#if you like multiple cheeses just choose the one that represents you better as a whole

[kharjo-san]

#if you like multiple cheeses just choose the one that represents you better as a whole #poll #polls #cheese #kharjo speaks #food

[ilguna]

Anteric - Chapter Two (f.o)

summary: secrets have more worth than you gave them credit for.

warnings; swearing, PALM CUTTING, DEATH.

wc; 10.4k

NOTES; I give reader a last name to fit the world.

–

The bus you take to the Choosing Ceremony is full of people from Abnegation. Grey shirts and cardigans. Grey slacks and skirts. You spend the entire time staring at the top of your shoes, trying to lose yourself like everyone else in here can. Sometimes, you manage to do it. Today it’s harder. You still have a decision to make, since it wasn’t made for you yesterday. 

When the bus stops, everyone slowly files out. Starting with the front, to the middle, to the back. Reed carries Alyssum in his arms, you walk next to him, following his steps to where he wants to go. The Hub is the tallest building in the city, stretching far beyond the clouds. You shield your eyes from the sun and stare up at it while you wait for Reed to start to go inside.

Outside of the building stands a group of Candor, talking amongst themselves. Cigarettes are between their fingers, they breathe smoke after a long breath in. You remember the smell of tobacco on the bus man’s breath when he got in your face. You also remember that was your first act of defiance yesterday, as the second was directly challenging Reed.

You wish you could say that you regret asking him that question, but you don’t.

Reed starts up the front steps, you walk behind him. With the amount of people in the Hub today for the Choosing Ceremony, the elevators are hard to get onto. They’re all crowded and take too long, since the ceremony will be taking place twenty stories up. Reed readjusts Alyssum in his arms before he starts towards the stairwell. You don’t complain.

It starts off with only the three of you, but it doubles multiple times the further you go up. Reed has just unintentionally started a trend amongst you all. If you hadn’t gone up the stairwell, you’re sure that you would have all waited in a pack at the elevators, waiting for all the other factions to get on before you.

A man with cropped blonde hair notices that Reed is carrying Alyssum, so he hurries up before you guys so that he can hold open the door for everyone that passes through. You and Reed thank him on your way through. Inside of the ceremony room, the factions are arranged in concentric circles. On the very outside edge is where you’ll be standing with the rest of the sixteen year-olds from every faction. Since you’re not a member of any faction just yet, you can’t sit with them. Not even the Abnegation, who you grew up with.

What you choose today will make you an initiate, and if you complete initiation, you’ll become a member. Some factions are harder than others to get into. While you’re sure that Dauntless or Erudite is difficult, Amity and Abnegation don’t often have initiates that fail. It’s easy to give yourself away for others. Supposedly.

You, and every other teenager in here, arrange yourselves in alphabetical order according to your last names. You stand between a Candor boy dressed in a black and white suit, and a Dauntless girl dressed in pure black, with a piercing in her nose. Finnick is further down, since his name starts with an O. You will get to decide before he does.

In the next circle are rows of chairs for your families. You watch as Reed carries Alyssum to a single chair, and sets her in his lap. She doesn’t fuss much, only plays with the sleeve on her loose shirt. It’s a little too big for her, but all clothes in Abnegation are meant to be loose-fitting to not draw attention to yourself. 

Since the responsibility of conducting the ceremony rotates every year, it falls on Candor this year. Their leader is a tall man, with dark hair and haunting grey eyes. His name is Haymitch Abernathy, and he stands at the podium that fits snugly between Erudite and Dauntless. He doesn’t smile.

The room falls into silence as soon as all the chairs have been filled. You clench your fists at your sides, staring right ahead at Reed and Alyssum as Haymitch gives the opening speech. 

His voice is monotone, with very little hints of actual emotion, “Welcome to the Choosing Ceremony, the day we honor the democratic philosophy given to us by our ancestors. Let us say thank you for allowing them to give us the idea that every man has a right to choose his own way in the world.”

A few people mutter out a thanks. Your lips are sealed tight, normally the decision is already made for you because of the aptitude test. But unlike everyone else in this room, you truly are given a right to choose where you want to go. Abnegation, Dauntless and Erudite all have their arms out for you. Each one of them holds a different opportunity, a different lifestyle. But only one of them is familiar.

“Our children are now sixteen. They are on the edge of adulthood, which means that it’s now time for them to decide what kind of people they will decide to be. A long time ago, our ancestors realized that politics, religion, race and nationalism are not to blame for the awful world. Rather, they determined that it was the fault of a human’s nature to go towards evil. 

“Since evil presents itself in many different ways, factions were formed to eradicate those qualities they believed responsible for the world’s disarray.” Haymitch pauses for a moment, “Those who blamed aggression formed Amity.” 

Amity, the faction that was ruled out first because you chose the knife over the cheese. The knife you didn’t even end up using because you left it behind to save the girl from the dog. How can you be Abnegation and not Amity too? Selflessness and peace go hand in hand, right? Right?

The Amity share smiles. They are dressed in red or yellow, of all different shades. Amity is seen as loving, care-free and kind. Three years ago, you lost your brother to this faction, because Abnegation wasn’t good enough. Somewhere, Mox is dressed in red and yellow, singing songs and picking apples out of trees. He is not thinking about you.

“Those who blamed ignorance became the Erudite.”

Erudite sit together, at least one article of clothing that they wear is blue. You were told a while ago, by someone who you can’t remember the name of, that it’s because blue is supposed to calm the mind. You can’t think rationally if you’re in a constant state of panic and worry. Also, most of them wear glasses, as they’re supposed to make you feel smarter.

If you choose a faction other than Abnegation this afternoon, it will not be Erudite. You switching in the first place will already be a harsh slap to the face. You will not make it worse by choosing the one faction that has their gun pointed at Abnegation. Erudite was never an option.

“Those who blamed duplicity created Candor.” Haymitch gives a ghost of a smile.

The Candor are the ones who don’t lie. They’re also able to pick out liars easily, which makes it frustrating in class when they blurt it out. They don’t believe in holding secrets, as it’s too close to a lie. They wear black and white suits and dresses. They’re also the people you saw before you came into the Hub, smoking in front of the building. 

“Those who blamed selfishness made Abnegation.”

Your home. You have grown up in this faction for sixteen years, and you have been selfishly debating whether or not you’ll stay. You’re supposed to be able to forget yourself in this lifestyle, but all it’s done is magnify the things you hate about it. Under different circumstances, you think that you would want to stay more. But after everything that’s happened…

“And those who blamed cowardice were the Dauntless.”

Dauntless is dressed in black, tight-fitting clothes. They have piercings, bright-colored hair, and tattoos. They are loud, and reckless and a lot of people inside of Abnegation don’t like them. To switch to their faction would flip your entire life upside-down. Your current life is not like theirs. You would have to go from forgetting about yourself, to thinking about who you are all the time.

But don’t you do that already?

“Working together, these five factions have lived in peace for decades. Each faction is important, as they contribute to a different sector of society. The Abnegation gives us selfless leaders in our government. Candor has provided us with trustworthy leaders in law. Erudite has supplied us with intelligent teachers and outstanding technology. Amity has given us understanding counselors and caretakers. Dauntless provides us with protection from threats both inside and outside of the walls.

“But the possibilities of each faction do not end there. We give one another more support than we can put into words. In our factions, we find meaning, we find purpose, we find life.” Haymitch pauses for a moment again, “A life without factions, is a life we would not survive in.”

The last sentence is a direct attack to the factionless, who are supposed to be savages because they live their life without a purpose. They don’t contribute to society in large ways, like the factions. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t at least help. You appreciate them, for they are the janitors, they are the garbage truck drivers, and they are the construction workers. Without them, the city would not be clean and well-functioning.

“This day marks a happy occasion, in which we receive our new initiates, who will work with us toward a better society, and a better world.” Haymitch finishes, signifying the loud applause sounding from the families.

Haymitch reads the names one at a time. A sixteen year-old will step out of the line and walk toward the middle of the circles, where five metal bowls lay. Each one has an element that represents the faction. In Abnegation, there are grey stones. Amity has soil. Candor has broken glass. Dauntless has lit coals. And Erudite has water.

The first to choose is a boy from Candor, who stays with Candor. He makes his way up, and stands behind the faction section. Haymitch reads a new name, the next person comes out of the line, he offers a new knife, they cut their hand, and choose their home faction.

You recognize a few from school. Mac Andas, a boy from Amity, is wearing dark red clothing. He smoothly walks to the middle of the room, cuts his hand and doesn’t hesitate to hold it over the soil. He will be staying in Amity. Amity shares smiles, and a few touch his arm on his way up to stand behind them.

The first to switch factions is an Erudite girl, she holds her hand over Candor. Her new faction shifts in anticipation, excited for their first transfer. You aren’t surprised that she’s switching to Candor. In a way, you’d like to think that brutality of telling truth and the striving for knowledge against all odds go hand in hand. Even if it means to disturb the peace.

Erudite doesn’t look happy, but they don’t voice their opinions, only cast glares toward the Candor section. Their eyes are not yet directed toward the girl, but they will be eventually. Switching factions alone is enough to consider her a traitor.

With the Erudite girl being the first to switch factions, others slowly find the same courage to do what they want, too. Other factions welcome in new initiates, new faces and fresh blood. A girl from Amity named Verda switches to Abnegation. You feel a little warm inside, seeing the way she lights up. She’s happy with her decision, will you be able to feel the same?

A few more names, and suddenly you’re coming up fast. A tight feeling begins in your throat, you clench and unclench your hands. It’s the Candor boy and then you. His name is called, he goes down the steps to the middle. He cuts his hand, and then holds his hand over Erudite. An even trade to balance out the fact that the Erudite girl had went to Candor. Smart nods come from his new faction.

“(Y/n) Gallows.” Haymitch says, his eyes land on you next. 

You take a deep breath to steady yourself, and then you head down the steps. In your head, there’s a loud debate going on. You need to hurry up and choose. All factions have pros and cons, you’re overthinking it now. 

It’s not that serious.

Except for the fact that it is. You will not be able to choose again. If you fail initiation, you will land yourself factionless. Is that what you really want? Do you want to live your life driving buses and cleaning up trash off the road, not knowing when your next meal will be? You know you’re strong, but you’re not that strong. The only thing that takes more courage than switching factions, is leaving a faction because your hand was forced. It happens more often than you like.

Not to mention, one of those factionless degenerates is the reason why you lost your second parent.

You stand in front of the large metal bowls, eyes quickly sweeping over them. They’re all stained in some way by now. The Erudite water has gone from clear to a dark pink and the Candor glass is now reflecting red. The only bowls that will not show a difference are Dauntless and Amity. You haven’t gotten to see Abnegation just yet.

Haymitch offers you the knife. It will only be used once, and it will only be used by you. Haymitch gives you a curt nod, and you are left to decide by yourself. The knife you hold now is nowhere near as heavy as the one you held during the aptitude test. This one is lighter, and sharper.

You bring the blade to your palm, carefully dragging it across. You grit your teeth tightly as you watch the rich colored blood spring to life, outside of your body. You stare at it for a second, and then you shift your body to the left, where the Abnegation and Dauntless bowls are waiting for you. You are not cut out for Amity, you are too mean. You are not cut out for Candor, you are a liar. And you are too smart for Erudite to have.

The blood begins to pool in your hand the more you wait. You don’t know how Mox did it. How he so effortlessly chose Amity. He came down here easily, cut his palm and held it over Amity as if his mind had been made up for years. He didn’t think twice, he didn’t hesitate. He just went.

This decision is not so easy for you. 

You’ve figured this much: you want to leave. As much as you want to stay, you don’t think you can. And it’s not because of Reed and what happened last night. There have been plenty of times where you’ve straddled the border of pushing it. If you stay here in Abnegation, it means that you’ll be subjecting yourself to getting to know the people who once knew your parents. You will see their pity, and they will tell you what your parents once did when they were alive.

You know this because it’s already happened. Naida still talks about your mother as if you’ll find comfort in it. But really, it digs at you. She uses the same knife, the same look, the same words. It’s having the opposite effect than what she’s intending to do. Both of your parents fell in love with this faction, and they died inside of it. If you leave, you get to start over. 

But it also means that you will be starting over without a family. Reed and Alyssum are all you have left. Mox left years ago, you haven’t seen him since the day of the Choosing Ceremony, and Reed never brought you to see him on Visiting Day. If he could do it to Mox, who is only two years younger than him, he will do it to you too. Reed doesn’t change. 

He needs help with Alyssum. He can’t take care of her alone, he’s already pushing it with the next door neighbors. Alyssum is only three, too. She needs an older sister, someone she can relate to, to look up to. If you leave, she’ll never see you again. All the memories she’ll have of you will be hazy. And Reed won’t be much help, because he won’t speak of you. 

Reed will cut you off as if he didn’t just take care of you for the past three years. You know this because it’s the exact thing that he did to Mox. Mox is never spoken of, not even when the two of you are alone. And he left only a couple of months after Alyssum was born, a couple of weeks after your father died. You were already hurt enough by the fact that you lost two parents, and with Mox gone, it made it all worse.

Reed would rather choose silence than remembrance.

By the time Alyssum will get to choose a faction of her own, she won’t know Mox, and she won’t know you. You and your older brother will just be two faces on the old family photos. The only person that she’ll know is Reed. Not mom, not dad, not Mox, not you. You will hold the memory of her forever, and she won’t even have something to hold onto besides dusty family photos.

If you can’t do it for yourself, then you have to do it for her.

You bring your hand near Abnegation, not quite tipping your hand over the stones just yet. You can see the drops of blood on them from teens who have come from you. All of them transferred without hesitation, they had their minds made up. And you do too, so why aren’t you spilling your blood over the stones?

One reason. You’re waiting for one good reason why you shouldn’t stay. That’s all it will take.

You’ve been in Abnegation your whole life.

You have done nothing but follow the rules. You wore their clothes, you never talked out of line, you gave up your seat on the bus, you walked up the stairs, you never looked at yourself in the mirror. You did the dishes, did your homework, made dinner, never got into trouble. You have never once uttered a complaint even when circumstances were bad. You have been grateful.

You have always put everyone first before you. You have lost yourself in your surroundings too many times. So many times that it took a long time to put yourself back together. You have done more than your part in Abnegation. Don’t you think it’s time to finally be selfish?

Abnegation is home--do you really want to start over as much as you say you do? You know what to expect here. You know that the initiation is volunteering. You know that you will not fail it. With Dauntless, they have people that fail all the time. You’re more likely to end up factionless. You will join your father’s murderer. Do you like that chance? You don’t know Dauntless as much as you think you do. You don’t even know anyone that’s there. You will have no one to lean on for help.

Finnick will leave you behind.

And you’ll only have your brother and family friends to lean on.

Think, is that what you really want? Be honest.

No, it’s not.

What about Reed? He’ll be mad. And he’s the only family that you have left. If you don’t have him, you won’t have anyone…

What are the chances that Finnick chooses Dauntless?

A big chance, actually. Finnick won’t choose Amity, Erudite or Abnegation. Which leaves Candor and Dauntless, but Finnick is not known for being honest. And Finnick is Finnick.

You think… you think that it will be an even trade. Reed for Finnick. Reed and Alyssum for Finnick.

You hope that you aren’t choosing wrong.

You hang your hand over the Dauntless flames, feeling the heat lick at the back of your hand. You have spent your entire life being selfless in Abnegation. You know how to help everyone else, a trait that will be with you for the rest of your life, even if you don’t stay with Abnegation. You think that will be good enough.

It’s time to start focusing on yourself.

You let out the air you’re holding, turning your palm downward. You watch and listen as your blood sizzles over the hot coals. The sound is satisfying, the only noise that fills the room for a beat or two. And then the Dauntless section explodes into cheers, welcoming you in their classic fashion. With how loud they are, you can’t help the smile that creeps its way onto your face. 

You bow your head slightly, face feeling hot, but there is definitely a feeling of wholeness in your chest. You head up the steps to stand behind the Dauntless faction with the rest of the initiates. You can feel hands on your arm, pats on your back, there’s whooping. By the time you’ve made it to the top, you can confidently stand there with a smile. However, you are not confident enough to see the look on Reed’s face. This afternoon, you will follow in Moxs’ footsteps of a silent transfer. A clean cut.

The ceremony continues, still going down the alphabet. Most of the people who join Dauntless now, are Dauntless-born. Only a few from other factions aren’t. A girl from Candor, a bunch of boys and girls from Dauntless, a girl from Erudite. With every person that leaves the line, the closer Finnick’s turn draws. You feel nervous for him.

When his name is called, he moves down the steps without hesitation, almost like he glides down. Haymitch offers him the knife, and he takes it, turning his back to Candor, Amity and Erudite. The only two factions that he’s facing are Dauntless and Abnegation. If there’s one thing that you know for sure today, it’s that he won’t be choosing Abnegation.

You can see him in Dauntless black.

Finnick lifts the knife, drags the silver blade across his hand, and patiently waits for the blood to build up. To anyone else, this might look like he’s stalling. To you, it seems like he’s trying to make it as excruciating as possible for the people in Abnegation. Hardly anyone ever transfers because Abnegation is supposed to be a good faction. But they have already lost one of their children. In a moment, they’re about to lose another.

A cheeky smile appears on his face just before his hand flies over the Dauntless flames. He shakes his hand down, the blood smearing down his hand, landing straight onto the coals.

Dauntless explodes again, whistles filling the air. Finnick turns towards the stairs, heading up them at his own pace. When you look to check Abnegation’s reactions, you’re careful to avoid your family, and you make it brief. The most you can see is a few dirty looks towards Dauntless, as if they’re somehow to blame for this. 

Finnick stops beside you, laughing. You bump his shoulder with yours, using the end of your shirt to clean the blood off your hand, “Why am I not surprised?”

“You didn’t have to switch for me, you know.”

You look at him to see that his eyebrows are raised. You snort, “Don’t worry, I’m doing this for me.”

Half an hour later, the Choosing Ceremony is over. Dauntless leaves first, which means you have to walk past your former faction. Men and women dressed in grey stare forward, at the back of someone else’s head. Inside of this section sits your only family, Reed and Alyssum, who may or may not visit you on Visiting Day. This is your last chance to look to say goodbye, and to keep yourself from falling into temptation’s trap, you turn to give Finnick a smile.

The people leading the Dauntless pack immediately choose the stairs instead of the elevators. You walked up these stairs hours ago with half the intention of staying with your brother and sister. And now, you’re walking down them with your new faction. Your new family. This is how you will leave your old life behind and find comfort in the new.

As soon as you step foot into the stairwell, you break into a sprint to keep with everyone else’s pace. There’s whoops, cheers, shouts and laughter that echoes off the cement walls. The sound of feet pounding on cement stairs join it, like a pack of wild animals. Among the shouting is Finnick’s voice, who seems to have finally found himself. Instead of taking the stairs, he’ll slide down the railing, causing people behind him to do the same. In order not to trip, you pull up the loose fabric of your pants. You watch as Finnick takes your hand, squeezing it tightly as he pulls you along, making sure that you won’t lose each other.

You can hear the sound of the door hitting the wall as the first few Dauntless burst through the exit doorway. Outside, the sun is setting, splashing bright colors of orange, pink and yellow into the sky. After spending hours inside of the warm Choosing Ceremony room, the outside coolness washes over your skin in a refreshing wave.

You have to run to keep up with the Dauntless.

The crowd thins out the further you go. Together, you take over the entire street, blocking a bus’s way. Finnick and you pace yourselves, not allowing the other to fall behind. Every now and then, you’ll share a look with him. The realization never stops hitting. This life won’t be so bad, it’s been less than five minutes and you can already feel yourself lifting higher and higher.

You’re weightless now that the restraints have been lifted off of your shoulders. No wonder why Finnick has been itching for this feeling. You haven’t felt this good in years.

The running makes your calves burn, almost making it hurt to run. Your throat is dry from how much air you suck in to keep going. You follow everyone down the street and around a corner, until you’re all coming to a stop. It’s a momentary break, before the sound of gasping is replaced by the horn of the train, signaling what you’ll have to do next.

You hand slips from Finnick’s. You know what happens next.

A long, single-filed line forms. The lights on the train are flashing, horn blasting to let you know a second time that it’s coming. Every single door is open to allow easy access for you to get inside. The train whirrs past you, flattening your clothes on your body because of the wind.

Group by group, people pull themselves in and disappear into the cars. Only when one is full, does someone stick their head out to let the others know. In no time, it’s only you initiates left. However, the Dauntless-born have been doing this for years, so they too, are able to get in without a worry. Which means that it’s time for the transfers to give it a try. 

And you’re at the front of the line.

You’ve only seen this happen a couple of times. It was always after school, in front of the building while you waited for Finnick. Normally it’s you who’s late to get out there, but on occasion, Finnick found himself held up in a classroom or hallway, waiting for people to get out of his way. If anything, you think that Finnick could do this better than you can. But he’s not at the front, you are.

The last train car is about to come around, so you take off running to keep up with it. This is going to be significantly harder to catch, especially for the people behind you. You have nothing to fall back on if you fail. This could be your first and last test before you find yourself factionless.

Don’t think like that.

The faster you run, the more your legs burn, but it’s a good burn. You hold up your baggy pants with one hand so that you don’t have to worry about tripping over the ends. As you get closer to the train, you remember how the other Dauntless had pulled themselves inside. One step at a time.

You give yourself one last burst, and then you throw yourself to the left, grabbing a hold of the handle with one hand. With the other, you reach up and grab the inside of the doorway. The cut on your hand stings from the sudden use, causing a hiss to rise out of your throat. You arch your back inwards, which is just enough to push you inside.

You stumble a little, catching yourself on the far wall. A laugh rises out of you, a smile appearing on your face. You did it. You turn and head right back to the open car door, looking out to see who’s next. You know that you made it inside by yourself, but it wasn’t easy. Others will need help.

Finnick is running right next to the train. You hold your hand out for him, giving him a wider smile, “Come on, Finnick!”

He jumps, his left hand grabbing the handle, his right grabbing yours. You pull him inside, give him a slight slap on the back, and then you turn to grab the next person. They jump, grab your hand, and get pulled inside. One after another, all of them looking just as dazed as you feel. The only people who don’t take your help are the Erudite girls, who get help from the Candor instead.

You and Finnick take a back corner, away from the door. It’s quieter, and not as dangerous. Next to the door, all it would take is shifting your foot the wrong way and you’d end up falling out. On the other side of the car, stands and sits the group of Candor and Erudite, and the one Amity girl.

“You could’ve just told me you were going to Dauntless!” you throw your arms out, “I mean, it’s not much of a surprise!”

“I wanted it to be dramatic!” Finnick defends, he smiles as he runs a hand through his hair, “What about you? I thought you were staying?”

“I almost did.” you say, and then shrug, “But I couldn’t. I wanted a fresh start of my own.”

“And that’s a good reason.” Finnick says, “You’re sure that Dauntless was the way to go? Not Amity or Erudite or something?”

“Didn’t qualify for either of those. And I knew that you’d come here, so I decided that I’d rather be with you than by myself.” you give him a smile, “Hope you’re ready to put up with me for the rest of your life.”

“I’ve survived so far.” Finnick winks.

--

It’s over half an hour later before you’re finally getting a clue as to what happens next. Unfortunately, in this time, you and Finnick were able to establish a rivalry with the Erudite girls. Mostly because Finnick said that the faction was for assholes a little too loudly when you were talking about what factions you could have gone to instead. And that’s really all it took before the girls were all pissed.

They’re both blonde, but one of them is taller. The taller one has also made friends with two out of four of the Candor initiates too, and the both of them are also extraordinarily tall. The two of you were almost at a disadvantage, but all it took was Finnick straightening out to his full height and rolling up his sleeves to get the point across.

Back home, you’re not allowed to get into physical fights. And you never really had a reason to, it takes a lot to get under your skin. Being Abnegation is to have a target on your back all the time, the Erudite reports just made them shinier. You have to have thick skin if you’re going to survive. This doesn’t mean that you haven’t had it out with someone once. However, like you’ve been saying, there are rulebreakers. And there are also ways to get around it to make sure that you don’t get caught.

Finnick was one of those kids who always found a way. There’s a couple of rules he has to follow, though. The first is to keep away from Candor and Amity, they have this safety blanket that keeps them protected. Candor kids aren’t supposed to lie, therefore there whatever they say automatically has to be true. The Amity are peace keepers, their natural instinct isn’t to fight, it’s to resolve the problem through words or whatever.

The second rule is to make sure that there aren’t witnesses. You take the kid out to some part of town that’s abandoned, oftentime the factionless areas because no one’s going to intervene. And the third rule is not to get hit. At all. It’s hard to claim it was a fight if one person is beat to hell and the other doesn’t have a scratch on them. Also, the feud probably shouldn’t be public knowledge.

Only recently did Finnick begin to get into fights like that, and it’s always with the Erudite kids because they don’t know how to keep their mouths shut. Since he didn’t plan on staying, he didn’t see a need to not fight. Of course, it could always come out later and hurt his family. But why would an Erudite want to admit that they got their ass kicked by someone in Abnegation? It’s almost embarrassing for them.

You’ve had plenty of time to watch and take note of the way Finnick interacts with people. It’s typically nonchalant, but if someone wants to fight, his first instinct will be to match them. To some extent, this must be good survival instincts. To another, Finnick is always itching for a fight. He’ll fit right in with Dauntless.

Needless to say, a fight didn’t break out in this train car. But it’s only a matter of time before one does.

You, Finnick, and a few others gather near the opening of the train car to see what’s going on. You knew that getting off the train would have to include jumping off. You just didn’t know where, you’ve never been out this far. You’ve never ridden the train before at all, actually. 

The train is moving slower now to make it easier for all of you to jump off and not hurt yourselves. You watch as a group of Dauntless adults jump from the train, over a gap, and onto a roof. Most land on their feet, there’s a few that land on their knees, dusting the gravel off. They’re all laughing, sparing glances behind them, at cars like yours to see who’s coming next. 

A sick feeling sprouts in your stomach, throat growing tight. You have to swallow your spit multiple times to get it to loosen up enough to breathe comfortably. You place a shaky hand against the wall so that you can lean out and see how far away the ground is from where you are now.

You grit your teeth, inhaling deeply as you back off.

You’re more than ten stories up, a fall from this height can kill you. All it would take is a slip, or a jump not strong enough to push you to the roof. You lock your knees to keep from collapsing.

