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hottestthingalive · 3 years

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just want to extend my sincerest well-wishes to folks living in new england right now. if henri remains a hurricane and makes landfall in new england, it will be the first hurricane to do so in thirty years. in the past few decades, tropical storms and super storms (even the ones where new england only got bands of the storm and never entered the eye) have been enough to devastate the area. speaking from experience, a hurricane is a very different beast, especially in the path of the eye, and henri is predicted to possibly generate tornadoes as well. it’s also happening near a full moon, meaning tides are already high and flooding risks are huge. this is far more serious than many folks are taking it to be.

if you live in the predicted path of henri, please treat this seriously. a hurricane, even a category one, is enough to cause massive amounts of destruction, especially in areas unprepared for such weather conditions like new england. i’m hoping for the best, but i advise all of you to prepare for the worst. have necessary supplies like food, clean water, medication and lanterns stocked and ready, charge all electronic devices now, get gas for cars, generators, stoves, etc. beforehand, and do whatever else you can think of. there’s not much time left to prepare, so here’s a checklist for how to be as safe during the storm as possible:

-make sure you, your family, your pets, and anyone else in your household stay in one area, preferably a single room, as a sort of base. this room should have as few non-reinforced doors, windows, or walls as possible. if you are living in a house, do not go in the basement unless necessary (while the walls are likely more reinforced, it will be more easily flooded) but try to also avoid upper floors unless necessary, as branches and trees falling on or into them is a huge risk, not to mention well tornadoes. if you are living in an apartment, try to stay in a room with as few windows as possible, towards the middle of the apartment or wherever would be most stable in an emergency. in both scenarios, i’d advise bathrooms as generally good bases.

-keep the majority of your supplies in this room with you, including food, water and sleeping materials. ideally, you should be able to stay in this room without leaving it for hours at a time.

-pack go-bags, and keep your stuff organized and ready to tranport. if things get really dire, you will want everything easily moveable, even if you aren’t leaving the house: moving upstairs if your home begins to flood is far easier and safer if you can grab everything in one go instead of having to pack it all up.

-keep valuables in plastic bags. if you’re especially worried, use more than one bag and air-tight containers. make sure they’re still easily transportable, though, and have them packed up at all times. if possible, do this with electronic devices early on: you will not want your phone to die if you lose power, so you should not be using it for any reason but an emergency until you have a guaranteed way to charge it again.

-have an evacuation/escape plan. if things get bad, know where you’re going and how to get there. make sure all paths to your home’s exits are completely clear of obstacles. monitor your state’s policies on the matter of evacuation. if you’re told to evacuate, even if it is beautiful and sunny outside and seems completely fine, do so immediately. if you have to take a car and your tires are worn or not good for driving on slick surfaces, see if you can change them or get another vehicle beforehand. new yorkers and other city dwellers, do not use the subway or other below-ground transport under any circumstances until you know for certain they are completely safe or unless you have absolutely no choice in the matter. however, you should be aiming to avoid moving from your home after the storm starts until it ends: travel is extremely dangerous during hurricanes, and you want to stay in one place for as long as it is possible.

-have money withdrawn from your bank in cash, and keep it on you. make sure your important documents (passports, id, social security card, licenses) are all accessible and safe as well.

-make sure you are able to eat and drink and are doing so. if you will not have safe access to a stove during the storms, make sure you have food with you that does not require such preparation. you should also always have water, medication, and other necessary survival items with you whenever possible.

-if you have a car, make sure it’s not under any branches or structures that could fall on it during the storm. also, try and ensure it is on stable ground and is steady in place even when not braked. if you have immediate, obvious evidence to support the belief that your car could be moved or damaged during the storm, it is not in a safe space. if it is in a garage, ensure it is fully closed up and that the path to it is clear and, if you must enter the garage, try to use side doors or the like.

-do not go out in the storm, even if you think it is abating or gone, until you have full confirmation that it is. if you end up in the path of the eye, remember that the eyewall is a circle: the relative calm in the eye is a prelude to a second round of terrible winds. in your place, i would genuinely not risk going outside until at least 1-3 hours of little to no rain and wind had occurred on Monday (as many predictions expect the storm to last until Monday morning). staying inside is almost always safest.

-tornadoes in hurricanes are dangerous and unpredictable. if you suspect one to be nearby or passing overhead, stay away from all windows and outer doors and walls, and try to hunker down.

-if any property of yours is damaged outside, even if it is your car or house, do not go outside to deal with it until the storm is over unless that damage actively threatens your safety. if your chimney is blown off but no water is entering your fireplace and your roof seems intact, stay inside: however, if a tree breaks through a window, wall or roof and allows wind and rain to enter, address it immediately, although try to do so from inside when possible.

-use ‘oxygen mask on an airplane’ logic. your own safety needs to be your first priority, and then that of your housemates, and then that of anyone else. you are in pure survival mode, and odds are that playing at heroism or martyrism will not only actively endanger you but those around you as well.

-bring a book, a sketchbook, cards, or other forms of entertainment into your base: you’re gonna be waiting out this storm for a while. i’d advise not trying to sleep through the worst parts of the storm unless you have someone on watch, though: you do not want to be caught unawares by flooding or damages. i would also not advise using electronic devices that you may need in an emergency for entertainment (which includes anything that could be used to contact emergency services, even ipads or the like) although things like cd players are viable options. if you have a radio, use it to monitor alerts, and only use it for entertainment if you can be absolutely positive that you can recharge it (via batteries, for example).

if anyone has anything else, please add it. to sum this all up, though:

don’t take risks, be smart, and be safe. you can do this. i believe in you.

#hurricane henri #cinder communicates

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queenshelby · 3 years

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A NEW WORLD - PART FOUR

A Quiet Place 2 Fanfic

Pairing: Emmett x Fem!Reader

Warning: Angst, Gore, Death, Aliens, Violence, Movie Spoilers, etc…

Because you all love a cliff hanger…

***

Day 1

‘Y/N, hurry up, I will be late for school’ Lucas shouted from outside the bathroom door as you stood beside the toilet and wiped your mouth before reaching for your toothbrush which was lying on top of the sink.

‘Coming’ you shouted out just before you opened the bathroom door and put your hair into a bun.

‘Are you still feeling sick?’ Lucas asked and you nodded and yawned at the same time while you pulled a baggy jumper over your head.

‘I am seeing Dr Lauren today before the game this afternoon’ you said as you could see that Lucas was worried about you.

‘But you are still coming to the game too, right?’ he asked and you nodded, responding with a short ‘of course’.

Whilst you tried hard to avoid Emmett and Nora, you still made it to most of Lucas’s baseball games. It was important to him and you hated to upset him.

The bond you had with Lucas was stronger than anything else and you were the one who had taken it upon herself to look after him now that your mother couldn’t.

After you dropped Lucas off at school, you went to work a short shift at the hospital where you were assisting Nora for the day.

It was not how you wanted to spend your day but you had little to no choice. You needed the money and what happened between you and Emmett wasn’t her fault.

You knew that Emmett had confided in Nora about the night in question, but he had never mentioned to her who the woman was he had been with and he promised you to keep it this way until after you and Lucas had moved to Gorgia in two weeks.

‘Good Morning Y/N’ Nora said as you arrived for your shift twenty minutes early and, before you could even respond to her, you had to make another run for the lavatory.

‘Are you alright sweetie?’ Nora shouted out after she followed you to the lady’s room.

‘Yeah’ you huffed as the nausea had subsided once again. This has been ongoing for a week and you felt as though you have lost a few pounds in bodyweight during this short time.

Whatever you tried to eat, it wouldn’t stay inside you for very long and the constant feeling of nausea was horrendous.

After you calmed down a bit, you followed Nora to one of the medical procedure rooms for the morning briefing. You had three women coming in for check-ups before noon and she wanted you to carry them out while she was preparing the weekly medical reports.

‘Are you still feeling ill? Nora asked surprised as she handed you a small cup of water from next to the dispensary and you simply nodded before drinking it all, the entire cup.

‘I am seeing Dr Lauren later, before the baseball game’ you said as your hands were trembling and you reached for the muesli bar in your handbag. You needed to eat, again.

‘Hey, it’s none of my business Y/N, but have you taken a pregnancy test? I am just thinking, it’s much cheaper than seeing Dr Lauren and I felt pretty lousy when I was pregnant with Henry you know. The nausea could be from that’ Nora suggested and you simply starred at her with wide eyes.

Of course, you hadn’t considered this possibility since you were pretty precise with your method of birth control.

‘I am on the patch’ you quickly said, brushing her off and not wanting to discuss this topic with her any further.

‘And on Topamax and St Johns Wort. I’ve seen them in your locker’ Nora said before telling you that both, the medication and the herbal supplement, interfere with the efficiency of hormonal birth control therapy.

Your chin dropped and your face instantly turned pale. You were speechless and simply couldn’t respond to what Nora had just told you. This was the first time you heard about this.

Nervously, you watched her walk to the medicine cabinet and grab a small plastic cup and a white strip pregnancy test.

‘Here you go. You know how to read these. Go on’ she chuckled and you took the cup and trip out of her hand before making your way to the bathroom nervously.

***

‘And?’ Nora asked as you returned from the bathroom. Your face was much more pale than before and it was obvious that you were crying as your eyes were watery and red.

‘Not pregnant’ you said quickly before advising her that you would need to make a quick phone call to Dr Lauren’s surgery before seeing the first patient.

She nodded and you disappeared into the women’s change room to make the call.

***

Your appointment with Dr Lauren later that afternoon was rather quick but, when you left her rooms, there was paperwork for you to sign before the nurse would hand over the medications which you had discussed with Dr Lauren

‘Y/N, for this procedure, we will require you to sign a waiver. The use of the drugs prescribed by Dr Lauren will be effective but we cannot guarantee that there won’t be any complications if you decide not to attend our other clinic for an ultrasound following the chemical abo…’ the nurse said and, just as she did, you watched her stare out of the large window in the reception area. Her chin dropped and her eyes widened as she looked up into the sky.

‘What the fuck is that?’ you said as you signed the waiver and, at the same time, heard a loud bang coming from the sky outside.

You quickly took your car keys from the reception counter and ran towards the door.

‘Y/N, your tablets…’ the receptionist shouted, holding up the packet of medicine prescribed by Dr Lauren for the procedure, but you were gone.

Quickly, you started up your car and drove to the baseball field where Lucas was playing but, just as you turned the corner into the main street less than two minutes later, you saw people running around everywhere.

You had no idea what was going on as, suddenly, two men ran in front of your vehicle followed by what appeared to be a large creature of some sort.

You panicked and reversed the car quickly, but there was nowhere to go.

‘Holy fuck’ you shouted as, behind you, there were more people running from yet another one of these creatures and, without giving it too much more thought, you opened your car door, grabbed your bag and ran inside the pharmacy.

‘What the fuck are these things?’ you shouted in fear as you ran behind the counter and the pharmacist Joe cocked his gun just as another creature came taring down through the shop front window.

Joe tried to shoot it, but was taken by it almost instantly while you tried hard not to scream.

Tears were running down your face as you were quietly sitting beneath the counter. You had absolutely no idea what was going on but you had to find a way to get to the baseball field as quickly as possible. Lucas needed your help and you were scared for his life.

But you were stuck as the creature was lurking inside the shop, obviously looking for you or any other humans inside.

You took long and deep breaths and tried to remain calm as you could hear it making the strangest of noises as it walked around the store.

As you were sitting there, your heart was beating out of your chest and you believed that your time had come as the creature drew closer to the counter beneath which you were sitting.

But, to your surprise, after a minute, it turned around, drawn by the sound outside on the street when a large bus hit one of the buildings.

Quietly and slowly, you walked out of the pharmacy as the two creatures were destroying the bus. Without making a sound, you walked along the street from car to car, hiding behind them, trying to be as quiet as you possibly could.

It soon became evident to you that these creatures couldn’t see you. They could only hear you and possibly smell you. But you couldn’t be sure.

Without a car, you made your way to the baseball field which took you at least 20 minutes for what usually would be a two-minute walk.

By this point, the street was quiet and covered in dead bodies and blood. There were no more creatures and no men and women alive. It took these monsters as little as 15 minutes to kill everyone and now there was no longer any screaming or yelling. Just silence, blood-filled streets and human remains.

You tried hard to focus as you finally reached the baseball field. It was abandoned, no more than three or five dead bodies. On the field, there was silence. All you could hear was the cracking of the leaves from the trees surrounding it.

You desperately wanted to yell out for Lucas, trying to find him, but you knew that you couldn’t. You had to be quiet or these creatures may come back.

You searched beneath each bench, behind every tree and inside the locker rooms. But, he was nowhere to be found.

Tag List (Cillian):

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#a quiet place #a quiet place 2 #a quiet place imagine #a quiet place fanfic #a quiet place smut #a quiet place ii #a quiet place part 2 #Emmett #emmett x reader #emmett smut #cillian murphy #cillian murphy smut #Cillian Murphy x Reader #cillian murphy imagine

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ms-m-astrologer · 3 years

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Transiting Venus through Cancer

Since I have the time, I thought I'd do a separate post on Venus' entry into Cancer. (It also has been the nonfiction equivalent of a merciless plot bunny.) I'm going to look at her main "areas," then conclude with some words about kicking the transit up a notch.

The Arts

Cancer is a very traditional and sentimental sign, therefore for the next 25 days we can expect a greater appreciation for traditional art forms. In the US, that might be Norman Rockwell paintings (scoff not, check out 1964's "The Problem We All Live With"), Motown songs, older movies - anything that scratches the nostalgia itch, and makes us feel good. Some people may have the opportunity to invest in art (but see "Money" below). If you make art, this is more of an "incubation" stage in the creative process. You'll have some wondrously imaginative ideas to play with, if you're quiet long enough to get them.

Beauty

Well, bosoms. Cancer rules the chest. This may be the time you finally toss out that ratty old brassiere for something a little prettier. Again, we're going to be more conservative under this transit, perhaps checking out some styles from bygone days. (Ms M loves the 1940s, herself, and wishes she had the figure for the 1910s.) We'll want to beautify our homes, with an eye to comfort as well - think a nice snugly crocheted afghan, or some flowers from the garden.

Money

Oh, my goodness, can this sign penny-pinch. Clutching and grasping the coins with both claws, Cancer can out-miser Capricorn when motivated. If we spend money at all, it's going to be on food, security, and the home. And maybe our moms. This is a good time to save, especially since Venus moving through Leo will see us spending more on entertainment.

Relationships

In Cancer, Venus has a tendency to marry the partner's family and not just the partner. There's the need for tribal approval of the chosen one. We want to settle down and cohabit with the partner - Cancer is also a very fertile sign, so if you don't want kids right now (or ever) you need to take precautions. Another possibility with Venus in Cancer is the chance to mend familial relationships. Show some TLC to your tribe.

Kicking it up a notch

Most of the time, Venus transits are limited to having pleasant or unpleasant days. She's more of a "trigger" for what the outer planets are up to. So let's look at those days when she's mixing it up with Saturn etc.:

Between June 12-15, Venus will sextile both Ceres and Uranus in Taurus, but also square Chiron/Aries and inconjunct Saturn Rx/Aquarius.

