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autoirishlitdiscourses · 3 years

Text

Discourse of Saturday, 10 April 2021

You changed would juggle to juggled in line with general academic practice, and you provided a really, your deadline for you, OK? Oversleeping, even though you may find that connection as a thinker or a bit in the novel. Distribution of paper handout. I think that it would be necessary to make it. All in all, I think that you are traveling with a web browser that supports your claim, will result in the formula above is actually quite a good Halloween! However, any good copy of it. I fully appreciate this it's not you agree with you about your ideas more collaboratively. Again, please let me know if you get/zero/points for section in another book, while waiting for the student's schedule hasn't changed, but it's more or less normally adjusted despite being very polished in many ways even though it is that race gets slipperier the more easily accessible representations of the outside world, on the sheet handed out today to be jumped, but really, your recitation, midterm, and the Stars, and this is not entirely satisfying way, and failure to notice an email, or the other students in class with respect, and that's perfectly normal and acceptable at this point whether there is of poor quality: The Dubliners' version of your own logical processes more carefully to be helpful.

However, one sentence at a draft of a letter grade. I had told him that what I'll expect is that I am personally less than half a percent away crossing the line into A-range paper grades discussed in class, then you have any questions, OK? All in all, though perhaps incidental to the rest of the resources you consulted while doing so. Midterm review. All in all substantial ways to go before me, and extreme claims require very strong familiarity with the connection between textual material and related topics, but you picked a good paper here in many ways. Feel free to propose alternatives, but I don't believe I've seen any of the two elements plough, stars and then mercilessly edited your paper being more successful would be higher than an analysis of a reminder that I can bring your hard copy of your main claim in the poem in section. I will do so by that time passes differently when you're at the coin from the final exam except that you can make up for discussion. Another would involve remembering that Yeats's father and brother both named John Butler Yeats were visual artists, and I think that one key element of pushing this concept as far as getting discussion going: you'll get that to give quite a difficult text; there might be to pick out the eighth one without grading it, which seemed to warm up more quickly for you by the time that you haven't done your recitation in the UK and Ireland, regardless of the group members will have to report this to you. You picked a very strong job yesterday you got most of the day before Thanksgiving. As with everything else except for the course website as your model, and that's part of why I want to accomplish. Chris Walker's guest lecture slideshow along.

I think that you finished early. My point is to make intermediate connections that you need particular approaches to Futurism; it's just that I'm poorly qualified to evaluate how passionate a particular depiction of people haven't done the reading. I suspect, is in how you're using them as choices made as a simple concept in many societies, but writing a more specific about what your other discussion points. But everything looks really good beating on the structural schema given to friends: Carlo Linati; Stuart Gilbert J.

I myself tend to agree with me. Third: remember that sometimes sitting down and start writing. If you have any other reason. You've written a very good paper here in many ways, and you're thinking about it, because it's a busy point in the front of the time limit will result in a professional setting. I am performing grade calculations in such a great deal since you gave a thoughtful grace in your paper graded by the time limit has come up with an urgent question the night of section; eight got 9 or higher on the more likely to be just a little below the middle of the texts we are reading by the other students, that this class, but I also feel that there are a lot of ways. If there's someone who's been a pleasure having you in lecture or section, not on me. Well done, and I've gone ahead and confirm that the overall argument will be spent on reviewing for the absolute final deadline to name your poem and connect them to lecture on the day that your thesis at the time limit you've sketched an outline with more rigor. Wednesday, but rather attempts to gloss over anything, but it would be true either for comment or to be reciting as soon as possible. What is my nation? 494-95 p. Which is bad. Yes, that's fine my 6 p. If you have already given up 70 points out of that section within the time that you should also go to bed late tonight and see what people do some of your presentation is unlikely, you should aim for a reason to freak out. Truthfully, I think, always a few things that come from the course at this point in the future. Ultimately, I think that putting V for Vendetta in the front of a chance to add classes without a petition. I suspect the professor hasn't said how much your writing despite some—mostly—rather nitpicky comments I've made some very good paper in other respects. Both of these are often quite good, nuanced writing. The Butcher Boy. Choosing more than 100% of the things the professor to say: if you have any questions, OK? Hi! I could try to avoid them, I'm sorry about that. Has a much longer paper in a way that they've done for most students to add extra space at the final metaphorically speaking, of course grade.

You have to get 5/5 of the test in another class, and Cake next to each other and how that structures the characters' understanding of the historical and cultural ties to the novel; and mop up with Joyce's appropriation and recasting of classical mythology Ulysses in front of me to let the discussion section is UXJU. Again, I think you've got a good impression and pick up every possible point available for the quarter by ⅓ of a proper Works Cited page; any borrowings from anyone at all, you do well just by doing background reading on aspects of the texts with which you can respond productively if they don't warm up quickly is not an easy thing to do it more in your introduction and conclusion around that interpretive claim.

VIII. Another potential difficulty is that we're going to wind up on the feedback for paper topics, in lecture. I appreciate that this is the best clothing possible, because it's so centrally concerned with Irish nationalism are connected in rather interesting. You were clearly a bit too tired tonight to do as well.

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon; Woman with Mustard Pot aha! That is to have been years where I've graded two hundred papers and gave a solid understanding of the entire class. Thanks for letting me know. 238 Reading quiz, if I recall correctly, was mentioned in that part of your TAs for English 150.

Still, an English Paper lots of good work here in a solid, overall, you did well here. Have a good job of choosing not to cancel my office or schedule an appointment with me for any reasons less severe than hospitalization will result in an even more. The Covey 6 p. Do you want it to be to make sure you can point the other hand, posting it on the other reading assignments for Ulysses recitations is over remember that at the beginning of the quality of the quarter, and, if you're busy during that time. I realized that your copy of Word and work it can be a tricky job to engage in micro-level issues of the text s and that tonight was not my area of expertise, one of the format of the class at this stage, your projected paper looks like you're writing more of an A-. Your readings of the work that you were on track throughout your time and wind up posting it on the make-up, and the to a lot of silences let them sit for a good job with it. As far as it were a couple of suggestions. Hi!

Again, well done overall. Question is not good, clear readings of Richard III, from taking an opportunity for you to be substantial deviations from the Aeolus episode of The Wake Forest Book of Irish literature, due on Tuesday night, so let me know if you have other priorities instead of seven, and you related your discussion notes by the poem, and I quite enjoyed having you in any case, let me know and we can chat after lecture. I just heard back from the paper in my margin notes and look at my discretion, although other people to examine the presuppositions that the most part though it is, and giving other people. No real surprises for me to. The Butcher Boy in the specificity that you are hopefully already memorizing. I'll assess each component separately and email it to. Awesome! Sorry for the quarter is theoretically possible but really, your ideas are actually doing? I think that this is what is your job to engage in a more central position in your discussion of as close to every comment, and is mentioned in that case.

For this reason, deciding that you could take Playboy as a source. This set of arguments about a text during the week preceding the section. I'm glad that worked out. I think, to be more successful than just being a good move on your grade in the paper has to teach, and you touched on some important material provided an important maneuver. There are a number of important issues and showing that you picked to the actual amount of time and get you started thinking about the relationship between the different kinds of people the characters was a wonderful and restful holiday break!

Does it answer your specific point.

If you don't email me and I will be scaled to 150, the more that you are quite likely at that point. I think that this is a short description of your email, but they're not yet chosen a recitation for 27 November or 4 December On poems by Paul Muldoon, Quoof Paul Muldoon, provided that you look for cues that this has happened, review briefly any major points into questions, but you're absolutely welcome to talk about this. Have a good Thanksgiving break. 5% on the section hits its average level of deviousness, intelligence, or sent me email or stop by my office or after you reschedule it: technology breaks. Again, thank you for putting so much ground that it's a good thumbnail background to the poem by 4 to 5%, depending on to and the idea that will be thinking closely about how the text to connect your thoughts this is, what do you want to go above and beyond the length limitation work productively for your health. You expressed an interest in the literal sense of the book it appears on your sheet so I wouldn't want to pursue the topic as a group is, or after lecture, and what you think about this profitably, and what the fellow is thinking about how you'd like, etc. The question will be much more apparent to you. Great! More importantly, though, your points because it will help you to think about where you move effectively from text to connect your thoughts are being represented. You also demonstrated that you have several options: prepare a longer selection than the other side of this. Thanks! Something else entirely? Etc. I'm pretty sure there are a real bitch at the very opening bit twelve lines of the texts saying to a specific point about that. Happy Thanksgiving! Let me play devil's advocate here and there memorizing your selection specifically enough that you want to make sure that your body paragraphs don't wander too far afield. Again, I realize. 25 on the issues that you had quite a good set of background information. You did a good move, because in my office door SH 2432E, provided that no one else at all. In romantic relationships by subsuming them under merely bestial impulses; that it curved back to you, not a certain way, and think about their relationship. I think that one, to talk about.

I can just bring it to be productive.

It's not. I have to do, because I think that articulating your criteria for determining what the implications of the quarter, you did quite an impressive move. If I'm wrong about how you disagree with you and use standard citation methodology more carefully to do as soon as possible. Note also that serious problems may lower your grade by 1. Have a wonderful poem, and the way that Beckett conceptualizes it.

Well. What if that works better for you, or could select a selection from each paragraph, and you did quite a good weekend, and might have helped some, here is a waste? No longer legal tender in Britain and Ireland, the winter of perfect communion; To-morrow the bicycle races Through the suburbs on summer evenings: but to-memorize twelve-line chunk; pick a selection that you bring up in discussion. The other people's textual selection in question. For one thing, and setting a positive example for them, in South Hall 1415. You had a good lens for. I Do Like a S'Nice S'Mince S'Pie sung by Corp. —You'll take the exam, and you are working. On what your total points for the announcement in lecture. This is perfectly OK to return to the section meeting and that is not something that you made two genuinely tiny errors, and responded in a comprehensive list. However, you have received a boost of a group of talented readers, and what you'll drop if you are going quite well I have graded all of the total possible points for section in a a central claim in the sense of the recitation assignment or the penalty for backing out at the last minute to use the poems you choose. Nothing that I'm allowed to pass. Think about what specifically was the fact that marriage is primarily important insofar as he makes clear in the class as a whole. But tomorrow afternoon that works best, OK?

If, after lecture tomorrow. So, what immediately suggests itself to me. —Part of the Anglo-Irish Literature, fall back on, and the way that men see and understand women, his understanding of the Anglo-Irish Nugents may very well on the assumption that you will put in a way that they are assumed to feel more intensely, because you will put in a flirtatious correspondence with a lot of similarities to yours.

Again, thank you for doing a large number of sections attended relative weighting 50 _9 Research Paper Letter grades for papers are assigned based on your recitation, you really did quite a strong job! I'll give you does not work as expected/, because the email I promised to forward to your larger-scale concerns with other people in the time, and what you're saying and what you see absurdism most clearly illustrated in the email me a photocopy of that looks good to me I'm looking forward to hearing you do a couple of ways, and you do so in section on 27 November or 4 December discussion of a text that's separated temporally from Punishment, 1984, Brave New World, and because you're going to be a stronger, clearer stand on the web or in posting your notes and get you your add code from him. Hi! Thanks for doing so by 10 a. I am currently leaning towards calling on you. Here's a breakdown on how to deliver it. A is out of the issues that you've actually set yourself up to reciting in lecture today that you think, too, that there are probably thousands of races, and thinking abstractly about the way that it could be. I forgot to say. The sample paper available on the final, and in line 22. As promised in the stream of consciousness and how it changes the grading expectations for performance in a number of additional purposes, as it turns out that I think you most need to represent your own presuppositions more. Lesson Plan for Week 4:30 or so of all my students for review. I can make up for the specific text of the poem and get you your grade at your outline is 4 p.

#Irish literature #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Python #Markov chains

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lachryphage · 4 years

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ok ok so several people have been interested in my Music Learning from tonight and also this is MY blog and I actually go back and look at old posts of mine for like. referential purposes.

and so from the other side I bring you this tale and hopefully some tasty morsels of discovery:

(putting under a cut because it’s very long but we’ve got topics of vocal range, octaves, key, and transcribing songs)

I started the night out playing guitar, and I managed to make a LITTLE progress on the actual physical creation of chords but CONCEPTUALLY I was thinking about how singers will listen to a note to help them sing it more accurately, so I tried it out! I played the highest string on the guitar – an E4 – and then sung it. I downloaded a handy little tuning app that seems fairly accurate, and I had it resting on my knee while playing and I saw that indeed! when I played an E, and then sung what I heard, my voice also created an E!

now this sounds so silly because yeah, that’s what they do in voice lessons! but one of my questions going in to this was figuring out where my head voice differs from my actual voice, and it appears that the difference is one of “timbre” rather than the actual note (I made a recent post about timbre, and I’m still not 100% I’m using that word correctly but let’s roll with it eh?).

but this is where it gets interesting (to me). based on what I learned about my vocal range earlier this week, an E4 should be out of my range unless I go falsetto (I also made a post recently about my range and falsetto). and I was definitely not falsetto (still not sure if I’m using that word correctly in terms of sentence structure). so I actually looked at the tuning app instead of glancing at it and saw that while the string plays an E4, I was singing an E3, which means I was singing an octave lower and in my range without really thinking about it.

now this is!!! this is so interesting to me!!! notes were one of the hardest things for me to understand because they are RIDICULOUSLY arbitrary but the reality of a note is that it’s a frequency. a frequency is a real measure of something physically occurring – in this instance a sound wave. when you go up an octave, the frequency of the note changes proportionally. the one I always remember is an A. A’s occur in ratios of 55. an A1 is 55 Hz, go up an octave (higher in sound) then A2 is 110 Hz. changes octaves with other notes works the same!

so what I find really interesting is that the human ear can identify these ratios and we can tell there’s a similarity between two sounds – that they are both A notes – even though they are so much higher and lower in frequency.

ok so that’s just a review, let’s get back to tonight.

tonight I got to see that happening in myself, in my actual brain! I love having an example of these concepts that occurs naturally, something that I come across without meaning to, that organic form of discovery solidifies something in my mind more readily than any lesson ever could.

so when I went to practice keyboard, I played with this more. I’d play a note, and then try to match that note, and if it was out of my comfortable (non-falsetto) range, then I would sing it an octave (or two) lower so that it was in my range. with the really high stuff I couldn’t get it quite right, so then I’d play the same note lower than my range and! voila! I could get it right.

I decided to learn a song this way. so I took the first one that came to mind and sang the first two verses. then I found the notes to what I was singing and played it on the keyboard. and this is where it really gets interesting.

I knew I was singing the song lower than what it actually is, by several octaves, but the last two notes of the versus I was playing were like right at the limit of the low end of the range, so I couldn’t here them accurately enough to figure out what they were… and so I pulled up the song and listened to it. and that is when I realized that what I was playing was entirely different from what the song sounded like, but it still sounded the same.

I was playing notes that were the same distance from one another, but were not the actual notes of the song, so what I was singing and what I had been playing sounded right, but weren’t the actual notes. sounds so so fucking crazy but after talking to my bestie I learned the reason they can sound the same and different at the same time is because of key.

ever here some bullshit like “in the key of ___”? what the fuck does that even mean, am I right? like ok you use some notes but not others? why? doesn’t make any sense. but, a key is like a palette of colors. you can effectively make the same painting with different palettes, but the colors you bring to it change it enough that they cannot be exactly the same.

so I was singing in a different key than the actual song… and you wanna know why? I am certain it’s because if I sung the correct notes, either the high or the low would have been uncomfortably out of range, but by changing the key, the highest note was comfortable, and the lowest was at the very edge – so I couldn’t hit it well, but I could still hit it.

unfortunately, after showing my bestie what I did tonight, she looked it up and my transcription of the song by ear is slightly off, a few notes are off by like a “half step”?? not entirely solid on what that means yet but… despite being off she could still tell what the song was and more importantly, I learned a lot.

I hope this makes any kind of sense, I am inebriated and these are still some really tough concepts for me to grapple with. thanks for reading this far!!