“You’re pale.” Finnick says, he’s eyeing your face, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” 

You chose this life. You have to live with it. If you don’t jump onto this roof, you will have failed initiation before it’s even begun. You will be factionless, and you can’t be factionless. But if you do jump and you don’t make it, you’ll die. Death or factionless, which one will be easiest to live with?

You’re overthinking it again.

You force yourself to look out and watch more people jump. The gap is small enough to cross, you know this because all the Dauntless are making it across. If you try hard enough, you too can easily make this jump. All you have to do is get a headstart and leap. You got onto the train, you can get off the train. 

The roof draws closer and closer, with every person out, is another empty car. The Dauntless that have made it to the other side, move out of the way to allow more to spill over. Soon, in less than a minute, you will be one of them.

You can’t jump with everyone in the way.

“Back up!” you shout, motioning for all of them to get away from the door. You place yourself on the wall the opposite of the doorway. Finnick joins your side, the two of you bracing for a run. 

You wipe your palms on your pants. The gap is small. The train has a height advantage. You will make it to the other side.

Finnick counts down from three, and on one, the two of you take off running. Just as your foot hits the edge of the train floor, you push off. The wind is howling in your ears, your stomach swarms with butterflies, and then you hit the ground. Your left foot first, and the right one following after. You stumble a couple of steps, hands out to balance yourself. You’re on the other side. You had nothing to worry about, you didn’t even come close to the edge.

Finnick’s on his feet too, stretching his legs behind himself. The two of you stare at each other for a long moment. Laughter begins in your chest and bubbles out of your throat. Finnick joins the laughter, and follows you to the other side of the roof. More initiates jump out of the train, landing onto the roof. But none of them are nearly as graceful as you.

What amplifies that thought, is the sudden scream that comes from the other side of the roof.

You turn, eyes landing on the girl. It’s the taller Erudite, staring straight down. You look over who did make it, making everyone off one by one. The Amity girl dressed in red is here, the two Candor girls and the two Candor boys dressed in black and white, and one Erudite girl, dressed in blue. Which means the other didn’t make it.

One of the Candor girls has a strong grip on the Erudite girl’s arm, pulling her away from the edge. If it weren’t for her, she'd fall straight over the edge too, joining her friend at the bottom. You’re not cruel, so you don’t wish death upon her. But karma can be cruel. Especially when attacks on others aren’t deserved.

There were nine of you, and now there’s eight.

You shake your head slightly, turning back around to face the man standing on the edge of the roof, hands in his pockets. His eyes are on the Erudite girl, who has now broken into a sob, the Candor girl comforting her. But when he sees you and Finnick drawing closer, his eyes follow. It must be strange to see two Abnegation initiates.

“Listen up!” he begins, people fall silent. Except for the Erudite girl, who’s still crying, “My name is Damon, I’m one of the leaders of your new faction!” Damon has dark skin, his dreadlocks are long, pulled into a ponytail at the back of his head. Only one of them is loose, and it’s tucked behind his ear, “Several stories below us is the members’ entrance to our compound. If you can’t muster the will to jump off, you don’t belong here. Our initiates have the privilege of going first.”

The sick feeling in your stomach returns, you grind your teeth to keep from focusing on it. A girl just fell to her death trying to get onto this roof, and now you guys are supposed to jump off.

“Let me get this straight.” The Erudite girl snaps, her voice raising, “You want us to jump off? What kind of joke is this?”

“It’s not.” Damon gives her a smile, “You can jump off and start initiation, or you can stay up here and be factionless. You always have a choice.”

You will not be factionless.

“What do you think’s at the bottom?” Finnick asks, leaning over.

“Cement.” you say.

The crowd in front of you initiates splits. Some go right, others go left. It leaves a wide enough path for you to take to where Damon is standing to jump off. No one moves from where they stand, though. Not even Finnick, who’s normally eager to do anything dangerous and rule-breaking. The Dauntless-born could do this in their sleep, and they don’t move an inch.

A beat passes, and then two. At this rate, you’ll all end up factionless. In your head pops the image of the Erudite girl that had been the first to switch factions. Before her, no one else had gone. In a way, it’s like what happened in school after tests. All it would take is one person to turn it in, for all the rest to follow.

“I’m going to jump.” you tell Finnick, “Make sure you’re next.”

“What?” he says.

You start forward.

Damon raises a half-shaved eyebrow, giving you a challenging look, as if you won’t actually be able to go through with it. If you’re being honest, halfway through the walk, you start regretting it. But you’ve come this far, you can’t turn back now. You won’t be seen as a coward.

It could all be a trick, you know this. The Dauntless don’t have to be kind, they’re not held up by the same virtues that Abnegation and Amity are. But they wouldn’t just kill you. They don’t know you or your story. Only that you switched from Abnegation. You’ll have to admit that them allowing the initiates to go first is a red flag. Which is all the more reason to go first. 

This is a test of courage.

Damon steps off to the side, motioning for you to take his place when you stand right in front of them. There’s thousands of alarm bells going off in your head, all warning you to take a step back and realize what you’re about to do. You’re going to jump off of a roof, you should have more common sense than this. What the fuck are you doing?

You stand on the edge of the building, your toes hanging over the edge. The wind picks up, making your clothes snap violently. The building you’re standing on is one side of a square. In the middle of the square, is a hole. When you look down, all you can see is concrete, with one single hole in the middle. You can’t see beyond that.

Your heart skips at the bare thought of jumping, the butterflies taking over your body again. You take in deep breaths through your nose, gritting your teeth, “This will not kill you.”

You turn to face away.

“This will not kill you.”

You lean back.

“This will not kill you.”

And fall.

The wind howls in your ears loud enough for them to pop. A scream rises in your throat, which you’re barely able to hold down. Your stomach makes home in your chest, every muscle in your body tenses. You suck in a breath when you see the hole draw closer. Either you die, or you live.

You picture your body laying on the cement. 

You’re engulfed in darkness in an instant. And then you hit something hard that eventually sinks under your weight. You let out the air you were holding, dizziness sprouting when you do. Your fingers glide over the thing beneath you, and you find that it’s a net. You’re not dead. You’re very much alive.

You lay your head against the net for a second, staring up at where you had just jumped from. And then, you’re laughing, not being able to control yourself when you sit up to see where you go next. You’re greeted with hands, all out to help you off. You grab one of them, allowing them to pull you the distance.

Your feet connect with a wooden floor. Your hands glide to your hand, fingers hooking around your hair tie to pull the knot on the back of your head free. It’s grown considerably awful since you’ve jumped off a train, and now a roof. It’s only down for a brief moment, then you’re pulling it into a ponytail on the back of your head.

Your eyes become adjusted to the dark quickly to see that you’re standing on a platform that’s ten feet above the regular ground. Around you is an open cavern. You are now inside of the Dauntless headquarters. You look over to the person that just helped you off of the net to find it’s a woman. You have to look up to see her face.

Laurel has a smug look on her face, “What name do you want to give us?”

There’s a lot of things that you have left behind today, but your name won’t be one of them, “(Y/n).”

Laurel gives you a nod, it’s obvious she recognizes you. She looks over her shoulder, “First jumper--(Y/n)!”

You watch in slight horror as a crowd comes from the cavern’s walls. You hadn’t even noticed that they were there. And in classic Dauntless fashion, they immediately cheer, pumping their fists in the air, whistling, stomping, some clap. You give them a smile.

“Welcome to Dauntless.” Laurel says.

You look back at the net just in time to see another initiate fall from the roof. They bounce on the net once or twice, hair going in every direction. It isn’t until they sit up, do you realize that it’s Finnick, heeding your advice. There’s a grin on his face, you can hear him laughing to himself.

The Dauntless standing around the net reach over for him. He takes one of their hands, helping him off. Laurel leans over to get his name, and then turns, “Second jumper--Finnick!”

The cheering coming from the crowd is loud. Finnick joins you where you stand, eyes wild, he runs a hand through his hair to tame it, “Holy shit.”

“Tell me about it.” you breathe.

When the rest of the initiates stand on solid ground again too, Laurel and a woman named Pleurisy lead you down a narrow tunnel. Everything is made of stone, and the ceiling slopes downwards. Most of it goes unlit, which means you have to rely on your senses to get through the dark. However, after a few close encounters, you wrap your arm around Finnick’s to keep you steady, letting him decide your fate.

When Damon, Laurel and Pleurisy come to a stop, you do too. They all face you, Pleurisy is the only one to speak, “This is where we split. The Dauntless-born initiates are with me, I’m pretty sure you don’t need a tour of the place.”

Pleurisy starts her way into the darkness, you watch as most of the crowd goes with her. You count them as they pass, and end up with the number ten. In total, combining both the transfers and the Dauntless-born, there’s eighteen of you. Damon takes the end of the crowd that’s leaving, wishing Laurel good luck.

“My name is Laurel,” Laurel says, loud enough to cut over the voices speaking behind you, “I’m going to be your instructor for the next few weeks during your initiation. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me after the tour.” She turns her back to you all, and starts walking, “This is the Pit.”

She pushes open a set of doors at the end of the hallway, you and the others walk out to see what she means. Like the hallway, the Pit is also an underground cavern. It’s an open space out here, though. It’s huge, you can’t see the bottom, and you can’t see the other end of the Pit from where you are. There’s several stories above you, and inside of the walls are built-in stores. Food, clothing, supplies, places to build hobbies. The paths leading up are narrow, and it doesn’t have railings to keep you from falling off. 

At the very top of the Pit, is the roof. It’s made out of glass, allowing sunlight to come in and light up the area. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t blue lanterns strategically placed around the paths. The sunlight covers only so much distance. As the sun sets, the lanterns become more reliable.

There are Dauntless members everywhere, caught in their own little bubbles. They shout and laugh, and their children run along the hole in the ground as if it’s not dangerous. All of them are dressed in black, with varying amounts of piercings, different brightly colored hair, and tattoos. Each and every last one of them is unique, unlike in Abnegation.

“Let’s go to the chasm!” Laurel says.

She brings you along the right side of the Pit, straight into the dark. Once again, you place your hand on Finnick’s shoulder. You lean in slightly, “Something tells me that one of us is going to end up tripping and knocking out our entire row of front teeth.”

“Don’t let it be you. I heard that you’re the coolest out of all of us.” Finnick snickers.

You punch his arm slightly.

Laurel brings you to an iron barrier, a railing at last. You can hardly see through the darkness, but there’s an unmistakable sound of rushing water. You let go of Finnick and head forward, firmly placing your hand onto the railing before you lean over the side to see down. A couple stories down, is a river. It’s making so much noise because it’s constantly crashing into the jagged rock wall. One particular wave hits the wall hard enough to send a spray of water up, it doesn’t reach you.

“The chasm is a reminder that there is a fine line between bravery and stupidity!” Laurel shouts over the noise, “One jump off this railing--” she slaps the metal, “--will end your life. It’s happened many times before you, do not be one of them. This is your only warning.”

With that, she leads you all down another hallway, across the Pit and to one of those holes in the wall that you mentioned earlier. The room alone is bright enough to light up the hallway. When you get closer, it’s clear that it’s some sort of dining hall, full of the Dauntless.

Laurel brings you in, and steps aside. For half a second, the entire dining hall falls silent. And then the crowd is roaring, loud. They all get to their feet, slamming their shoes against the concrete, whistling, clapping, cheering. The noise lasts for minutes on end, you can’t help the smile that appears on your face.

When it does end, you’re all left to find seats by yourself to get comfortable. And since FInnick is taller than you, he easily spots a table on the far side of the dining hall. He moves quickly through the aisles, so you have to grab a hold of the back of his shirt to keep from falling behind. 

He takes a seat, you’re sure to sit on his left. It’s only a few moments later when you’re being joined by some of the other transfer initiates. The only Amity girl takes a seat across from you and Finnick, tucking some of her curly dark hair behind her ear as she serves herself without a word. While the only Erudite girl comes through with the Candor boy and girl that she was talking to on the train. Her eyes are bloodshot, she spins a strand of her blonde hair around her finger, puckering her lips before she sits down in a flourish. Her friends sit beside her.

You wonder when you’ll finally know all of their names.

“How bad do you think initiation is going to be?” you ask, looking over at Finnick.

Finnick’s currently staring at the food that’s in the middle of the table. None of it do you recognize, and it sits on large silver plates. You two are used to frozen chicken and canned vegetables. Fancy food in Abnegation is, of course, self-indulgent. But there’s also the fact that farms are far away from where you used to live. Even if Abnegation were allowed to eat the food, you wouldn’t be able to get it.

“Well, considering that we’ve jumped off a moving train and a building, I think that it can only get worse from here.” Finnick barely spares you a glance, “Okay, seriously, what the hell is this?”

He picks up a… sandwich…? off of one of the platters. He turns it slightly, being careful not to let it disassemble itself, “I’m kinda missing the chicken right now.”

“The Abnegation transfers don’t know what a hamburger is?” A loud voice says.

And right on beat, Finnick asks, “What the fuck is a hamburger?”

You let out a snort that develops into a loud laugh. Even the Amity girl sitting across from you two is laughing, covering her mouth with her hand. She raises her eyebrows, and looks over at the Erudite girl. If her intention is to embarrass either of you, she’s going to have to try harder than that. Last time you checked, you three were the first to jump off the building. She took her sweet time coming down.

“Hamburgers in Amity are typically for special occasions.” The girl speaks, “We normally eat fresh fruits and vegetables, but sometimes we’re able to have stuff like this.” She smiles, “My name is Thyme.”

“Nice to meet you,” you give her a smile, “I’m (Y/n).”

“Finnick Odair.” Finnick says, he also smiles, “Am I supposed to eat this dry?”

“No, you can use this.” Thyme pushes forward a couple of bowls of different colored sauces, “Put it on the top bun.”

Out of instinct, you glance at the other transfers. But you have to look again when you see that the Erudite girl has got her eyes on you, glaring. 

“If you’re going to say something, do it. Otherwise, stop fucking staring at me like a freak.” you snap, pressing your palm to the table.

She turns away, so do you.

“Wow, had I known that your personality would change completely, I would’ve told you to go to Dauntless in the first place.” Finnick says, he gives you a grin.

“I’m surprised that you haven’t killed any of them yet, yourself. What happened to violence first, words second?”

“I’m eating.” he says, holds up the hamburger like he’s cheering, and then takes a bite.

“You’ll have plenty of time for that in the first stage of initiation.” A familiar voice says, you look up to see it’s Laurel. She takes a seat beside Thyme, “I wouldn’t worry about it now. In fact, enjoy the peace while you can.”

Your face twists, “That doesn’t sound good.”

She shrugs.

You go ahead and help yourself. For about fifteen minutes, you, Finnick and Thyme are between eating and getting to know each other. Or rather, getting to know Thyme better and telling her bits and pieces about yourselves. Like the rest of you, Thyme is sixteen, she’s from Amity, she has two sisters and a younger brother. She’s the only one in her family to have switched factions. And her face darkens when she mentions it’s because of Amity’s values.

Guess they’re too sunshine-y for her? Not that you want to ask what she means, because the tone of her voice was pretty set. But you don’t get the chance to anyway. The doors to the dining hall open to reveal one person. He must be important, because he’s able to make the entire fall quiet, only whispers being heard. You watch as he comes down the aisles.

You wipe your hands on your napkin, and then your mouth, “Is he another leader?”

“Yup.” Laurel says, she looks over her shoulder slightly to see.

You and Finnick fall completely quiet. And then he chokes, coughing and covering his mouth with his hand. You pat his back without looking at him, it’s only when he shakes your shoulder, do you see his face. It’s red, he struggles for a moment, and then says; “He looks familiar.”

The leader coming down the aisle is blonde. The sides of his head are shaved, but the top is long enough for him to pull it into an acceptable ponytail. His hair is only a couple of inches long, not long enough to reach the back of his neck. You think that it would barely reach the back of his head, actually. But the blonde hair sticks up, wavy and fanned. He’s got a piercing through his nose, and two through his bottom lip on opposite sides. Tattoos snake up his arm.

Finnick is right. There’s something about him that’s familiar. And it doesn’t hit you until he smiles. You can practically hear his laugh in your ears, riding right along with your brother’s.

An unintentional gasp leaves you, hands curling into fists, “Caspian.”

Laurel backs up slightly, looking over you, “Yeah, how’d you know?”

“He was best friends with my older brother.”

The sudden urge to call out his name to gain his attention fills you, but you don’t have to. He takes a turn toward your guys’ table, eyes seeping down until they land on you. You stand from your spot, a smile coming over your face.

“Caspian!”

Caspian gives you a white grin, “And for a second, I thought I’d get the jump on you. How are you?”

When he sits, you do too, “Good, actually. You look so different.”

“All part of the Dauntless scheme.” he then gives a look to Laurel, “Except for her.”

“I got a tattoo.” she defends.

“And your brothers?” Caspian looks back to you.

You give a half-hearted shrug, “Mox is in Amity, he switched a couple of weeks after the accident. Reed is still Reed, but Naida and the kids are doing good!”

You can’t directly mention that it’s his family. Technically, when you switch factions, you’re supposed to forget who you were before. Family, mannerisms, friends. The saying is ‘faction before blood’. You’re sure that Caspian wouldn’t jeopardize his position here to ask about his family, anyway. So you thought that you might as well answer the questions that he won’t ask.

He gives you a sincere smile, a silent thank you. But then he’s grinning, “Dauntless, huh? Thought you were all about Abnegation, Stiff.”

“Couldn’t do it, it’s too stuffy there.” you loosen up a little, jabbing your thumb at Finnick, “Plus, I knew that this idiot would come here. And I couldn’t just leave him to fend for himself.”

“Haha.” Finnick says, rolling his eyes, “You should’ve seen her so far, though. She’s fearless.”

You can feel your face grow hot, “For now.”

“Well, keep up the spirit.” Caspian says, “You’re going to need it.”

At the end of dinner, Caspian takes you and the rest of the transfers down a series of hallways. Laurel had split. An end of a hallway is signified by a single blue lamp, and then you’re submerged back into darkness for long periods of time. The ground is uneven, so you rely on Finnick’s occasional complaining and the sound of him tripping, to let you know when to step up or down.

During this, he eventually grabs a hold of your shoulder.

Finally, Caspian stops in front of a side of large wooden doors, and then turns to you all, “My name is Caspian, I’m one of five leaders here in Dauntless. We take initiation seriously, so I’ve taken the liberty of volunteering to oversee most of your training.”

Volunteering. Very funny, Caspian. 

“Here’s some rules!” He shouts, “Be in the training room by eight everyday, training will take place from eight to six, with a break for lunch. After six, you’re free to do whatever the hell you want. Between each initiation stage, you’ll get some time off.”

Time off? That, right there, is already a big difference between Abnegation and Dauntless. In Abnegation, you’re not allowed to put yourself first, much less your interests. If you had free time, you needed to fill it by helping out Reed, Alyssum, a neighbor, somebody. The only time you would get to yourself would be at night, when you were supposed to be in bed, sleeping.

“You can only leave the compound if you have a Dauntless buddy, not one of your shitty initiate friends. If you leave without one, you will have to answer to one of the Dauntless leaders.” He grins, “Probably me. Behind the door is where you’ll be staying for the initiation process. There’s ten beds, eight of you. Pick whatever you want.

“During the first stage of initiation, you’ll be kept separate from the Dauntless-born initiates, but you’re still being compared to each other. When initiation ends, your rankings will be decided depending on what the Dauntless-borns have gotten. Long story short, it’s all rigged.

“Depending on your rank by the end of all of this, you’ll get to pick your job. The higher the rank, the better the job. Also, only the top ten initiates are made members. In total, there’s eighteen initiates this year, four of you will be cut on the first stage, and the rest will happen after the final test. However, you always have the option of dropping out and becoming factionless.”

He pauses to let this sink in. It’s so quiet in this hallway, that you can hear when someone shifts on their feet.

Ten initiates will become members. Dauntless practically cuts all of their initiates, no matter what happens. Dauntless is more ruthless than you anticipated. But if Caspian of all people can get through initiation and be good enough to become a leader, then you can pass too.

And you will.

--

ANTERIC IS A SPIN-OFF DIVERGENT AU //MASTERLIST//

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[sickslickman]

Welcome to the Table States

Been thinking of doing this for a while, just a cast list for Welcome to the Table by main, major recurring, minor recurring, and guest spots. Let me know if I missed anyone. Also I don’t know sports teams worth a damn, so if I don’t name the state’s jerseys as they should be, that’s why.

Main cast:

(These are characters that premiered in the first episode and appear in most if not all of the episodes. Note: unless otherwise mentioned, all characters in this series are portrayed by Ben Brainard)

DC: The District of Columbia. Runs the meetings. Acts as the leader, but occasionally the shady side of politics comes out of him. Trying desperately to keep his sanity amid the virus, BLM, and everyday American life. His appearance goes from wearing a polo shirt to a suit and tie. Appears in every episode.

Call: “I’m about to do something drastic!”

Florida: The Sunshine State. The Mr. Hyde to DC’s Dr. Jekyll, he is all for absolute chaos and fun over order and following guidelines, and basically comes to the meetings solely to ruin DC’s day. Knows how to call every state because everyone eventually moves to Florida. His appearance is usually a tank top, shorts and a bucket hat. Believes that the coronavirus is a hurricane (or a tropical storm, it varies from day to day). Appears in every episode.

Call: “Duval!”

Texas: The Lone Star State. Usually represents everything the conservative side stands for (guns, politics, religion, women’s rights, big government, you get the drill). His appearance is a red button down shirt and a black cowboy hat. Appears in most episodes.

Call: Sing lines from “Who Put All My Ex's in Texas” by Willie Nelson

California: The Golden State. Usually represents everything the progressive liberal side stands for (abortion, anti-police, anti-fascism, anti-confederacy, BLM, you get it). His appearance is hipster based with beanie and thick-framed glasses. Appears in most episodes.

Call: “Hey Human Torch!” (Unknown if that’s official call or if it just worked because of the wildfires currently ongoing in California)

New York: The Empire State. Tends to be gruff, abrasive and sometimes hostile with his arms almost always folded. Politically is sort of the middle ground between Texas and California; mostly would rather be doing anything else. His appearance used to be a winter coat and hat but has since switched to a Giants jersey. Appears in most episodes.

Call: Unknown at this time, but does react when someone claims their pizza is better.

Major Recurring:

(These are states that make frequent appearances and/or have a strong presence)

Louisiana: The Pelican State. Florida’s best friend and main partner in crime. Very laid back. Only character that speaks with a Cajun accent. His appearance was initially a bucket hat and suspenders with no shirt, but has gradually shifted to wearing LSU gear. Loves daiquiris and gators. Appears in most episodes. His premiere episode is the most watched episode of the series.

Call: “Who dat? Who dat?”

(Note: At this point he has appeared in as many episodes as the main cast, considering bumping him up to main.)

Georgia: The Peach State. Always acts like he just got out of bed, and is almost never seen without a mug of coffee. His appearance has gradually shifted from pajamas to Panthers gear. About as chaotic as Florida, but more out of being dim-witted than out of desire for chaos. Appears in many episodes.

Call: Unknown at this time

West Virginia: The Mountain State: The only state to appear in the pilot episode that is not a main character. Appears very infrequently. His appearances usually involve following coronavirus guidelines and his usage of the word “f***.” Initially dressed in Amish clothing, he has since changed to a Mountaineers football shirt and hat.

Call: Unknown at this time

Washington: The Evergreen State. As the American spread of the coronavirus originated in Seattle, he is almost always coughing but passes it off as “allergies.” Usually wears a dark short-sleeved button down and hipster glasses with ear buds. Appears in several episodes.

Call: Unknown at this time

Massachusetts: The Bay State. Appears frequently and loudly. Has a love-mostly-hate relationship with New York. Tends to be a very abrasive and loud voice of reason. His appearance has gone from a Celtics jersey to a Bruins one.

Call: “Is that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck?”

Utah: The Beehive State. His appearance is a dress shirt and tie and he usually carries a Bible. He is a Mormon and very religious. Has an antagonistic relationship with Florida, who constantly belittles him and inquires about his multiple wives (which Utah does not do anymore). Appears semi-frequently.

Call: “I wish someone were here to tell me about my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!”

Kentucky: The Bluegrass State. Usually wears a dress sweater and carries a picture of Governor Andy Beshear with him everywhere. Tends to be a voice of reason and one of the least problematic states at the table, which is surprising given who his senator is. Appears semi-frequently.

Call: Pronounce “Louisville”

The Carolinas: Both make frequent and strong appearances, and both have a rough relationship with Florida. Both wear T-shirts reflecting their states.

South Carolina: The Palmetto State. Likes to remind Florida of the Jameis Winston crab legs incident. Gets annoyed if you say his barbeque is trash. Loves college football and is always talking about Clemson.

Call: “Carolina BBQ is trash!”

North Carolina: The Tar Heel State. Although he has only appeared in the series fairly recently, he has already become a recurring character. Loves barbecues and basketball. Tends to get hit with a lot of natural disasters.

Call: “It’s bo time!”

Colorado: The Centennial State. Wears a blue T-shirt and a ski hat with goggles. Is usually high all the time and constantly talks about weed. Appears semi-frequently.

Call: Howl like a wolf

Alaska: The Last Frontier. Has only appeared a couple of times but has made a strong impression. Wears an “Alaskan grown” shirt and winter hat. Speaks in a slow but patient voice. Likes to be left alone. Has a friendly rivalry with Texas on account of size. Is a little weird but friendly enough.

Call: None. He is always there. Like Batman.

Minor Recurring:

(These are for characters that are more like supporting characters. Note that although several of these states have had episodes focusing on them, their overall presence is less than that of the major recurring)

Indiana: The Hoosier State. Has only appeared twice. Has trouble coming to terms with Mike Pence’s alleged homosexuality. Not much else notable about him.

Call: Sing the Indiana Jones theme (Although he would prefer “Hoo hoo!”)

Pennsylvania: The Keystone State. Appears semi-frequently but is mostly a slightly less abrasive New York or Massachusetts. Wears an Eagles jersey in most appearances. Constantly asking for a drink. Constantly asking people to choose between Wawa or Sheetz.

Call: “We are!”

Wisconsin: The Badger State. Wears a giant foam Swiss cheese hat on his head. Is perpetually drunk. Argues in favor of the rights of the people (although not always in the best ways). Hates Illinois and especially the Bears.

Call: “Anyone need anything from Quik Trip?”

Illinois: The Prairie State. Mostly just known for Chicago and not much else. Wears a Cubs jersey and hat. Seems rather old fashioned and does not like alcoholics. Everyone in his state seems to hate each other. Hates Wisconsin and has arguments with New York in regards to who makes better pizza.