Since Venus rules Taurus, no doubt these days will amp up the "Venus" parts of Taurus. Given Ceres' association with Cancer, we can probably think of it as a mutual reception, too. This could be a fantastic opportunity for grounding and centering work. It won't be easy, though. The square to Chiron shows some wounds that need to be healed, while the inconjunct from Saturn may indicate some pressure from "the greater good" to deny yourself. We are all slowly coming to the realization that everyone deserves a bare minimum of food and shelter - guaranteed; all you have to do to earn it is wake up in the morning. If you have important placements between 12-15 degrees of any sign (like Ms M's Ascendant at 13+ degrees Scorpio) you'll feel this one particularly strongly.

Between June 20-24, Venus will be trine Pallas Athene and Neptune in Pisces (both of whom are about to station retrograde) - but also opposite Pluto Rx/Capricorn and square Eris/Aries.

Again we have the good mixed in with the bad. And that is one difficult "bad," essentially a cardinal t-square involving Venus opposite Pluto, with Eris square both of them. This isn't a new situation; something comes up which we've failed to deal with in the past. Ms M immediately thinks of the so called "Q Anon" dolts in the US, who continually threaten violent overthrow - which is also known as treason - and who seem to get a free pass. In our personal lives, this can manifest as fighting between partners and/or family members, over some issue(s) where compromise seems impossible. The trine to Neptune offers us some guidance, perhaps by getting in touch with the Divine Feminine - while the trine to Pallas Athene can help with diplomacy (and possibly making some great Art out of the conflict). Placements between 23-27 degrees will get the brunt of the pressure here.

Finally - any transit of Venus is based on your natal Venus position.

Because of natal Venus...

We take action with transiting Venus...

Resulting in effects to the houses ruled by Venus in our natal chart (the ones with Taurus or Libra on the cusp)

My Venus/Taurus/6th House, in other words, is the basis for whatever happens to me during Venus transits - right now, that's through Cancer, and my 8th and 9th Houses - with the effects of that transit coming to my 7th House (Taurus cusp) and 12th House (Libra cusp).

#Astrology #Transiting Venus through Cancer #Ms M astrologer

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chroniclerdl · 3 years

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Seven Fundamentals to Writing Better Yu-Gi-Oh Duelfics

Ever wanted to write a duelfic just as good or better than canon?

Done right, duels are memorable action scenes.

Done wrong, duels shatter the suspension of disbelief. It’s already a big ask to imagine the world revolving around a card game.

You don’t want the tragedy where your readers yank the scrollbar past your duel, or worse, close your tab. Even the small pool of duelfic readers/writers like me will skip huge chunks of your chapters when the duels sag.

By implementing basic storytelling techniques tailored to dueling, you can hook your readers into following the play-by-play.

High Stakes

Consistent Rules

Sneaks Checked

“Balanced” Gameplay

Foreshadowing Victory

Engaging Description

Dramatic Tension

1. High Stakes

When you advertise your story as a duelfic, your first duel tells readers whether or not what you wrote is worth their time.

If your characters duel without a concrete reason to rip the opponent’s throat, readers already know the outcome:

You lose.

Why? The game is pointless. Who’s dropping whatever they’re doing just to read the equivalent of your characters sipping afternoon tea? If you’re introducing the setting and characters, why can’t you introduce exciting threats?

No reader expects your first duel to decide the fate of the world, but your characters still need to bet.

Characters wager life chips.

If your character loses, they suffer death or suicide-inducing despair.

Is it too much to start with life-and-death? No. Think of the life chip as the culmination of hopes and dreams.

As the story progresses, the stakes will rise, must rise. How? Others will entrust the main characters with their own life chips, and/or the life chips acquire additional meaning. Consider this loose analogy: at the end of a poker tournament, gamblers sit at the final table with stacks built from the chips of others.

Life chips mean different things to different characters. Let’s take the Duelist Kingdom arc.

Yugi’s life chip is the hope to save his grandfather (and later, his own soul)

Joey’s life chip is the hope to win the prize money to fund his sister’s medical operation

Kaiba’s life chip is the hope to save his little brother (and later, his own soul)

You don’t even need your final showdown to revolve around the fate of world; it just has to be one or more things that matter to your characters.

Also, make sure to communicate the stakes, or why the characters accept uneven bets.

If you have the chops, you can also play around with disguising the stakes. As in, your character thinks they’re wagering something small, but it’s actually their life chip. However, your readers still need a vague reason to believe that a defeat will devour the character.

Always make sure the characters stake one or more life chips!

2. Consistent Rules

If you watched the Duelist Kingdom arc and tried to understand the moves everyone made, your head exploded.

Ask yourself: will the clever scheme that your hero invented drive readers crazy?

If I write a magic system that requires a wand, this applies to all. I cannot become a genius and suddenly wave my hands to cast magic.

Demonstrate the rules early, preferably in the first duel, and keep them sacred.

If you must make an exception, establish it early. In that case, the exception becomes a well-defined branch of the rules that the readers can anticipate.

Can the players magically draw the card they need, whenever they want?

If you can establish the when and why, by all means. The readers proceed with the understanding that the players can reach into their deck like a glorified toolbox.

For example, Duel Links has a concept called “skills” that function like a player’s special ability. At the time I wrote this, Yami Yugi’s “Destiny Draw” skill lets the player take any card from their deck once per duel after losing 2000LP (and even if they stacked the top of the deck earlier!).

Card should also have the same, predictable effect. If the card prevents attacks, I doubt the text discusses physical properties or mentions holding things in the air. But you knew that, right?

The rules are the laws of the universe.

3. Sneaks Checked

I love duels. I also love getting what I want.

Why does getting what I want have to be through a duel?

If we talk, maybe we can come to an agreement. If I blackmail you, maybe you’ll give in to my demands. If I shoot you, I can loot your corpse. Give the readers a good reason as to why your characters would bother with the hassle of honest dueling and can’t wiggle from the consequences of losing.

Often, the duel takes place in the context of a tournament. Hopefully, the tournament officials are keeping a good eye on the players and cracking down on cheaters.

However, even that’s not a guarantee. What’s the key concept?

Power.

The competitors have equivalent capacity for coercion (usually violence) or have a neutral referee presiding over the match with the most capacity for coercion (shoutout to gambling manga Usogui).

Anyone who enters a game otherwise has lost before the first move.

In Yu-Gi-Oh, magical and sci-fi enforcement are common. The Shadow Realm can trap the loser in a desolate hell. In a digital world, the loser suffers deletion. Or just have good tournament officials.

Be vigilant when your duel doesn’t call upon these tropes.

Your amoral characters won’t mind blindsiding your other characters, and they won’t mind blindsiding you with a plot hole.

If you’re not careful, the readers will ask you why they played uncharacteristically fair.

4. “Balanced” Gameplay

Duels should be fair and fun…for the villain.

Ostensibly, everyone plays a balanced game, designed to give both sides a sporting chance. In reality, the villain tilts the field to their favor with one or more tricks up their sleeves. Why would your villain ever fight fair?

But that’s fine. We love rooting for the underdog and watching the villain get their comeuppance.

Overpowered ability to let the villain read minds? Deck full of unbalanced cards that makes the villain’s monsters invincible with no drawback? Creator who knows every strategy in the game? Readers will turn the page as they wonder how the hero will prevail.

The more obstacles you can throw in the hero’s way, the better.

Got custom cards? No problem, just follow a couple guidelines. After all, some duelists are more equal than others.

The hero’s deck is full of regular cards that have a cost to use. For every play they want to make, their cards insist that they give up their attack, discard to play, etc.

The villain’s deck is full of rare cards that power up their game for free. So long as you can justify why the card made it to print, the villain can play whatever they want.

For every step your hero takes, the villain gets two.

5. Foreshadowing Victory

How many times have you watched a duel where the protagonist comes up with this never-before-seen card that does exactly what the protagonist needs to clinch the win? In the final showdown, no less? It’s like the writers begged to be called amateurs and idiots.

No other genre tolerates such laziness.

However, readers don’t want an infodump of the characters’ decks. Show the cards in action. To cover the deck, you'll probably need multiple duels.

This also implies you have more freedom in how your character defeats their early opponents in the duelfic.

Does that previous statement contradict what I said about never-before-seen cards clinching the win as the mark of laziness? No, because here’s the rule:

Tolerance for the hero’s new cards decreases as the story progresses.

(Notice that I specify the hero’s new cards; your villains exist to make life harder by inventing unfair tricks.)

When you must include new cards for the hero late in the duelfic, at least find a way to make them first backfire.

Now, some writers have lots of knowledge about the card pool and metagame. Can they assume the readers a priori know the hero has access to any of the available cards in a given archetype?

I’d err on the side of caution and properly foreshadow the cards before they appear late in the duelfic. Not every reader is a walking card database. They have no reason to assume something exists unless you show the card.

Take the tolerance rule into consideration when planning your duels. If you know the awesome combo you want to use for the final turn in the duelfic climax, that’s your cue to scatter the cards into the earlier duels.

Plan the last duel first and your early duels last.

6. Description

Every reader wants a front-row seat to the action.

They’re paying you their time, so make it worth the admission: sleek combatants & budget-busting fights. Kaiba invented Solid Vision technology for a reason, so help readers envision your duels.

Who’s fighting? Describe the point-of-view’s impression of the monsters’ appearances. Red-Eyes Black Dragon should be self-explanatory.

What about a decorated monster like Time Wizard?

You could go into detail about how the red clock humanoid has yellow gears that form epaulets and purple, pointy boots and a green mustache made from clock hands and so on, but such a level of minutiae bogs pacing and invites skimming.

Readers just need to hear about a purple-caped, red clock humanoid with a wand to form an image. Their imaginations can handle the little details.

Paint appearances in broad strokes and one or two brief sentences.

How are the monsters fighting? Duel Monsters is a game where the target takes the aggressor’s attack like a champ. That doesn’t mean you can’t spice it up.

For example, my opponent’s dragon attacks my weaker knight with a fireball. My knight, interested in not dying, raises his shield. Unfortunately, he screams as the flames engulf him.

You wouldn’t just stand still with a straight face if someone armed with a knife lunged for your gut.

A fight scene is a string of action and reaction.

Most people also experience life in more senses than just sight.

A dragon’s fireball is a bright reddish-orange, hot, dries the air, smoky, and explodes with a boom on impact. I never tasted a fireball, and I hope I never do, but that’s still four senses: sight, touch, smell, and sound.

Include multiple sensory details.

Let’s spare a moment to talk about the heads-up display (HUD).

In Yu-Gi-Oh, cards have multiple stats and abilities. You’re free to mention whatever you deem necessary. No set formula exists. On one extreme, you can mention nothing to keep the narrative clean at the risk of confusing the readers. At the other extreme, infodumps about the monster’s abilities provide great detail but wreck the pacing. But there’s a cozy middle.

State only what you need from the card.

If your duels occurred before the era of Synchro, you don’t need details about levels. You can just display the basic stats to determine the stronger monster. If a deck has Pendulum monsters, just mention the scale numbers when they're played as scales. And so on.

You can also make an index of new cards at the end of a chapter.

BONUS TIP! Understanding show, don’t tell.

What is show, don’t tell? At its core, this concept refers to immersing your readers in the senses and feelings instead of exposition. Unfortunately, that definition is a bit vague to execute. After writing for a while, I had my lightbulb moment.

Don’t TELL the readers how to think or force-feed them a conclusion.

SHOW your readers the evidence.

Here’s a written example from Joey vs. Rex in Duelist Kingdom. See if you can spot what makes this prose telling instead of showing.

“Joey watched nervously as Two-Headed King Rex stomped Baby Dragon. He messed up his Baby Dragon-Time Wizard combo!”

You can see two failures: “nervously” and the second sentence.

Adverbs like “nervously” and other “-ly” friends get a bad rep because rookies tend to use them as telling crutches (especially beware adverbs after dialogue tags!). “Nervously” tells me how Joey reacts. But what does “nervously” look like? One character might bite their thumb. Another might fidget in their seat. The adverb in this context lacks nuance.

We also have the second sentence: “He messed up his Baby Dragon-Time Wizard combo!” When you’re explaining the “why” to something, you’re telling. It’s like talking down to your readers.

Contrast with the next example.

“A bead of sweat rolled off Joey’s face as Two-Headed King Rex stomped Baby Dragon. He stared at the Time Wizard in his hand.”

The first sentence shows me Joey’s physical reaction. I see him sweating, so I think he’s nervous.

We also see a second physical reaction: “He stared at the Time Wizard in his hand.” This comes on the heels of the first sentence, and I also have knowledge of when Joey used the Baby Dragon-Time Wizard combo in a prior duel. Combined, I think Joey is ruminating about a missed chance.

Readers are smart; they’ll catch your intention if you show the proof.

7. Dramatic Tension

I bet you know what it's like to draw a bad hand.

Imagine: The hero staggers into the arena, and the villain just needs to win one duel to take over the world. The villain draws a bunch of powerups with no monster, but the hero draws a one-turn-kill combo.

Anticlimactic. The readers throw that duelfic straight into the trash.

Don’t just write real-life duels. “It really happened” doesn’t mean it’s emotionally satisfying.

That’s why we have literary structure.

Success and setback pace together with progressive intensity to maximize dramatic tension and emotional payoff.

I’ll spare the nitty-gritty theory detail, but your duels should look like this on a basic level:

Part 1: Villain’s basic threats. Introduces the villain’s deck and style.

Part 2: Villain’s minor strategy. The villain’s first serious attempt to defeat the hero.

Part 3: Villain’s major strategy. The hero’s reversal! But the villain has worse in store.

Part 4: Hero’s imminent defeat. The hero must break through, or else will instantly lose!

Ideally, you’re also integrating the story itself into the duel; themes and duels synergize to create a stronger effect.

You may notice how the format resembles the three-act structure.

Act I is Part 1

Act II until the Act II midpoint is Part 2

Act II midpoint until Act III is Part 3

Act III is part 4.

I’ll use Yugi/Pharaoh vs. Pegasus in Duelist Kingdom as an example.

Part 1: Mind scan. Pegasus can read minds to counter combos.

Part 2: Toon World. Indestructible, cartoonified monsters attack.

Part 3: Shadow game. Toons destroyed! But playing a shadow game weakens Yugi.

Part 4: Yugi passes out. The Pharaoh must find a new way to stop Pegasus’s mind scan!

Figure out each part of the structure for your duels before writing the turn-by-turn plays.

By the way, modern real-life Yu-Gi-Oh duels don’t suit drama because the rules provide weak constraints to creating strong boards. A good modern deck usually establishes a scary turn one board and jumps straight into Part 4, whereas other card games like Magic: The Gathering and Hearthstone force the powerhouse cards to wait several turns until the player builds the mana to pay costs.

You can still write a good modern duel. Here’s a basic outline of Arc-V’s duel between Sora and Shay. Technically, “tragedy” is the structure of this duel, so I’ll make Shay the “hero” to flip it and keep matters simplified.

Part 1: Basic monsters. These clash before a monster appears from the Extra Deck.

Part 2: Frightfurs. They come one after another to crush Shay’s Raidraptors.

Part 3: Sora’s wrath. Rise Falcon survives! But Sora’s malevolent nature comes to light.

