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haledamage · 5 years

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Kira Grace Kingston

female, she/her

5'6”, slender build

shoulder-length, straight dark-brown hair

pale, lightly freckled skin

light brown eyes

bisexual (though I play her in-game as straight because I just really connected with the all-male Unit Bravo for some reason)

Taurus, born 28 April 1992; 25 at the beginning of Book 1, turns 26 between Book 1 and 2

left-handed

Romance: all of them, I’m using the same Detective for all routes

(infodump about her under the cut, for my own purposes mostly but also for anyone interested)

--Was inspired to become a cop to help people after having one help her when she really, really needed it. Wanted to pay it forward, so to speak.

--Kira is a natural leader and very good at deduction and problem solving (it’s her second highest stat, after people/psychology). She would have likely gone out for detective soon anyway, but didn’t think she was ready or old enough to be in charge of the whole station yet and was surprised when the promotion came. The rest of the station had been secretly considering her their boss for years before Detective Reele retired, but Kira somehow has no idea.

--Totally shot Adam. Feels really bad about it but would never tell him that.

--Will drink tea or coffee, but prefers tea. Her favorites are cinnamon tea and masala chai. If she’s drinking coffee, she prefers the sugary, flavored, Starbucks-like variety, but will sometimes drink it black just to unnerve people (people mostly being Tina).

--Doesn’t wear much make-up, but likes to paint her nails. Usually black or some other dark color, a “layover from her misspent youth.”

--Wears contacts. Has gold-framed glasses that she wears when she has to, but hates them. She’s farsighted, so if for some reason she can’t wear her contacts, she only puts on the glasses for reading.

--Plays guitar and lap steel guitar. Prefers to play blues music, but can play just about any genre. A pretty good singer, but very shy about it. Probably only Rebecca and Tina have ever heard her sing as far as she knows. (she sings to herself at her desk sometimes, but doesn’t realize it. All of UB have probably noticed; Felix definitely has, and is likely waiting for a good opportunity to tease her about it)

--She’s always been very close with Rebecca. They’re both rather independent-minded, so she didn’t mind her mother’s absences so much. Mum was always there when she needed her, and always willing to listen, and that’s what mattered. Now that she knows what she does, Kira is sure that she’s called her mother while she was on a mission before, but Rebecca still always answered, and that fact makes her respect and admire her mum even more.

--Lost a bet to Verda in regards to The Reveal. Verda had said the Murphy case and its oddities were supernatural in nature, Kira said it was science experiments gone awry. Technically, they were both right, but Verda was more right. Kira looks forward to one day being able to tell him, even if she’ll be out £50 for it.

--The only reason Kira isn’t some reclusive hermit is because of Tina Poname. Tina and Kira met when they were both in a very low place, and have lifted each other up and helped put each other back on their feet. Their friendship is very important to Kira, and the fact that she can’t tell Tina that the Hot Secret Agents they’re working with are Hot Secret Agent Vampires is the hardest part of The Reveal. She’s not used to keeping secrets from Tina.

--Tina and Kira have a monthly movie night. One of them picks the movie and the other picks the food, then they swap the next month. It’s more like an adult slumber party than anything else, really, lots of wine and gossip and venting if need be. It’s a tradition going back years now and neither would miss it for the world.

--Is very good with people, it’s her highest stat, but doesn’t actually enjoy being around them much. Very much an introvert, prefers silence and solitude or the company of close friends only. She works very hard to be as approachable as she is.

--Curses like a sailor. Poor Nate.

--Loves to read. Anything and everything. You put a book in front of her and she’ll read it. Mysteries are a favorite.

--Her favorite color is wintergreen like Adam’s eyes.

--Apartment style would be somewhere between cosy and dark. Kind of a Spooky Grandma’s House vibe. Lush fabrics and textures, soft sofas and chairs, but subdued colors. Black, gray, navy blue, with pale blue and wintergreen accents. Artwork is mostly made by locals or by friends from university. Bookshelves nearly overflowing. Apartment is kept clean, but always looks a bit cluttered.

--Preferred clothing style is casual but professional. Jeans, most often paired with a t-shirt or button-up shirt. Mostly long sleeves, but with the sleeves pushed up to her elbows. Usually black, sometimes white or gray, very, very rarely dark green or dark blue. Black leather jacket when it’s cold. Almost always wears black boots; she paid more for those boots than she did for her car (but that says more for how little she paid for the car than how expensive her boots actually are).

--Speaks seven languages. English, Sign Language, Spanish, French, German, Welsh, and, because someone dared her to at university, Sindarin Elvish. With the exception of the elvish, she learned most of them out of necessity or exposure.

--English literature major. Doesn’t serve much in her job, but she’s still proud of it.

--Very shy when it comes to flirting. She hates it about herself. She’s very confident and self-assured in almost every other situation, but if someone starts showing the slightest bit of genuine interest in her she flusters very easily.

--Dated Bobby in year one at university for a couple months. With him in journalism and her in English lit, they had a lot of class overlap early on, and he was familiar and clearly interested and that was enough, for a while. She regrets that she fell so easily for his flirting and has resolved since to not be such an “easy mark” in the future. Hasn’t dated anyone since and hasn’t wanted to (until UB barge into her office, obviously). Kind of hates him, but would never let him know that; she is, instead, very meticulously polite to him, never any more or less.

--At the beginning of Book 1, she has 4 tattoos. Gets a 5th one during the 2 months between Book 1 and Book 2. -a small, stylized crown on her right wrist (Rebecca has a matching one that she hides under her watch band at work) because Kingston -bars of music wrapped around her right bicep (watercolour-style effect behind it - the music is Tom Petty’s “Won’t Back Down”) -a quote on the inside of her left bicep (“I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein) -a large full-color floral piece from her left hip almost to her knee (forget-me-nots for her father, lupines for her mother, lavender roses and verbena for herself) -new tattoo is a simple, black crescent moon on the back of her neck to symbolize a new beginning (keeps it hidden under her hair most of the time, especially at work).

--Preferred method of working out is rock climbing/wall climbing. Has some combat training, mostly just from the police academy, but she tries to attend aikido lessons when she has time. She likes that it lets her defend herself without being stronger than her opponent, especially now that she deals with the supernatural so much.

--Kira didn’t realize how attached she’d grown to Unit Bravo until the attack on her apartment. She wanted to stay to help her team; on every route, she has to be dragged away in order to get her to leave. Completely, 100% ride or die for all of them.

Kira is my only Detective and I’m using her in all four routes (sorry, folks, I can’t do the Love Triangle. I tried, but I can’t, it already hurts and I’m not strong enough). It’s been very interesting, since she has the same personality no matter what, to see in what ways she connects with each member of Unit Bravo, and the slight changes in her personality stats based on how she responds to romance-specific scenes.