 Call: Unknown, but seems to react to someone insulting the Bears.

Ohio: The Buckeye State. Loves skyline chili and wine at two o’clock. Begins just about every sentence with “ope.” Used to dress like a rapper wannabe, but now dressed in Ohio State gear. Hates Michigan and given the chance would kill him himself.

Call: “O-H!”

Michigan: The Great Lake State. Wears a Lions jersey and hat and brings a bottle of Vernors with him everywhere. Hates Ohio and wants to beat Ohio State at football.

Call: “Liberate Michigan!”

New Mexico: The Land of Enchantment. Appears very infrequently. Speaks Spanish on top of English. Is intelligent to a degree but will throw down if necessary. Mostly talks about cultural things. Wears a blue hoodie-looking sweater.

Call: Unknown, but responds when someone claims to have better green chili.

Mississippi: The Show Me State. Claims to be the “Harvard of the South.” Carries a water bottle with him wherever he goes. Gets into arguments with California over Confederate momentos.

Call: Unknown at this time

Alabama: The Cotton State. Mostly appears in the weekly recap videos. Represents the philosophies of the Deep South. Not much else known about him.

Call: Unknown at this time

Arizona: The Grand Canyon State. Appears mostly as a semi-frequent character in the weekly recap videos. Not much else is known about him.

Call: Unknown at this time

Missouri: The Show Me State. Appears semi-frequently in the weekly recap videos. Not much is known about him other than he likes barbeque and has a feud with Kansas over Kansas City.

Call: Unknown at this time

Oklahoma: The Sooner State. Appears mostly in the weekly recap videos but has made other appearances too. Tends to be rather sarcastic and blunt, but is prone to overreaction at times. Hates Texas.

Call: Unknown at this time

Tennessee: The Volunteer State. Appears mostly in the weekly recap videos. Tends to be high-pitched and melodramatic.

Call: Unknown at this time

Oregon: The Beaver State. Appears mostly in the weekly recap videos. Was very active during the BLM protests and was vocal against the use of police brutality and unmarked abductions.

Call: Unknown at this time

Minnesota: The North Star State. Appears mostly in the weekly recap videos. Was very active during the BLM protests and in support of defunding police and reallocating resources. Tends to be a voice of reason.

Call: Unknown at this time

Connecticut: The Constitution State. Has only appeared a few times in the weekly recap videos. Tries to avoid dealing with Florida as much as he can.

Call: Unknown at this time

Maryland: The Free State. Wore a T-shirt in early appearances but is now decked out in crab gear in recent ones. As abrasive as a northern state, but with as much pride as a southern one. Early episodes had a running gag of Maryland’s issues regarding coronavirus tests.

Call: “Anyone have any Old Bay?”

The Dakotas: Appear infrequently. Only have about thirty-six people among both of them.

North Dakota: Has only appeared a couple of times. Not much is known about him.

South Dakota: Has appeared more often than his brother, but usually only talks about the Sturgis Bike Rally. Also is trying to fight meth.

Call: “Who’s the better Dakota again?” (will call both of them)

Iowa: The Corn State. One of the biggest running gags in the series is that no one seems to know where he is or how to get in touch with him. Tends to come and go from meetings whenever he sees fit.

Call: Unknown at this time

Background characters:

(Characters that only appear once or have no real significance to the series)

Nevada: The Silver State. Has only appeared once. Dresses like a Vegas dancer.

Rhode Island: The Ocean State. Has only appeared once to discuss his name change.

New Jersey: The Garden State. Has only appeared once. Doesn’t like it when New York keeps visiting him.

Wyoming: The Equality State. Has only appeared once when Florida insulted his name.

Nebraska: The Cornhusker State. Has appeared a couple of times but has had no real significance.

Kansas: The Sunflower State. Has only appeared a couple of times. Tends to feud with Missouri over Kansas City.

Idaho: The Gem State. Has only appeared once(?).

Arkansas: The Natural State. His only real appearance was in the poker episode when everyone told him he couldn’t play on account of he never shuts anything down and can’t weigh in with anything.

Delaware: The First State. Has only appeared twice. Like the state itself, nothing of significance has yet been noted.

Virginia: The Old Dominion. Has only appeared a couple of times, and his only notable role was in the mask debate.

States that still have not made an appearance:

Montana

Vermont

Maine

New Hampshire

Hawaii (Note that Brainard has stated he wishes to find a Hawaiian native actor to play this character.)

Other characters in this series:

CDC: The Center of Disease Control. Originally played by Ben Brainard, the role has since been taken over by comedian Drew Lynch. An overworked, underappreciated man who tries to get the states to adhere to coronavirus regulations. He has a bad stutter and has not slept in weeks. He may be being kept alive purely on coffee and good intentions.

International DC: Played by Elana Rose. Has only appeared once. DC’s sister and the international relations part of the federal government. She’s not very good at her job and tends to act very “mean girl.”

Mother Nature: Played by Liz, aka “lozclaws”. The goddess of earthling weather. Has an on-again off-again relationship with Florida.

Claire: Also played by Liz. Mother Nature’s...roommate? Mother? Not entirely sure. Tries to be a voice of reason to a pair with very little reason between the two of them.

The National Guard: The national army. Has only appeared twice, once to bodyguard Maryland, the other to discuss the BLM protests.

The 3rd Amendment: The third amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Only appeared once. It was very confusing.

Virginia: Kentucky’s sign-language interpreter. Only appeared once. Was deeply offended by Florida (as we all are).

Greg the Sound Guy: The guy who handles the audio and holds the mic boom for the show. Only appeared twice. Probably doesn’t get paid enough.

#Ben Brainard #Welcome to the Table #a wikia of sorts #TikTok

[hellyeahheroes]

Building Billy Batson in D&D 5e

Hello everyone, I felt like making another build to add to the previous ones (which you can see in the Masterpost) and today....*Phone rings*

Is it done?

The Main Man always delivers. One Dark Multiverse bastish tied up like a gammon. What do ya wanna me do with that creep now?

 Throw him back where he came from. I won’t let him mess with another of my builds. Now, about the payment...

-mmmmmmmpf---mmmmmph.

Shup up or I’ll shove that headband where tha sun won’t shine! Anyway, consider tha one a freebie. One of that bastich’s buddies had an indecency ta die before Main Man’s fist could explain to his face why ya don’ stab me with my own hook. Whippin’ ta smile of tha bastich’s face is now a matter of honor.

Pleasure doing business with you.

*Call disconnected*

Sorry for that. Now that we are sure NO leather-clad clown from Dark Multiverse will get his dark-matter-covered hands on my builds like he did with Supergirl, let’s make build for who might be one of the most popular characters fitting the scope of this blog. So much I worry if the inspiration for these builds, Tulok the Barbarian, won’t drop his own build soon (I mean I did say in Supergirl build I doubt he will do Superman anytime soon....and then he did). We’re tackling an actual movie star this time. You probably already know who I’m talking about, right?

Shazam, vel Captain Marvel, vel Captain Marvelous vel Captain Thunder etc, is such a nice character he already has prepared his own list of goals for his build - the Wisdom of Solomon, the Strength of Hercules, the Stamina of Atlas, the Power of Zeus, the Courage of Achilles and the Speed of Mercury.

For Ability Scores, we’re always using Standard Points Array - 15, 14, 13, 12, 10 and 8. If your game uses a different point buy or your roll the dice, treat these as guidelines, just keep your Wisdom and Dexterity high enough for multiclassing.

Strength - 13, Strength of Hercules after all

Constitution - 14, it is Stamina of Atlas

Dexterity - 10, not exactly Speed of Mercury but we can reflect that easy in other ways.

Intelligence - 8, it reflects learned knowledge and Billy is still in school and is usually portrayed as an average student

Wisdom - 15, as it represents both Wisdom of Solomon (duh) and Courage of Achilles

Charisma - 12, too bad we cannot get it higher but Shazam is MAD (Multiple Ability Dependent) by definition. Anyway, people like Big Red Cheese.

Now for the Race.... Shazam is World’s Mightiest Mortal and he is supposed to be an aged up version of Billy or recreation of Billy’s memory of his dead father, so we’ll go with Variant Human. If you would rather take any form that reflects stories where Billy and Shazam are different people switching places, there are few options - Gensai seems somewhat fitting, so does Aasimar, Filbolg, Goliath or even Elf or Half-Elf, depending on where you’d want to focus with the character.

Variant Human gets 1 free language, pick whatever is campaign appropriate, one extra skill, pick Persuasion to help your good public image, +1 to two Ability Scores - pick up Wisdom and Charisma, and a feat. Elemental Adept allows us to pick a lightning type of damage so that from now on when we deal it, it will ignore the resistance and all 1s on our lighting damage rolls become 2s. Alternatively, you can use thunder for this feat, we will be doing a lot of both.

For background we will build a custom one. Pick up Athletics and Perception for skills, any two language or tool proficiencies you find campaign appropriate, and the City Secrets Feature from Urchin Background, which allows you to, when not in combat, travel twice as fast within a city.

Now for the Class, we’ll start with Sorcerer, which gives us proficiency with Charisma and Constitution saving throws, two skills - pick Insight to further utility Wisdom of Solomon to read people and Religion so you actually know what gods granting your powers are about and, you know, don’t go looking for Greek Titan Atlas and find some other guy named Atlas (King Shazam was a stupid book ok?) - and proficiency with daggers, slings, quaterstaffs, darts and light crossbows.

Sorcerer also gets Sorcerous Origin and Storm Sorcery gives us two features - Wind Speaker lets you talk and understand Primordial language and its dialects and Tempestuous Magic allows you to fly up to 10 feet on a gust of air without provoking opportunity attacks.

Sorcerers get to learn magic. How it works is that we get to learn two spells and two Cantrips and two spell slots. We get to cast a spell using the spell slot and we get them back upon finishing a long rest, while Cantrips we can cast as many times as we want. If these spells require a spell attack we roll it with a modifier equal your Charisma Modifier and Proficiency Bonus and if they ask to make a saving throw, difficulty for that is equal to that sum +8.

Also, from Unearthed Arcana for class options, you can pick Spell Versatility, which allows you to replace any of those spells with another of the same level once per long rest.

We start knowing two cantrips and two 1st-level spell from the Sorcerer Spell List:

Shocking Grasp. You make a melee Spell attack roll with attack modifier equal your CHA modifier + your proficiency modifier (so just the last one) and on a hit deal 1d8 lightning damage to a target. As you level up it increases to 2d8 on level 5th, 3d8 on 11th and 4d8 on 17th

Lighting Lure lets you bring up the fact Wonder Woman was slightly inspired by Captain Marvel - you can make a lasso out of a lighting and on a failed strength saving throw the target is pulled 10 feet towards you and if this makes them end within 5 feet from you takes 1d8 lightning damage (scaling as Shocking Grasp)

Expeditious Retreat which, as long as the concentration is maintained for a maximum of 10 minutes, lets you dash as a bonus action when you cast and on each of your turns. This should add to some of that Speed of Mercury thing.

Jump, it triples your jump distance. 

We will now jump (heh) to the first level of Fighter to gain proficiency with armors, simple and martial weapons and shields. Shazam isn’t wearing armor but you can argue his outfit could be a light armor maybe? If not, maybe consider picking up a Mage Armor instead of Jump. Or just go mad and have ARMORED SHAZAM to terrorize your enemies with. We can learn a Fighting Style and Unarmed Fighting from new Unearthed Arcana will make Shazam’s fists deal 1d6+Strength Modifier for damage, instead of static 2. If he uses two hands, or dropkicks someone, World’s Mightiest Mortal can roll 1d8 damage instead and on successful grapple check and whenever he hits a creature he is grappling he can deal an extra 1d4 of damage. You also gain Second Wind, which allows you to, on a bonus action, to regain hit points equal to 1d10 + your fighter level.

2nd Level Fighter gets Action Surge, which allows you once per short or long rest to take an additional action on your turn. This, combined with your Expeditious Retreat helps us somewhat stimulate Speed of Mercury.

If you are confused with multiclassing do not worry, from now on we will remain firmly within a single class. Our 4th level will be 1st level of Cleric. I mean, as far as we might call him Wizard, the guy giving Billy his powers is beyond a mere d&d Wizard (tho some of them are close due to how bullshit op wizards are in this game) - a god-like being who often gets invited to sit at the same table with Phantom Stranger and Zeus, sired two freaking demons and gets into arguments about human nature with personification of Abrahamic God’s wrath and pulls cavemen from time to prove a point. Wizard Shazam is your diety, might be some sort of god of magic. 

1st Level Cleric gets to choose Divine Domain and with the whole motive, we have there is no better option than Tempest. You gain few proficiencies you already had from Fighter and Wrath of the Storm. An amount of time equal your Wisdom modifier per long rest you can use your reaction whenever you’re hit by a creature within 5 feet that you can see to deal it 2d8 lightning or thunder damage or half on successful DEX save.

Cleric, of course, learns spells. They work a bit differently from Sorcerer - you always know them but can only prepare a limited amount, equal your Cleric Level + your Wisdom modifier, ahead of time once you finish a long rest. Your Domain gives you extra spells you always have prepared as well. You can prepare spells on a higher level than they are normally to give them more powerful effects. And your Spell Attack and Spell Save Difficulty for Cleric spells use your Wisdom instead of Charisma. Cantrips work the same except new feature from Unearthed Arcana, Cantrip Versatility, lets you replace one you already know with another every time you gain a Cleric level.

Also, remember that since you are multiclassing casters, consult how many spells slots you should have with SRD - it’s very simple, you just sum up your Cleric and Sorcerer levels. You cannot cast spells from a level higher than you have access by the standard class spell progression, so I will still write down all spells as they would be granted on a standard level for a Cleric.

At first level you gain 3 Cantrips, 2 bonus spells and can prepare two spell slots + one for the next level

Virtue lets yu for one round grant yourself or another target 1d4+your Wisdom modifier temporary hit points.

Guidance lets you for up to 1 minute, on concentration, grant yourself or any willing creature a 1d4 to roll and add to any Ability Check.

Resistance works like Guidance but for saving throws.

Fog Cloud - you create a 20 feet fog that heavily obscures the area of your choice. You can maintain this spell with concentration up to 1 hour but it might be dispersed by wind.

Thunderwave makes you explode with the power of Zeus, dealing every creature within 15-feet away from you 2d8 thunder damage, half on a successful Constitution saving throw, and pushes 10 feet away from you all creatures that failed and everything that isn’t tied or nailed to the ground.

Guiding Bolt makes you make a ranged spell attack - on a hit you blast the target with energy, dealing it 4d6 radiant damage and giving anyone who attacks it an advantage on the next attack because of how the lingering energy makes them a sitting target.

Cure Wounds lets you hear 1d8+your Wisdom modifier of damage on a single target who isn’t undead or a construct. This may represent both your resilence in combat as well as how you inspire other heroes to keep fighting with your optimism - remember hit points are not meat points. (as an alternative you can take Healing Word which works similar except cannot be used on yourself instead can be used at distance - think of it as Shazam cheering an ally in the middle of the combat)

Protection from Evil and Good, upon casting lets you choose one type of creature - an aberration, celestial, elemental, fey, fiend or undead. You can hold it up on Concentration for up to 10 minutes and it gives all creatures of that type a disadvantage on attack rolls against whoever you cast it on and prevents them from charming, frightening or possessing them - and if they already are, it gives them the advantage on saving throws to break free.

2nd Level Cleric learns to Channel Divinity, letting the power of Zeus grant you one of the following options once per short or long rest:

Turn Undead forces every undead within 30 feet that can see or hear you to make a Wisdom Saving Throw or be turned for 1 minute or until it takes any damage, a state in which it must spend its turn using all actions to move as far away from you as it can, unless that’s impossible (then it must try to escape that effect), cannot willingly move to any area within 30 feet from you and cannot take reactions. So now you know why Nekron waited until Billy was depowered to kick off Blackest Night.

Destructive Wrath can be activated whenever you deal thunder or lightning damage and lets you just skip rolling and declare you deal maximum damage possible.

Harness Divine Power from Unearthed Arcana lets you spend your use of Channel Divinity as a bonus action to regain a 1st-level spell.

On 3rd Level Cleric gains 1 extra spell slot for 1st level spells and can now prepare 2 2nd level spells and 2 bonus spells from Tempest Domain and I will also get out of the way new Cantrip and another 2nd level spell slot we will get on 4rd level.

Word of Radiance makes you erupt with radiant energy, forcing every creature that you can see of your choice to make a Constitution saving throw or take 1d6 radiant damage (scaling with your total level like previous Cantrips).

Divine Favor is a concentration spell that can last up to 1 minute and lets you add an extra 1d4 radiant damage to your attacks

Enchance Ability is another Concentration spell that lasts up to 1 minute, it lets you grant you or someone else a bonus on Ability Checks for one Ability of your choice with some minor bonuses for physical ones - 2d6 temporary hit points for CON, preventing you from taking falling damage for DEX and doubling your carrying capacity for STR.

Aid lets you increase current and maximum hit points of up to 3 allies by 5 for up to 8 hours. It doesn’t require concentration and doesn’t count it as temporary hit points, meaning it can stack with those and you can cast it early and it should last for a while.

Prayer of Healing will be the improved version of that “Shazam cheers on his friends” deal with healing I mentioned above - now you can heal 2d8+your Wisdom modifier of damage on up to six creatures you can see.

Gust of Wind lets you play a big bad wolf - you huff and puff so much it creates a strong wind in a 60 feet long and 10 feet wide line, which can last up to 1 minute on concentration. It extinguishes any flames that aren’t protected, has a 50% chance of doing so to protected ones as well, and forces every creature caught in it to succeed a Strength saving throw or be pushed 15 feet away whenever it starts its turn in that line. On each turn you can change the direction of the line as a bonus action.

Shatter lets you bring the thunder - it deals 3d8 thunder damage to all not worn or carried nonmagical objects and every creature within the 10-feet radius from you, half as much on a successful Constitution saving throw, which inorganic creatures (like Doctor Shivana’s robots maybe?) make with disadvantage.

A situation where Enhance Ability is put to a good use

4th Level is an ability score Improvement, increase your Wisdom for better Saving Throw difficulty and more Spells prepared

At 5th Level you get Destroy Undead, which means that from now on every time you use your Turn Undead, all undead of Challenge Rating 1/2 or less who will fail their Wisdom Saving throw get instantly destroyed. You also get 2 3rd level spell slots and gain two bonus spells. And one more on 6th level.

Protection from Energy grants you or another willing creature resistance to one type of damage you choose - acid, cold, fire, lightning or thunder - for up to 1 minute on Concentration.

Beacon of Hope also lasts up to 1 minute on Concentration and in this time grants any number of creatures within range advantage on Wisdom saving throws, death saving throws and make all healing spells automatically heal maximum number of hit points.

Speaking of which, Mass Healing Word lets you to heal up to six creatures in 60 feet range that you can see for 1d4+your Wisdom modifier.

Sleet Storm is your second bonus spell and it is pretty hard to explain this one in character, for now. Until it ends, and it lasts 1 minute on Concentration, you can make sleet and freezing rain fall down on an area of 40 feet radius and20-feet in height, centered on any point you chose within 120 feet radius. Flames in the area are doused, the ground becomes difficult terrain and whenever a creature enters it or starts its turn there it must make Dexterity saving throw or fall prone and every creature concentrating on a spell within the area must make a Constitution saving throw or lose concentration.

Call Lighting on Concentration can last up to 10 minutes and it creates a 10 feet tall, 60-feed wide cylinder centered on a point 100 feet above you within 120 feet radius, which makes storm erupt in that area. On each of your turns or when spell is cast you can literally call lighting on any point within that area and have lighting strike it, dealing all creatures within 5 feet to 3d10 lightning damage, half on a successful Dexterity saving throw, +extra 1d10 if you cast it in stormy conditions already. Why does that sound familiar?

Unlike what we learned in Kingdom Come and Justice League cartoon it is not advised you actually stand next to the person you’re blasting with Call Lighting.

On 6th level, you can use your Channel Divinity options twice between rests and you gain Thunderous Strike - whenever you deal Lighting damage on a large or smaller creature, you can push it 10 feet away from you.

7th level Cleric gets to learn first 4th level spell, plus two bonus spells and we will also cover one spell of that level you get at 8th level:

Freedom of Movement lasts for an Hour, no concentration, and make target unaffected by difficult terrain and immune to any magical effects that would reduce its movement, paralyze or restrain it, can spend 5 feet of movement to escape all nonmagical ones like grappling and doesn't suffer penalties on attack and movement underwater.

Aura of Purity, added to Cleric’s list in Unearthed Arcana, lets you generate an aura for up to 10 minutes on Concentration. You and each non-hostile creature within 30-foot radius cannot become diseased, gains resistance to poison damage and advantage on saving throws on any effects that would cause it to be blinded, charmed, deafened, frightened, paralyzed, poisoned or stunned.

Control Water lasts up to 10 minutes on concentration and lets you control any body of water in 300 feet area that would fit in a cube up to 100 feet on one side, making a flood, parting it, redirecting its flow or creating a whirlpool. No idea how that fits Shazam, maybe instead of Speed of Mercury you got Aquatics of Moses? But hey, free stuff.

Ice Storm lets you choose any point within 300 feet radius and have it becomes a center of a cylinder 40 feet high and 20 foot wide that gets BOMBARDED BY ROCK HARD ICE dealing all creatures in it 2d8 bludgeoning damage and 4d6 ice damage, half on a successful Dexterity saving throw and the ground in that area becomes difficult terrain until end of your next turn.

8th level is also dense with features. Yoru Destroy Undead now works on all undead of challenge rating 1 or less, you can round up your Wisdom with an Ability Score Improvement and you get Divine Strike. Once on each of your turns when you hit a creature you can deal it an extra 1d8 thunder damage. Alternatively, you can choose to make it radiant with a possible replacement feature from Unearthed Arcana, Blessed Strikes, allowing you to add 1d8 radiant damage to any damage you deal with a hit or spell once each turn. It is more flexible but won’t increase to 2d8 when you gain 14th level of Cleric.

Yeah, being able to call upon Ice Storm does make me think Armageddon has arrived.

9th level Cleric gets a new Cantrip, one more 4th level spell slot and we will do our usual dance with 5th level spells - covering one for a slot you gain on this and next level and two bonus ones.

Light lets you make an object no longer than 10 feet in any dimension shine with bright light in a 20-foot radius and dim light in following 20-foot radius and if that object was held by a hostile creature, it must succeed a Dexterity saving throw or drop it.

Our 4th level spell is Banishment, which lets you do that one trick where Shazam punched a monster so hard he created a black hole and send it to another dimension. Which he did. You choose a target up to 60 feet from you and force it to make a Charisma saving throw. If it fails, you need to keep concentration up to 1 minute. If the concentration breaks, the target returns. If a minute has passed and the target was a native to the plane you are on, it will then return. If it wasn’t, then if you keep up concentration for that 1 minute, they do not come back. Have I mentioned two of your enemies are freaking demon children fo Wizard, Blaze and Satannus? And that one of your deadliest foes, Mr. Mind has been in new continuity an interdimensional threat (and for fans of him being an alien, look up Spelljammer)? Put this baby to a good use.

Mass Cure Wounds lets you to choose up to six creatures within 30-feet radius centered on any point of your choice within 60 feet from you. Each one regains 3d8+ your Wisdom modifies of hit points. Billy further inspiring his friends to keep up hope in face of evil.

Flame Strike is another spell for the “how is he exactly doing that” category. It’s basically you choosing any point within 60 feet range from you and yelling SHAZAM! to make a 10-foot in radius, 40-feet high PILLAR OF FIRE erupt with a center on this point, dealing 4d6 fire damage and 4d6 radiant damage to all creatures within it, half on a successful Dexterity saving throw.

Destructive Wave makes a burst of destructive energy erupt from you. You can choose which creatures within 30 feet radius from you it hits and deal them 5d6 thunder damage and 5d6 either radiant or necrotic damage, whichever you prefer, half on a successful Dexterity saving throw. Those that fail the save are also knocked prone.

Finally Insect Wave. Choose any point within 300 feet radius. It becomes a center of a 20-feet in radius sphere that gets FILLED WITH LOCUST that deal 4d10 piercing damage to all creatures in it, all those who enter the area or end a turn within it, half on a successful Constitution saving throw. On Concentration, you can keep up this nightmare up to 10 minutes. Maybe that M does stand for Moses after all?

This is how it looks like when Shazam tries Banishment, minus that part where he gets sucked in as well.

At 10th level Cleric learns Divine Intervention - in time of need you can call upon your boss the Wizard and ask him for help. Roll percentile dice (1d100 or 2d10, with one serving as tens and another as ones) and if you roll equal or below your level the diety will intervene on your behalf.

11th level Cleric gets Destroy Undead increased to Challenge Rating 2 and learns a 6th level Spell. Otherwordly Form let’s you assume form of divine being. You can say SHAZAM and for one minute, with Concentration, assume either Upper or Lower Planes form and gain following benefits: flying speed of 40 feet,+2 bonus to AC, an abilitty to substitute your Wisdom for Strength when punching people and depending on the planes you picked either immonity to poison damage and poisoned condition (lower planes) or necrotic damage and charmed condition (Upper Planes).

12th level Cleric gains an Ability Score Improvement. Due to many of our spells requiring Concentration, we should invest in Constitution. Remember it grants extra hit points retroactively. 13th level grants us a single 7th level spell. Let’s make SHAZAM! the word of power it deserves to be then with Divine Word - you utter a word imbued with power that shaped the world since the dawn of creation. Choose any number of creatures with 30 feet that you can see. You force them to make a Charisma saving throw and if they fail the following results happen: if the creature had 50 or less Health Points, it gets deafened for 1 minute. If its HP was 40 or lower, it gets blinded and deafened for 10 minutes. If its health was 30 or lower it gets blinded, deafened and stunned for 1 hour. Any loser with HP below 21 is killed instantly. And if you use it on  a celestial, an elemental, a fey, or a fiend and they fail a save they get kicked out to their native dimension and cannot return for next 24 hours unless someone uses a Wish spell, on top of all that deafening and killing.

This is what he is talking about and you cannot convince me otherwise.