Part 4: Frightfur Chimera. Sora chomps candy and summons his biggest fusion horror!

If following the four parts is too difficult for you, that’s okay. They're just logical extensions of one basic concept. Keep the following in mind, and you’ll never go wrong:

The villain’s subsequent threats become increasingly overwhelming.

Conclusion

Much of writing a duel boils down to storytelling technique.

Let’s tl;dr the main takeaways.

High Stakes: Minimum ante is the life chip, worth a character’s hopes and dreams.

Consistent Rules: Everyone plays by the same logic.

Sneaks Checked: Characters can’t skip the duels with violence and coercion.

“Balanced” Gameplay: Villains enjoy advantages.

Foreshadowing Victory: Readers have a chance to predict the winning combo.

Engaging Description: Immerse senses and invite reactions.

Dramatic Tension: The villain makes progressively stronger threats.

As a duelfic reader/writer, I can gauge a writer's ability by measuring their duels with the fundamentals. Many fan writers struggle; even the canon writers struggle.

But writing a duelfic isn’t rocket science. With practice, minding the fundamentals will become second nature.

And don't forget to tag your story as a duelfic. It's a whole genre in fanfic, so sort it properly and help readers from the future find you.

May the heart of the cards be with you.

…

Want to see in-depth examples of my advice? I rewrote the Orichalcos arc to reimagine its untapped potential without the failures of the canon presentation. You can find it on FFnet and AO3.

#yugioh #ygo #yugioh fanfiction #yugioh fandom #fanfic writing #duelfic #writing #writing tips #writing advice #writing help #how to write #listicles

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dourpeep · 3 years

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Seeing people complaining about the lack of anniversary rewards is getting so tiring. The game's ratings dropped to like 2 on Google play, all comment sections of official accounts are full of complaints. I know and understand that people are upset but it's just so so tiring to the point where I unfollowed most accounts that aren't related to fanart or fanfiction because of all that negativity

I personally spent (a little) money on the game so I get where p2w players come from but idk. I saw that we didn't get anything and moved on pretty quickly. Maybe that's just me, idk

Maybe you have a different view on this and if so, I'd like to hear it

Sorry for ranting in your inbox

hehe no need to apologize because I have quite a bit to say myself nodnod

Read if you like, don't if you don't--this is just my opinions and stuff based off my experience knowing Eastern gatcha games as well as talking about using a 5* vs 4* of the same build + slot

This got kinda long ehe-

Like really long.

Anyway

My turn for a Hot Take (tm)

Yeah I understand this--I've been feeling so drained and my enjoyment of the game and writing has diminished immensely because all I see everywhere is just that.

I understand that the event rewards suck but at the same time? I realize how gacha aren't really popular here in the West--and I have seen a lot of comparison between Genshin and Cookie Run but they're also two entirely different genres despite both being gacha. Not to mention that Cookie Run is fast at first until you get to around uhh Kingdom lvl 37~~ and you're stuck and can't go forward because things cost too many materials or your cookies aren't strong enough even though you have several stars on your team consisting of epics built as optimally as possible-

So the maintenance rewards for Cookie Run have been the only significant amount of gems I've been getting for a few weeks now compared to when I first started and could do 10 roll after 10 roll.

Also also, Cookie Run is PvP (arena, guilds, etc). Being able to get more rolls is absolutely a gamechanger. If you can't get a good defense cookie or healer cookie, you're fucked.

So!! That's why Cookie Run is more generous with rolls. You're not going to want to keep fighting other people in the Arena or doing Guild stuff if they don't add in those generous rewards.

On the other hand, Genshin Impact is an open world rpg w/ co-op (note, co-op doesn't count as pvp because you're collaborating) where you can build pretty much any of the characters to be viable (dps/vampire Barbara is one major example, Noelle is a guarantee roll character for that beginner's banner and she can easily be built to be a tank/healer/dps to fill whatever slot you desire)

So they're not going to be incredibly generous w/ rewards because the characters you have--meta or not--don't really effect your ability to play the game (unless we're talking spiral abyss which really is considered endgame anyway) when you're able to get at least one character of each element for free I mean, you start out with traveler who can be anemo, geo, or electro once you get to the respective places, Amber, Kaeya, Lisa, Barbara (iirc, you need to get to rank 20?), Xiangling (complete spiral abyss floor 3), and Noelle (reduced cost 10roll w/ guaranteed Noelle).

Which would be one of each element and a variety of one of the 5 weapon types nodnod.

Time to talk about builds and why it's not necessary to have a 5* unlike in other gatcha games like Cookie Run (again, a kingdoms builder) before going back to the anniversary stuff

But continuing, like Eula is considered a fantastic 5* character who features a kit that is based around her being a physical damage character. My sibling, C, has her built and she does some insane damage.

On the other hand, I have Xinyan built as a physical dps and if you were to compare their damage?

With crit, C's Eula deals 9k to 14k with Skyward Pride (5* claymore w/ energy recharge substat). With crit, my Xinyan deals 8k to 13k with Song of Broken Pines (5* claymore w/ phys substat) OR 7k to 10k with Prototype Archaic (4* craftable claymore w/ attack substat).

Both C and I agree that they're pretty evenly-matched in the sense of damage output.

We have similar builds focusing on physical damage, however, C's Eula uses 4pc Pale Flame and my Xinyan uses 2pc Bloodstained, 2pc Pale Flame (both have the 25% phys damage bonus for the 2pc). It's also good to note that both their Eula and my Xinyan have a physical dmg % cup.

So just by stacking up more phys on Xinyan, you get a physical dps (with some elemental support capabilities due to her E and Q) you can easily make her deal consistent, reliable damage that is comparable to a fully built Eula. Ofc, I'm sacrificing Xinyan's shield, but since she's built to be a physical dps, it doesn't matter anyway.

Another thing is Zhongli is an incredible shield support. His shield?? Absolutely insane because it's based off his hps. Guess who else has a hp-based shield and heals??? Diona. Another incredibly good support 4* with a shield and healing would be Noelle!

But with Diona, specifically since I did kinda cover over Noelle already, she can easily be built along with her shield having over 100% uptime (like how Zhongli has over 100% uptime). The fact that Diona is also a healer definitely is a perk too.

Ofc the difference with this is that Zhongli can be built as a burst support/dps while Diona is not. But the point isn't that--the point is that you don't need a 5* shield support to have a good, reliable shield support.

But regardless of 4* or 5*, to get a viable character, you need to build them well. So if your character isn't doing satisfactory damage, you just have to take a quick peek at what artifacts they're running and fix as needed!

Another thing--

Talking about the rewards and stuff for the anniversary-

Generally, gatcha games aren't really that generous with rewards and instead usually have some sort of event. In this case, I'm pretty sure that Moonchase is considered a part of the anniversary which is why it's giving so many rewards- just the primos from the first day alone with the chests and quest was enough for two rolls (40 chests * 5 primos each + 60 from the quest and a few that I forgot where they come from but are from the event) as well as the 4* Luxurious Sea Lord claymore.

Before you say that it's shitty for them to make a festival into the anniversary event, I'm certain that people would complain if the anniversary rewards were just a little more than the 10x fates and stuff and that's it because it'd feel like they're skipping over the anniversary entirely. (keep in mind, festivals don't normally give this much stuff in terms of primogems from what we've experienced so far--they're mainly focused on the free event weapon you can get and build like with Festering Desire, Windborne Ode, Dodoco Tales)

Also companies love taking advantage of festivals to make an event bigger + more fleshed out. It'd be otherwise kinda boring to have to just log in every day for a week (not to mention, not everyone does that) and encourages players to play to get rewards.

yeah, that's supposed to work in their favor because they want to keep interest.

So the fact that there's a lot of backlash on everything going on is tiring and also?? I want to make the point that they'll only listen to so much. Getting heard is important, but there will be a point where Mihoyo will just stop listening to the players entirely because all they're getting is a constant barrage of "this event is the worst" "no one likes that character" "(insert character) when???" "okay but where's (blank) rerun?" pasted over the forums, discord, twitter, facebook, instagram--

You can't keep demanding more while also talking shit constantly about the new stuff added because then they'll just not add those new stuff because we (general) seem to never be satisfied.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if they end up just cutting Genshin Impact as a loss entirely if this continues as it has and gets even worse.

But I digress.

Anyway, I agree that it sucks that the daily login rewards for the anniversary are just cut and pasted from the Lantern Rite, but as someone who's played a lot of gatcha games, it's pretty much the standard.

Have a daily sign in for rewards and a big event featuring a ton of stuff you can get instead of having an 'official' anniversary event.

I'm sure there's a lot I'm missing because it's not coming to mind, but yeah. These are my general thoughts on what's happening with the discourse.

#anon asks #discourse #anyway that being said--make sure to get some rest anon #stuff like this is incredibly draining so take care of yourself nodnod #I'm not sorry for this being so long I got carried away but at the same time this is something I'm pretty passionate about #And I'm not at all excusing the stuff going on but at the same time us (general as players) are also not really being the best

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alignwithmind · 3 years

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Intuition Vs.Ego

So, I’m laying here on some cushions in this little sanctuary soul space I have created myself. I just feel so peaceful and connected here. Super aligned with my mind and tiny heart space. It’s like my anchor spot. Last night I had SO much fun. Literally like soul beaming fun and it just happened. There was no grand plan or anything, those are my fave times though when the good gets better and just unfolds with the best fun as you just are and trust in the moments and go with it. I listened to this A M A Z I N G podcast about an hour ago. Weirdly (but not weirdly ~ thanks universe) it pretty much was exactly what I needed to hear. Universal vibrations are real. This is inspired from ‘Intuition Vs. Ego - Make Shift Happen With Samantha Daily’.

Intuition and Ego. I have heard things regarding intuition and prior to this, to me, it was like a gut feeling. Gut feelings are guardian angels right ~ I see intuition as like a feeling within your body that guides you to how you truely feel. Ego -I am only beginning to learn about ego. I thought it was just this personality trait that disregarded everyone or everything else, and because I’m such an empath, I thought it was a massive turn of. I am learning that an ego is somewhat yes a trait, but its more like that chatter in your head. That chatter that feeds you lots information. In fact, it can be too much to process. It can lie to you. There is a whole world about the ego. Anyway, this amazing podcast helped me understand how to identify and channel into knowing and aligning with your mind to become aware of which is which, and how to really like get more confident in tuning into intuition. ’I think that's what a lot of us are waiting for intuition. Unfortunately, it's never as obvious as you would like it to be and for a lot of us are waiting for that amazing life changing feeling of like ~ YES FOR SURE. This is without a doubt, what I should do. This is the next step for me. This is the direction I'm going in. I know that I can trust it because my intuition was so loud and so clear and yes, I feel affirmed and ready and here we go. As much as I wish it was that loud and clear, that's just not how our intuition works. Until you start to lean into listening to your intuition more often and really get in tune with what it does feel and sound like for you, and start trusting it, then it eventually of course will become easier for you to trust it. You will feel like it's a lot more clear when your intuition is speaking to you because you have that experience of having heard it before and having trusted it and having leaned into it. But until we start to really recognise it and play this sort of re-wiring or game of like okay. I'm just going to go with it and trust it. It's hard for us to really know what it's telling us. I think the biggest thing is trusting what it's telling us.

Unfortunately, the intuition is is not going to be as obvious as you want it to be. Especially if you're moving through a period in life where you're kind of uncertain about where you're going or what the next step is for you or what's right for you. This could look like Am I in the right relationship? or am I in the right career? or Should I quit my job? Should I get a new job? Should I stay or should I go? All that kind of all that kind of energy of feeling like you're in limbo is when we tend to really want our intuition to come through and speak to us, guide us and feel like we have that guiding light, that voice. that all-knowing voice that's like you ~ should do this ~ but it's not it's not going to feel as obvious as that. The trick is to ~ identify what you feel like you should do, rather than what you think you should do ~ So intuition vs. ego is very much the difference between feeling and thinking. Intuition is is a feeling, not a thought, which is why we so often dismiss the Intuition or quickly push it down. Because it doesn't feel strong enough or a loud enough for us to fully trust it the same way that our thoughts do. Your logical mind will take you through all the scenarios and tell you know, this is safer. This is what you should do. This is what we can expect from this option.. etc etc that overwhelming chatter kind of laying everything out for you in this attempt of a neat little picture of what makes the most sense right? That is The Logical mind. That's the Ego! Intuition doesn't really work in the same way.

So, you know when you get that feeling.. like an intuitive light or something that's like nudging you towards a decision or towards the next step or towards something that's big or scarier difficult or new, you're going to feel that intuitive paying of like; go do this. This is what's next for you. Or maybe you should do this. Right ..but it's going to be really soft like a whisper like just a flash of a moment. It's really really quick and then immediately after that, your Ego/logical thoughts are going to come in and tell you why it's not a good idea, which is why it becomes so confusing to listen to our intuition. We have that tug of war going on inside of us. If I feel this one way, but my brain is telling me something else and this is because your brain, your logical mind, your ego is always trying to protect you.

That's the job that it has right? It's trying to hold you inside of your comfort zone and keep you within the bounds of familiarity so that literally you don't die. If we break it down to the most basic level, the reason why our brain does this the reason why we feel so we feel so convinced sometimes that staying within our comfort zone is the best option is because to our brain, we know that at least that this comfort zone is known, there's no immediate sort of danger that might cause death for us. That's like the very very basics of it. Your brain works FOR you, not against you. It will always prioritise keeping you alive, that its job. So even if your current situation is a relationship that's not fully serving you or it's not exactly what you deserve, or it may be even toxic or it's a job that you don't love that you're not passionate about or maybe even toxic too, whatever the situation is. The current circumstance that you're moving through, as long as it doesn't relate to you potentially dying, It's considered more safe than the unknown.

Our Ego always operates from the mindset of ~ the devil you know is better than the devil that you don't know ~ which is why so many people find it so hard to leave relationships and to leave jobs, or move to different cities and to do different things with their life because they get convinced by their logical mind. ~ No, no, like if you did that that could be even worse, like maybe no one will love you again if you leave this person and maybe you'll be alone forever or maybe you'll run out of time and you won't meet someone and then it'll be too late and then you can never have kids, like just stay, just stay here to stay with this person. This person loves you they provide for you, it's good enough. Just stay. The Logical mind says Yeah, but maybe if you quit this job ..you'll be unemployed. And then you won't have enough money and then you'll have to move back in with your parents or you will be homeless or you'll have to ask your friends for help or ask your parents for money or you won't be able to pay your bills and you'll never get a job again, and then you'll have this weird gap in your resume and then nobody will want to hire you and once you have a thought, it triggers a feeling, which triggers another thought and it goes on and on and on and on and on. All of those thoughts all of those fearful what if scenarios in your mind is the ego. It's trying to do its job. It's trying to bring you back to the comfort zone is trying to keep you safe by saying; Hey, we're you are isn't so bad. Right just be grateful. Like it's fine. We're not dead yet where you are is fine. Just stay here. Just stay here. Because beyond this experience, beyond this wall, if we were to leave this relationship or this job or the city or this whatever, who knows what could be out there? that could be even worse than what we have now. Alright, that's the story that The Logical mind tells us because to our brain unfamiliar always equals unsafe potential for danger.