Adam: arguably my “canon” romance for her, though I legitimately and completely love all of them. On his route, her stats skew a little more toward Stubborn and Impulsive because she’s spiteful and he’s kind of an ass, especially to start with.

They’re both headstrong and natural leaders, so they butt heads a lot in terms of authority. She doesn’t like that Adam tries to order her around, he doesn’t like that she refuses to listen to orders sometimes out of spite. But when they actually try to get along, they agree more often than not and could probably make an amazing team given time.

She’s completely, head-over-heels in love with him, but she hasn’t figured it out yet, though she knows she feels something for him. He makes her feel safe, which is how she knows that she’s in deep.

On Adam’s route, Nate is Kira’s best friend. Poor guy’s gonna be stuck between the immovable object and the unstoppable force for 7 fucking books.

Nate: On Nate’s route, Kira’s stats tend more toward Cautious, and also a bit more Heart on the Heart/Mind scale.

Of all of them, Nate would be the one Kira would be most surprised to find herself falling for. She’s not much of a romantic, generally, but she’s also never had anyone look at her like Nate does, or treat her like she’s something precious and important. She feels completely off balance with him and has no idea how to react. She has never been so overwhelmed with a desire to kiss someone before.

Personality-wise, they have a lot in common, both are good with people, compassionate, linguistically talented, and avid readers; to anyone except Kira, them getting together makes perfect sense. He probably doesn’t like how stubborn and foul-mouthed she is, but between Adam and Mason, he’s used to dealing with it.

On Nate’s route, Mason is Kira’s best friend. No one is more surprised about that than they are, and they aren’t really sure how that happened.

Felix: On Felix’s route, Kira skews more toward Easygoing and Impulsive.

In a word, Felix helps Kira relax. She’s a bit of a workaholic and he brings her out of her shell and reminds her that she’s more than just Detective Kingston. It’s refreshing and overwhelming. Romance with Felix is easy.

He’s the only one where she doesn’t end up 100% shy because, even though she still gets horribly flustered by him, he doesn’t make her as tongue-tied as the others do. Maybe it’s because he’s so much less intense than the others, but also she kind of feels like she’s always known him.

She wants to show him the world, all the little things about being human that she’s always taken for granted but he never had in Echo World. Paper airplanes and creepy travelling carnivals and movie theater popcorn and photo booths and everything. They’ll be good for each other, but them joining forces is probably very bad for everyone else.

On Felix’s route, Nate is Kira’s best friend. Unlike with Adam, he isn’t so much trapped between two opposing forces as he is an exhausted parent trying to corral overly-curious children.

Mason: On Mason’s route, Kira’s stats tend even more toward Genuine than they do on other routes, as well as Stubborn.

On the surface Mason and Kira probably don’t look like they’d work, but really I think they’re the pairing that makes the most sense. Mason doesn’t drain her social batteries as much as the others, even at the beginning when he’s as hostile toward her as possible. They both enjoy the quiet, and that’s where the first romantic feelings from her would form, in the calm and silent comfort she feels with him.

But obviously, it doesn’t start romantic even a little bit. At the beginning, she’s neither intimidated nor put off by his sharp, brusque personality, and she’s very flustered and intimidated by his intense manner of flirting, though she’s not really put off by it either. She doesn’t know how to respond to it (though he clearly enjoys how she reacts), but he makes her feel desired in a way she never has before. There’s a certain comfort to knowing that he only wants her physically, that he’s straightforward in his interests.

I imagine that she figures out she’s falling for him after he does something small that should be innocuous, some little off-hand affection that he didn’t even think about and she just goes “oh shit, I’m in love with Mason.”

On Mason’s route, Felix is Kira’s best friend. He definitely sees them falling for each other long before they see it and does everything he can to get them to stop being idiots and realize that they’re in love.

#the wayhaven chronicles #kira kingston #I'm also tagging this as #rhitober #day 12 #day 13 #because I've had a brutal migraine all weekend and can't concentrate to write creatively #but infodumping like this is easier #and since it's over 2k words I think it still counts as writing #I'm glad to finally get this all written down even if I'm probably the only one that'll read it #I've gotten really attached to kira #and I love the little details that change about her between romances even though her base personality stays the same #twc

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weepylucifer · 4 years

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Let’s Go in the Garden - Ch. 1

Team Folly takes a call and unearths a bit of past that everyone believed long-buried.

“Aed,” said the fae. “Please, you may call me Aed.”

It was, that much I knew from what had stuck during my leafing through the Folly’s mundane library, one of the lesser known faerie aliases, like Aisling or Myself or Nobody, something for a fae to use in a pinch, and certainly not likely to be this guy’s actual name. But it had been what he’d responded to my inquiry after his legal name - fine, A legal name for our files.

Aed looked like David Bowie and Kurt Cobain had had a lovechild, whom they then abandoned to be raised by a family of raccoons.

He was tall, pale, skinny and he gangled, and everything about him looked… dejected, is what I’m trying to bring across here. Fae have often been observed to dress according to their chosen vocation, or so one of the ancient wizards said who used to record his observations on the demi-monde within the Folly’s records. I’ve certainly also seen this here and there, like Molly’s Edwardian servant dress or Foxglove’s artist getup. This guy seemed like he was trying to play up a role of… hermit, or dumpster-diver.

Aed’s story was this: once upon a time, in some vague past, his… Nightingale says ‘tribe’, I would opt for ‘community’… of fae had had some neighbourly dispute with another one. Before they knew it, dispute became war, there had been a vicious attack, and Aed’s people had been scattered. Far as he knew, he might be the last one standing. Now, unwilling to pass back into the realm in which his type of fae actually dwelt for fear of what might await him there, Aed subsisted in a... it cannot be said any more politely, in a dank cave out on Dartmoor, far from any kind of civilisation save for a few scattered villages around and about. They barely counted, for my part; most of them could barely boast one decent pub.

Sometimes, occasionally, people from these adjoining towns would stumble upon Aed’s dwelling. Purely by accident, you understand, it wasn’t like he was luring anyone out here, or at least so he claimed. Most people, he could simply cause to forget. They would head home and not bother him out here again. But sometimes, people came to him with a wish to make. A bargain to offer. Troubled people, he said. People who, like him, longed for escape. A quiet place, to hide from something, just to get away from it all, and bliss. Oblivion. Respite.