#personal shit #sounds #by god I hope any of this makes any kind of sense #what a night #crazy disappointed that the transcription of the song wasn't accurate but my bestie said that the differences were minor so...#it just feels like the most basic thing so why wasn't I able to?

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quincywillows · 5 years

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how do you plan out your books/wips bc I have a solid idea and pretty much a billeted list of what I want the plot to be and how my book goes but I’m lost at outlining everything in a coherent and organized way it’s highkey frustrating

okay i’m going to do my best to try and give some helpful tips here for how you can organize your thoughts, and i’ll take it from the perspective of both fics, novels, and just general story ideas! a lot of the principles i follow overlap, and obviously it differs by project (and by writer, for example me and my roommates have completely different outlining styles), this is just what has worked for me so far. hopefully it’ll give ya some things to chew on!

firstly, to make sure i’m orienting myself correctly -- from what i understand, it sounds like you’ve already got a sense of what your beginning, middle, and end is. not beat-by-beat, but the general gist of it. this is already a lot of progress, so kudos!! it can be hard to get from just that general warm and fuzzy and exciting idea phase to an actual concrete sense of what you want to plot to be, so feel good about that. it’s not easy work.

i think what you’re now trying to do is get your ideas down into a tangible format that you can follow to start actually working on it, yes? if so, here are some of my thoughts.

method #1: phase-by-phase, beat-by-beat method

i’m starting with the sort of straightforward outlining method here just because that’s what i’ve employed with quincy willows, so it’s most fresh in my mind. when it came to outlining quincy willows so i could start actually writing it down in concrete scenes, i decided to visualize my story by beat rather than by chapter or major plot points. “beat” is a sort of loose storytelling term that means different things to different people -- for me, it’s not a set “scene” (some beats include 2 - 3 scene changes), but more so an important emotional or context moment. this could be a reveal of information, it could be a relationship building scene, it just in some way drives the story forward even if its just the tiniest step.

how this ended up panning out was that i actually divided my full story into “phases.” these are sort of like the stereotypical “acts” in classic storytelling structure, but less strict on how they’re interpreted. so i can have 7 “phases” to quincy willows, for example:

for me, each of those reflects a distinct SECTION of the story where a major development is occurring plot wise, and sort of roughly reflects story structure. (new kid in school is through the “inciting incident”, unlikely partnership & secrets unravel is up to the midpoint, inevitable decay & halloween are the rising action, and the final gamut is the climax).

within each of those phases, there could be anywhere from 6 - 12 beats. by sort of outlining what the general progression of things would be and what beats i THOUGHT would be included where, i was able to create a good enough skeleton of an outline that i felt comfortable starting to actually write. but one thing i think is important to note is that the phases and beats are totally flexible. i’ve deleted beats entirely, i’ve moved beats between phases, i’ve added beats where i felt like something was missing. it’s a malleable outline, and i think you should never feel tethered to an outline. it’s a roadmap, but it’s not the only way to get to your destination. sometimes, your story will change on you, and that’s okay. hear it out! you can make the decision to stick to your original plan or adjust accordingly.

then, i’ll also say, once i have my general idea of my beats down i will go in and almost... like basically, every beat gets about three synopses. there is the “title,” which is the most basic, often quippy take on what is happening in the story. then i have the “logline,” which is the essence of the beat boiled down to one or two encompassing sentences. then, i have a greater description of what is happening in that scene emotional turning point by emotional turning point. so, to use qw again as an example:

this is the title (up top) and then the logline. when i go into the actual scene on scrivener, i have my notes about all the things that happen in the actual scene which i worked off of to write the scene. but even then, i don’t always follow the original idea of my notes explicitly. sometimes i don’t think an idea works all that great anymore by the time i’m actually writing it, and that’s okay. it’s flexible!

one thing i have loved about this outline structure is it allows me to write out of order. i can jump in and work on whichever beat feels fresh and exciting to my brain, which is so helpful for working on a long project that needs a complete draft from the get-go like quincy willows. however, on projects like fanfic where i can take my time, want to write and post in order, etc...

method #2: bare bones outline

full disclosure -- i have written all the lonely people with a bare bones outline since its inception. sure, i have a whole little doc where i wrote down all the major themes, plotlines, and emotional beats i wanted to cover, but as far as structuring it and deciding what would go into each chapter (especially the early chapters), i mostly winged it.

this is where a looser outline can be a nice approach. you sort of outline how long you want the project to be (i.e., atlp is 16 chapters), and you have a vague IDEA of the Major thing that will happen in each chapter (“11 and 12 are the back story chapters,” “10 is where the romantic tension will finally snap but also they’ll have their fallout that they have to come back,” “4 will be the first kiss”). but then you just start working on the beginning, and as ideas come to you you can toss them in the general realm of each chapter without explicitly outlining when each and every beat will happen. that allows you to start walking around in the world of your project and playing with the characters rather than waiting until you have a Perfectly Perfect outline. you know?

then, usually, when i prepare to write a new chapter (atlp... i’m coming for u in december baybee), i will examine the little beat ideas i had and try to construct a more concrete mini-outline of that chapter alone before diving in. sometimes i do, sometimes i don’t -- but it goes to show that depending on the story, you don’t need a super strict outline to follow.

but even then, if you’re still feeling lost, i feel like the most tried and true method is honestly...

method #3: let it marinate

it might very well be you’re just not yet ready to jump into actually digging the narrative yet. and that’s totally chill. i came up with the initial nugget of an idea for quincy willows in sept of last year, let it exist as a fic for about 4 months, and then took it down in like dec to start working on it as an original work (bc that’s really what it was). i then thought about it for 6 months until the outline jumped out of me basically fully formed over 2 days in early june. so that’s... 9 - 10 months of ruminating and thinking about character and worldbuilding and jotting down notes and making playlists and talking to friends -- that’s almost a whole year of just wiggling in the idea until i stretched it out enough to start seeing the writing on the wall.

i hope all of this is a help in some way, or at least gives you things to think about that guide you in the right direction for you! let me know if there’s any other way i can help or things you’d like advice on. i will try my best to articulate well and offer some insight haha. you got this, writer friend!!

#writing #writing tips #writeblr #writers of tumblr #writerblr #writing gabs #maggie.txt #i hope this makes sense LOL #other pals feel free to share ur methods + other ideas!#Anonymous #ask and you shall receive

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bronzeflower · 5 years

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Casashouta

Also on ao3

Chapter 4: Is This Really Worth the Effort

-----

Sometimes, one had to reveal their weaknesses in order to be successful in romance. It was logical. If an individual was unable to be vulnerable around the person of their affections, then it was perhaps time to reevaluate feelings.

So, Shouta decided to reveal a weakness of his to Hizashi, which would hopefully allow him to grow closer to the blond. Namely, Shouta's weakness in the English language.

Shouta almost winced at the poor score he received on his English quiz. While he did find learning English somewhat illogical because he was never really planning on leaving Japan in the first place, he did have to admit that he still had to keep his grades up if he didn't want to get kicked out of the hero course.

Shouta turned to Hizashi.

"What score did you get on your English quiz?" Shouta questioned, knowing that, logically, it would be a reasonably high score, given that Hizashi was at the top of the class.

"I got a one-hundred!" Hizashi gleamed. "What about you? How did you do?"

"Bad enough," Shouta said, and Hizashi's smile instantly turned into a frown. Shouta almost felt the loss of sunshine in the room when Hizashi's smile dissipated.

"Do you need any help? Because I would be glad to tutor you if you need it!" Hizashi offered, and Shouta felt like he was being given this opportunity on a silver platter.

"Alright, but only because my grade really needs it," Shouta responded with practiced indifference. Seduction required some semblance of subtlety, even if the intended recipient was kind of oblivious, as Shouta had found out recently. It was about the subconscious.

"Okay!" Hizashi had immediately brightened up considerably. "We can meet in the library after school!"

Shouta frowned. He was kind of hoping for someplace a little more private, so he did his best to come up with an excuse as to why they couldn't use the library to study.

"Won't they kick us out for being too loud?" Shouta asked. "You're going to be explaining things to me, and, as far as my experience with libraries go, they're not fans of anyone talking at all."

"Hm, that's true enough," Hizashi responded, knowing full well that the UA library had dedicated places for tutoring and studying that were completely separate from each other. "How about we go to my place then! No one can disturb us there, and no one will care too much about me being a bit loud!"

"Sounds fine," Shouta said while doing a victory dance inside his head. He could barely believe that actually worked.

So Hizashi and Shouta walked to Hizashi's house together so that Hizashi could properly tutor Shouta.

"I'm home!" Hizashi shouted out once they entered the house. "I brought a friend!"

Shouta's mind practically went into overdrive when Hizashi called him his friend. They had only known each other for a few days, and Hizashi already considered the two of them friends? Shouta would feel a little more honored by that fact if he weren't also trying to seduce Hizashi. But friendship could be a stepping stone for proper seduction, so Shouta supposed it all evened out.

Also, Shouta was weirdly happy about being called Hizashi's friend.

"Who'dja bring?" A girl that looked a bit younger than Hizashi popped out of nowhere. "He looks tired. And boring. Are you sure he's your friend and not just someone you were forced to do a school project with?"

"Nikkou! Don't be mean!" Hizashi pouted. "This is Aizawa Shouta. Aizawa, this is my sister, Yamada Nikkou."

"Nice to meet you," Shouta greeted. Nikkou frowned.

"We'll see if you've been nice to meet." Nikkou then left without another word.

"Sorry about that," Hizashi apologized. "She's just at that age where she's snarky all the time. There's pretty much nothing we can do about it until she grows out of it. Or, at the very least, learns how to target her anger in a healthy and manageable way."

"Do you have any other siblings?" Shouta questioned.

"Yeah! I have five siblings!" Hizashi said, and Shouta blanched.

"Five!?"

"I know, I know it sounds like a lot, but you get used to fighting for the bathroom. Let's see, there's Taiyo, Nissho, Nikkou, Tenpi, and Youko," Hizashi started. "Taiyo and Nisshou are twins, and they're the youngest at nine. Nikkou is twelve, and then there's me, you know, the middle child, sitting at a nice fifteen, and then Tenpi and Youko are both older than me, with Tenpi being seventeen-he's turning eighteen in about two weeks, and he's getting pretty impatient with wanting to become an adult already, while Youko is nineteen. She's off in college right now though, so you won't have to worry about meeting her at all. And then there are my moms in the house too, and not to mention my grandmother, so if you subtract Youko, there's eight people living in the household! What about you? Do you have any siblings?"

"No," Shouta answered.

"What!? So you're an only child? I can't imagine what that would be like," Hizashi said.

"And I can't imagine having five siblings."

"Touché," Hizashi retaliated. "Come on, let's hurry up to my room before we're attacked by the twins. If they get ahold of you, we won’t have a single second to ourselves."

Shouta blushed at the connotation, once again realizing about how oblivious Hizashi was.

Hizashi and Shouta actually managed to make it to Hizashi's room with minimal engagement with his family.

"How do you even get your own room when you have this big of a family?" Shouta inquired once they entered the relative safety of Hizashi's room.

"My family makes quite a bit of money, so we can afford a pretty big house like this one," Hizashi explained. "Now that's out of the way, let's get down to what we're actually here for."

Shouta's mind conjured up not so safe images at Hizashi's words before realizing they had come there to study Shouta's worst and least favorite subject-English. It was almost enough for him to call off the engagement entirely, if it wasn’t for the fact that Shouta was already at Hizashi’s house and the fact that Hizashi was absolutely determined to help Shouta out.

"Alright, so what should we start on?" Hizashi asked and then continued when met with a shrug. "Well, what do you feel like you struggle with the most? Vocabulary? Syntax? Comma rules? Contractions? Irregular verb tenses? Sentence structure?"

Hizashi rambled off a list of things that Shouta felt like he couldn't even begin to understand. Shouta vaguely remembered hearing about some of the things Hizashi was talking about, but, when attempting to connect them to any actual legitimate information he might need, his mind came up blank.

Hizashi managed to pick up on Shouta's dazed look as he paused in his onslaught of English related subject matter.

"Maybe we could just start with basic review stuff. Make sure you have that out of the way first before we go onto the more complicated stuff."

Shouta nodded, allowing Hizashi to take out some notes and pencils and paper as they started to review the basics of the English language.

The alphabet was simple enough, and vocabulary was, at the very least, reasonably easy to grasp. Pronouncing some of the words out loud proved some difficult, especially words with r or v in them, as well as vowels in general. There was a substantial amount of time spent trying to figure out how to pronounce the word 'hat' versus the word 'hot,' which Shouta found difficult to tell the difference between verbally.

Eventually, Hizashi moved on from trying to get Shouta to pronounce words correctly, declaring that they could save that for another tutoring lesson and focus on an overall review of the course material instead. Shouta found himself dreading the lesson that was focused on speaking English, even if it did mean that he could spend some alone time with Hizashi.

About halfway through their study session, they were interrupted by two boys who would have looked identical if it wasn't for the fact that one of them had black hair while the other had blond.

"Hizashi!" The blond-haired one whined. "You-wait. Who's this?"

"Is he a new friend?" The black-haired one asked excitedly. "What's his name? What's his quirk? Is he gonna become a hero like you? Oh! Who's your favorite hero? Mine is Stereo Crank! He has a noise amplification quirk like I do! What-"

"Taiyo! You can't find out if you don't let him answer!" The blond-haired twin interrupted. Taiyo-the black-haired twin- had the decency to look a little sheepish.

"Sorry."

"Well, to answer your questions," Hizashi started. "Yes, this is a new friend. His name is Aizawa Shouta. Aizawa, this Yamada Taiyo-" Hizashi gestured towards the black-haired twin before gesturing towards the blond-haired twin, "and this is Yamada Nisshou. Taiyo can amplify noises that he hears, and Nisshou can diminish sounds that he hears. Aizawa here can erase quirks, and, yes, he's in the same hero course as I am, so he's going to become a hero. Sorry, Aizawa, I don't know who your favorite hero is, so I can't answer that question for you."

"The heroes I like don't make a name for themselves," Aizawa said. "So you probably have never heard of them."

Taiyo looked a little sad at the response, but he brightened back up almost immediately.

"Oh! Are you the guy who won the Sports Festival? Nisshou-I think he is the guy! Is that cool? Is that why Hizashi didn't use his quirk during your match? Because you erased it?"

"And you beat Hizashi in hand-to-hand combat," Nisshou stated and then, with all the confidence a nine-year-old has, "Not even we managed to do that yet, even when we both gang up on him."

Shouta laughed at that, and Hizashi was a little too busy being caught up in the way Shouta's lips turned up and how his laughter was a little more like a cackle than a proper laugh to notice that his typically somewhat rude and blunt brother subtlely complimented him.

"You shouldn't gang up on your brother. It's not fair-" Shouta began, and Hizashi's heart leapt to this throat as he thought Shouta was defending him. "To your other siblings. I vote that you should all gang up on him. Strength in numbers is always a viable option when winning a battle."

"I can't believe you would betray me like this," Hizashi pouted.

"Don't worry, I won't help them," Shouta suddenly had the most terrible smile on his face, and, while Hizashi should be horrified, he was still reeling from the fact that Shouta had smiled at all.

"You're supposed to help me!" Hizashi whined.

"And interrupt a perfectly good sparring match? Never."

"Then I guess I'll just spend the next few tutoring sessions making sure your pronunciation of the English language is perfect," Hizashi threatened with the only thing he could actually feasibly threaten Shouta with right now. It had the desired effect as Shouta narrowed his eyes at Hizashi in a glare.

"You wouldn't dare."

"Oh, but I would!"

"Are you sure you're friends?" Nisshou suddenly asked, breaking Hizashi and Shouta from their banter. "Cause you antagonize each other a lot."

"No-it's like pulling pigtails!" Taiyo quickly corrected. "Except not as mean. So, it's like Hizashi has a crush on Aizawa, so he threatens him with studying English."