At 14th Level your Divine Strike damage increases to 2d8 and your Destroy Undead power now works on undead up to Challenge Rating 3. 15th Level Cleric gets access to 8th level spells. Holy Aura is a Concentration Spell up to 1 minute, making you shine a bright aura in a 30-foot radius. Any creature you choose within that radius shines dim light with 5 feet radius and have an advantage on all saving throws, while everyone else has a disadvantage on all attack rolls against them and if an undead or fiend actually manages to hit them in a melee, they shine brightly for a moment, blinding their attacker for the remaining duration of the spell, unless they make a Constitution saving throw.

16th level Cleric gains another Ability Score Improvement, increase your Constitution again. Our Capstone is the 17th level of Cleric which increases Destroy Undead to now working on Challenge Rating 4 undead and gives us Stormborn, which grants you flying speed equal to your walking speed while outdoors and not underground. So assume all these insane storms were results of Billy flying up and messing with the weather above. Finally, we learn a 9th level spell slot. Upon casting you to restore up to 700 Hit Points divided as you choose between any number of creatures within 60 feet, also curing them of all disease and effects making them blinded or deafened. You know, in case Black Adam used his own Divine Word on your allies.

So this is how I would build Shazam in D&D. Storm Sorcerer 1/Fighter 2/Tempest Domain Cleric 17. Now lets us see how variable this build is. First of all, Big Red Cheese is a good person to be around, always inspiring his allies to push forward and keeping up the morale (aka healing everyone). Second he can use his might to bring terror upon the battlefield, with many area of effect spells wrecking chaos among the enemies. And in a pinch, Billy can tank damage like a champ with around 180 HP and with high Constitution and proficiency in its save he should maintain Concentration easily. You are also surprisingly mobile for a guy doing tanking and battlefield-control.

On the downsides, Strength of Hercules and Speed of Mercury are mostly maintained by casting spells and playing them off as some sorts of abilities you just have. Meaning if you want to maintain that you need to carefully consider your spells for each day and what you might need. Your strength modifier being only +1 also means that without Otherworldy Form you will often simply not hit your enemies. Even your damage in melee is mostly accomplished by fighting style and Divine Strike. Speaking of which, a lot of your damage is done in types that many creatures have resistance and immunity to and this build is too hungry for Ability Score Improvements to pick up second Elemental Adept so you cannot even deal with resistance on both lightning and thunder. Finally, a lot of your spells require Concentration, meaning you can use only one at the time. Overall, however, you are a valuable member of the team, as long as you remember you cannot do everything alone.

ALTERNATIVES:

Speaking of a team, Billy isn’t the only champion of the Wizard. So why won’t we talk about how to alter this build to make any of Billy’s siblings? Here are some quick suggestions:

DARLA: Change Ability Scores to STR 12 DEX 14 CON 13 INT 8 WIS 15 CHA  10 and use your Variant Human modifiers to round up Wisdom and Constitution. Drop fighter and Sorcerer and instead pick up a level of Monk for increased mobility and DEX-based Unarmed attacks, then a level of Revised Ranger with Favored Enemy replaced by Favored Foe from Unearthed Arcana and one extra level left spend on Cleric (from which you should be starting this build now), spend Ability Score Improvements on maxing out Wisdom and Dexterity. You will keep your mobility, decrease the MAD and be able to both move around the battlefield, deal decent damage in combat and still rely on your spells requiring a saving throw or spell attack.

PEDRO: STR: 14 DEX 10 CON 15 INT 10 WIS 13 CHA 8, two +1 spend on Strength and Constitution, replace Elemental Adept with Athlete to round up your Strength, replace Sorcerer with one more level of Fighter and pick Brute as a Martial Archetype, spend Ability Score Improvements on maxing up Strength and Constitution. Focus on Concentration based spells, especially those beneficial to you and your allies, so you can be a team tank.

EUGENE: For Ability Scores replace Charisma with Intelligence and drop a level of Sorcerer and a level of Fighter for two levels of Wizard. At second level pick up School of Lore Mastery for Spell secrets - it allows you to change the type of damage dealt by your spells and the type of a saving throw they demand to make. You’re squishier but more flexible in casting, able to make all your weird spells deal lighting or thunder damage or another way around if you run into something with resistance or immunity.

MARY: drop Fighter and Sorcerer for 3 level of Celestial Pact Warlock, on 3rd level pick up Pact of the Chain and replace one of your Eldritch Invocations with Investment of the Chain Master from Unearthed Arcana and either convince the DM to let you summon a rabbit familiar (despite it not being on the list) or agree to use stats of one of the animals on it while treating it like a rabbit in story. With the Invocation, you will get flying rabbit with magical attacks, or should I say HOPPY THE MARVEL BUNNY?

FREDDY: Drop levels of Fighter and go with 3 levels of Draconic Sorcerer to get better AC, more spells and Metamagic to let you do some crazy stuff.

- Admin

#Dungeons & Dragons #Shazam! #Shazam #Billy Batson #Pedro Pena #Darla Dudley #Eugene Choi #Mary Broomfield #Mary Marvel #DC

[nowhereiswhereibelong]

73 Questions

I mas tagged by: @mrs-machinegun-norris about two centuries ago sorry

On a scale of 1-10, how excited are you about life right now?

• 5

Describe yourself in a hashtag?

• #sadbicht

• Cause I'm a bad bicht you can't kill me, only I do that

If you could do a love scene with anyone, who would it be?

• Aaron Taylor-Johnson

• Colson Backer

If your life was a musical, what would the marquee say?

• The crazy bisexual is on the loose

What’s one thing people don’t know about you?

• That I cant handle silence

What’s your wake up ritual?

• All my cats and family yells at me till I roll of take my meds and stare at the wall till I'm late

What’s your go to bed ritual?

• Make sure I cleaned the litter box and that my cats have food and water then is up to bed and reading anything and everything till I fall a sleep

What’s your favourite time of day?

• Night time (I get the zoomies), or when I'm home alone

Your go to for having a good laugh?

• I really like comedy and some that make me laugh even when I watched 1000 times: John Mulaney, Daniel Sloss, Russel Howard and Sarah Millican

Dream country to visit?

• As many as I can! I have an extensive list

What’s the biggest surprise you’ve had?

• Last semester 3 professors at university were really supportive and understanding and I didnt expect them to be so kind or belive in me that much.

Heels or flats/sneakers?

• Sneakers everywhere all the time for any given reason

Vintage or new?

• Vintage bits and pisses of different eras but late 80s early 90s give me live

• And I'm obsessed with 70s buildings dont know why

Who do you want to write your obituary?

• An creative stranger - go nuts dude freak people out

Style icon?

• dont have one I guess

What are three things you can’t live without?

• My cats

• My phone

• My guitar

What’s one ingredient you put in everything?

• I'm crazy about mustard

• My dad always says anything salivary can be better with cheese and anything sweet be better with chocolate - not that far from the truth

What 3 people living or dead would you like to make dinner for?

• Elvis Presley

• Jane Fonda

• Janis Joplin

What’s your biggest fear in life?

• Failure

• The dark

Window or aisle seat?

• Window: you can look at the view, it's better for sleeping and during the day sunlight for reading

What’s your current TV obsession?

• A have many, it's a problem, but right now mind hunter

Favourite app?

• Instagram and tumblr

Secret talent?

• I like to lie to myself and say acting but maybe just weirdly good at pretending to be good at things (ain't that the joke huh)

Most adventurous thing you’ve done in your life?

• I would say it was dumb, stupid and streamly dangerous but when I was 16 a friend and I went to some guys house in a very weird neighborhood and lied to our parents about it and only 1 other friend new (also our taxi couldn't find the house). We meet those two guys at a friends party and they said that they were throwing one and that we should go, and our dumb selfdestruting alcohol hunting minds though, why not. It was not a party. It was just a hang out with us and one other guy and to this day I dont know how we left at 7am (the only way to get out of there was the first bus because uber wasn't a thing yet and me and my friend were to scared of what kind taxi driver we would find) unharmed and not sexually harassed, given that one of the dudes that our friends new more hated me for a few months for not putting out for him, cause you know, men.

• I'm absolutely sure they wanted a sex party that didnt happen. But I did show my unasked skills of knowing every single black veil brides lyrics.

How would you define yourself in three words?

• Anxious

• Laud

• Loyal

Favourite piece of clothing you own?

• The stolen 80s tshirts from my dad

• High waisted shorts

Must have clothing item everyone should have?

• A comfortable pair of jean shorts that you feel pretty in

Superpower you would want?

• To stop time

• I get to anxious trying to time manage and it just snowballs from there. And sleeping in without being always late.

What’s inspiring you in life right now?

• Machine Gun Kelly (I stared listening to his stuff a few months ago)

• But always and forever is the passion that moves people

Best piece of advice you’ve received?

• Be/do to other people what you wanted to be done for you

Best advice you’d give your teenage self?

• It's not just on your head it's a real thing, you're lot alone, and it ok to need help.

A book that everyone should read?

• Harry Potter: that even thou I have read multiple times it still is amazing and full of symbolism that people brush through some times.

• Women who run with the wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

• My older sister made me start this book and its absolutely live changing and I belive should be obligatory to all women in this world. This book is a live long work by this psychologist and through miths, legends, folk tales and stories she puts together what she calls the wild women archetype and what is the feminine instinct is and how those tales teach us about it and how to have a healthy relationship with her.

What would you like to be remembered for?

• For being kind

How do you define beauty?

• It's an powerfull force within

What do you ~love most~ only love about your body?

• The shape of my eyes

Best way to take a rest/decompress?

• Listening to music and dancing around

Favourite place to view art?

• I dont understand sorry

If your life were a song, what would the title be?

• Static supernova

If you could master one instrument, what would it be?

• Guitar and piano cant choose only one

If you had a tattoo, where would it be?

• My planned ones:

• Orca

• Felix felicis

• Tree

• Mother earth

• Penicillin allergy (I dont trust nobody)

Dolphins or koalas?

• Dolphins

• Did you y'all know that orcas not only aren't whales but belong on the same family as dolphins?

What’s your spirit animal?

• Orca

Best gift you’ve ever received?

• My cats (even thou there are rescues they're my little special gifts from nature)

Best gift you’ve ever given?

• On my best friend wedding my friend and I gave a performance as siluetes (it was private beach and all the light were off and we had the car headlights behind us) I played the song you are in love by taylor swift while she did an beautiful performance on silks the song represented their relationship and how she shared it if us in a very sacred way and the silks was a representation of her herself and how the 3 of us saw in the last few years her transformation from a very broken person to the women she was born to be.

• Yes we were crying the hole time but was the most genuine and beautiful think I ever done so yeah

What’s your favourite board game?

• Dix it, its awesome go play it pls

What’s your favourite colour?

• Petrol blue

Least favourite colour?

• The color of lentil soup my mom makes it looks like a baby have serious digestive problems

Diamonds or pearls?

• Diamonds of the symbolic value of "the pressure that could've break us made us into diamonds insted"

Drugstore makeup or designer?

• Drugstore makeup, the one I know that are real brands hauahauahs

Blow-dry or air-dry?

• Air-dry

Pilates or yoga?

• Pilates even thou I must prefer sports mostly

Coffee or tea?

• My blood is coffee at this point

What’s the weirdest word in the English language?

• Wolrd, because English is not my first language and specially in an American accent the pronunciation of wolrd if simply the worst and is absolutely obnoxious and unsettling.

Dark chocolate or milk chocolate?

• Dark

• But my absolut favored is a 70% cacao white chocolate. It's incredible but I only got to buy it twice :(

Stairs or elevator?

• Stairs, I also love to sit on them

Summer or winter?

• Winter. I only like heat if I'm inside very cold water

You are stuck on an island, you can pick one food to eat forever without getting tired of it, what would you eat?

• If nutrition value doesn't matter, ice cream

A desert you don’t like?

• Orange cake. Bad memories and I vomit every time I try to eat it.

A skill you’re working on mastering?

• Singing and playing the guitar

Best thing to happen to you today?

• I think I made a online friend :D

Best compliment you’ve ever received?

• That I'm kind

Favourite smell?

• Buttering sugar

Hugs or kisses?

• Hugs i Iike to be permanently attached to some people at times

If you made a documentary, what would it be about?

• Domestic violence

• Parenting

Last piece of content you consumed that made you cry?

• Today I was trying to play this song called Ronan and cryed my eyes out like all the other times I tried before It's a song of child cancer in the mother's perspective

Lipstick or lip gloss?

• Lipstick

• I'm a red matte lip stan

Sweet or savoury?

• Sweet

Girl crush?

• Billie Elish

How you know you’re in love?

• The only time I think I've been in love I only realised it because they left and I didnt understand why i was severely hurt by it and changed the way I created all relationships after that. And then it hit me

• So pain and heartache.... yeah that's depressing as shit

Song you can listen to on repeat?

• When the sun goes down - Arctic Monkeys

If you could switch lives with someone for a day who would it be?

• My own self but not a anxious depressed mess just to feel what it's like

What are you most excited about at this time in your life?

• That I dont need to make decisions

[ashandboneca]

Crafting Pagan Ritual

ED: This is a very old piece of mine probably written more than 10 years ago, written when I practiced a very Wiccan-centric path. It was a class I taught to beginners. I feel it still may be helpful for those who run public ritual or are exploring ritual creation.

What is ritual?

A ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value. It may be prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community.

It is driven by a mindset – to celebrate a holiday/season/special day, to create and execute a spell, or to honour a deity (or other spiritual guide or being). Normally there are certain parameters that are established (a circle, a boundary), and certain actions taken, depending on tradition and personal beliefs. It can celebrate a rite of passage (a birthday, for example), and usually has lasting traditions (birthday cake, candles, presents) that can be repeated year to year (month to month, etc).

Really, let’s be frank; a ritual can be anything.

For me, a ritual (in a spiritual sense) is a space to create a psychological mindset so that I can focus on my intention, and get my purpose done.

When do I create ritual?

You create ritual to celebrate an occasion, to mark a holiday, to honour a deity, or to raise energy for an intended purpose.

A ritual can be as simple as lighting a candle and saying a prayer, or as complicated as a mystery play with multiple participants, costumes, and several songs. It is dependant on what you choose to involve, and whom (if) you choose to involve.

Purpose: The Necessary Ingredient

I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH.

Without a purpose, you do not have a ritual. A ritual without purpose is like a ham sandwich without ham – sure, the bread, mayo, and mustard are edible, but they are not as good, as nourishing, or as satisfying without the ham. In fact, they suck. You can attempt to do a ritual for any old reason – but trust me, it will go nowhere fast without a clear purpose.

Purpose gives you something to focus on. An example: Beltane is May 1. I may decide to do a ritual to mark that passage in the wheel. So – I could say ‘my purpose is Beltane!’. Or, I could go one better, and say 'Hm. Beltane is often associated with fertility – my purpose is fertility!’ Or, I could go even deeper – my purpose could be the specific gods/goddesses (Demeter, Green Man, Hathor) associated with that holiday – so I could be petitioning for their help. My friend Sally could be trying to have a baby – I could use her as a focus for my purpose.

You want to have a clear purpose, and you can narrow the focus as much as you like. However, I have found that in larger, more public settings, it is better to have a focused purpose that is more general – more along the 'fertility’ option. The other participants may not know Sally, or perhaps they want to focus on their own fertility. It still gives the ritual a structure and a place/concept to direct the energy, but it allows it to be more accessible for the general populace.

Psychologically, the purpose gives our minds a place to go to – and allows our imaginations and visualization capabilities to fill in the blanks. It helps us to figure out how we want to picture the energy, and how exactly we want to send that out to the universe. Piggybacking on the Beltane example, I often visualize fertile energy as green energy starting at my sacral chakra. It gives us the freedom to work with the energy as we want, but allows us to work towards the same goal.

In personal ritual, it is just as important to have a purpose. Being in ritual headspace all the time is exhausting – if you are working a spell or honouring a deity, you want to conserve that energy so you have no issues raising it when needed. It would be the equivalent of going to a mall with no purpose – not to shop, or browse, but just to wander aimlessly for hours and hours. You end up tired and cranky, and that bleeds into your ritual work.

An example: One year, I decided to do a ritual. No real reason, just wanted to do one. So I cast my circle with my wand, and just…. sat there. I didn’t have a purpose, so I had no focus. I ended up just sitting there, stewing about something that had made me angry earlier, and that energy just got supercharged. I got angrier and angrier, and ended up channelling so much of this into my wand that it snapped!

My Magic Formula

To be fair, this is a pretty old formula. I just molded it to fit my needs.

This is a classic example of the visualization of plot. As in, a literary device.

Almost any ritual can be slid into this formula – it represents any purpose, and gives a clear beginning, middle, and end. A ritual is simply a story being told in a poetic way to illustrate a purpose. This graph is your best friend.

Building ritual from a skeleton

Let’s break it down simply.

The introduction: This is where you set your stage. You decide if you want a circle to create sacred space, and how to do that. Some people prefer the 'hand to hand I cast this circle’. Some prefer taking their pointy tool of choice (finger, athame, or wand) and going around the outside. Some people hand a ball of yarn around so that it is a physical representation of the circle.

You also decide how to call your quarters. They can be as simple or as flowery as you like. They can be creative – a few rituals we have done word association.

Decide on what gods/spirits/beings you want to call into your space. This will be relevant to your purpose. Make sure the beings get along – don’t call opposing entities to work together in cohesion – I guarantee it’s not happening.

Direction: This is simply your statement of purpose. It can be as simple as 'we are here today to celebrate Imbolc’ or as complicated as “We gather here on Brigid’s day to celebrate the turning of the wheel. We have come to honour the gradual warming of the earth, the persistence of the coming spring, the waning of the ice and cold of winter’s grasp. At Yule we honour the gifts of darkness, and today we honour the gifts of the light.” This is the statement that puts the celebrants (or yourself) into ritual headspace.

I also like to explain any activity that will be done, and why we’re doing it. Like, if we’re going to be singing a chant, I pass out sheets with the words, or teach people the words, so we aren’t stumbling when the critical point arrives.

Rising Energy: This is when you are … well, raising energy for your purpose. You’re chanting, singing, meditating, whatever. The point is that your focus is on the purpose, and you are channelling life into that.

Climax: The release of energy into the universe. Pretty self explanatory.

Denouement: The falling action – the part of the ritual that is essentially used to help people ground. Often, people will serve cakes/ale, or hold a meditation, or simply ground.

Completion: The end of the ritual. You thank your deities, dismiss your quarters, take down sacred space, and thank the participants.

These terms make up the skeleton of a ritual – they are key points that keep the ritual cohesive. This ensures a clear beginning, middle, and end. Use these key points to initially create your ritual, and fill in the rest as you go along. I find writing out (and blocking it) is extremely helpful.

Example:

Samhain, 2006

Altar is decorated with black cloth, scattered leaves, gourds, acorns, apples, and black and orange candles. In two candleholders, there are taller black tapers. A variety of breads and fruits for feasting on a pentacle. A lit black pillar and unlit white pillar sit near the tall black tapers candles.

Intro: Outline your circle with bird seed and salt. Cast the circle (using athame) and call Quarters (simple calls)…… invoke the Crone aspect of the Goddess by lighting the black Goddess candle… invoke the God by lighting the black God candle.

Direction: Explain the significance of the holiday (using script). Set the scene using props (apples, boline). Statement of purpose (the honoured dead, those who have passed, death as a cycle). Explain myth of Persephone.

Rising Energy: Bless the food. Begin chant (likely Hoof and Horn). Have drummers to keep beat. Slowly chant faster.

Climax: Send energy to focus. Have everyone raise their hands and shout.

Denouement: Snuff black pillar (old year). Light white pillar (new year). Pass around blessed food to enjoy.

Completion: Thank God/ess. Dismiss quarters. Drop circle (using athame). Hand out leaves to participants.

Meat : Now safe for vegans

Now here comes the actual work of the ritual writing – the meat. By meat, I mean all the decisions that need to be made about what is in the skeleton. So you’re going to call the elements – how are you going to do this? Is it freeform, or will you have a script? This is where you write that script. You need to block out everything, down to where people are standing and what people’s jobs are.

This part can take research. It can be really easy if you are writing for yourself – most of the time you can do it freeform, or read it off a paper. In a larger setting, this can be a challenge. I will get into the type of people you need in a later section.

The script gets written – depending on how eloquent you are (or how eloquent you want it to be), this can be a challenge. If you need someone to pass things around, or need someone to perform a specific task or chant, that has to be included here.

Think of it this way: you’re making a sandwich. You have decided on the type of bread you want, and the condiments you want – what do you want to be the main part of the sandwich? Is it ham, beef, sprouts? Do you want to shaved, cut, or raw? What kind of cheese do you want, if you want it? Aside from the purpose, this is the most important part.

Drama: why it is necessary (and not the crummy type)

It’s all well and good to write out a beautiful ritual, but actually running it is another story. Any great story or play is going to have drama, and you had better sure you have some as well.

When you are looking for other participants to play parts in your drama, you need to be sure that you are choosing the right people. Can these people read with passion and conviction, or do they have the stage persona of a wet dishrag? With encouragement, anyone can show promise – but when you are running a ritual for other people, it is very important your ritual has a good flow and is suffused with enough passion and zeal. Nothing wrecks a mood like a quarter-caller who reads with the passion of a banker’s box. Practice your ritual before the big day – DO NOT leave it until the last minute. You want the ritual to feel confident and effortless, so people should know exactly what they need to do and when. Being unprepared shows in your ritual – you are directing the energy, and you want to keep the revellers on point. Having everyone read through their parts a few times so they don’t stumble over words or lose their place in ritual will keep the energy flowing – but most importantly, it will keep everyone in what I call 'ritual mindset’.

Ritual mindset is the psychological state we enter when we enter a ritual. Many things can effect this – sounds, smells, visuals. I knew someone who would instantly go into a meditative state when he smelled benzoin. This is why there are people in robes, a decorated altar, drummers and bell ringers. All of these are tools to keep you focused and intent on what needs to be done. I have written about this in my past article The Importance of Ecstatic Ritual.

Every religion has it’s own pageantry – paganism is no different. Catholic priests wear ritual robes and often carry censers of frankincense and myrrh up the aisle of the church – Jewish men wear the yarmulke as a pious custom. These 'costumes’ are ways to differentiate the religious leaders from the flock – in paganism, we often wear these clothes to symbolize the shedding of the mundane and stepping into sacred space. This is not to say that I would not have the ability to lead a sabbat ritual in jeans and a t-shirt; I certainly could, but would people seeing me, in jeans, automatically think 'ritual’? Doubtful.

Sometimes, donning ritual jewelry, a robe, a cloak, or even all black clothing is enough to non-verbally communicate 'we are in a sacred space’.

The fear: or how I stopped worrying and learned to love the Gods

Here it is – you’re standing in front of a group of 5, 10, 30 people. They are looking at you expectantly. You’re pretty sure if you could, you’d pass out from fear. Rhi, you ask, how do you get past this?

Honestly? I am a pretty shy person, and every ritual is a challenge for me. I find it hard to speak in front of people, and I have screwed up so many times in ritual from fear and nervousness – I can’t even count. You are your own worst critic – nothing is ever expected to be perfect. The god/esses are not going to judge you because you said south when you meant north. I also find laughing it off, or a little self depreciation works just fine. “Oh, ha, I had a dream I visited Australia last night – still running in Aussie headspace!”

Mistakes happen. We are all human, and any other expectation is unrealistic. Just focus on having fun. If you’ve done a few runs of the ritual, you should be comfortable enough to lead with little issue. Every ritual is a celebration, and if you spend the time worrying about every little thing, you’re throwing the wrong energy out there.

A Final Note

I have been involved in the community in the past, running and assisting in public rituals. Community was always my focus, and it is my goal to make people understand how much work goes into a ritual, but also how easy it can be to create the ritual, either for personal or public use.

Please note that this article is based on my own experiences and methods. If something does not work for you, or if you disagree with my opinions or thoughts, that is okay! It is all about giving you a basis so you can learn to create and nurture your own methods!

#ash and bone #ashandbone.ca #witchcraft #traditional witchcraft #heathenry #the crooked path

[lightsandlostbells]

Skam France season 3, episode 6 reaction

I have a Jerome theory and I’m sticking to it

Episode 6

Clip 1 - Lucas gets his turn in the hoodie of despair

Lucas is at school Monday. We get a shot of his bandaged hand that’s a parallel to the trailer for the season, where we also start with a shot of Eliott’s hand. In both situations, Lucas/Eliott is about to walk into the school in a tense, uncertain situation, Eliott facing a new school and new people after his episode at his old one, Lucas facing his old school and old friends after alienating or angering the people he cares about.

Also, the bandaged hand is representative of his emotional ~wounds but that’s ... really obvious, I feel silly saying it.

The angsty piano music, a hallmark of this season, plays as Lucas crosses the yard. The boy squad laughs at him, and if that wasn’t obviously fake, then Raptor Alex miming a blowjob at him while standing with Eliott should be a dead giveaway, because like hell Eliott would tolerate homophobic bullying of Lucas, no matter their relationship status. (Though it’s kinda amusing to think about this scene as an Alex/Eliott AU where Alex is bragging about his BJ game and Eliott is smirking like “damn right.”)

Daphne comes up and kisses him on the cheeks. She’s so effusive and affectionate that at first I thought she already knew Lucas was gay and was trying to jump to the front of the queue to make him her gay BFF. It’s not that, though. She touches his arm and is like HOW BUFF which is hilarious because Lucas is, how do you say, wispy. No offense at all, but I would never be like yeah, that guy looks like he works out. Lucas doesn’t seem to buy it either. Of course Daphne wants him to help move a couch, lmao. Protect the five vulnerable girls going to pick up the secondhand sofa from a potentially shady dealer? I guess Daphne got over her fear that Lucas would be taking over as head of the common room once she realized he was another pair of arms to carry that couch.

Of course when Lucas looks over, it’s not the boy squad, but some random dudes. Not Alex and Eliott but some random dudes. Not Maria and Chloe, but some random girls. All of them seemingly minding their own business and not caring about Lucas one way or another. This puts a different focus on the scene than with Isak, because with Isak he actually was walking into the lion’s den. He saw Emma and Even in the courtyard and psyched himself up to walk between them with his Nas song playing in his ears to psych himself up. Isak was miserable, but in a way it felt like an act of courage; he saw his worst fears on both sides of him, literally, and pushed himself forward. With Lucas, I’m not saying he isn’t brave, but with all those people turning out to not really be there and not really laughing and talking about him, the emphasis is more on his paranoia and fear. It’s a much drearier take on a scene that was already depressing (and I feel like the lighting/coloring reinforces that, too, but err, that’s Skam France’s usual aesthetic so I’m not sure how intentional that was.)

