#void fields on stage 2 really helped

[mxmade-up]

Sometimes after so many failed mastery runs it’s nice to go back to characters you actually enjoy

It was fun while it lasted

#an hour sounds pretty good to me #seriously a god run though #void fields on stage 2 really helped #too bad the void got curious and I got nailed by several devastators at once #my fault though #risk of rain #risk of rain 2 #also lost seers lenses #there’s no way that was a 3% #my stuff #ror #ror2

[tsvaling]

Announcement? Update? Screaming at the void? I don’t know what to call this right now, so if anyone is curious about what the hell I’ve been doing all this time read on...

So, I’ve been getting a few asks about my ongoing fics and whether I’m going to continue them because I haven’t posted a new chapter in 2+ years. Well, as everyone knows, Covid fucked everything up, and 2020 was just a horrendously shitty year on the whole to start with. I have been insanely lucky to avoid getting sick (helps I do not socialize outside of work whatsoever, but considering I work in dental and am literally in people’s mouths all day - yeah, really fucking lucky to have avoid illness). But, the external stress and anxiety the ongoing plague has caused in me has really messed with my ability to write or do anything.

But, as I announced at the end of last year, I’m back in school. I took two classes in the spring and got A’s in both, with such amazingly consistent feedback on my writing that it began to inspire me again.... Except right as I was regaining my confidence, more shit started happening in my personal life to blow a hole in my intentions.

I’ll put the details to that under a cut at the end so if people don’t want to read the shit that’s led to endless existential dread and a burdensome mid-life crisis, you can ignore that part. I’ll just get to the point here.

Despite all the shit that’s been weighing on me the last few months... years, really... I do know I absolutely cannot continue to work where I’m at. I need to get out of the medical field for the sake of my mental health, as well as physical health. But, I can’t just quit because I have bills to pay and I don’t have anything lined up to move on to. I genuinely want to work from home, focusing on what I love and would like to do for a living - writing. My whole plan of getting a Master’s in Library Science after completing my B.A. is still kind of there, but all the feedback I got and the excitement I’m feeling for my writing courses has really told me that writing is something I need to be doing, but I can’t make money off fanfic (copyright law’s a lot stricter with writing versus art).

I’m almost afraid to announce this because it’s probably way too early, but I am working on an original high fantasy romance story that I intend to publish. I’m only in the early planning/ outlining/ worldbuilding stage, but it’s something I really want to write. It’s a smaller scale than a high fantasy saga I’ve had rattling around in my head for years, but it came to me and seems more manageable as a first foray into self-publishing that might give me a base to then spring into the larger saga that’s gotten more solid in shape over the years.

My plan for this is to make a Patreon once I have a solid draft of the story written, then post two chapters a week as I go through my early editing process, and then publish it as an ebook once I’m satisfied - likely using whatever funds I manage to get from Patreon to pay for an outside editor to finalize the book.

But, as I said, this is all in the early planning and hopeful yearning stage of my idea to make a career out of writing. I am absolutely terrified that even speaking about it may jinx me just because of how this year has gone, but I am excited to see if I can do it (all while also taking three classes this fall, ahahahaha).

As to what this means for my fanfic - I don’t know. I still really want to finish Amber Curse, but it’s become so difficult for me to concentrate on my fics that I might not be able to go back to it. Or, I might use it as a way to take a break from my own original work, especially since I can get away with sporadic posting and still get really great and inspiring feedback from people. We’ll see. I know I hate the idea of disappointing anyone with an incomplete story, especially one that is so BIG. So, while that’s sort of in limbo right now, I haven’t forgotten about it.

I’ll try to be more active on here, too - give updates about my process when I can.

But, for those curious as to what I’ve been dealing with this year that’s really fucked with my head, the details are under the cut. Fair warning for those who don’t want to be dragged down, there are mentions of illness and sudden death in the family.

Edit: Realized the post is on the long side, so the cut isn’t working on the mobile platform - so everything after this is just depressing shit you don’t have to read if you don’t want to.

At the beginning of the year my aunt died. She was my dad’s little sister and while we hadn’t been in regular contact with that side of the family, it still took a huge hit on my mental health. To add to it, at that same time, my dad discovered he had a lesion in his throat that came back as lymphoma. Fortunately it was caught early enough and is a form of lymphoma that responds incredibly well to chemo, so after three bouts of chemo and a few weeks of radiation, there is no sign of lymphoma in his system. But my dad is the type to panic over everything (I get it from him), and believe he’s going to die when he only has a common cold, so hearing he has cancer literally a few weeks after his sister died... yeah, not great news.

I am an only child, and I live with my parents, so I had to go with my dad to as many appointments as my schedule would allow so that I could help him understand the prognosis, treatment outcomes, and side effects. My mom’s also been having trouble driving, so anything he needed a driver for fell on me. To add to it, I had to basically act as his therapist and constantly reassure him that he is not going to die. My father and I had a very tense relationship when I was younger, and while we are on better terms now, spending any time with him is stressful because I’m innately terrified of him, but to add to it, I have to remain calm and be the voice of reason and reassurance throughout all this. Even when in the middle of a panic attack, I have to do everything in my power to mask it to make sure I don’t add to whatever the fuck my dad is freaking out about. Add to this extreme burnout from a job that requires me to show compassion and empathy to complete strangers on a regular basis that I no longer really have because it’s all used up - yeah, this whole thing has beaten down my already poor mental health.

And then, right as we were nearing the end of my dad’s treatment - literally he had one more radiation treatment the next day - my mom had a stroke. Again, we were insanely fortunate we caught it as early as we did. She had no signs of paralysis or facial drooping, but was extremely confused with verbal aphasia (word salad) worsening by the minute. My dad and I rushed her to the ER, they got a clot-busting medication into her within two hours of symptoms appearing, and she was pretty much back to normal and transferred to an ICU bed by the next morning. But, again, I had to act as medical advisor from the moment my dad noticed my mom’s changed mental state - assessing her symptoms as a nurse would and making the split second decision to go to the ER, and then literally assisted the nurse in the ER who was assigned to watch over her while the medication did its thing. I am not a nurse for a reason, and being my mother’s caretaker reaffirmed that reason, but my dad was relegated to a corner to do his best to hide his compulsion to freak the fuck out while I just took over all the hands-on work to keep my mom calm and give the nurse an extra pair of hands when my mom needed moving.

All of this has just reaffirmed that life is too short and I am too young to be facing my parents’ inevitable mortality. Chances are they will live for at least another 10 years, but they will need me to take care of them more and more over that time. While I am very fortunate that they are both still mobile and independent, these last few months have kept me on edge waiting for the next emergency to crop up.

Writing is therapeutic for me, so being stuck in a cycle of not being able to write but wanting to write has only made all this worse. But, I am forcing myself to break that cycle. Even if all I’m writing are little blurbs of poetry for myself, it is still something to maintain a fraction of my sanity. Hopefully things will calm down now that my parents have gotten over these hurdles and I can have some time to focus on my work, but if I suddenly go MIA again, chances are something major happened with piss poor timing again.

#;personal #ranting word vomit under the cut #hopefully i'm not jinxing myself by announcing this but fingers crossed I maintain my focus

[sercj]

I saw you gave tips to @ozi-uwu. Can I have tips?

I use mul-t btw

Can I also have tips to unlock the other weapons for mul-t?

My goodness, I'm so sorry I'm getting to this late! I use tumblr on mobile, where asks get buried under reblogs and likes.

Mul-T's greatest strength is its flexibility! Having 2 seperate M1's for different ranges/enemies, and being able to carry 2 different equipments, makes it a great all-rounder. The movement ability also gives you a ton of armor, so if a big hit is coming in (stone titan laser, boss jellyfish's desperation attack, etc) you can use it to help tank a bit.

As for unlocking things, I will always recommend command. It helps you get a run going faster, it helps your runs go longer, and the only real cost is that piloting it takes some game knowledge to do well. For example, you'd never pick up leeching seed (heal on hit) in command, since the ol lopper (heal on crit) does 7 times the healing and getting 100% crit chance in command is bith easy and really good for lots of other reasons too.

For specific unlocking tips, Pest Control is easily done on a really long run with multiple loops, as eventually every teleporter event will have at least 2 bosses spawn. You just gotta remember to stay in the zone! Gotchya is real easy with command - just make sure you have a preon accumulator in your pocket, loop until you find an imp lord, get it low, and let er rip! Seventh Day is really the only hard one. I'd reccomend getting a really nutty command run going (maybe something with disposable missile launcher, gesture of the drowned, and a pocket ICBM) and going to the void fields after stage 8. After that, you just gotta hope tesla coils or something else unfortunate doesn't get added to the cell while you're doing it.

Hope that helps! And sorry again for the late reply!

#risk of rain 2 #advice #most importantly: don't give up! #it's all possible! #i believe in you!

[nuri-design]

CV Research

When applying for roles in the creative industry it is essential to demonstrate creative or artistic skills. The use of colour theory, logos and/or typography can help showcase skills for certain roles.

I personally, wanted to create a minimalistic yet cute cv that would showcase my identity as wells as my skills. To do that I might have to make some icons and choose an appropiate font. 

CV Example 1

Camila Soto’s CV is very unique and colourful, I like the icons and choice of font for the titles however there is a lot of things I would change about this cv.

Some of the words are unreadable, I don’t particularly like the layout as it gives a grid effect and just looks very messy.

Link to her cv: https://www.behance.net/gallery/15372085/Curriculum-vitae

CV Example 2

Yojna Shetty has created a very beautiful and unique CV, she seems to have a lot of experience and a broad variety of knowledge and skills. She showcases her design skills with the icons and bars she has created with the blue/green background. All her graphic elements were designed by her, the cv is well made and easy to read. Her cv includes experience, education, contact information and workshops/events.

Link to her CV: https://www.behance.net/gallery/22650635/Resume

CV Example 3

Kyle's CV is very well balanced, easy to read and well organised with a great choice of monochromatic colours creating a pleasantly consistent theme, The use of info-graphics feels a bit null and void as it doesn't really provide much of any information and to some recruiters can seem either unprofessional or inexperienced. Another qualm I have is the overall layout of the CV, as it's good practice to have experience at or near the top of a CV with references being the least important and often left at the bottom.

Link to his cv:

When researching how to design and write a generally more effective CV I came across an abundance of articles, videos and so on about good practices to follow and here's what I gathered from all of that;

-CV should be professionally formatted as it is the first impression a recruiter experiences from a candidate

-A CV should be no longer than 2 pages and ideally have all necessary information on 1 single page

-Contact detail should be clear and visible but information such as DOB or home address

-They should try to be tailored for each job application you apply for

-Relevant work experience should be at the top of CV

-Always attempt to include Numerical or factual examples of experience in a workplace such as “3+ years experience as a marketing coordinator”

-A concise but professional profile isn’t a necessity but if it is included should be used to highlight key characteristics about yourself

-Education is the next big section to be included in a CV but becomes less relevant the further experience you have in the field your applying for

-Skills and achievements should be kept brief but informative with information such as technical skills or spoken languages

-Interests are by far the least important of all the attributes but you feel it is relevant to an application and not generic don’t be discouraged to include it

-References can be left at the end of a CV as they aren’t typically necessary for this stage of application in addition to most employers assuming they can be provided if requested upon

https://www.prospects.ac.uk/careers-advice/cvs-and-cover-letters/how-to-write-a-cv

https://zety.com/uk/blog/how-to-write-a-cv

https://www.cv-library.co.uk/career-advice/cv/how-to-write-a-cv-tips/

https://www.reed.co.uk/career-advice/how-to-write-a-cv/

Development of CV

All icons are designed by me

Mock-up of my cv

Visual cv

[percymakesgamesnow]

First day!

I got this new laptop all up and running; all the keys work and it doesn't wheeze like an asthmatic pug so that's awesome and helpful. Installed GameMaker Studio 2 and started working through their Little Town tutorial to learn to make adventure games.

I really enjoyed the entire process, honestly. It took me the whole day to get through the first module, but to be fair I kept procrastinating and doing things like making this tumblr and stuff. The code was surprisingly fun, but the moment it started to feel like math I definitely felt my brain cave in a little bit. Today I covered making objects, sprites/spritesheets, rooms, and all that cool basic jazz. The product at the end of the day is a little girl running around a field whose sprite changes based on movement/idle and direction! The camera follows her, keeping her centred until she reaches the sides of the field where it'll stall which is cool. There's also several barrels in the world that AREN'T floating, they're always on the correct side of the player and it's sweet! There's also a very cool feature where reality has no borders and the little girl can run endlessly into the void without the camera following her, lost in the aimless unseen abyss: endlessly free and neither living nor dead.

I'm really really excited to get good at this stuff. I predict that I'll struggle most with art, and then code. I think I have a good brain for code once I get the fundamentals, but it'll definitely take a while. My background is in music and I've been into game design since I was a wee lad so I'm very excited to get into those aspects. Genuinely game development has been one of my dreams since middle school and I couldn't be happier to finally be getting into it. I'm such a goddamn tryhard I took physical notes in a notebook as Tutorial Man was talking. We'll see how long that holds up.

I have no concrete goals for games I'd like to make, but I think that's honestly a good thing. I'm definitely the type of person to get a vision and be a perfectionist about something, and that feels antithetical to learning this stage of the game. I have ideas for games all the time, and my brain is full of "oh shit would that be cool" ideas every day, but when it comes to actually applying them??? Whose to say. I'd definitely like to make some kind of dumb iPhone game to pay tribute to my adolescence spent reclined in a Junji Ito spiral playing MegaJump and Cut The Rope on the bus ride to and from school. I'd also like to make a roguelike since that's probably my favourite genre. OH also I'd love to do an adventure game with snarky charming writing and a million little details I get to procrastinate with making and the player gets to explore, I love that shit and that's what I made back in my RPGMaker days. Definitely gonna do a horror game someday too, though I'm a big ol' baby and scared to make one bc I don't want to playtest it lol. Also I've had an idea for a few years to make a stealth game where you're trying to get your shopping done while someone you know from high school is in the store, which isn't fleshed out beyond that idea but could be fun. I have so much excitement in my bones to get into GameDev, and I'm sure as I become more proficient I'll be doing it nonstop; my biggest hurdle right now is not knowing what tf I'm doing.

Anyways, not sure what I'll do tomorrow but I'm trying to make time to practice art more frequently, since that's definitely gonna be my biggest obstacle for solo development. Art is such a huge part of how a game feels and is received, and it's possibly the thing in this world I'm worst at. I'm very excited to get into this leg of my life, and I'm nothing but optimistic about the future. I get excited and obsess over a new hobby probably twice a month, but this really feels different.

[ginkgomoon]

Gavin’s Old Days Date- Analysis

I received an ask just then about this date and so I’m typing my heart away at 2 in the morning. It didn’t really fully sink in to how much of a good date Old Days was until some time had passed, with the way how I looked at Gavin back then different to how I saw him now. This date brought back so many emotions and memories- especially when it’s such a well-rounded story with various hidden meanings and references which enabled me to have something to analyse!

This date circulates around Gavin and MC’s high school history in the span of days Friday and Saturday- on that fateful day when Gavin wanted to give the letter, to the night he waited for her.

It also has a circular storyline structure, from when MC first dreams of Gavin that catalyses following events. But something we also have to note is that the whole entire time until the very last few minutes- MC is ‘dreaming’.

The turbulent flow of time and space stunned me, and countless doors opened before me one by one.

The memory fragments poured in, and those images reflecting me and Gavin flew past quickly.

He turned his back to me and walked away, his white shirt fluttering in the wind, almost engulfed by the increasingly denser mist.

I shouted his name aloud and ran desperately, wanting to catch up with him, but the corner of his shirt was like wind that couldn't be grasped, dispersing between my fingers.

His figure became increasingly blurred as he was farther and farther, finally disappearing completely in the narrow field of vision.

Standing in the void, I seemed to have lost all directions and motivation forward.

Until a gentle breeze with a familiar fragrance blew the fog away.

There seemed to be dazzling sunlight piercing through the clouds, and after the mist dissipated, a completely different space-time appeared before me…

This part of MC’s dream is like a metaphor for Gavin’s sudden leave. The mini fragments of her memories and the information that she knew now compared to back in high school come together to try to form some comprehensible picture in her mind, which in this case- her dream.

(Which probably was helped by the presence of Black Cabin with the ‘“doors”. But I could also argue that it wasn’t, because this isn’t supposed to be the first time MC enters Black Cabin. Then again, dates differ from the main storyline.)

But just like how MC is Gavin’s North Star, without him, even she is lost and directionless. They both need each other. As they are each others’ mystery, they are each others’ answers.

“This uniform and medals are my beliefs, with you guiding me in the direction forward.” -Go See Him

MC wants to reach out, not wanting Gavin to leave her, just like how he left seven years ago. Though even here, Gavin’s wind helps guide her forward- to meet him again in this time-space.

Dreams are still a big mystery to us. Some say it reveals our deepest desires and fears presented by our subconscious. By listening to it, we are able to guide our efforts in achieving and chasing what we truly desire whilst avoiding our fears. And if some dreams are based on truth, then it can easily foreshadow what we are about to encounter.

As MC finally settles in appearing at their old school of Loveland High, she sees Gavin.

Through the crowds, he seemed to be looking at the girl standing on the middle of the flag raising platform with a speech draft in her hands. Without realising, he crumpled the letter in his hand even more tightly.

The infamous letter.

Moments ago he saw me, he was so shocked that his pupils contracted slightly. He also slipped when he was about to jump down.

“Who are you?”