That's what's going on for us. According to your mind staying where you are has a higher survival rate then stepping into this uncharted territory or breaking that boundary; going outside of the comfort zone. Staying where you are has a higher survival rate because we know what goes on here in this current reality, and we know that everything is relatively sort of fine. We're not dying. Even if it's a sucky situation or it's not an ideal situation. At least we know that it is relatively “safe”. ~ It's also a 100% guarantee that you're going to get the exact same results that you've been getting staying in. ~ This current reality is objectively safer than the unknown, but it's also a guarantee to continue to get the results that you've been getting all this time. So if what you're really desiring is something different than what you have. You're going to have to come up against those fearful thoughts. Those Ego thoughts that tell you that where you are is fine and it's good enough and it's safe and you don't know what's out there and something worse could happen and let's just hang out here because it's easier and it's comfortable and then we don't have to make any change or face new or be vulnerable or get into hard conversations. It’s like oh that all sounds like soo much work. Let's just let's just skip that great. That's kind of the the game we play in our mind, but your intuition on the other hand. Your intuition is really really smart and your intuition isn't afraid of the unknown because it is all knowing. Your intuition is that gift from the divine. It helps you or is meant to help you navigate life and go in the direction that you were designed to go in. So your Intuition is that part of your higher self that is all knowing. Your intuition is is guided and it's supported by the infinite love of the universe to help present to you the ideas, decisions, opportunities and action steps that your higher self would take but the problem with the intuition is that she is really soft spoken and she's not a pusher. She's kind of like here's the answer.. take it or leave it. And it's usually comes in like a whisper whilst we're waiting for this big loud audacious voice to be like ~ you should do this. It's the exact right move. Don't be afraid just do it. So when your Ego comes through it is like yo do not do that. Like you don't know what's best for you. Just stay where you are for a little while longer. you don't even know what's going on. Don't make any decisions etc etc. You go. Okay. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. You're right. Hmm. Yeah. I don't even know. What do I know? I don't even know what I want. You're right Ego. I don't even know what I want. I just need to put them to rest chill the F out and wait for the right thing to come along. Right? The Ego comes in real hot real confident real loud.

The intuition comes in real soft real feminine real take it or leave it with this different level of certainty, right? It has a level of certainty as well, but it's more like this is the answer but I'm not going to push you towards it like you can reach out and grab it if you want to. The loud logical thoughts end up drowning out the intuition most of the time, So that's why we have to get really intentional about listening for our intuition and remembering that she shows up not in the form of words or logical thoughts., but in the form of feelings ~ It's like it's not even a voice like it's not words. It's not a logical thought process strung together in sentences. It's just a knowing. It's just a feeling so you have to stop waiting for your intuition to sound like your thoughts. It's never going to sound like your thoughts. It's never going to string words together and tell you a story about why this is the right thing and all the pros and all the cons and you know how this makes sense for you. That's what your Ego is going to do. So you have to, if you want to, get in tune with it. You have to stop waiting for it to sound that way because it's not going to. It's not going to provide you with the evidence or the arguments to back it up. She has a different level of certainty. That's like I don't need to prove why. This is Divine intervention. This is higher knowledge. This is all knowing information. There's no argument to back it up and it doesn't have to make sense. That's because it just is ~

Intuition is really your inner wisdom ~ your gut feeling. Your silent but persistent inclination that something just feels right or something just feels off. It's that consistent persistent inclination gut feeling that I don't know if this is right for me or that feels really expansive. I want to do that, but I'm afraid. The more that you listen to it, tune into it, like really try to get engaged with that feeling, get in touch with that feeling and follow it. Follow its advice follow what it's telling you, go in the direction that it's pushing you, it'll be easier for you to identify when your intuition is coming through. That's the reason why it's so hard for so many of us to know what our intuition is speaking to us because we're off from it. It's telling us the answers throughout our life. But we become so consumed in the Ego mind that comes forward more more loudly and we always follow those logical thoughts and that intuition becomes lost. So we forget we don't even know what it feels like to feel that that intuitive hit. We don't even we don't even realise that it's happening. We don't even realise that it's there. Really trying to feel into it and see how it comes forward for you. It's all there. That's your that's your intuition speaking to you. That's your inner knowing. That's your inner guidance.

Of course, there's decisions that we make that aren't ultimately right for us in the long term, but it doesn't mean that they weren't right for us in that moment. I truthfully do believe that there is a lesson in e v e r y t h i n g. There was something in it that we can learn, a challenge that we had to face, a realisation that now we have the opportunity to come to, and it allows us to accumulate more knowledge or experience or lessons. From these experiences, we connect more deeply into ourselves, and intuition becomes stronger and clearer.

Another thing, if you're struggling to know if you're making the right choice or if you're moving on the right path is to not mistake sadness or fear or uncertainty about making a decision or closing a chapter of your life. Don't mistake that as a sign that you're like making the wrong choice or that you've made a mistake or that now somehow you're not on track right because jobs and friendships and certain eras or seasons of our life, we close chapters and inevitably we're going to have emotions that come through about that. We're going to feel sad. We're going to feel like we're leaving something behind. We're going to feel fearful about the future or uncertain about what comes after this now that I've close this chapter shit. Like what do I do next? What comes after this? This all those emotions are going to come through as you continue along your path and close chapters and open new ones. But you can't allow those emotions to mean something that they don't mean. So don't allow that sadness or fear uncertainty about the next step to mean that it's the wrong step, or that you're going in the wrong direction, or that you veered off the path and now you're totally lost and totally fckd. Don't make it mean something that it doesn't. You need to feel to heal. I trust that it's coming through for me. I trust the Universe. I trust myself. I know that it's going to happen. It's already on its way to me then we ultimately receive that desire because we're available for it. if we say, oh I want this thing and then as soon as it gets hard or there's a challenge or something else that's like kind of half what we want comes along and we say, oh, well, I'll just take that. We're no longer operating from a place of abundance and trust. We’re operating out of fear and lack of like oh, but maybe nothing better will come along. So I'm just going to take this. Great, so that's that's a big lesson to in terms of, you know receiving what it is that you want. You have to be you have to be willing to step into the place of trust and not just take any old thing that comes your way. Listen to your intuition. Channel into that desire. There's ways to feel into it more, look for the initial feeling rather than the thoughts that come after. Also just being aware of the fact that those thoughts are going to tumble in right after the intuition speaks so that you can be prepared and be able to recognise like, okay. My first instinct was yes, I should do it or no. I shouldn't and then immediately after my thoughts started racing and kind of giving me all the the breakdown the scenarios that this that the pro/con all the things when you are aware that that is going to happen. You won't be as likely get confused by it because you can distinguish. Okay ~ I felt this way but then the logical thoughts came through and confused me or made me feel a different way. But I know that that's a not truly my higher self. That's not truly the best option for me because my inner knowing and higher self serve me best. Even just building the awareness around that fact will help you kind of distinguish more and start to honour your intuitive feelings more. Knowing that the logical mind or the Ego is always going to try and keep you safe and it's always going to come through seconds after the intuition speaks. It's very very fast, which is why we have to get used to the gut feeling.

Gut feelings are guardian angels.

~ I trust myself ~ I trust my inner knowing ~ I trust in my highest self ~ My intuition comes from my heart space ~ I hear my Ego but I choose not to listen ~ I have my own back

#intuition #ego #spiritual development #selfdevelopment #spiritualgrowth #spiritualawareness #intuitionvsego #podcast #mindfulness #meditation #journalling #spiritualguidance #oraclecards #awareness #awakethesoul #awakening #self love

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allthebooksandcrannies · 4 years

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I know a lot of older people think it's a problem that so many young people don't want to have children, but I think it shows an increased understanding for how much of a responsibility parenting is and how much damage you can do to a child of you're not ready to raise someone.

I think that everyone is capable of being a good parent and I think that some people should never be parents. These may sound mutually exclusive but they aren't because there's a big if involved in the first half. That if, is that everyone is capable of being a good parent someday if they put in the work to take care of their own shit first.

When you become a parent or guardian, you are officially signing on to prioritize another person's physical and emotional needs before your own for the rest of their life. That means loving them no matter what they do or who they become. That means putting aside your own exhaustion and frustration at your day when they walk through the door so that you can be their champion and their confidant and their companion. That means teaching them how to process their emotions and think critically and empathetically and it means letting them find their own path, even if it's different than the one you wanted or imagined for them, but making it clear that if they need or want your comfort, your help, or just your ear that they will have it. You don't have to be perfect. No parent ever is, and it's important anyway for kids to learn in nontraumatic ways that adults make mistakes too and that's okay as long as you take responsibility for that and strive to learn and grow because of your mistakes. Kids learn by watching and listening to the adults around them and the things they conclude from those early years of observation will stick with them the rest of their lives.

I know that that sounds scary. It probably should because deciding to raise a child should be the biggest decision you can make, and if it's not, you may not be taking it seriously enough.

I also know that this is hard. And I have the greatest respect for people who truly understand this and decide to raise a tiny person anyway.

I'm also not trying to discourage you from becoming a parent. You may not be ready now, but that doesn't mean you can't be later. I personally would love to be a mom some day not I know that I have a lot of personal growth and healing I need to take care of first, to say nothing of the stabilization of my financial and career status.

The real question is what can you do to be a better parent, guardian, or even trusted adult to someone else's child (a really important and valid role and choice in itself!) later?

First off, you need to do some hard core introspection to figure out what traits and behaviors you have that might exhibit that would interfere in your ability to be a good parent. Maybe you're still emotionally immature. Maybe you're struggling with uncontrolled mental illness, chronic illness, or addiction. Maybe you've internalized some toxic ideas. Maybe you're still recovering from trauma or just now realizing that what you have even is trauma. None of these things makes you a bad person and none of them stops you from being capable to becoming a good parent. But, all of them can interfere with your ability to model healthy behaviors and coping skills to your child. Children learn through observation and, because their brains need the world to make sense and be predictable, they're going to interpret everytime you seem upset or lose your cool as being their fault. Young children aren't capable of going "mom is upset and snapped over something relatively trivial, she must be having a bad day/be tired/etc" because that's an interpretation of the world that is outside their control. Instead, they're going to go "I did x and mom got mad at me, it's my fault so I better not do x again" and that's a really harmful mindset that can contribute to self-worth issues and other mental illnesses like anxiety, especially if this happens long-term (for the record, you're going to make mistakes and you're going to snap over stupid things because being a grown-up is hard, so when you inevitably make this mistake it's important to be honest and upfront with your child about what happened, why, how it's not their fault, and you have to genuinely apologize for it, turning your mistake into a chance to model good adult behavior).

It's important to take care of yourself and let yourself grow and heal before bringing a kid into the mix because 1. you'll be a better parent if you start out in a better place emotionally and mentally, and 2. because you deserve the chance to be healthy and happy and it's much harder to address the things that are interfering with that when your also trying to juggle the additional emotional/mental demands of raising a child.

Additionally, I definitely recommend making sure you and anyone else taking a primary caretaker role in your child's life is in a stable financial and that the relationship between you and any other caretakers is stable and amicable regardless of what kind of relationship it is. The financial aspect is important because kids are expensive as hell (both the having/acquiring and the raising) and you want to be able to provide then with the best possible shot at life.

This isn't about me but I feel like the example will be helpful. We weren't poverty level growing up, but even as a child it was clear to me that we could be. My parents were 20 year old newlyweds when they got pregnant. My dad had been set up to inherit a position in his father and grandfather's construction company and did not go to college because they thought he was guaranteed a steady job. My mom was paying for a college education she couldn't afford because no one had ever explained how to get financial aid and scholarships to her and her parents were too caught up in their own shit to be anything but relieved about getting to make her future my dad's problem. Then they got pregnant. They started building a house that took much longer to build then expected because that construction business dad was expecting to inherit went out of business because it turned out that a cousin had been embezzling and my great-grandmother wouldn't let them sue or press charges against family. Mom had to drop out of college to raise me because daycare costs as much as she makes at work and she no longer has the time or funds. They had a baby they weren't prepared to raise and my dad's new job had him working in the Texas heat all day before going and working on our house at night so that we could move out of my maternal grandfather's house now that he was getting divorced and couldn't afford it. My parents society never saw each other and they were constantly worried about money. Less than two years after I was born they accidentally got pregnant with my brother. He ended up with failure to thrive and (although he did eventually recover) it raked up a serious amount of debt in addition to my mom's student loans and the mortgage. Flash forward four more years and my dad falls through a roof at a construction site and permanently cripples his ankle. Cue a year of the only breadwinner in the household being unable to work, several surgeries and massive medical bills we can't pay. A year after that my mom has to have a historectomy because her fibroids are causing immense pain and then they find pre-cancerous cells. Another year after that she starts having unexplained siezures and signs of organ failure that will take years to diagnose as a rare autoimmune disorder that will leave her disabled and, again, rake up serious medical debt. I found out in college that it came to the point that we almost lost the house but as a kid I still always knew we were struggling. And that fucks with a kid's head. There were reasons I didn't tell my parents that something was wrong for a week after I sprained my wrist when I was 10 and it wasn't just because I didn't want to sound like I was asking for attention (a phobia that also comes from having emotionally immature parents). I pushed myself ridiculously hard in school because I knew I couldn't expect any help paying for college from my parents. I still feel incredibly guilty anytime I spend more than 20 dollars even though it's my money and I need groceries or textbooks or gas or whatever. A lot of these issues would have been financially difficult and unpredictable, but had my parents been in a more stable position when they got married and started having kids, it would have been much easier to weather the storms.

Additionally, money is the main thing couples fight about, so if you can take that off the table as a significant concern before bringing kids into the mix, please do. Maslow's hierarchy of needs states that you can't address higher order concerns like personal growth of your worried about where your next meal is coming from and that goes for your children as well.

Again, I'm not trying to shame people for their financial difficulties. Most of us are playing at a game we were never intended to win and I get that not all children are planned. But, your good intentions unfortunately will not put food on the table or pay the rent and your children will have a lot less stress in their lives if you are able to make sure that things are as stable as possible before you bring them into it.

The same goes for your relationship with fellow caretakers. Don't try to have kids to save your relationship. Don't ever make your children feel like your relationship is in anyway their responsibility. Again, they need their world to make sense and if you're fighting they're probably going to assume it's somehow their fault. Don't do that to them.

Anyway, this rant turned out a lot longer than I intended but I think I needed to say it. In summary, raising children is not about you but your going to make it about you unless you take care of your own shit first. Children don't ask to be born. If you're not ready for that responsibility, either don't have kids or put in the work so that you will be. If you already have kids, and don't have your shit together, there's still time but it's going to be harder and you might have to do some damage control from any traumas you may have already inflicted on your child, regardless of your intentions. If that's the case, you have a responsibility to get your kid the help they need and do everything in your power to avoid further harm. You're the adult in this situation, and if you're going to be a parent, you need to act like it.

#parenting #emotionally immature parents #childhood trauma #parenting advice #personal rant #personal growth #original post

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glcssysky · 4 years

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HAIKYUU HEADCANONS sfw alphabet - ushijima

A = AFFECTION (how affectionate are they? how do they show affection?) let's be honest, this man doesn't come off as very affectionate. i feel like he would let you lie on him or sit in his lap whilst he played with your hair. he may give you a small cheek or forehead kiss every now and then, but that is probably about it.