I looked into that gaunt face framed by sad, stringy hair, those long, bony fingers fiddling nervously with the strings of his moss-green hoodie, and understood that Aed actually had thought he was helping. And the disappearances had been too few and far between as to ever rouse the suspicion of the Folly, or much of anyone for that matter. But then, about a week ago, a girl named Lucinda Blaine had gone missing and, what with her being the great-granddaughter of a bloke remotely connected to Hugh Oswald’s gossip mill, we’d gotten a call on the Folly’s ancient landline. Even ancient retired practitioners keep their eyes open, apparently, and people disappearing plus a relatively recently circulated local fairy myth about the area had warranted a call to us. So we’d headed out here because, well, obligation, missing children, all that jazz. This time, Nightingale had tagged along, possibly because he too felt an obligation towards one of his centenarian cohorts and, by extension, their families. Apparently, just after the war, he’d been asked to stand godfather to the spawn of about anyone who’d made it back to England and gotten it in their heads to start procreating. There had been guys trying to name their sons after him. These days, all the hype seemed to have died down: we didn’t often get veterans calling the Folly, and if Nightingale was otherwise in contact with any of them, I’d never noticed, and I got the feeling he preferred this.

“But she approached me with a wish,” Aed was now saying. I was taking his statement right there in the cave, seeing as he couldn’t be persuaded to leave it, and abandon his sleeping charges. “She told me her situation had become untenable. That she longed to escape the torments of her life.”

“Well, she’s eight,” I replied, maybe a bit more sharply than was strictly appropriate. “Eight-year-olds try to run away from home sometimes. Doesn’t mean adults should enable that. Yeah, her parents getting a divorce is causing her a lot of grief right now, but she’ll get better eventually. It for sure doesn’t warrant putting her into a magical sleep forever.”

I looked around the cave. Lucinda was nowhere near the only person asleep here, although we had been quick to find her. The other people resting here in their magical stasis were adults, thank god for small mercies. There were green vines everywhere, making up beds for the sleepers, growing under and above and beyond them; the ones that had evidently been here the longest were all but covered in vegetation. But they were all breathing, and none of them looked worse for wear.

“People have to go and confront their problems,” I said. “What do you think sleeping it off is going to solve? Will they really be happier when they wake up and it’s a hundred years later?”

Aed looked at me, saddened and confused. Here was a guy who had been out here on his own for too long, I thought. He had lived here in his own little world, where making people disappear was justified and good, and now he suddenly had wizards in his home demanding he stop. “Their problem would be gone,” he said softly.

“They’d have other, bigger problems instead.” I shook my head. Sometime soon, we’d have to wake up all these people and get them out of here, preferably into medical care; they would be in shock and needing to be looked at. I had no idea how the folks over in the town would cope with having everyone who disappeared here within the last couple years back at once. Mostly, though, right this moment, I was worried about getting Aed to part with his charges. He didn’t look like he had a lot of fight in him, but with the demi-monde you never know.

It was then that Nightingale tapped me on the shoulder. “Perhaps I should like to have a word with Aed here, outside,” he said. “In the meantime, you’d better start reviving the victims. Getting these plants off of them should do the trick, but try not to have them touch your skin. And see if you can call anybody at the local force, these people are going to be needing medical attention.” Then he gently, but firmly put a hand on Aed’s shoulder and steered him towards the mouth of the cave.

“Now,” I heard him say, “let me tell you, one survivor to another…”

I tried not to strain my ears to listen to what they were discussing. I had work to do, anyway. Through some minor miracle, I had a signal up here, so I called down at the station in one of those arse-end-of-the-world towns and got told that while it would be nigh-impossible to get an ambulance out here, there would at the very least be a team of first responders along soonish. I sighed to myself, already impatient to return to London and civilisation, but there was a job to do first. I put on gloves and started to unravel all the vines.

Nightingale proved to have been right, people began waking up as soon as I got the flora off them. They were fairly out of it, most of them confused, somewhat frightened, especially the eight-year-old. Apparently most of them had not come out here for a bargain with the faerie expecting to be laid to sleep in a cave. I questioned them - gently, you see. There was a group of twenty-somethings here who’d wanted to celebrate some pagan ritual (completely made up). There were some other folks who’d simply angled for a meditative moment, to honor a little local custom, to leave a wish for the faerie, expecting... well, nothing much. After all, the Good Gentlemen of the Hills weren’t real, right - until they were. Some of these people had indeed been here for years. I had my hands full, and the situation was coming precariously close to slipping from me when the first-response-team showed up, dispensing shock blankets and gently corralling everyone to where they’d parked the ambulance.

Just about then, Nightingale came back. He wasn’t terribly wordy, said he had been able to persuade Aed to return home at last, to finally check on his people. I wanted to ask what he said to him but didn’t, a slight bit afraid that he’d had to make threats of some sort or worse, give Aed the Condensed Ettersberg. I imagine suspecting you’re the last one of your people and knowing it makes a bit of a difference, and according to Nightingale, last anyone from the Folly had checked, some of Aed’s tribe had still been extant, so who knows. Maybe there was hope for that guy yet.

“You missed another one back here,” Nightingale said at last, striding deeper into the cave.

There was what remained of Aed’s camp here, a sleeping bag and futon, a portable stovetop, a few bags with odds and ends. Depressing. There was, indeed, also another buried sleeper.

The vines were thickest towards the back of the cave, a verdant green affair that didn’t look quite… real, almost stylized, like vines in a video game rather than real life plants. They were almost as thick as a man’s forearm, and the shape of the last person trapped here was suggested rather than seen. I had trouble pulling them off without potentially injuring the sleeper, so Nightingale said, “Allow me,” and disintegrated them using some at-least-fifth-order spell. I had half an eye on the other sleepers who were all slowly coming to, so I left him to it until he called my name.

“Peter,” he said, and there was a sudden tension to his voice that worried me, “I’m afraid we have another problem.”

He had unearthed the whole man - I have to assume - by now, and was looking at him with a hard-to-read expression. There was almost some disdain in it, certainly a load of dismay.

“Sir?” I asked.

“This is another sort of glamour here, some seducere variant,” he explained, “or another fae. It cannot possibly be what it looks like.”

This surprised me, seeing as I wasn’t feeling anything at all weird - no vestigia, nothing. By the looks of it, this was another ordinary bloke sleeping here, another result of a dodgy deal with the fae. But I decided to defer to Nightingale’s expertise. “How so?” I asked.

“For the sake of convenience,” Nightingale said, “Could you please describe to me what you are seeing here?” He gestured at the sleeping man and there was some undercurrent of something in his voice, something badly repressed there, and my concern and confusion mounted. Still, I obliged.

“I’m seeing a white male, early or mid-fourties by the looks of him,” I started my description. “Dark hair, sort of unkempt, sort of a gaunt look to him. He has a mole or birthmark on his neck, here.” I tapped my own thoat in the corresponding place. “He is wearing what appears to be hiking gear, pretty old, that is to say old-fashioned but well-maintained. He must’ve been laid up here for quite some time. Boots, like army boots, like the pair you have. Grey canvas jacket, or maybe it’s khaki.” Hard to tell in this light.