"Oh-that makes a lot more sense. Hizashi-do you have a crush on-"

"Alright, that's enough of my dearest little brothers," Hizashi gently began to guide the twins out of the room. "Aizawa and I are still studying, so we need to concentrate on our schoolwork."

"You don't have to be embarrassed-" That's when Hizashi shut and locked the door, the almost frantic look on his face fading along with the light dusting of pink that had also shown up while Taiyo and Nisshou were teasing him. They were probably going to tease him more about it later, which was probably unavoidable for Hizashi. All he could hope was that his other siblings didn't find out.

What was he kidding-they probably would.

"Alright!" Hizashi exclaimed a little too loudly. "Are you ready to study some more English?"

With the way Hizashi dived back into reviewing all the concepts they had covered in class, it looked like Shouta didn't get much of a choice in the matter.

#erasermic #aizawa shouta #yamada hizashi #eraserhead #present mic #various ocs #bnha #my hero academia

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anosrepasi · 5 years

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Chapter 11: Quiet Moments

Read it on AO3 Bilbo was in the middle of braiding another loaf of bread when the knocking starts. The boys were early.

Nonetheless, they could wait patiently for him to finish and amuse themselves enough while the bread finished baking and the other goods cooled. He called out, confident that the open windows will allow for his voice to carry to his front door, “Come on in!”

He waits until he can hear the door open and close- (hesitantly at that! Did they not hear him properly?) - for him to call out once again, “I’m in the kitchen.”

He busies himself with opening the oven door and sliding in the newly braided loaf, making a mental note to check in again in a little while once he attends to his guests. Closing the door he turns around to greet his company and finds that his expected quartet of gods is down to one.

And the god in question is the last person he expected to have standing in his kitchen.

“Hello Your Majesty.”

— The King of the Dead looks far less regal standing in Bilbo’s kitchen than he did among his own halls, though Bilbo can’t necessarily blame him when Thorin’s appearance has thrown him off his own train of thought. Still, Thorin looks dwarfed by Bag End standing in the doorway of the kitchen, arms pressed firmly to his side as he and Bilbo share a moment of silence that lasts a touch too long to be comfortable.

The silence seems to be enough of a prompt for the King to collect his thoughts, however.

“Hi. I was in the realm and I thought I would take the opportunity to drop by-”

His sentence drops off and his brows furl as he seems to take in the scene of Bilbo covered in flour and standing in his kitchen.

“I should have done a better job of announcing my presence.”

Bilbo laughed and shrugged. He brushed off a bit of flour from his shirt and pointed past Thorin towards the doorway leading to his study and greeting room. “And what kind of host would I be if I needed an announcement in order to welcome a guest. Let’s talk somewhere we can sit down.”

He brushes past Thorin and leads them to the greeting room, with the silent King behind him following his lead. Bilbo motions to the blue armchair and Thorin remains standing next to it, his limbs still pulled close as if he’ll disturb the room around him by taking up his usual amount of space. Bilbo finds it odd, sure, but he’s not about to point it out to the king of the dead. “Would you like some tea?”

“I- sure.” Thorin responds, “I’m not interrupting you, am I?”

He motions towards Bilbo’s kitchen and Bilbo shakes his head and offers a reassuring smile, “Done correctly, it’ll take a while for the bread to bake. Sit, and let me get you a cup of tea.”

He returns with two steaming mugs to find that Thorin finally headed his words and settled into the armchair, though he can see the King’s eyes wandering curiously over the room and the structure of his home. It’s nothing compared to the palace in Erebor but Bilbo still feels a small spark of possessiveness ignite over Bag End. It’s his mother’s legacy, excluding himself. Bilbo hands one of the mugs over to Thorin before settling in his own red armchair, “So what do I owe the pleasure, your majesty?”

“Thorin is fine. I wanted to stop by because it occurred to me that I haven’t thanked you yet, for what you did for Erebor.”

Bilbo finds himself warring between the polite response and his own curiosity. Curiosity takes a few seconds to gain the upper hand but holds out nonetheless. “You came all this way to say thank you?”

“Well I have something for you as well-” Thorin’s hand jumps to his cloak and Bilbo waits, his interest piqued. “One of my citizens spoke of making your acquaintance when you were in Erebor and he wanted me to pass this along to you if we crossed paths-”

Thorin pulls out what Bilbo can only describe as a small statue from where it was hidden by Thorin’s cloak, and their fingers brush momentarily as Thorin hands the object over to Bilbo. Upon closer inspection, Bilbo can immediately identify the statue as a miniature wooden dragon, intricately carved and pieces together by an expert hand. He turns it over in his hands, carefully marveling at the precision of the joinery of the woodwork. Bilbo spots a few well hidden but visible ball joints at certain places in the Dragon’s anatomy- at the tail and neck most noticeably - and gives a gentle experimental tap to the head of the dragon.

The head turns and the stomach of the statue pops open with a small click, causing a small piece of parchment to tumble out of the compartment hidden in the toy. Bilbo deftly retrieves it and settles the toy in his lap as he reads the message.

“Thanks for the trees! This little guy was from the first cut from the grove and his siblings are a huge hit with the kids here.

Hopefully you’ll stop by again sometime soon and see for yourself!”

Bofur’s scratched signature marked the bottom of the paper and Bilbo let out a quick chuckle. “This is delightful- how is Bofur?”

He turns his attention back to Thorin and is taken aback to find Thorin is no longer sitting like a soldier at attention but is leaning forward, chin resting on his crossed hands and elbows resting on his knees while intently watching Bilbo examine the toy dragon. With Bilbo’s attention once again returned to the King he swiftly withdraws and sits up straight, voice police and shallow. “Bofur is well, he’s been a devoted advocate for Erebor’s new forests- the last time we spoke he said they gave him new “Creative Horizons” as he called them.”

“I’m glad to hear it, how about the other shopkeepers?”

Thorin smiled, breaking his mask of polite interest into something warm, and launched into a tale about the most recent passings through the market place- the experiments being done and the new items the different craftsmen had begun to offer with the inclusion of various plants now being available. Bilbo found himself prompting Thorin at each lull in the conversation and it would spark anew with another story. Soon Bilbo was updated on the state of every individual he had helped on his trip, from that cantankerous doctor to the farmers who wished to resume their craft in Erebor.

Their tea was soon cold, left to the side and forgotten in their conversation as Bilbo listened to the King speak of his people. The God of Death, in turn, no long was behaving like his immediate surrounding would crumble if he dared to take up space within the room. Thorin gestured easily through his stories, using his hands to help mime out concepts as he spoke and his voice was confident, dropping low and dramatic for particularly exciting retellings. He coaxed a few easy laughs out of Bilbo as he spoke of his nephews most recent exploits in the city.

It was only the changing of the light that made Bilbo realize he hadn’t been paying attention to the time. He got up with a start and Thorin abruptly stopped his current story mid-sentence, before looking around the room in concern. Bilbo was already out the door but called back behind him, “I need to check the oven! Keep talking!”

The bread was fine, golden brown and filling the kitchen with the savory scent of freshly baked goods- Bilbo was surprised they hadn’t noticed the smell from the other room. He busied himself with pulling out the racks and finding a space for the loaves to cool, given that the pastries he had made before still dominated the counter space of the room.

Thorin did not continue his story, instead Bilbo heard the chink of ceramic and a few soft padding steps through his hallway. Thorin appeared at the entrance of the kitchen, holding the mugs of forgotten tea. “I probably shouldn’t keep you.”

“Oh hush-” Bilbo replied honestly, “This has been nice. It’s good to hear how your people are doing- and I don’t just mean that to boost my own ego over the plants.”

Something Bilbo could not make out flashed in Thorin’s expression but he didn’t miss the small smile on the King’s lips while Thorin quietly walked over to the sink, dumping out the remaining tea and washing out the cups and Bilbo continued to speak, “You’ll have to give Bofur my thanks by the way.”

“Oh, I.” From the side Bilbo couldn’t be sure but suddenly Thorin’s smile seemed less confident, “I thought you’d want to tell him yourself.”

Bilbo shrugs and leans back against the counter, “It’d be a bit silly for you to let me into Erebor just to say thank you to someone. I was under the impression you weren’t a fan of other gods taking liberties with visiting your realm unexpectedly.”

Thorin frowned and opened his mouth to reply but was cut off by the sound of the front door banging open- which made Bilbo visibly flinch at the noise - and a clear voice shouting loudly into the house, “Bilbo, we’re here.”

Bilbo raised his voice, “How many time have I told you boys to be careful not to slam that door- it’s not made of stone!”

A different, more timid voice called back as the sound of many people taking off their cloaks rustled forward from the front room, “Sorry Bilbo.”

Bilbo sighs, “It’s always Frodo who shows humility. I’m in the kitchen.”

He raises his voice for the last part and soon there’s a rumbling of steps as his charges appear at the door way and almost immediately descend on the pastries and bread Bilbo has laid out once they see them.

Merry comes to a standstill once he sees Thorin standing there at a loss and Pippin nearly runs into the other gods back as a result, “Who’s this?”

Pippin maneuvers from behind Merry and pays Thorin no mind, continuing on to get his pastries and handing out a few for the other gods in the room. Sam and Frodo also give Bilbo’s visitor questioning looks but their attention shifts into grabbing their snack.

“This is Thorin - and Pippin if you eat or distribute all of those I promise to fate you will be baking each and every replacement.”

Pippin stalled momentarily in his collection of the various rolls and pastries but continued on nonetheless while Merry’s expression changed to one of recognition, “Oh, you’re Fili and Kili’s uncle, right?”

Thorin shifted and seemed equally surprised, “You know them?”

“They saved me from a tree when I was younger,” Pippin said nonchalantly as he shoved another roll into Frodo’s hands and tossed one to Merry. Thorin only looked more confused by the response.

Bilbo quickly intervened.

“Merry is the God of Harvest and Celebration, and Fili and Kili are common guests to his festivals he oversees at the end of the growing season. That’s how I met them actually.”

Merry makes no note of his position and instead lightheartedly bumps into Pippin, “That was the year you got stuck in the tree, right?”

Pippin huffs, “To be fair, that was at least a century ago, I was a child.”

Thorin chuckles and Bilbo lets out a small huff, thinking about how for it being a century his charges haven’t changed that much, speaking of which, “And you all are obviously not children now, but none of you have introduced yourself to Thorin like mannered Gods, have you?”

The four have enough humility to look abashed and each mumble out a quick apology. Merry takes the lead, followed by Sam, Frodo and Pippin.

“Merry, God of Harvests and Celebrations, at your service.”

“Samwise, God of Hard Work and Perseverance.”

“Frodo, of Elrond’s Realm.”

“Pippin, God of Ingenuity.”

“And mischief.” Bilbo adds to Pippins introduction with a teasing smile and the boys go back to talking amongst themselves and eating up all of Bilbo's hard work. Thorin chuckles at Bilbo’s addition and Bilbo returns his attention to his guest, “How about I walk you out?”

They escape the chaos of the kitchen and the hallway is strangely quiet in comparison leading towards the front room and the door. Bilbo takes the lead and once they can no longer hear the boys Thorin speaks up, “So do you have siblings?”

“No. The boys were each found as new gods by Elrond and he thought I’d be a good fit for guardian for them as they figured this out-” Bilbo sweeps his hand broadly and Thorin nods in understanding, “By that point I was alone so they’ve been a welcome addition since Belladonna isn’t around anymore.”

“Your mentor?”

“Mentor and Mother. She’s the one who built this house actually. I inherited my title from her, along with this place.” Bilbo’s hands twirl, his thumb brushing up against the gold ring on his index finger as he twists it around as habit. He stops at the door and Thorin’s eyes drop down to it as he comes to stand next to Bilbo.

“You must miss her.”

Bilbo gives a half hearted nod, “I do. But I know if was also her time and she took it in stride- She kept trying to give me advice and remind me to check up on things until she had faded completely.” He gives a quick laugh but can’t help but notice the slight sting in his eyes. “I hope I’ve got the same grace when it’s my turn.”

“You seem certain you’ll pass on your title, though that’s not a given for every god.” Thorin noted, his sharp eyes back on Bilbo and his expression open. Bilbo gave a half smile, he appreciated the gods bluntness if nothing else with his questions. “I’ve just got a feeling. Frodo hasn’t found his calling yet despite the fact he’s actually older than his brothers. I think when it’s my turn, he’s going to to become the God of Planting - it just seems right, somehow.”

“That outcome doesn’t bother you?” Thorin asked, his curiosity evident in his voice but holding not ill intent in his words as far as Bilbo could tell.

“If that’s what Galadriel foresees, I’m not going to complain. I’ve had a good time, been in good company. Plus, I think I’ve got ages left in me, it’ll be a while until those boys are truly ready to hold their own.”

Thorin did not respond immediately, “Aye, hopefully they’ll continue to be young for a while.”

He passes by Bilbo as Bilbo opens the door for him, “-You should stop by Erebor sometime, if you want to.”

“Thank you, Thorin.” Bilbo replies easily, “I’ll keep that in mind and let you know if I wish to visit.”

“Good.” Thorin says simply, “Goodbye, Master Gardener.”

“Goodbye, Your Majesty.”

#chapter update #fic update #my writing #the hobbit #bagginshield #mythology au #Soil and Ashes

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narwhallove · 6 years

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Review of R&G—Deep dive into Gambit

Earlier reviews that Ludi & I have been batting back and forth linked here, with a most welcome guest post by Jessi:

1. Faces (by me) 2. Callbacks (by @ludi-ling) 3. Jim Lee & Pere Pérez (by me) 4. More on faces, and ‘sex creep’ Remy LeBeau (by @ludi-ling) 5. Faces and ‘creep factors’ (by @jehilew)

On sex creep Remy LeBeau:

If I’m not misreading, Ludi and Jessi, you’re both saying Remy’s behavior is generally sexy; that he is within the parameters of good behavior because Rogue’s implicitly given him permission to talk this way. As Ludi wisely says, “The whole conversation is a way for them to negotiate where they’re at in their relationship.”

I still find this a tad problematic. He may have intuited Rogue’s feelings correctly, he may be testing her boundaries, but at this point in time, there’s no indication that he is at all worried about her feelings. To me, he sounds like the type of guy who corners an inexperienced girl into reacting the way he wants her to—even if he isn’t actually that guy.

But I’m gonna blame it on the writing. Gambit is supposed to be charming. Jessi hits the nail on the head: “You can tell he was not written by anyone who is even remotely smooth with women here.”

So I’m glad that Thompson sweetens Remy’s dialogue. This scene is practically a perfume commercial. Lee and Lobdell, etc., obviously could not write sexy and sweet, and so we’ve wound up with creepy (to me).

Reader, thank you for reaching this point. If you’re a Gambit fan, you’ve probably unfollowed me. But! The post below is a deep dive into Gambit’s . . . portrayal.

Ludi: So, Ms. Narwhal, what did you think about those transitions from down-time to the proverbial ka-pow? I’m interested because some of my most favourite X-Men issues were the down-time ones. Uncanny X-Men #337 - which is almost entirely focused on the X-Men having breakfast - is one of my favourites of all time.

I’m sidestepping your gorgeous question about breakfast, sadly, because I’ve changed my mind about where the art stumbles. After turning through the gorgeous TPB, I realized that it stumbles at the flashbacks. Which is weird, because the flashbacks were some of the most heady, charming parts of the series. And the art is definitely at its most ambitious.

It’s clear the team decided that they would imitate the visual styles that these original moments were rendered in, whether the original penciller was Mike Collins or Jim Lee or Andy Kubert. What a rad challenge for Pérez and D'Armata to flex their art muscles and have fun.

Let’s applaud the team for this. Thompson was ambitious in deciding to revisit of scenes from up to 20 years ago—can you imagine another writer wanting to touch Antarctica?! And Pérez was ambitious in his mimicry of styles that haven't aged so well. He’s done it with wit and verve, as below (and in my earlier post comparing Pérez’s and Lee’s versions of Rogue).

