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oldblackhat · 2 months ago

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Ah i love all this!

Two thoughts: i think Aziraphale underestimates how much work and more importantly how much maintenance goes into a skill learned the human way.

Maintenance as in maybe when he first tutored with Rossignol or Hoffman he actually did get pretty good at it (or at least better than he is now) and then he’s partially lost it through lack of practice. Because if it didn’t come naturally to him and he’s having to learn it manually then the human laws of “use it or lose it” with skills might apply.

So “functionaries” as you put them aren’t built to learn, well, anything new. Everything is either easy or outside your scope. No childhood to learn how to learn and fail and try again.

Point is I think if a being who was built like that tried to push themselves and actually learn they would almost definitely underestimate how much practice, repetition, and maintenance is needed. They might tend towards feeling like if they got it right one time then they have it (ie like photographic memory incl muscle memory) but that’s just not true.

And so in addition to his not being built for picking things up—he also might underestimate just how much repetitive practice would need to be done for him to be as good at it as it is possible for him to be. And some of the things we see him do may be out-of-practice iterations on something he was actually better at at one point — because he’s not recognizing the need for regular practice as maintenance.

My other thought is I think Crowleys dismissiveness of Aziraphale’s attempts to learn stuff is also symptomatic of Crowley being a “functionary” — we don’t see much evidence of Crowley trying to learn to do things from scratch the human way.

He yells at his plants—which is not how humans garden. His bentley has only been filled with gas once in 100 years. His speaker system isnt plugged in. He used rats to take down the cell towers instead of a true computer virus code.

Crowley does question things — more than Aziraphale in terms of why things are the way they are. But i am having trouble thinking of any examples of him trying to learn how to do anything the human way.

And so maybe it’s not actually that surprising that his reaction to Aziraphale doing things badly isn’t that different from what your average angel/demons reaction would be. It’s not an area where he’s actually much more developed then your average eternal being.

We know he was friends with masters like Da Vinci and appreciated human innovation — but how much has he actually watched the nitty gritty of humans grinding through the learning process (making awkward mistakes) to become skilled practitioners

Maybe he tells Aziraphale to retire the magic act because he doesn’t fully recognize (& maybe Aziraphale doesnt either as discussed above) that what Aziraphale really needs to do is practice a lot repetitively and routinely behind closed doors.

Somebody (Maggie, Nina, Anathema, Tracy) needs to sit Aziraphale down (after a not terribly impressive magic act) and gently suggest that maybe he should make a plan of regular structured practice if he wants to not just improve but maintain. Because funny thing that about learning things “the human way” — muscle memory and “use it or lose it” are very real things.

All this isn’t to say I think Aziraphale hasn’t practiced at all! I bet he has. I just wouldn’t be surprised if he hasn’t practiced quite as much as us humans recognize you need to to get really good at something (& then maintain it) — And perhaps he doesn’t fully realize the need to do so

What’s Really Magic About Aziraphale

Aziraphale: terrible magician, cringey speaker of bad French, laughable dancer of antiquated steps. Even defenders of the angel say “What a dork!” and giggle over his clueless antics.

I don’t, and have never, seen them in that light, and I’d like to talk about why.

First off—maybe most importantly—I don’t laugh at good-hearted people who are dorks. I try to see their challenges and celebrate their achievements on their own merits. I strongly dislike people who cut others down because they don’t measure up to an arbitrary standard.

Angels, presumably, and demons as well, are functionaries. They sprang fully-formed into existence equipped to perform the duties that were required of them (this may or may not jibe with the GO universe, but it seems likely to). Both Crowley and Aziraphale challenge their boundaries, and both should be appreciated for doing so.

We forget the main characters in GO aren’t human, because the actors are humans cosplaying supernatural beings cosplaying humans. We see them as human in the show when they’re actually not physically embodied, and because all fictional beings are, at base, cosplaying humans by metaphorically representing our humanity.

But they’re not human, and I like it like that.

Aziraphale loves humans. His first great act of rebellion is to give away his flaming sword with the intent to protect them. We don’t know a lot about what his directives actually were, but in both books and show he’s protective of them. He loves cosplaying humans, with his portly, comfortable shape, his reading glasses, his love of creature comforts.

I think Aziraphale is fascinated by human cleverness, and wants to understand it.

Aziraphale can speak all languages, but chose to learn French “the hard way.” (In truth, this is very likely to explain why his French was “rusty” in the prison scene in S1, but it becomes an important plot point in itself.)

How does a being who was created to speak all languages learn a language “the hard way”? You can’t learn a language badly when you already instinctively speak it perfectly; can can only pretend to speak it poorly.