The shock in his eyes was now replaced by alertness and uncertainty.

Gavin clearly doesn’t know this MC- because in this time-space, she doesn’t really exist. As I said above, as dreams can be based on truth and our desires, MC feels like she could have done something to correct their relationship in this course of time. But at this stage between her and Gavin, she doesn’t know much about it because he never explicitly told her and she wants to know. This dream is a manifestation of that.

MC: “Excuse me, do you know MC? I am her cousin.”

MC also experiences being her own cousin such as in Time Subway’s Loveland High Noodle Bar and STF Drill Ground.

Gavin looked at me suspiciously for a long time, and finally nodded indifferently.

Gavin: “Oh, what do you want with her?”

MC: “How is she doing in school lately?”

Gavin: “I don’t know her that well.”

Gavin helps MC locate herself- her high school self- but when she looks back, he has already disappeared. She then overhears students talking about Gavin getting beaten up by a hundred people and becomes an investigator into his whereabouts.

The next part of the date isn’t from MC’s narration, which led me to believe that this really did happen in MC and Gavin’s own universe. The ‘truth’ of the dream.

*Beating up happening*

Random Kid Who Doesn’t Have Better Things To Do: “I heard that our school overlord is transferring to another school. Is that true? Since you are leaving, why can’t you be good?”

Gavin: “That’s none of your business!”

Random Kid Who Doesn’t Have Better Things To Do: “True, but after you leave, your beloved girl will no longer be under protection, right? Don’t worry I’ll take care of her for you. And I heard she’s our campus belle.”

Gavin (fiercely with an angry face): “What did you say?”

*More beating up*

MC’s POV begins.

Finally, I found the alley from memory.

Gavin: “You won’t get off so easily next time. Try getting near her and see what happens.”

Gavin leaves and even MC wasn’t fast enough to catch a wounded, bleeding Gavin. She racks her brains to try to figure out where he is, and finally comes to the piano room.

And BEHOLD- Gavin casually sitting on a ginkgo tree dressing his wounds.

Gavin (annoyed): “Why are you everywhere…”

MC: “Are you waiting for MC? She’s preparing for exams so she won’t be here today.”

Gavin: “...I wasn’t looking for her.”

Gavin reluctantly agrees to follow MC into the infirmary and she starts to help properly dress his wounds.

MC: “Are you not a close friend with MC?”

Gavin: “... I’ve just heard her name before. She’s got good grades and she’s very kind.”

MC: “Have you ever talked to her?”

Gavin: “Nope.”

MC: “Then how do you know she’s kind?”

Gavin: “Why should I answer your questions?”

He looked a little vexed, looking away with his ears turning red.

MC: “Sorry, I meant well. It’s just that she’s mentioned you to me. She says you’re not as bad as what people say you are. You helped carry her books and took her to the infirmary…”

Gavin: “I just happened to be around.”

MC: “Err, then you must happen to be around quite a lot.���

Gavin: “How do you know all of this?”

MC: “She tells me everything. We even look very similar don’t we?”

Gavin: “But you act differently.”

MC helps Gavin finish patching his wounds and Gavin is noted to be unwilling to stay with her.

MC: “I have one more thing to tell you. MC is a bit slow. She is not as good as you think, and will also be blinded by rumours…”

Gavin interrupts me coldly.

Gavin: “She’s a very nice person. What she thinks of me has nothing to do with anyone else. If you're here just to tell me these things, then I don't need to listen to you.”

Gavin grabbed his uniform, but a white object fell from his pocket to the floor.

It was a crumpled letter. Stained in blood.

I went to pick it up but the paper slipped out and I caught a glimpse of the contents by accident.

Gavin quickly picked up the letter and put it back without saying a word.

There was a flash of dismissal in his eyes. He tried to flatten the creases on the letter awkwardly.

(RIP LETTER. He even tried to flatten it. GAVINNN)

Gavin’s view remains the same in their own universe- “You can’t change other people’s opinions but you can change your attitude towards them. Don't let yourself be easily affected. You shouldn't envy me. You’re different from me. You're kind and thoughtful. That's what makes you, you. Besides, I’m not as free as you think, and I care about a lot of things.” -Company Footage [Chapter 3-7]

The scene around her changes. MC figures that if this is the memory of her and Gavin, then the most important thing was to find him.

MC’s mind fixates on the familiar bloody letter- recalling its words. MC then sprints to the school library.

The library looked a little deserted in the darkness. Looking along the rows of bookshelves, I finally found Gavin seated next to the window.

At this point, Gavin has been waiting a whole day for high school MC to meet him. She didn’t read the letter that had the time he wanted her to come.

He turned around and the moment he heard my footsteps, and the glimmer in his eyes suddenly died away again when he saw me.

I realised that on this day, he had wanted to say goodbye.

He just frowned and looked away, uninterested.

MC: “Are you waiting for MC? She might have misunderstood. Sorry, let me apologise for her.”

Gavin: “It has nothing to do with you.”

He paused and said in a self-mockery tone.

Gavin: “I knew she wouldn't come anyway.”

I’ve never seen Gavin like this. At this time, he was still so young and one could easily read his emotions.

Only then did I realise how he described his past as a mere “regret” was an understatement. He had to endure the long wait and the misery of being understood silently.

(It’s 2am and I’m crying.)

I mistook the farewell letter as a threat and threw it away. I never tried to learn the truth and misunderstood him. And still was protected and cherished by him.

I never felt so sorry and never wanted to blame myself even more.

If I didn't know all of this, if we had never met each other after we went in opposite directions…

MC: “Although I know saying these now is meaningless...You’ll be a very awesome person in the future, and you will stick to your belief and to justice. And you’ll also meet the person you want to meet. Even though she might not be great and always troubles you, you will definitely meet each other in the future. So…”

But when I looked back up, Gavin was gone.

As if back to the beginning of the dream, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t catch up or make a sound.

And MC wakes up. (Circular storyline- starts and end with a dream- starts and ends with Gavin.)

“Why did it take you so long to answer? Did you just wake up?”

It was Gavin.

MC: “Gavin… I….”

Gavin: “Why do you sound so weird?”

MC: “I had a dream about you.”

Gavin: “Was it a bad dream? Don’t worry, it won’t happen. By the way, I'll be at your place soon. I brought steamed buns and soybean milk for breakfast.”

Just like how he bought milk and bread for her at the infirmary after she fainted during a school sports event.

The moment I saw Gavin, I threw myself into his arms, crying.

His strong chest, the familiar smell under his collar. This was Gavin, the Gavin who would never disappear or leave me.

Gavin: “Why are you crying?”

He tried to dry my tears clumsily, but both his hands were occupied, so he had to move to the table and put the breakfast down while I hung onto him like a koala.

Gavin: “Tell me, what was your dream about?”

MC: “In my dream, you skipped class, got into fights, and ignored me.”

Gavin: “...”

MC: “You also said, ‘it’s none of your business’ to me coldly several times.”

He held back laughter and listened to my tearful complaint. Then he suddenly took my hand, and slapped it on his palm.

Gavin: “Then bully me back now.”

MC: “Gavin, have you ever thought about… what if we didn’t meet?”

He gave it some thought and nodded seriously.

Gavin: “Yes I have. If I wasn't there, would the girl get bullied? Would someone be looking out for her? I’ve also wondered if someone would fall in love with her or give her a love letter.... Would she like someone else? So, if I were to meet her again, I must hold onto her.”

He took my hand lightly, and kissed it preciously, his voice soft.

“And never let her go again.”

(The same hands that helped dress his wounds. CRYING.)

All this time Gavin had regretted not being able to give the letter to her in person, presumably with the fear of rejection from the one person he cared about. Even if Gavin hadn’t had a conversation with her or knew her very well, the interactions they have had together was enough for Gavin to form an opinion of her- a strong enough opinion that even he refuses to listen to MC’s ‘cousin’ (interactions like wanting to introduce himself in the library but MC dashes off LOL).

Wanting to protect her continuously from the students during the alleyway fight and waiting day and night for her also really does showcase his determination and the effectiveness of having a glimmer of hope from and for someone goes a long way, especially with a loyal man like Gavin.

Additionally, MC states that he was cold to her, which shows that even someone who claimed to be her cousin wouldn't melt Gavin’s heart with secondhand words. (That wall that he built up between him and MC of how he bats each question she asks with another question LOL.)

Even in front of Cousin MC, he wants to keep up that tough and unbreakable persona, the one that high school MC is more familiar with- until the very end when he finally has to come to the conclusion that MC is not going to see him. This therefore really does make him think that she didn't want to meet him. And in the storyline, he really did have to live like that, thinking that she thought of him just like how everyone did- until they met again.

But after all that Gavin had been through, he’s willing to cherish every moment he has with MC in the future. Not basing their relationship off of the failures, misunderstandings and regrets- but their hopes and dreams of a better future together.

“Before you… I lower all my defences.” -Gavin

#ITS 2 AM #ANALYSIS OH HOW IVE MISSED YOU #mlqc #mr love queens choice #love and producer #恋与制作人 #mlqc gavin #mlqc en #mlqc analysis

[phantomphangphucker]

Ectober week Darkness/Poison - Sinners Are We Chap.2: The Prince Of Poisoned Hope And The One Lurking In The Shadows

Even monsters can make a family. That’s no reason for the world to get its hopes up though.

History books will always show you how one simple change can change everything. Alter the course of History forever. And while that was true, today’s history books didn’t have much to tell. The universe had fallen to ruin in a matter of years after all. There were some who would say that this was the best possible outcome though. Even wrote books on it. That if it had been just one or the other, instead of the two of them together, that there wouldn’t be a universe left standing. Because together they changed one another, gave each other something other than obliterating things to focus on, and a heightened interest in the future.

The universe watched those two walk out on stage vengeful and angry, sadistic and carefree. One acting out of a twisted version of retribution and spite, the other who was more just a destructive force of nature. And as their show went on, one became more uncaring and unbothered by her past and the other grew even fonder of the idea of ‘irony’. The two former arch enemies in the eyes of anyone who knew of how they were before, now coupled together and encouraging each other in different was.

Their wedding was a Zone-wide and universe-wide celebration. Not because anyone was happy for them, no, because not celebrating might get you killed. Those two were incredibly flaky over who they would and wouldn’t kill, maim, or torture now-a-day’s. But it was also officially a holiday. Because the king and queen were to be wed.

The King Of Ghosts and the Queen Of Mortals. And though the latter hadn’t actually been a thing until her, no one was about to oppose. Lest she sic one of her metal machines on you or came after you herself. If she was in a mood, maybe he would come after you instead. Which while promising a likely quicker death, also would likely get everyone around you killed or maimed too.

The living were overall more fearful of her but would rather suffer at her hand than his. Something similar happened with the dead. A ghost didn’t care much about the collateral around them, and loved chaos. So while they feared him more, they’d take his destructiveness over her torture any day. And arguably, when it came down to it? They fulfilled their conquered roles well. When he wasn’t running amok destroying areas of Zone, the place flourished and they had a leader that was feared. That meant a lot to those of the dead. Being feared was their bread and butter. And the places he destroyed, if he left them alone long enough, reformed better than before. Like a fire had raged through it and the new growth was coming back stronger. Similar went for her, her existence alone deterred crime and planets simply couldn’t survive without other planets help due to all the destruction and loss. The living were more connected than ever and better behaved. And the living and dead hardly harmed each other anymore, because doing so was a great way to get the two tyrants' attention. Which was very seldom a good thing.

Of course there were plenty who were genuinely loyal and fond of the pair. Often working as assassins, knights, or subordinate rulers under them. In fact, anyone with large amounts of power or sway could reasonably be considered at the very least sympathisers. Not that anyone could do anything about that. Most people just busied themselves with survival and enjoying every day as much as they could, it very well could be their last day at the drop of a hat after all. Though everyone paid attention and gaped when the firstborn Gray-Phantom was announced. One Russet Julius Gray-Phantom, the middle name wasn’t recognised for the warning that it accidentally was. Most actually genuinely celebrated because maybe, maybe, this would take up more of their time and attention. Maybe the kid could be a positive influence on them. Be a poison that could dissolve the ice and hatred around their heart and Core. Maybe they’d actually consider their own kids' opinions and wants; they didn’t care about anyone else’s after all.

At the same time though, lords know how fucked up this kid might be or get.

The second-born Gray-Phantom, one Orrin Jasper Gray-Phantom, being announced only four years later gave everyone genuine hope that maybe the two’s focus had genuinely shifted to building a family. That they would stay with their family and exist more in the shadows of the two Realms rather than tormenting them on the forefront. Which could be good or very very bad. The realms could end up with a whole family of violent psychotic monsters. With generations of them. A lineage of brutality. And yet at the same time, both realms had gotten used to the king and queen. The dead didn’t want their king to lose his touch, his fearsomeness; and him destroying things was a reason to socialise with each other more, they might need to stay at another ghosts lair after all. The living worried that crime might increase or that they might start nipping at each other’s throats; she had made the living more inclined to violence and survival of the fittest yet more tight-knit community wise.

Then the elder prince went and ripped a bunch of the living apart limb from limb while laughing like a mad man at thirteen years of age. The boy was an absolute demon child, and his parents had no interest in leashing him. Heck, those two probably enjoyed it. But this incident was also when the Mortal Realm learned halfas were a thing. In suitably dramatic fashion when the human-looking elder prince transformed directly in front of the police force before shooting into the sky cackling. Which was news that spread through the universe at breakneck speed, faster than any poison, both for the oddity of that and the impossibility of that. Plus, gossip surrounding the high royals always stirred up interest. Out of morbid curiosity and pure survival.

At least they knew what the elder prince looked like as a human now, so they wouldn’t be caught so easily by surprise. Which did result in him getting attacked by ghost hunters in human form once, which very noticeably pissed him off... and got the hunters killed. But people understood why they tried, it was a test to see how strong the teen was. Which was to say he was definitely not as strong as his father or as smart as his mother; and he had very little in the way of tenacity. Which was good for them, meant he could be easily deterred; running off to huff like a petulant child.

The younger prince was more of an unknown, an uncertainty. But those that did run into him or spot him from afar said he looked at people like he was judging their worth and made them feel small. Like they were staring into a black smokey void, So he was clearly intelligent. Him leaving an area, especially to ghosts, felt less like he was running off and more like he had decided that the place or person could be useful to him. But for the most part, he stuck to the shadows, or maybe just seldom left Phantom’s Keep. It was quite possible he hung around in his human form, if he was a halfa too; no one would know after all. Though there were rumours that he went and stopped some war in the Ghost Realm at some point. No one was sure if that meant he had been peaceful or just went and obliterated both sides. The second being more in line with the behaviour of the rest of the family. Regardless, both the living and dead preferred the younger prince. He wasn’t actively dangerous to them and seemed less wild. But considering the king’s and queen’s history, the fact that they had both been heroes and champions for good once hadn’t disappeared into forgotten history; the younger also made them more nervous. Russet’s motives and feelings were obvious, if you saw him you knew he was up to something that would get someone hurt or make him stronger; it was obvious by the time he hit adulthood that he was power-hungry. By twenty, everyone was pretty sure he would have tried to off his parents for the throne if they weren’t in a totally different league than him in the power department. The king and queen seemed to enjoy mocking him for that and were gleeful over him trying to make himself stronger. They viewed that as them trying to push him over the edge, push him even further into violent darkness. At least that distracted the man some.

While Orrin, even at sixteen, was still effectively a mystery. Based on him ageing the same as his brother everyone decided he was definitely a halfa too. For a short while they tried to pin down his mortal form, but even the dead had no luck with that. As a result the amount rumours about him were almost endless. The most popular was that he was a thief and trickster. That he would pop up randomly in houses and lairs, scaring or creeping people out and then something went missing. That might have been born out of the fact that Russet clearly didn’t get his father’s humorous side, so maybe Orrin got all of it.

So one was like a poison that ran around destroying things and causing mayhem; even a couple societal collapses. While the other stuck to the darkness and no one really knew what lurked in that darkness.

And then, the third Gray-Phantom was born. A little girl they named Dove Jay Gray-Phantom. Just like her brothers, she was born looking like a six-year-old and she caused a stir. Because she was beautiful. Many of the more poetic types likened her to a rose blooming in a field of thorns. Of course, roses had thorns of their own; but she literally looked like the feeling of innocence. The living were as relieved as they were willing to let themselves feel when it came to the high royal family, but the dead viewed her as a possible weakness. And so they went to ‘test’ her, or more accurately ‘attack her’ while the king and queen were busy dealing with their handful elder son.

But that’s when Orrin’s protective side came out and the realms got to see his thorns for the first time. Russet lashed his thorns around like an animal full of pride, but when Orrin’s burst out from the shadows everyone immediately knew who the stronger bother was. He completely annihilated the ghosts that went after Dove with a straight face and seemingly without effort. Dove, meanwhile, seemed clueless and reportedly hummed softly the whole time.

The younger prince and princess weren’t seen for a while after that, and the elder prince seemed more volatile than normal. It could be because Dove hadn’t protected herself, which for a Gray-Phantom was absolutely unacceptable. They were supposed to be God’s amongst men whose reach seeped into every facet of the universe after all. And the elder brother was likely foaming at the mouth over being shown up by the younger. Most of the realms honestly hoped that maybe the adorable princess would change things, doubtful. But images mysteriously leaked of her wielding a sword with puffed out cheeks inspired more hope than worry.