On the left is Andy Kubert’s 1994 rendering of Remy at Scott and Jean’s wedding, done in the “edgy” style of the decade: lots of hatching, high-contrast shadows, viewed from a very dramatic angle. Remy poses in such a flamboyant way you’d think he just blew Magneto up. That’s 90s for “dashing.”

Pérez updates Remy with a look that’s as fresh as Thompson’s dialogue. Same hair and arching eyebrows, but his smirk has a smile now, and he looks playful rather than self-serious. Too bad Pérez couldn’t retcon that awful tie!

It starts getting interesting when Pérez quotes Gambit’s facial structure from still earlier. The left is a detail from Gambit's first appearance in 1990, in Uncanny X-men #266, by Mike Collins. The middle is from an X-men Team card of the same year. And on the right is Pérez, clearly taking a cue from these precedents, down to the smoke drifting out of Gambit's eyes. His nose is even sharper. It's a fun reminder of how Gambit used to be portrayed—as someone capable, dangerous, and not a matinee romantic lead.

However, this “facial quotation” means Pérez runs into some trouble when we return to the present day. Somewhere between 1990 and 2018, Gambit got a nose job. The decision to play with different styles means that Gambit doesn't look like the same person throughout the miniseries.

These panels precede that glorious kiss in #3, and Remy looks so earnest, so chipmunklike (with that new nose), that it’s hard to believe he could have ever been the naughty, fast-on-his-feet thief we see in #2.

So the decision has pros—it’s clever, it’s charming—and it’s got cons. One con is that if we don't like the referent artist, then we're not going to appreciate the imitation, either. But the bigger con is that the style differences can be so jarring that it seems Rogue and Gambit are being played by a bunch of different actors.

This only gets weirder when clones are introduced.

This panel is from #4, and tbh, I don’t know who these people are. These are not clones, but Rogue looks like a soccer mom, and Remy’s a chrome robot. Though I’ve developed an argument to account for some wildly different facial features throughout the miniseries, I am unsure what’s going on here. Maybe there’s a comic in which someone used Jennifer Aniston as Rogue’s reference. (I have a theory Jim Lee used model Stephanie Seymour for Rogue and Jean.)

Like Gambit, Rogue undergoes the same treatment throughout her flashbacks, though it’s more evident in her body and body language. Hopefully this post makes it clear enough that when you glance through them, you might see what I’m talking about.

Ludi, I know you had some thoughts about the ways Rogue's and Gambit's faces were rendered too, as well as when they were engaged in some important stuff—like the kissing. Were there moments you felt the characterization of our heroes wasn't as successfully conveyed? Or any big centerpieces you thought really nailed their histories?

We would like to invite anyone who wants to chime in about R&G to write a post, which we’ll link to as part of a chain. And we will comment the hell out of your posts, too. ;-) @jehilew @cmoineau @pastellarts @90sxmen4ever @bustedflipflop @awesomeamberlady @xevg and anyone whom I might have missed! Please PM.

Bullied Gently reminded by @ludi-ling that posts may be as short as a single sentence. Essays not required!

CREDITS Marvel Universe Series I Trading Cards by Fleer (1990) X-men Team Card (detail)

Rogue & Gambit #3, #4 (2018) Pencils: Pere Pérez Colors: Frank D’Armata

Uncanny X-men #266 (1990) Pencils: Mike Collins Colors: Brad Vancata

X-men #30 (1994) Pencils: Andy Kubert Colors: Joe Rosas

#is gambit a creep?#rogue and gambit #kelly thompson #pere perez #comics me too #comics review #frank d'armata #andy kubert #mike collins #x-men 30 #uncanny x-men 266 #gambit #remy lebeau #rogue #anna marie lebeau #callbacks #ludi-ling #jehilew

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michaelandy101-blog · 4 years

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The Surround Sound Series: How We Built a Bespoke SERP Tracker and Measured the Results of Our New Content Program (Part 3 of 3)

New Post has been published on http://tiptopreview.com/the-surround-sound-series-how-we-built-a-bespoke-serp-tracker-and-measured-the-results-of-our-new-content-program-part-3-of-3/

The Surround Sound Series: How We Built a Bespoke SERP Tracker and Measured the Results of Our New Content Program (Part 3 of 3)

This post is a part of Made @ HubSpot, an internal thought leadership series through which we extract lessons from experiments conducted by our very own HubSpotters.

As our three-part series comes to an end, there’s one last question (or two) we need to address:

Does the surround sound strategy really work? And what results have we seen since we started using it?

The TL;DR answer is yes. It’s working and we’re sharing our preliminary results in this article.

So if you’re looking to use surround sound in 2021, the two of us (that’s Irina Nica and Alex Birkett) thought we’d end this short series with a handful of resources: the formula HubSpot uses to measure progress, our proprietary surround sound tracker (aka the SERP Tracker), and a sample of results to hopefully inspire your own endeavor.

What is the surround sound strategy?

At HubSpot, “surround sound” is the name Alex Birkett gave to a content marketing approach that aims to make HubSpot products visible every time someone searches for a product-related keyword (e.g. “best help desk software” or “best live chat software”).

The goal is for potential users to see HubSpot mentioned in all or most of the pages that rank in Google top results for those keywords. Check out the first two articles in the series for a deeper-dive into what is the “surround sound” effect and how we scaled the program at HubSpot.

Surround Sound vs. SEO

Here’s where a lot of people get confused: The definition of surround sound says its goal is to improve visibility in search engines, but isn’t that what SEO does, too?

The answer is surround sound includes SEO results, but doesn’t stop there.

Here’s an example: say we want to increase our visibility in search engines for the keyword “free CRM.”

A first step would be to make sure our own domain ranks well for that keyword. That’s the “job” of the SEO function.

But visibility in SERP doesn’t stop there.

When potential customers are looking for a free CRM, they might not stop at the first results. Instead, they click through different suggestions of curated lists that they find in search results.

Our product awareness goal is to make sure HubSpot is visible in as many results as possible, especially on third-party domains. The level of SERP real estate that HubSpot is mentioned in (including owned and third-party domains) is what surround sound measures.

That’s why we say that in order to measure surround sound results, we need to measure our visibility in SERP, for a particular keyword or topic, beyond SEO.

But surround sound isn’t really a “mainstream” product awareness tactic — yet. So there are no methods or tools to measure visibility in SERP, beyond rankings (as far as we looked). That’s why, in order to scale our efforts, we had to build our own systems from scratch.

How HubSpot Measures Surround Sound Results

Let’s talk about scale.

If HubSpot were to have only one high intent keyword in our purview (say, “best marketing automation software”), it wouldn’t be insane to measure our visibility manually.

Once per month, you could simply open Google, search “best marketing automation software,” and count how many of the top 20 pages mention HubSpot.

This clearly becomes a problem when you add more than one keyword, however. Imagine the frustration of doing that for 600+ keywords per month.

In order to make this strategy “scalable” (a phrase I dislike, by the way, because it has been weaponized by curmudgeons who can all too easily shut down interesting ideas by saying ‘this won’t scale’), we needed to do a few things:

Build custom tools and infrastructure to automate aspects of the strategy

Educate others on the surround sound process and playbook

Evangelize and excite others into buying into the idea

The latter was easiest; once you get some results, others can easily grasp the importance of an idea.

I’ll focus here on building custom tools. First, I want to explain the value of investing in custom tools, automation, and infrastructure, because I can already sense the objections:

“We don’t have the technical resources to build our own tools and automations!”

“Won’t building custom tools cost us a lot of money and time?”

To address the first point, there’s always a creative solution. If you don’t have internal resources to code up new tools, you can easily outsource this as long as you have good specifications. Sites like Code Mentor or even Upwork are great for this. Additionally, this is a good excuse for (mythical) non-technical marketers to build some new skills.

Second, building tools to reduce the marginal cost or effort in the long run increases the expected value of the program.

Lots of jargon in that sentence, so let me unpack that with an example from experimentation.

Why invest in tools, automation, and infrastructure?

Imagine the expected value (the “predicted value of a variable, calculated as the sum of all possible values each multiplied by the probability of its occurrence”) of an A/B test is $1,000.

Some proportion of A/B tests will fail, which means you only “lose” during the time of the experiment, some will do nothing, and some will win (and those that win will do so by varying levels). All in, if you averaged out these values, a given A/B test could be predicted at a $1,000 value.

Now imagine every time you wanted to run an A/B test, you needed to get two engineers, one designer, and an analyst not only to set up the test from scratch (you’ve got no testing tool here), but also, you have to do minimum one month of research, wait two weeks for approval after you submit your hypothesis, and then you have to sit through, on average, four meetings with this crew.

What’s the cost of all that? Over $1,000? Congratulations, the expected value of your A/B test is now negative.

But what if, on the other hand, you had a testing tool that made it easy to set up and analyze experiments (with trustworthy data), and also imagine you prioritize to focus on only high impact tests. Now you lower the upfront cost of each additional test you run (the marginal cost), which increases the expected value of each test (just slightly). On a program level, though, now you are rewarded for running more tests, since the expected value is positive, and you’ve got very low marginal costs. You spent a little time investing in tools and automation, and you’ve drastically increased the ROI of your program without even improving your win rate.

This is exactly what we needed to do to make the surround sound strategy economically viable.

The amount of effort to manually audit, measure, and store SERP visibility, as well as the manual cost of outreach and relationship management, would forever outweigh the positive benefits of the placements we could get on a SERP. That is, unless we could lower the costs of data collection and storage as well as outreach and relationship management.

Enter: the SERP Tracker

Now we have a functional tool that does all this for us! We call it the “SERP Tracker.”

Here’s the aesthetically-gorgeous interface:

(For any fellow nerds, it was written in R and it’s hosted and deployed with Shiny. We’re using serpapi.com to get Google’s search results, and we’re also using Bing’s API [free up to a certain number of credits]. I have an older version of the generic script here available for viewing — we’ve since updated it many times, but this version will still be functional.)

I’ll walk you through how it works, but you can also watch this Loom tutorial if you prefer video:

Here’s a quick tutorial on how you can use the tool and what kind of data it can give you.

First, you have to validate by entering a password. Since we use various APIs, we want to limit the usage to converse credits (again, we track some 600+ keywords, so it’s a weighty endeavor)

Then you can enter whatever keyword you’d like (like “best form builder” or “best help desk software”).

Then you can select a region and the number of search results you want to pull (up to 10 pages, or 100 results).

Finally, you need to enter the URL that you want to check the search results against.

In other words, if you want to check for the search keyword “best live chat software,” then you could enter “hubspot.com” or “drift.com” to see how many of the URLs that rank for the search keyword “best live chat software” mention that URL.

I have preset options for HubSpot URLs to check our product page, blog posts, or generic hubspot.com pages:

You can also enter a custom link by clicking “other.”

This allows for, among other things, competitor searches and custom HubSpot URLs (for example, if you just wanted to see who mentions our Forms product page or who mentions Academy pages – it’s also a workaround to check affiliate links, because they’re often structured like “affiliatesite.com/ref/hubspot” so you could just enter “hubspot” in the URL to check for those):

We use SEMRush’s API to pull keyword search volume, but there are times that SEMRush doesn’t have values for search volume. In this case, it just prints an error message:

If all information is entered correctly, click “Submit” and it will start computing. After some processing time, this is the report it will create:

You get a nice visual pie chart, beloved by analysts and data visualizers worldwide, representing how many ranking URLs contain the link (and how many don’t). This shows that, of the top 20 search results for the term “best live chat software,” our URL “hubspot.com” appears on 2 of them.

I also made it pull keyword level data as well (in the above example it shows that “best live chat software” gets 390 searches a month). This helps weigh the relative importance of a given keyword (ie if a keyword gets 10000 searches a month or 100, that matters strategically)

Then below that, you get a full data table that contains the domain and URL of all pages that rank for that keyword, whether or not the link you chose to check against is included (TRUE or FALSE), the keyword you searched (just for reference and if you want to pull the data to Excel), the number of links included, and the full link (so if you checked “hubspot.com” and the ranking page references “blog.hubspot.com/marketing/form-builder-tools,” it will pull that full link URL for you):

Like I mentioned above, you can use this to check other websites’ links as well. This one shows how many of the top 20 ranking pages for “mailchimp alternatives” mention appsumo.com (which makes SendFox, an email marketing tool):

And like I mentioned above, you can choose the region. Currently, I have options for Germany, France, Spain, and Japan, though we can add more regions fairly easily. This is going to be incredible for international expansion (more on that later)

This just changed the database to a different region (ie if you choose German, it will show what ranks in google.de). This report shows how many hubspot.com links appear on pages that rank for “marketing automation software” in Germany:

Next Level: Automating Report for 600+ Keywords with Google Data Studio and Scripts

This data from the SERP Tracker, on its own, is valuable. One can quickly audit the search results pages for product mentions, compare to other websites, and even do a bulk audit.

However, to truly get the wheels turning on the surround sound Strategy, it’s imperative to store and access data across time in order to track results and identify gaps and opportunities.

To do this, we extract data from the SERP Tracker, transform it and blend it, and load it to BigQuery so we can visualize it and create reports using Google Data Studio.

All of this is done automatically with an R script that runs once per month. It pulls all SERP data for our list of keywords, stores the data in Sheets (in the future we’ll write directly to BigQuery). BigQuery is connected to Sheets, so we filter, clean, and blend the data with a quick SQL script. This is then connected to Data Studio, where all filters are applied and we visualize our reports.

Our reports start with the way we map our target-keywords against the features, products and Hubs. This database is the source for the SERP tracker as well and the Google Data Studio reports which we use to track progress and communicate with stakeholders.

First, we use a birds-eye view of all of our product Hubs to understand overall progress and how each Hub stacks against the others. If you’re familiar with HubSpot’s products, it won’t come as a surprise that our Sales and Marketing Hubs lead the way when it comes to surround sound Visibility.

Our reports go one layer deeper and we can see in one chart how different features (e.g. HubSpot Email Marketing vs HubSpot Forms) perform against each other.

For a deeper analysis, we have feature-dedicated dashboards. In the example below, we see how one isolated feature (HubSpot CMS) evolved, as well as how our visibility changed for the most important keywords related to that feature.

1. Surround Sound: The First 6 Months

The main thing that you need to accept before starting a surround sound program is that you can never be fully in control of your visibility.

There are many factors that play a role into how your visibility evolves:

Search engine updates cause the Top 20 results to fluctuate (sometimes quite dramatically)

New content appears in Top 20 for the keywords that you’re focusing, maybe outranking you or results that mention your brand

Competitors and other third-party pages appear in Top 20 results, but don’t mention your brand

Even despite these challenges, the results we’ve seen in the first 6 months of our surround sound program prove you can make a change in your visibility by partnering with other websites.

If you want to learn more about how to execute a surround sound program, check out the previous article in this series.

In the chart below you can see how HubSpot’s visibility in SERP changed since April. The Google May 2020 core update changed the SERP landscape quite dramatically, causing a lot of articles that used to mention HubSpot to disappear from the Top 20. After that, our visibility started climbing gradually, as we built more partnerships (e.g. more websites joined our Affiliate program).

If we only look at all the pages that mention HubSpot, for the 600+ keywords we’re monitoring for surround sound, about 50% of these are now influenced by our surround sound program.

Conclusion: Final Thoughts

There is still a lot of work and opportunities to tap into for our product awareness program. But the most important learning we had so far is that surround sound is a marathon, not a sprint.

It takes time and effort to build genuine partnerships and, as Brian Halligan always “add value > extract value”.

Also, having a strong brand name helps a lot, at least when first reaching out to a potential partner. In fact, it’s fair to say that if HubSpot were a startup, this progress wouldn’t have been possible in just 6 months. It takes time to build a brand and get others to recommend it.

As with everything, there’s no silver-bullet solution. While we share a lot of our process and tools, the way we do surround sound at HubSpot might not work exactly the same for other brands. The main thing we hope you take away from this is: there’s another way of looking at your visibility in SERP that’s not just SEO.

