and in the confusion it is not difficult for her to steal a single soul away, throwing her own rules to the wind as she does so.

#mcu #loki #norse mythology #Nonny Mouse #raylen replies

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orbemnews · 3 years

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Analysis: Bezos leaves behind a company that's created value but has also triggered a national reckoning Bezos, the world’s richest person until recently, has gone from selling books out of his garage to running a company that makes consumer electronics, produces award-winning films and TV shows, offers organic groceries and hosts some of the world’s biggest websites. His company’s ambitions include delivering packages to households using flying drones and spreading facial recognition technology to virtually every consumer’s front doorstep. With each new innovation, Bezos and Amazon have offered the promise of making life easier, more convenient and enriching for customers. But these services also became testaments to Amazon’s ever-expanding power, influence and self-interest, inspiring fierce criticism from the company’s opponents: that Amazon kills brick and mortar businesses; that it bullies workers; that it uses the data from its massive online storefront to maintain a monopoly; that its partnerships with law enforcement have made it an accessory to discriminatory policing. “The guy was just obsessed with the end user. They were the highest priority,” said James Bailey, a professor of leadership development at George Washington University’s business school. “It’s one of those situations where your biggest asset is also your biggest liability.” Now, as he prepares to step down as CEO of the $1.7 trillion business he built and take on the role of executive chair, Bezos leaves behind a company that’s created immense value for consumers, investors and many small businesses, but which has also triggered a national reckoning over the costs it may have created for everyone else. A model for building online companies Bezos’s ambitions were large from the start: He launched Amazon at a time when few people knew what the internet was and chose the name, he later told journalist Brad Stone, in part because the Amazon river is “not only the largest river in the world — it’s many times larger than the next biggest river. It blows all other rivers away.” To achieve his vision, Bezos frustrated some shareholders by investing heavily in the business. It wasn’t until the end of 2001 that Amazon had its first profitable quarter, and its first profitable year didn’t occur until 2003. Amazon would continually flirt with profitability for the next decade. This approach would become a model for many others in Silicon Valley, and perhaps even something of an excuse for cash-hungry startups that seemingly burned through money without a pathway to profit. “Bezos created the blueprint for building internet businesses, being hyper customer-centric, and scaling disruptive innovation,” tweeted Aaron Levie, the CEO of enterprise cloud company Box.com. No other innovation symbolized Bezos’s appetite for losses like Amazon Prime, which was launched as a $79-a-year subscription plan and introduced what became the company’s most recognizable offering: free two-day shipping. On the surface, Amazon Prime stood to lose money. The cost of its benefits — which came to encompass not just fast shipping but streaming media, digital photo storage and discounts on groceries — outweighed what the company made in subscription fees. But it was another example of Bezos’s long-term plan to lure new customers into Amazon’s orbit and persuade them to become mega-spenders on the platform, thereby allowing Amazon to lower its costs even further to attract yet more customers, creating a virtuous cycle, or what Bezos called a “flywheel effect.” The company last year announced it has more than 150 million Prime subscribers worldwide. Relentless, or ruthless? As Amazon became a bigger player in retail, it inevitably came into conflict with others, both big and small. In some cases, it effectively drove them out of business. The bookseller Barnes and Noble announced in 2019 it was going private after a decade of trying to keep pace with Amazon. Toys”R”Us has blamed Amazon’s aggressive pricing for crushing the quintessentially American toy store. Rightly or wrongly, Amazon is often listed as a contributing factor behind the so-called retail apocalypse. And these days, the mere mention of Bezos’s interest in a new service is enough to send an entire industry’s stocks into a downward spiral. Like Walmart before it, Amazon has come to be viewed as “the new big bully, at least in the internet retail space,” said Bailey. Amazon famously clashed with book publishers over who controlled e-book pricing. It deliberately lost money selling diapers in order to thwart Diapers.com — then, according to a landmark antitrust investigation by US lawmakers, it acquired the company before raising diaper prices. (Bezos has said he does not recall giving an