⊱ ──────── ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ──────── ⊰

B = BEST FRIEND (what would they be like as a best friend? how would the friendship start?) let's just go off his and tendou's relationship. they most likely met through being first years together on shiratorizawa's volleyball team. with their opposite personalities, they most likely clicked pretty quickly; opposites attract. if you were best friends with him, i would say he would still act just as quiet and stern, but would open to you about home life, his interests etc. you would study together, go out on certain days just to hang.

⊱ ──────── ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ──────── ⊰

C = CUDDLES (do they like to cuddle? how would they cuddle?) probably his best way of showing affection to either a friend or s/o. he would ADORE cuddling you, especially if you were his partner. him most likely being the taller one of the two, it would either be him sat leant against something, with you sat between his legs, back against his chest and his arms around your waist. or, you both lay down, you facing away from him. he would be hugging you firmly to his chest, his face nuzzled into your hair.

⊱ ──────── ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ──────── ⊰

D = DOMESTIC (do they want to settle down? how are they at cooking and cleaning?) he is 100% down for settling down somewhere with you. because pf his career, he would be travelling a lot, but once done with tournaments, would come home. you would probably own a house in the countryside. (despite him earning a lot of money he would prefer a simpler life, with a little mix of modern). he can probably cook a little, and definitely cleans a lot.

⊱ ──────── ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ──────── ⊰

E = ENDING (if they had to break up with their partner, how would they do it?) face to face would be his way. he would rather be able to talk it out, and would want to comfort the other if they got upset. he would go about it my speaking to them softly about how he felt, and go on about the fact they could stay friends. he would hug you and apologise for making you upset if you did get upset too.

⊱ ──────── ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ──────── ⊰

F = FIANCEE (how do they feel about commitment? how quick would they want to get married?) he is a strong-minded man, and would be able to commit to it. he would probably want to get engaged and then married at least after 2 years of relationship, if the relationship was strong. he would struggle to propose and it would probably seem like he was emotionless (as usual), but bless him he tried.

⊱ ──────── ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ──────── ⊰

G = GENTLE (how gentle are they, both physically and emotionally?) very, VERY gentle. despite him being a big man, he wouldn't hurt you. the only time he risks injury is through sport, and even then he seemed upset about hurting another person. he would be super gentle with his hugs and hand holding, and he would be the biggest comforter ever. he is probably more of a listener, but definitely is gentle enough to not give you a harsh or sharp response.

⊱ ──────── ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ──────── ⊰

H = HUGS (do they like hugs? how often do they do it? what are their hugs like?) he won't admit it, but he LOVES hugs. he would try to hug you almost 24/7 when you are both alone. in public, he would most likely hug you from behind and rest his head on yours or your shoulder. his hugs would be the BEST. big arms and a big chest, it would be super comfy, warm, and would make you feel safe.

⊱ ──────── ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ──────── ⊰

I = I LOVE YOU (how fast do they say the l-word?) almost immediately, but with the most monotone voice and blank expression, like he usually speaks. he would just look you dead in the eye and say it, staring at you whilst he waited for a response.

⊱ ──────── ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ──────── ⊰

J = JEALOUSY (how jealous do they get? what do they do when they're jealous?) i don't think he would get TOO jealous, but he is definitely one to get quite jealous. he would mainly get jealous if you were spending a LOT more time with someone else, or if you were giving an animal more attention then him. he would be the silent jealous type, and would probably just glare at whoever you are giving your attention to.

⊱ ──────── ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ──────── ⊰

K = KISSES (what are their kisses like? where do they like to kiss you? where do they like to be kissed?) his kisses would consist of very gently ones, mostly on your forehead, cheek, or knuckles if he is holding your hand. there would occasionally be lip kisses, but they would be more slow and gentle rather than rough. he loves to be kissed on his jaw, and sometimes the bridge of his nose.

⊱ ──────── ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ──────── ⊰

L = LITTLE ONE (how are they around children?) i am not gonna lie, i feel like his presence may scare some children since he is big and scary. but, i feel like he would be very good with them and in taking care of them. they would use him as a climbing frame, and he would not mind one bit, moving himself each time so they had a different climbing stature.

⊱ ──────── ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ──────── ⊰

M = MORNING (how are mornings spent with them?) 90% of the time, he will wake up before you. he would, however, constantly be hugging you close to him. once you had woken up, he would greet you with a morning before kissing your forehead. he would then proceed to get up and make you breakfast.

⊱ ──────── ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ──────── ⊰

N = NIGHT (how are nights spent with them?) similar to the mornings. he would make sure to fall asleep after you, just to ensure you actually got to sleep, and he wouldn't leave your side. the night would probably be him talking to you quietly about things and you the same to him. you would be, as guessed, hugged from behind close to his chest, and that position wouldn't change overnight.

⊱ ──────── ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ──────── ⊰

O = OPEN (when would they start revealing things about themselves? do they say everything all at once or wait a while to reveal things slowly?) he is definitely more of a closed off guy. i think it would take him at least a week to start making small talk in general, and then definitely a few months of being closer friends or partners to open to you about more personal things. i mean, he was pretty open to tendou and the team about his father, so i guess that topic itself is not very hard for him to talk about.

⊱ ──────── ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ──────── ⊰

P = PATIENCE (how easily angered are they?) depending on the circumstance, he has a LOT of patience. he definitely doesn't get angry over a lot of things, even to the point of being pestered. the only time he really gets angry would be in a game, if the other team are finding a way to beat him, or if you talk about his dad a lot, especially in an insensitive way.

⊱ ──────── ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ──────── ⊰

Q = QUIZZES (how much would they remember about you? do they remember every little detail you mention in passing, or do they kind of forget everything?) he would remember EVERYTHING, and i mean EVERYTHING. he puts a lot of work and care into getting to know his partner better, and will remember little things about you, and stuff you do or like, even if you don't tell him and he just sees you doing it. he knows you almost better than yourself, in a good and healthy way of course.

⊱ ──────── ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ──────── ⊰

R = REMEMBER (what is their favourite moment in your relationship?) it always will be your first kiss. that moment when you both leant in and shared that soft connection between each other was in fact his own first kiss. that moment plays in head head a lot, and he definitely smiles about it and random points in the day.

⊱ ──────── ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ──────── ⊰

S = SECURITY (how protective are they? how would they protect you? how would they like to be protected?) he wouldn't want to nor need to be protected himself, since he doesn't get into any kind of fights with anyone, other than small quarrels with other team captains/members. he would be very protective over you, but just wouldn't show it as much. if you were being bullied, harassed or whatever, he would definitely step in and just glare down at the person doing so, asking them to leave and not do what they were doing again. he would never resort to violence.

⊱ ──────── ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ──────── ⊰

T = TRY (how much effort would they put into dates, anniversaries, gifts, everyday tasks?) weeks are spent planning these things out with him. he wouldn't want anything to go wrong, so would plan out where you were going, how much money to bring, where to go after and what to do etc. everything would be made perfect for you, even just lunch at home.

⊱ ──────── ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ──────── ⊰

U = UGLY (what would be some bad habits of theirs?) overworking, not drinking enough water and staying quiet about some problems. when it comes to planning out your dates, or training for volleyball, he would do it non-stop. there is no doubt he works WAY too much on both of these, for hours of end with no breaks too. alongside volleyball training, he wouldn't drink as much as he should. he wouldn't have a bottle with him and would usually only bring the small carton of drink. you would have to bring a bottle to the match and make sure he gets it. with his personal issues, he would stay quiet about them, unless you asked. then he would explain.

⊱ ──────── ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ──────── ⊰

V = VANITY (how concerned are they with their looks?) he is concerned about them to the extent that he always looks presentable. regular showers are a thing with him, and afterwards he would style his hair. he shaves regularly too.

⊱ ──────── ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ──────── ⊰

W = WHOLE (would they feel incomplete without you?) although he wouldn't show it, he wouldn't feel the same not having you around. he wouldn't have somebody as close to open up to, or talk about things you two did together, since he wouldn't want to bombard tendou with it all.

⊱ ──────── ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ──────── ⊰

X = XTRA (a random headcanon for them.) you would have plants all over your home when you moved in together. guaranteed he already has a bunch in his dorm at school too, on both the desk and the windowsill. if no one is there, he most likely talks to them.

⊱ ──────── ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ──────── ⊰

Y = YUCK (what are some things they wouldn't like, either in general or in a partner?) he wouldn't like someone who goes out without him a lot, to party or something either. he wouldn't really like someone who is really pushy with him and his emotions either. in general, i don't think he would like animals like rodents, or snowy weather.

⊱ ──────── ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ──────── ⊰

Z = ZZZ (what is a sleep habits of theirs?) this man definitely snores occasionally. oh, and if you saw in that one season 4 clip, he has a volleyball in his bed next to his pillow.

requested by: n/a word count: 1927 words started/finished: 05.08.20 - 06.08.20 next character + theme: feel free to ask in my ask box for the next character!

#haikyuu #haikyuutothetop #headcanons #headcanon #ushijima #ushijima wakatoshi #ushiwaka #wakatoshi #sfw alphabet #sfw headcanons #ushijima headcanons

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troutfishinginmusic · 3 years

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The story of Grass Records: From Brainiac to Wind-Up and Creed

Images via Grass of ’96 compilation

Everything isn’t available in the streaming era. There are notable gaps in the seemingly bottomless amount of music currently available. Some of the most noticeable exclusions are albums released on Grass Records.

If you’re a fan of ’90s indie music, this short-lived New York label mattered. Though sometimes dismissed as a sibling label to Homestead Records, Grass released over 60 full-length albums ranging from pop to punk to noise to experimental music. It raised the profile of influential bands like Brainiac, Toadies and the Wrens.

The amazing thing about the label is how consistent it is. Every time I thought I was done with this article, I would listen to a band like Baboon and be completely blown away. These are all fascinating, idiosyncratic bands. This is more incredible considering the label was only around for about four years.

Much of this music is hard to find. The odd song might be lingering on YouTube, but you’re almost better off looking at your local record store or ordering from Discogs.

Why are the albums in this weird limbo? Mostly because the monied interest who bought the label in 1996 thought it wasn’t yielding a big enough return on the investment. Grass was gutted and rebranded into post-grunge/nu metal giant Wind-Up. Money poured in and these wonderfully weird records were swept to the side.

The following interviews were conducted via email, Facebook messenger and phone over the last few months. Quotes from the interviews have been edited for style/clarity. I’m eternally grateful to everyone who got back to me. I am also willing to expand this story if more former Grass artists want to reach out. If you’re one of these artists, my email is at the bottom of this story.

Seedlings

“I started in the music business purely by chance,” said Camille Sciara, who founded Grass Records.

Sciara got her start working at Record World in New York as a second job and became friendly with the store’s buyer. After attending a manager training program, she moved on to become a manager of the store. Her second job became her first.

“Then, after two years there, I became bored managing a record store and my friend Mike, the buyer, told me about Dutch East India,” Sciara said. “I started there as a salesperson and, after a year of sales, became the buyer when that position opened up. I never envisioned starting a label.”

While working as a buyer at Dutch East India Trading a friend sent her a Toadies cassette. She “loved it” and started Grass in 1993 to release it.

Grass released the Toadies EP Pleather soon after, which contained an early version of the band’s inescapable alternative hit “Possum Kingdom.” After Pleather, the band scored a major label deal with Interscope. The platinum-selling Rubberneck arrived in 1994.

“They did really well on their first major release,” Sciara said in an email interview. “But then it appeared that Interscope just dropped the ball or lost interest. They were such a great band live, I never understood how they weren't huge stars. And super cool people.”

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Tall grass

Sciara would go on to sign unique and influential bands like Brainiac and The Wrens.

“Since I had never run a label before, I was going purely on how much I liked what they submitted,” Sciara said. “Obviously not the best business model for running a label, but for the money we offered it worked to some respect. The longer I ran the label, the more I understood what was needed from them [the bands] regarding can they tour etc.”

There were few bands of the 90s that radiated weirdo energy as brightly and brilliantly as Brainiac. The documentary Transmissions from Zero chronicles the significant impact the band had on the music scene at the time. It also shows a band on the brink of mainstream success. Brainiac released two albums on Grass, Smack Bunny Baby and Bonsai Superstar, before departing for Touch & Go. The band’s forward motion was sadly cut short by Tim Taylor’s death in 1997. Prior to this, Interscope was expressing interest in the band.

“If Tim hadn't passed I'm pretty sure they'd have been the biggest [band on the label],” Sciara said.

Original Brainiac guitarist Michelle Bodine said Grass’ association with Dutch East India made the label initially attractive.

“[Camille] was super excited about us and we had total creative freedom,” Bodine said. “We also liked the 2-record deal with the option of 3 contract.”

After leaving Brainiac, Bodine would go on to play guitar and sing in O-Matic. The band released its lone album Dog Years in 1996. The album is one of the overlooked gems of the ’90s.

The Wrens’ influence reverberated in more subtle ways. The band’s first two albums, Silver (1994) and Secaucus (1996), provided a blueprint for much of the post-Pixies landscape of ’90s indie rock. They could’ve been much bigger, but still made a significant impression.

“The depth of realization in this record is unparalleled: every angle is perfected,” Pitchfork founder Ryan Schreiber said about Secaucus. The band’s third long awaited album, Meadowlands, dropped in 2001 and received a “Best New Music” tag from the same publication.

Rumblings of a follow-up to Meadowlands have been thrown around for the last 10 years, but a record has yet to materialize.

The level of talent the label had was staggering. A few groups Sciara thought would be bigger ranged from the Irish dream-pop band Chimera to Georgia punk band Sunbrain. “There's more, it would be long list,” Sciara said.

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New shoots

Baltimore

Baltimore punk band Liquor Bike had released one album before signing a two-record deal with Grass. The band’s first release on the label was Neon Hoop Ride in 1993. Liquor Bike was excited to be on the label because of the Homestead Records connection.

“We loved being on Grass, we toured like crazy,” singer/guitarist David Koslowski said. “We had great booking with Creature Booking.”

Between the booking agency, which had done work with Nirvana, Helmet, the Lunachicks and Jesus Lizard; and the new label things were looking up for the band. The band would have posters up in whatever towns they were playing in and mentions in the local paper. The label would keep them up to date if they had to do things like impromptu radio interviews. When they got off the road, they entered the studio to record The Beauty of Falling Apart. During this time Alan Meltzer, who bought the label from Sciara in 1996, entered the picture.

“At the onset we were pretty psyched because this guy’s got major label distribution,” Koslowski said.

It also helped that Sciara stayed on after the transition.

“We could still work with Camille, who we love,” Koslowski said. “We slept at Camille’s house when we would play up in New York. She’s an amazingly nice, sweet person and very giving.”

Koslowski said the band was given significantly more to record the follow-up based on buzz the band was getting at the time. J Robbins, of Jawbox and Burning Airlines fame, did the cover art and Drew Mazurek produced the album. The band even hired John Lay, who had previously worked with Squeeze, to manage the band.

“By that point we were having decent guarantees,” Koslowski said. “Those two years when I was on Grass I barely worked a real job. I wasn’t making a rockstar living or anything, but I was certainly able to pay my rent and utilities.”