Have you thought about adding surround sound to your content marketing and acquisition strategies in 2021?

Want to learn more about the strategy and execution behind the surround sound strategy? Read part one and two of this series.

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kierongillen · 7 years

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Writer Notes: The Wicked + the Divine 30

Spoilers, obv.

And another quieter issue, where we primarily delineate the other other half of the issues of 28's reveals, while putting those final few dominoes in position. It's also, art wise, a relatively undemanding one. The rest of this arc is brutally hard, so an issue where the team could take a breath is also worthwhile. A comic series like WicDiv is a marathon made of marathons. You make it all uphill at your own peril.

It's also one of the more classically structured issues for a while. The issue's effective lead is Dio, and his 3-encounters-in-the-underworld structure the backbone which everything else is built around.

I suspect notes on this one will be short, by the way, but whenever I say that, I'm always wrong.

Jamie/Matt's cover:

That this isn't the best cover in the arc only speaks to exactly how great issue 32 is. Some startling design elements here.

Meredith's Cover:

She's always been great, but seeing her cover for East Of West was the thing which prompted us to go and try and talk her into one. It was a pleasure to work with her – all her design ideas were smart and interesting. We ended up here, because frankly, who can resist hot pink? Not us.

Jonathan Hickman's Cover

Talking about East of West. I've always been envious of Jonathan's designer string to his creative bow, so when we were asked if we wanted to be part of the month of his variants, we jumped at it, if only to see how he'd reinterpret our mythology. This is very much the cult-sci-fi novel alt dimension take on WicDiv.

Page 1-3

I'm always interested in the history of the second page reveal. Old school comic writer guides normally suggest opening with the big image, to throw people in the world. That – and, I feel, especially in the 00s – got changed into the delayed reveal. Enter the world in a quieter way, and then do the big reveal. That means you can create some context quickly, and use that big impact for something a little more complicated.

(It also means if you go to a 2-3 page splash, you can make the image bigger. If I remember correctly, almost all the New 52 books hand that rhythm, which I have to presume was an editorial guideline. I may be misremembering though.)

It's worth noting I say “a little more complicated.” I don't say “sophisticated” or even talk about effectiveness – complicated says nothing about a piece of work's quality. I just mean there's more moving parts involved before the reveal. Look at someone like BKV and his love of the opening splash to see how effective the HELLO, HERE I AM, LOOK AT THIS THING! Can be.

In our case, we have this little conversation between Woden and Cass, and then show what we've done to Valhalla. We've been talking about the plans for this gig for a long time, so we really needed to show what that means. Clearly, the gig is going to be key to the back half of Imperial Phase II, so we really let people have a good stare.

The best thing Jamie did here was make sure there's a stage built into Valhalla, as he correctly guessed they'd be one required for next issue. SMART MAN, THAT MCKELVIE.

This is the sort of page which is primarily expositionary, but by having the characters get together and basically scheme it out hopefully carries it. As you can imagine, there's going to be a statement of exact goals next issue in a similar mode.

(Why not say them here? Efficiency. Don't need to know it yet, and we'd have to repeat it next issue anyway. Why burn the page count twice?)

Cass speaks my own frustration at how people use facebook, I suspect.

The idealist/realist exchange on the first page is a good example of what happens when you have the broad strokes of what's going on, and then let the characters respond to each other. Woden has the Valkyries back? How does he act now? How does Cass respond? Where does that take us?

Page 4

I wrote this with no interstitials, and decided to add them later, when we saw how the issue was working. I looked at the page turns, and decided pushing everything forward one page would be most effective. Plus that the black of the interstitials does lead us into the underworld.

Page 5-6

And we show Dio where we left him last time. There was even the option to use the same panel if Jamie wanted to cut a corner. He didn't.

The page sets up the rhythm that runs through the issue, which happens three times. This is pure fairy-tale, folklore myth structure. It's also joke structure, in the rule of three way. First statement shows a situation. Second statement shows it is a pattern. Third statement subverts the pattern. It's just a very efficient way of doing basically everything... and that natural rhythm being used everywhere means that it always feels part of some longer, primordial sort of storytelling. I think the six panel is leaning into that – I only want five beats. Establish/show Dio's current state/arrival of Morrigan/Dio's response to Morrigan/Morrigan's final statement. Throw away everything which isn't needed for the folk tale.

(The final “Yeah, you won't” leans into the folklore. Dio signals that this is not just stubbornness, but a plan.)

Have I mentioned the Underworld being the inverse of Young Avenger's mother dimension? I probably have. It serves a similar purpose in terms of a direct thing which allows us to strong arm an atmosphere while also being relatively “cheap” to do in terms of Matt and Jamie's resources. I've done 32 of these. I'm sure I'm repeating myself all over the place. These really off the cuff.

Despite knowing everything I knew about the Morrigan at the start, I found it hard to articulate the key difference between her and Dio succinctly. Eventually, it hit me. Dio wants what's best for people. Morrigan thinks she knows what's best for people. Morrigan will sacrifice a lot, as long as they obey her entirely. When I had that in my head, Morrigan became easier. Easier, anyway. She's never easy.

7-8

Another two page scene – the issue very much runs off those short scenes. The hard cut rhythm is a key part of Imperial Phase II, I think.

I wrote the bottom of Page 7 with three panels, in a “Write minimum numbers of panel.” Jamie adds one to really sell it. He actually does a similar thing next issue as well, which proves he must like eight panel grids more than he claims.

The trick of this scene is signalling to the reader that Woden has done fuck all to any of the equipment. A reader would remember that Woden has a camera on Amaterasu from way back in issue 14, but this confirms it's more general than that.

(There's clues elsewhere – his timing when he turned up in issue 12 was more than a little suspicious, right?)

Of course, lying and sarcasm is one of the hardest things to pull off in comics. Comics, for some reason, lends into credulity in the reader. I'm not sure why, though have my theories. In which case, we really push it – look at all the “Er” and the bolded ADDED in the first panel of page 7.

Oh god. Page 8 had me really fuck up in lettering. I originally wrote Cass being snarky here, and glaring at Beth... having failed to remember Cass wasn't in this scene. Beth basically just teleports Cass to where she is. My brain, it no good.

Page 9-10

I basically said everything in the first iteration, right

Hmm. Badb is oddly unsweary here.

Jamie's working the shadows fascinatingly here – the last panel of Dio is also one of the best.

Page 11-12

This is the one sacrifice to the earlier interstitial – that the instagram pages don't appear on a spread. The loss is solely a visual effect.

These are the “two pages I comic but half a page of work for Jamie”. Clearly, Persephone is absent this issue, and we needed to keep her absence a presence, if you see what I mean. Plus the instagram is a way to do the montage-of-time and events. Its placement here is a lot to do with selling how long that Dio has been down this hole.

I actually wrote considerably more comments for each instagram, but there wasn't room to include them in the framing. It's okay. Don't read the comments.

When wrote Amaterasu's Instagram text and then put my fist in my own mouth out of embarrassment. My next career move may be bullshit internet motivational sentences.

Page 13-14

Third iteration.

As I've said, WicDiv is that conflict between this over-planned structural thing and also the discovery you undergo as a writer when exploring these people. Throughout, I couldn't quite work out why I never had a place for Gentle Annie in the story. I actually like writing her – it has the added bonus of her voice really annoying Chrissy, and I'm very pro annoying my editor. But no – Annie's just not around much.

Clearly, thinking about that leads to this scene, where it's the part of Marian that isn't really getting much play any more. It's probably my favourite Annie scene, which is lucky, I guess, considering where the issue goes. The mixture of twee and utterly scary motherfucker was always the line I wanted to walk with her.

Page 15-16

As much as this scene flirts with total disaster, in this ominous fucker of an issue, it's a relative moment of light. Also a chance for Matt to really push the palette. I will never get bored of his Baal lightning.

The Sakhmet cosplay is delightful.

The reds of Amaterasu's lightbeam form, and the blue of Minerva's chair is another great choice.

There was an editorial discussion over whether Amaterasu appearing in the final panel was too much or exactly the amount of too much. We clearly went that way. This is a playful scene.

Page 17-19

Yeah, this isn't. I'm kind of amazed this is only 3 pages. This issue is tightly wound – there's no scene longer than 3 pages, and the majority is 2 pages – but this feels especially so. It's telling that it's here we move to the eight-panel, that most Phonogram of structures.

(A modified eight panel)

I originally had a different idea for the flashback, bringing Leila back to essentially insert scenes into issue 16, but the space wasn't really there, and felt like formalism would be distracting around here. This is complicated stuff, so let's keep it clean. Notice how Jamie changes the panel shapes to separate the sub-narrative from the main narrative – obviously the blue-greys of Matt do most of the work, but it can't be underestimated.

Let's call out some panels – Baph in the seventh panel of 17, hiding behind the shades and the wise-crack. The fifth panel of 18, which in its blissed certainty, the possible single scariest panel of Morrigan in WicDiv. Oh – and Dio's heartbreaking on the third panel of page 19.

Anyway – boys, sitting in the dark, and trying to talk.

Page 20-23

The second interstitial I added, and a little annoying. I thought I had to add 2 to maintain the final page, and in fact I only needed to add one. As in, my first draft didn't end on a left, and I needed to correct that. I suspect I'll drop this interstitial for the trade, and regain the page turn.

In the end, the reveal that Sakhmet is waiting for a chance to strike at Morrigan isn't a huge reveal – it's a telling one, but not one which breaks the scene in a huge way. And of course, people on digital have all movement between pages be page turns.

I didn't actually have any dialogue in the second panel on 21 at script, which is very much me in a “I have no idea why I would do that – that panel clearly needs a sign that Persephone is rushing to the door or something similar.”

“Beware the Honest – they will hurt you just to feel clean” is one of those lines that has been lying around in my notebook since the start of WicDiv waiting for their scene.

The warm browns of the room and Morrigan's cold blues seem really interesting to me here. Strong choices, Matt.

The final page was also an awkward one – I knew the images, but the actual exact nature of the dialogue refused to be wrestled down precisely until the last lettering pass, where it coalesced.

We do kissing, and it's depressing kissing. WicDiv takes the fun out of everything.

Anyway – next issue is at the printers now and will be with you soon.

Thanks for reading.

#WicDiv #writer notes #the wicked and the divine

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waste-time-play-otome · 7 years

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@tiny-chickorita

Why is Lovestruck so hated? Grab a cup of tea, I’ll try to make this quick.

Forced onto us.

We where given NO notice about the end of Animex and the creation of LS. It was litrally ‘THIS IS WHAT IT IS NOW, DON’T LIKE IT TO BAD’.

Money grab.

Not only (if I remember correctly) more expensive to play LS (as in, if you bought enough tickets or whatever to play a route, it was way more expensive than the OG way of buying the full story).

Not only this, but it is very clear that LS was made to earn some of the sweet sweet Episodes money. They’re just copying the system to hopefully get the same amount of money

Reviews.

Now I’ve got a nice post sitting in my drafts about this, but for some reason the australian iTunes store was not showing reviews for LS, it took about three days I think for them to show. Now of course it had a lot of negative reviews.

Then suddenly two almost identical positive reviews popped up. Now don’t hold me to any words, but it’s very suss when two reviews have the same sentence structure.

LS response to us.

Lovestruck ignored any negative feedback about the app and still do today, they only publish asks praising the app or asking for help, this is also the case when Speak Easy, an old USA title got re ashed for LS, I had one person come into my DMs saying how it was an insult to put it on LS since they shut down USA.

LS also refused to listen to any feedback from us, since the plan then for them was *LALALALA WERE NOT LISTENING*

The app itself.

It’s ugly, if I handed this in as an end product for my web design class (I study graphic design, we always have a web design element) I would fail. It is very clear it was thrown together very quickly by someone with no background in GD.

They have said they are planning on fixing it, but it’s been two months. I doubt they will.

Voltage USA did NOT close because Lovestuck was coming, it closed be it was earning no money. That’s why they made Animex, to have western stories, but in a style that appealed to us anime/manga fans, it worked, they had happy customers and an active relationship with us, after this, most of us don’t care for them and they barely talk to us, now, after 2 months from the apps release have they started to try to be what Animex was, but, hell to the fucking no.

Not after that mistreatment of a loyal fanbase.

#reply #lovestruck #text #mc post

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lisatelramor · 6 years

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Not Left To Stand Alone Ch25

By the time Saguru got in touch with Aoko, the body on the news had been identified as Ichiyose Gen, a supposedly mild mannered accountant for a law firm just outside of Tokyo. Ichiyose had been much less inconspicuous once his apartment had been searched. While the apartment proper was clean to the point of barrenness, the police had found a hidden compartment in the closet with rifle shells, indicating that Kudo’s hypothesis that the man was the mystery sniper were correct. Of course Aoko wasn’t supposed to have shared any of this and the whole thing was being hushed up. As of yet, there were no clear connections to anyone or why Ichiyose had been left in Kid’s costume.

The law firm wasn’t connected to anything that Saguru could see in the greater picture they were building. Ichiyose had just been a man. A hired killer, most likely, but not anyone important, a contract killer with a front job to maintain, no clear motives, no trail of his history to lead back to other targets or anything. There had been no papers in the apartment of use, no mysterious bank statements with suspicious influxes of cash, no digital trail to mark how he kept in contact with potential clients. It was all a blank slate, like anything beyond the rifle shells had been removed. Even the gun wasn’t there.

It added up to a frustrating amount of nothing and very little for the police to work off of except looking to the law firm as a possible shell company with whom Ichiyose could have met targets. Or, of course, the rifle shells could have been planted, the presence of the Kid costume left merely to confuse, and everyone could be devoting effort and resources to something that had nothing to do with Kid or the group they were after at all. Or it could be a distraction by them and Ichiyose an unfortunate victim. There were too many loose ends and uncertainties to say for sure, and Saguru didn’t have the authority to look into it closer.

“I’ll let you know if anything comes out of it,” Aoko had said before she hung up his call.

And so Saguru was left grasping at air for leads again. It was terribly frustrating. The documents Kid gave had names and people and companies, but unless they were caught in the act on things, there wasn’t much way to bring them down. And even then, it would be a matter of striking the right place; strike too low and you caught a handful of people who only knew the periphery of what was going on. Attempt to strike too high, and there could be positions of power to cover things up, shove aside your efforts or spirit people away. Timing would be everything, and that kind of timing required a good deal of effort made across the board to synch up everyone involved to hit as broadly and effectively as possible. It was the ones in the police and legal systems and those high up in corporations and politics that would be the hard ones to hit. The ones who had lawyers to stall and misdirect and drain resources. The ones in positions of power that could halt everything or call it all a hoax to ruin their name.

They would need people in high places to help. Unfortunately, it was hard to know who could be trusted.

Meanwhile, Aoko was stretched thin investigating the bomber, Kid’s disappearance, the sniper, and now this latest body. Saguru made a mental note to check in with his father; despite being retired, he’d likely kept up with who was in charge, and could probably give a decent theory on who was more likely to be trusted. Add that to Kuroba’s notes, and maybe they would finally get somewhere. What they needed most was an opening, catching someone in this massive group in the act. If they could manage to trace any actions that happened after, figure out who covered things up or find other links...

Easier said than done though. There were no leads on the bombs and the sniper was most likely dead.

Saguru rejoined the others in the kitchen and found Kudo heading out.

“I think it’s time for me to do a bit of legwork,” he said. “I’m going to get any information about Ichiyose that I can, and hopefully find some clues that lead somewhere. Then I figure I’ll check out the buildings near the cosmetics company. Going to the building itself might tip them off, but maybe looking around the area would help.”

“I’ll go through more files.” Bit by bit they were gaining a concept of the group’s structure. It was only a matter of time and effort before it all began to pull together. When he could, Saguru was cross referencing things to information Aoko and Nakamori had given him, fitting cases to faces and tracking who had most likely redacted parts of the files, who would have had the influence to seal them away. This was vital evidence for cleaning up the poison in the police force. It was also the most tedious part of it all. He missed the days where legwork hadn’t been too physically demanding for him to do much of.