To actually undertake this feat, he would first have to forget the language—presumably with a self-applied miracle. This is an important point in itself because it suggests that the supernatural beings in GO can choose to forget at will. But specifically it means Aziraphale cared enough about something to go to extraordinary lengths to explore it.

Crowley is baffled by the angel’s linguistic struggle, as he fairly frequently is about Aziraphale’s special interests. As Crowley says, Aziraphale is unpredictable; and it’s one of the things Crowley adores about him, no matter how cringey or frustrating the demon finds it from time to time.

I expect if you intrinsically speak a language, it may be exceedingly difficult to relearn it. Adult humans may struggle to learn a new language, and we’ve needed to do so many times over the course of human existence. We’re born with the ability to learn languages, and learn new ones if necessary.

Aziraphale was made with the ability to speak all languages; he isn’t naturally equipped to learn them word by word as humans have to. It’s outside of his skill set. Of course he isn’t very good at it, but he had the persistence to make the attempt, and is justifiably proud of his progress, no matter how we feel about it. Aziraphale is the only angel (or demon) we know of to have taken this radical step.

It’s been pointed out that French is known as the language of love, and that it’s beyond relevant that Aziraphale learned it from a Monsieur Rossignol. We might say that metaphorically he’s the only angel who has forgotten what Heaven has taught him about love (if anything), and relearned it, haltingly, the way a human learns it—by heart, the hard way. I hope he speaks it fluently some day.

The Gavotte. Ok, it’s cute and funny that Aziraphale learned something as antiquated and obscure in modern times as this dance, and it’s so adorable to watch him enjoy his skill. But let’s take into consideration that, canonically, angels don’t dance. Like they really don’t dance, like, “it’s one of the distinguishing characteristics that marks an angel” don’t dance. They don’t dance the same way orioles don’t tie their shoelaces, and even demons (presumably laxer about decorum in general) apparently aren’t very good at it.

This is something no other angel has ever done. He’s not a two-left-feet guy who has to work to get a mediocre skill, he is a pioneer of an art form that his species has never explored.

But Aziraphale, although he took to it like “a duck to merchant banking,” persisted, and (unlike French), he became “quite good at it.” If that’s not a triumph against your conditioning and your toxic heritage, I don’t know what is.

Then there’s magic. Yeah, yeah, yeah, usually he’s embarrassingly bad at it and it’s very funny at his expense. Why is he bad at it? Because, as Crowley points out as he tries to fathom what the hell is up with his angel, he can do real magic, and he’s good at that. That engineered Austenian ball was a tour-de-force of miraculous orchestration.

But he loves human magic—prestidigitation, sleight-of-hand. He was made with the talent for miracles; the skill for illusion he has had to fight for and to persist at.

I think about ancient cultures where the imitation was more valuable than the original—imitations of natural objects made of cloth or precious stones where the value is in the human ability to mimic, to fool the eye of the observer. I’m a sculptor in a small way, and I know a good statue of a cow will generally enthrall me more to look at than a living cow (no matter how fond of cows I may be), and in a different way.

NO HE ISN'T “GOOD” AT IT. Of course he isn’t. It’s actually against his nature, but he does it anyway. Why would an angel need an aptitude for stage magic? He doesn’t have the aptitude, but he persists.

And I know, I know: Crowley was so very gentle when he told Aziraphale—right after Aziraphale’s magic trick saved his demonic bacon—that he really is “terrible at magic.” I think it may actually be the worst thing Crowley does in the series. It always makes me cringe. He could just as well have said “retire the act until all the kinks are worked out” (which is also a fun double-entendre, of which they are fond), or something of that nature. Give the angel a break—it was his first time on a big stage, with a dangerous act that hadn’t been rehearsed, in the chaos of trying to perform with an unexpected miracle blocker in action—and they pulled it off. Aziraphale scarcely missed a beat.

Terrible at (stage) magic? Aziraphale is better at it than any other angel. That’s pretty impressive, really.

Angels are also presumably not engineered to lie, which is another form of human magic. We often see Aziraphale as a bad liar, but when the chips are down, he lies as well as any demon (or any human, more germanely).

In Conclusion

Aziraphale is not just funny and clumsy; he’s actually a trailblazer. We all know Crowley asks questions—but so does Aziraphale. The questions are just different ones. I think he loves how humans work and delights in experiments to celebrate them.

We see Aziraphale being brave a number of times—in the Final Fifteen, certainly, in the confrontation in the dressing room with FurFur, and—my favorite—when he goes balls-out (with apologies to Jane Austen) to defy the hectoring martinet of a quartermaster, to desert Heaven’s army and defect to earth despite being handicapped by the lack of a body, in search of someone to possess despite having no idea how any of that works. He figures he will just learn on the job, and he did.