Liquor Bike went on tour with Gas Huffer to promote the forthcoming record. On the tour Koslowski noticed there weren’t posters out and the band didn’t receive write-ups in the local press. To make matters worse, they never received CDs of The Beauty of Falling Apart to sell at shows. Koslowski said Grass had promised this.

“We were pretty confused," Koslowski said. “I mean our record had been mastered already, everything had been sent to the factory.”

Lay soon informed the band Sciara had been fired and the band had been dropped. Koslowski said the band decided to stay on the tour even after being kicked off the label. The band had old records and T-shirts to sell. They had put a lot of work into the tour and didn’t want to waste it.

Liquor Bike eventually released its third album on Merkin after failed meetings with Amphetamine Reptile, Columbia and Interscope. It was the band’s last before the members went their separate ways.

Seade was another band on on Grass that was unfortunately overlooked. Their lone album (Perf) is an underrated ’90s classic.

Prior to Meltzer, Koslowski said that he didn’t think there was any favoritism toward any one band despite the label being so prolific.

“I just think the woman loved music and wanted to spread that out to people,” Koslowski said of Sciara. “I think she legitimately wanted to help people, you know, help these bands out. She was nothing but giving.”

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Omaha

Mousetrap, an Omaha-based punk band, hoped to initially get a deal with Homestead when it sent in two 7” singles.

“Camille really liked our singles and got in touch with us.” Patrick Buchanan, Mousetrap’s singer/guitarist said in an email interview. “We developed a great relationship with her, and eventually she offered to sign us — we were given the opportunity to sign either with Homestead OR with Grass, which was a brand-new label at the time.”

Buchanan said the band thought it would possibly get overlooked in Homestead’s large stable of well-established bands and decided to sign with Grass. He also said Sciara made a large difference.

“Camille was one of the coolest people we had ever met in ‘the business’ – she just seemed really genuine, straightforward and honest,” he said. “Those are the types of people we wanted to work with. So our relationship with Camille was probably the main thing that made us sign with Grass.”

Mousetrap would go on to release three albums on the label, starting with Cerebral Revolver in 1993. The band was a big influence on Commander Venus, an Omaha band featuring a young Connor Oberst.

“They were definitely a big deal in Omaha and everybody loved them,” Oberst said of Mousetrap in an episode of the Turned Out a Punk podcast earlier this year.

Commander Venus came in contact with Grass through Mousetrap. The band signed to the label when Oberst was only 14. The band also featured Rob Nansel, who would go on to co-found Saddle Creek Records. Oberst said the band recorded its first album, Do You Feel At Home, in 1995.

“That was a good experience and a learning experience,” Oberst said. “I also think it kind of made it more apparent that even if you do get an opportunity like that, you know, you’re a little fish in a big pond. And maybe people aren’t going to work as hard or care about it.”

He said that this was mitigated by having the support system of a local scene in Omaha. The band ended up releasing its 1995 debut on Lumberjack, which later became Saddle Creek. The band released one more album, The Uneventful Vacation, before Oberst formed Bright Eyes.

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Promoting growth

Alan Meltzer came into the picture with a retail background. He had previously owned Titus Oaks Records in Long Island. He went on to found CD One Stop in 1985, which was purchased by Alliance in 1993. Meltzer became Alliance’s president during this time but left the company in 1995. Meltzer acquired Grass in 1995 from Dutch East India Trading (the label’s owner/distributor), finalizing major label distribution through BMG in 1996.

“When I heard the Grass repertoire, I almost fell down,” Meltzer said in a 1996 Billboard Magazine article. “I heard so much good material.”

“Alan was shopping around looking to purchase an established label with an extensive catalog that he could pour endless money into,” Sciara said. “He originally wanted Homestead Records. A great label owned by Dutch East as well. But once he saw the contracts and issues with some of the ‘grey’ areas in them, he then moved on to Grass.”

Meltzer did have some legitimate interest in the label as an artistic venture.

“He absolutely was obsessed with the Wrens once he heard them and Commander Venus,” Sciara said. “He was sure with all his resources, money and big ass staff he could make them huge stars. He failed. Not the bands’ fault.”

Grass would have the name (and credibility) of an indie, but the corporate reach of a major. Meltzer looked at the new situation as the best of both worlds.

“We’re not a major label, but we’re not an undercapitalized, disorganized independent that’s out there on a wing and prayer,” Meltzer said. “We’re somewhere in the middle. We’re staffed, we have the organization, and we’ve got the know-how. I opted for major distribution because the majors are better at it.”

Grass kept Sciara on as a VP of A&R (artists and repertoire) and expanded Grass’ workforce to 20 in-house employees, according to the Billboard article. The label’s future looked bright. Bodine left Brainiac and formed O-Matic (also signed to Grass) when the change happened.

“…It seemed better – they had a nice office in Manhattan with an open stairwell area and glass walls,” Bodine said. “It was very modern and cool. The budget was much bigger. They hired more people and we felt like we had a good support system.”

“When we went there it felt like money,” Koslowski said.

Koslowski only met Meltzer once at a Grass Christmas party.

“He was a typical New York money guy when I met him,” Koslowski said. “I didn’t get a good vibe. He didn’t have that indie spirit that Camille had unfortunately.”

The meeting didn’t go well.

“I remember drinking a bit and messing with him,” Koslowski said. “I said ‘hey Alan I wanted to see if I could run this by you. You know that new Liquor Bike record we’re working on? We got the artwork but we just wanted to run the title by you and make sure it’s cool. We want to call it Eat My Fuck Asshole.’”

Meltzer and his wife were horrified, according to Koslowski.

Yellowing, patchy

In an oral history with Stereogum, Wrens bassist and singer Kevin Whelan said the band was picking up steam.

“So Secaucus came out and it started to do somewhat well and “Surprise Honeycomb” was starting to get recognized and played on different shows, and we thought that international fame was around the corner,” Whelan said.

And then the call came in.

“He [Meltzer] said, ‘Well, boys, I’m not going to give you any more money. If you don’t sign with me today, it’s over.’ So, I remember, we sat in the van, we looked at the empty gas tank and we were like, ‘Well, I guess we’re not signing, let’s get the credit cards out and see how we can get home.’”

According to the Wrens’ website bio, Meltzer wasn’t pleased.

“[Meltzer], infuriated, commences layoffs of involved record company personnel and vows that ‘the next band to walk through that door will be made famous – at any cost,’” the bio states. “The next band through the door is Creed. Grass Records becomes Wind-Up Records. Creed becomes famous at any cost.”

By the time of the Wind-Up transition, Moustrap had already fulfilled its contract when it released its third album The Dead Air Sound System.

“At that time, Mousetrap was not very active,” Buchanan said. “I think we had become rather disheartened by how much time and love we put into the band, while getting very little recognition on any type of national level. At that point we were physically and mentally exhausted by constant touring and recording, with very little in the way of tangible success to show for it. So we didn’t really have any relationship with the label by the time it became Wind-Up.”

When the label wasn’t as successful as Meltzer thought, he brought in Steve Lerner. This was effectively the end of Grass Records.

“I was let go along with 8 to 10 others when Meltzer brought in Steve Lerner to run the company,” Sciara said. “The new staff felt Grass was too much related to me so hence a name change.”

“With Lerner serving as his right-hand man, the duo transformed Wind-up into a $100 million-plus sales operation with multi-platinum acts like Evanescence and Creed,” a 2007 Billboard article said.

Death, new high-yield crops

Grass was rebranded as Wind-Up, a key player in the nu metal and post-grunge universe, in 1997. Many of the Grass bands were dropped to make room for the likes of Finger Eleven, Creed and Evanescence. Meltzer, who ran the label with his wife at the time Diana, finally found his cash machine.

“I was extremely happy because, although Creed was a mega-seller and saved his label, I wanted nothing to do with that and the direction the label was taking,” Sciara said. “Not knocking it. You need artists like that to sustain a label that had an enormous payroll and nice offices. I totally get it, it’s a business. But I was happy running a small label with smaller contacts and cooler bands that didn't have to compromise their sound to write a ‘hit.’ That’s what he was always looking for.”

The transition to Wind-Up in 1997 did have some overlap with former Grass artists. The second Commander Venus album was released by Wind-Up and Thick (with a later release on Saddle Creek). Pollen, a rough-edged pop-punk act that had released two albums on Grass, dropped Peach Tree on Wind-Up. Baboon’s sophomore album Secret Robot Control was also released in 1997 on the new label.

Slowpoke’s Virgin Stripes, the final vestige of Grass Records, was a co-release with DGC in 1998. The album didn’t break the band, but it’s not a stretch to imagine it could have (especially since it boasted a song as infectious as “Belladonna”). The album retains some of band’s outsider noisy energy, but delivers it in a package palatable enough for the post-grunge crowd. Past this point, Wind-Up focused mostly on its new sound.

Koslowski didn’t initially know Wind-Up was the successor to Grass. One day someone mentioned to him that he was labelmates with Creed.

“I was like ‘wow, OK I guess he got his hit,’” Koslowski said.

Meltzer died in 2011 at 67. He made headlines by leaving $1 to his chauffeur and $500,000 to his doorman. Bodine saw this as frustrating because of how he left things with other Grass bands.

“He owed lots of bands money so it’s just really fucked up that he didn’t pay them/us. Liquor Bike did get theirs before he died only because they were persistent,” said Bodine.

In 2013 Wind-Up was purchased by Bicycle Music Company with distribution by Concord Music Group. In 2015 the two companies merged to form Concord Bicycle Music. Craft Recordings manages the label’s reissues.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/wZBpr1tDktI

Rare strain

Aside from Brainiac and The Wrens, many of the bands on the label aren’t on streaming platforms. The physical releases on Grass are mostly out of print. A sea of fantastic experimental indie music remains in this gray area. This doesn’t seem to be changing.

“Unfortunately, I haven’t a clue about if there are plans of Wind-Up re-releasing any back catalog,” Sciara said. “It’s sad really. Holding peoples’ artistic work hostage or just ignoring it seems cruel. Hopefully Wind-Up did the right thing and gave them back their masters, rights etc. Or at least license it to someone else to release.”

The three Mousetrap albums are stuck in this place.

“I wish more people had the chance to hear our music, so yeah I wish it was easily available,” said Buchanan. “Sure, we wanted to be popular — but the most important thing for us was that we made the music we wanted to make. We always did things our way — for ourselves, with no regrets. So even if the albums are harder to get, we’ll always have the memories — and those who were there to witness it will, too.”

Liquor Bike’s lawyer was able to secure the master tapes and artwork for The Beauty of Falling Apart with no questions asked. The band also has the master tapes for Neon Hoop Ride.

“Crazily enough, Grass did not make us buy Beauty of Falling Apart from them,” Koslowski said. “I have heard from some of my fellow Grass artists that they wanted to charge an incredible amount of money.”

Neon Hoop Ride was remastered and briefly available on streaming services. The album was only available digitally and did not get a physical rerelease.

Greener pastures

Following her departure from Grass, Sciara started Ten23 (Oct. 23, 1996 was the day she was fired from Grass). The label released The Wren’s EP 1135 before folding.

“It seemed like a great idea,” she said. “Didn't put out anything else after that release. It was an expensive endeavor starting a label from scratch, so to speak, and at the time I was unemployed.”

From there she went on to work at the Knitting Factory label group and eventually Narnack Records. She uprooted from N.Y. to move to L.A. to work at the latter. She eventually ended up back in N.Y. where she was a manager at Petland Discounts for 12 years until it closed in 2019.

Buchanan has gone on to release music as Vicious Lovers. Mousetrap has plans to release new music for the first time in 20 years according to Buchanan. Some of Mousetrap’s music can be streamed here:

Michelle Bodine went on to play guitar in Shesus, which was signed to Narnack. The band released an album and an EP before splitting up. Bodine has since been participating in Brainiac reunion shows and was featured in the Brainiac documentary Transmissions from Zero.

David Koslowski went on to play in the post-rock band Vivid Low Sky and the power-pop band Gerty. He currently owns a coffee shop/record store in Baltimore called Baby’s on Fire.

“I loved every aspect of being on Grass, except for the very end,” Koslowski said. “I also loved how diverse Camille had the label. A lot of friends from that time from those bands, I’m still friends with them. It was like a really cool little group of people that all got to share in something for as brief of a time period as it was.”

If you have questions, information or concerns I can be reached at [email protected].

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article spelled David’s last name as Kozlowski. It’s actually Koslowski. Also, J. Robbins just did the cover art for the band’s third album. Drew Mazurek actually produced it. Godplow is a great band but they’re from Minneapolis, not Baltimore.

#grassrecords #indie #90s #brainiac #thewrens #mousetrap #liquorbike #baboon #toadies #omatic

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retphienix · 3 years

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There are so many fucking games I want to play for the blog and I hypothetically have the time, but the energy, the attention span, the drive?

In more positive terms here are some various titles I plan to give a shot for the blog.

Let's do a 5am state of the blog kind of thing to clear some thoughts, eh?

Morrowind (Current Game ramble)

For the moment the blog is more or less on break with me playing Morrowind ""For the blog"" but mostly for me, because that's just a game I've wanted to explore. Not that every other game on the blog isn't that, just that I looked at Morrowind and said "That'll be a terrible game to present naturally. That's a stream game, or a condensed video, not a liveblog" and then did it anyway.

I'm loving Morrowind! Honestly the sense of mystery, fantasy, and adventure is just chef kiss levels of perfect to me.

But it's terrible in a photoset, I'm not particularly interested in doing another format for the game, and it's a game with less 'intense narrative themes!' and more 'Incredibly different game design compared to modern Bethesda' in terms of discussion material and let's all be real here:

We're all fucking tired of that conversation lol.

So there ain't much to talk on in depth, it's more of a "Here's a newbie seeing new things!" playthrough with nothing to talk about after the fact, which ain't a strong point for the blog- again- that's a stream/video kind of thing.

ANYWHO- Morrowind fun, about the only news I can offer on that series is that it might abruptly end and become a 'for me' series because I'm not particularly interested in beating the game nearly as much as I'm interested in exploring aimlessly and seeing what happens.

I'm not playing Morrowind for the end goal of beating the main quest, or beating the DLCs. I'm playing it to wander into caves and find new pants, so if I reach a point where I'm satisfied with what I've shared and my motivation has not borne a new end goal then I'll end the live blog and move on to a new game :P

Backlog

The short statement I'll make is that this blog is a hell for my backlog.

Even without infinite money on hand I've ended up with so many physical and digital games just sitting here waiting to be played either because they caught my eye or because of recommendations by various people over the years.

I keep sitting down, cataloguing my backlog, realizing it's pointless to catalog, deleting it all, and then starting over yet again.

The fact is, if anyone recommended it it's probably still sitting in a text document somewhere, or physically on my shelf, and I don't remotely know when I'll get to it.

I've yet to hit the point where I decide to turn this blog into work, so I have never sat down and gone "Well, Retphienix NEEDS to post! Sit down, 8-12 hours minimum, let's play the next game!"

And part of me wishes I'd do that, but the fact is this isn't a job. There's no money here, there's the opposite even! I don't remotely see it that way, but if you squint and tilt your head I've spent a lot of money on this blog over the years.

Capture devices (a lot of them!), consoles specifically bought for the blog, controllers out the wazoo, I've gone through multiple computers for this thing, and the games, my lord the games- so many games.