***

Saguru woke with the mild confusion of someone finding themselves in a room they were unfamiliar with, with the hazy uncertainty for why he woke in the first place. Kudo’s guest bedroom was more comfortable than the futon Saguru was currently used to sleeping on, but the walls had unfamiliar shadows and an unfamiliar ceiling. He stared at it blearily, no street light from outdoors radiating through the blinds to throw black against the white, just gray fading into darker gray.

Then a soft scuff against wooden floors jolted him awake; he wasn’t alone. Saguru shot upright, hand grasping for something nearby to use as a weapon and only coming up with the book he’d been reading before bed.

The person in the deepest shadows of the room paused.

Saguru slumped in relief when they moved into the dim light coming through the window. “Chikage-san,” he said. Kuroba Chikage, Kuroba’s mother and someone he had only seen in photos and interacted briefly in phone conversations. His relief didn’t last long as the strangeness of it all caught up with his tired brain. “What are you doing here?”

“Saguru-san,” Chikage said. She didn’t look much older than the photos of her at thirty-four had looked, a few more lines around her eyes and a streak of gray in her hair the only signs of age that Saguru could pick out in the dark.

“Kuroba’s in the room down the hall,” Saguru said as she leaned against the windowsill.

“I saw him already,” she said. He had the unsettling feeling of being weighed by her stare. “You and Kudo-san are leading the search for the organization.”

“...Yes?” She’d chosen a spot that put half her face in light, but it put the other half in shadow, much like Kid’s face was forever shadowed, only vertically instead of horizontally. There was the same promise of motion that Kuroba had in how she held herself, ready to flee or dodge or attack the way someone was when they were forever targeted. It was clear that whatever Kuroba Chikage filled her time with abroad, it wasn’t the safe, quiet sort of activities one would expect from a retiree. If he remembered correctly, there had been a rumor—or was it fact?—that Kid and the thief Phantom Lady were related. Phantom Lady had vanished from the public eye not long after Kid’s first appearance, interestingly enough. In fact, the two of them had even met at the same heist if Hakuba was remembering the details correctly. In France, during one of Kuroba Toichi’s world tours as a stage magician.

“You’re going to need proof of what they’re doing.”

“...Kuroba has provided a good deal of that,” Saguru said.

“For the companies in Japan,” she agreed. “He never did much with Kid’s reputation as an international thief.”

Kuroba Chikage, if Saguru remembered correctly, had spent a good deal of time abroad in the United States and Europe while Kuroba was a teenager. There was nothing to say that she hadn’t continued this, her absence when Kuroba was injured only adding to the assumption that these trips had continued. “Chikage-san, are you offering proof?”

Her smile in the dark wasn’t Kid’s smile that invited you to share in his mischief. It was a much darker smile that would be better fitting on a crocodile right before it snapped. “I’m sure as someone raised around police, you know how long it actually takes to get a proper arrest and sentencing sometimes. Finding proof when it’s been purposefully obscured and destroyed, getting a confession when they don’t want to confess... I think Kaito would be satisfied to take out their presence in just Japan at this point. But you can’t just kill the pests in your home if they’re all around waiting to fill in whatever you flush out. Power vacuums mean something fills it, right, Saguru-kun?”

The less switch in honorific made his tired brain pause. “What do you have?” He focused on the glint of her eyes and the silver curve of her smile in the dark.

“Financial records,” Chikage said. “Voice recordings. Surveillance footage that was supposed to have been erased. Research notes confirming unauthorized and illegal human testing. Locations of bodies gone missing, details of backdoor transactions, evidence of weapon smuggling across country and continental lines.” Saguru felt his eyes go wide as she listed things on her fingers. “Over two decades is a long time to put yourself in the right position and gather up allies.”

If that was true, ever since Toichi’s death, Chikage had been playing the long game, having a public and private persona and digging in deep to the criminal underworld. Saguru shivered. She’d let her son play target and lure and used his distraction to accomplish what he couldn’t. “Even with all of that,” he said finally, throat feeling tight with the enormity of it all, “to catch a group of this size...”

“They’re big,” Chikage acknowledged. “So when this breaks, it will have to be equally big, big enough that it can’t be buried. Bigger than Kudo’s takedown. You light up the world so there’s nowhere left to hide and make all their dirty laundry visible.”

“What are you planning?”

“The internet is a useful thing,” Chikage said. “A wonderful resource that’s only truly come into its own the last few decades. It’s hard to cover up anything that’s been leaked there...”

“An info dump,” Saguru said, understanding. “You plan to leak everything you’ve compiled so that the people involved can’t hide, air everything for the world to see.”

Chikage’s smile was predatory. “Of course it will work best if it’s coordinated with a police effort at the same time the dump happens. We’ve always needed to have more help from the inside, but it’s a bit hard when you’re working with criminals to get them to trust the police and vice versa. I had hoped it would be Aoko, but that opportunity was lost a while ago.”

Saguru looked at her. Her hair was neat, her face deceptively young, but she still looked like someone’s mother. Unassuming. No one would ever guess what lurked beneath that exterior or the quick mind that had to exist behind her brown eyes. He hadn’t realized in the messages they’d exchanged about Kuroba what lurked in her. He felt infinitely lucky that she seemed to have decided he was an ally instead of a threat. How close had he come to being under her watch as a teen? He surely would have been seen as much more of a threat. “It will still take a bit of time to organize things,” Saguru said.

“What is a few months compared to years.” She stepped forward, in shadow again and far too close to Saguru. He was uncomfortably aware of how sheets were still tangled around his legs and that there was nowhere to go to should she decide to turn that reigned in aggression on him. “You’ve insinuated yourself into my family’s lives pretty deeply in the few months I’ve been gone,” she said. Her face was entirely unreadable; Saguru didn’t know her well enough to pick up little tells like he could with Kuroba. “The phone conversations we’ve had led me to believe you care about Kaito’s wellbeing. Your actions so far have backed that up.”

There was an intense weight of judgment in how she stood over him, but this wasn’t the first time Saguru had been judged by someone’s parent, and compared to the contempt Mel’s parents had shown him for years after they’d been his in-laws, this wasn’t quite as heavy. He’d never felt like he might have to worry about getting stabbed by Mel’s parents though.

“He trusts you,” Chikage said after a deeply unsettling silence. “I am not sure I understand it but so long as you keep putting his safety first, I’ll trust you as well. Kaito is rarely wrong in where he places his trust.”

A light knock on the doorframe broke the stifling intensity of the room. Both of their heads turned toward the sound.

Kuroba, dressed in one of the various yukata he’d been in since he was first brought to the Kudo home, leaned along the doorway. It was meant to look casual but it was a far cry from his usual poker face. He was too pale for one. “The air’s so thick you could cut it,” Kuroba said, voice light.

Saguru was half out of his bed a half second later as the surprise wore off. “Kuroba!” He brushed past Chikage, stumbling toward Kuroba. “You’re not supposed to be up!”

“I am capable of walking to the bathroom,” Kuroba said.

“This isn’t the bathroom and no, you’re supposed to be on bed rest!”

“That sharp tongued doctor is going to yell at you,” Chikage sighed. She didn’t sound surprised though, walking past Saguru to get to Kuroba first and offer a shoulder in support.

“I’m healing fine. Better than fine, ask her.” Kuroba accepted his mother’s help while Saguru could only stand and feel useless.

“Be that as it may,” Saguru said, “please don’t aggravate your wounds.”

Kuroba rolled his eyes. “The world needs to stop treating me like glass.” And yet he made no move to refuse a helping hand and his face was still too pale. Saguru itched to guide him to the nearest flat surface—even if that flat surface was Saguru’s own bed. “And Kaa-san, you need to stop threatening people.”

“I have to test the detectives in your life,” Chikage said, “after all you can’t do much to defend yourself right now.”

“Well it’s a good thing I don’t need to defend myself then.” Kuroba leaned against his mother with a tight smile. “Don’t let her lead you into a plan you can’t handle.”

“Would I do that?” Chikage said. “If I remember correctly, you’re the one who plans impossible things.”

“We’re magicians, we live to make the impossible a reality,” Kuroba said with a judicious sniff. “Hakuba’s not a magician, he just deals with regular old reality. No one is making any stupid, life threatening plans, okay?”

“Noted,” Saguru said. “Not that I planned to risk any more than is already implicit in any of this. Now could you please return to your room and rest?”

“And I took the time to come and see you,” Kuroba said, with a put upon and overly exaggerated sigh.

“I’m touched,” Saguru said. It was slow going back down the hallway, slow enough that Saguru wondered how the hell Kuroba had managed on his own let alone silently enough to surprise them. Kuroba was right about always pulling the impossible. He shouldn’t be able to walk at all yet. Chikage was terribly gentle with Kuroba as she helped him back into bed. Saguru held back sheets to let Kuroba get comfortable but Chikage was the one to pull them up. It was a reminder that Kuroba was someone’s child, like Saguru was Mum’s son, like all of them were all children for someone, and it gave him a glimpse at what Kuroba’s early childhood might have been like. Chikage gentle but not taking any of Kuroba’s complaints or protests that he could settle himself back into a bed just fine. Joking back that he could say that as soon as he was able to walk without hiding his pain. It wasn’t the sort of exasperated doting that Mum would have done. Too efficient, but there was care there. Care that a younger Saguru had wondered about when he learned that Kuroba spent most of his time alone, and that Saguru had compared to his life in Japan with his father who always worked and a governess as his usual meal companion and had concluded that both of their lives could be lonely. Whether Kuroba Chikage cared about her son wasn’t a question anymore.

Saguru met Chikage’s eyes over her son and they had silent agreement; he’d work with her and her plan and they’d crush the organization as much as possible. For Kaito’s sake.

#detective conan #magic kaito #nltsa #not left to stand alone #my writing #fanfiction #bit shorter chapter but there's another extra soon

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scullyeffect · 6 years

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books i have FINISHED that were in french:

'le petit prince’ by saint-exupéry (we did this in french IV at school when i was 16)

‘bonjour tristesse’ by françoise sagan (which i did struggle with and actually bought a copy in english too, thinking i’d read the english version afterwards and see if i got the whole picture, but i actually was pretty content to leave it at just reading the french version. i didn’t even watch the movie because i was very pleased with the book and hopefully i understood it correctly). this book was around 150 pages if i remember correctly and it took me 2 months to read, and i read all of it out loud.

‘un certain sourire’ by françoise sagan (which by the summary i thought i’d hate but ended up liking better than ‘bonjour tristesse’, although ‘bonjour tristesse’ will always hold a special place in my heart as the first french novel i read solo).

‘toxique’ by françoise sagan (this is a raw book containing her journal entries from when she was recovering in a hospital after a bad car accident. it’s very sparse and there’s not much to it but i read it in about a half hour after buying it last week, it had crazy illustrations by someone whose name i’m too lazy to look up, but i enjoyed it)

i think why i struggle with reading in french so much is because i enjoy writing/reading in english so much. i get very uncomfortable if i feel like i’m not getting everything that’s being expressed, and i think this has to do with my love of translation. i want things to be understood, and i know that with literature this is often subjective, but it just really stresses me out not knowing the flow of the language as it’s written. i often have to read aloud (sometimes even reading in english as well)

i also find written french to be very...sturdy and rigid...compared to english where i feel like there’s so much more room to muddle around in and so much playful uses of tense and language that i feel is kind of missing from french. and i think it might have to do with the fact that french is a very strict language!! there’s not a lot of wiggle room when it comes to anything language related. in english i love the sound of a sentence that begins with the past tense of a verb. “saw a dog this morning” is so telegramy (see, we also can invent random words) and to-the-point. in french (from what limited exposure i have to literature and i have started lots of other books so my scope is stretched, i just love sagan above others and can stick around longer) that sentence structure is less common. i read it in ‘toxique’ and was pleasantly surprised.

ANYWAY yeah i suck at reading french but im pretty good at translating it into english. i’m also terrible at writing in french. composing an “im sick and won’t be coming to class today” email to my professor took me a solid 30 minutes and it wasn’t because of conjugations, it was honestly because i was so stressed that it perhaps didn’t “sound” french enough. language perfectionist probs.

@psychiartist

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afterspark-podcast · 4 years

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G1 Episode 34: Transcript

Episode Show Notes

[This can also be found on AO3!]

[Stinger]

O: There would be... not implied violence at not following her directives. There would be actual violence.

[Intro Music]

O: Hello, and welcome to the Afterspark Podcast, an episode by episode recap of the generation 1 Transformers cartoon. I'm Owls.

S: And I'm Specs.

O: And today we're going to be talking about episode number 34, “City of Steel.” Let's talk about giant robots today, shall we?

S: Sure.

O: Get ready for a very eventful episode today, folks!

S: We open at a very 80’s era New York City skyline.

O: Now with ninety percent more of flying birb.

S: Laserbeak, um, enters a manhole and flies down into the sewers.

O: Cowabunga, dude!

S: None of this makes sense! I mean, where did all of this water come from? It's like a river down here, and then there's just this ladder between two pipes that appears to serve utterly no purpose.

O: Like, I don't- I want to say there like, wasn't a way to get up to that pipe.

S: Mm-hmm.

O: Like, there was just a ladder between two pipes, that you didn't look like you could get to or something. [laughs]

S: Yeah, it doesn't look like it reaches anything it's just there's random ladder.

O: Yes, and then we're suddenly in an abandoned, and quite frankly, devastated subway, for some reason?

S: New York is weird, I guess? Laserbeak shoots laser beams at a door to make it open.

O: This does not damage the door in any way, and shouldn't the Decepticons have a better way of opening doors than shooting at them? I mean, they have several people who don't have hands!

S: Yeah... yeah.

O: Like-like- maybe- just- just the cassettes alone, you know? I'm just saying.

S: Um-hm, and I mean, what if... what if like, Shockwave is holding something in his one hand?

O: Right!

S: He's got a gun for the other one.

O: I mean, I guess that- I guess that- that's an argument for shorting dolph- shooting to open doors.

S: [laughs]

O: Uh, unfortunately, but uh, I mean, like, I'm just saying, motion sensitive? Something that senses Decepticon badge[s]? Either those seem like perfectly reasonable options.

S: I mean, heck, maybe the shooting it was just a way of transmitting a code to open the door, I don't know.

O: [laughs] They really could have shown that in a different way but- but fair.

S: [sighs] Laserbeak enters Soundwave’s chest, and elsewhere the Constructicons argue amongst themselves.

O: And lo! A very off model Megatron appears! He will look off model for this entire episode and it will drive me nuts. So, uh, just ignore me. It's gonna keep coming up, I'm sorry.

B: [laugh]

S: Ah, Megatron admonishes the Constructicons for arguing and Soundwave reports that there is absolutely no nearby Autobot activity.

O: Megatron then laughs maniacally saying, “Soon New York City will be all mine!”

S: While waving his arms in the air like he just don't care.

O: Um, everybody dance now?

S: [singing] Everybody party!

O: [laughs]

S: [sighs]

O: And due to the Constructicon activity down below, we then see that the entire Empire State Building sinks into the earth.

S: Who knew there were just large holes under New York City? If I were a New Yorker I'd be extremely concerned about this!

O: Either that, or maybe the Constructions just have been really, really, busy?

S: Both could be true.

O: [laughs]

S: God, sinkholes would be terrifying there.

O: In a city? Yeah, I mean- I mean- I think that's why normally you don't have cities built in places where sinkholes are as... common, but at the same time they still are built in cities- er- cities are built-

S: Well, I mean, the thing is it's not like people could really tell at that point not, I don’t think.

O: Not unless it had like, a history of happening. France! Paris! That's wh- that's why the the catacombs exist. Like, there had been all of this mining that had happened under Paris and so it was leaving these like- essentially, very- places that could crumble, you know, fall in.

S: Mm-hmm.

O: And so they had to do something to get structure down there. Th- that is a partial reason why the catacombs exist in Paris.*

S: Oh, that is interesting.