#ectober #ectober week #ectober week 2020 #danny phantom #phandom #dan phantom #valerie gray #dark gray #implied/referenced murder #ghost king Dan #mortal queen Valerie #villain! Valerie #altrernate tue #fan fic #phan phic #my writing #have a fic suck my dick #phantomphangphucker #me taking the prompt and stretching it as far as it will go

[putschki1969]

Keiko SPICE Interview ~ English Translation

Notes: This is an amazing and very insightful interview. I did my best to translate it as quickly as possible. Please enjoy. Keiko is alluding to having a nephew now in addition to her niece. Ahh, that’s great. I know she loves being an auntie. She also mentions a chronic illness. I know she was having issues with her voice ever since late 2015/early 2016 (mild bronchitis) but I didn’t know it was that bad. Kalafina’s busy schedule probably didn’t allow her to fully recover. So glad she was finally able to recover properly. Anyways, let’s get to it! As always, be aware that my Japanese is by no means perfect so take everything with a grain of salt.

Source: https://spice.eplus.jp/articles/270870

In her first public interview since 2 years KEIKO talks about her quest to find music she can imagine herself creating. Regarding her solo debut she shared, “I liked these songs so I wanted to sing them!”

Three-person vocal unit “Kalafina”. KEIKO, one of the three members who created beautiful harmonies together, released her solo debut single  「命の花／Be Yourself」on May 27. After two years I got to interview KEIKO who is finally launching her solo career. She shared her thoughts regarding those two years of silence and how she ended up creating her new songs. She also told me how she felt about her 10 years as part of Kalafina~

The moment when music was no longer present in her life

――It's been such a long time. My last interview with you was back in March 2018.

Wow, has it really been this long...

――On May 27, you released your debut single「命の花／Be Yourself」 as solo artist, what did you do during your hiatus? How did you spend your time until you started working at your new agency? Did you prepare yourself for your solo activities?

No such thing. For me it was a period where I had to come to a full stop in order to get some clear answers for myself.

――Were there any specific things you wanted to try, a new start so to speak, without having to stick to any schedules?

I spent a lot more time in nature and with my family, there were also some days when I helped out my grandmother with her everyday chores. During these days I talked a lot with her and while we were reminiscing about the good old days the topic of kimonos came up, my grandmother is a “kimono instructor”, you know. “You have always loved kimonos, right?” she asked me one day so I ended up trying some of them on with her help. It’s a very special feeling for a girl to have someone put a kimono on for you. I wanted to provide that feelings for other people, especially my little niece and nephew.  Also, I remembered from all of our previous overseas lives that Japanese kimonos are very popular all across the world so I felt a strong determination and decided to go to a Kimono School, "OK, let's go to school!."

――So you really enrolled in a school?

Yes, I went back to school for about half a year.

――Did you get a qualification?

At first I just wanted to take some classes. But as I spent my time there, I realised that wearing a kimono also meant studying a part of Japanese history. I was so absorbed in my studies and then all of a sudden someone suggested, “why don’t you take the exam?” “Eh?” I was slightly taken aback, “should I really do it?” “You definitely should!” It was kinda like that *laughs* So I got my qualifications by sitting in for an exam in front of very sophisticated teachers who asked me lots of questions.

――This was probably refreshing for you, like a switch had been turned off in your mind?

Yes... At that time I felt like I got to experience all the good and bad aspects of my work and I was able to determine the field and scope of my activities all by myself. 

――I thought so.

When I went to Kimono School it was very refreshing to stay anonymous, I was able to put myself in a state where I was a nobody. There was pretty much no one at school who was close to my age in their thirties. There were either very young people who aspired to get a job in the kimono field or refined older ladies who were wearing kimono on a daily basis. But no one in my age-group.  

――It was an environment where you only had seniors and juniors around you but no peers?

Yes. It felt like a natural environment to start from scratch without having anyone around on my level. Jumping into such an environment was a very relaxing experience. 

――In a sense it might have been a refreshing time for you.

Naturally, when you put yourself into an unfamiliar situation, you will treat everything with a lot of respect. You are also starting to reconsider the way you treat the people around yourself, your attitude towards people.

――So it was a time when you were analysing the relationships and distances between yourself and other people? Within all of this, was there also some time you dedicated to music? For example, did you take singing lesson or anything like that?

Some fans may know this but towards the end of our activities my chronic illness had gotten pretty bad to a point where I wasn’t even able to do lives any more. Restoring my health and giving my voice a chance to recover was a major catalyst for me to take a break, that’s why I didn’t do anything music-related for about half a year.

――So you didn’t even take care of your vocals during this time?

Exactly. I took a complete and total break from music. In those moments when I was resting properly, music was no longer a part of my life.

――Music has always been a part of your life, you have dedicated a lot of thought, work and training towards music. In turn I think that music also provided a lot for you. So how was it to be separated from this integral part of your life? Did you maybe feel sad or a sense of loneliness?

I don't recall feeling any of that but my memories are quite blurry and fragmentary. I really don’t remember the time from our final stage greeting at the Toho Cinema Hibiya until around autumn of the same year. Maybe I was too absorbed with jumping into a new environment and resting my body. Even if I look back at that time now and try to remember what I was feelings back then, I can’t really remember anything of what was happening for about half a year. it’s very strange.

――So there was nothing, just a feeling of emptiness?

Yes, a feeling of emptiness. I guess that’s why I was trying to do so many new things, to fill that void.

She continued to search for an answer until she finally found it - a return to Kajiura Yuki

――After all this time you have returned with your solo debut. I wonder, was there a particular moment that had you become active again and which eventually motivated you to work towards your solo debut? 

I remember the moment clearly when I started to be active again, it was actually a very simple thing. I became aware of the voices of our fans who had always supported us, everyone was wondering, “will KEIKO be singing again?”, “How does she feel about music right now?!”

――Yes, everyone was really curious.

Naturally, as my body recovered, my mind and heart became brighter and healthier too. After the end of summer and autumn, my body was in a great state. From then onwards I felt motivated to finally meet up with people in the industry again. I had a chance meeting with Yoda-san* who is now working together with me as my producer. During our initial talks he asked me, "you have sung songs of all kinds of genres in the past but what kind of music it is that KEIKO-chan wants to sing?” I was baffled when he asked me that because for a moment there I had no idea what to answer… [*She is referring to Haruo Yoda who also produces MISIA. She uses UNIVERSOUL999 STUDIO for her recordings.]

――You just froze up?

Yes, for the life of me, I couldn't answer his question. I wondered, "what is it that I want to sing?" I was super shocked because I was clueless. In that moment I knew I couldn’t go on like that, it was like a switch had been turned on in my mind.

――Not being able to answer immediately, that’s unexpected.

I had always been so invested in music, for all this time I had done nothing but pursue music so it was very shocking to realise that I didn’t have an answer for such an important question regarding music. 

――So did you also start to become active again to find that answer?

After that switch had been turned on, I spent every day in the studio. I turned off the lights and listened to music all day every day pretending like I was at a concert venue.

――You spent all your time at the studio?

Yes.

―― Was it like trial and error? I don't know if you can give a specific name but were there any songs or artists that left an impression on you while you were listening to all of that music?

Kajiura-san for sure.

――Oh…….

No matter what I listened to, I always ended up thinking, “no, that’s not it, that’s not what I want to do.” At one point I thought that I just wouldn’t be able to find anything for me and then suddenly there was one of Kajiura-san's OSTs playing in the background. I was like, ‘oh... that's exactly what I was looking for."

――What exactly was that?

It was refreshing to once again realise that Kajiura-san's music is still able to touch my heart. All this time I had been looking for something "new!" After all, in order to start something new you want to find new music, right?

――I guess so.

But once I thought about it carefully, I realised that both the FictionJunction songs as well as the Kalafina songs were incredibly rewarding and worthy, so much fun and engrossing. Without even realising it, I had spent a decade performing these songs. I could do that because I loved the music. I felt like I was once again thrown back to a time when it was just about that simple feeling. That was the answer I ended up with in the final days of 2018.

――You were looking everywhere for the right answer but turns out the answer was right in front where you originally started.

I was kinda going back and forth needlessly, I felt very sorry about that *laughs*. The answer was right there all along *laughs*.

――I am sure that was a very emotional time for you... That's how you ended up appearing at Kajiura-san’s lives again after a very long break, how were those lives for you?

They were a lot of fun! I kept saying, “I am having a blast, I love this so much!” *laughs* Looking back at that time now, I think the biggest change for me was that I felt this immense joy to be back. I think it was because I took such a long break.

――But your heart was never able to let go.

Perhaps so. I think as an adult it takes quite some courage to put a halt to your life like that. But it was absolutely necessary for me to stop for a while.

――It's wonderful that you were able to gain a new sort of awareness during all of this.

Starting a new chapter like this felt really nice because my past and present got connected. And now I see it as my duty to strengthen my body and mind for a long-lasting music career.  

――When I first asked you how it was to perform again after such a long time and you replied with a huge smile, “it was so much fun!”, that felt very refreshing to me, it made me incredibly happy to see you like that. 

Thank you. I guess I am just so excited to be back at Kajiura-san's lives. It was so nice because everyone was there. Kajiura-san, the other singers and the band-members, they were all there. So I think that’s what made me happy. It might have been very different if my comeback had happened under different circumstances, on a different stage.

――There may have been a different kind of nervousness.

I agree. This way it just felt like coming home, a warm and welcoming home. 

Two songs she decided to sing because she fell in love with the melody

――Please tell us about the release of your digital solo debut single, 「命の花 / Be Yourself」. Let’s start with the time when you found out about the release.

I am currently busy with the music production process so it may be best to ask my staff members about all the details regarding the release *laugh*.

――We have someone from the record company with us here today so let’s ask them, shall we? Is there anything strategic about the timing of this digital single release?

Person in charge: We decided to release an album around autumn for her big solo comeback. But we knew that the fans would be very curious about what kind of music they could expect from KEIKO in the future. So to start with, we wanted to do a little greeting by KEIKO and a digital release with two very good songs, 「命の花」and「Be Yourself」. This way we would get the chance to receive some feedback from the fans.

――I see, thank you for your input. Now back to Keiko, I would also like to know your impression when you first heard those two songs?

Doing solo activities is like starting from scratch for me. I am working based on my instincts, my gut-feeling, right now my premise is "if I like a song I want to sing it."

――You want to be able to like and appreciate the songs.

When I heard 「命の花」 for the first time I was immediately blown away, “OMG, I NEED to sing this!” I fell completely in love with the melody. With 「Be Yourself」it was a different way of falling in love. It’s the kind of song I enjoy listening to as a personal hobby. When I want to get hyped or motivated I listen to this sort of song. I shared my impression with the people around me and then we all ended up deciding that I should try singing it and just match my voice to that type of song.  If you think about it, my way of falling in love with 「命の花」and「Be Yourself」was the complete opposite.  

――Yes, you liked both but your approach of liking those songs was totally different.

That's right. Nevertheless, I love both of these songs. For some reason they resonated with me.

――When it comes to 「命の花」you were also in charge of the lyrics, weren’t you? Did you fall so much in love with the melody that you immediately wanted to write the lyrics?

No.

――Eh! ?

Well *laughs*. I haven't studied songwriting and I have never written lyrics before. So despite wanting to sing songs I never thought I could write the lyrics.

――That’s your attitude toward music.

But this time I was asked, "if you feel like it you could try and write the lyrics yourself?” so I said, “okay, I will give it a try.” But if I hadn’t been able to put my own worldview into words I would have probably asked the composer to do it.

――Do you feel like you prioritise the world views of the music when you are writing the lyrics yourself?

First and foremost I think that listening to music should make you feel good. It’s about the placement of words and how you feel a certain atmosphere. I'm not saying that I dislike writing lyrics but depending on each song, I think I would like to decide whether I want to write the lyrics or not.

――So you will not write the lyrics for everything.

I really don’t think so.

――Is it very difficult for you to write lyrics?

I guess because I was so in love with the song I set some really high goals for myself. It took a lot of time. The production period was in January so the cold weather made it even more difficult for me, I was constantly sitting there and sighing into the cold air. “Phew...” *laughs*

――The cold season is perfect to let out heavy sighs *laughs*.

It really wasn’t easy. But I didn’t see it as hardship. The feeling that I really wanted to sing this song was too strong. At the end of the day I managed to write the lyrics thinking that I wanted to sing this song as soon as possible.

――If you can't write proper lyrics you won’t have a song to sing. 

That's right. "I can't sing it right now so I have to deal with this situation!” So that’s how I spent all of January, singing and writing and lots of sighing, trying to put my feelings into words. Lots of trial and error, “no, this doesn’t sound right, no that doesn’t resonate well here,...”

Everything leads to the feeling of "doing music and having fun".

――When I listened to the song I got this really silly impression, I felt like, "this is all so KEIKO-like, bursting with KEIKO-ness."

Why is that? *laughs*

――You put so much thought into your singing, I was able to hear all sorts of colours and sceneries in your voice, a great mixture. So the first thing that came to mind was, "this is all so KEIKO-like" *laughs*

Hahaha! *laughs*

――Overlapping colours, getting glimpses of the shades below, a multicolour structure. How was it when you actually sang the song?

Rather than writing the lyrics first and singing the song afterwards I wrote the song and sang it at the same time. So when I had finally completed the song, it felt like a natural progression.

――It’s not so much about trying to sing something that is already written but more about finding the right words to express the song properly? 

It's difficult to put all of this into words... I wanted to use sharp sounds and vowels in my singing that would emphasise the images emerging from the melody. This is what I struggled with the most. It took me some time to find a balance where the melody and words would match.

――You wanted them to match?

Yes. I think that's because of my activities as a member of Kalafina, my ears are trained in such a way and used to that kind of harmony.

――Probably because you have heard such a wide variety of singing styles, this made you very particular about how things are supposed to sound like.

When the lyrics are written by someone else and the notes and words are fitting nicely together I never thought it would actually be that hard. But from the very first moment I started to work on my song, I really gained an understanding for the difficulty of writing lyrics yourself.

――When you are thinking about that you quickly realise that what composers and songwriters are doing is simply awesome, it’s out of this world.  

I think it's amazing. At the end of the day I am just a newbie so all I can do is a beginner’s work. You have to be aware of yourself and what you can do. That’s something I have learned, you can’t do anything in life unless you are fully aware of your capabilities. The very final vocal recording was a lot of fun though.

――I think it's great that you can do music and have fun at the same time.

That's right! It's so much fun!

――Do the words and themes used in the lyrics reflect some parts of yourself?

Yes, some parts for sure. But... hmmm... it's difficult. This is my first time talking about writing lyrics but I am not really sure how much I am supposed to say? I guess it’s all hidden within the lyrics somewhere, I think everyone should go and look for those parts.

――I guess it all comes down to the individual interpretation, listeners discover the things that they want to hear?

I agree. There are all kinds of people who are doing their very best every day and working hard. I want to create and sing music for those people. I'm most happy when they can listen to my music and find something that resonates with their own lives.

―― Now I would also like so hear a few things about the second song "Be Yourself." It made me feel great to listen to it while going for a run.

Thank you, I am so happy to hear that *laughs*. I have also done some of my workouts and muscle training while listening to “Be Yourself”, it really got me motivated.

――It's such an exhilarating song!

For me it has this particular vibe of youthfulness. We are all at an age now where youth feels quite far away, doesn’t it? *laughs*

――Well, yes... *laughs*

However, the beat and momentum of the song drown out any sort of embarrassment you might feel, there is a kind of overeagerness conveyed. I wanted to sing a song that you can just listen to without having to think or worry about anything, you can just have a great time.

Maybe one could say she is a “Sound Otaku”

――It's been a while since the release. An official Twitter account has also been launched, it’s something you have never done, right? Have you seen some of the fan reactions?

I am seeing them. But for the most part I am busy with making more music at the moment so I am leaving a lot of that work to my staff members. I am very much aware of everyone’s feedback though so thank you!

――How was everyone’s feedback?

As you mentioned earlier, people were just really happy to hear my voice and bothing but my voice in two whole songs. Others said they were really curious to hear more of my music. I was particularly happy to hear everyone’s impressions regarding my singing voice.

――In the future you will most likely release lots of albums and sing your music live at concerts. Have you already thought about the fact that you will be standing alone on stage then? Have you been imagining yourself doing that?

I have already started to research different ways on how to best express my songs with my newly created singing voice. I am doing image training, taking care of my voice and preparing myself for live performances

――What do you mean by expressing the songs?

As I have said earlier, I started to make music again because I really loved the melody so I wanted to add my voice to it. During the production process I spend a lot of time in the studio and I try to find a voice and sound that fits the song perfectly. This period right now is super fun since I am putting everything on the line, I am taking a lot of risks. Depending on the song, my voice and singing style can be completely different.

――That’s quite something. It’s very stoic of you that you can find so much joy in that.

I wonder if stoic is the right word here... I think “otaku” would describe it better.

――So you are a music otaku?

Maybe a sound otaku? *laughs*. Wondering about what kinds of sounds are echoing in the background while listening to a song...Being curious about the base-line... It’s these things I am super interested in. My infatuation with sound (“otomo”) is very strong. The word otomo is probably made up by Kajiura-san *laughs*.

――It’s a good word. A word that accurately describes an infatuation with sounds. I feel like you are even more infatuated than you used to be in the past.

Everyone around me is making the pursuit of my infatuation possible, that’s why I am so determined. I am just really grateful. 

――After listening to everything you have just said right now, I think everyone will feel the need to check out your songs.

I want everyone to listen to them. I think they are both very interesting *laughs*.

――Speaking of which, is there anything particular you would like to share with your fans before they listen to your songs?