Clip 2 - Yann the voice of reason

Gym class, not for Lucas, but for Chloe. After class ends, Lucas comes into the gym and wants to talk to her. Chloe is not having it. Lucas tries to say she said on Friday is nonsense. He’s not a (homophobic slur) and he asks her not to spread it around. Ohhh boy, this is. Uncomfortable. Completely understandable that he doesn’t want the rumors to get out, and I get why he’d say he wasn’t really gay in order to protect himself, but him using a slur? That’s really sad. That makes this not just a strategic move or an attempt to handle the situation before it gets worse, but something self-hating. There was no reason for him to use homophobic language except to distance himself from being gay, like in episode 3, the advice he took to keep people from guessing. 

She’s pissed that he didn’t even come to apologize or talk, just to ask her not to spread it around, so you know she’s not really listening and making this about her own feelings. And look, we can say over and over again that Chloe has a right to be mad, and of course she does. But she also just doesn’t get the seriousness of outing someone. Lucas is begging her not to spread the rumor, very upset, but Chloe says he can’t tell her what to do. Man, so they made Chloe even worse than Emma, despite having Lucas treat Chloe worse than Isak did with Emma. Isak didn’t plead with Emma to not out him while Emma was like, “Whatevs, I do what I want.”

Lucas is clearly unraveling. He bursts out of the gym and runs into Yann. Lucas tries to use his family as an excuse again and Yann cuts him off, saying not to play him. He knows whatever’s happening with Lucas is more than just his parents. Yann is a lot more blunt about it than Jonas; Jonas knew that Isak was bluffing but let it slide without calling him on it. He’s also more blunt about Lucas refusing to talk about his problems. The guys all just want Lucas to get better, and are here to talk to him, but if he doesn’t want to do that, then he needs to fix his problems and come back when he’s better. Completely fair, tbh. I can see how the more straightforward approach works with Lucas; Isak felt more defeated at this stage, like he barely had energy to get through the day let alone put up his usual act, so chill Jonas could get through to him, whereas Lucas is like brimming with anger and fear and seems more defensive, so he needed Yann to just cut through his bullshit directly.

Clip 3 - Pasta is Deep

I feel like a recurring issue with Skam France is that it skips establishing the mood of a clip, often just jumping into whatever needs to happen without a lot of grace, which probably has a lot to do with their time limitations (although this episode is several minutes shorter than average so...) This scene isn’t one that I expected them to recreate so closely, with Isak just ordering a sandwich for like a minute and a half, but it did remind me of how that completely mundane action was so much more than the damn cheese sandwich, because it was about putting us directly into Isak’s headspace and letting us feel how blank and distracted he was, and then what a jolt it was when Even appeared - exactly what Isak must have felt. I think Skam France could benefit from being more careful with staging moments like that, more showing, less telling. Like there’s nothing wrong with the start of this clip but it skips establishing Lucas’ mood entirely, and Eliott comes around the corner so we the audience see him before Lucas does, so there isn’t as much of a reaction.

Anyway, the important observation: Eliott cut that girl in line, what a dick.

There are two plates of pasta on the counter before them, and Eliott says if he were Lucas he’d take both of them. Lucas says sometimes you have to choose. I get that this is ~symbolic and it’s about Eliott trying to have it both ways and Lucas not having that but it’s one of those moments that takes me out because ... why would Eliott say Lucas should take both huge-ass plates of pasta ... except so Lucas can be metaphorical in response ... is that normal? It feels like a very writerly setup to be Deep so the dialogue can have a double meaning, except it doesn’t actually make sense on the first/surface meaning, if you get what I mean. Or else Eliott thinks Lucas is capable of eating two plates of pasta. 

Eliott tries to make conversation but Lucas just grabs a plate and storms off. That was some good timing with the angry plate grab. Eliott looks sad and the angsty piano music starts again.

Lucas walks into the cafeteria and sees the table with the boy squad and the table with Chloe and Maria, while Eliott is walking behind him. This time Chloe is looking at him for real. Lucas just leaves his tray without eating and walks off as Eliott notices. 

It was kind of odd that they needed both moments of Eliott reacting to Lucas’ distress, like ... we got it the first time when they were in line, we didn’t really need the second time to tell us the same thing we just saw thirty seconds ago. Was that supposed to be Eliott noticing Lucas didn’t want to sit with his friends so it wasn’t just him causing Lucas stress? IDK. Even if that were the case, it felt redundant. (Sometimes with this show I want to be like “have confidence that the audience will understand!”)

Clip 4 - Someone’s gonna catch a disease or a demon from that sofa

The girls and Lucas walk to a secondhand store. The store is like where they keep the props for The Conjuring movies. For some reason this thrift shop has multiple dolls that are missing body parts just hanging out, which is objectively the creepiest thing you could encounter. There are also jars of yellow ... something. I’m not gonna say it’s definitely pee, but it could be pee.

Daphne is once again the MVP of the show for how she screams and runs away when she gets freaked out. She’s so entertaining. 

A dude shows up and the scene dramatically cuts to black with the sound of a sharp blade, as if in a slasher movie, but of course then we cut to this guy pouring tea for everyone. Total tangent but you know, a horror series could be pretty fun if it followed the real-time format of Skam. They played with the concept in the cabin episode, as a parody of course, but I would love to see more genre series in this mode of story-telling. A really well-written suspense or horror story could be so effective in real time!

Also, the guy looks like the school psychologist from Skam Italia. And the gym teacher from Skam Italia. Or maybe I just think all older men with beards look alike.

It was the guy’s brother’s shop. He was a compulsive hoarder, which is not a surprise in the slightest. The brother died recently. “Of what?” “I don’t know, I haven’t found him yet.” Lmao, this is a funny scene. They guy is joking and says his brother had cancer, but let’s be real, that’s also a lie. The guy was obviously murdered by those dolls.

The gang gets some additional goodies from their visit. So Lucas has to carry the couch back with Manon and Daphne, Imane and Alex carry the football table, and Emma trails behind with her lava lamp. LMAO. It’s a great image. (I have no idea if Daphne was actually carrying the couch at all, or if she was just supervising. I think Lucas and Manon were doing the heavy lifting, literally.)

They take a break and Lucas rubs his injured hand. Lucas, get help for that! Go to the doctor! I’m sure she has some eccentric yet helpful life advice in addition to her medical expertise.

Daphne comes up to him and asks whether he’s heard from Basile since Friday. NO GOD WHY.

Lucas smiles and says a bit, why? Daphne is like… just for news. The girls tease her by saying she’s actually into him, Daphne says no, he’s so annoying. WHY GOD. WHY MUST WE GO HERE. It’s so aggravating that the best character on this show is going to be paired off with the worst character on the show (and one of the worst characters in the entire Skam universe). 

The girls talk about how much their men suck. Daphne says guys are worst than girls. LESBIAN. DAPHNE. PLEASE. I’m begging you. 

Daphne says no offense to Lucas, and Imane says he’s not a real guy. Whoa! Hold on a moment there. Lucas’ expression is all WTF, Imane tells him to take a joke. This is one of those casual comments that can cut deep; Imane doesn’t know Lucas is gay at this point, so it’s not quite her assuming that gay guys are honorary girls or something like that. But one of Lucas’ fears is how being gay will separate him from his male friends, and at this very moment he is separated from them. So this is not a reassuring thing to hear. Calling someone a “real guy” can sting for someone who’s struggling to find out just where they fit in with the guys, and now hears that they don’t really belong there. Interesting that they made Imane throw out this comment since it’s more careless than we often hear from her. Not that she’s perfect or anything, just that we more often hear remarks like this from someone like Daphne. But it goes to show that everyone’s capable of these microaggressions.

Daphne says Lucas is so lucky, girls are so much simpler (I guess she means with dating). Irony! Lucas does not say L M A O in response. How lucky can he be when a raccoon man broke his heart? Manon says that’s inaccurate and not true. Daphne thinks it’s easy for Manon to say that when she’s dating the perfect guy. Irony! Manon hops off that couch and says it’s time to go again. I wonder how long they’re going to string along the hints that all is not well with Marles. Noora came back and immediately told everyone that she and William had relationship issues, but Manon is hiding the truth. 

I thought this clip was a lot of fun but it’s one that doesn’t really fit with the mood or atmosphere that Lucas is going through right now. I saw people defending it as like a break from the misery and tension, and I couldn’t help but be like ... no! That’s not a good thing! I get that Lucas doesn’t need the same emotional journey as Isak, but speaking as someone who watched Skam S3, episode 6 in real time, the constant pain was a good thing. Sure, it was draining. Sure, it was stressful. But it got you into Isak’s head. It made you feel what he was suffering. It captured his isolation and loneliness. It made the final clip of the week with Jonas such a huge relief (and to be fair, they sure took a different tone with Yann...) Narratively, it was expertly crafted and paced. With scenes like this, it does chip away at some of the tension. I wouldn’t say it’s pointless (and again, on its own there were a lot of funny moments) but again I wish Skam France was better at establishing and holding a mood. Because there are ways they could have shot this scene with similar content, but with more of a consistent emphasis on Lucas’ POV, filtering through his lens. Focus on his detachment, have something in the shop remind him of Eliott, etc. The dead guy’s brother talks about how isolated and lonely the brother was and how he didn’t open up to anyone. Something like that. Except for a few brief moments like the shot of his hand or the response to Imane’s comment, the scene doesn’t have much to do with him, really, and this is a very crucial time in the story to be making us feel what Lucas feels.

There’s also that I feel like a girl squad scene is like a requirement of each episode, and listen, I enjoy them as much as anyone, but I also think that these scenes can feel like they don’t fit with the narrative as a whole. Both the cake clip and now this clip had little to do with Lucas’ POV (compared to something like the Kinsey Scale discussion which was relevant to him). There are some bits contributing to other subplots, like a hint at the end about Manon and Charles, which is probably meant to lead into the next clip where Manon cries, but tbh they’ve dropped quite a few hints about her not being OK by now so IDK this particular one was necessary? And to be fair, other seasons of Skam spread their focus beyond the POV character. But part of why Isak’s season is so good, IMO, is that every single clip contributes to the main story. It’s very tightly written. I guess I can’t help but wish that every clip had a clear tie to Lucas’ character arc even if there are other subplots happening, and not just that other storylines are taking place and Lucas happened to be there. 

Clip 5 - Not talking is good

Lucas is up at almost 2:00 watching TV. A late night clip, wow! Glad to see one of these. It’s something that does establish mood and get us into Lucas’ mindset. Timing is one of the most useful tools the Skam format has, compared to traditional TV series.

Manon comes in and he asks if he woke her. She sits next to him and climbs under the blanket. Manon is clearly distressed. Lucas notices she has tears in her eyes. She seems on the brink of saying something, but he suggests they don’t talk about it. He puts an arm around her and she leans into him as the piano music starts again. We’re getting a hell of a lot of that this episode. She cries, he starts to get teary as well.

Lucas and Manon have the most familial relationship in the flat. In Skam it was Isak and Eskild, here it’s definitely Lucas and Manon. They feel like each other’s family. I do really like this scene for showing their bond and demonstrating that they’re both going through something they can’t talk about, it’s really lovely. Neither of them can say what’s troubling out loud. Manon has been needling Lucas to talk to her about his problems, but Lucas doesn’t pressure Manon to talk about what’s making her cry. There’s probably a balance they need to achieve to get to the emotionally healthiest place.

One effect of moments like this is that the Lucas/Manon relationship feels so much more developed than some of Lucas’ other relationships, like they can cry with each other and show emotional vulnerability with each other in a way that Lucas can’t with other people. Like I was rooting for Lucas and Yann’s friendship, and there is a ton to be said about Lucas being accepted by his best friend and what that means in terms of depicting supportive male friendships, but I also completely get why people thought he should come out to Manon instead, because story-wise, this relationship feels different from others. Lucas does feel comfortable with her, even if they’re not talking about their problems, and making the progression to voicing their problems to each other seems like a logical progression. 

Clip 6 - Find your Jerome

Lucas has gone to the school doctor from the first season, who tries to guess his name. The final one she guesses is Isak, lmao. Awww. I’m going to be a total sap and say that my heart got all mushy and emotional hearing that name. I miss my boy! I need Julie Andem to deliver that reunion special ASAP. But I do like Skam France’s nods to the original show, they’re not that subtle but they’re sweet gestures.

Lucas says he has trouble sleeping. To their credit, they did show him and Manon up late at night this week, so it doesn’t come totally out of nowhere. I do think perhaps they missed a chance for him to go to the doctor because of his hand. And maybe lie to her about how it happened, but she kinda guesses he punched something and gives him a little speech about not bottling up emotions and taking out his anger by punching stuff? IDK. I think that would’ve fit Lucas’ characterization and his particular struggles, but this is fine.

I love how satisfied the doctor seems when she tells him to avoid blue light. Nailed it!

I feel like this scene could’ve been built up a a bit clearer, because Lucas is all, “IDK why I can’t sleep” and that seems a little ridiculous, like obviously he knows why he can’t sleep all of a sudden. If he didn’t, he’d be like, “Oh, blue light is the problem? That settles that.” He’s got big personal problems. It’s just that he’s not going to tell this doctor what they are. With Isak, he had a clear motive for going to the doctor - there was a text where Linn mentioned her sleeping pills and Isak came in asking for some of those, except the doc gave him some advice to talk to people instead. Like I’m not sure what Lucas wanted from going in here? Because he knows he’s thinking too much at night, but he doesn’t want to tell the doctor the specifics. So I’m not sure what he was hoping for by going here since I’m sure he wasn’t planning on using this appointment as a therapy session. I guess he could’ve been intending to ask for some sleeping pills or something else to help him sleep, but never got around to it because the doctor started to talk about her lover and thoughts of murder. Just a small observation. 

The nurse starts telling him about how she also has problems talking about herself due to shyness or modesty (lol, this doctor being shy or modest). But she can talk to Jerome, the man she’s apparently cheating on her spouse with? Or engaging in some mutually agreed polyamorous arrangement, looking at it in a more positive light. (Or Jerome is a mannequin. Somehow that seems like the most plausible option.)

She mentions that her days are filled with teenagers who think they’re pregnant, nice nod to S1, and tells Lucas she can confide in Jerome about her murderous fantasies when her brother wants her to visit. LMAO. Well it’s nice that she can talk to someone about that? Tell me that this tidbit isn’t made dramatically more interesting if Jerome is indeed a mannequin, though. Anyway, she encourages Lucas to find his Jerome, someone he can trust.

Outside, Lucas is sitting and thinking and brooding. He reaches his hand into his pocket and finds a note from Eliott. The tinkly piano music starts again, damn, they’re going for a record in this episode. I think it’s the same tune as when Lucas first saw Eliott. The note is a very cute cartoon of his raccoon fursona, “Eliott 25473” looking at a hedgehog and not approaching him, but “Eliott 34512″ runs towards his fate and talks to the hedgehog. Hedgehog looks super happy to see this raccoon. The animal cartoons continue to be one of my favorite parts of this season.

Lucas sees Eliott walking across the courtyard. That seems to make up his mind, so he puts the drawing in his pocket and gets up. He walks up to someone and asks if they can talk later. The view of the person is obscured just to give you a misdirect that Lucas is talking to Eliott, but of course it’s actually Yann. Yay, Yann! And we’re all so excited for this beloved scene to happen next!

Clip 7 - Coming out to Yann

Ahahahaha.

After school, Lucas and Yann are sitting on a bench in the schoolyard, and Lucas is saying how he has been acting weird lately. There’s the complicated situation with his parents, there’s school, there’s the rent he can’t pay … and he thinks he fell in love. Not with Chloe. It’s not a girl. Yann seems a little surprised, which Lucas observes, but mostly Yann just seems to be listening. Yann is like, but it’s not me? Lucas says no, but there was a time last year … he trails off as Yann seems to be thinking wait, what? So Lucas just holds off elaborating on that confession and tells Yann about Eliott. Yann seems to understand, he’s just nodding and listening, asking a few questions. All is well.

Lucas says he wanted to tell Yann the truth, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He went to see the nurse because he hasn’t been sleeping. She told him to talk to someone he trusts. Lucas talked to Mika and it bit him in the ass. Chloe got mad. Yann asks if anyone else knows. Lucas thinks Manon, Emma, and Alex are suspicious and have guessed, and when he talks to Imane about it, they fight. Lucas asks Yann what he thinks. Yann is turning over something in his head. Lucas wants to know what Yann is thinking.

And Yann says, he can’t do this right now. He needs time. And he gets up and walks off. Lucas sits there in shock and misery after Yann leaves as dramatic music plays. 

I feel like I need a drink before discussing this scene.

I do not think this was the right narrative choice, for multiple reasons. The clip has already been debated and discoursed, so I might not be saying anything new, but let’s unpack it from several angles. I will say upfront that after this scene, even before we got confirmation, I thought it was most likely Yann was upset about not being trusted, or other people finding out before he did, than because he was a big homophobe. But I still don’t think this makes the scene much better or justifiable.

From a basic writing standpoint: I think this was sloppy. I don’t think it was meant for anything other than throwing more shit at Lucas and some quick shock value. They wanted to surprise the viewers of the original show or throw in a plot twist. But none of this fits Yann’s character. The guy has been encouraging Lucas to confide in him during the season, so for this to happen when Lucas does finally confide? Feels wrong. Keep in mind that Lucas is not just confessing about being gay/falling in love with a guy: he mentions his family situation, his rent, school. Yann may not realize that Lucas was outed, but Lucas does mention the stress he’s felt from other people finding out about him and Eliott. So Yann hears all of this and decides to walk away, because of his own wounded feelings. Yann, after being supportive of Lucas and his family situation for ages. Okay. I get that characters aren’t perfect. But this doesn’t even feel like a choice Yann would make. Earlier in the episode he was like “either talk to us or sort your shit out”? He makes it clear that they’re not going to wait around for him if Lucas doesn’t want to talk, it’s caring but very no-nonsense, which is part of why it feels like his reaction doesn’t fit - he takes it personally that Lucas didn’t come to him. It just seems at odds, and I get that people don’t necessarily react consistently, but in a scripted TV show I do expect characters to react in a way that feels organic to their prior behavior.

Without a doubt it would have been worse to make Yann walk away because he’s genuinely homophobic, but in a way it feels even more contrived that he did so for other reasons? I’m trying to word this properly, but while making Yann homophobic would have been a horrible choice and I’m glad they didn’t go that far, the fact that he’s not makes this scene feel extremely petty in the overall narrative. Like when Yann explains himself in the next episode, it becomes abundantly clear that this was a fake-out, this was meant to throw the viewers off for a few days. It was just cheap. It doesn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of the narrative.

There’s the racial aspect. You cannot ignore that in this scene. We have two non-black Jonases in OG Jonas and Giovanni reacting amazingly to this confession, and the Skam France writers chose to make their black Jonas react poorly. I doubt their thought process was “he’s black so he’s gonna be more homophobic.” But I do think they should’ve thought the implications through. Because as much as people wanted to say race didn’t matter in this scene - it did. People already had an irrational dislike of Yann for doing the same things that Jonas and Giovanni did, and this clip just confirmed their worst biases. We had people hating the black character because of this change. People being like “I told you Yann was the worst and that he wouldn’t support Lucas!!!” when there wasn’t any reason to think Yann wouldn’t support Lucas prior to this scene. It was uncomfortable to watch this play out in parts of the fandom. And you had one of the character’s best, most shining moments taken away from him. Sure, the scene with Yann in the next episode is great. But the coming out scene is beloved and iconic, it made Skam fans love Jonas when many people had still been on the fence about him due to S1, and it could have been an equally powerful moment for Yann, a character who is already marginalized and dismissed by parts of fandom for being black. He didn’t get that. 

Also, when Basile and Arthur ended up being OTT LGBT allies to the point of comedy, and Yann is the one with a bad reaction ... not great that the white guys were overly awesome and the black character is the one who ditched his friend. I’m not saying Yann has to be perfect and that’s the only way he can be great representation. But they had a precedent of this character reacting well and they actively changed that to be worse, and they changed these other two characters to be even more enthusiastic about their friend being gay. Then we also have two other white characters, Manon and Mika, supporting and comforting Lucas when he’s breaking down, in part because Yann rejected him. It’s a pile of unfortunate implications.

Then we have prioritizing the straight character’s feelings. Yann’s reasons for walking away were about Yann, not Lucas. Yann being upset that Lucas didn’t trust him. Yann being upset he wasn’t the first one to know. It’s self-centered. And we’re supposed to assign narrative weight to how a straight character feels about a gay character coming out. This is one of the biggest moments of Lucas’ life, for any gay person’s life. It should not be about the straight character’s feelings. That was something that was so important about the original scene. Jonas showed empathy and understanding that this was Isak’s moment, not Jonas’. Jonas listened. He let Isak talk at his own pace. He asked about Isak, he asked about Even, he didn’t make it about how he, Jonas, should’ve noticed a long time ago or how he felt about it. By making Yann walk away, the scene doesn’t become about the relief Lucas feels, it doesn’t become his affirming moment. In fact, it doesn’t even feel totally like his miserable, shitty moment? Because now everyone is thinking why the fuck Yann did that, what’s wrong with Yann, is Yann going to come back and apologize, etc. The ~mystery takes the emphasis away from Lucas. 

In conjunction with the doctor scene… the actual fuck were they thinking? The advice given to Lucas was “find someone who you can trust” with the message that it’s such a relief to open up to someone. And this lesson as it actually plays out? Leads to rejection. Showing that if you talk to people, it won’t be any better, it might actually be worse because then your friend will leave you. What a great message. It’s not like talking to people and not bottling up your feelings is one of the most important lessons of the show. For a show that is aimed at helping teenagers through stress and shame, teaching them valuable lessons to deal with their problems, it’s thoughtless bordering on irresponsible to juxtapose these clips.

And that leads into my final point, which is not just about this scene, but about how criticism can be received in this fandom. We gotta talk about “realism” and its use as a defense in the Skam remakes.

Some people might ask, well, why does there need to be a great message in Skam? Why do there need to be life lessons in these clips? Can’t it just be an entertaining show? Or, the other popular argument: It’s realistic, therefore it’s beyond critique. (Usually not worded like that, but that’s the sum of the argument.)

Yes, Skam is a show built on realism. It is a show that captures teenage acne and awkward pauses and the mundane experience of lying on your bed texting someone, trying to think of the right things to say, in a way that is often glossed over by other TV series. But Skam is not just a realistic show. Skam is an idealistic show and it always has been. The show has always been about trying to give teenagers hope, to present positive models of behavior, to show the best of what we could be.

Here are some things that could be considered “realistic” in S3:

Isak rejecting Even due to his mental illness

Isak getting bullied and beaten up after being outed

Isak’s religious mom telling him he’s going to hell for being gay

Isak shoving himself back in the closet and continuing to date girls

Even killing himself due to depression

These are all extreme examples, for sure. But they’re things that have happened in real life. They’re stories that have been told in media before. Why didn’t Skam go there? Why did S3 end with Isak and Even in a happy, loving relationship, and not both of them dead from reenacting Romeo + Juliet, or Isak crying over Even’s grave, or Isak forever alone and miserable and suffering for being gay? Because that’s not the point of the fucking show. 

Skam is not perfect. The characters are not perfect. But you have to ignore a core value of the series if you want to claim that Skam is about realism but not idealism. There is a reason so many characters resolve their problems by talking about their feelings. There is a reason we get so many quotes about how we should have empathy for others. Are there many true villains in this series? The only one who feels completely irredeemable is William’s brother, the sexual predator, and even he got a moment of sympathy when Mari acknowledged how messed up his childhood was. Everyone else, even the ones who act as antagonists, eventually gets some kind of compassion and forgiveness. Isak ends S3 on good terms with basically everyone: his friends, his parents, his roommates, Even, even people like Sonja and Emma. Because the show wants to give you some goddamn hope. Skam wants to demonstrate how good we can be to each other when we try.

I watched this episode of Skam in real time. I was going through Isak’s misery day after day. I was there when the original clip of Isak and Jonas dropped. When Isak came to Jonas and Jonas reacted so wonderfully, it was a tremendous relief for both Isak and the audience. I remember when the regular hearts on the Skam website (the like button) turned into rainbow hearts - it was for that clip, and it was such a meaningful moment. Isak was out, the hearts had changed, Isak had changed, there was no going back, but it was a triumphant change. And it wasn’t Disneyland. The clip was healing. It inspired other fans to come out to their friends and loved ones.  

Circling back to Yann’s reaction here: I certainly get why it would resonate with viewers who’ve had similar experiences coming out to people and don’t want to invalidate their responses. It’s not that I think it’s completely out of line with Skam’s idealism for him to walk away. That he comes back in a few days and apologizes is a positive moment with good messages. It’s more that this moment was changed to be worse - I can’t help but feel it betrays that sense of optimism and hope that was built into Isak’s story. Because the fact that they went for the more dramatic shock value moment, rather than the healing moment, feels deeply cynical about what they want for the viewers. As I said above, the change didn’t feel well thought-out, it felt cheap. It’s pretty meaningless in the whole narrative, it’s just a quick gut punch to make you (and Lucas) feel bad. There are other bad things that happen to Lucas that matter in the overall story, because they influence his character or push the plot forward. This felt like angst for the sake of angst. "Realism” should not be a shield for every writing choice on the show, or else we can let all sorts of shitty tropes (and just plain lazy writing) happen in the name of realism. 

Also, can we get rid of the idea that Norway is some homophobia-free paradise and Jonas’ reaction makes sense only in an LGBT wonderland? Homophobia is everywhere. Some places more than others, for sure, but nowhere is perfect. Isak’s story was full of homophobia even if he wasn’t getting gay bashed. How do you think he developed internalized homophobia in the first place? If Isak’s culture is devoid of homophobia, then why is he so nervous about coming out to people at all? 

And I gotta say, after events in episode 7, it is totally ridiculous to defend this scene as realism and “not Disneyland” when Basile and Arthur are basically wearing Mickey Mouse ears when they learn Lucas is gay. Not that I think it’s wrong for them to be supportive, just that their scene is clearly grounded in idealism.

The original clip with Jonas reacting well to Isak coming out? Was based on a true story. It’s just as realistic as Yann walking away.

Social Media/General Comments

Lmao, Daphne’s inspiration deco for the common room. Dream big, girl. I like Alex’s response of pretty pink and elegant toilet paper decorations. Emma suggests a big box of condoms, which is the most practical suggestion.

Eliott posted a picture of his raccoon fursona throwing out many notes, so probably him struggling to come up with the right thing to say/draw to Lucas.