And that's fiscally, what about manpower? So many hours have gone into this blog, so many hours poured into the background of making all this work, researching shit, putting my all into formulating my opinions clearly for posts, writing, hell video shit even though it's mostly clips as my one step into edited content became an impromptu awkward hiatus from doing more lol.

What was I on about.

Despite all that nonsense, Retphienix is a passion project. Not a job.

If I lack the passion in some sense then the work doesn't get done "just for the sake of the work". And I don't mean lost passion as much as "No motivation on x day; tired on y day; interested in doing something else on z day" etc.

If things aren't clickin' I don't force it, so the blog has all this backlog and isn't put together in a way that facilitates burning through it quickly.

I do sometimes wish things were different though, I know I'd still enjoy such a playstyle, but I can't justify "faking it til you make it" in a format that literally isn't built to pay and was never intended to.

I can't work myself for nothin'.

Hypothetical "Next" games

While the backlog is a wild wasteland of titles, there are some that just kinda guarantee their spots sooner rather than later.

Yakuza 6 and 7 along with Judgment, obviously. The series is one of my all time favorites and I generally have some of my absolute most fun on the blog side of things with those games, so it's a winner on two fronts. It's just fun to react to, post out of context things for, and talk with other fans about and for whatever reason tumblr has a healthy enough fanbase for the series that my meager blog gets some attention there.

Dragon Quest has a strangely weighted chance all things considered. DQ has many of the same advantages as Yakuza- it's a series I adore, it's fun to talk about in this format, and the fandom is big enough to occasionally spill my way making the blogging experience a bit more fun. It's also a series where I don't know what'd come next to be fair. Probably DQ4? I mean, might as well continue on from that point since I have 1-3 done. I can't exactly justify replaying the entirety of DQ11 no matter how much I want to! Turning on the games above gave me DQ goosebumps which kinda settled how likely it is to show up sooner rather than later, lol.

Jeez. I looked at one of my surviving lists and that's like all that's popping out at me.

Other series feel like giant leaps with no gas in the tank, like do I want to start playing Kingdom Hearts? Not really, not right now. Do I finally play Lisa? Eeeeeeh. Persona? Hmmmm.

I haven't the fuzziest. There are so many one off interesting titles, but if the drive ain't there they might as well be textbooks.

Perhaps instead of any major next game I'll just do some afternoons exploring random titles for a bit here and there with no intention of beating em.

The idea is enticing as hell, but the feeling of not giving the game's a "real shake" feels bad.

We'll see. The only certainties seem to be Yakuza and DQ, as much as I'd prefer far more.

Side project hypotheticals

Outside of the basic live blog stuff I'm still interested in exploring scripted stuff. Mostly to prove to myself that I can overcome some anxieties and break from the meandering pace the last effort gave- I can write! That much I know! So just gotta trick myself into writing for a video and then make the video after the fact lol.

Current thoughts are on a video exploring the monster taming sub-genre. It's a genre near and dear to my heart, and one I know some weird things about as is- but mostly it's a genre I KNOW I know very little about despite that, so I'd like to give it an overall look, or perhaps just explore some random entries, I haven't a clue lol. I'd mostly like an opportunity to talk about some interesting entries in the genre, things like explaining my adoration for DWM while explaining how the flaws make it really rough today, or the interesting mash of genres that is Lost Magic, or the more modern take that mashes idle-like mechanics with Siralim Ultimate.

Won't lie, playing the demo for Monster Hunter Stories 2 threw a wrench in that plan because it made me want to talk about it and how the genre might have a new breath of life after really grinding to a halt as pokemon became what it is today, but all to be seen or not lol.

As far as other things like streams? Not really.

The concept of writing a bit more on games is tickling the back of my head lately, but that mostly just means "more posts that aren't live-blogging" as I haven't the fuzziest where I'd share such nonsense.

Really it's all up in the air as far as retphienix content is concerned, beyond the live blogging obviously.

5am closing

It's fun to explore what games have to offer, both on the individual level, the personal level, and as a whole- as a medium.

So I like Retphienix.

And I like all I've made here.

I hope to continue for a long, long time- no matter what future formats might look like.

#Retphienix

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felassan · 4 years

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Countering Solas

This is a subject I think about a lot, and not just post-Tevinter Nights. Whether you chose ‘try to redeem’ or ‘resolve to stop’, whether the Inquisitor returns as PC or there’s a new guy on the block, whether Solas is the Actual Big Bad in this game or the ‘Dragon’ to something else or just another key player on the ‘field’ over which some other encroaching threat is looming down on, the reality is we’re likely to be spending a lot of the main plot in DA4 trying to counter Solas and his steps. I say “counter” not “defeating” because most of this post deals with that, although at the end it does inevitably dip into the hypothetical defeat scenario (so I guess don’t read to the last point at the end if you don’t like to think about that scenario). I also say “counter” because there is no guarantee that we can straight up stop him. (To be clear, I’m not against the idea of the main plot having him always succeeding from a top-level meta/enjoying the universe and developments within it perspective, nor asserting that he will not. There are seeds in the lore that allude to him succeeding. A post-Veil world would be a fascinating thing to explore and really change things up/refresh the universe. A post-Veil world setting for DA5 has a lot of cool potential. It’s just that even if he does always succeed, we’re still likely to be spending most of the game trying to counter him, kind of like Hawke trying to put out various Kirkwall ‘fires’ until eventually it reaches the Act 3 crescendo and you can’t stop Anders no matter what. I’m specifically wondering about how the writers will have our PCs go about the attempt, trying to explore what that could entail on a practical level, and that’s okay. It’s trying to think about what the story beats and even some game mechanics could involve, given his power. The PC isn’t going to spend the game sitting on their hands and doing nothing re: the Dread Wolf, since Thedas seems aware of this new threat, unlike how Kirkwall was unaware of Anders’ goal. This post also doesn’t mean I don’t like Solas, that I haven’t played out his dialogues or romance, that I don't realize how Powerful he is, or that I think that there’s no other big threat to Thedas that is a serious danger to the world and that Solas is concerned about - the Solas romance is my favorite one and my canon. I shouldn’t really have to make so many qualifications of this kind on a post like this) Anyway I wonder a lot about the specifics of how they’re going to write the PC doing this in terms of the PC’s in-universe efforts and maneuvers on this quest, and about how they can portray this in a satisfying way. I also think a lot about what my Inquisitor would be doing in her own specific efforts to try and stop him.

Here’s some wandering thoughts on the subject of how it might be possible to counter him. It’s a mix of things to keep and mind and literal suggestions of possible measures. This list is by no means intended as prescriptive or exhaustive, and I don’t claim that it’s realistic or ground-breaking or that these ideas would be super effective. There are also bound to be a bunch of things they have in store that we don’t know about, both in terms of what he can do and what they’ll have us do. The rest is under a cut for length and Tevinter Nights spoilers.

Let’s face it, from what we know of Solas, added to how he is at the end of Trespasser, now in combination with the new additions to his repertoire in Tevinter Nights, he’s clearly very powerful, even seeming in some lights a bit OP. He’s a powerful ancient mage from a different time with ancient knowledge, a Dreamer, a Rift Mage, a Fade expert, capable, shrewd, very intelligent and already experienced in this kind of covert stuff/guerrilla warfare. He can kill people in their sleep, freeze people from a distance with a flash of his eyes, he has a powerfully explosive mind-blast move, probably can take the form of the massive draconic Dread Wolf to fight, and it seems like some spirits are helping him. He also has an extensive network of spies and agents, some of whom are fanatically loyal to the cause to the point of being willing to giving their lives up for it; he has eyes everywhere, even in the Qun, Tevinter and the Inquisition. He and these agents are also able to easily move quickly and secretly around much of Thedas thanks to his control of the eluvian network. They seem to have a lot of info, resources and money at their disposal. He is a very substantial power and is of course also a god figure.

Recruit. This is fairly self-explanatory. We already know that since he knows who the Inquisition are, we’re in need of help from people he doesn’t know. This can be people he’s aware of but not super experienced with i.e. that he doesn’t have a complete psychological profile of thanks to having not spent a year working closely with them, like Irian and Vadis. Naturally, an even better idea would be recruiting people he doesn’t know of at all, that have never attracted his attention. It’s also important to remember that there are entire factions we’ve never encountered before in Thedas, like the Fex and the Par Ladians. Very little is known about these groups. We have no idea what they’re capable of, and the dearth of information means it’s totally possible for the writers to write whatever they want about their capabilities and powers.

Some recruitment specifics: Since we know now that he can kill dwarves in their sleep the same as anyone else, even though they supposedly don’t dream, focusing on recruiting mostly dwarves because they wouldn’t be vulnerable to that doesn’t really hold as a viable strategy. A degree of caution towards both existing and new faces is required also, as he has spies/agents placed everywhere - in the Inquisition, the Qun, Tevinter, across Thedas even (which I took to mean across most of its nations and factions). New people need to be highly vetted. Where did they come from? What’s their personal history? How long do the records say they’ve been around for? If there’s anything odd, questionable or unknown/unsure, they can’t be trusted. (Frustratingly, my Inquisitor genuinely mistrusted Solas from the very outset, but you have no option of telling him to go away or not recruiting him). I also hate saying it but an extra layer of caution is unfortunately needed with elves. His agents so far are all elves, including some City, some Dalish, and some ancients, and we can’t know at the outset who is working for him and who is not.

And possibly… even someone he does know. Seemingly clashes with the points above, but there’s merit in the idea. Solas makes a big deal of how he has spies everywhere and how all organizations inevitably have problems with betrayal and corruption. Even with the fanatical-ness of some of them, what makes his follower group any different? I know he keeps them in separate cells so that it’s need-to-know and such, but it’s actually rather boring to me if as a whole they’re completely immune to being infiltrated, having double agents present or outright defections. We already have one example of an ancient elf who turned from the cause and began to think of modern elves as people - Felassan. I bring him up less as a ‘Felassan as a companion pls’ thing (although, pls pls) and more of an example that it’s possible such a character exists/could turn. Felassan didn’t know everything, but if we managed to get someone like that on our side… he knew parts of Solas’ plans and what he intends, and he knew the guy himself quite well and so knew a thing or two about how he operates. Advice from someone like that would be invaluable. You could either have someone acting as an agent of Fen’Harel but in reality they’re a double-agent for us, or a straight up defector who joins our party, turning their powers and what they know about him against him. Additional note: There is now even official indication that the writers have left the door open on Felassan’s “death” in case they decide they want to bring him back.

Not all elves will support him. Ties into the point above. Elves are not a monolith. We have examples of this already - see Charter and her love for Tessa, Irian’s refusal to join them when approached for recruitment (and her relationship with Vadis and general opinion on the whole Fen’Harel cult thing). We even have an example of an ancient not supporting him (Felassan). I would appreciate it if there is an option in-game at some point to try to have a dialogue with some of the elves who follow Solas (but mostly only if race-selection returns and the PC is an elf themselves, otherwise it could take on a not-right tone). Their decision to support Solas is understandable and not stupid, and their concerns are valid. Gaining better understanding of their perspective would be a good thing.

Adapt / change things up. Also fairly self-explanatory. We already know that he knows how the Inquisition works, about its strengths and weaknesses. They are naturally going to need to radically alter their modus operandi. This includes their structure, approaches to things and the specifics of their secrecy measures. They need to try and be unpredictable to him and do things he wouldn’t expect, and double down on being clandestine, need-to-know basis, etc. Real black ops shit. This battle is a chess-board, not open warfare.

Talk-no-Justu. Some amount of this are inevitable I think, especially in ‘try to redeem’ universes. This isn’t a criticism. If it’s well-written and executed well, I have no problem with it. Part of this involves trying to appeal to his better nature and sense of reason, and part of this involves trying to convey the value in and the pockets of good in the modern world, which TN gives us examples of. We have examples of some modern elves who occupy or occupied different positions of relative power or prestige - Charter, Irian, Teia, Cyrros, Guili, Bolivar. There are examples of good deeds; Teia’s ‘don’t kill the help’ policy, Irian and Vadis avoiding killing Tevinter elven servants and Qunari elves who were just doing their jobs, Dorian no longer keeping slaves and only now having paid servants, Lucanis endangering his job and current contract to free a group of elven slaves from their cruel Magister master, the development of an anti-slavery movement in Tevinter. Much of Thedas is still a widely problematic crapsack, and these things don’t in the slightest make up for it for its oppressed groups, but I can see BW putting us in a position where we have the choice of trying to advocate for the modern world and creating change within it as it exists now.

Solas hasn’t been as mysterious and opaque as he thinks. We too spent a long time with him and know his character traits decently well. Sometimes he even could not resist dropping a hint here or there (whether out of pride, moments of weakness or the unconscious desire to be stopped is up to your reading of him). We too know something of how he organizes his forces, how he operates, his tactics and way of thinking. We are not the only ones in this compromised position. He inadvertently revealed some of this stuff in instances like his guerrilla warfare banters with Sera and even in his vocal chess match with Iron Bull. Please note that this is not me suggesting that he is stupid or that he does not carefully consider what to say and what not to say.

He is not all-knowing and all-seeing. He doesn’t have complete oversight of his agents. Sometimes they do things he would not approve of or even that are in accidental complete opposition to what he wants. The best example of his is when Gaius in the comics traded away the idol for information, the very idol Solas has been keenly-seeking all along and is key to his post-foci plans. To add, some of his people are fanatical, and fanaticism is not traditionally a notorious hotbed of critical thinking or making the best decisions.

He is also not infallible. I don’t doubt that he is eminently capable, or that he’s logical and considered, or that he’s keenly aware of what his flaws are. But in his own way, he’s human. He has made mistakes. By his own admission he’s prideful and hotheaded. Pride is his fatal flaw and the crux of his character. He will continue to make mistakes, as anybody would.

There is a bit of a front going on. In a way, the booming ordering wolf and the “I’ll destroy anyone who gets in my way without hesitation, you cannot stop me” persona isn’t quite true. I mean, it is, and he will, he’s dedicated to his goal and feels he has no choice. He’s also quite pragmatic and ends-over-means. But he’s also simultaneously deeply regretful, and very sad and tired. This duality can be capitalized on. Also tying to the above, when we’re sad and tired, we’re more inclined to slip up and make mistakes. In some universes he straight-up seems like the wants to be proven wrong or wants to be stopped or die in the attempt but be thwarted.

He himself acknowledges the threat modern Thedosians pose to him and his plans. He is on record saying that many people oppose him and that he knows they’re not fools. He’s worried enough to personally attend a meeting of the top spies in all of Thedas in order to try and find out what they know about him and attempt to throw people off his scent. That’s a big deal. He is worried for a reason

He underestimates modern Thedosians. Related to the point above. Not by much, but still a bit. Felassan straight-up tells him that they are stronger than he thinks. This goes for their intelligence and resourcefulness also.

How many followers can he even have? A few dozen at least, a few hundred at most imo. That’s considerable but not actually a lot in the scheme of things.

Length of time. Self-explanatory. It’s going to take a few years for the ritual to complete. HoF stopped the Fifth Blight in a year. Inky stopped Cory in a year. A lot can be done in a year or two.