Not really. Everyone should freely decide whether they want to listen or not. And they should listen with an open mind. I feel like my motivations, infatuations and interests are very different from what the fans like. If I share all the aspects and points of my songs that I consider special  then fans are very likely to focus on only that.

――Yes, that’s true, if you provide all this information beforehand then people may end up being biased.

I want everyone to enjoy my music with an open mind, without being bound by preconceived notions.

How she currently feels about 10 years of Kalafina

――I would also like to hear your thoughts on Kalafina. Looking back, how do you feel about the 10 years as part of Kalafina?

My 10 years as part of Kalafina, well, yes, they are the reason I can sing now. It’s the binding link of everything, it’s why I can sing now, it’s why I want to sing, it’s the axis of my very existence. That’s what my time in Kalafina means to me.

――Now that you have released your solo debut single in May all three of you have started your solo activities. How do you feel about Hikaru and Wakana's solo activities?

I want them to do their very best and achieve everything that they couldn’t achieve as members of Kalafina. I think that’s the only thing I can say about that...I think there is no point in comparing our solo activities. I just want them to sing with all their might.

――I think for many people Kalafina is still very important. I am assuming there are quite a few fans who yearn to hear Kalafina’s harmony again one day when they listen to all of your solo works.

Our lives as singers is based on that very harmony so I am honestly very happy that many people are still thinking that way. We put all of our heart into Kalafina’s music and activities so to know that everyone wants to hear that harmony again feels like an affirmation of our hard work, it makes me very happy.

――Last but not least, please share a final message for the fans.

In the past I have talked about all kinds of thing with SPICE. I am happy to once again share my thoughts with SPICE now that I am starting out on this new path in my career. My solo activities as KEIKO have just begun, I am really enjoying making music. I am looking forward to the day when I can sing my songs for you, please look forward to that day as well! Thank you for your lifelong support. *laughs*

#kalafina #keiko #keiko solo debut #keiko solo work #my translation #my translations #spice interview #such a long interview #I am dead #my baby #everyone #please read this #the amount of candy that was needed to finish this translation #there goes my diet XD

[maximelebled]

2019 & 2020

Hello everyone! So yeah, this yearly blog post is about three... four months late... it covers two years now.

I did have a lot of things written last year, last time, but the more things have changed, the more I’ve realized that a lot of things I talked about on here... were because I lacked enough of a social life to want to open up on here.

In a less awkwardly-phrased way, what I’m saying is, I was coping.

Not an easy thing to admit to in public by any means, but I reckon it’s the truth. Over the past two years, I’ve made more of an effort to build better & healthier friendships, dial back my social media usage a bit (number 1 coping strategy), not tie all my friendships to games I play, especially Dota (number 2 coping strategy), so that I could be more emotionally healthy overall. 

Pictured: me looking a whole lot like @dril on the outside, although not so much on the inside. (Photo by my lovely partner.)

To some degree, I believe it’s important to be able to talk about yourself a bit more openly in a way that is generally not encouraged nor made easy on other social networks (looking at you, Twitter). I know that 2010-me would be scared to approach 2020-me; and it’s my hope that what I am writing here would not help him with that, but also help him become less of an insecure dweeb faster. 😉

Not that recent accomplishments have stopped me from being any less professionally anxious. Sometimes the impostor syndrome just morphs into... something else.

Anyway, what I’m getting at is, the first reason it took me until this year to finish last year’s post is because, with my shift in perspective, and these realizations about myself, I do want to keep a lot more things private... or rather, it’s that I don’t feel the need to share them anymore? And that made figuring out what to write a fair bit harder.

The other reason I didn’t write sooner is because, in 2018, I wrote my "year in review” post right before I became able to talk about my then-latest cool thing (my work on Valve’s 2018 True Sight documentary). So I then knew I’d have to bring it up in the 2019 post. But then, I was asked to work on the 2019 True Sight documentary, and I know it was going to air in late January 2020, so I was like, “okay, well, whatever, it, I’ll just write this yearly recap after that, so I don’t miss the coach this time”. So I just ended up delaying it again until I was like... “okay, whatever, I’ll just do both 2019 and 2020 in a single post.”

I think I can say I’ve had the privilege of a pretty good 2019, all things considered. And also of a decent 2020, given the circumstances. Overall, 2019 was a year of professional fulfillment; here’s a photo taken of me while I was managing the augmented reality system at The International 2019! (The $35 million dollar Dota 2 tournament that was held, this that year, in Shanghai.)

If I’d shown this to myself 10 years ago it would’ve blown my mind, so I guess things aren’t all that bad...!

I’ve brought up two health topics in these posts before: weight & sleep.

As for the first, the situation is still stable. If it is improving, it is doing so at a snail’s pace. But quite frankly, I haven’t put in enough effort into it overall. Even though I know my diet is way better than it was five or six years ago, I’ve only just really caught up with the “how it should have been the entire time” stage. It is a milestone... but not necessarily an impressive one. Learning to cook better things for myself has been very rewarding and fulfilling, though. It’s definitely what I’d recommend if you need to find a place to start.

As for sleep, throughout 2019, I continued living 25-hour days for the most part. There were a few weeks during which I slowed down the process, but it continued on going. Then, in late December of 2019, motivated by the knowledge that sleep is such a foundational pillar of your health, I figured I really needed to take things seriously, and I managed to go on a three month streak of mostly-stable sleep! (See the data above.)

Part of what helped was willingly stopping to use my desktop computer once it got too late in the day, avoiding Dota at the end of the day as much as possible, and anything exciting for that matter... and, as much as that sounds like the worst possible stereotype, trying to “listen to my body” and recognizing when I was letting stress and anxiety build up inside me, and taking a break or trying to relax.

Also, a pill of melatonin before going to bed; but even though it’s allegedly not a problem to take melatonin, I figured I should try to rely on it as little as possible.

Unfortunately, that “good sleep” streak was abruptly stopped by a flu-like illness... it might have been Covid-19. The symptoms somewhat matched up, but I was lucky: they were very mild. I fully recovered in just over a week. I coughed a bit, but not that much. If it really was that disease, then I got very lucky.

(Pictured: another photo by my lovely SO, somewhere in Auvergne.)

My sleep continued to drift back to its 25-hour rhythm, and I only started resuming these efforts towards the fall... mostly because living during the night felt like a better option with the summer heat (no AC here). I thought about doing that the other way (getting up at 3am instead of going to bed at 7am), and while it’d make more sense temperature-wise, that would have kept me awake when there were practically no people online, and I was trying to have a better social life then, even if had to be purely online due to the coronavirus, so... yeah.

I’ve been working from home since 2012! I also lived alone for a number of years since then. For the most part, it hasn’t been a great thing for my mental health. Having had a taste of what being in an office was like thanks to a couple weeks in the Valve offices, I had the goal of beginning to apply at a few places here and there in March/April. Then the pandemic hit, so those plans are dead in the water. I wanted 2020 to be the year in which I’d finally stop being fully remote, but those plans are now dead in the water.

Now, at the end of the year, I don’t really know if I want to apply at any places. There’s a small handful of studios whose work really resonates with me, creatively speaking, and whose working conditions seem to be alright, at least from what I hear... but, and I swear I’m saying this in the least braggy way possible... there’s very little that beats having been able to work on what I want, when I want, and how much I want.

This kind of freelance status can be pretty terrifying sometimes, but I’ve managed (with some luck, of course) to reach a safe balance, a point at which I’ve effectively got this luxury of being able to only really work on what I want, and never truly overwork myself (at least by the standards of most of the gaming industry). It’s a big privilege and I feel like it’d take a lot to give it up.

Besides the things I mentioned before, one thing I did that drastically improved my mental health was being introduced to a new lovely group of friends by my partner! I started playing Dungeons & Dragons with them, every weekend or so! And in the spirit of a rising tide lifting all boats, I managed to also give back to our lovely DM, by being a sort of “AM” (audio manager)... It’s been great having something to look forward to every week.

Something to look forward to... I’ve heard about the concept of “temporal anchors”. I had heard about how the reason our adult years suddenly pass by in a blur is because we now have more “time” that’s already in our brains, but now I’m more convinced that it’s because we’re going from a very school routine such as the one schools impose upon us, to, well... practically nothing.

I thought most of my years since 2011 have been a blur, but none have whooshed by like 2020 has, and I reckon part of that is because I’ve (obviously) gone out far far less, and most importantly there wasn’t The Big Summer Event That The International Is, the biggest yearly “temporal anchor” at my disposal. The anticipation and release of those energies made summer feel a fair bit longer... and this year, summer was very much a blur for me. In and out like the wind.

I guess besides that, I haven’t really had that much trouble with being locked down. I had years of training for that, after all. Doesn’t feel like I can complain. 😛

(Pictured: trip to Chicago in January of 2019... right when the polar vortex hit!)

Work was good in 2019, and sparser in 2020. Working with Valve again after the 2018 True Sight was a very exciting opportunity. At the time, in February of 2019, I was out with my partner on little holiday trips around my region, and, after night fell, on the way back, we decided to stop in a wide open field, on a tiny countryside path, away from the cities, to try and do some star-gazing, without light pollution getting in the way.

And it’s there and then that I received their message, while looking at the stars with my SO! The timing and location turned that into a very vivid memory...

I then got to spend a couple weeks in their offices in late April / early May. I was able to bring my partner along with me to Washington State, and we did some sightseeing on the weekends.

(Pictured: part of a weekend trip in Washington. This was a dried up lakebed.)

After that, I worked on the Void Spirit trailer in the lead to The International. In August, those couple weeks in Shanghai were intense. Having peeked behind the curtain and seen everything that goes into production really does give me a much deeper appreciation for all the work that goes unseen. 

Then after that, in late 2019, there was my work on the yearly True Sight documentary, for the second time. In 2018, I’d been tasked with making just two animated sequences, and I was very nervous since that was my first time working directly with Valve; my work then was fairly “sober”, for lack of a better term.

(Pictured: view from my hotel room in Shanghai.)

For the 2019 edition, I had double the amount of sequences on my plate, and they were very trusting of me, which was very reassuring. I got to be more technically ambitious, I let my style shine through (you know... if it’s got all these gratuitous light beams, etc.), and it was real fun to work on.

At the premiere in Berlin, I was sitting in the middle of the room (in fact, you could spot me in the pre-show broadcast behind SirActionSlacks; unfortunately I had forgotten to bring textures for my shirt). Being in that spot when my shots started playing, and hearing people laughing and cheering at them... that’s an unforgettable memory. The last time I had experienced something like that was having my first Dota short film played at KeyArena in 2015, the laughter of the crowd echoing all around me... I was shaking in my seat. Just remembering it gets my heart pumping, man. It’s a really unique feeling.

So I’m pretty happy with how that work came out. I came out of it having learned quite a few new tricks too, born out of necessity from my technical ambitions. Stuff I intend to put to use again. I’m really glad that the team I worked with at Valve was so kind and great to work with. After the premiere, I received a few more compliments from them... and I did reply, “careful! You might give me enough confidence to apply!”, to which one of them replied, “you totally should, man.” But I still haven’t because I’m a massive idiot, haha. Well, I still haven’t because I don’t think I’m well-rounded enough yet. And also because, like I alluded to before, I think I’m in a pretty good situation as it is.

It’s not the first encouragements I had received from them, too; there had been a couple people from the Dota team who, at the end of my two week stay in the offices, while I was on my way out, told me I should try applying. But again, I didn’t apply because I’m a massive idiot.

(Pictured: view from the Valve offices.)

To be 200% frank, even though there’s been quite a few people who’ve followed my work throughout the years, comments on Reddit and YouTube, etc. who’ve all said things along the lines of “why aren’t you working for them ?”, well... it’s not something I ever really pursued. I know it’s a lot of people’s dream job, but I never saw it that way. I feel like, if it ever happened to me... sure, that could be cool! But I don’t know if it’s something I really want, or even that I should want?

And if you add “being unsure” to what I consider to be a lack of experience in certain things, well... I really don’t think I’d be a good candidate (yet?), and having seen how busy these people are on the inside, the last thing I want to do is waste their time with a bad application. That would be the most basic form of courtesy I can show to them.

Besides, Covid-19 makes applying to just about any job very hard, if not outright impossible right now. And for a while longer, I suspect.

(Pictured: the Tuilière & Sanadoire rocks.)

I’m still unhappy about the amount of “actual animation” I get to do overall since I like to work on just about every step of the process in my videos, but well. It’s getting better. One thing I am happy with though, is “solving problems”. And new challenges. Seeking the answers to them, and making myself be able to see those problems, alongside entire projects, from a more “holistic” way, that is to say, not missing the forest for the trees.

It’s hard to explain, and even just the use of the term “holistic” sounds like some kind of pompous cop-out... but looking back on how I handled projects 5 years ago vs. now, I see the differences in how I think about problems a lot. And to some extent I do have my time on Valve contracts to thank a LOT in helping me progress there.

Anyway, I’m currently working on a project that I’m very interested & creativefuly fulfilled by. But it has nothing to do with animation nor Dota, for a change! There are definitely at least two other Dota short films I want to make, though. We’ll see how that goes.

Happy new year & take care y’all.

#year in review

[gamingredcat]

How real are claims of poker machine community benefits?

One of the protection claims made by poker hardware clubs in Australia is that they offer extensive help to provincial territories. By and large this is spoken to by the help clubs offer to reasons, for example, more youthful football clubs or noble cause.

  In New South Wales, the state with perhaps the most texas hold'em creators and quite possibly the most texas hold'em producer cost, stature body Clubs NSW pronounces to have really dispersed A$ 92 million in gives a year ago. That is a great deal of cash.

  However, as a level of complete poker gadget benefits, it's fairly little. In 2013-14, club poker types of gear in NSW made $5.4 billion. As an extent of that profit, $92 million is 1.7%.

  In 2012, the lead writer of this article and furthermore associates found that the level of installments clubs made to genuine zone reasons for existing was low as an extent of online poker machine income.

  The information void

  In 2010, the Productivity Commission contended that despite the fact that clubs made neighborhood commitments:

  The proclaimed favorable circumstances of wagering profit on brandishing exercises just as chipping in don't seem solid. Unquestionably, the presence of betting may adversely impact chipping in rates.

  The (gross) worth of social commitments by clubs is probably going to be considerably not exactly the help governments give to clubs through assessment just as different concessions.

  Offered this, there are strong premises for the staged execution of significantly lower levels of gaming income charge giving ins for clubs, similar with the realize region benefits.

  Clubs, for the most part joined as "not for income" shared associations, don't cover corporate duty and furthermore ordinarily acquire from diminished betting expense costs differentiated to organization gaming administrators.

  One of the challenges remembered in the 2012 examination was that data on the genuine online poker gadget profit got by clubs are not openly accessible in NSW and furthermore Queensland; in the ACT and furthermore Victoria, these information are delivered. This space in data accessibility makes it intense to decide how much explicit clubs are really giving to the zone differentiated to what they make from that region utilizing the misfortunes of people utilizing poker gadgets.

  In Victoria, club pokie places are called for to present a yearly area advantage explanation, which exhibits that they have really given in any event 8.3% of their pokie profit to neighborhood destinations. On the off chance that they do this, they get a decline of 8.3% on the betting duty they pay, differentiated to resort settings.

  Spots don't make good on organization charge. What's more, when the GST was presented, gambling club poker machine charge commitments were brought down proportionately. The tax cuts pokie areas get are fairly impressive, just as the Efficiency Commission's remark concerning these courses of action depended on this rather interesting treatment.

  What do we know?

  Of late, we investigated the latest consolidated arrangement of territory advantage proclamations held up in Victoria for 2013-14. Different gatherings of cases are promptly accessible under the Ministerial Order proposing these cases, comprising of the area's working cost -, for example, compensations, protection strategy, power costs and furthermore enhancements or gear.

  We found that commitments to what numerous individuals would consider as genuine territory benefits were amazingly diminished. This classification comprises of kind and humanitarian capacities just as blessings provided to local area associations. Across the entire club field in Victoria, neighborhood advantage announcement pronounces added up to A$ 273.7 million out of 2013-14. Of this, 6.8%- - or A$ 18.5 million- - was named "commitments, blessings and sponsorships".

  Interestingly, $209.4 million- - 76.5% of protection claims- - went to working spending plan, including income, superannuation, organization costs and furthermore protection strategies.

  As an extent of generally club pokie misfortunes ($846 million), commitments, presents just as sponsorship added up to 2.2%.

  In its 2013 record, Carlton declared more noteworthy than A$ 1.1 million in installments to wearing offices from the four pokie places it works - all of which went to Ikon Park, its preparation base for first class AFL footballers in downtown Melbourne.

  Or maybe, Carlton made protection cases of commitments of almost A$ 1.3 million to Ikon Park. These were viewed as gifts, endowments and sponsorships, as opposed to donning helps.

  All things considered, these sums mosted liable to precisely the same capacity - one that maybe misses the mark to give nearly nothing if any sort of bit of leeway to occupants of the external rural areas where their pokie places lie.

  Collingwood asserted commitments, endowments just as sponsorships of A$ 180,000 from its two club areas in 2014. The mind-boggling main part of its local advantage proclamation claims (more than $1.8 million) were running costs - compensation, superannuation and so forth

  Geelong runs 2 club places. In 2014, it attested gifts endowments and furthermore sponsorships of A$ 111,000. Most of its cases were for the working cost of the area - A$ 1.5 million, 93% of the total attested.

  What now?

  It's unmistakable protection claims by clubs that they supply considerable advantages to the zone are overemphasized.