Daphne and Lucas have a friendly conversation. She really wanted him to go lift that couch.

Eliott posts another picture with a Virginia Woolf quote, saying “In case you ever foolishly forget, I am never not thinking of you.” Should be obvious that he’s thinking about Lucas. Virginia Woolf is a good choice for Eliott to quote since she was supposed to be bipolar, as well as bisexual (not pansexual, as Eliott may identify like Even did, but still relatable as they’re both into more than one gender). 

Here’s a post about the Pygmalion reference with the picture Eliott posted. I feel like there’s something to be said about Polaris, too, and Lucas embodying one of the characters in Eliott’s movie, so that it feels like Lucas is lifted right out of Eliott’s art.

Eliott deleted the cartoons of him and Lucille cat after the cafeteria conversation with Lucas about having to choose. He CHOSE.

There’s a very sweet text from Manon and Lucas where she thanks him for last night, it was nice to not talk with him. Awww. They do have a nice relationship.

Emma seems done with Raptor Alex judging by her post “when he’s a fuckboy but he’s cute as hell” which goes along with the conversation when they’re moving the couch. Do we think Emma and Yann will end up getting back together, next season perhaps? Will she and Alex continue to be FWB? Or will Emma find someone else? Or be single for a while? 

Super depressing post from Lucas after he comes out to Yann, a cartoon saying “God needs your boat to use as an ash tray” showing that he’s really slipping and feels like he’s drowning. When Yann walked away, he took Lucas’ last shred of hope with him. JFC.

I’m not French so feel free to explain or clarify something I missed.

If you got this far, thank you for reading!

#skamfr reactions #skam france reactions

[sanrionharbor-blog]

Some Sanrion Pick-Me-Ups :)

*Guys, I’m going to be nothing but GOT meta for the next few weeks--there’s more text where this came from xD

Did a wee bit of thinking today and, while I’m 100% confident that I have no idea who will end up with whom either in the GOT-verse or ASOIAF-verse, I can say this: shipping is excruciatingly fun, and I’m just here for the ride. 

So without further ado, some Sanrion thoughts. 

1. Sanrion is still up in the air. Like, the ship hasn’t sunk, nor has it sailed. Theonsa? Feels like pure emotional bonding to me, not a sudden crush. Doesn’t mean it won’t “happen” but let’s be honest--Theon’s arc revolves more around his redemption (which will probably end in death) than another Grey Worm-esque romance. 

2. If Sanrion DOES happen, that means we got the best slow burn romance of this entire show. 

Look at what was, essentially, confirmed in Episode 2: Braime and Gendrya. (More on Braime in a bit).

Gendrya sorta needed to happen in the first two episodes--it’s more fitting with Arya’s hell-bent personality, and if there are going to be multiple endgame couples, they better spread them out. Now Sansa, if she has any romance at all, has the opposite problem that Arya has. Whereas Arya has trained herself to be stripped of almost all armor (figuratively speaking--she’s tried to strip herself of her identity, humanity, and fear of death--and far from being a casual fling, her night with Gendry was a step towards her feeling both pain and love again), Sansa has multiple layers standing between her and anybody who might dare love her in that way. Her costuming reflects this. Her experiences inform this. Her history and her character are not something that will be transformed with a pair of bedroom eyes. (Again why I don’t interpret her bowl of soup with Theon as romantic--actually, speaking of soup bowls...).

3. I’m getting brotherly vibes from Sansa’s reactions with Theon. I know Jonsa is a very popular ship and Theonsa is the little ship that could, so again, if you ship these, don’t read any further. But I see brother/sister/survivors-of-war parallels between Sansa’s interactions with Jon and Sansa’s interactions with Theon. Nothing romantic, but still intimate and deep. Her reunion hugs with both Theon and Jon have the same vibes--tender, precious, tentatively hopeful, pain being replaced with relief. Heck, they even shot her eating soup with Theon in a similar fashion to her eating soup with Jon. Which tells me it probably shouldn’t be read as OMG-Theon-is-the-one-for-Sansa. 

How do you cinematically set up two characters for romance? You give them one-of-a-kind shots. You give them tension. You give them unresolved threads.

4. Now, who does Sansa have unresolved threads with? Arguably, Jon and Tyrion. For the most part, I believe Sansa’s relationship with Jon has improved by strides--but is it suddenly going to go from “you were the half sibling that my mother taught me not to respect” to “Jon, who is not actually my sibling, is my future husbando.” I mean, with 4 episodes left? So the unresolved thread here is, who/what will Jon be loyal to, if asked to choose? Obviously Sansa represents his ties to the Starks and Dany represents his ties to the Targaryens. (And if the showrunners boiled that down to a love triangle instead of continuing Jon’s arc of brotherhood/loyalty/searching for a home, so help me--). 

Or does Jon have to choose? Remember what he told Theon--”You’re both a Stark and a Greyjoy.” But anyhow, that’s going into another subplot. 

As for Tyrion, Sansa still has unresolved tension there. Which is why I think both she and Tyrion will definitely survive the upcoming battle. They didn’t give Tyrion nearly enough to do in these first two episodes, or Sansa for that matter, to just kill them off for shock value in the following climax. And perhaps they didn’t wrap things up with a bow between Sansa and Tyrion because they’ll be integral to the drama that will unfold after the battle. IF that drama included romance, I think it would be a subtle footnote, or a “Hey, let’s start again.” Actually, how poetic/bittersweet would it be for the two families that have been warring all this time to unite in a marriage where both parties actually consented? (I’ll have to do a separate post on all of the psychological complexities that still stand in Sanrion’s way, because I’m OCD that way, but for now let’s just say a Lannistark romance would be epic). 

5. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe there’s more book-context for Sansa/Tyrion than there is for any of Sansa’s other ships (the interesting asides with Sandor Clegane withstanding). There are also some interesting parallels in their story lines: take their runaway bastard story lines, which are perfect parallels to one another right after they split up over the same event--the Purple Wedding. Then, an internal journey/myth parallel, which is that of Beauty and the Beast. The same kind of story line that GRRM explicitly set up for Jaime and Brienne. Long story short, there’s lots of contextual things going on for Sanrion

6.  (Bridge4 is a super smart GOT fan who’s dived into all the lore, genuinely loves and has fun with the series, and occasionally drops compelling reasons for Sansa and Tyrion to end up on the Iron Throne together ^^) [sorry if the video doesn’t show up correctly!]

7. I consider Seasons 5-8 of GOT a rough draft for the last third of GRRM’s series anyhow. xD Not dismissing a lot of the hard work put into it, but I can’t for the life of me understand why they couldn’t get people better at writing dialogue in their inner sanctum. I’m a writer myself and know it’s a lot easier to criticize than it is to create. But GOT started out as a filet mignon with baked Alaska and has somehow become a cheese pizza with extra ham--and don’t get me wrong, all the ingredients are top notch, but it’s a strange course to end on all the same. Bring back the Shakespearean drama and leave out the self-referential humor and fan service. (and please, if we ever have any more super cool reunions, don’t just do the boring thing and sit them around a fire, in a circle, with literally nothing interesting in the room, no interesting angles, no nothin--i digress).

#sanrion #sansa stark #tyrion lannister #got #got s8 spoilers #shipping #sansa x tyrion #tyrion x sansa #meta #long post #sorry not really generous to any other sansa ships haha #anti theonsa #anti jonsa #ugh anti looks so negative but i don't want shippers to accidentally read something against their ship

[funkymeihem-fiction]

Fire and Woohoo- The OW Trio Plays The Sims

(D.Va, Lucio, and Junkrat have a very special game night with an old classic.)

The snacks had been warmed, the drinks chilled, and they had gathered in Hana’s room again. Game night had just begun, and it started off with a proclamation.

“First off, J-Man and I had a meeting and we both agreed that we’re not playin’ any more fighting games,” Lucio declared. “The only way either of us can win is by him cheesing you with that low kick move on that one dude, and then you both start fighting in real life and I gotta break it up.”

Hana glared at them both. “Well maybe because there’s no skill involved in legsweep spam!”

Junkrat’s ever-present grin only turned sharper. “Oh-ho-ho! Still pissy because that one time I kicked your arse usin’ an effective strategy I invented myself, and you can’t just admit—”

They were starting to lean a little too close to each other already, and Lucio sighed as he shouldered in between them and spread both arms to keep them at bay. It was a well practiced strategy that he’d had to do many, many times before when tempers flared. “See! There you go! I mean it this time, we are so not doing any more fighting games. Just choose something else for game night.”

“Ugh, fine. What do you boo-hoo babies want to play tonight? Dress-Up Pony Adventures? Pachimari Island? The Sims?”

Junkrat seemed to give the choices serious thought, apparently not understanding her sarcasm. “What’s a The Sims?”

“Oh, uh,” Hana looked slightly taken aback while Lucio only smirked. “You don’t want to play that. Even I haven’t played that in years. It’s just a game where you live every day life. Like you can make little people and a house and have them get jobs and adventures and just…wacky stuff sometimes? Like I made us in the game ages ago—”

“Wait, ya made me in a game? I wanna see me! Show me The Sims Junkrat!” he demanded.

Lucio’s smile turned into a grin at the scowling Hana. “Hey, that sounds fun to me. You made a little game version of me too? Show us.”

“Oh my god, you guys,” she snorted, spinning her chair back around to face the screen. “Fine. I’ll show you the Overwatch House and your little dudes, but only for a minute. I am not spending the whole game night on The Sims. Babe, grab me a drink?”

Lucio abandoned his chair to meander over towards her mini-fridge while Junkrat pulled up both long skinny legs to rest on the edge of his chair— a chair so dirty and soot-smeared, with the cushion ruined by his peg leg and bony rear, that it had been made his own personal game chair and nobody else dared touch it… after Hana had given him an earful for trashing the thing. He perched on his seat, watching curiously as the screen lit up with The Sims 9 logo and the cheerful title theme began playing.

“The fuck is this music?” he asked, giggling madly.

“I warned you it was goofy!” she snapped, looking a little embarrassed as she snatched up the beer Lucio offered to her. Clicking it open and taking a sip, she watched as the cutscene played and the little sim characters went about their act. “See? Those are the simulated people. Get it, The Sims?”

“Wot.”

“Never mind. Lucio, you ever played this?”

“I think maybe once when I was a kid? Not this one, though.” He snapped open his soda, taking a gulp and frowning at the taste. “Aw man, did they change the ingredients in my soda again? I gotta rethink that endorsement deal. I don’t want the kids thinkin’ this is good stuff.”

Hana nodded, flicking through her save files as the game continued on. “I warned you, you have to watch the drink companies in particular. They’re always trying to change the quality. My team had a clause that no drink product could change their recipe without going through our manager first. Oof, after what happened to The Starstrikers when all those kids got tooth rot…”

Junkrat grumbled from where he was gnawing at the blackened edge of a fingernail again, up until Hana smacked his hand away from his mouth. He snorted, looking dour as he glanced between them. “Yeah, well…Mebbe one day I’ll have me own line of soft drinks, ya know? Something what’ll even outdo the Bundabergs and Bickfords! Represent! Something like… Junkrat’s Junk Root Beer, or Roadhog’s Pink Lemonade. That bloke loves pink lemonade like nothing else. Think junker merchandise could really rake in some coin…” His eyes drifted in two different directions, the way they sometimes did when he was in very deep thought, only to come snapping together at something he saw on the screen. “Oi! Is that us!”

It was more than just them, he saw. Almost the whole organization had been modeled into cartoon people form, or at least what Hana had been able to mimic of them. Soldier 76’s combat visor had been replaced with sunglasses, Torbjorn was nowhere near as tiny or bearded as he was supposed to be, Reinhardt looked more old and fat and gray than the muscular juggernaut that he was, and several of them he didn’t recognize at all. But they didn’t interest him.

Hana and Lucio’s Sims were standing next to each other, with Hana dressed in her favorite pinks and blues, and Lucio wearing a green t-shirt, his dreads nowhere near the magnificence that they were in real life. Frankly, they didn’t interest Junkrat either.

There was a very tall and very skinny one, with spiked blond hair, all four limbs intact, wearing one orange glove and a black backpack instead of a tire, and instead of his skull and fire tattoo it was just a swirl of tribal black. Junkrat gaped, jaw falling open.

Hana coughed. “Uh…Sorry? It turns out Jamie is not really not the easiest guy to make into a Sim? I mean, I didn’t want to get into all the cash shop stuff so I did what I could. And your hair kind of just makes you look like a blond Goku, but y—”

Junkrat leaned forward so abruptly that his face nearly smashed into the screen. “I look bloody amazing, mate! Look at that! Really captures my likeness, that does. S’got my good side n’ everything! And…” His wide eyes got even wider, pupils practically becoming slitted. “Look who’s next to me! Does that mean we’re a couple in the game?!”

Hana pinched her lips together and looked skyward, trying very hard not to laugh for a moment before she smothered her snickering into her beer. Lucio elbowed her and merely grinned, gesturing to where Junkrat was still trying to enter the computer screen like it was a portal to a better world. Perhaps in his mind it was, as he was standing next to a much smaller and chubbier little figure, with dark hair twisted into a bun, glasses, and a familiar blue outfit.

Finally, Hana emerged from her beer can. “Uh, I don’t think so. It’s randomly generated. Mei’s just standing next to you is all, I think. I mean, Genji’s also standing next to her, and I don’t think they--”

“The cyborg? With Mei? Yeah, nah. Delete him from the game so it’s just me! Can I fight him?”

“Okay you know what, this might actually turn out to be interesting after all. Let’s load up the house…” Hana clicked the button and the loading screen scrolled past. “Okay, this is the game itself. I made us a nice mansion, so we can go see who’s doing what. Hey, there’s Lucio already! See him eating at the dining table there?”

Lucio leaned forward on Hana’s other side. “Aw, yeah! Looks like I have some waffles. Woah, I look good! …Did you give me extra muscles?”

Her cheeks went very slightly pink beneath her whisker marks. “Uh…I may have put you in the gym a few times. Actually, you and Zarya are best friends because of it, so that’s a plus! Soooo! Let’s find Sim D.Va!” She clicked on her portrait, and it zoomed to where her namesake Sim was playing on the computer in a room decorated pink and blue, with multiple game consoles and toys. “Oh hey, meta.”

“Wow, that’s pretty true to life, I guess. You think she’s playing The Sims in her world?” Lucio said, tilting his head. “Or is she…playing our world?” He wiggled his fingers and made a spooky noise “OoooOOoooo?” that soon tickled the back of Hana’s neck and sent her into shrieking laughter as she batted his hands away.

“Yeah whatever!” Junkrat pointed to his spiky-haired portrait. “Me! Me next!”

They clicked the portrait for Housemate Jamie, and the screen centered in on where the lanky Junkrat-esque figure was screaming and waving his arms for no apparent reason, down in the house’s basement. As they watched, he whimpered and hugged himself, and then promptly urinated a blue puddle all over the floor before he straightened and wandered off.

“The fuck’s this!” his real life counterpart demanded. “Did you make me piss meself?!”

“Ooooh,” Hana said. “Sorry, I think I forgot to make you use the bathroom before.”

“Did Mei see?!”

“I don’t think so. Hold on, let’s find her.” She clicked on Mei, who was placidly sitting and reading on a couch, next to where Angela was watching television.

Sim Angela turned to her and commented a cheerful “Yargle boorgle doo!” to which Mei replied a soft “Aaah, ya feeb.”

Junkrat looked aghast. “What’s all that? Are they talking about me? Did she call me a feeb?”

“They don’t speak a real language, it doesn’t mean anything.”

He pushed into Hana’s side abruptly, long arm reaching to the screen and clicking on his portrait again. “Back to me!”

She pushed him right back, elbowing him back into his chair. “Hey! What did I say about trying to steal my screen control! You know the rules!”

Lucio sighed, lifting both hands. “J-Man, she did lay down the rules a while back. You gotta chill, man. Let her do her thing unless it’s your turn, right?”

Junkrat scowled, looking chastised as he slumped back into his ruined chair once more. Though he couldn’t remain sullen for long, watching his little virtual self wander through the dark basement and speaking gibberish to himself. Hana had left the camera on him, at least, despite her protests. And both she and Lucio watched with curiosity as the Sim Jamie spun in a circle and yelled ‘Nipsy vorg!” before ascending the stairs to join the others.

“That there is a man on a mission,” he said, nodding with approval. “Look, I’m thinkin’ of drumsticks, I’m gonna nipsy vorg some chicken.”

Hana hovered over a smaller window with his stats. “I think you’re going to cook something. This’ll be funny. I gave you the pyromaniac trait, so…Let’s watch.”

Sim Jamie passed by Sim Lucio, who was cleaning up the last of his waffles. Following the other Sim into the kitchen, he began dutifully washing his plate in the sink while his pyromaniac housemate pulled a package out of fridge and began chopping it up. A few moments of that, and he shoved the platter into the oven…which promptly caught on fire and began smoking wildly as Sim Jamie laughed and clapped in front of it.

Real life Jamie seemed just as thrilled. “Yeah! Attaboy! Fight the system!”

“Every time.” Hana nodded.

Sim Lucio started shrieking and clutching his hair in alarm, dancing frantically in place for several moments before pulling an extinguisher from nowhere to begin battling the flames. He was soon joined by the sunglasses-wearing Soldier 76, who started screaming helplessly on the sidelines but strangely made no move to help. Sim Jamie just laughed wildly before turning and pulling a whole bowl of cereal out of the fridge, eating and enjoying the show.

“Why am I the only one trying to save the house!” Lucio protested, pointing in a very accusatory way at the virtual Soldier.

“The hell were you complainin’ about before, Hana?” Junkrat said. “This game’s amazin’. Oi, make me go say hi to Mei.”

“Wow, even a kitchen fire can’t distract you? This sounds serious. All right, let’s see where Mei is now.” She scrolled to find the little blue-dressed Sim, who was… blurred out on the toilet. “Oh, um.”

“She can’t stay in there forever! Put me outside the door there.”

“Yeah, Jamie. Totally not being creepy on her Sim or anything, here.”

They abandoned the still-screaming Sim Lucio as he battled the oven blaze, as Sim Jamie took up his post admiring a painting of a sad clown that had been hung near the bathroom. Soon the door clicked open, and Mei exited. Hana took the opportunity to make her charge approach her, selecting ‘Chat’.

“Ah dag voorlog, mis frontoy?” Sim Jamie asked.

“Oh! Blanana! Dipso varootni,” Mei answered, and then laughed. It sounded nothing like her real laugh.

That didn’t stop Junkrat from lighting up, bushy brows lifting hopefully. “She likes me! Make me say that stuff again, she likes it!”

Hana brought up the enactment wheel. “Hey, why I don’t show you how to actually play this? See, these are all your options. What do you want to make your little Sim guy do next?”

“Kiss her!”

Lucio sighed. “J-Man, even the Sims versions of the ladies don’t appreciate it when you just try to kiss them out of nowhere. Why not give her a compliment or something?”

“Uh, okay. Well it says hug, there. Let’s give Mei a hug. Nice friendly hug, right?”

Hana clicked on the hug, and they watched as their Jamie opened up both arms and went in for the embrace, only for Mei to shrink back and rebuff him with a curt, “Eeenh! Va nitso!” that left the spurned Jamie with two disappointed minus bars over his head.

“What the fuck is wrong with her!”  Junkrat demanded. “I’m doing all the right stuff! This game’s shite!”

“Dude, try something more lowkey. Hana, make our boy actually compliment her,” Lucio said, downing the last of his soda. “I can’t believe we’re even focusing on this while the house is burning down, by the way. I’m probably dead in the kitchen.”

“Nah,” Hana assured him. “We’d hear the Grim Reaper music if you were dead. It’s fine. We’re going to focus on the more important things, like romance. Let’s try Lucio’s suggestion.”

Junkrat still looked peevish, but accepted the suggestion as she selected ‘Compliment’. His Sim approached Mei once more, clearing his throat and smoothing back his hair (He really did have a nice head of hair, didn’t he?) before giving her the wink and the gun, saying “Aaay! Wo ta tupsi blorno, dayg.” The Sim Mei seemed a little taken aback, but giggled and swayed a little as she shyly answered gibberish back to him. Plus signs popped over both their heads as they continued.

Hana leaned back and smirked. “So! What did we learn!”

Heartened once more, Rat finally conceded. “Arright arright, maybe the kisses were coming on just a bit strong. Let’s chat her up some more. Oh! Share secrets! Let’s learn her secrets? Oh oh, no, do that one. Talk about fire.”

“Actually, Romeo, why don’t you play for a little bit? I don’t really care what happens to the save anyway— NO, no getting on MY chair. Just move yours in the middle.” Hana rolled her chair to the side, grabbing the back of Junkrat’s chair to push it into her spot. “I’m gonna go make some popcorn. Lucio, come with?”

“Yeah, hold on.” He picked up both their empty cans, moving to follow her out. “Gotta recycle these. Yo J, you want anything from the kitchen?”

Junkrat was already involved in a very deep and completely nonsensical conversation between Sim Jamie and Sim Mei, the task bar already filled as he clicked to compliment her again. “Huh?”

“That’s a no. Come on,” Hana urged, grabbing Lucio’s hand to guide him out of her room as the door whooshed shut behind them. Once she was sure they were out of earshot and a fair distance down the hall, she glanced to him with a more genuine little grin. “You know, this is one of the few times I’m not scared to leave him in there by himself.”

Lucio paused to basketball-toss one of the cans into the recycling bin by the kitchen door, clattering into the goal. “I think he’s doing better with the whole ‘boundaries’ thing, on not blowing things up that don’t belong to him.”

She nodded, ripping open a packet of popcorn and tossing it into the machine. “Not perfect, though. And he still thinks I didn’t notice him stealing my Retro Zeldamari keychain. Uh…I was going to demand it back from him, but then I saw Roadhog wearing it and…yeah, not worth it.”

“Not perfect,” Lucio agreed, smiling a little sheepishly. “Sorry about your keychain, I’ll get you a new one.”

She rolled her eyes, plugging in the cooking time before leaning back against the counter, opening both arms. “It’s fine. I mean, you can still buy me a new one,” she grinned. “But it’s fine. Jamie’s funny. Sometimes I still wanna strangle him, but he’s a fun guy. Don’t worry so much about him, Lu.”

“Can’t help it, I guess.” He meandered forward, wrapping her up in a tight hug and speaking into her shoulder. “Just trying to make sure everyone gets along.”

“That’s because…” Hana drew his chin up with one finger where he had been slumped against her chest, meeting his concerned gaze. Nodding solemnly, she dropped her voice to a furtive whisper. “…because you are the lamest lamer to ever lame…lame-oid.”

The DJ’s face split into a grin, shoulders shaking as he started laughing into her collarbone. “Aaah, ya got me.”

“C’mere,” she said, grinning back at him. “We have like two minutes for the corn to pop. That’s like, two straight minutes of making out. Timer and everything. Ready?” She didn’t give him a chance to answer, pressing her lips to his before he could even react.

His grip tightened around her, one hand sliding down to her slender waist, resting atop one hip as he tilted his head. Their kiss deepened, her tongue soon boldly prodding into his mouth as he started to press her against the countertop. Nearly bent backward, her fingers clawed into the fabric of his shirt to hold on, looping one ankle around his leg. Lucio growled a low hum into her lips, the soft wet sounds of their mouths drowned out by the humming and rapid popping of the microwave next to them.

There was soon a very cheerful ding, and she grumbled as he released her to grip onto the counter, lifting himself off her. Smoothing back her hair, she stood and adjusted her mussed and crooked top. “Two minutes are up already?”

“Time’s up, corn’s done,” he said, shrugging helplessly. “And you prrrrrobably don’t want to leave Jamie in there alone for too long, Sims or not.”

“Yeah, you’re right, but… You want to stay over after he leaves? Like, longer than two minutes?”

“Don’t think I don’t notice you trying to set me up for a stamina joke, girl. And I’ll check my schedule, but I think I might be able to make some time tonight. After game night.” He reached into the microwave and grabbed the popcorn bag, jostling it about before upending it into the D.Va Bunny Bowl she held out for him. “Let’s go see the damage.”

She snorted, taking her corn and leading him out of the kitchen and back down the hall. “It had better be virtual damage only.”

***

Hana’s door beeped and whooshed open, and they found Junkrat still curled in his chair, facing the holoscreen with his cheeks flushed pink and a stranger grin than usual. He didn’t even glance their way, trying to stifle his giggling as he rocked back and forth and remained fixated on the game.

Lucio lifted a brow at him, stealing a handful of popcorn before meandering over back to his own chair. “What did we miss?”

Hana followed shortly after. “Yeah, how are things going with- OH!”

There was the sound of soft moaning from the Sims game, and both of them watched aghast as the bed on the screen bumped and writhed and giggled. Little hearts popped blipped up from the covers, and the blankets were soon pulled down to reveal Sim Jamie and Sim Mei looking adoringly at one another after a round of carnal bliss. Mei even sighed happily and reached out to stroke his jaw, muttering a satisfied little, “Mmm, na darnu pas noorny…” as Jamie uttered a very sexual growl.

Pausing with popcorn halfway to her mouth, Hana merely looked vaguely impressed. “Huh. That was actually pretty fast. I had to give Lucio like ten straight minutes of hugs and massages before he’d bang my Sim.”

“Hey, Sim-Me has standards,” Lucio said. “Gotta get those hugs.”

Junkrat looked up at them, biting one sharp fang into his lip and muffling a shriek of happy laughter. “Ya didn’t tell me there was rootin’ in this game! I was gettin’ all nice and spicy with Mei, even got to give her a kiss on the cheek. So I kissed her cheek a bunch of times, then I kissed her on the lips some. And then I saw Mei had this ‘woohoo’ thing, so I thought she wanted to party, you know? Like, celebrate, woohoo!”

Hana smirked. “…That’s actually super adorable, you thought she wanted a party?”

“Well…turns out she wanted to party all right! So uh…I’ve been making us woohoo since you been gone. Also some weird music started playing and this guy in a cloak showed up, but who gives a shit? So I went back to woohooing Mei—”

“Wait, guy in a cloak? Oh, damnit! Hold on, let me see—” She batted Junkrat’s hands away from her screen as he went to make woohoo yet again, and scrolled over towards the kitchen.

The kitchen was obliterated, little more than a fire-charred husk. Hanzo and the Grim Reaper was dancing to a stereo that had survived the blaze, completely ignoring the scene nearby where Angela, Torbjorn, and Hana were weeping pitifully over the scorched gravestones and piles of ash that had once been Lucio, Soldier, and Zarya. Genji, also scorched and black from battling the fire, lay passed out in exhaustion, snoring amongst the debris.