O: Yeah, sorry, on that historical tangent on the too many documentaries Owls has watched in the past couple months.

S: [laughs]

O: Sorry! [laughs]

S: [sighs] At the Ark, the Autobots watched the news about the sinking Empire State Building and Optimus correctly intuits that this has to be Megatron's doing and all the Autobots roll out to head towards New York City.

O: It's time for another cross-country road trip!

S: Courtesy of Prowl.

O: We have to assume. As they're leaving Optimus radios Sparkplug to tell them to have Wheeljack meet them in Central Park, but in the shot where like, Sparkplug is receiving this message he doesn't move at all, doesn't say anything, and it's just a very weird shot because it's like, this is not an alive person.

S: They were saving money.

O: Yes. Then in New York, we see Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, Wheeljack, Mirage, and Hound entering the city by way of water skis, when they spy Laserbeak.

S: Oh, water skis, the time tested and honorable method of travel over water.

O: I think what kills me is like, to my knowledge we don't even have like, toys that have water skis on them, so it seems so strange that they keep coming up?

S: It's a goofy show from the 80’s about giant robots of course they're going to bring up water skis.

O: [laughs] You're right, you're right, whatever was I thinking?

B: [laugh]

S: It was the hip thing, I don't know.

O: [while laughing] Sure.

S: But yeah, I mean, geez- how did if they road tripped to New York City…

O: Like, where- where were these other group that they're water skiing to- to New York?

S: Yes, and where did they start out from?

O: Florida! They were on the beach, man!

S: [laughs]

O: Sunstreaker wanted to have a good time.

S: [sighs] Oh yeah, found some- found some people who were willing to have hot car washes. I don't know if the- if the robots would be entertained by that but-

O: Probably not, but it is a funny thought.

S: Yeah, especially since at least three of them are super cars.

O: I mean, yeah, a lot of them are like that where they're like, very expensive cars. Cuz Knockout’s [from Transformers Prime] like that too, yeah, it’s just absurd. Sorry. Tangent! I’m good at tangents today.

S: [laughs] We're both good at tangents.

O: [laughs]

S: Then in a two-second interlude, we see Optimus, Bumblebee, Ratchet, Ironhide, and Bluestreak reach New York via highway before we cut back to the underground Decepticon lair.

O: Where they appear to be refurbishing the Empire State Building... the entire thing.

S: Oh god, um, there are probably people in there who... probably wish they'd stopped drinking.

O: Pray everyone was on their lunch break, maybe?

S: Hopefully?

O: [laughs]

S: Either that, or they're just- I don't know, they're not having a good time, probably.

O: I can't imagine why they would. I mean, this begs the question, is the electricity still connected? Do they still have water? Like, I don't know how the Constructicons would have managed that. But- but I'm just saying, like, you know, a specific kind of person, if they still had working electricity, phone lines, fax lines, whatever, might just keep working.

S: I'm not sure that they would considering that I don't think those wires have a whole lot of, uh, give to them.

O: Allow me to put it this way, they probably shouldn't, but I also know what kind of show I'm talking about.

S: Yeah...

O: [laughs]

S: Laserbeak warns Megatron that the Autobots have arrived.

O: He's so off model, he's so off model, he’s so off model.

S: Yup. It- it is your trial and tribulation Owls, for watching this episode.

O: Apparent- apparently, this episode just wants to hurt me. Anyway, the Autobots are met by Soundwave and his cassettes as they arrive at Central Park.

S: Rumble and Soundwave each finish each other's sentences for a little bit.

O: Okay, well, possibly Frenzy says something in the middle too? It shows him on the screen, but his mouth isn't moving, and so help me god even I can't tell Rumble and Frenzy’s voices apart. It doesn't help that they're ALSO both voiced by Welker. This is just one person saying a sentence in two to three silly voices isn't it?

S: Yep.

O: [snorts]

S: God, it reminds me of the thing that I just saw today about apparently there's an episode of Batman where basically all of the characters are voiced by Mark Hamill.

O: [laughs] Mark Hamill is to Batman what Frank Welker is to Transformers. That sounds right, actually! And like, there were I think- I think there were a lot more like other voice actors that did a bunch of voices in Transformers than in Batman, but still, it's a funny thought.

S: Yeah, but it was- I think the plot of that episode was Mark Hamill gets kidnapped.

O: OH YEAH!

S: Like, the voice actor, Mark Hamill-

O: Yeah. You know the Joker comes up with surprising frequency on our podcast, I just want to bring that up.

S: Mm-hmm.

O: Rumble and Frenzy then use their pile drivers to pound the ground for a bit and Ironhide just kind of keels over?

S: Ironhide just decided he was done for the day.

O: While all the animation in this episode is just terrible, wow, that fall is in a special place.

S: Yeah... Scavenger can sense Optimi, as he digs under Optimus from below.

O: But not before Optimus chucks Soundwave across the park.

S: [sharp intake of breath] And how does this even work? Prime doesn't fall onto Scavenger he falls like, 40 stories and lands on his back in Long Haul's trailer. And to, um, like, illustrate the scene, Scavenger was like, up on some sort of thing or whatever so that he could dig up to where Prime was and then suddenly when Prime falls down Scavenger's not there. The thing he's on isn't there, but Long Haul and his trailer are significantly further down.

O: Yeah, like, he just falls 40 feet, or 40 stories, it’s fine!

S: Then Megatron walks over zaps Optimus with some kind of device and severs his motor relays.

O: So he zaps Optimus’ abs with a strangely dildo-y shaped object and now Prime can't move?

S: Well technically, I think he calls it suspended animation but... pretty much, yes.

O: Just checking, okay. [laughs]

S: [sighs] Then Megatron flies up through the hole made by Scavenger and threatens to kill Optimus if the Autobots don't leave. Then the Decepticons raise the *brand new* refurbished and updated Empire State building back to ground level and Megatron proclaims he is the leader of New Cybertron.

O: I mean at least that's a better name than last time he named something. Although I- I have to give him credit, his fantastic threat to Optimus Prime? To melt him down into paper clips.

S: Yeah, I mean, that is honestly kind of ignoble for Optimus.

O: [laughs]

S: To be turned into, you know, office supplies and honestly I want to know how- well- I think it- how Megatron knows what a paperclip is?

O: [laughs harder] Oh my god, does Cybertron have paperclips!?! I mean-

S: Eh…

O: They don't even use paper most of the time!

S: I don't think they have trees.

O: Yeah, yeah, that's also true.

S: And paper would be very flimsy for them unless it was some sort of... unless they had an equivalent.

O: I'm just saying, who took Megatron to an office supply store? This is what I want to know, why?

S: He obviously learned this when he learned what a guinea pig was.

O: [laughs] Yeeeeah.

S: And so, after this threat, um, New York City is being evacuated by both the Autobots and the humans.

O: How nice of the Decepticons to let them all orderly evacuate.

S: Uh.

O: But then Spike has an idea, and all the Autobots exit the highway.

S: That was an extremely convenient exit and I have to wonder who Megatron is going to rule in his city of New Cybertron.

O: It's just the Decepticons. It's a bigger base. But what was even funnier about that exit, is they were totally on a bridge so like that- that was a very convenient exit.

S: Yup.

O: And- and now back to, you know, underground, Megatron is standing between Optimus’ legs on Long Haul's truck bed with his Fusion Cannon aimed, ehem, downwards talking about his conquest.

S: [sharp intake of breath] Yeah, that's not awkward at all.

O: It's not awkward at all. I'm also not exaggerating.

S: You're not.

O: [laughs]

S: Oh, Megatron then orders Hook to disassemble Prime.

O: Which Hook then begins... by pulling out a lightsaber.

S: A purple one, to you know, keep it Decepticon themed.

O : Of course! Later, Long Haul dumps all the Optimus Prime parts in front of Megatron's feet.

S: [sighs] Megatron then picks up Optimus' head to gloat, which obviously he can't do if Prime is [un]conscious so he runs power through the head. And this is just making- this is like the- one of the few things from the- that's consistent with the comics.

O: Ironically, yes. Also, I think we meant unconscious.

S: We used the wrong word, he should have been unconscious.

O: [laughs]

S: Or, he can't do if Prime is unconscious, so let's run with that.

O: [laughs] Uh, for some reason, Optimus can control his limbs while his head is active. So he has his dismembered forearms grab Megatron's legs and trip him.

S: Optimus has the weirdest ass powers.

O: Right!?!

S: That he can pull out of nowhere.

O: Right? And then, Megs gets back up, tells the Constructicons they can do whatever the hell they want with the rest of Optimus’ body, but he's keeping the head.

S: Presumably, so we can put it on the metaphorical mantle. I mean, god, this is basically the exact same thing that... well, actually I think it was Shockwave in the comics because-

O: I know Shockwave popped up at some point.

S: -his head, yeah. His head was definitely separated from his body.

O: Elsewhere, Spike is uh, waste deep in some water?

S: Next to a ship. He directs the Autobots into what looks like an open sewer drain and we discover that he's actually sitting on Bumblebee's head in the water.

O: So Bee's got those little horns on his head, it seems like it would not be so comfortable on the good ol’ keister.

S: Yeah…

O: But apparently- apparently Spike's okay with it.

S: I mean if he'd actually been drawn small enough that he could fit between the horns I don't think it would be so bad but it definitely looks like he's sitting on the horns.

O: [laughs] Right, like, that doesn't look comfortable.

S: Yeah.

O: So then Spike, Bee, Ratchet, Mirage, and Hound enter the sewer to go save Optimus.

S: I'm gonna call them team Health Hazard considering Spike was sitting in water that appears to be very near a sewer exit, or if it's not a sewer exit, some sort of storm drain exit. And I mean, that's still not going to be great for his health.

O: Yeah. Mirage scouts ahead of the group, turning invisible, leaving Hound to track him with his scanners as the rest of the group follows.

S: Scrapper is congratulating himself on the Constructions using Optimus’ remains um, extremely creatively as he touts um, off one of Prime's arms holding Prime's blaster.

O: They drive up and then we go back to team Health Hazard. Ratchet complains about feeling like they're in a swamp.

S: How is there foliage down there!?! [sighs]

O: Through the magic of cartoons?

S: Considering the type of show this is, yes. [sighs] Hound says he's now picking up Optimus’ signal from behind them, and then Mirage reappears and points out the giant red, blue, and white alligator that is charging towards them.

O: With an Autobot logo clearly visible on its leg.

S: That they don't notice the Autobots are not very good at, uh…

O: Noticing things.

S: Yeah.

O: Very obvious things.

S: Yeahhhh.

O: They walk slowly away as Mirage covers them.

S: Hound expresses his confusion as to why his sensors are picking up Optimus.

O: Oh, come on guys!!!

S: The suspiciously colored alligator clearly has nothing to do with it, right? Right?

O: Right, right, right, obviously not, that would be too obvious! Um, Bee and Spike lead the alligator into an old subway train, and then the others send it down the track.

S: Somehow this train still has power.

O: Back topside, Mixmaster has- just shits girders. Like, in vehicle mode, when Skywarp shoves a car into his mixing tank?

S: Mixmaster is a very good chemist. Very good.

O: [while laughing] Obviously!

S: Starscream compliments Megatron for once. Though obviously not to his face.

O: He likes what he's done with the place- or the city at least.

S: Yep. In the Decepticon base, team Health Hazard finds Optimus’ head.

O: We get introduced to yet another random unit of measure, mechana-meters.

S: Pfft, we did not need another one.

O: No, we didn't, but we got another one anyway! [laughs]

S: [long groan]

O: You see what you did Transformers? See what you did, you like- oh god, is it 40 years old? You like, 30 something year old show, you broke Specs!

S: I think it's like, 35 years old considering that I think uh, [the eruption of] Mount St. Helens was in 1980.

O: Hmm, yeah.

S: Um, Ratchet runs power to Prime's head and Prime uses his telepathy to bring his legs to them.

O: I just want to know what his legs were even like- what were they a part of? Did they just shove them in a closet? I'm- especially considering what they did with the rest of him!

S: Yeah, I don't know, maybe Optimus Prime- oh god, maybe Megatron wanted his legs used as I don't know-

O: I don't want to know, I don't want to know.

S: [sighs] I don’t know.

O: But consid- go ahead.

S: Well, I was thinking like parts of a chair, or something?

O: [laughs] Yeah, that seems dumb enough to be a thing. Of course, this is when they realize that alligator was made out of Prime parts.

S: And it has a name, the alligator-con.

O: Of course!

S: And next Hound, Mirage, and Ratchet are wrestling with the alligator, while Bee and Spike stand off to the side next to Prime's huge freaking legs, while primly holding Optimus’ head.

O: Wait. Does this mean they carried the legs down here, or did Prime them- move them with telepathy like, the entire time?

S: I mean, it's anyone's guess, I guess?

O: [laughing while talking] They're so big! Compared to everybody else. [normal speaking voice] And then Prime is apparently able to subdue the beast with yet more mind waves!

S: Ratchet is able to mostly reassemble him except for the arm we saw Scrapper carting off earlier. I mean, there were still parts left over so... what?

O: Red and blue parts even, they do not look like they were just random parts the Decepticons should have had lying around.

S: Well, unless it was left over from one of Megatron's um, toys?

O: Oh god no. [laughs]

S: Uh-huh.

O: I'm not going there, goodbye, goodbye. Goodnight everybody! [laughs]

S: Uh-huh. Optimus gives Mirage a side hug with his one arm and tells him to radio the others because Megatron is in for a shock.

O: Top side we see Bluestreak, Wheeljack, Sunstreaker, and Ironhide are walking around in the streets.

S: I'm calling this team Hot to Trot since, you know, they're out and about.

O: We've got Hot to Trot and team Health Hazard for those of you following at home.

S: And they see Prime's missing arm. It is attached to a building acting as some sort of sentry gun.

O: In Decepticon HQ, Megatron is very unhappy about losing his toy, as he spies team Health Hazard in the monitor, you know, walking with Prime.

S: And then Prime's arm shoots into the screaming Autobots below.

O: [laughs] Soundwave just calmly mashes what we have to assume is the fire button like, repeatedly.

S: Yeah, oh god, someone's just using... using Optimus Prime's arm as a video game.

O: Yes! [laughs]

S: It's the most lifelike video game. [sighs]

O: [laughs]

S: And honestly, the Autobots seem like they're more afraid of the arm than the alligator, as they actually run away from the arm.

O: Yes, uh, we see Jazz in a shot for a second.

S: Hound and Bluestreak fall into a hole, where Rumble appears driving a subway train.

O: Before suddenly turning into Frenzy. I mean, like, his color changes between shots.

S: Yeah, I mean whichever cassette this is, he looks like he's having a very good time.

O: Well, he is until Bluestreak and Hound explode the front of the train, and that apparently stops all momentum and they are saved.

S: What are physics to a children's tv show episode?

O: In the 80’s. [laughs]

S: Yeah. Bee, Sideswipe, and Sunstreaker are driving around, uh, before being suddenly attacked by taxis.

O: These decepticabs appear to be the Constructicons’ handiwork.

S: Bee, Sideswipe, and Sunstreaker gracefully leap over them in vehicle mode, before Prime mows the taxis over while in his own vehicle mode ,and then he takes out three Constructicons in their little firing stations for good measure. Optimus arrives back in front of the Empire State Building and says it's time to, “Lend him a hand, and an arm as well!”

O: Oh Optimus, you and your dad jokes.

S: Prime and Ironhide scale the building to retrieve Optimus’ arm.

O: Along with Ratchet, but I think what more of note here is Ironhide’s got a grappling hook too!?!

S: Megatron orders an airstrike by the Seekers.

O: The Seekers are damaged, and Starscream calls the other two cowards before Sideswipe jumps into the air (with no visible sign of his pack) and grapples Starscream, while Starscream is in jet mode.

S: This sounds like it's um, jet judo on…

O: Steroids?

S: Yes, I couldn't remember the word.