  More prominent advantages could be offered by utilizing the extra duty amassed from resort scenes - for Victoria's situation this would surely be 8.3%, or more noteworthy than A$ 70 million every year- - and from the charge of business charge on betting earnings, particularly on account of large clubs, for example, enormous NSW clubs. These are, in various strategies, cycle not quite the same as huge business tasks.

  A few clubs do supply genuine focal points to their regions. Unfortunately, clubs have created impressive online poker producer reliance - a normal of about 60% of complete profit. Some club agents may plate the lily in their protection cases of territory help, frightened presumably of the repercussions of more successful damage limiting law or more attractive expenses.

  In any case, to have a critical contention concerning the focal points and inconveniences of inescapable pokie wagering, we in like manner should have the option to perceive precisely what they contribute, just as what they cost in harming local area impacts. Given the information power blackout that wins in NSW and furthermore Queensland, we're far from achieving that at this moment. 

[busterofbeing]

Ranking The Page Classpects

I'm going to do my best to rank all the page classpects, from best to worst. Fair warning: most of these classpects are pretty bad. When making this list, I sorted out the bad from the awful and started putting the worst ones on and work my way up. If a classpect is high up, it doesn't mean it's good; it just means it sucks less than the ones below it.

Here's my take on page class. First: the page starts off weak, but if they manage to reach their true potential they are "second to none". This is stated in canon. Second: the journey of a page typically takes the entire session. Of the pages we've seen, they're journeys haven't been the best; Jake didn't reach his true potential until his fight with LE (or before [S] Game Over in the game over timeline), both events happened the last day or well after the last day of the session. Tavros, the page of breath, didn't realize his true potential until he was dead. Yeah. We see Tavros rally the troll army to fight LE with just his friendliness, charm and flexibility (part of the breath aspect); a feat that only Aranea, a troll with eons worth of mind control practice could achieve. Keep in mind a page reaching their full potential applies to the emotional side of them as well; not just the fancy powers they get. Horuss, the page of void, never realizes his full potential. For this list, I ranked under the presumption that it generally takes a page almost the entire session to realize their true potential, if they manage to at all. Third: Pages are challenged by, yet embody their aspect. Jake has a good-natured demeanor and is positive, yet he can't see possibilities to escape his relationship with Dirk, and isn't optimistic about the ones presented. Tavros leads without realizing it during the afterlife and is pretty flexible, yet has a tough time changing throughout Hivebent and literally could not move, all parts of the Breath aspect. Horuss is certainly a void player, but is challenged because he sees everything, and can't embody or focus on nothing. Part of the page's journey is to overcome their emotional challenges, meaning they start off challenged by their aspect in some way. Fourth: The Page serves their aspect or serves through their aspect for themselves (this is probably the most widely debated point here). Lastly, a page can weaponize their aspect. Okay! Now to the list...

1.) Page of Rage 2.) Page of Life 3.) Page of Hope 4.) Page of Void 5.) Page of Time 6.) Page of Doom 7.) Page of Mind 8.) Page of Light 9.) Page of Space 10.) Page of Heart 11.) Page of Blood 12.) Page of Breath

1.) Page of Rage

I put this for number one because it seems to be the least problematic of the bunch. Rage-bound can be dangerous, so a person challenged by rage likely wouldn't be a problem to the session. A Page of Rage might start out as a pacifist, and part of their journey is learning when to step up for themselves and fight. As for powers- we know Gamzee (a non-god tier) delivered the most powerful blow to the Black King, so Rage-bound are capable of dealing massive, if unpredictable damage. A PoR would no doubt deal insane damage once fully realized.

2.) Page of Life

I’m gonna say it, probably the worst life classpect besides maybe bard. They'll go through most of their session as an okay healer- maybe they can heal wounds or injuries at best. As a person, they would either be bad at helping and taking care of people, or they help in the wrong way. They would probably be annoying to deal with in a session- whenever they try to help, they just make things worse or make people upset. a PoL would need to learn how to take care of people and actually build them up. Fully realized, however, they would be the best healer in the game. They'd certainly be capable of revival, and could rapidly heal, especially themselves. A passive self-regeneration ability? A fully realized PoL would be a very useful ally in the fight against the Black King.

3.) Page of Hope

Jake showed us a PoH can still be hopeful, although maybe not the best source of hope and trust. Either way, the PoH doesn't seem to be a nonconstructive classpect. At their worst they might selfish or bad at having hope (especially for themselves, as Jake showed dealing with his Dirk problems). Jake also demonstrated a fully realized PoH can be deadly, apparently rivaling the power of the green sun when Jade attempts to overpower him. Not too shabby.

4.) Page of Void

As Horuss himself states, this is a confusing classpect. How does one realize the full potential of nothingness? A PoV would likely start out confused about who they are or what they want to be, and their biggest problem is that they see infinite possibilities and are overwhelmed, again, as Horuss himself states. A PoV would need to learn to be okay with not knowing every possibility, and would need to learn how to "void out" possibilities and find out what their strengths are. Think of a kid who has no clue what they want to do or be when they grow up. A fully realized PoV would have excellent voidy powers, easily become invisible and untraceable. They'd be able to create a sort of void cloud (if that makes sense) around people, although it would be stronger with them. Black holes are also a possibility.

5.) Page of Time

A PoT would likely start out either being way too violent and selfish and/or would struggle with accepting the end of things. If they got a grade on an assignment they felt they didn't deserve, they'd be the ones to argue a better grade, even if they've been told it's final. The journey of a PoT would force them to accept the inevitability of things, and would challenge them to be less violent in their reactions and use their time powers for good, and not petty or zealous reasons. Their time powers in question wouldn't be great. Perhaps they can only travel forward or back in time by only an hour? The biggest problem would be their mastery over their powers. Being violent, selfish, and inexperienced brings plenty of danger to other players (revenge?), and could create many doomed timelines if the PoT wasn't careful. A fully realized PoT would be an excellent fighter, maybe they could even go back in time and fix all their mistakes they made with their powers? Either way, their powers are more potent when they benefit the PoT rather than other players.

6.) Page of Doom

This is a tricky one. Being challenged by doom could mean the PoD is always doomed and must overcome said doom, or they simply aren't doomed and need to accept doom. Combined with fully realized powers, this makes the PoD a personified nuclear bomb, at least in my opinion. Using doom as a powerful weapon could be really good against an impressive foe, or could wipe out the players or even part of a session. It's very unclear which would be the case, so I stuck this classpect in the middle of the list. Another interpretation is that they serve themselves with doom. This could manifest as using doomed people/players to get what they want, which is basically slave labor. Not cool.  Very unpredictable, the co-players must be very wary of a PoD. 

7.) Page of Mind

Alright, here's where the mediocre gets sucky. A PoM would be challenged be decision-making and logic. Maybe they like thought and logic, but aren't good at it. Think an enthusiastic but bad chess player. Or perhaps they might be decent thinkers, but they're too indecisive to put that mind power to use or can't make decisions quick enough. Either way, they wouldn't be constructive to the session because they either can't think/strategist or they can't because they don't know which option they should pick. A fully realized PoM would be an excellent strategist (picture Ender from the Ender series), capable of finding weak points, using strategy to maximize damages, and being able to predict an attack. Powers would include said prediction, maybe they'd be able to visualize the field and how their strategies would play out before they make a move?

8.) Page of Light

 Uy. I don't like this classpect. A light player is valuable because they can provide information, critical to a game like SBurb. Being a PoL, they'd be challenged by light and would either not be able to get information, or wouldn't understand and apply it well. Because this is an active class, they wouldn't be inclined to share this information or their insight with the team. They might also be unlucky. A PoL might also struggle with being in the spotlight; maybe they have stage-fright? Maybe they don't handle attention well and are insecure? A PoL will need to become comfortable with having attention and dealing with it accordingly. A fully realized PoL would have great powers and could get very lucky. The informational part wouldn't be as useful. What's the use of a walk through if you don't get it until the final boss? Eh, they might be able to adapt to what's going on in a battle and fight according to that info.

9.) Page of Space

A PoS would be challenged by space, let's start there. This applies to personal as well as physical space. A PoS might be very disorganized, and/or would have serious issues with *personal space*. Get it? The space aspect, as alternate Calliope tells us, is a lonely aspect. A PoS might have a tough time balancing "people time" and "alone time", and not being able to get help or be left alone (whichever is the problem) would pose a challenge to a PoS. The really bad thing about this classpect is that a space player is required in a null or fruitful session, and is responsible for breeding the Genesis Frog. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want a disorganized person literally challenged by space to be handling the creation of a new universe. The saving grace is that a PoS would be very powerful, rivaling or surpassing Jade's powers (remember she gained the power of the green sun!). Emotionally, a realized PoS would be able to manage their space and personal space well. They'd be able to benefit themselves by being organized and having more/less alone time.

10.) Page of Heart

Challenged by people skills and the self. Their classpect literally means "to serve the self". A PoH would be very obsessed with building up their image and reputation, but would be horrible at dealing with relationships. They wouldn't be kind, and changing would be hard. Because of the fact they will serve themselves, and aren't very good at it, they're nonconstructive to themselves as well as their co-players. A PoH would need to learn to be themselves in order to build their reputation, and that in order to be emotionally stable they'll need to be willing to change and also be open to others. In terms of powers, we don't have much to go off of. Maybe they can fake fake their identity to get behind enemy lines and gain an advantage? Their source of strength would be their own soul, so being emotionally healthy (hard in SBurb) is quite necessary in order to be a good PoH. Overall, an unhelpful class that doesn't have a big payoff when they reach their full potential.

11.) Page of Blood

Oh boy. I've been waiting to roast these last two classpects forever. The PoB is a VERY bad classpect. This is a leader aspect, meaning a PoB will likely be the leader in a session. Here's the problem- they're a page. They're inherently challenged by being able to lead and unify. "Serving themselves through unity" would manifest itself as a PoB wanting to delegate tasks or organize people to benefit their own desires or agenda, which could be very detrimental when playing SBurb. A PoB might even drive people away rather than bring them together. A PoB would need to learn how to lead, and how to lead and unify well. Fully realized, a PoB would basically be a powerful army general. Their fully realized blood powers would likely grant their teammates major power boosts, which could be very useful, especially if they're powerful to begin with. This would make the PoB a personified mega-steroid. In terms of combative powers, we actually have no clue what the powers of a blood player are, so I can't say.

12.) Page of Breath

AKA: The Roast of Tavros. This classpect. This. Classpect. It suffers from the same problem PoB does; you're not going to be a good leader throughout the session. And what's the point of an awesome leader if you're not going to actually get the awesome leader when you need to, you know, LEAD A SESSION?! At least you might have a good leader for the final battle and into the new universe, if you made it. The double whammy to this classpect is that being a PoB, they would struggle with change. Pages need to change to realize their true potential. A Page of Breath is bad at changing. DO YOU SEE THE PROBLEM HERE!? This is easily one of the worst classpects, it's very design has such anti-synergy that will make a PoB fundamentally useless. A PoB would need to learn to be flexible and actually accept change. Being challenged by movement, they might be slow or bad at moving. As stated earlier, Tavros starts out without the use of his legs, literally embodying this fact. A fully realized PoB would be a great leader. They would be very fast and great at moving (Tavros dances when he dumbfounds Vriska), and would have powerful windy powers. Does it make up for the journey? ... The answer should be painfully obvious.

Thanks for listening to my ramblings. I put a lot of thought into this list and the classpects, I hope you enjoy! Leave your thoughts in the comments!

#homestuck #page #classpect #classpects #breath #blood #light #void #time #space #hope #rage #life #doom #heart #mind #aspect #tavros #jake english #horuss

[make-it-mavis]

Anchor (part 2)

Wreck-it Ralph/Ralph Breaks the Internet AU 3151 words Characters: Make-it Mavis (murder AU), Red (Nice Turbo) Content warnings: discussion of anxiety/panic attacks

Premise: After inviting Red to come keep her company in a moment of distress, Mavis finds herself spilling a bit more than she thought she would... and receiving more care than she thinks she deserves.

Part 1

Red took gentle, but confident control of the situation when he arrived.

He showed up only five minutes later than he promised. His knock at the door was nearly drowned out by Mavis’ blasting TV, and he had to let himself in, as Mavis found it quite daunting to leave the bed. Once inside, he saw what he considered problems and dealt with them quickly. He turned the volume way down on the TV. He changed the content to softer videos. He pulled a couple bars of chocolate out of his bag and placed them on the bedside table. She protested when he went to turn off the lights, but compromised to dim them just a bit. Mavis felt as though she should have been annoyed at him for messing with everything she had set up without asking, but just watching him was distracting enough to start calming her down. She was so curious about him and the choices he made, about his thought processes. She just had to understand how he could be so… different.

Mavis leaned back against the mound of meticulously fluffed pillows on her bed, wrapped in a blanket that weighed a little heavy on her muscles that were weary from trembling. Her eyes were still fixated on the hotel's wall-mounted TV screen, but rather than boisterous gamers, she was watching a pair of hands scrape a knife along a dry bar of soap. She did not quite get it, but Red seemed to think it would help. He sat next to her, keeping a respectful distance that she appreciated his instinct for.

He had been chatting with her a bit, checking if she needed anything, offering her pieces of chocolate, which she could not refuse. Mavis did not say much, or even think all that much. She was just trying to zone out to the sound of his voice. Admittedly, the weird videos he put on were helping, too. They were kind of hypnotic.

Eventually, she asked, “What am I watchin’, Red?”

“That's kinetic sand,” he said, referring to the green substance on the screen that she wanted to stick her fingers in. “They’re stim videos.”

Furrowing her brow, she just gave him a side glance. He saw her not understanding, and there was a glimmer of a smile in his eyes for just a second.

“They help people calm down,” he explained. “Really helpful for people with anxiety problems.”

“I don’t have anxiety problems,” she said, not maliciously.

Red considered that. “That’s okay. They’re good for chilling out to regardless,” he took another careful pause. “Sorry if I came off as... accusatory or anything.”

Her gaze lingered on him for a second, but she turned her attention back to the satisfying videos with a small sigh. “Nah, you're probably right. I don't, uh, really name my issues, I just beat ‘em off with a baseball bat as they show up. I bet a shrink would have a real field day with me.”

Red took a minute to think about that. She could tell he was picking his words carefully. “Well, you don't have to name them, really. Sometimes… it's just helpful to know the shape of what you're up against, going into a fight. Y'know?”

Her head nodded lazily. “Tends to help.”

“Yeah.”

“I don't wanna see a shrink, though.”

“Oh, no, that's fine, too. You're good.”

It was some sort of gallows humor, how untrue those words were. But Mavis left them be. She watched as the next video started, one where heated glass was being shaped into a dragon. After a little while, Red commented, “That is such crazy precision work.”

She said, “Seems like I should have beaten this by now.”

Mavis could tell Red was caught off guard. “...Sorry?”

“You’d think after thirty-seven years, this wouldn’t happen anymore,” she mumbled, unsure if her openness came from a place of trust or utter indifference.

She could feel Red looking at her, but felt no prying, no scrutiny, no anxiety. After a moment’s thought, he asked softly, “So this is a regular thing, huh?”

“Mm… I guess. It doesn’t happen every day. But I’ve had… these my entire life, on and off.”

“Okay,” he said gently. “Do you mind if I ask… what does this feel like to you?”

Mavis squinted a bit in thought, her eyes still trained on the glass dragon being bathed in flame. “Like… it’s like…” her head shook a bit, “out of nowhere, for no freakin’ reason at all… it’s like I’m convinced the world isn’t real anymore. Like, uh… nothing feels the way it should. It’s like everything around me is some cheap stage prop, and just behind it all is… nothing. So I freak out, because… it’s like any second, everything could break, and I’d be swept out into this… void. Drift into nothingness forever.”

Red was quiet. She wondered if he expected her to say more.

“I know that won’t happen. I know it’s stupid,” she added.

“It’s not stupid,” he said. “It’s not your fault. That sounds awful. I’m really sorry you’ve been dealing with that for so long.”

Mavis could not find a response that felt appropriate. Silently, she bent up her knees and folded her arms over them. The blanket fell away from her shoulders as she leaned forward to rest her chin, and her skin felt blazing hot against the cool air.

“Y’know…” he continued quietly, “it’s not fair to judge yourself for still getting like that sometimes. Psychological stuff is… sticky. It’s not so easy to shake. And I wanna say that for the most part, the passage of time alone isn’t a cure-all.”

“Well… yeah, I get that,” she sighed. “But it’s like… in the time I’ve been alive, I’ve had to go through so many changes. For better or worse, nothing’s ever stayed the same for long. Except… this. This feels just the same as it did the first time it happened.”

Red was quiet for a little while again. Then he asked, “Would it be outta line for me to ask… how do you deal with this when it happens?”

“Uh…” Mavis thought, suddenly feeling embarrassed for how ungracefully she had coped with it over her life. All the drinking and buff use… and then the dependence on someone else to make her feel safe. The former was effective, but dangerous… and the latter was very effective, but… mortal.

She spoke carefully, but truthfully, “I just… try to feel things. Shock my senses. I feel as much as I can, as hard as I can. Makes the world feel a bit more real again. When it gets still and quiet, that’s when I feel that nothingness creeping up.”

“And that’s worked?”

“Usually. Not always, but usually. The weird thing is… it’s gotten worse since I came to the internet. Everything here is always moving, and there’s so much of it, and it’s all so loud and bright and bustling… but it’s like it goes on forever. And I’ve never, uh… been quite so alone… for so long. That kinda thing… gets to you. Like… I don’t know what’s keeping me tethered to the world around me anymore. If that makes any sense.”