Lucio’s jaw dropped open. “I’m dead! I told you I was gonna die! Jamie, man, you killed me! You killed like four people while we were making popcorn!”

“Bad luck there, mate. Just had more important things to do. Oi, Hana, put it back on me and Mei. Where’s Mei’s bed, can we woohoo on there next?”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “Uh, why don’t I just let you borrow the game and then you can woohoo with virtual Mei and murder all your friends as much as you want?”

“Yeh! Sounds ace, thanks darl!”

“Hold on, this is for the game night records.” Pausing the game on the scene of utter house distraction and death, she spun Junkrat’s chair around and pulled Lucio in against her as she grabbed her phone. Snuggling the boys in on either side, she angled the picture so it was the three of them grinning in front of the Sim carnage, with her flashing the peace sign. “For all our dead Sim pals and Jamie’s woohoos. One, two, three, kimchiiii!”

“Kimchiii!”

She snapped the photo, looking down to the newest picture of game night, to add in to all the ones before…the ones with them laughing, eating, arguing, making faces, and the blurry one that Lucio had taken of Hana pinning a flailing Junkrat by the chest while he held the game control out of her reach.

Smiling, she scrolled through them. “That was a good one. I can’t believe the most successful game for you was The Sims. I never would have guessed it.”

“Nah, yeah. Educational game, this is. Lu was right about all the complimentin’ and chats and whatnot, before we get to the kissing and the woohooing. Got to approach the ladies slow-like, not spook them.”

“Uh huh,” Hana said. “Life lessons from The Sims. We’re all learning something tonight. I learned that the Grim Reaper and Hanzo have a lot in common, that Jamie isn’t housebroken, and that Lucio is super flammable.”

Lucio chuckled, wrapping both arms around her shoulders and kissing her neck, leaning to look through the pictures as well. “I died for a noble cause.”

Junkrat sighed dreamily. “I learned how many times I gotta compliment Mei for woohoo. Gotta try to remember that for later…”

“You know,” she suggested. “There’s more stuff you can do in this game besides death and woohoo? I mean you can have babies and get jobs and raise pets and all kinds of stuff. You can also dress everyone in hot dog outfits and make a prison compound where they are forced to make paintings and write erotic novels to fund your efforts to make one hundred babies with everyone in town.”

The two boys stared at her.

“But uh…How about we make a new household instead and I’ll show you the rest of the game, Jamie?”

“Can’t believe you were holdin’ out on me. This is the best game I ever heard of. Yeah, show me more Sims! Woohoo!”

#overwatch #the sims #junkrat #jamison fawkes #lucio #lucio correia dos santos #D.Va #hana song #fanfiction #writing #mei #mei-ling zhou #meihem #junkmei #meirat #bunnyribbit

[superchartisland]

Trivial Pursuit (Domark, Spectrum, 1986)

Gallup all formats chart, Your Computer Vol. 7 No. 1, January 1987

Trivial Pursuit the board game divides the world of knowledge into six categories; six wedges of cheese for six spaces in a wheel with six spokes. In pursuit of rounded knowledge from Trivial Pursuit the computer game of the board game, there seems no better framework to adopt than its own.

By the time 1986 turned into 1987, electronic games had become well established as a leisure pursuit in their own right. For the teenagers of the time, they had been popular in some form for their entire lives. The ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 had been out for five years, and increasing numbers of parents were being persuaded of their educational and fun value. That would carry on -- I got my own Commodore 64 several Christmases later. As discussed a few entries back, computer games were sold in the biggest high street shops. Meanwhile, sports are a familiar subject for AAA. Making games about subjects people already know well is an easy route in for an audience. Taking an already popular activity like football with its own set of defined rules and turning it into computerised form is an even more obvious thing to go for, on both the developers’ side and the players’. With that background, it is no surprise at all to find other existing leisure activities being successfully translated into computer games. The board game Trivial Pursuit was of a similar age to the Spectrum and C64, still in an initial swing of popularity which meant that an electronic version of it wasn’t trying to replace a well-established favourite like Monopoly, but offering an alternative or addition to the fun thing you’d recently come across. The computer game’s manual explicitly calls it a game that “the whole family (Mum and Dad included!) enjoy enormously.” On Christmas Day 1986, many British families must have gathered round the Spectrum after dinner for a game of Trivial Pursuit.

Computer science, particularly at the kind of price that was able to reach large numbers of game-playing households, had only advanced so far. This presented some technological barriers to recreating the Trivial Pursuit experience. Representing the colour brown, for instance, was apparently an unachievable task, and so the art & literature wedge becomes black. Still, Trivial Pursuit is a very viable candidate for transfer to computer form, comprising as it does of a series of trivia questions with a limited appendage of choosing movement and collecting tokens. So the dice also go, replaced by a random dart-throwing animation which captures a miniscule fraction of the tactile sense of ceremony, but mostly the game is intact. Expanded on, even, since the board game couldn’t offer musical rounds where listening to “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain” is an essential part of the experience, or easily offer picture rounds. The one remaining issue is that of the mechanics of answering questions. I assumed going in that there would be some kind of multiple choice arrangement, but the actual solution is much more simple and elegant. The game just poses each question and then asks whether you got it right, Y/N? Players of the board game similarly get an answer written down and have to determine among themselves whether the player asked it answered satisfactorily, so why should a computer recreation of the experience be any different? The psychology of presenting an irreversible button-press and relying on players’ honesty in this way is nonetheless a fascinating sideshow all of its own.

I’ve talked previously about the strength of games as ways of presenting spaces. Trivial Pursuit has several spaces to present. One is the board, a recreation of a physical object with functionality retained and resemblance to the original object at the forefront. Another of its spaces is the more completely imagined room in which the question master paces backwards and forwards, surrounded by items to represent the different question categories. Sometimes it goes dark, giving the idea of an image being cast by a projector, the game turning into both test and lecture at the same time. Among the items in the room is a world map up on the wall. And what is a chart but a map of territory, of tangible or intangible space? The Gallup charts by which we are finding our way through the AAA journey are maps of their own territory, suspended between imaginary and real. SalesSpace, we could call it. In SalesSpace, the things that count are time and format and sales, and that’s what’s reflected in the picture of relationships between games that charts of SalesSpace show. In SalesSpace, board game recreation Trivial Pursuit and World War II shoot-em-up 1942 sit together in the same top ten. In SalesSpace, Trivial Pursuit goes between well-remembered arcade games Paperboy and Gauntlet along the route through the UK’s #1 games. Look along the right axes and what you might have thought of as very separate places turn out to be right next to each other.

One of the first things that’s obvious on playing Trivial Pursuit the computer game is its commitment to being as accessible as it can. It’s notable that it uses the keyboard’s arrow keys for directional controls, rather than QAOP or one of the other arcane combinations other Spectrum games tended to go for. Anyone was clearly meant to be able to turn up and figure out what was happening as quickly as possible, and that holds up. Admittedly if I didn’t already know the rules of Trivial Pursuit I would need the manual at hand, but that goes for the board game too. Past that, the basic action of answering trivia questions is fun, its questions are pretty well-pitched as easy but not too much so, and the attention to detail seems reasonable (I haven’t encountered any Hugh Jackilometresans so far). The choice of questions goes for timelessness, even more than the board version since the music question choices are backwards looking, presumably to keep the sound samples copyright-free. Where it doesn’t achieve that timelessness, the perspective on what has changed in three decades makes for intriguing wrinkles -- you could probably still ask “What was Mrs. Fawlty’s Christian name?” but not in those words. Trivial Pursuit is one of the most straightforwardly entertaining games I’ve played for AAA so far.

But is it art? It’s not a question that I’ve engaged with on this blog elsewhere, because it’s not very interesting, but it’s one that somehow doesn’t go away. An inferiority-complex-driven need to justify video games to outsiders as being art seems to have infinite lives. Worse, within some very loud pockets of game culture, that need sits alongside a vicious refusal to tolerate the kind of cultural criticism that art tends to get. Sometimes the same people are the ones saying both, and more. There’s no place for politics in games, apparently. Narrative events only ever happen inside the context of the narrative and not a wider context of authorial choice. Games should just be fun, OK? But, of course, the right kind of fun. The wrong kind of fun means a non-game, a phrase I became familiar with as I re-engaged with video games in the Wii and DS era and read NeoGAF, a gaming forum which was relatively open and welcoming (i.e. it was merely toxic rather than a seething hellscape). Wii Sports was a non-game. Non-games are successful games which are too popular and do too many things which games don’t do to count as games. In a weird inversion of the ‘how is this art?’ Turner Prize winner phenomenon, the mainstream audience sees non-games as a perfectly fine type of game and the enthusiasts proclaiming themselves at the centre of the culture completely deny non-games a place in the category. Not in the sense of them being too lowbrow, but of trying to define them out completely. Trivial Pursuit would surely have counted as a non-game. Which is nonsense, obviously. It provides an experience of a virtual space that’s dependent on the player’s actions, producing an emerging narrative within its bounds. I can’t work out a plausible game definition which wouldn’t include it without going absurdly narrow. Its selection of questions is a meaningful creative decision, illustrating and reinforcing what knowledge is seen as worth knowing. As for the wider art question, let’s just say that I have an equally tough time with any argument that identifies Frank Bruno’s Boxing as art and doesn’t do the same for Trivial Pursuit.

One of the more successful tactics of the kind of gatekeepers who talk about non-games is an appeal to history. They were here first. People who want something different than monolithic hardcore games are trying to change the rightful way of things proven by time. The whole idea of non-games has that idea of definition-by-precedent built in. Yet find the right maps and this appeal to history is revealed as not only bogus, but bogus even within the boundaries of its own arguments. Casual games and casual players have been here thriving all along. As 1986 turned in 1987, more people were going to their local high street WHSmith and buying Trivial Pursuit the computer game than were buying anything that has outlasted it as an emblem of retro gaming. The world mapped out by the games charts has always been a big one with room for many perspectives and interests. It’s not surprising, because it’s the same story for other media. And yes, other media have their own purer-in-the-old-days crews, too. Music discussions are crowded with talk of how things were better in the past when real music ruled. But significantly, it’s almost as common to see the response that there has always been music of different types in every era, even if it’s likely to be phrased as ‘there has always been disposable pop’ or something more derogatory. The narrative of aberration can’t stand when enthusiasts are engaged with the reality that refutes it. It’s much tougher for ahistorical nonsense to gain any credence when reality is a matter of public record, the charts that map history still accessible. But what if your medium has failed to keep its history up so well? What if the only history most get to see is filtered through the nostalgia and commercial goals of a specific set of winning viewpoints? What if Gauntlet is commemorated but Trivial Pursuit isn’t? Then the gatekeepers can just keep on pretending that the current version of what they don’t approve of is a new aberration, restarting their game to fight the same fights over and over again from a position of illusory strength. The selective retention of knowledge is anything but trivial.

Q: What was the UK’s best-selling computer game at the turn of 1987?

A: Trivial Pursuit.

#every number one #Trivial Pursuit #8bit #retrogaming #ZX Spectrum #1987 #video games

[theemberarchive]

Life on Haakha

The quality of life for most people on haakha is comparable to the life of a human from around the year 1000 AD. Farmers till fields, herders tend flocks, hunters and trappers provide meat and skins, weavers create clothing, woodworkers build furniture, authors write books, and so on. Meals are cooked over open fires. Entertainment comes from a lute player, a group of singers, or perhaps comedic thespians. 

Parents typically raise children, although in some places extended families are common. Many children attend some kind of school until the age of about twelve, when they learn a craft. Some students, usually those in larger cities, go on to higher learning. 

Life expectancy varies wildly, but those who survive to the age of thirty can expect to live to at least sixty. It’s rare but not unheard of for someone to live to be ninety or even one hundred. Those fortunate enough to be rich can partake of the elixir of eternity, and might live twice that long—or longer. 

The dead are usually buried or cremated.

Communities

Communities spring all across the world of haakha in many forms. Whether their a small town of stone work with thatched roofs, a series of chambers and tunnels carved into a cliffside, or even fly high in the sky, one can almost always find a city almost anywhere in the world. 

As the world is a dangerous place, many settlements are built with some kind of defense in mind. Almost all settlements that can afford to build a large wall of some kind around them, so as to protect them from rampaging monsters. Most other settlements tend to have a heavily fortified and durable structure called a sanctuary built so that if a dangerous storm or creature comes and stays for an extended period of time, the citizens can bunker down in relative safety. Although large cities exist here and there (usually near coasts or along rivers, but not always) most people live in small villages. Typically, a village’s population ranges from ten to about two hundred people. A town might be anywhere from a bit bigger than a bit bigger than a village to a few thousand people. A city usually have at least 5,000 people, and plenty have more. The largest cities (not including the ancient pre-cataclysm cities like Thalarion) have 500,000 or more, though these are the exception, with a city of about 20,000 or 30,000 people typically being a metropolis by most standards. The largest city in the world is Thalarion, the city of a thousand wonders, with a population of 3,500,000 people (counting several hive-minds as ‘individuals’, not multiple individuals). 

Almost every settled community has a wall of some kind to defend itself. Haakha is a dangerous place after all. Communities–particularly the walled variety–have a force of dedicated defenders, often double-timing as law enforcement for whatever leads the community. In cities, a dozen or so guards for every thousand residents is the usual minimum.

Life in a City

Life in cities is, generally, better than in towns and villages, with most city dwellers have access to more of everything beyond simple necessities– greater variety of foods, more education, more kinds of entertainment, more health care, more experience with the supernatural, and a wider range of cultures. City dwellers are usually employed in occupations beyond the production of food (farming, hunting, herding, and the like). Food is usually shipped in from surrounding villages. Instead, the people work as clerks, scribes, cooks, messengers, crafters, artisans, scholars, and more, but the typical resident is a laborer. Laborers include porters, packers, diggers, movers, builders, repairers, sanitarian workers, and so on. 

Any sort of standard item or service can likely be purchased in a city. Many cities have their own specialties as well, such as a city known for its textiles, its metals, and so on. 

Cities have schools for young children and very often a trade school or university. Sometimes there are many different temples and churches for a variety of different religions. 

City dwellers rarely know everyone in their town, and thus are usually more accustomed to strangers and outsiders.

Life in a town or village

In towns and villages, residents have limited access to education, entertainment, and so on. There may be limitations on healthcare and food variety as well. Most people in these communities are farmers, herders, hunters, or gatherers– in other words, focused on producing food. 

Townsfolk, in particular villagers, are usually extremely suspicious of newcomers. Travel isn’t very common, so outsiders don’t show up in the community all that often. Traveling merchants come and go occasionally, but even they come with enough regularity so as not to be outright strangers. 

Towns and villages, often fairly isolated, develop their own customs and rituals. It’s not at all odd for such a community to have its own unique form of religion.

Class

Most communities across Haakha have a strict class structure. Although some places differ, in most places there is an aristocracy, a middle class, a lower class, and a slave class. The details can vary, as can how one’s class is determined. Most of the time, however, the class into which you are born is the class in which you will remain for you entire life. 

Thus, the aristocracy are born to their station and have greater wealth and greater access to food, health care, and other resources than anyone else. They also have authority over those beneath them. Sadly, it is the rare aristocrat who does not abuse these advantages. Nobles are aristocrats with titles, such as baron, duchess, and so on. 

The middle and low classes are usually different only in the amount of wealth they possess. Middle–class residents of cities and towns often have their own house, for example, while their lower class counterparts live in communal buildings or on the street. These classes have varying rights, but in the end they are almost subject to the aristocracy. It is possible for a middle–class person to be wealthy or even extremely wealthy, but not technically an aristocrat. This, however, is rare, in that the class system is constructed to keep non–nobles from accumulating much wealth and because in some places, it is possible to buy one’s way into the upper class. 

Slaves are those captured in war or, more likely, the children of slaves. They can also be members of the lower class that have accumulated high debt and no way to pay. Lastly, sometimes criminals are sentenced to be slaves. Slaves have few, if any, rights and can be bought and sold. In some communities, slavery is limited–you might be a slave until you have worked of you debt–but most of the time, it is a permanent status. In a few places, slaves have absolutely no rights and can be killed without repercussion.

Relationships

Although there are many types of relationships, we’ll focus here on the long-term romantic relationships, and in most of these, people are encouraged to choose their partner freely. Couples co-own resources, businesses, or whatever is in their possession. If they choose to split, they work out the division of property by themselves or with the assistance of a mediator. Arranged marriages or the like can happen, but usually only among a few specific classes–among the nobility, slaves, and mage clans. 

Couples of all genders, sizes, and sexual orientations are common. Two-partner, heterosexual relationships the majority, but hey are aren’t the norm, per se. It is actually quite common for people to participate in commitment ceremonies. In this, a large group of adults make commitments to one another, living together and raising children as a communal family. This particularly common among groups of soldiers or, slightly less, among adventuring parties. 

Not everyone is a relationship makes formal commitment to each other, but those who do have number of choices. Ceremonies can be private or public, and take the form of handfasting, feasting, exchanging goods and services, or holding a large, elegant gathering in the presence of an officiant. In many cases, living together for longer than a year is considered the same as having a commitment ceremony.

Economy

On haakha, traders and merchants are some of the bravest folk around, for they are willing to move goods from one community to the next. Travel is dangerous, and communities are often unwelcoming. Merchants almost universally travel in bands with guards overland or in sturdy craft along the coast or rivers. In some places, they have organized into trading companies that help get the right goods to the right places, more out of the need for security than anything else. 

Kals are the primary currency used in Haakha. Their popularity started in Thalarion, and it quickly spread from there as Thalarion adventurers traveled. Named after the material their crafted from, Kals are crafted by ancient machines out of Kalrite (the only way it can be worked) that the Thalarion’s of ages ago found in various locations. Thalarion is not the only nation to possess these Kal minters, which has only added to their popularity. 

While Kals are not the only currency in use, they remain the standard currency in most places. It’s not as if Kals are important, just that they are an easily understood unit that represents barter. In other words, when the butcher tells the woman in the dairy that a certain amount of meat is worth 2 Kals, she knows that she can get it with 2 Kals worth of cheese as payment, even if no Kals are used. 

Kals come in two varieties. The most common is the Kalrite bar, the one simply called Kals. The second is the Kalrite coin (Kal coins for short), which is 100X of a standard Kalrite bar.

#Haakha #lore #worldbuilding #worldcrafting #sci-fi #sci-fantasy #science fantasy #Fantasy

[flas]

Flour or Wheat - Wentworth Miller

I've been coming here a long time, to this strip mall hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant off the freeway, with the chicken quesadillas I decided somewhere in my mid-20s (without much research, admittedly) were the best in Los Angeles.

In 199-something it was a small chain with franchise dreams and few locations, one of which was near-ish my apartment. When it closed I started commuting to a location that was not near-ish. It was far-ish. And when I brought someone along they would inevitably pronounce, between bites, that it wasn't worth the gas.

I paid them no mind.

I have a history of mental health issues and routine is important to me. Also consistency. Which might be why, once I started coming, I didn't stop. Why in the hundreds of times I've approached the counter I've always ordered the same thing.

Always.

One chicken quesadilla on a flour tortilla with guacamole. Rice and beans on the side. Plus chips.

Seriously. I've never tried anything else on the menu. For all I know the shrimp tacos make men weep. I don't care. They're not on my radar.

Yet somehow, despite getting the same meal about twice a month maybe ten months a year for almost fifteen years, the guy behind the counter never remembers my order.

Ever.

Or, by extension, it would seem to follow, me.

This isn't "Cheers." Nobody knows my name. And if anyone's glad I came, they're keeping it to themselves.

Eventually I learned not to expect the guy behind the counter to know my order. What I could expect was a set mouth and a flat stare. Free of charge.

And that's been a relief.

At times.

At times I have deeply appreciated being made to feel anonymous. No one approaches me here. No one asks for a photo. No one seizes an opportunity to go full koala around my waist while a friend repeatedly fails to take a picture on their smartphone.

Other times, vacuum-sealed in my LA existence, moving from apartment to car to freeway and back, the luxury of not having to touch or be touched by another human being mine to indulge, I have very much wanted the guy behind the counter to know my order without me telling him first.

But no. Every time I walk in we have essentially the same exchange we've been having lo these many years:

Him: Upward nod and/or raised eyebrows with a split second of eye contact to signal I have his attention.

Me: "Chicken quesadilla, please."

Him: "Flour or wheat?" They've got two kinds of tortillas to choose from.

Me: "Flour." Let's not go crazy.

Him: "Rice and beans?"

Me: "Rice and beans."

He spreads a flour tortilla on the stovetop, sprinkles it with cheese while I pay at the register then get my salsa from the salsa bar. Unless I get my salsa from the salsa bar first then pay after. That part changes depending how fast the lady at the register rings me up. (I think of this as my chance to practice being flexible.)

When my tortilla is done browning and the cheese melting, the guy takes it off the stovetop and says, "Chicken or steak?" Even if I am the only customer in there, mine the only order being juggled, I will be asked to repeat my choice of protein.

Me: "Chicken."

Him: "Rice and beans?"

To be fair, I don't know his name or order either (assuming he eats there too). To be fair, I'm sure it's no picnic chopping onions and grilling carnitas for a living. I spent a summer scraping uneaten refried beans off plates at a Mexican restaurant in Phoenix. An outdoor restaurant. In Phoenix. In summer. So while I don't/won't insult the guy behind the counter by pretending to understand the depth/breadth of his experience, I feel like I can imagine it. At least a little bit.

Or maybe not. Maybe I'm just a spoiled jerk with a sense of entitlement. Maybe the guy's having an off decade. Maybe his dog ran away and never came back. Maybe he needs some sweet understanding. Maybe I should cool it with the judgments and projections. Maybe it shouldn't matter to me that he can't (won't?) remember my order.

But it does.

Whatever. I don't come for the service. I come for the quesadilla. Which, most likely, is average. But which, drawn to ritual as I am, I've eaten enough times to become sentimental about. Ditto the 90-minute drive there and back, the smell of the hand soap in the bathroom, the validation stamp with the red ink they stamp on my parking stub that gets on my fingers if I touch it before it dries. This is my spot. My joint. My Cheers. Even if nobody knows or cares what my name/order is. This (most likely average) quesadilla is threaded through my LA history, this city I've liked and hated (almost) equally, a place I came to because it's "where the work is" and, now that the work is taking me away, I'm thrilled to leave. A town that has never felt like home, even if it was where I chose to lay my head.

As the poet said, #notmyvibenotmytribe.

Which is why, on the eve of my permanent departure, about to begin a new job in a new city in a new country, as I ready myself for a set of experiences that promise change and growth and shift and all the things that used to frighten me but which today I recognize and embrace as gift and gold, it's only fitting that I make the drive to my little Mexican restaurant one last time, for one last chicken quesadilla on a flour tortilla. And by doing so honor all the other times I came here to enjoy "my last quesadilla." Not because I was leaving town but because I was going to go home and kill myself.

Of my close friends, I've known Depression the longest.

By 10 we were well-acquainted. He was there for my first attempt, at 15, for my second, freshman year at Princeton, and for the multiple dress rehearsals and close calls that followed. He was there as recently as four years ago, seated in the front row for what was in some ways my most serious breakdown since college. When all I wanted was to die. When Depression had me convinced - deep down, on a cellular level - that I Would Always Feel This Way and that There Were No Other Versions Of Me/Life On Offer.

That was before I realized Depression is a Liar.

That was before the daily meditation, the prayer, the affirmations. Before the therapy, the men's work, the move from isolation into community. Before the self-expression via writing (privately, professionally) and coming out (publicly). Before the gentle (and sometimes not-so-gentle) letting go of the people, habits, and belief systems that knocked me out of my body, lowered my frequency, and robbed me of a good night's rest. Before the gradual conclusion that I did not come into this world preprogrammed to self-destruct. (That upgrade/virus came later, courtesy of outside influences.) Before the understanding (remembering?) that my birthright is joy. But joy won't just come when I call it. I have to invite it. Gently. With intention. Building a connection, a trust, over time.

But I digress. Where was I? Oh yes. Chicken quesadillas.

Over the years, on a handful of dark days, I would determine that my final meal would be my favorite and when it was finished, I would exit this earth. Because I couldn't imagine feeling better. Because I couldn't imagine a different, vastly improved state of existence.

Which, obviously, represents a colossal failure of my imagination.

That was another tool in Depression's toolbelt: the limits of what I could and could not imagine.

The man I was then couldn't have pictured the man I am now, moving (more) consciously and (more) thoughtfully through the world, (more) alert to the people, habits, and belief systems that invite peace and purpose into my life on a daily basis. A man departing (escaping) Los Angeles with a plateful of things to look forward to.

The man I was then wouldn't have believed any of this was possible. But it was. Is.

And to celebrate, I'm treating myself to one last chicken quesadilla on a flour tortilla before I go. Because it's f-cking earned. If I do say so myself.

I park my car in the underground lot, get my parking stub, enter the restaurant. I walk past the guy behind the counter and into the bathroom to wash my hands. Emerging, I get my tray, approach the counter, and see that for the first time in the near fifth of a century I've been frequenting this chain, on what is potentially and very probably my final visit to this strip mall hole-in-the-wall, this totally unexceptional restaurant I've spent years patronizing and a not inconsiderable amount of gas money getting to from various apartments, the guy behind the counter has already got a tortilla heating on the stovetop for me. Flour.

Eyes down, he sprinkles it with cheese, says to me or himself or to both of us, "Chicken quesadilla."

It is a statement. Not a question.

I say, "Yes. Please."

And "Thank you."

#Wentworth Miller #excerpt #wentworth where ever you are right now I hope you are happy honey

[publicnym]

Main Meditation Protocol: p1

This is pretty much copypasta from the original github source, to be digested more thoroughly later.

---

p1: [old names: Elemental Analysis, Comprehensive Elemental Analysis]

1. Incline towards producing one of:

(1a) a logical argument/deduction/derivation (standalone or possibly including a narrativized explanation), [What implies/entails this/X? What does X/this imply/entail? Why X? What is the reason for X? What follows from X? X=?] (1b) a description of a causal mechanism, [What caused this/X? What does this/X cause? X=?] [How does that work?] [(1/2) What’s going on? What’s going on, there? What’s going on, here? What’s going on, out there? What’s going on, in here?] (1c) a description of some spatiotemporal sensations/experience, [What is before this/X? What is after this/X? What’s next? What is adjacent to this/X?  What qualities does this/X have? X=?] [(2/2) What’s going on? What’s going on, there? What’s going on, here? What’s going on, out there? What’s going on, in here?]