If anything, my description seemed to surprise Nightingale even more. “Yes, that is… that seems to correspond with what I’m seeing.” He shook his head. “I was expecting for you to be seeing… something else.”

“Like what?” I don’t get impatient with my governor often, but I have to admit I was starting to hate how tongue-tied he was being.

“Probably a woman,” he said cryptically. “Anyway, this cannot be what it appears to be, seeing as I know this person, and he’s been dead for quite awhile.”

Ah. Well, shit. And here I’d been so glad already that this situation had gone over without any fighting. I wanted to ask Nightingale who it was, but he beat me to it before I could so much as open my mouth.

“Right,” he said. “Let’s get it over with. Stand back, I’ll try to wake him.”

Before I could think to argue, or even make up my mind about what alternative action to argue for, Nightingale gripped his staff tightly, got down on one knee and used his free hand to shake the sleeper by the shoulder.

The man was slower to rouse than any of the others we’d found; he murmured something, a hand coming up to swat in the vague direction of Nightingale’s, but after a minute, his heavy eyelids fluttered open.

Voice thick with sleep, the stranger slurred, “Thomas?”

Nightingale straightened, took two steps back and huffed out through his nose. “Don’t even attempt it.”

The stranger blinked, evidently confused, and then, with surprising speed, he lunged to his feet. I admit I flinched.

The stranger’s legs were trembling, he was shaky with the effort of keeping himself upright after laying prone here for god knows how long. Hair fell into his eyes as he leveled a wild-eyed gaze at my governor.

“Get away!” he shouted, his voice hoarse. “You’re that fae again. You’re a shape-changer, aren’t you? How dare you appear to me like this?”

Nightingale raised an eyebrow. “I should be asking you these questions.”

“You’re not Thomas. Thomas fell at Ettersberg.”

“What?” Nightingale crossed his arms; it was almost funny how indignant he sounded. “No, it’s you who died as a result of Ettersberg.”

Jesus Christ, I thought, Ettersberg again. It’s always fucking Ettersberg, isn’t it? Unbelievable, really, how much my life was being affected by a place I’d never been to and had no desire to visit.

“Nonsense,” the stranger ground out harshly. “We… we had no word, there was, there was no way anyone on the ground got out.”

Nightingale was drumming his fingers against the tip of his cane, as much proof of his pique as I’d ever seen him exhibit. “And yet here I am.”

“That’s… no. You’re not Thomas.”

“It is you who isn’t what you profess to be.” I was seeing just how tired Nightingale was growing of this back and forth. Whoever, whatever this was pretending to be one of his old war buddies, it had him careening towards the end of his tether.

“I am exactly what I profess to be,” the stranger claimed. He took a deep breath. “In 1930, in November, I was visiting you while you were staying at the consulate in Lahore. We sat in the gardens, under the stars, and you said to me that you wouldn’t mind if–”

Nightingale cut him off with a sharp wave of his hand. “You could easily pluck that from my memories.”

I had been watching the exchange, I must admit, with my mouth slightly agape. Now I saw an opportune moment to cut in. “Sir,” I said. “He claims to be someone from the old Folly, right?”

“That’s right,” Nightingale replied at the same time as the stranger asked, “Who’s that?” like he was just now noticing me for the first time.

“My apprentice,” Nightingale introduced me. “Whatever you have to say to me can be said in front of him.”

I found that a little bit of an odd thing to say in the moment, but I was also flattered at the show of trust.

“An apprentice?” The stranger snorted. “Yeah, bullshit. My Thomas doesn’t have an apprentice, and no desire to take one either.”

I ignored him for the time being. “Sir, as for proving his identity, one way or the other,” I suggested, “could you recognize his signare? Is it possible to fake that?”

Nightingale looked at me in the way he does when I hit on something he hasn’t considered before. “Not that I know of.” He beckoned towards the stranger and demanded, in one of his rare militaristic tones, “Right. Werelight, please.”

“You too,” the stranger said through clenched teeth.

“While we’re at it,” Nightingale said with a nod and they both held their palms out, and conjured a werelight each.

Now, I’d like to say I’m familiar enough with Nightingale’s signare from all this time spent around him watching him work his magic. The stranger’s was entirely new: like a gust of fresh air through a recently opened window (I thought I could even feel a hint of the curtains blowing in the sudden breeze, white and starched), a hand skimming over cool tiles, the sound of something bubbling in a beaker, and a hint of pine that weirdly seemed to correspond with a component of Nightingale’s own signare, like two pieces of something coming together.

The stranger gaped. “It’s really you. You’re really here, you… you’ve found me.”

I glanced from him to Nightingale, who seemed to have frozen solid. His staff clattered loudly as it hit the ground. And I swear, I have never ever seen this purely indescribable look on my governor’s face.

“David.”

“Hi, Thomas.”

I kind of stared. David is a common name, but somehow I knew exactly which one this was. I knew approximately two things about David Mellenby with a certainty: he’d been very into science, and he was definitely dead. No wonder Nightingale was suspicious. Apart from that… not much. Nightingale had brought him up maybe twice.

“This isn’t possible.” I barely recognized this as Nightingale’s voice, but it was coming out of his mouth, so what else could it be? “You’re… dead, they told me, Hugh Oswald found your body. It about gave his nerves the rest.”

The stranger - David, apparently - twisted his mouth into a discomfited frown. “Hugh Oswald found a body. I’m so sorry.”

“But how…” Nightingale shook his head. He looked as if a train had hit him, and it was a disquieting sight. I was used to Nightingale in control, see, I was used to him being the guy who, well, might not always know right away what to do, but will reliably find out. “What are you doing here?”

“I left… I ran. I had to get away. It got... too much, being in the Folly, with that damnable library there. I don’t know, I barely knew what I was doing. I just wanted to disappear. I had no idea you’d made it out of Ettersberg, Thomas, I would never let you believe I was dead. You must know that. I ran into this fae out here and… I’m not sure what happened then, but I must have talked myself into a right mess.” Mellenby tried for a smile. “But it can’t have been too long, can it? You look good. Did you just get home? You seem to have recovered rather splendidly. Are you… are we alright?”

Nightingale seemed to unfreeze at that. He stepped forward, and then, with unfailing precision, he punched Mellenby in the nose.

Mellenby, still unsteady on his feet, reeled back, stumbled and landed flat on his arse clutching his bloody nose. “Thomas! What on earth–”

“You…” Nightingale was breathing heavily. “You were here the whole time, alive, you ran away, is what you’re telling me? How could you do this to Oswald? How could you do this to me!”