Red took a moment, but tentatively scooted a bit closer to her. “It does,” he said kindly, “but you know… you’re not alone anymore. Yeah?”

She squeezed her knees a little bit, her gaze falling downcast, away from the video of sparkly slime. His friendliness was ill-advised, given her history… but she appreciated it more than she knew what to do with. Whispers of guilt floated around in her head for not knowing how to give him the response he deserved. The one she wanted him to have.

“I’m here for you,” he insisted softly. “And, hey, if it means anything at all… I believe in you.”

Feeling heavier and stiffer than stone, she slowly turned her head and let her cheek rest against her arm. He was looking at her with a sort of care that was all too sincere for her to understand. They had hardly known each other for a month, and yet…

“Why?” she asked, her voice barely there.

Red blinked, but his smile pulled into his cheek. “‘Cause… I believe it’s never too late to change. No one’s ever too far gone, if they’re really willing to try. I know you can beat this. I can just tell.”

“How, though? How can you say that?” she whispered. “You haven’t known me that long.”

For a second, his eyes turned down in thought, but he met her gaze again with a light, oddly admiring smile. “I dunno,” he shrugged. “What can I say? I just got this real good feeling about you.”

Mavis’ heart swelled, but it sank deep into her stomach. Trusting her was incredibly dangerous. If he only knew the things she had done. If he only knew the disgusting, despicable, arguably evil deeds she carried around on her back. If he could see how little remorse she felt for them, save for exposing such a good person to such a… foul, poisonous creature. Looking at him there, with such pure, easy kindness on his face, she could not help but feel a bit in awe of him. There was a troubling degree of adoration in her heart, but it was inevitable. The world felt so dark, but he was a ray of sunshine, almost too radiant for her eyes.

She took a deep, nearly painful breath, and let it out slowly and steadily. There seemed only one thing to say.

“...Thank you,” she whispered.

Red visibly sighed through his nose, leaning forward. He said nothing, but cautiously reached for her back, carefully watching her reaction. She looked at his hand. Although she had, for the most part, overcome her touch aversion, the instinct was still there to shrink away. But a calm surrender came over her, and she simply shifted to meet his hand halfway.

Gently, comfortingly, he rubbed her back. The touch was so blessedly relieving. She had been so starved for contact since Turbo passed, and finally feeling it again felt so good that she could have cried if her tears had not dried up long ago. As she relaxed, her eyes fluttered shut, and Red took that as a prompt to rub a bit harder, pressing his fingers in enough for a light massage. A long, quiet groan dragged in Mavis’ throat as she realized just how much she ached.

Red’s hand rose to the back of her neck, and he squeezed the muscles there, rubbing with his thumb. “Man,” he said, “I oughtta give you a real massage one of these days. You’re hard as a rock.”

She grumbled, “That’s what she said.”

His hand stopped, and with a short delay, he snorted a brief, dirty chuckle. “Yeah, okay,” he said, patting her back.

The back rubs were really great, but they prompted a greater, uncharacteristic need for closeness, comfort, security… affection. Not daring to open her eyes, she scooted right up against him and laid him back against the pillows, resting her head above his collarbone and settling in. For just a couple seconds, his arms hovered, but he gladly obliged and held her close.

“Sorry I kinda smell like a garage right now,” he muttered with a bit of a laugh.

“Nah,” she breathed. “You smell nice.”

“If you say so.”

He was so incredibly warm, as was typical of a speed demon. Like a hot bath, it relaxed her muscles until she felt herself truly go limp. As drowsiness crept in, she found herself baffled over how quickly she came to trust him, when that was otherwise so rarely earned by others in her life. Maybe it was because he looked just like Turbo, but… she was not sure. It could not trouble her in that moment. She felt safe, which had been a rare thing since she came to the internet. She was not about to waste that.

Still, her weary, dreamy mind wandered, contemplating the terrible darkness from a calm, removed head space. She remained this way for a time she lost track of… and it startled her a bit when words slowly spilled from her mouth.

“When my game was first plugged in…” she muttered, “I didn’t spawn above ground, ready to play, like everyone else did.”

Red’s head dipped down towards her face a bit as he quietly listened.

“Every game had a locked door to this… space… where all the code was stored. It was like a huge, tangled web… made of pulsing, static light… that sort of tingled if you got close… and made your hair stand up a bit. It just… it floated there, by itself, in… this… void. Just… darkness in all directions… No ground, no gravity, nothing to hold onto but hot wires… No sound… Just freezing cold, dead silent, never-ending nothingness…”

She swallowed. “That’s where I spawned.”

Red seemed at a loss to respond. After a moment, he just elected to rub his thumb against her arm and let her continue.

“Just once, the arcade owner entered my button combo to test me out, and I was pulled above ground, and it was… man, it was amazing. ‘Cause I was literally made to do it, y’know? But… when it was done… I reappeared in the dark. I figured it would only be a little while ‘til I was pulled up again, and then I could be sure to grab onto something and stay out of the void, but… it didn’t come. My combo just wasn’t pressed… for ages. I, uh… wondered, for a while, if I would ever come out again. I had no sense of time… but… when I was finally, finally let out, I discovered… I’d been down there for two months.”

Red let out a heavy breath through his nose.

Mavis squeezed the fabric of his shirt just a bit. “It was so long ago, now… and it didn’t even last that long. It feels so dumb to be so messed up about it, an entire lifetime later… It doesn’t make sense to me, why I can’t just… get over it.”

“Mavis,” Red whispered, squeezing her close, “it’s not your fault. That’s such a… I mean, that’s nightmare fuel, what you just described. And to have that be… y’know, the very first thing you experienced in life… I mean… shit, I’m proud of you for even being here with me right now.”

A deep, awful, emotional quake began to shake in her chest. Her body wanted so badly to cry, but it just could not quite make it. Besides, as much as she trusted Red… she never wanted anyone to see her cry.

All the same, she clung to him tightly, leaning her face hard against his chest. He was just too good. He was impossible. He was more than she deserved… but she found herself hoping to the Devs that her time spent with him would somehow last, and whatever disease she carried would not take him away.

She felt his nose press against the top of her head. Lips moving against her, muffled by her hair, he mumbled, “Do you want me to stay the night?”

‘No’ felt like the responsible answer, one she may not have regretted later. But, against her better judgement, she whispered, “Please.”

He rubbed her arm reassuringly. “Okay. Just hang tight a sec.”

He carefully wiggled out of her embrace and slid off the bed, moving to dim the lights just a bit more, leaving just enough of a foggy glow to illuminate shapes and surfaces. Mavis tossed what remained of the chocolate to the side table and spread the blanket out over the sheets again. While she pulled off her socks and slithered down into the covers, Red cast a new video to the TV -- just a dark, serene picture of rain, with the low, thrumming sounds of a downpour laid overtop of it. He was right to assume she liked white noise, and she found it sort of remarkable that he did not need to ask. The fact that YouTube could be a good source of it was something to remember.

Once that was all taken care of, he returned to the bed, pausing at the sight of her lying under the covers. He seemed unsure. “Do you…” he asked, “want me under, or on top?”

Half-muffled against a pillow, she slurred, “That’s what she said.”

Red snorted with a grin that mostly showed in his eyes. “C’mon.”

“Under,” she paused to consider, taking a page out of his considerate book. “If that’s okay with you.”

“Totally,” he said happily as he sat down. “How could I say no, when you look so cozy?”

Red lifted the covers and slipped right in. He looked at her with eyes that were glowing so clearly in the low light, and extended an arm to invite her into his embrace again. Hesitating for only a second, she squirmed over and pulled herself flush against his side again, even going so far as to tentatively hook a leg over his. His arm wrapped around her back and he rubbed her side gently, and his other hand found hers against his chest, giving it a short squeeze.

After a couple quiet moments, he muttered, “...This is nice.”

“Yeah,” she sighed. “I, uh… don’t normally do this.”

He exhaled softly. “Well… thanks for trusting me,” he paused. “With everything. Even though I haven’t really had a chance to earn that yet.”

Mavis hummed in thought. “Yeah, uh… I guess I just...” she ducked her head a bit, “I got a good feeling about you.”

Mortified at her own sappiness, she tensely waited for a reply. After a moment that felt too long, his chest hopped with a nearly silent chuckle. “You’re sweet,” he whispered.

“I’m not,” she whispered back. “I’m really not.”

“You’re sweet,” he repeated in a musical, teasing tone, rocking a bit from side to side. “Admit it.”

“Go to sleep, Red,” she instructed, fighting a smile.

“Okay,” he sighed dramatically. “G’night, Mav.”

“...G’night, Red.”

“Sweet dreams.”

“You too.”

“Sweet as you.”

“Red.”

He shook with soft laughter again, but she felt him lay his cheek against her head, and the room fell silent, save for the soothing sigh of rain wafting from the TV.   

Once she truly settled in, her emotions waged a long, losing battle against sleep. Mavis could still hardly believe what was happening, or what she was doing -- never in her life had she been one to cuddle up to near strangers… or, truly, anyone other than her long gone partner. But with her eyes closed, with his scent, with his warmth… she could so easily convince herself that she was nestled against her Turbo again.

Strangely, though, that night, she could have been just as happy with or without the fantasy.   

#wreck it ralph #ralph breaks the internet #make it mavis #turbo (red) #internet AU #fanfiction #was feeling weirdy again the other night and took the opportunity #so here have something sweet for once #i dont exclusively write angst you see!!!!

[moonlitjiminn]

Silver and Gold Beads | Taehyung, You

Scenario is dedicated to my beautiful friend @kurrrzurrr (I LOVE YOU MIA AND I HOPE YOU LIKE THIS)

Distance means so little when someone means so much

You were trying hard not to let your nerves get the best of you, but as you listened to Wild by Tiffany Gouche for the fifth time that evening, with the rest of your dance crew it was becoming all too real. Tomorrow was the day. The day you finally got to dance in your dream arena, to the choreography you had all been practicing for over a year with the twenty strangers who had become your closest friends in the span of that year.

“Mia?” a quiet voice interrupted your thoughts and you turned to the source.

“Yeah?” you shook your head, “Sorry, I’m just too excited.”

Your friend cheesed a smile, “Me too! I can’t believe the day’s here already!” she leaned in closer, “Is the boyfriend coming?”

Your smile fell. Taehyung was currently in America for their tour and so couldn’t make it. But it was okay, you understood.

It would be a lie, however, if you said you weren’t upset about it.

“I told you,” you smiled, showing your friend that it didn’t really phase you, “He has his tour.”

“Okay listen up!” your team leader announced from the other side of the circle, “I have something to say.”

When everyone was done talking, he stood up.

“I just wanted to let you guys know that I’m so proud of each and every single one of you…” and with that beautiful pre-concert speech, the void that Taehyung’s absence had was suddenly filled. “We have all worked so hard to get to where we are, enduring countless injuries, spending numerous hours a day practicing and crying oceans of tears to this day. You owe it to yourselves to go out there tomorrow and do your best. The hardest part is already over, let’s just go out and have fun!”

“Mia, I miss you so much,” your needy boyfriend whined on the phone once the dinner with your crew was over and you were back home getting ready to sleep.

You grinned, washing your face, “I miss you too honey,” laughing at his clinginess, “How was your day?”

“Well, Namjoon hyung forgot one of his lines in Airplane, Seokjin accidentally danced to verse 2 during verse 1 in Anpanman, Jungkook forgot he was meant to be harmonising with me but there weren’t any other mistakes really.”

“Thanks for the update, Tae.”

“You’re very welcome,” you heard him shuffling around before he settled finally, “Are you ready for tomorrow?”

“Yes! Tae you have no idea how excited I am,” you rolled over to your other side on bed.

“You have no idea how much I want to be there to see you kill the stage, Mia.”

You grinned, “No, Tae, I do know, and it’s okay, I told you, it’s really okay.”

“Tae! Can you hurry up and shower so I can use the bathroom! We gotta leave for the interview in half an hour!” you heard Jimin’s muffled voice through the receiver.

“Okay, you get back to your thing honey, I’ll talk to you tomorrow!”

He groaned, “I want to keep talking to you,” you could hear the pout in his tone.

“I know, Tae, but we both have huge days coming up, let’s rest and talk later okay?” You always found yourself having to become the rational one when it was between you two, someone had to be right? But you loved it, knowing that he wanted to spend as much time with you as you did.

“Okay, fine, good luck for your concert tomorrow Mia, although you won’t need it,” that made you giggle, “Love you!”

“Love you too Tae, make sure you get heaps of rest after all your interviews, okay!”

“Yes Ma’am,” his voice was stern and that was you cue to hang up.

You turned to the ceiling. Tomorrow. It’s finally coming.

--

“Pass me the bobby pins!” someone yelled over the background music.

“Did you find Tracey’s shoes? She said she left it in the dressing room,” another voice.

“Get me the new sets of liquid lipsticks, will you?” You smiled down at your phone; you loved the atmosphere in here, although it was busy, everyone was happy, and everyone was laughing. And besides, you were also excited to see a new message from your boyfriend.

Taehyung: Hey Mia, how’s prep for tonight going?

“Mia your hair is not listening to me today,” your stylist told you, picking at it.

You laughed, “When does it ever listen to you? You always seem to get it to work though.”

Mia: Good! I’m getting my hair done right now :)

His reply was almost instant.

Taehyung: Please send pictures when you’re done! I want to see your outfit!

Mia: Of course Tae

“Can you just hold this up for me hun?” you looked up at the mirror to see your stylist holding a piece of your hair out for you.

Putting your phone down, you held it like she told you.

Before you knew it, your look was stage ready, and you were getting organised to get on stage. When you went back to get your phone from where you had left it on the dressing table, you couldn’t find it there.

“Hey, do you know where my phone is? I left it here but it’s not there anymore,” you asked one of your friends in your dance group and they nodded their head to a box in your leader’s hands.

“Hyung collected them all, it should be in there.”

“Thanks!”

Skipping over to your leader, you wanted to ask for your phone to quickly snap a photo of you in your costume to send to Taehyung before you got all sweaty and disgusting.

But that was when you were called for stage.

“Mia! Where the heck ar-” you looked up to see someone running through the hallways looking for you, “There you are, c’mon let’s go, your set is up in a minute.”

You sighed, guess Taehyung will have to suffice with the group photos you took before.

Almost immediately, you were thrown onto stage, your song playing in the background and your members getting into position. Before you followed, however, you couldn’t help yourself when you quickly took a peek at the audience. The whole arena was full, glow sticks and wrist bands illuminating the crowd.

You would be lying if you said you didn’t get teary eyed at the sight.

Almost two years in the making, all your hard work was about to be on display for thousands of people.

You didn’t get to indulge in your thoughts for too long, however, as it was finally time to start dancing.

--

It was now time for your fourth (and final) dance set and this was the one where you were to dance on the extra stage which went into the audience.

However, when you were walking to the centre stage, something you saw caught your eye.

“You know pink doesn’t look good on me!” Taehyung whined, taking the cap off his head.

You pouted, trying really hard to make him feel guilty.

“Baby, I spent two days making this!”

Taehyung bit his lip, looking at the cap, ‘Mia’s number one fan!’ bejewelled with silver and gold beads on the top, two strips of black and white cloth clipped to the back of it. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s gorgeous.”

You could hear the lie right through his teeth.

“I just don’t think pink suits me,” he pinched your cheek, “Also, I wouldn’t be able to wear this anywhere, it would attract too much attention.”

Your eyes were bored as you replied, “Kim Taehyung you better take this cap and wear it right now-”

He sighed, caving and taking the cap. Putting it on his head, he looked to you, “Happy?”

You grinned, taking his face in your hands, “You’re my number one fan.”

“You know, it would be perfect to wear this to one of your concerts,” he looked down, “If I could ever go to one.”

You bent down, trying to put yourself in his field of vision, lifting his head up, “Doesn’t matter where you are, whenever I perform, you’re right there with me, every second of it. So don’t feel bad okay? I love you and I know you want to be there, besides, there’s always video.”

“It’s so much better seeing you live though,” he sighed. “I’m such a bad boyfriend I’ve never seen you perform at all.”

“Oh shush, it’s not like I’ve been to a Bangtan concert either.”

He looked up to you, “Wait, what?”

“Oh no,” your eyes widened, and you hopped off his lap, “I think someone just called me.”

Squinting your eyes to the cap in front of you, you realised you weren’t hallucinating and it really did say ‘Mia’s number one fan’ in silver and gold beads.

The head lifted, and your guess was right.

There he was.

Kim Taehyung, beaming right up at you.

You almost tripped, tears threatening to fall from your eyes.

Quickly looking away, you tried to keep your composure, willing for the next seven minutes of your routine to zip past quick so you could run back stage and to your boyfriend.

Luckily you were able to focus on your dance for the remainder of it, catching glimpse of Taehyung here and there, the proud smile on his face as he watched you never leaving.

When the dance was over, your whole group did their bows and final waves to the audience before you finally sprinted back, changing your shoes, throwing another member’s hoodie over your shirt and getting out of there.

As soon as you opened the door, however, you crashed into someone.

“I’m so so-” when you looked up, you cut yourself off, seeing Hoseok – one of Taehyung’s band mates – standing there with a huge bouquet of flowers.

“Hey!”

He grinned, “Mia! Just the girl we wanted to see.”

“We?”

That was when a head popped around Hoseok’s own, and another, and another, before all seven heads were in your view.

“What are you all doing here?” you laughed, finding the tears start to well in your eyes again.