Forge alliances. There are seeds of this happening already and it’s a standard part of a BW narrative, ‘oh we must unite against our common enemy guys’. He clearly has knowledge of many intelligence-related groups in Thedas, including but not limited to the dwarven Carta, Inquisition remains, Nevarran Mortalitasi, Tevinter Siccari, Qunari Ben-Hassrath, the Executors and probably Orlesian bards. But, could he really stand against all of them, were they to work together? They in turn have been keeping tabs on him and have various intelligence on his movements, goals etc. What if we pool and share all that knowledge? We’d get a much clearer picture of what he’s doing. Some are already actively working against him and reaching out to one another. What if we add in other groups he doesn’t have a signposted-eye on to the mix, like the Antivan Crows, the Grey Wardens and the Rivaini Lords of Fortune? I think all or most of these groups working together are a formidable adversary for anyone to face. A potentially very potent ‘let’s counter him’ alliance between the Inquisition and the Qunari Ben-Hassrath is already alluded to. What if the Ben-Hassrath then re-direct the Antaam’s attentions to the real magical threat (and boy do they hate magic)? They have canons, explosives, dreadnoughts, advanced technologies, many well-trained soldiers.

Information-gathering. If there’s one fallen piece of Arlathan with bits of libraries with ancient elven texts in them that can be located by the Inquisition and ransacked for clues on the Evanuris and their potential undoing, there are others. The Inquisition and Qunari are both clearly researching this subject and pursuing this line of thinking, and they clearly both had this idea independent of one another. If one expedition can be mounted, others can. Laudine can’t be the only person for a gift for ancient elven language. Among the Dalish there are probably others who are good with it. Who knows what useful information we might find in these places/ventures, or already found in the TN expedition?

Smash the eluvianarchy. His agents would still be able to get around a lot and easily, because there are bound to be many more and many that we don’t know about. It’s also a waste of priceless ancient artifacts. But every barricaded door is one they can’t get through, one more tool denied them. Briala and her people probably know where a portion of them at least still are. So do the Qunari. Doing this to every one that’s known of and every one that’s found along the way partially hampers their ability to travel through them and therefore partially impacts their movements

[and/or] Construct our own eluvians. Having our own means of instant travel and our own network of eluvians would be helpful. Two can play at that game, sort of thing. Modern inventors like Dagna are brilliant. The Glassworks in Serault are renowned across Thedas for their skill and knowledge, and Morrigan even went there to conduct research on eluvians. What they have there, and what she researched, was enough that it enabled her to be able to repair an eluvian. The Inquisition has done some research into eluvians and has contact, either direct as in the case of Morrigan, or indirect as in the case of Merrill (via Varric) with its own eluvian experts. And in Trespasser, Dorian comments that they have many eluvian samples and discusses the possibility of them building eluvians of their own (Varric even pipes up about Merrill if he’s there). Dorian indicates a desire to do this and take it on as a project, so this isn’t out of the realm of possibility.

Seize the means of lyrium production. Okay not literally, and not all of it. But there’s something to be said for the idea, both at the point of extraction and the point of sale/trade. If his ritual truly does require lyrium as the characters in the final story in TN speculate, if his ritual is anything like what the Magisters Sidereal did, it’s likely that he needs looots of the substance. The Magisters Sidereal needed an unimaginable, inordinate amount, actually over two thirds of the lyrium in the entire Tevinter empire at the time. The Magisters had to set 100 acolytes just to the task of gathering it. This amount of such a valuable substance would surely take some time to acquire, even with his many agents and all his money. If you remember, all those coffin-like boxes in Trespasser may have contained lyrium. The companions remark that this was enough lyrium for whole armies of mages. So much lyrium that the Imperium would be jealous and it outstrips the amount Orzammar keeps on hand. That sounds like a Magisters Sidereal Ritual 2.0 amount, if not more. Fortunately we flooded that room and put everything that had been mined underwater. Is there more elsewhere, or was that The store, was that a setback for Solas and he had to begin acquiring it all over again? It does sound like his ritual has already begun, to be fair, which would perhaps imply he had all he needed in order to have begun it in the first place. But I enjoy the thought. Maybe it requires more like a constant stream fed into it, like how we must routinely add wood to a fire in order to keep it burning? Track missing lyrium shipments, find out who is buying up an oddly-much amount. Follow these lines of thinking back to route agents of Fen’Harel and prolong this labor of his. However, a note: if Solas’ ritual requires red lyrium to fuel it and not blue lyrium, this is unlikely to be possible and would not be wise to attempt.

Tap the templars and the Seekers. I don’t like the templars either, but. Tevinter templars have access to enchanted anti-mage weapons that shoot beams of light. Even better, the southern templars and the Seekers are trained specifically to counter and deny magic. They can reinforce reality and the immutability of the world, close off a mage’s access to the Fade, disrupt mana and dissipate magical effects. This is in stark contrast to the magical/Fade-y themes of imagination defining reality and using magic to direct the river of the Fade and therefore influence the world, and I think this contrast is highlighted for a reason. Templars are also somewhat immune to the effects of magic, and even without their powers are among the best warriors in Thedas. They would be capable allies in this specific battle, against a powerful mage with some strong mage followers. And more specifically, a few dozen elite/veteran templars were all that was needed to seal the Breach that first time in DAI if you sided with the templars. Okay yes, via the Herald and through their tool - the Anchor - but that was to seal an already-open tear. What would happen if a few dozen elite templars directed their wills and nullifying abilities at the ritual-in-progress? What about a few hundred? Would Solas be able to cast, for example, his mega mind blast if a few hundred templars were focusing their “nope” on him?

Disrupt the ritual. Ties to the above. Find the ritual site and interrupt the casting or proceedings. It’s going to take several years to complete and sounds intricate. Until it is completed, it is vulnerable. It might be fairly possible to locate as well - the site is likely imo to be somewhere where the Veil is thin. Some such places are already known to modern Thedosians, due to what happened there in the past being a matter of historical record (blood and death) and the weird nature of these places in the present e.g. Brecilian Forest, Arlathan Forest. Others can feasibly be located via research. Solas is the premiere Fade/Veil expert, and he led the work on this at the time, but the Inquisition helped him get readings of the Veil and measure its strength. The results were then overlaid on Thedas maps to predict which areas had a higher chance of tears developing. Are they still in possession of some of this work/some of the notes? Maybe this could be used or developed further.

Nullifying the effects of the idol. This is something that’s clearly possible. The Carta had a special thick double-shielded chest that effectively rendered the idol inert enough that its song and weird effects could no longer be heard/felt. It was marked with protective dwarven runes. Later the idol is kept on a pedestral wrought with - presumably similar - protective runework. I’m super interested in these runes and how they might be adapted to help our cause. (What implications in a general sense btw, do these nullifying runes have for combatting/negating red lyrium and Blight? There’s something going on here) The dwarves are great at this kind of thing, experienced in it and have some really cutting edge technology/creations. In addition, there are some really smart cookies and inventors among modern Thedosians. Dagna for example. She’s brilliant. One step further, destroy the idol. If his MacGuffin is destroyed, what’s his Plan C?

The effects of red lyrium. LOTR-y, but how long can he use or wield the red lyrium idol safely, without becoming corrupted/losing his mind? We know what its effects and the effects of red lyrium in general are. Maybe this is a complete non-issue for him, but it’s possible. In the teaser, red lyrium crawls up the spine of the Solas-esque figure on the idol. I don’t know that he can be immune to its effects indefinitely.

Approach existing modern Dreamers. The talent seemed to reappear in Feynriel, but he’s not the only one. There are still Dreamers in the Imperium, like Aurelian Titus before his death. I doubt he had no counterparts. There is also a belief that a few Dreamers might still exist among the Dalish. Maybe they can help us and our people find a way to defend against or ward off being killed in our sleep.

On the killing in sleep thing in general: It’s not the same as defending against being killed in sleep, but even some strong non-Dreamer mages like the Mortalitasi woman in the final TN story have the ability to create some kind of wards that keep the spirits that whisper in their dreams at bay. She could still hear/sense them whispering but they can’t get to her for vengeance. Similarly and in addition, Felassan had herbs that could keep him from dreaming most of the time, and wards that would do a good job of blocking him from the Fade when the herbs failed. It wouldn’t have been pleasant and it would still have been plenty risky, but it seemed like he could have feasibly used these measures to live a life, albeit constantly looking over his shoulder, at least for a time (this reminds me of keeping Will drugged up in Sens8 so Whispers couldn’t get to him). Modern Dalish have alluded to at least knowing of these herbs’ past existence (Mihris). I’m not sure what the exact connection is, because the dwarves were killed, and they supposedly don’t dream, so it seems like sleeping itself not specifically dreaming is the thing that makes one vulnerable to this thing, but maybe there’s something there that can be utilized or adapted. Even ‘partial cover’ would be super helpful. In emergency situations in the short-term, coffee and other mundane ways of preventing sleep are handy temporary measures, as the Carta dwarf was doing (I’m thinking about situations where an agent’s wards have dwindled and need like refreshing but they still have some distance to travel or time to wait until a mage arrives to refresh them - for example. Don’t mistake this for “we’ll stop him by drinking coffee”… writing that sentence made me laugh). Key to the defense here btw however for me is the fact that Adralla of Vyrtantium, you know, as in who made the Litany of Adralla, discovered or formulated a defense against dream-walkers. Get Adralla’s research, stat.

Along with the sleep-killing, the other major obstacle imo is his freezing ability. The Inquisition are implied to have discovered some kind of knowledge-y MacGuffin. As above with Talk-no-Justu, some amount of MacGuffin-ness is inevitable I think. Again this isn’t a criticism, if it’s well-written and executed well, I have no problem with it. In an ideal universe for me the MacGuffin includes some kind of defense against or way of negating the effect of his freezing powers. Notably, there is a precedent for something of this sort in the lore. In the MotA DLC, we gather jewels and reconstruct the Dagger of the Four Winds. With this dagger, the pirates who are petrified stone statues can be unpetrified. Interestingly, the Fog Dancers (who live in the north, where we’re going..!) have a story called the March of the Four Winds. Perhaps it’s connected, and the Fog Dancers know how to counter petrification. Even if they don’t, example MacGuffins like the Dagger clearly exist in Thedas, so it’s not much of a stretch to suggest that we could engineer a means of protection against this power. Or if not protection, perhaps a way of reversing? It’s debated if the Fog Warriors’ fog is magic or alchemy - if they also have the means to counteract petrification, it could also be either one. I like the scene in Narnia when Aslan breathes life and motion back into the frozen victims of the White Witch.

His true name. Not sure what exactly all that was about, but in that one story the Qunari allude to the fact that his names that we know aren’t true or aren’t quite true. They seem to be looking for information on his supposed-”true name”. Not sure if it’s just Qunari philosophy or Rasaan being Rasaan, but they believe that with this true name they can track a person back through the best and the worst of themselves, find flaws, exploit weaknesses, know what they had failed to be. A common fictional trope is I Know Your True Name. It’s like functional magic whereby knowing the secret true name of someone grants you control over them or some similar great advantage. I’m very intrigued by this idea, what it could mean and the potential here. “Find the Dread Wolf’s true name” quest arc?

Bring the full might of nations and their armies to bear. The idea of entire nations standing against him is already hinted at. This is a purely hypothetical situation, as the devs might not even have us fighting him, or the final battle could easily be against a possible true or bigger antagonist. Consider though a final assault launched on the located ritual site, with our main squad as the tip of the spear and being the ones who facilitate/convey the means to disrupt it to the center, or the entrance to the center (they would also inevitably be the ones who fight the final battle against him personally at the ritual-site-proper, where I imagine he’d be, trying to complete the cast or ready to do his thing when it’s done). Even with hundreds of followers and some mages, can he really defend the site against entire armies of multiple Thedosian nations, especially when he himself is mostly-occupied at the site-proper? Especially when said armies are peppered or reinforced/led by ‘special forces’ like the organizations I’ve named above?

A final battle against the literal Dread Wolf: I’m actually not worried about this. His form is mighty and dangerous, and I know that in-universe it would post a massive threat. I’m also aware of gameplay/story segregation and how our MCs in these games are invariably special or especially heroic compared to normies. But the fact is we and other people defeat giant beasts in this setting - Archdemons, high dragons, Blighted dragons, hyped up power-goons like ancient Magisters, ancient powerful demons like the Forbidden ones - on the regular. I am not worried about a squad of 4 wailing on a giant wolf. In addition, if there is a true or bigger antagonist, we might never even have to fight the DW.

On a meta level there’s going to be a combat-based game with bosses and a Player Vs Antagonist arc, and it has to be fun to play, have an engaging plot, be of a certain length. However it works out in the end in terms of him succeeding/not succeeding (btw us not succeeding, the ‘you failed despite how hard you tried to keep a cap on this thing’-style narrative, has value as a different kind of story which is cool - see DA2), the characters are still going to try. If he just freezes the PC on first meeting or at any subsequent meeting, how is there going to be a game/plot..? Is the PC never going to sleep for the in-universe duration of their campaign, or are we just supposed to buy that he had the ability to kill them in their sleep for the whole game all along and not once decided to use it to stop them? Solas isn’t stupid! I love a ‘desperate odds, how are we gonna do this, the villain is so incredibly powerful, this feels hopeless’-narrative, and don’t doubt that it’s gonna be in there, but it also has to be sensible - believable. We need to feel both threatened and also that if we try, we might be able to do something. It’s a balance to be struck. There’s going to be something, some kind of creative writing around his power gains or limit on it, some series of steps the PC will be investigating and attempting to take, or else the premise is nonsensical - even if the story has him always succeeding and even in the case of a true or larger threat.

The need to ensure permadeath/permadefeat: In the case of redeem universes, this is only a possible potential scenario that I’m posing to explore. I am not asserting nor wishing that this will happen. If even in those universes we fail in the attempt to convince him, or outright cannot convince him to stop, and in a general sense if there’s no other way (and disregarding for this one point/scenario here the possibility that for plot reasons his plans actually railroad to success - which I acknowledge is entirely possible - and he then dies or something as a result) - the first of his people do not die so easily. He’s not so far from the first of his people. He is an ancient and they were immortal. Flemythal’s various survivals over the years is an example of what might be possible. Plus if he was originally a spirit, or given the ancients’ spirity-ness, consider how when spirits ‘die’ they return to the Fade, and if the idea that gave it form is strong or other spirits have memories of it, something similar might reform one day. In this specific scenario, we need to be sure that killing him is a true permadeath, or that else that the means of disabling/depowering him is permanent. I don’t like the idea and don’t like the Rite of Tranquility and what it does to mages, it’s abhorrent, but this is a specific hypothetical scenario and I’m thinking about all options. If he can’t be swayed and can’t be truly killed, maybe making him Tranquil is an effective means of neutralizing the threat. Even it can be reversed however, so in this specific hypothetical scenario I’m curious what they’ll do here/how it would go down. Maybe he can’t even be made Tranquil, or would need to be killed in the Fade and then made Tranquil ‘twice-over’ kinda by doing it irl too? Interesting thought.

#dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #dragon age #tevinter nights #solas #bioware #tevinter nights spoilers #tevinter nights spoiler #video games #mj meta #felassan #Best Elf #Gryff Lavellan

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