I was seriously starting to worry for everyone’s continued safety here. Nightingale stood rooted to the spot, trembling fists white-knuckled at his sides and let’s be frank, he’s not a guy who hauls off and punches people. I’d thought I’d known what anger looked like on him but boy, did I have no idea. I’d seen him more controlled while actively in a fight with Chorley.

Mellenby stared up at him, his eyes wide. “My songbird…”

“No. You don’t get to… no. I’ve been alone with it all for - eighty years have passed, David!”

There was a dreadful little silence in which Mellenby just blinked. “I… are you saying I slept for eighteen years?”

“Eighty,” I piped up. The both of them turned towards me as if only just remembering I was there.

“Peter.” Nightingale’s voice was leaden. “Hand me my staff, will you? I seem to have dropped it.”

“Sir, may I suggest not doing anything you might regret,” I posited, because ‘my songbird’ was still kind of echoing, if not in the cave then certainly in my mind. I was closest to where his staff had rolled off to, so I did pick it up, but made no move to hand it over.

“Allow me to judge this for myself,” Nightingale said through clenched teeth. He beckoned in my direction without looking at me, his eyes still boring holes into David. “And give me my staff.”

I didn’t know if he wanted to use it for its intended purpose or just as a blunt object, but I couldn’t in good conscience enable either. “Sir, I don’t think–”

“I shan’t repeat myself.”

“Thomas, please, you know I love your little pranks, but this is not the time–” Mellenby started to say, but Nightingale waved his hand in the sharp downward motion that accompanied his more theatrical spells, and Mellenby’s mouth clicked shut.

He stared up at Nightingale in complete disbelief, eyes wide and shining with the onset of tears, unable to get his mouth open. I had seen this once before, and yet again I felt the vast and smooth click-clicking of Nightingale’s magic at work. But it felt different than the usual, disordered, the myriad little gears grinding.

“Sir,” I said, more sharply than I perhaps had intended. Nightingale finally turned to look at me, and slowly, gradually, he slipped back into the 21st century, where we have rules against using our magic on people in anger.

Mellenby crumpled to the floor when he was released from the spell, his head lowered, eyes leaking, cheeks glowing from the strain of trying to open his mouth earlier, some blood still smeared below his nose. Nightingale looked from me to him to me again.

“My apologies,” he said stiffly, to the room in general, and strode for the exit.

#i never started in media res before #david mellenby lives AU #idk if this is... wise to post like idk if this is good and this chapter is mostly exposition and scene-setting but #eh you know what i added some of the drama originally intended for chapter 2 bc hey it felt prudent right this second #posts by me

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loadlonestar494 · 3 years

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Kenichi The Mightiest Disciple Ova 12 Release Date

Kenichi The Mightiest Disciple Ova 12 Release Date 2

Kenichi Ova Episode 12

Shun Matsuena's Shijō Saikyō no Deshi Kenichi manga already inspired TV anime

This year's 47th issue of Shogakukan's Weekly Shonen Sunday magazine is announcing on Wednesday that an original video anime (OVA) project of Shun Matsuena's Shijō Saikyō no Deshi Kenichi (History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi) manga has been green-lit. The anime studio Brains Base will produce the project. More details and the release date information will be provided in future issues of Weekly Shonen Sunday.

Hey has anyone heard any news about Kenichi: History's Strongest Disciple ova getting a dub or if there will be anymore, i have done a little looking but found nothing on the matter and really don't know where to look. I just finished 1-50 and it was soooo good and i want more haha, so is there any news on 51+ or the the ova getting a dub. Short Special bundled with the Fourth and Fifth OVA episodes. History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi: Specials Special 12 (0) OVA Special 1. Just announced History's Strongest Disciple OVA 10 coming soon. Shogakukan will ship the limited edition bundle in Japan on May 16. Kenichi the mightiest disciple ova op full - Duration: 3:52. Mar 14, 2012 OVAs of History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi bundled with volumes 46, 47, 49, 53, 54, 55, & 56 of the manga. Alternate Titles: 史上最強の弟子ケンイチ, Shijou Saikyou no Deshi Kenichi, 'History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi' Genre: Action, Comedy, Martial Arts, School, Shounen, Sub Type: TV(Fall 2006) Status: Finished Airing Number of Episodes: 50 Episode(s) Views: 1370 Views Date: Oct 7, 2006 to Sep 30, 2007 MyAnimeList Score: 8.16.

The manga already inspired a television anime series that Funimationreleased in North America.

(Via Manga News)

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Kenichi The Mightiest Disciple Ova 12 Release Date 2

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Kenichi Ova Episode 12

Kenichi STORY:ShirahamaKenichi is an average 15-year-old high school student who has earned the nickname 'Weak Legs' fromalways getting bullied. One day he meets a cute girl named Furinji Miuwho helps him build the courage to begin training at a mysterious dojowhere she lives. Here Kenichi faces intense training from masters of manydifferent martial arts styles as he attempts to become stronger. Kenichi eventually becomes a full disciple of Ryōzanpaku, and becomes enamored of Miu. Subsequently, Kenichi's daily routine is divided between training under the six masters of Ryōzanpaku, and his fights against the members of 'Ragnarok', a gang of bullies trying alternately to recruit or to vanquish him. After Ragnarok is disbanded, Kenichi andMiu are targeted by Yomi, a group of disciples personally trained by a master of an organization rivaling Ryōzanpaku, Yami. While the masters of Ryōzanpaku and their allies follow the principle of always sparing their opponents' lives (Katsujin-ken), the members of Yami believe that any means of defeating an opponent is valid, including murder (Satsujin-ken). In the struggle between the two factions, Kenichi, Miu, and their allies fight the members of Yomi, while his mastersconfront the members of Yami.

A pretty snazzy character selection screen, that is.

ABOUT: ShijouSaikyou no Deshi: Kenichi (literally translated asHistory's Strongest DiscipleKenichi) is a 3D fighting game developed and published by Capcom, based on the manga and animeseries of the same name. Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple began as a Japanese manga written and illustrated by Syun Matsuena. The first tankōbon was published in August 2002. An anime adaptation made by Tokyo Movie Shinsha aired from October 2006 to September 2007 and had 50 episodes. The Kenichi PS2 fighting game was the first ever videogame based on the Kenichi series, releasing only in Japan in March 2007.