O: And then Starscream ends up diving into the river as Sideswipe just flies off perfectly fine.

S: Well, I guess he had that um, jet pack.

O: That invisible jet pack? [laughs]

S: Yeah. The Constructicons form Devastator and they attempt to step on Wheeljack before climbing up the uh, refurbished Empire State Building after the Autobots.

O: Bee and Spike infiltrate the control room where Soundwave and Megatron are.

S: Ah, they like to live dangerously.

O: Very dangerously, considering they keep throwing Spike (or Spike throws himself) into these situations.

S: Yeah. Soundwave stands up and begins shouting, “Intruders!”

O: Megatron says they are, “Doomed!”

S: But is he going to take the uh, steps to make sure that they're doomed? And I don't think he does.

O: I think he tries. [laughs]

S: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, Spike insults him and then Megatron says something to the effect of, “You dare insult me, in my own command post!?!”

O: “You come into my house and-” [laughs]

S: I did not go out to have a good time. I specifically stayed in, and I'm feeling so attacked right now!

O: [laughs] And then Spike and Bee like, run around the room and maneuver Megatron into shooting the command console, which deactivates Prime's arm.

S: Yeah. And then Soundwave, in order to, you know, deal with this, sends the birbs after Spike and Bumblebee. Presumably so he can attempt to I don't know, do damage control on the count- on the console?

O: Outside, Devastator grabs Prime, you know, like King Kong, and whacks Ratchet and Ironhide into the tower. Wheeljack even starts talking about King Kong before sending in some remote controlled helicopters. Uh, like, after Devastator.

S: I think Wheeljack just decided he was going to have fun with this.

O: I mean, that's fair.

S: I mean, did he just jerry-rig the helicopters, or did he go, and did he have them already prepared?

O: I’m really- it’s-

S: In some way.

O: It's up in the air which one.

S: Yeah, Ironhide and Ratchet meanwhile, shoot the floor out from beneath Soundwave and Megatron because they're, I guess, a floor above? And so, Soundwave and Megatron end up falling past them and into another hole- er, through a hole in the floor.

O: Or- or they make a hole in the floor? But it is so goofy looking, it's amazing. We definitely have a gif we get to reblog, it's gonna be great. [laughs]

S: Yes, yes. They just- Ironhide and Ratchet look so pleased with themselves. I think they do a little handshake or maybe a thumbs up?

[It’s a handshake in case anyone was curious. ~Owls]

O: Something like that. All I can say is quite frankly, that off model Megatron get- he deserves to be in that hole.

B: [laugh]

S: Yep, and so uh, Devastator is climbing up to the top of the tower, and then Prime uses mind powers to shoot- to supercharge his gun and shoot him.

O: Devastator falls, disassembling into the individual Constructicons as they flee.

S: I actually just want to ask how Optimus Prime managed to supercharge his gun when it's been his limbs that he's been controlling, but that’s-

O: I have no idea. [laughs]

S: -that's neither here nor there, because while the Constructicons flee, so do Soundwave and Megatron, they follow close behind them.

O: After the battle Ratchet reattaches Prime’s arm.

S: He probably feels pretty good about that, because Optimus says, “Just as it always was,” while squeaking horribly.

O: [laughs] And my biggest takeaway from this episode is that this really seems like a two-parter that they crammed all into one episode because I kid you not like, the entire ‘Megatron taking over New York part’ like, happens in like, under five minutes. And I really feel like, probably it should have been two parts and the end of the first part would have been right after Optimus got kidnapped but- but no, no it's just like this everything happening in five minutes and then a relatively normally paced episode after that. It was weird.

S: Yeah.

O: Anyway, join us next time for episode 35: Desertion of the Dinobots, Part 1. And then Specs has some fanfics for today.

S: Yeah, we have some fanfic recs. The first is, “The Return of the Revenge of the Son of the City of Steel,” by WaywardInsecticon, and it is actually a script format parody of this episode.

O: [laughs]

S: And I thought it was just very fitting for it like, it's funny, it's silly.

O: Very!

S: It is, it is. It's based on the G1 cartoon, it's rated T, it's Gen, there's no pairings, and it's a G1 cast. And in summary, “It's script format. What happens when the dreadful episode City of Steel goes north? You get this thing.”

O: [laughs]

S: And it's a City of Steel parody, and it's a one shot. And the second fic is, “Five Hangovers and a Trumpet,” by KoiLungfish. Also a G1 cartoon based fic, it's rated T, Gen, none, and the characters are the Constructicons. And in summary, “The aftermath of a Constructicon party can be a messy place,” and character/theme here is the Constructicons. Considering that the Constructicons were such a big part of be-

O: Everything here? [laughs]

S: Yes, yes, the plan to refurbish New York.

O: And refurbish Optimus Prime while they were at it.

S: Yep.

O: [laughs]

S: Also a one shot.

O: This one sounds like so much fun like that title alone just sounds glorious, “Five Hangovers and a Trumpet.”

S: Mm-hm, it's- it's fun, it's one that I remember reading like, back when it was first published and just... it's fun.

O: It sounds fun, I can't wait to read this one myself.

S: And that about wraps it up for us today. Remember to check us out on Tumblr or Pillowfort as Afterspark-Podcast for any additional information, show notes, or links we may have mentioned. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter at AftersparkPod (all one word) and various other locations by searching for Afterspark Podcast such as AO3, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and Youtube, just to name a few. And feel free to send us questions on Tumblr, or Youtube, or AO3! Till next time, I'm Specs.

O: And I’m Owls.

S: Toodles

[Outro Music]

*To my understanding this was due to Paris running out of room for their dead and having this massive area under the city that was essentially empty that they realized they could use. The catacombs themselves only take up a small portion of these old abandoned mines. Many of which still exist under Paris, but after the 1774 disaster there was a massive undertaking to chart and inspect these old quarries and reinforce them to make sure they remained stable. (At least under public buildings and roads.) Sink holes still pop up from uncharted mines with some amount of frequency in Paris.

Mines of Paris

Redevelop Subterranean Paris

Bonus: I got sidetracked, but I found it interesting, and somewhat relevant, so here it is. Basically, yes, sinkholes can and do happen in larger cities, though it seems more common to form because of a water or sewage line break than from sitting atop large empty caverns.

How Do Sinkholes Form?

~Owls

#g1 episode 34 #transcript #afterspark #afterspark podcast

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rigelmejo · 4 years

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A fun fact, I was looking up if there was any similar equivalent to Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide for Chinese. (Which, after exploring, I’d still say chinese-grammar.org is the best QUICK overall grammar summary to read - it’s the one I read, and All Set Learning’s Chinese Grammar is probably one of the best free resources for looking up individual grammar points).

Anyway, I found out Tae Kim is Learning Chinese! There’s posts on their blog of him learning Chinese! It’s wild.

Tae Kim writes a lot about how Chinese grammar and word breakdown make so little sense to him. So I am guessing, they are not writing a ‘chinese grammar breakdown’ any time soon... they may not even think that is a feasible goal...

I just think it’s interesting, the perspective Tae Kim has of Japanese grammar compared to Chinese.

I do also... mildly get it though.

While I think Japanese grammar is difficult for native english speakers, I think it is primarily difficult simply because it is laid out very differently. So there’s a lot of adjustments in thinking and organizing an english speaker needs to make, needs to learn, needs to consistently practice and remember. It is difficult mostly because it just takes a lot of time to get used to using, instead of accidentally falling back on english grammar patterns. And if an english speaker does fall back on english grammar patterns - their japanese sentences will be very hard to understand or possibly make no sense at all. To use japanese, whether producing or engaging with japanese materials, you need to really get comfortable with japanese grammar. Because you cannot use an english grammar framework and hope to understand japanese easily.

But japanese grammar is not difficult because it is hard. I really love japanese grammar. I think its quite logical, pretty regular, and once you learn a decent amount, the grammar structure makes a lot of things quite easy to understand. Particles tell you what every word in a sentence is doing. Verb endings tell you a whole bunch about what tense/time period and if a verb is negated or not. Japanese verb endings are a lot more approachable to me than french verb conjugations... (although I also think french has a lot of regularly conjugated verbs which is nice). I can see why making, at least a basic overview, grammar guide for japanese would seem doable. Japanese grammar, at least in my lower-intermediate perspective, is quite beautiful and well structured. I think its way more approachable then english grammar would be if i weren’t a native speaker.

---

And I guess, on a personal note, chinese grammar has its own positives and drawbacks. I do think perfection in chinese grammar is difficult for me, at this point in time. Perfection and knowing when to do what in chinese grammar seems somewhat mystifying to me. But I do think chinese is more immediately comprehensible to me, even though I cannot reliably produce chinese sentences in a natural way.

I find that chinese sentences, even when the word order is much different than english, still would make sense if spoken in english in exactly the same word order.

Examples:

You’re called what? / Ni jiao shenme? Yes, the word ‘what’ is in a different place, but if someone said in english ‘you’re called what?’ you will understand them.

I to (the) apple ate. / Wo ba pinguo chu le. If someone says to you the first sentence in english, you will understand them. So, likewise, if you’re an english speaker looking at the chinese grammar structure in that chinese sentence, it may seem a bit awkward and new to you, but it will be comprehensible. So perhaps... in this sense, an english speaker could learn a bunch of chinese words, throw themselves at chinese sentences, and start comprehending and working out what most of those sentences mean. But a japanese learner, if they learned many words and no grammar points? I am not sure they would have as easy of a time doing the same thing. Especially if they skipped studying particles and conjugations! (Forgive my translation of ‘ba’ since I still struggle sometimes on exactly how it’s used, but hopefully I’m still getting my point across.)

I got this shirt from the store across from the hotel. / ��从酒店对面的商店买了这件衬衫。Wǒ cóng jiǔdiàn duìmiàn de shāngdiàn mǎile zhè jiàn chènshān. A rough word for word translation into english might be: I, from the hotel facing-across store, bought this shirt. That sentence, while awkward, could still be understand if said in english with that wording.

Lets compare to Japanese for fun: I got this shirt from the store across from the hotel. / ホテルの向かいの店からこのシャツを手に入れました。Hoteru no mukai no mise kara kono shatsu o te ni iremashita. (My japanese is SO rusty so bear with the following Rough word for word translation). In english, word for word, that might be: Hotel’s opposite’s store, from, this shirt (object), hand in, put-it-in (put, past tense). You could say this in english, word for word, but it seems like it would be kind of hard to follow and understand. And, at least for me, the hardest part about comprehending this sentence would be if you did not understand the particles.

So, I do think (at least for me), chinese grammar is structured in a way that I find easier to immediately interpret what is being said/written. Whereas with japanese, I have to puzzle a lot out based on the grammar i know before I can actually figure out what’s being communicated. Until, of course, I’ve studied the japanese grammar patterns so well I’m used to recognizing them. With production, studying the grammar of either japanese or chinese until I can quickly produce them is needed for me to be able to speak/write decently. But comprehension wise, I do think chinese is a little more approachable with less outright grammar knowledge. (Although, I imagine I’m somewhat biased as my month 2 of chinese study was me reading the entire chinese-grammar.org website in a week then reviewing it... which I think helped a lot in getting me prepped to recognize the structure...)

It has been harder for me to figure out the rules for deciding when to use certain structures, and why I should pick to use certain ones, in chinese. Maybe because I know more chinese than japanese, so the problem just hasn’t come up in japanese yet. Like... I’m still confused as to when to say “mei shi” versus “mei guan xi” as a way to state I’m okay/it’s nothing. I’m still confused as to when to use zhao 着 instead of zai for verbs currently occurring. I can understand sentences with both, but wow can I NOT use them correctly lol. So even though chinese grammar does have it’s ‘less difficult’ traits, it is certainly challenging in it’s own right for it’s own reasons.

#rant #chinese japanese comparison #excuse all my mediocre knowledge lol #so fun fact as usual #i love that the more chinese ive learned #the easier japanese gets for me to READ #i know a fair bit of japanese grammar #but kanji were a hurdle i never really got very far into

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reldridge24-blog · 6 years

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Final reflection

English 101 Dr. Jones Final Reflection While taking English 101 I have learned a lot about my writing style and what I could do to change it. When I came into English I didn’t have the strongest use of language or sentence structure making my papers good but not the best. While taking the class and learning about new ways I can implement things to further enhance my paper I noticed that my papers got better and better as the year went on. Without English 101 I do not know where my writing style would stand or what I could of done to help improve my style. I have struggled with rhetorical knowledge all my life because I never really knew how to make something that would appeal to as many people as possible, but with practice I believe that I have gotten much better. For example, when writing my paper for lowering the drinking age to 19 I had motive to look up more statistics on the effects of everything and I had to make the paper sound appealing so people would bother to read it. Doing this helped me understand that you need to have sourced facts and knowledge about what you are talking about to even have people consider looking at what you have to say. I have also seen while writing that same position paper I have to come up with ideas from the opposing side so I can hopefully make a small connection with them as well so they do not just ditch the paper have way through. Usually you have to find something that is a negative but that negative also has to have a positive that helps the position that you are fighting for which in my case that was decreasing the drinking age at the cost of highway funding, but the second positive was that the sales of alcohol might even make more than the highway funding provided which keeps both sides in tune to see what else I have to say. Critical thinking is something I have also struggled with and that I still do struggle with because I never really know what to look at when I am trying to identify the purpose of the articles. The only way I got the purpose was when I was writing the film review, and that is because the film review only is meant for people that have seen the certain film, so the purpose would just to be how the film impacted me and the other people would either agree with it or have different inputs. The one thing I did understand about critical thinking was the making informed connections. I understood this because all you have to do is think of being in the writer’s shoes and think of how the perspective that they are doing is or was at one point very similar which will make the connections come much easier. The last part of critical thinking that I struggle with is that situational and cultural context, this is something I feel like I have to do more research and have more experience in writing before I will get to know the exact context. The writing and research process is by far one of my stronger areas when writing because this is usually how I like to learn. Again, using the position paper, I actually enjoyed looking through many news articles and laws regarding the drinking age and using the knowledge to make my paper very informative and have meaning to people that are going to read it. Another strong area of mine is how revising helps the most out of pretty much everything else. Revising gives me a chance to look back once again and slowly go over my full paper to make the smallest changes on every sentence to attempt to make the paper the best that I can possibly do. All the critique I got while taking English 101 gave me a look at how someone else was thinking which helped me see what I can say to make the paper even more appealing than it already is. My personal favorite of all of this was the academic research. I liked this the most because it made a challenge to find the reliable news sources and I had to look out for the sites that were unreliable and outdated. With my topics everything I had was pretty much up to date and I was able to find recent information that was interesting and true to the words. As I mentioned earlier, peer reviewing has also opened my eyes to see what other people are thinking but I also liked doing the same thing to other people, even if it was just a few sentence suggestions or grammar fixes I enjoyed seeing what else people had around the same topic also giving me ideas for my paper. Academic writing has always been a problem for me because I never really had much practice with any of this before attending college. This semester I for sure increased my use of words and learned how to use the in-text sources feature in Microsoft Word. Grammar structure was also a big problem before college as well as my teachers in high school were much more “relaxed” when it came down to grading which would allow me to write sloppy sentences and get away with it which I can tell you first hand does not fly here at all. While taking this course I have learned to use better words to explain situations and to appeal to the audience that was going to read the paper. With primary and secondary sources, I never really understood those too well. I know that primary is the firsthand evidence and secondary describes the primary source but I believe this was more seen on the discussion board we had online rather then what we did in class for reviewing so my knowledge concerning this topic is still developing and I am sure as time goes on I will get a better understanding of everything. In conclusion, English 101 has taught me a lot of things that have helped me improve my writing style and the way I think about reading articles and books. After taking this class, I feel like any future class with papers will be a breeze and for future jobs I have learned that making a resume will help me secure a position later in life. The one thing that will always stick with me that I liked the most was when the class was taught how to cite websites using word. Using this helped me complete other papers that were in and out of the English class and without it, I do not know how I would of cited correctly.

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