order to raise prices.) Amazon’s growing clout has allegedly given it immense leverage to squeeze its suppliers and to use third-party sellers’ own sales data against them to gain an anti-competitive edge. Bezos has argued that Amazon prospers not at others’ expense, but rather when it helps grow the whole pie. “Amazon’s success depends overwhelmingly on the success of the thousands of small and medium-sized businesses that also sell their products in Amazon’s stores,” he told Congress. Bezos also ruffled feathers when he held a highly publicized contest for the privilege of hosting Amazon’s newest headquarters. The so-called “HQ2” was pitched as an engine for local job creation and economic growth, particularly to small and mid-sized cities seeking development. For months, dozens of city leaders jockeyed for Amazon’s favor with offers of tax breaks and real estate. Ultimately, though, Amazon opted for Northern Virginia — just outside of Washington, D.C. — and New York, two of the nation’s wealthiest and most obvious metro areas, leaving many onlookers perplexed. (It later withdrew from New York after facing backlash from members of the community.) The entire episode was a bizarre flex of Amazon’s power and influence. To some critics, the good that Bezos has created does not negate the alleged harms. On the 2020 campaign trail, figures like Sen. Elizabeth Warren called for Amazon to be broken up, and regulators are circling. “The US and Europe are coming for Big Tech, and I don’t think the lawsuits against Facebook and Google are the end of it,” said Paul Gallant, an industry analyst at Cowen & Co. What’s good for customers isn’t necessarily good for workers Just as Bezos’s growing empire raised questions about whether it was good for other businesses, it also raised questions about whether it was good for workers. Rising automation, complaints about working conditions and a tough stance against unions all contributed to years of employee walkouts, petitions and, in some cases, lawsuits. Many of the company’s white-collar workers have also protested Amazon’s impact on the environment, calling on Bezos to make stepped-up commitments on climate change. (Amazon and Bezos later pledged to do more, with Bezos committing an initial $10 billion of his own money to fight climate change.) Early on in the pandemic, Amazon faced a warehouse worker revolt over a lack of hand sanitizer, masks and other protective gear. After one New York-based employee organized a protest over the issue, Amazon fired him for violating the company’s Covid quarantine policy. Amazon has since said it’s put in place temperature checks at fulfillment centers, ramped up its cleaning regimen, and established some 150 “process changes” to keep workers safe. Amazon has won plaudits for increasing its minimum wage to $15 an hour, but only after intense pressure from labor groups and some US lawmakers, including Sen. Bernie Sanders. And the same day that Bezos announced his plans to step down as CEO, the Federal Trade Commission said Amazon would pay more than $60 million to settle allegations that it withheld tips from its contract delivery drivers. In the coming weeks, Amazon workers in Alabama will vote on whether to form the company’s first US union. In response, Amazon has pushed for in-person voting despite the ongoing pandemic and launched a campaign to discourage unionization. “Jeff Bezos built his multibillion-dollar empire on exploitative practices including wage theft and surveillance tactics designed to bully workers into silence and prevent them from organizing,” said Rashad Robinson, president of the civil rights group Color Of Change. A tech icon whose reputation reflects his industry’s Despite the criticisms, Bezos will undoubtedly be remembered in the business world as a brilliant strategist and a disciplined entrepreneur. Bill Gurley, a prominent venture capitalist, called Bezos’s tenure at Amazon “the most spectacular CEO run of my lifetime.” In many ways, Bezos’s story with Amazon mirrors that of Silicon Valley. He began with a small idea in his garage that would change the world. He was lauded for innovating his way to success, putting in hard work and taking calculated risks. But those same choices also led to claims that his company had grown too powerful for its own good, and for the good of society. Now as allegations about Amazon’s power and approach to competition may be leading to a showdown with Washington, the billionaire CEO is tapping out. In a letter to employees this week, Bezos said he plans to spend more time on his newspaper, The Washington Post, and his spaceflight company, Blue Origin. He also plans to get more involved with his philanthropic initiatives, perhaps following in the footsteps of another transformational tech CEO — Microsoft’s Bill Gates. “Bezos wants to go out on top,” said Gallant. Source link Orbem News #Analysis #Bezos #company #Created #JeffBezos'scomplicatedlegacyasCEOofAmazon-CNN #Leaves #National #Reckoning #Tech #triggered

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