“We came to watch you dancing, isn’t that obvious?” Jungkook, the youngest, said, a-matter-of-factly.

You reached forward, hugging every member one by one, until they all just gave you a group hug instead.

“Okay now that that’s over,” Yoongi interrupted the hug, “We’re gonna leave Taehyung with you while we go and check out the displays.”

“What displays? No I wanted to talk to Mia-” Jungkook was dragged away by another member, finally leaving you and Taehyung to yourselves.

“I can’t believe you actually came,” you beamed, and cue the waterworks.

“I couldn’t miss it. God, you were amazing.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, even Hoseok and Jimin were in awe, they kept having a go at me for not letting them dance with you before.”

You laughed, “Yeah right, like they want to dance with me.”

“Don’t say that.”

“What?”

“Don’t put yourself down like that,” he held your hand, “You’re an amazing dancer, Mia, you actually crushed it out there tonight, I can’t believe I’d been missing all your performances, I missed out on a lot.”

Your laughter (and tears) wouldn’t stop.

“You’re a better dancer though.”

“How would you know,” he crossed his arms over his chest, “You’ve never been to one of my concerts.”

Laughing, you unwound his arms and wrapped them around you, “But was I really that good?”

He looked down, pointing at his hat, “I really am your number one fan.”

You chuckled, “You still have that thing.”

“Well yeah, I knew you were gonna give me an earful if I threw it away.”

“Why would you throw it away?!” you stiffened up, narrowing your eyes at him.

“Yeah, exactly, that’s what I meant,” he rolled his eyes, “Come here.”

Smiling, you leant into his embrace, “This is the perfect way to reunite after all this time,” sniffing, you held him tighter, “Man I missed you.”

“I think I missed you more, seeing as I actually got on a plane to come and see you.”

“Are you being salty right now?” you gasped, bending back from him.

“Shh, shh,” he hushed you, pulling you back into his arms, “Don’t ruin the moment.”

#kpopwonderlandtag #ot7network #bts #bangtan #bts scenario #kim taehyung #taehyung #bts scenarios #taehyung scenario #taehyung scenarios #kim taehyung scenario #kim taehyung scenarios #bangtan scenario #bangtan scenarios #bts fluff #taehyung fluff #kim taehyung fluff #bangtan fluff #bts angst #taehyung angst #kim taehyung angst #bangtan angst #kim taehyung reaction #bts reaction #bts reactions #taehyung reaction #taehyung reactions #kim taehyung reactions

[writemarvelousthings]

The Runaway Circus: Chapter 2

PAIRING: Reader x Bucky AU

WORD COUNT: 1.5k

WARNINGS: MENTIONS OF BLOOD AND SLIGHT VIOLENCE

Summary:  The Maximoff Circus was a band of ragtag misfits who had no place in the world around them. When a handsome stranger quite literally stumbles into their home is it a good thing to welcome a runaway into the circus?

A/N: I hope you all enjoy the next chapter, I’m sorry that this update has been a long time coming. Just know I will try my best to update as soon as I possibly can! 

Previously 

Bucky didn’t know what to say, he felt like a wild animal backed into a corner as the stranger's eyes him. Not unkindly, but more like surveying him. He’s known a little of what that’s like, Pietro smiles again. Pulling a stool up to sit next to him on the bed, peering at the bandage on his side a small frown graces his face.

“Does that hurt?” The soft concern in his voice makes Bucky shake his head in response.

“I see our Angel patched you up” Pietro winks at (Y/N) who blushes pulling her dressing gown around her more.

“I’m most grateful for your hospitality” Bucky murmurs, his eyes flicking from (Y/N) to Pietro who grins in response.

“Nonsense, you’re more than welcome here. We were all strangers and homeless once. We should let you rest”  at the mention of letting him rest (Y/N) stood giving him a warm smile as Sam holds the door open for her. Bucky watches as (Y/N) gives him one last smile before disappearing with Sam into the train hallway.

“I’m sure Steve won't mind you staying the night. He’s been in the market for a roommate” Steve laughs slightly rubbing the back of his neck.

“Get some rest, my friend. Tomorrow is going to be a big day”

His side throbbed slightly as he followed Steve into the morning sun. Stepping down the wooden plank, in the early daylight, he could finally see the scale of the circus that he had stumbled on. The train seemed to go on for miles, the dark wood almost made the train look black as the night sky. If it wasn’t for the red and white sign painted on each carriage Bucky would have trouble guessing what the train was in use for. The Marvelous Maximoff Circus was displayed for all the world to see from far and wide

“Another circus,” Bucky thought bitterly. But before he could slip deeper into the dark memories of the past a familiar face snapped him out of it. Like a spotlight illuminating a dark stage, the way the light hits her face made her skin glow. He watched as she turn’s to smile at something a red-headed woman said as they stand at the open cargo door hatch. The unfamiliar woman's eyes cast over him causing (Y/N) to turn and suddenly he felt the spotlight focus on him. Drowning out the darkness that was clawing its way back in.

“I wouldn’t risk it pal” Steve’s voice is like a switch as suddenly the world comes again, the spotlight and the dark stage has gone from his mind as the shouts of men and the smell of circus animals drawn into his senses. Bucky turns to Steve, the blonde man hooks his thumbs around his suspenders. The shirt hangs off his impossibly large frame, it should make Bucky stand up straighter at the sheer size of the man alone but he’s too exhausted to even attempt to size up to him.

“I’ve risked too much already” Bucky mutters to himself, pushing past Steve who merely frowns after him. The blonde shrugs it off, knowing it’s none of his business as he goes in search of his fire torches.

“(Y/N) are you even listening to me?” Natasha touched your elbow gently. Turning you give the woman an apologetic smile.

“Sorry Talia, what were you saying?” The redhead gave you a smirk in response.

“Don’t worry I was looking at him too. I guess he was what all the secrecy was about last night?” you fumble over your words for a moment as Natasha’s smile only grew.

“(Y/N) relax, it’s not like we’ve taken runaway onboard before. You know Pietro, Patron Saint of adopting the sick and broken. Not to mention strange and unusual” Ignoring your best friend you wrap your sweater around yourself as you climb down off the train onto the dew-covered grass towards Steve. You know he sees you coming, the muscles in his back tense slightly as he makes more of a show to search through his props trunk.

“What was that all about?” you nod towards the retreating back of Bucky. Steve glances over his shoulder, you both watch as Pietro walks over to him. Clasping his shoulder warmly before steering him away to where the big top was being strung up.

“Nothing, don’t worry about it. You should find Sam before he starts to worry” reluctantly you nod, turning to walk back towards the train to change into your warm-up costume.

Bucky wasn't paying much attention to Pietro, his eyes gravitate towards (Y/N) again. He watched as she walked away from Steve back into the train.

“Most people don’t realise how much work goes into creating a show such as ours” It was obvious that Pietro was proud of his Circus. Bucky nods turning back to watch the men work in tandem, the thundering of hammers is almost deafening if not for the large long blonde haired man shouting out orders at them.

“Yeah… it’s really something” Bucky mutters watching the familiar red and white canvas being carried across the field. The blonde man Bucky now registers as the leader barks at them, but not unkind. He has a large smile on his face as the booming laugh thunders in Bucky’s chest. The sound and the commotion around him make his heart drum almost painfully in his chest, flashes of torchlight and trees in the dark flood his mind. Reaching out almost blindly he steadies himself on a nearby crate, focusing on steadying his breathing Bucky refused to look up at Pietro out of embarrassment and shame. To his credit, the ringmaster merely stands to the side. Leaning against the crate as he watched his circus come to life around him as if he was watching ducks at the pond on a Sunday afternoon.        

“You know my father created the Marvelous Maximoff Circus in Sokova. It was the first of it’s kind, to celebrate the unique and unusual. This circus, it’s a safe haven for those who need it” Bucky feels his muscles tense as a warm hand his placed on his shoulder. Slowly Bucky raises his head to look at Pietro, his smile was encouraging as he waited for Bucky to relax.

“He had a policy he carried to his grave, to never turn away anyone. And it’s a policy that my sister and I have continued here in America” Pietro squeezes his hand gently.

“You have a sister” Bucky whispered wanting to waste no more time of flashes of the past. Pietro let out a soft laugh, removing his hand from Bucky’s shoulder.

“Wanda’s has a gift of almost reading people’s minds, she’s the circus fortune teller. She might have an insight into your future my friend” Bucky gave a small smile. Straightening up, the large structure now fully formed in front of him. The big top was impressive, the bright white and the fierce red colours contrasted yet complemented each other.

“Normally I wouldn’t offer this but tonight, you’ll have the best seat in the house. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to make sure everyone is ready for tonight” With a flourish of his red coat Pietro briskly strode away towards the group of men now gathered under the big top. Unsure of what to do and his place within this new environment Bucky wandered back to the train, his stomach reminding him that he hadn’t eaten in forty-eight hours. Following his nose Bucky found what he was looking for, a carriage with makeshift tables sat around it, a large pot of what Bucky guessed was porridge was set up for the circus performers to help themselves too. Subconsciously Bucky wondered if (Y/N) would be there, but instead, the red-haired woman from early was sat alone smiling at him.

“Won’t you sit down?” Bucky glanced at her, helping himself to a bowl of porridge before sitting on the wooden crate. The woman at first glance was beautiful but Bucky could register something inside of her that screamed danger.  

“Natasha Romanoff” she extended her hand out to him. Bucky was then only too aware how dirty his hands were, his next step was to find a basin to bathe in.

“James Buchanan Barnes” Natasha’s green eyes studied him for a moment, reaching into her coat pocket she produced a small packet of cigarettes.

“Do you smoke Mr Barnes?” Bucky nodded, red nails extended the slim white roll. He thanked her as she offered him a lighter, sitting back in the wooden chair Natasha took a long drag before exhaling. The smoke swirled around her for a moment before disapparating.

“So what is your act Mr Barnes” Natasha crossed her legs, Bucky tried to ignore the milky skin of her thighs as he in hailed his own cigarette.

“I don’t have an act” for whatever reason Natasha found some humour in his answer as she stood from her chair.

“Everyone has an act Mr Barnes” Without a second glance she strolled away leaving Bucky to sit alone.

“Don’t mind Natasha, she’ll come to trust you soon enough” Bucky’s head snapped up at the newcomer.

“She shouldn’t” Bucky reluctantly push around his cold porridge.

“My brother was right, you are a mystery”  

Tag list: If I’ve missed anyone please let me know

@bucky-plums-barnes @abovethesmokestacks @kittyisabel @emolordisme @nevaeh-potter15 @fly-little-butterfly @marvelrevival @founduebitches @frostsoldier @thekayceenicole @jixstarfire @mazarinqueen @hazeofeleven @sistasarah-sallysaidso @unic0rns-taking-0ver-th3-w0rld @leanoreblack @void--life @n3rdybird  @pseudonymfox @jennylovelyheart (strike means I couldn't tag)

#bucky barnes imagine #reader x bucky barnes #bucky barnes au #bucky barnes #marvel imagine #avengers imagine #marvel au #avengers au #bucky #the runaway circus #writemarvelousthings #my writing

[patriotsnet]

What Republicans Are Running For President

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/what-republicans-are-running-for-president/

What Republicans Are Running For President

How Mitt Romney Could Wind Up Running The United States 6 Years After Losing The Presidential Election

If, as expected, Mitt Romney wins his race for a Senate seat from Utah he may become the most powerful man in the United States Senate. As many of us remember, Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts, ran for president in 2012 and lost to Barack Obama. It wasn’t one of those totally humiliating losses—the map did not turn blue—but we assumed Mitt Romney would fade into history.

Well, maybe not.

Here’s how. Just a few months ago, conventional wisdom was that while the Democrats had a good chance of taking control of the House of Representatives, the Senate was out of reach. In 2018 there will be at least 35 Senate seats up—of which 26 are held by Democrats. Democrats need a net gain of 2 seats to take control of the Senate. In an ordinary year this would be tough for two reasons. One is that incumbents usually win, and secondly, 10 of those Democratic senators represent states that went for Trump in 2016—so a somewhat popular president might be able to use his clout to win a Senate seat back from the Democrats. But this is no ordinary year as poll after poll and special election after special election indicate a “blue wave” for Democrats.

EKamarckrecent pollspolling aheadpolling close

Us Election 2024: Who Are The Likely Republican Candidates To Run For President Against Joe Biden

Mike Pence, Ivanka Trump and Ted Cruz are among the rumoured candidates to become Donald Trump’s successor

The 2020 presidential race has only just finished, but the Republican candidates for 2024 are already preparing themselves for their shot at the White House.

We take a look at who may be looking to get themselves in to the race.

Nj Primary Elections 2020: The Five Republicans Who Want To Take Over As Us Senator

Colleen O’Dea, Senior Writer and Projects EditorNJ Decides 2020Politics

Five Republicans are vying for the chance to try to do something no one else has been able to do in almost a half-century: Convince New Jersey voters to elect a Republican to serve in the U.S. Senate, where Democrat Cory Booker now sits.

It has been 48 years since New Jersey voters have sent a Republican to the U.S. Senate, and registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly a million. In 2018, Republican and former pharmaceuticals executive Bob Hugin spent more than $39 million, including $36 million of his own money, and lost by 11 percentage points to incumbent Bob Menendez, who had been considered vulnerable after his trial on political corruption charges ended in a hung jury.

“Statewide races are the toughest ones of all for a GOP outnumbered by a million more registered Democrats in the state,” said Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. “But even before party registrations were so lopsided, Republican Senate candidates have fared more poorly here than almost anywhere else in the nation.” Since New Jersey last sent a Republican to the Senate in 1972, “the GOP has lost a staggering 15 Senate races in a row,” he said.

Thoughts On New Poll: Most Republicans Want Trump To Run For President In 2024

John Fletcher Jrsays:

May 29, 2021 at 11:48 am

There may not be an American Presidential Office to run for when Joe Biden is done. I still believe Joe Biden is a Counterfeit President. One thing is certain, Barack Hussein Obama is happy that Joe Biden now reigns as worst American President. America get yourself ready for HYPERINFLATION, it’s coming.

May 29, 2021 at 3:43 pm

I have hats of Trump that read ” make America Great Again”, Trump 2020?,and “KEEP AMERICA GREAT”,I also have flags of him ” TRUMP ON THE TANK”, “TRUMP 2020, NO MORE BULLSHIT”. and I just got a new one,“TRUMP 2024” and then I have a MASK that reads, “TRUMP 2024 and has 2 AMERICAN FLAGS .So I really hope he runs, otherwise all of this means nothing ! TRUMP 2024 and TRUE FIGHTING REPUBLICANSIN 2022 !! NO RINOS NEEDED ! STAND UP OR SHUT UP !

May 29, 2021 at 5:19 pm

IT is more than if he runs or not. YOU are sending a message that you stand for freedoms and still support that hard work he did while still in office. Trump stands for AMERICA FIRST and that is also part of your message to the leftists.You are sending a great message no matter what he decides….You know as well as I do that he is all about what is best for the AMERICA and All Americans….SO IF he supports someone else to run then we know that person is worthy of what we all need as AMERICANS.Don;t loose hope and wear your attire with pride knowing there are many others still hoping for another win.

Yes we want Donald Trunp be our presidentin 2024.

Republican Lawmakers Are Terrified Of Trump Running For President Again

A new report by Politico cites multiple unnamed Republican lawmakers – even those who publicly praise Trump – who say that they REALLY don’t want Donald Trump running for President again in 2024. They would much rather see Trump working “behind the scenes” to help shore up support for the Party as a whole, and they insist that the Party is stronger now than it was five years ago. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.

Transcript:

*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Recently, Politico interviewed several Republican lawmakers, who of course all chose to remain nameless. But Politico says that these were Trump supporting lawmakers, still are Trump supporting lawmakers, by the way. And each one of them said that they do not want Donald Trump to be the Republican party’s nominee in 2024. In fact, they don’t want Trump to run for president ever again. I’ll read a couple quotes from some of these lawmakers here. Here’s what one of them said, he’s one of the best presidents we’ve had in terms of policies. But having said that if it were up to me, I would never have Trump on any ballot ever again, because it’s such a distraction. I would love for him to play a behind the scenes role and not be on the ballot. Another one said, I’d like to see a fresh face. I think we have a lot of them.

Eight Republican 2024 Candidates Speak In Texas Next Week But Not Trump

Steve Holland

WASHINGTON, April 30 – A Republican Party event in Texas next week will hear from eight potential candidates for the party’s presidential nomination in 2024, without former President Donald Trump, a source involved in the planning said on Friday.

The May 7 event at a hotel in Austin is being co-hosted by U.S. Senator John Cornyn and Texas Governor Greg Abbott, to thank donors who helped fund a voter registration drive and get-out-the-vote efforts in the state.

High-profile Republican politicians who are considering whether to seek the party’s nomination in 2024 are expected to speak to the crowd of about 200 donors.

They include former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and U.S. senators Marco Rubio, Tim Scott and Rick Scott, the source said.

The event comes as Republicans wrestle with whether to try to move past Trump in the next election cycle or fall in line behind him. Trump told Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo on Thursday that he was “100%” considering another run after losing in 2020 to Democrat Joe Biden.

Trump was not invited to Texas, the source said. Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley was invited but was unable to attend, the source said.

Many Republican insiders doubt Trump will follow through on his musings about running for president in 2024, leaving a void that other party leaders will seek to fill.

Fact Check: Trump Did Not Call Republicans The Dumbest Group Of Voters

5 Min Read

An old quote falsely attributed to Donald Trump has recently resurfaced online. The viral meme alleges Trump told People magazine in 1998 that Republicans are “the dumbest group of voters in the country”. This is false.