(1d) an explanation of a phenomenon and possibly alternate credible explanations of that phenomenon (1e) an evaluation or appraisal of something (1f) instructions for achieving something (1g) description of an ideal, endorsement (1h) description of a goal state (1i) a description of a dynamical first-person perspective/experience (your present experience, experiential memory, inferred of another, or imagined), including mental, sensory, and somatic experience (1j.1) a question and possibly and answer, or (1j.2) a topic/subject and possibly content subsumed by that topic/subject (1k) a problem and possibly a solution (1l) some (or as exhaustively as you can) of your “actual/deepest/truest” (a) beliefs and (b) expectations—good, bad, and ugly, beautiful, endorsed, disendorsement,and relevant into words, in your “heart of hearts,” “throat of throats,” “gut of guts,” “genitals of genitals,” “sacrum of sacrums,” “perineum of perineums,” etc.: the beliefs and expectations and representations of the mind and body. (1m) some (or as exhaustively as you can) of your plans, intentions, willing, goals (1n) a meaningful story (1o) a meaningful autobiographical detailed excerpt or lifelong summary (1p) a plan for achieving something (1q) a list of that which you desire/thirst/crave, hope for, wish for, long for, etc. (1r) a list of that which you fear (1s) a list of that which you love (1t) a list of that which you hate (1u) a story/fantasy/narrative/scenario that is (a) exciting (and/or otherwise good e.g. uplifting or psychological) and/or (b) sexually arousing and/or (c) evocative if connection/intimacy/safety (1v) counterfactuals: for something that went one way or could have gone a way or might go a way or will go a way, how it could that have, did, or will go/gone a different way, elaborate on that, and what changed for that to be the case (1w) positive examples of something (things that are examples of X) as different from each other as possible, negative examples of that something (things that are examples of not-X) as different from each other as can be and as minimally different from positive examples of X in as many different ways as can be (1x) actions, doings; things you’re doing right now, volitionally or nonvolitionally, as broadly conceived as possible (1y) an personal inability/can’t/powerlessness and possibly a believable way to acquire that ability (1z) a “further purpose” a “for what you are doing something”; “I am doing/striving for X for/because”; “X is good because…” (1z1) a memory (1z2) any type of writing you want for any purpose. (1z3) your motivations or reasons, beliefs, knowings, understandings, or expectations for or underlying the actions, doings; things you’re doing right now, volitionally or nonvolitionally, as broadly conceived as possible, as exhaustively or usefully as possible 2. Get down (think or write down) as little or as much material as comes easily, even just a single relevant word or phrase. (And you can also patiently compose and/or revise as you go, or set up an outline structure to fill in, or do lots of messy freewriting, or a combination…) 3. Choose, from the material you produced, (3a) a word, (3b) a phrase, (3c) a sentence, or (3d) a boundary (e.g. between two sentences; this can be stylized as the last word and punctation of a sentence and the first word of a subsequent sentence) from the material you produced. 4. Lift it out, while remembering its context, and you might put an equals sign to the right of it. 5. Now, on the righthand side of the equals sign, say the same thing using more words than on the left side of the equals sign. It’s ok if you produce something partial, imperfect, or nothing. 6. Now, you might return to the original material for more content to repeat the exercise, or take something from the zoom/expansion/analysis you just did and zoom/expand/analyze  further. 7. Feel free to refactor, revise, expand, reboot the original material as much or as little as you’d like. 8. For anything you produce, be willing to throw it all away, plan to throw it away, be willing to forget for something better in the future. Don’t push, don’t force, don’t strain. Let the whole thing go. Let the whole thing move and flow. 9. You can also, and this is recommended, create new wholes. For example, if X = M + R + T,  and, Y = Q + G + V, then take, say, R and G. And, do this: “Z = ? = R + G.” Now, what is “Z”, what is that “?” between Z and R+ G? In other words, instead of putting things on the left hand side of the equal sign and then putting more things on the right hand side of the equals sign—instead, first put things on the right hand side of the equals sign and then put fewer things on the left hand side of the equals sign. Find new wholes and larger contexts. You might find wholes contained in larger wholes contained in larger wholes… 9b. You might play with this template:

[this/these] whole(s) Y is/are/contain(s)/= [this/these] parts M[, F…] + “just exactly/precisely [this/these aforementioned]/and nothing else”

That is, M and F are known; you have some words for them. Now, what is Y? What are some words for Y?

9c. Another kind of inverse is adding a subscript to the word on the left hand side of the equals sign and then looking for definitions for the other subscript. For example, you might have “suffering =“ and maybe before you even try to fill in the right hand side, you might do:

suffering_1 = suffering_2 = suffering_3 = and so on.

You might ask, what is everything I could possibly mean by this word (or phrase) “suffering”/X?

In this way, the word “suffering” can become more detached and flexible from the underlying language, while at the same time making each use of the word more precise. The subscripts do not have to be numbers; they can be anything that helps to differentiate which meaning/usage/sense of the word that you mean. That might be times or durations or conditions and so forth. [See also General Semantics for more on the idea of “indexing.”]

10. Also, consider intensional multischematism. For example, you might say that the same M can be referred to by single word R and single word H. That is R and H have different meanings/intensions but they refer or point to the same thing or set of things. Further, R = G + H + T and X = V + W + Q.  That is, (G + H + T) and (V + W + Y) each have different meanings, but correspond to R and X, respectively. Further, you might notice that, say, T and W, while using different words and meaning different things, in fact refer to the same thing(s), have the same extension. Another way of saying things like this is that the concept M, or that which directly represents M, or <M>, refers or applies to M using the word “M”. Or, you might say that both <M> and <K> refer or apply to the same extension; “M” and “K” refer to M and K which are actually the same. In our syntax and semantics, here, M = K. Example a: This M and this K are the same (thing). [not just the same type of thing. <this M> and <this K> corefer to M (which is K) and K (which is M).] Example b: All Gs are also Hs.

[note that the above is ambiguous as to whether X, Y, Z, etc. are “bound” or “unbound” for any given X in the language/wrting above]

Examples:

Example 1a: X = The cat sat on the mat. Example 1b: Y = cat in X = furry animal + … Example 1c: Z = furry in Y = experientially noncontiguous nonhomogenous light nonpunctate/distributed pressure when touched gently Example 1d: Q = noncontiguous in Z = mediacy and absence = missing immediate relations = a proper subset of immediate relations from a particular designated/delimited closed/finite set Example 2a: T = rippling water = directionality backflows dappled light dark traveling shimmers twinkle flecks arc chase over under undulate Example 3a: R = The last thing was cheese. We find that in these cases… Example 3b: M = [cheese.] [We] in R = …summary signpost implication… Example 4: B = ? = cat + dog; B = ?; B = a partial set of quadrupedal mammals, those things that [for my purposes…]…

Places likely worth investigating:

1. Where something seemingly X somehow leads to (or somehow depends on) something seemingly Y, or vice versa. (e.g. when doing something bad is good or when doing something good is bad) 2. Where something is seemingly somehow X and Y at the same time. 3. Where something is seemingly somehow X and Y at different times. 4. Where something is seemingly somehow either X or Y conditionally. X, Y = a) true, false b) good, bad c) existent/present, nonexistent/absent d) necessary/unconditional/noncontingent, conditional/contingent e) possible/conceivable, impossible/inconceivable f) simple/nonpartful, complex/composite g) unified/whole/connected, separate/plural/multiple h) before or after, synchronous i) veridical, nonveridical j) beautiful, ugly k) that is something that has some attribute or property, that doesn’t have that same attribute or property

Further notes: (*) You might also write/think/say things (assertions) and then incline towards generating relevant (apparent, seeming, believed, thought, felt, wondered, imagined, suspected, endorsed, something…) counterexamples or contradictions to those things. And then use the things and the counterexamples or contradictions to improve on the original thing or to write a better thing not subject to the original counterexamples or contradictions. (*) Some additional good concepts, semi-separately, are “error correction,” “counterfactual,” “counterexample…” (*) Try also: not X = [pick things and see if they’re in or out, let this change anything] (*) Consider swapping out the =/equals sign above with things like: is, means, signifies, is equivalent to, ~/sort of equals; maybe equals; could equal; is; is essentially; could be conceived as; could be construed as; could be stipulated as; could be schematized as; could be conveniently stipulated as; boils down to; could have a good enough for now/here definition of; is/can be defined as; most people think of this like/as; is like… (*) In addition to =/equals and so forth, you can of course try using the particular word or phrase in a sentence or sentences. (*) If you write down assertions anywhere, e.g. as premises or points in an argument, you might ad hoc or systematically look for counterexamples. You might also, ad hoc or systematically, explore objections that others might raise to the/those assertion(s).

#meditation #meditationstuff #protocol #main

[sunshineweb]

Thinking, the Einstein Way

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Here is some stuff I am reading and thinking about this weekend…

Book I’m Reading – Who Moved My Cheese I read this little book multiple times before quitting my job to start work on Safal Niveshak in 2011. It is about, well, coping up positively with change. Who Moved My Cheese illustrates the simple fact that change will happen, whether we choose to accept it or not. The defining factor is how we deal with it; whether we allow ourselves to change or insist on staying the same.

The story involves four characters who live in a maze: the mice Scurry and Sniff, and two little people named Hem and Haw. They find a huge source of cheese in the maze. Hem and Haw move their houses to be near it and the cheese becomes the centre of their lives. But they do not notice that it is getting smaller, and are devastated when they arrive at the site one morning and find the cheese is gone. Having built their lives around the big cheese, they feel they are the victims of fraud. Yet this only makes things worse, as their clinging on ensures that they go hungry.

The mice Scurry and Sniff, on the other hand, quickly accept the loss of the cheese and go off into the maze in search of other sources. For them, the solution is simple: the situation has changed, so they must change.

The fable captures that moment and experiences we are all familiar with i.e., sudden, unexpected change. The author’s message comes out loud and clear and that is that instead of seeing change as the end of something, we must learn to see it as a beginning. Like, to make himself accept reality, Haw writes this on the wall of the maze –

If you do not change, you can become extinct.

Another of my favourite quotes from the book is –

What would you do if you weren’t afraid?

And finally, here’s an advice from Haw that has helped me immensely at various stages of my life –

Sometimes, Hem, things change and they are never the same again. This looks like one of those times. That’s life! Life moves on. And so should we.

Idea I’m Thinking – Visual Thinking Here’s a note from Ashlee Vance’s biography of Elon Musk…

Visual thinking, which is a way to organise information in a visual way or to see words as a series of pictures, is a great way to understand complex or potentially confusing information, and also a way to organize your thoughts and improve your ability to think and communicate.

As a 15 year old, Albert Einstein dropped out of school because his teachers didn’t approve of visual imagination for learning, skills which became fundamental to his way of thinking. “Imagination is more important than knowledge,” Einstein would say.

“When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing knowledge,” Einstein explained later in his career. He added, “I never came upon any of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking.”

In Seeing What Others Don’t: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights, Gary Klein writes –

At the age of sixteen, Einstein began to conduct thought experiments about beams of light. These thought experiments were mental exercises that helped Einstein appreciate properties of light and also helped him notice anomalies and inconsistencies. Einstein imagined different conditions and possibilities, pursuing these speculations for ten years.

Imagine someone talking to you, and starting with the word – “Imagine…” You are completely hooked, isn’t it?

Consider this excerpt from Richard Feynman’s The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, where his father helps him visualize about dinosaurs –

We had the Encyclopedia Britannica at home and even when I was a small boy my father used to sit me on his lap and read to me from the Encyclopedia Britannica, and we would read, say, about dinosaurs and maybe it would be talking about the brontosaurus or something, or tyrannosaurus rex, and it would say something like, ‘This thing is twenty-five feet high and the head is six feet across,’ you see, and so he’d stop and say, ‘let’s see what that means. That would mean that if he stood in our front yard he would be high enough to put his head through the window but not quite because the head is a little bit too wide and it would break the window as it came by.’ Everything we’d read would be translated as best as we could into some reality and so I learned to do that – everything that I read I try to figure out what it really means, what it’s really saying by translating.

Then consider how Warren Buffett visually convinced me why gold was a bad investment…

I will say this about gold. If you took all the gold in the world, it would roughly make a cube 67 feet on a side… Now for that same cube of gold, it would be worth at today’s market prices about $7 trillion dollars – that’s probably about a third of the value of all the stocks in the United States… For $7 trillion dollars… you could have all the farmland in the United States, you could have about seven Exxon Mobils, and you could have a trillion dollars of walking-around money… And if you offered me the choice of looking at some 67-foot cube of gold and looking at it all day, and you know me touching it and fondling it occasionally…Call me crazy, but I’ll take the farmland and the Exxon Mobils.

I’ve tried my hands at visual thinking through the illustrations I draw on my Wall of Ideas to think through things.

When it comes to investing, you can avoid yourself a lot of pain by just visualizing your life after you’ve lost a lot of money trading and speculating in the stock market. If the visuals unnerve you, don’t do anything that would get you into such a situation. That’s also the concept of inversion.

Thoughts I’m Meditating On

How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people — first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.

~ Albert Einstein

When something bad happens you have three choices. You can either let it define you, let it destroy you, or you can let it strengthen you.

~ Theodor Seuss Geisel

Video I’m Watching – Buffett and Gates on Success

Buffett on what matters more than IQ and talent: “How I got here is pretty simple in my case. It’s not IQ, I am sure you will be glad to hear. The big thing is rationality. I always look at IQ and talent as representing the horsepower of the motor, but the output — the efficiency with which the motor works — depends on rationality. A lot of people start out with 400 horsepower motors but only get 100 horsepower of rationality. It is way better to have a 200 horsepower motor and get it all in output.”

Buffett on regrets: “I never look back. I don’t worry about anything… You play the hand you get, you play it as well as you can… and you’re thankful.”

Gates on dealing with success: “You’ve got to enjoy what you do everyday. Every time I think I found a little success, I’m pretty careful not to dwell on it very much. The bar gets raised. People’s expectations change.”

Articles I’m Reading

Knowledge of the Future (Latest Memo from Howard Marks)

Jeff Bezos’ 2019 Letter to Shareholders (Amazon)

The Practice of Value Investing, by Li Lu (Longriver)

James Montier on Fear and Investment (Masters in Business Podcast)

Unintended Consequences, Part II: What if LTCM Was Not Rescued? (Barry Ritholtz)

How COVID-19 Is Wreaking Havoc On Our Ability To Make Things — Including Vaccines (Five Thirty Eight)

Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates both do this mundane chore that may have significant mental benefits (CNBC)

A Question for You If you were dying, what worries you won’t be worrying about that you are worrying about today?

We are all dying. But sometimes we need to remind ourselves of this question to enjoy living.

Anyways, before I end, here’s something from Winnie the Pooh –

“What day is it?” “It’s today”, squeaked Piglet. “My favorite day”, said Pooh.

Enjoy today. Stay safe. Stay sane. Be grateful for this life, — Vishal

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[womanaction]

tagged by the amazing @a-mi-zivi!!

Answer the questions given to you. Make 11 questions of your own. Tag 11 people.

Can you tell me about a dream that you still think about sometimes? I have a lot of really memorable dreams, including weird recurring-ish nightmares, but one I still think about that’s less unpleasant is a dream I had in high school about being reborn. It was like I went into a coma and when I woke up I was a new person, but I had chosen to do this somehow? And my room was full of people I knew but I couldn’t remember them anymore. I still loved them, though, and I wanted them to be happy for me, and I just felt like....really positive even though I had lost all my memories and knowledge. Like every sensation was amplified and it was incredible.

How about top 5 things that made you smile this week? #5 - release of Xanathar’s Guide to Everything with grave domain clerics what what! #4 - meeting new awesome people! #3 - getting ready for my mom to come visit me for Thanksgiving! #2 - my cat has made friends with another cat and they’re adorable and they kiss each other! #1 - having a really wonderful conversation with my best friend and being so proud of her!

Is there a book you would buy multiple editions of? I currently have 3 edition of The Hobbit and I’ve had up to 5 before. So...yes. (There are also others).

What does your dream living space look/smell/feel/sound like? I’m actually trying to move soonish so this is a question I’ve asked myself a lot and honestly idk. I think I prefer cozy over super large and open spaces but I also like things to be clean, minimalistic, and fairly organized...there are lots of different decor styles that appeal to me...and I like different scents depending on the season. So ??? what I want is just an apartment inside the clock tower in Twilight Town k thanks byeeeeee

What are some tropes that would be included in the perfect story for you? Found family and friends to lovers have to be top two lol. 

What’s your go-to meal when you don’t really feel like eating but you still have to? Pasta with either an opened sauce that’s already in my fridge or just butter or olive oil. Maybe cheese. 

Tell me one unpopular opinion? Trying to think of one I don’t constantly talk about haha. How about - Ross is a great character and integral to Friends but Joey/Rachel is a better ship? Technically two unpopular opinions but especially to hold together I feel.

What kind of dystopian future do you think you have the skills to survive? Probably things that require you to fall in line at least outwardly and control your behavior (a la 1984), if there’s no other option I can sustain myself really well even when miserable outside conditions. 

What is a huge popular thing (movie/book/tv show/song/celebrity) that you find underwhelming? On Tumblr anyway, C*rly R*e J*psen. 

What is your most surreal experience? I have no idea, I feel like most of the things I perceive as surreal are mostly due to internal factors? Like I have a lot of deja vu so my biggest sense of surreality (shut up computer that’s totally a word) is from that kind of “how is this happening when I know what’s going to happen” perception. 

Which song would you sing to introduce yourself? Maybe Sing by the Carpenters? Just bc it was my favorite song as a kid and I still find it really inspiring, idk. 

My questions:

1. What was the first song you remember intentionally learning the words to? Why? Do you still know all the words?

2. If you had to choose a single item that you currently possess to represent yourself to someone who didn’t know you, what would it be?

3. Describe “your type” of favorite character.

4. Top five favorite patterns?

5. What is something you would like to learn how to craft or make with your hands?

6. Tell me about your favorite blanket/quilt/throw of all time.

7. How do you keep track of things - a physical calendar, planner, an app on your phone? 

8. Unlimited toppings, all allergy or other dietary restriction safe - order some Good Place fro-yo.

9. You have five minutes where you have to talk to either your past or future self. Which do you pick, how far in time are you traveling, and what do you talk about?

10. One favorite and one unfavorite texture?

11. Someone sniffs you and says “Aw, you always smell like...” How do you want them to finish that sentence?

Tagging: @demandingbillydolls, @starshollowisonahellmouth, @thiefofeddis, @kiranwearsscienceblues, @sapphic-spook, @strongwomenandstrongcoffee, @scienceofficer-winifredburkle, @babypinkbisexual, @nikiiwi, @bring-alessandra-the-horizon, @thenewbuzwuzz

#text #asks

[cutepoison0104]

In honor of Wentworth Miller’s decision to unpublish his facebook page, and his granted permission to save anything we’d like to, I’d like to post the first ever thing I read on his facebook page; something that impacted me greatly. Word for word. Link for link.(Because why preserve something if you only take pieces?)

Flour or Wheat. 

I've been coming here a long time, to this strip mall hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant off the freeway, with the chicken quesadillas I decided somewhere in my mid-20s (without much research, admittedly) were the best in Los Angeles.

In 199-something it was a small chain with franchise dreams and few locations, one of which was near-ish my apartment. When it closed I started commuting to a location that was not near-ish. It was far-ish. And when I brought someone along they would inevitably pronounce, between bites, that it wasn't worth the gas.

I paid them no mind.

I have a history of mental health issues and routine is important to me. Also consistency. Which might be why, once I started coming, I didn't stop. Why in the hundreds of times I've approached the counter I've always ordered the same thing.

Always.

One chicken quesadilla on a flour tortilla with guacamole. Rice and beans on the side. Plus chips.

Seriously. I've never tried anything else on the menu. For all I know the shrimp tacos make men weep. I don't care. They're not on my radar.

Yet somehow, despite getting the same meal about twice a month maybe ten months a year for almost fifteen years, the guy behind the counter never remembers my order.

Ever.

Or, by extension, it would seem to follow, me.

This isn't "Cheers." Nobody knows my name. And if anyone's glad I came, they're keeping it to themselves.

Eventually I learned not to expect the guy behind the counter to know my order. What I could expect was a set mouth and a flat stare. Free of charge.

And that's been a relief.

At times.

At times I have deeply appreciated being made to feel anonymous. No one approaches me here. No one asks for a photo. No one seizes an opportunity to go full koala around my waist while a friend repeatedly fails to take a picture on their smartphone.

Other times, vacuum-sealed in my LA existence, moving from apartment to car to freeway and back, the luxury of not having to touch or be touched by another human being mine to indulge, I have very much wanted the guy behind the counter to know my order without me telling him first.

But no. Every time I walk in we have essentially the same exchange we've been having lo these many years:

Him: Upward nod and/or raised eyebrows with a split second of eye contact to signal I have his attention.

Me: "Chicken quesadilla, please."

Him: "Flour or wheat?" They've got two kinds of tortillas to choose from.

Me: "Flour." Let's not go crazy.

Him: "Rice and beans?"

Me: "Rice and beans."

He spreads a flour tortilla on the stovetop, sprinkles it with cheese while I pay at the register then get my salsa from the salsa bar. Unless I get my salsa from the salsa bar first then pay after. That part changes depending how fast the lady at the register rings me up. (I think of this as my chance to practice being flexible.)

When my tortilla is done browning and the cheese melting, the guy takes it off the stovetop and says, "Chicken or steak?" Even if I am the only customer in there, mine the only order being juggled, I will be asked to repeat my choice of protein.

Me: "Chicken."

Him: "Rice and beans?"

To be fair, I don't know his name or order either (assuming he eats there too). To be fair, I'm sure it's no picnic chopping onions and grilling carnitas for a living. I spent a summer scraping uneaten refried beans off plates at a Mexican restaurant in Phoenix. An outdoor restaurant. In Phoenix. In summer. So while I don't/won't insult the guy behind the counter by pretending to understand the depth/breadth of his experience, I feel like I can imagine it. At least a little bit.

Or maybe not. Maybe I'm just a spoiled jerk with a sense of entitlement. Maybe the guy's having an off decade. Maybe his dog ran away and never came back. Maybe he needs some sweet understanding. Maybe I should cool it with the judgments and projections. Maybe it shouldn't matter to me that he can't (won't?) remember my order.

But it does.

Whatever. I don't come for the service. I come for the quesadilla. Which, most likely, is average. But which, drawn to ritual as I am, I've eaten enough times to become sentimental about. Ditto the 90-minute drive there and back, the smell of the hand soap in the bathroom, the validation stamp with the red ink they stamp on my parking stub that gets on my fingers if I touch it before it dries. This is my spot. My joint. My Cheers. Even if nobody knows or cares what my name/order is. This (most likely average) quesadilla is threaded through my LA history, this city I've liked and hated (almost) equally, a place I came to because it's "where the work is" and, now that the work is taking me away, I'm thrilled to leave. A town that has never felt like home, even if it was where I chose to lay my head.

As the poet said, #notmyvibenotmytribe.

Which is why, on the eve of my permanent departure, about to begin a new job in a new city in a new country, as I ready myself for a set of experiences that promise change and growth and shift and all the things that used to frighten me but which today I recognize and embrace as gift and gold, it's only fitting that I make the drive to my little Mexican restaurant one last time, for one last chicken quesadilla on a flour tortilla. And by doing so honor all the other times I came here to enjoy "my last quesadilla." Not because I was leaving town but because I was going to go home and kill myself.

Of my close friends, I've known Depression the longest.

By 10 we were well-acquainted. He was there for my first attempt, at 15, for my second, freshman year at Princeton, and for the multiple dress rehearsals and close calls that followed. He was there as recently as four years ago, seated in the front row for what was in some ways my most serious breakdown since college. When all I wanted was to die. When Depression had me convinced - deep down, on a cellular level - that I Would Always Feel This Way and that There Were No Other Versions Of Me/Life On Offer.

That was before I realized Depression is a Liar.

That was before the daily meditation, the prayer, the affirmations. Before the therapy, the men's work, the move from isolation into community. Before the self-expression via writing (privately, professionally) and coming out (publicly). Before the gentle (and sometimes not-so-gentle) letting go of the people, habits, and belief systems that knocked me out of my body, lowered my frequency, and robbed me of a good night's rest. Before the gradual conclusion that I did not come into this world preprogrammed to self-destruct. (That upgrade/virus came later, courtesy of outside influences.) Before the understanding (remembering?) that my birthright is joy. But joy won't just come when I call it. I have to invite it. Gently. With intention. Building a connection, a trust, over time.

But I digress. Where was I? Oh yes. Chicken quesadillas.

Over the years, on a handful of dark days, I would determine that my final meal would be my favorite and when it was finished, I would exit this earth. Because I couldn't imagine feeling better. Because I couldn't imagine a different, vastly improved state of existence.

Which, obviously, represents a colossal failure of my imagination.

That was another tool in Depression's toolbelt: the limits of what I could and could not imagine.

The man I was then couldn't have pictured the man I am now, moving (more) consciously and (more) thoughtfully through the world, (more) alert to the people, habits, and belief systems that invite peace and purpose into my life on a daily basis. A man departing (escaping) Los Angeles with a plateful of things to look forward to.

The man I was then wouldn't have believed any of this was possible. But it was. Is.

And to celebrate, I'm treating myself to one last chicken quesadilla on a flour tortilla before I go. Because it's f-cking earned. If I do say so myself.

I park my car in the underground lot, get my parking stub, enter the restaurant. I walk past the guy behind the counter and into the bathroom to wash my hands. Emerging, I get my tray, approach the counter, and see that for the first time in the near fifth of a century I've been frequenting this chain, on what is potentially and very probably my final visit to this strip mall hole-in-the-wall, this totally unexceptional restaurant I've spent years patronizing and a not inconsiderable amount of gas money getting to from various apartments, the guy behind the counter has already got a tortilla heating on the stovetop for me. Flour.

Eyes down, he sprinkles it with cheese, says to me or himself or to both of us, "Chicken quesadilla."

It is a statement. Not a question.

I say, "Yes. Please."

And "Thank you."

www.huffingtonpost.com/news/national-suicide-prevention-month/ www.thetrevorproject.org www.afsp.org www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org www.activeminds.org www.iasp.info

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