Kenichi features 12 selectable characters, each representing their unique fighting styles seen in the original manga and anime. Modes include Story, Versus, Practice, Score Attack, Time Attack, Survival, Mission, and Gallery. For each character,you can choose two battle styles 'Quiet' and 'Motion'. Quiet focuses ondefense and counter attacks, while 'Motion' focuses on attacks and explodeanger (super combos). During battles there are 3 types of attacks: shockskills (strikes), truth skills and return skills (counter attacks). Shockskills are stronger than Truth skills; Truth skills are stronger than Returnskills; and Return skills are stronger than Shock skills.

https://loadlonestar494.tumblr.com/post/657336202910908416/firefox-os-x-104. Download Old Version of Firefox for Mac for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger (PowerPC) Skip Development Versions tead. 13 March, 2012 (9 years ago) 18.77 MB. Mozilla Firefox 3.5.19. 28 April, 2011 (10 years ago) 17.84 MB. Mozilla Firefox. I'm running Mac OS X 10.4.11 'Intel,' TenFourFox doesn't help with that. Whenever I load Firefox it tells me to upgrade to 12.0 for security reasons. 12.0 is most definitely not compatible with the version of OS X on my MacBook Pro.

Where have I seen this stage before?

In more ways than one, Kenichi resembles Capcom's well known 3D fighting game series starring high school stereotypes, Rival Schools. From the cel-shaded 3D graphics style of Kenichi to the stylized anime characters, Kenichi is an attractive looking PS2 game for the time. The fighting stays mostly on a 2D plane, but there are somesidestepping techniques as well. The gameplay is comparable to several Capcom fighters, but focuses more on martial arts techniques and less on projectiles. The gameplay isn't nearly as solid or deep as comparable fighting games of 2007, but features plenty of fan service for those familiar with the manga and anime series.

Page Updated:January 29th, 2020Developer(s):Eighting Co.Publisher(s):CapcomPlatform(s): PlayStation 2 Release Date(s): March 2007 Characters: Kenichi, Takeda, Miu, Ukita, Siegfried, Hermit, Nijima, Valkyrie, Thor, Loki, Freiya, Berserker, Odin, 20

Featured Video:

Related Games:Project Justice, Rival Schools, Fate/Unlimited Codes, Hokuto No Ken, The King of Fighters 2006, The King of Fighters: Maximum Impact Regulation A, Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection, Virtua Fighter 5, Virtua Fighter 5 R, Battle Fantasia, Sengoku Basara X, Martial Masters, Sunday X Magazine

Gameplay EngineStory / ThemeOverall GraphicsAnimationMusic / Sound EffectsInnovationArt DirectionCustomizationOptions / ExtrasIntro / PresentationReplayability / Fun'Ouch' FactorCharacters

BOTTOM LINE

Final Words:

Kenichi is one of the few fighting games with 'Capcom' written on the box that I haven't played. (Although, the game was developed by Eighting.) Out of many of the 'me too' anime fighting games that spawned in the mid / late 2000's (and after), Kenishi seemed like one of the more interesting ones. The series seems like aperfect fit for a fighting game. From whatI've seen, the animation quality is rather decent. I've only caught a few episodes of the anime, and it's actually not too bad from what I remember. Some of the character designsare a bit stale, in my opinion.. but others are worth checking out. Honestly what I like most about Kenichi is that the characters seem like they could share the same universe as Rival Schools. Anyway, I don't have a modded PS2 in order to play this game.. but ifever get around to it, I'll give this game a proper review. ~TFG Webmaster

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personalportfoliohd · 5 years

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How to get into the tattoo industry

Be an artist. This is the first and most important step. You can't become a tattoo artist without first being an artist.

Build a portfolio. I mean a tattoo apprenticeship portfolio, not a tattoo artist's portfolio. They're different. Learn more below.

Find a certified tattoo artist-mentor who will take you on as an apprentice. This might be tricky. Learn how to approach a shop below.

Learn the trade. During your apprenticeship, you'll do a lot of menial tasks, but you'll also learn professional business skills, best hygienic work practices, and tattoo design.

Get certified. Every state has its own requirements; learn more and find links below.

Find a shop to work in. After your apprenticeship and certification, you'll be ready to start getting paid! But first, you'll have to find a shop to work in.

So the next part of my research about becoming a tattoo artist is actually about how to get into the tattoo industry so conducted a lot of research onto how.

https://tatring.com/getting-tattooed/StartCareerTattooingOne

1) The skin of the human body has no straight lines on it.

So how does this affect you and your drawing style? It affects you plenty if you use a ruler to create most of your drawings, because the last thing you want to put into a tattoo is a lot of straight lines. The body is in constantly flexing and contracting its muscles, as the human body is always in motion. So straight lines will almost always look curved.

Another thing you will want to stay away from is perfect or concentric circles. They are way hard to tattoo, and most shops won't touch a piece that is reliant on more than a few perfect circles (which, for the same reason you shouldn't have too many straight lines, circles get distorted when the body flexes and relaxes).

2) Does your art look like a bunch of tattoos?

While there are many styles to tattooing today, there is still the old stereotype in existence about what tattoo art on paper should look like. I do not recommend that you copy anyone's work to put into your book, but I do recommend that you look up artwork by Sailor Jerry or (the REAL) Ed Hardy, and see if you can emulate their styles. Look at the lining, where are the lines thicker and thinner? how much coverage do the utilize in the color and in the shading? Look at the pieces that move you, and try to look at them from a mechanical point of view.

3) DO NOT use someone else's work, especially someone famous, and pass it as your own.

If you decide to copy these pieces to learn the basic stylization techniques, that's cool (after all, mimicry is the highest form of flattery), but don't even think about putting them into your book. Because you have to remember, the guys you are going to look for instruction from have already seen a LOT in the way of other people's work. They know the intricacies of a Jerry or Hardy copy, or something that is meant to tribute them.

Keep your work your own, as you will get tired of copying flash to stencil before you know it. Besides, stealing is stealing, and if you're willing to steal someone else's work, the shop owner will assume you'd be willing to steal from the shop as well.

4) Create work that is shape-appropriate for body parts, and label them accordingly.

This is one of the times a ruler will come in handy in creating portfolio pieces, and having friends of various shapes and sizes will help as well. This technique is not in very common use, and I'm really shocked it isn't. Read on . . .

Pretend that you are a tattoo artist already, and have two female friends, both of different height and build. Imagine that they are both in your shop to get lower back tattoos, also commonly referred to (inappropriately) as tramp stamps, and follow these steps to document a logical method to your design capabilities

Get your camera and ruler ready. Have each woman hold up their shirt to reveal their lower back, while the other woman holds the ruler to the other's back as you snap a picture or each woman's lower back. Print this as a half page, leaving the other half of the page blank.

Get proper measurements of the top and bottom of the tattoo-able area (I call it the boundaries) using a tailor's tape measure. Note that the measurements you'll be taking both start at the spine, and work their way out toward the hips. Since the typical lower-back tattoo is symmetrical along the spine, you will only need to draw one half of it.

Use the measurements to create a bounding area on a piece of paper. BE SURE to take into account the shape of the top of each woman's behind and the angle at which the trunk transitions to the hips. Not all women have the same figure, and in designing the tattoo, you will either want to enhance her shape or play down her shape, depending on what she wants.