While the quote has been debunked several times since it apparently surfaced in 2015, users have recently been resharing it on social media. Examples can be seen here , here , here , here

The meme reads: “If I were to run, I’d run as a Republican. They’re the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe anything on Fox News. I could lie and they’d still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific. – Donald Trump, People Magazine, 1998”

Snopes first wrote about the false quote here in October 2015 . Since then, the quote has been debunked multiple times .

People magazine has confirmed in the past that its archive has no register of this alleged exchange.

“People looked into this exhaustively when it first surfaced back in Oct. . We combed through every Trump story in our archive. We couldn’t find anything remotely like this quote–and no interview at all in 1998.”, a magazine spokesperson told Factcheck.org that year .

In December 1987, People published a profile on Donald Trump titled “Too Darn Rich”. The article quoted him saying he was too busy to run for president .

The Long Race For The 2024 Republican Presidential Nomination Begins

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — In the past week alone, Nikki Haley regaled activists in Iowa, Mike Pence courted donors in California and Donald Trump returned to the rally stage, teasing a third campaign for the White House.

The midterms are more than a year away, and there are 1,225 days until the next presidential election. But Republicans eyeing a White House run are wasting no time in jockeying for a strong position in what could emerge as an extremely crowded field of contenders.

The politicking will only intensify in the coming weeks, particularly in Iowa, home to the nation’s leadoff presidential caucuses and a state where conservative evangelicals play a significant role in steering the direction of the GOP. Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas is slated to visit on Tuesday, and others, including Pence, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are expected to appear in July.

The flurry of activity is a sign that there is no clear frontrunner to lead the GOP if Trump opts against a 2024 campaign.

“It definitely feels early, but it doesn’t feel like it’s a bad idea based on the situation,” said Mike DuHaime, a longtime Republican strategist. “The party has changed, the voters are changing and I think the process has changed. And I think many of the candidates have realized that.”

“We won the election twice,” he said. “And it’s possible we’ll have to win it a third time.”

As for Trump?

Are You Ready For Republican Tim Scott To Run For President In 2024

The Senate’s lone Black Republican member, Tim Scott, is opening eyes and creating conversation about his 2024 political prospects.According to Fox News, Scott has brought in $14.4 million in campaign fundraising, after posting $9.6 million during April-June. The total amount in his campaign coffers has led many to believe that Scott is eying higher office than just the U.S. Senate.Scott has kept his name ringing in the political arena during his tenure in the Senate, especially after delivering a GOP response to President Biden’s primetime address to a joint session of Congress earlier this year. Scott has also led his party in negotiations with congressional Democrats on a major police reform bill.

While Scott has downplayed the hype surrounding his political aspirations, people on the Hill and talking heads on camera are noting that he could possibly be a 2024 Republican presidential nominee.

“Tim Scott is a force,” Jim Merrill, a New Hampshire-based Republican consultant said to Fox News. “His strong numbers reflect how he has inspired activists and business leaders alike, good for both his reelection next year and for a potential presidential campaign in 2024.”

Fear of a Black Landowner

With Scott previously downplaying the notion of running for president and his recent declaration that he won’t run for Senate after 2022, Black America will just have to see if Tim Scott will lean-in to the dollars raised to bankroll a potential campaign for the White House.

Reaction

New Poll: Most Republicans Want Trump To Run For President In 2024

A new Quinnipiac University national poll released this week revealed that two-thirds of Republicans want former President Donald Trump to run for president in 2024.

The Quinnipiac poll surveyed 1,316 U.S. adults nationwide from May 18-24. The poll’s margin of error was +/- 2.7 percentage points.

Three key Republican findings of the survey included:

66% of Republicans want to see Trump run in 2024

66% of Republicans do not think Biden’s victory was legitimate

85% of Republicans want candidates that mostly agree with Trump

“The numbers fly in the face of any predictions that Donald Trump’s political future is in decline. By a substantial majority, Republicans: believe the election was stolen from him, want Trump to run again, and , if they can’t vote for Trump, prefer someone who agrees with him,” said Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy.

Malloy is right. The poll reveals what many American already know — Trump still serves as a top conservative leader.

But is Trump still up for another run? And if he does, can he win?

The first question looks like a yes. Trump recently told radio host Dan Bongino people will be very happy with his answer. However, Trump has also previously said he would not announce whether he is running until after the 2022 midterm elections.

The more important question is can he win? If two-thirds of Republicans already support Trump, how many more will be required, especially in key battleground states, to reach the needed electoral votes?

Native American Voting Rights Are Under Attack In Republican

Paul Blumenthal

After turning out to vote in record numbers in 2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Native Americans are now one of the biggest targets of Republican-backed voter suppression efforts in states where their votes mattered the most.

Republicans in states with significant Native populations like Arizona, Kansas, Montana and more have enacted new laws that limit voter access in ways that disproportionately impact Native voters. Imposing strict time limits on correcting a mail-in ballot, prohibiting third-party ballot collection, implementing strict voter identification requirements and making it harder to pay for election resources all negatively impact Native Americans in these states, largely due to specific circumstances on reservations where many of them live.

“The laws the state legislatures are passing are lethal to every Native American living in those states,” said OJ Semans, the founder of the Native voting rights group Four Directions and an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota. Such legislation, he said, “is going to knock us back 10 years” after “what we’ve been working through for the last 18 to 20 years to get more and more Native Americans to participate in elections.” 

It wasn’t until 1962 when New Mexico’s laws blocking Native voting fell. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 also provided important protections for Native voting rights.

Trumps Role As Republican Party Leader Is Becoming Stronger

This weekend’s CPAC straw poll results showed that Trump’s popularity — along with DeSantis’ — in the Republican Party has grown in the last six months, according to Forbes.

In February, only 55% of attendees of a similar CPAC event in Orlando, Florida, said they wanted Trump to lead the ticket in 2024, Forbes reported.

If Trump stayed in political retirement, or at least stayed off the presidential primary ballot in 2024, DeSantis lead the poll with 43% attending Republicans choosing him in February’s hypothetical presidential primary.

Related

Inside the newsroom: Words matter, including the hateful ‘Murder the media’

When Presidential Primaries Started They Weren’t Decisive

Woodrow Wilson.

The Progressive Era at the beginning of the 20th century saw a backlash against local party machines and their bosses dominating American politics. This backlash was especially pronounced in Western states, where reformers implemented ideas like legislating via ballot initiative at the polls.

Progressive reformers also invented the presidential primary. In 1910, Oregon became the first to use a popular election to pick its delegates for national conventions, with the delegates pledged to support specific candidates.

But these primaries lacked the efficacy and decisiveness of those we have today, in part because most states didn’t have them and in part because the ultimate nomination decision was still made via a multi-ballot process at a national convention.

In 1912, ex-President Theodore Roosevelt decided to challenge his successor William Howard Taft for the GOP nomination. He crushed Taft in the primaries, carrying nine of the 12 states that held primaries, while Robert La Follette won two and Taft just one.

But that still left 36 other states, which mostly sent pro-Taft delegates to the convention, securing him the nomination. And that led Roosevelt to bolt the party and launch an independent bid for the general election.

But while McAdoo didn’t have enough support to win, he did have enough to block the party bosses’ favorite, New York Gov. Al Smith, a Catholic.

Why Donald Trump Is Republicans’ Worst Nightmare In 2024

Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large

Earlier this week, amid a rambling attack on the validity of the 2020 election, former President Donald Trump said this: “Interesting that today a poll came out indicating I’m far in the lead for the Republican Presidential Primary and the General Election in 2024.”

this on Trump’s future political ambitions from Politico“Trump is confiding in allies that he intends to run again in 2024 with one contingency: that he still has a good bill of health, according to two sources close to the former president. That means Trump is going to hang over the Republican Party despite its attempts to rebrand during his exile and its blockade of a Trump-centric investigation into January’s insurrection.”new Quinnipiac University national pollhis growing legal and financial entanglementsAs CNN reported on Wednesday night“Manhattan prosecutors pursuing a criminal case against former President Donald Trump, his company and its executives have told at least one witness to prepare for grand jury testimony, according to a person familiar with the matter — a signal that the lengthy investigation is moving into an advanced stage.”

The Contenders Who Competed To Run Against Donald Trump

Tom MurseTom Murse

Within weeks of Donald Trump taking the oath of office as the nation’s 45th president, challengers began lining up to see who would attempt to unseat him in the 2020 presidential election. The controversial president faced early challenges from within his own party, but by and large, the focus remained on the candidates put forth by the opposing Democratic Party.

During one of the most crowded primary seasons in recent memory, several high-profile Democrats, including multiple sitting senators and rising stars in the party, competed for the party’s nomination. Ultimately, it was former vice president Joe Biden who won the party’s nomination. He selected Senator Kamala Harris, another primary candidate, as his running mate, and the ticket won the 2020 general election with 51.3% of the vote and 306 electoral votes to 46.9% and 232 electoral votes for the incumbent Trump/Pence ticket.

Here’s a look at the Democrats, and even members of Trump’s own Republican Party, who ran campaigns looking to unseat the controversial commander-in-chief.

Democratic Challengers

February 7, 2020

Former Us Ambassador To The United Nations Nikki Haley

Haley, 49, stands out in the potential pool of 2024 Republican candidates by her resume. She has experience as an executive as the former governor of South Carolina and foreign policy experience from her time as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Haley was a member of the Republican Party’s 2010 tea party class. A former South Carolina state representative, her long shot gubernatorial campaign saw its fortunes improve after she was endorsed by Sarah Palin. Haley rocketed from fourth to first just days after the endorsement, and she went on to clinch the nomination and become her state’s first female and first Indian-American governor.

As governor, she signed a bill removing the Confederate flag from the state Capitol following the white supremacist attack at the Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston. She left office in 2017 to join the Trump administration as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and Quinnipiac poll found she was at one point the most popular member of Trump’s foreign policy team.

“I think that she’s done a pretty masterful job in filling out her resume,” said Robert Oldendick, a professor and director of graduate studies at the University of South Carolina’s department of political science.

Haley criticized Trump following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by his supporters, saying she was “disgusted” by his conduct. Oldendick said he thought her “pretty pointed criticism of the president will potentially cause some problems.”

Republican Candidates Running For The Us 2020 Election

Bill Weld was married twice and has five children.

Weld ran for vice-president as a Libertarian on the Gary Johnson ticket in the 2016 presidential election.

As a conservative, Weld is strongly pro-choice on abortion issues.

The presidential race is on and the candidates are being whittled down to the very few. Who is running on the Republican side? Current President Donald Trump is going for re-election, and the only candidate now challenging him for election as president of the US this coming November 3rd, 2020 is Bill Weld, a former Massachusetts governor.

The 2024 Republican Presidential Candidate Wild Cards

The first Democratic debate back in 2019 had 20 — TWENTY! — candidates, so don’t be surprised if the Republican field is just as large or larger. We could have some more governors or representatives run, or even other nontraditional candidates, like a Trump family member, a Fox News host or a celebrity, like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who’s said he’s “seriously considering” a run. Stranger things have happened.

Who Wants To Run For Governor As A Republican In 2022

Pennsylvania Republicans have been battling with Gov. Tom Wolf since he unseated incumbent Tom Corbett in 2014. Many of them are eager to take Wolf’s place, but there is no clear frontrunner this early in the race. Several Republicans have already announced their bid, and a few others have hinted or shown interest in joining what is expected to be a crowded primary. Thus far, it’s hard to find a Republican candidate without some sort of ties to former President Donald Trump. 

With a heated race to fill U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey’s seat next year, the GOP will have to be strategic about what candidates it wants to back for the Senate and for governor. Potential candidates will also have to weigh their options and decide where they fit best and can compete.

There are plenty of names that could be added to this list in the coming months, but here is our second iteration of potential Republican candidates for 2022. A couple of candidates have been added since the last edition.

Running

Former U.S. Rep Lou Barletta

Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Gale

Gale was the first Republican to formally announce his candidacy for governor back in February. An avid Trump supporter, he has criticized the Pennsylvania GOP and pledged to be a conservative populist. He’s also caught attention for and saying Trump’s presidency was sabotaged. 

Former Corry Mayor Jason Monn

Pittsburgh attorney Jason Richey

Dr. Nche Zama

Charlie Gerow

John Ventre

For These Republicans 2024 Is Just Around The Corner

Mike Pence. Mike Pompeo. Rick Scott. They share big ambitions, but one name hovers above them all …

President Biden told reporters last month that his “plan is to run for re-election,” despite already being the oldest person to have won a presidential election. So, for now at least, the question of who will lead the Democratic ticket in 2024 has been put to rest.

On the Republican side, however, certainty is in short supply. It’s beyond early to be talking about the next presidential election — but that’s only if you aren’t planning to run. Some Republican candidates have already made trips to Iowa and New Hampshire, and others are laying plans to go, in what often represents the first step in building out a campaign operation in those early-voting states.

And on Wednesday, in a conspicuously forward-looking move, former Vice President Mike Pence announced the formation of a new political organization, Advancing American Freedom, whose advisory board is stacked high with former Trump administration officials and allies. The news came on the same day Simon & Schuster announced that it would publish Pence’s autobiography as part of a two-book deal.

The G.O.P. is badly fractured, trying to hold together a dominant base of those loyal to former President Donald Trump and a stubborn minority of pro-decorum, anti-Trump conservatives. Anyone looking to grab the Republican mantle will have to find some way of satisfying both camps — and maybe even expanding upon them.

Rivera Another Candidate Who Is Trying A Second Time

Another candidate making her second Senate attempt is Natalie Lynn Rivera. A social services coordinator from Sicklerville, Rivera ran as an independent under the slogan “For the People” in 2018, garnering about 0.6% of the vote.

Rivera, 44, said she wants to give typical New Jersey residents a voice in Congress. On her Facebook campaign site she calls herself a conservative. Among her priorities are restoring Second Amendment rights that she says are “under seige” in the state and outlawing abortion.

What sets her apart from the other candidates, she said, is that she “will be a servant to the people … I think I am authentic and will serve from the heart to put their best interests at the forefront.”

Another candidate running a shoestring campaign is Eugene Tom Anagnos, a retired middle school teacher who taught in Newark and Elizabeth schools. A Greek immigrant who now lives in East Hanover, Anagnos is an Army veteran who holds a bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Indiana University.

General Election Candidates On Five Or More Ballots

In addition to Biden, Hawkins, Jorgensen, and Trump, the following candidates have qualified to appear on five or more ballots:

Roque De La Fuente   Gloria La Riva   Jade Simmons   Jesse Ventura/Cynthia McKinney   Sheila Tittle   Kyle Kenley Kopitke   Ricki Sue King/Dayna Chandler  

Incumbents are bolded and underlined The results have been certified.

Total votes: 158,379,904

0 states have not been called.

Here Are The Republicans To Keep An Eye On For 2024

Bradley Devlin

Republicans are paying extra attention to a number of Republican governors, senators, and former officials that might consider making a run for president in 2024.

The contenders come from various contingents of right-leaning thought, and will be fighting to capture parts of former President Donald Trump’s base. Whichever Republican hopeful prevails will not only become the Republican Party’s nominee, but also help determine the ideological trajectory of the Republican Party in the post-Trump era.

Vice President Mike Pence

It’s not uncommon for vice presidents to follow up their stint as second-in-command with a run for president. Former President John Adams, the nation’s second president, was America’s first vice president under President George Washington. More recently, President Joe Biden became the 46th president four years after he ended his eight-year tenure as former President Barack Obama’s vice president.

Vice President Mike Pence might decide to do the same, but Pence’s relationship with Trump seems to be severely tarnished after Pence did not contest the certification of the Electoral College results, as reported by The Hill.

Senator Ted Cruz

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz could run for president again come 2024 after he defended his senate seat in 2018 from Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke. Cruz’s bid for the presidency in 2016 ended in failure as Trump captured the Republican Party’s nomination.

Senator Josh Hawley

Governor Ron DeSantis

Poll Results Are Fake Unless Theyre Good Trump Says

During his speech at the Dallas convention Sunday night, Trump said he only would have believed the results of CPAC’s straw poll if they were his favor, Business Insider reported.

“Now, if it’s bad, I just say it’s fake,” the former president told the crowd, reported Insider. “If it’s good, I say that’s the most accurate poll, perhaps ever.”

In the past, Trump has decried similar things he doesn’t like as false, like referring to unfavorable media coverage as “fake news.”

Early Nomination Contests Didn’t Involve Primaries

Presidents Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren.

Intraparty disputes over who should be nominated for the presidency are as old as the republic itself. But the modern system of determining nominees through a series of state primary elections is essentially an innovation of the 1970s. Before that, parties deployed a wide range of methods.

The Democratic-Republicans, the dominant political party of the early 19th century, used to select candidates via a vote of the party’s members in Congress.That method let it control the White House for 20 years, and lasted until the rivalry between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson made the party splinter into the Democrats and the Whigs in the aftermath of the 1824 election.

Back in 1836, in the early days of Whig versus Democrat competition, the Whig Party even tried nominating several candidates simultaneously in their bid to block Martin Van Buren from succeeding Jackson in the White House.

In most Northern states, William Henry Harrison appeared on the general election ballot, while Hugh White got the nod in most Southern ones. And Massachusetts Whigs went with Daniel Webster , while Willie Magnum was nominated in South Carolina.

But it did not work. Van Buren won the election, and in subsequent contests the Whigs emulated the Democrats, picking a single nominee at a broad national convention with representatives from all states.