Go to the drawing board, and create one half of the tattoo on a sheet of paper in a black and white outline. After you ink up the outline, take your trusty ruler, photocopy it at 100%, and cut it out. Paste the ruler to your drawing to show its size without covering up any of your work.

Write a few comments about your design method, and why you came up with that design on the page you printed out the picture of each girl's lower back with the ruler. In this essay, you want to basically state the measurements you took, the figure she has, and why you believe you have designed something sufficient. Be sure to ask each lady if she liked this design the way you drew it out for her. If she does, allow her to write her name and a short statement saying that she would get this tattoo as you have designed it underneath your essay. If the lady does not like your work, well, its time for you to draw something else up for her, because, just like in the shop, everything you draw is not always going to be accepted as-is. It does help you to be humble once you get your apprenticeship, so be humble while building your portfolio.

https://www.tattoodo.com/a/2018/11/in-hentai-heaven-with-brando-chiesa-an-interview/

What are you doing when you are not tattooing? Beyond creating art, what are you passionate about?

When I am not tattooing I am drawing (!) or working on digital illustrations...I have a solitary and hermit life, I dedicate my time to drawing; I am devoted to my work like a Monk lol; this is my religion. Recently I have been working on a new personal project of mine; my personal streetwear brand.

https://99designs.co.uk/blog/designers/design-spotlight-jordan-mitchell-tattoo-artist/

When did you know you wanted to become a tattoo artist?

I knew I wanted to be a tattoo artist when I first started seeing people with tattoos that looked really nice. I never really cared for it until I came across tattoo magazines at a store one day and saw the stuff that could be done.

I guess before that, in my mind all that could be done with tattooing were simple designs. I was ignorant to how amazing the older traditional and newer modern stuff looked. That was a real wake up call. I immediately told myself “WOW I need to learn how to draw that well, and WOW I need to learn how to tattoo that good.”

Do you think there are challenges in being a tattoo artist that artists who create for themselves don’t face?

I feel like the challenges are the same, but in a different context. I think the challenges probably differ from client-to-client and the project they are asking for, whereas the challenge during your free time is just to figure out what you’re going to paint. You have complete freedom as an artist on your free time, and that can be a challenge in itself. Each tattoo has its own little challenge just like each painting or project has its own challenge that needs to be complete – but that’s the fun part.

So what I’ve seen from my research, theres a lot more to it than just illustrating- you also have to have an understanding of how the human body is shaped so that you can create your art that works on certain body parts, for example a tattoo put onto a leg would have to be designed differently for someones stomach because its shaped completely differently. Also, with the two interviews of the tattoo artists above, they are still illustrators in their own time and do that on the side as well as tattooing.

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maximelebled · 7 years

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2016

Wo-ho-ho-ho there, it's time for my yearly blogpost again.

We all know how bad this year has looked; 2016 is a terrible year, 2016 was the worst year, 2016 this, 2016 that. And really, who could blame anyone for thinking that? But I feel like I'd be doing myself a disservice by focusing too much on the negatives; with our cognitive bias and all that, we tend to forget that the world keeps on getting progressively better and that despite appearances, overall, things are looking... up? Not that we should let our guard down; in fact, more than ever, we need to be aware of each other and look out for each other. The two greatest values you can have, and that you can transmit to other people, going into 2017, are empathy and curiosity.

But anyway, I'm not a skilled writer and other folks will have already said more or less the same thing already, so now it's time to talk about myself again!

Before I do that, though, I would like to give my most heartfelt thanks to the people who have supported me through this year, whether from close circles or from further. I know, it's cliché, but at the same time I feel like people don't realize how much their support means to me, and the true, hidden impact it has had on my life. You know who you are! ♥

I still find writing this blog post to be as oddly awkward as last year, but it's good to let things out, have it all laid out in front of yourself; especially when things keep becoming more of a blur over time. I can't really distinctly remember specific periods from this year as well as 2015, but then again I'm also writing this while coming down from a nasty flu. I've read that things become more of a blur over time the more you age, because you have more of a frame of a reference to go through. That prospect makes me uneasy, but at the same time, I don’t dread it as much as I used to.

2015 was arguably a worse rollercoaster as far as I was concerned, with higher highs but also much lower lows. 2016, smoother ride? Less exciting. Even though from an outside eye it may look more impressive, which feels like a weird contradiction.

In February, I got taken onboard at Nightdive Studios to work on a really cool project: a remake of System Shock. It started out as a 1:1 project (almost like a Doom source port, if you see what I mean?) but eventually the ambitions grew into actually doing a full-fledged reboot. We ended up releasing a "pre-alpha" demo for a Kickstarter that grossed $1.35 million, and people seem to be quite excited, which I'm happy about. I wasn't very happy with my animation work in the demo but since then, I got time to iterate on it and I'm more at peace with it right now. Of course, I wish I could talk more about the project, but I obviously am not in the position to! ;)

It's funky, going from nearly two years of Dota & "cartoonish" animation right into something more AAA-realist, with less stylization, and the transition is a bit hard, but of course, it's a very valuable process to learn how to dial your own style back. I’ve felt that animating kind of goes like this:

At first, you have zero idea what you're doing and everything is super stiff and robotic. Then you learn about follow-through and inertia and you start doing that everywhere because it makes things smooth... too smooth. So then you dial it back... back... oh wait, things are too stiff again! And ultimately, after 15 years of repeating that process, back and forth, you'll probably be an amazing godlike Pixar-worthy animator... when you reach the point of being able to animate stiffness that looks smooth.

Of course, all that is a (relatively humorous) generalization but it's a pattern I've observed in other animators, mostly in the SFM community; their growth in skill over time seemed to have this sort of trend. I think I'm about halfway there... hopefully!

Right now, we’re in the middle of our vertical slice phase. My favourite part of the project is— well, I have quite a few of them, but I wanna say my coworkers are an absolute delight and our lead programmer is a freaking angel. I feel really lucky to be able to work with these people. And that’s gonna sound dumb, but it makes me feel weird that they LIKE ME BACK. But you know, impostor’s syndrome, etc. though that’s gotten better recently. Still, it’s hard to get used to the thought of things like “dude, there are animators from Blizzard who follow you on Twitter, stop doubting yourself for a second”.

youtube

July rolls around, and I decided to participate, again, to The International 2016′s Short Film Contest. This time around, I teamed up with EDJE (Erick Wright) and @zandraart — and I won again. First place! I was legitimately expecting to get third, at best, even though there were people like SirActionSlacks telling me “dude you won already stop worrying”. Unfortunately, my brain was louder than their voices; I remember the night before the results were announced, I couldn’t sleep despite having taken two sleeping pills...

As self-centered as a statement like that may sound, winning three animation contests and having worked on four games eventually ends up drilling in your head that there is no reason to let shitty people influence your brain. I guess it’s a self-esteem thing 😃

This sort of feeling that I was not being myself, forcing myself to not be me, well, it’s gone! And for the first time I’m starting to feel like I got my shit together, even if only just a bit, so that’s relieving.

We did the movie in two weeks again, but I’m not gonna lie, I’m not as happy with it as I was with Enigma’s Exasperation. The execution might be a little stronger but the idea is weaker for the one minute format. But a good thing to remember: it’s fine to not always outdo yourself even if you meant to.

That said, for next year’s contest, I hope I’ll be able to dedicate more time to making the film. I’m hoping they extend the maximum time to 90 seconds and make the prize pool less top-heavy again... but, unfortunately, knowing Valve, I wouldn’t count on it.

Here’s a list of my favourite music albums that I listened to this year:

The Timura Trilogy series of albums by Bjørn Lynne (Wizard of the Winds, Wolves of the Gods, The Gods Awaken)

Fortress by James Hunter USA (bandcamp)

Everything from Nelward

Orange Express (1981) by Sadao Watanabe

Memories in Beach House (1983) from the CBS/Sony Sound Image Series

The Dark Crystal movie soundtrack by Trevor Jones (if you’ve never watched the movie, you should, it is absolutely incredible)

Now onto health... I believe I've mentioned this subject a couple times before. Being a nerd who works from home, I'm subject to many of the sins that come with having a commute consisting of merely walking down the stairs from one's bedroom. The two biggest being 1) a terrible sleep schedule and 2) lack of physical activity.

I use the Sleep as Android app; upon telling it that I'm in bed, it starts using my Pebble smartwatch to track my motions and determine the quality of my sleep, the phases, the cycles, and whatnot. But the most insightful data doesn't even come from that algorithmic tracking; the times for "when I went to bed" and "when I got up" are more telling. Here's a chart of my sleeping times since the beginning of 2015. Each vertical bar represents the sleep of one day.

I've taken the liberty to highlight the time range between 22:00 and 9:00 in the morning, sleeping times that would make you say "yeah, this person is a reasonable adult". As you can see, my sleeping times often didn't fall into that range, and the whole graph has a stripey appearance because my sleeping times keep shifting a little every day, almost like I'm living 25, 26 hour days.

What I love about this graph is that you can definitely see the times when I had to get it together; The International 2015 is very noticeable, with no "stripe" pattern where there would have been three previously.

Here's a zoom on only 2016:

There’s actually a bit of improvement here; the length of the "stripes" keeps growing, and in the middle of some of the stripes, I hang to regular times for longer and longer before slipping away into indecency again. I’m trying my best to keep that progress on the right track. (a track that goes right to my bed)

Now, as for the lack of physical activity. It's very tempting to stock my fridge and then live like a hermit for 3 days, but I've tried to make sure this wouldn't happen. The goal is to not have a single day where I don't move at least a minimum amount of time, unless I have a very good reason to (like illness).

I use the S Health app to passively track my steps; it offers a few fun statistics, and also counts steps onto an additional counter if you've walked fast enough for a certain amount of time, that is to say, at a pace that is considered physical activity. If I were to walk for 1 hour, and during 15 of those minutes, I was at a pace that was above 100 steps a minute (I believe that’s the threshold), it would amount to about 6000 steps, 1500 of which would then be qualifying as "healthy steps".

I took all the average monthly values and put them in this chart:

It's really easy to see on here when my motivation just plummeted post-TI5, after all that terrible stuff I've mentioned before. It took quite a while to shake the depression off. I would consider 3000 steps per day to be the baseline goal, as it amounts roughly to 30 minutes of walking per day. In the latter half of 2016, I managed to reach that goal!

The last thing I wanna talk about, health-wise, is understanding, in my opinion, the two big hidden plagues on ourselves: the first one is sugar, the second one is stress. I saw a very eye-opening documentary on Arte that talked about how cholesterol was made to take the fall for heart disease and whatnot, and sugar is in fact the true culprit — combine that with recent studies showing how it’s, in fact, “similar to drugs”, and it’s easy to see how we’ve come to think it’s harmless but it’s not, much like how we thought cigarettes were good in the 50s. This makes me glad I stopped drinking sodas and eating candy as much as I did four years ago; I’ve largely replaced the drinks by either carbonated water or the stuff that’s light on sugar (both in terms of sugar AND taste).

The second plague is stress. This ties into mental health. I deeply believe that learning how to stay sane and relaxed, as weird as that may sound, is one of the fundamental keys to living well; don’t worry about stuff you can’t control. Of course, that doesn’t mean “be apathetic to the world”. Our cognitive bias makes us focus so much on the negatives that it’s become so hard to perceive the positive side of things. This is gonna sound stupid but I hope you see what I’m trying to get at here: for example, there are really shitty people being all like “I’m gonna run over Black Lives Matter protestors”, stuff like that, and we get outraged at it, and rightly so; but in the process, we forget that it’s a really good positive thing that BLM exists in the first place. You know what I mean? I don’t know how to phrase it. Like I said before, I’m not a skilled writer!

And it’s frustrating, really, to have all these ideas, vague concepts floating around your head; you know what you mean to yourself, but you don’t know how to communicate that to other people. Language, writing, and communication are skills far more important than most people realize!

Anyway, to reiterate what I’ve already said like three times now, it comes down to not worrying about things you can’t control. It’s hard to internalize and it took me years to understand it, but it’s a valuable life lesson.

There are a ton of other little life lessons that I don’t actively think about but which have been super valuable on a day-to-day basis; these are also, for the most part, hard to phrase into coherent words, but the best one would be that it’s okay to be wrong and to make mistakes, but it’s also (even more) okay to admit that you were wrong and that it’s not a personal failing, as in, a failure of you, as a person, to have made a mistake or whatever. I think it’s something that is extremely important to teach people, because it’s part of the entire “be open-minded” package, if that makes sense? It was hard for me to change myself until I realized that admitting that I made mistakes. It’s kind of like the five stages of grief; the first one is acceptance, and you’re not going to make any progress until you go past that...? When you say to someone, “you did something wrong”, or “you made a mistake”, whether it’s moral, personal, professional, whatever, if you don’t have that mindset, that person would perceive it as a personal attack. But to err is human, and errors are not reflections of your moral standing as a person. I guess it comes down to having this distance between... yourself... and what you do? See, here, words fail me again. That said, I hope you see what I’m getting at.

Anyway, that’s it for looking back on this year... here’s a sneak peek at my next big personal project, hopefully to be released in the first trimester of 2017!

#year in review

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