But I think he deserves recognition for the bravery of doing so many things he isn’t good at, will likely never be good at, likely never can be good at. He delights in them for their own merit and doesn’t judge himself by others’ standards.

Maybe your own victories are worth celebrating, even if your best friend thinks you’re terrible at them.

#meta #interesting thoughts

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watching-pictures-move · 2 years ago

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Movie Review | Spiral: From the Book of Saw (Bousman, 2021)

This is the first of these I've watched since the original, which I thought was downright terrible, so I suppose against that low, low standard, this is an improvement. Like that movie this is a hybrid of psychological thriller and torture scenes. But where that movie had the premise of two guys trapped in a room repeatedly undermined by cutting away to some dogshit police procedural scenes, this puts the cop thriller stuff first and punctuates it with the torture scenes, so it's a dramatically sturdier piece of work. And while these days I tend to be lenient towards anything shot on film, the fact is that the original movie was a total eyesore, the scenes in the room having the ambience of a dirty public bathroom with blinding fluorescent lights, and that was before we got to the piss filter cop scenes. This movie has that same urinary colour scheme, but the higher production values made this more tolerable to look at. That being said, the editing rhythms here feel amusingly akin to the nu metal style of the early 2000s, and if you didn't know the release date, you'd be forgiven for thinking it came out a decade and a half earlier than it actually did. So I guess it's a throwback of sorts.

The big selling point here, aside from the usual trappings of these movies, is that stars and is based on a story idea by Chris Rock, something which sounds like a hacky SNL sketch from two decades ago. Rock's touch is apparent from the dialogue, although I must note that none of the jokes here would make the cut in any of his specials. (Exhibit A: Rock's character complaining about Jenny from Forrest Gump in the opening scene.) on his routines in Selective Outrage, he's still in fine comedic form, but you wouldn't know it from this movie. But I suppose Rock's hand is also apparent in the social commentary, which tries to examine the issues of police misconduct and accountability through the lens of a Saw movie. Rock's character is the sole honest cop in a corrupt department, whose members are being targeted for their misconduct. The movie goes much softer on this subject than one might hope, as it leaves the obvious racial angles largely unexamined, and for all its ideas, the execution is very much akin to a hacky cop show. But in any case, it offers an alternative to the currently in vogue elevated mode of horror for movies in the genre seeking to traffic in social commentary.

For what it's worth, Rock's performance and story ideas seem to respect the material, or at least don't condescend to it, although one wishes the movie were less interested in maintaining any sense of dignity about itself. The moral equivalences presented by the killer are all bullshit, so rather than trying to examine them with any seriousness, it might have been more fun to go full bozo mode, like the speechifying in the much more fun Law Abiding Citizen. The only time it does so is right at the end, when it keeps cutting between a character suspended in a trap with the puppet the killer used for a creepy video message during a climactic moment. This is easily the most fun part of the movie, which is otherwise a mixture of middling procedural scenes and the kind of ugly torture scenes that I'm glad went out of vogue over a decade ago.

Anyway, I'm very obviously not the target audience, although I should note that the performances are respectable and the runtime of an hour of a half makes this relatively painless.

#film #movie review #spiral: from the book of saw #darren lynn bousman

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fairydollsteps · 4 years ago

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Helloo! I seen your post and I was wondering if you can do a Megumi x reader where the reader feels like she she's not up to Megumi's standards

Sure. This one will be short or boring cause I am feeling lazy.🙂This writing piece will also be base on my personal experience such as feeling unworthy, overthinking, and stuff. I do hope what I wrote is what you wanted!

Megumi Fushiguro x Insecure Reader

Okay, we are talking about Fushiguro Megumi here.

We have seen him in action during his mission multiple times and he did what he was ordered flawlessly, exceeding many higher-up's expectations.

Fushiguro’s powers have a great capability and potential to exorcise curses that come in his way.

Furthermore, he also plays a very vital part in teamwork with his classmate during a fight with the curses and they manage to slaughter the curses without dying.

All his power and skills as a Jujutsu sorcerer are shown and he was then later titled as a grade 1 Sorcerer after proving his talent and worth to receive this title.

Of course, you are extremely proud of your boyfriend’s achievement as a grade 1 sorcerer but there is a thought of yours lingering behind your head mentioning you are not at his standard and useless, being a burden to Fushiguro.

Weak. Is a word that you thought yourself about after comparing yourself with him.

Which is kinda wrong, you become a grade 1 sorcerer right before Fushiguro becomes one after you have exorcised 2 special grade curse all by yourself.

You only managed to survive because you use everything of yourself to kill both of them and you succeed. You were injured but is not too severe or life-threatening

Your success has Fushiguro’s respect and admiration and it also encourages and motivates him to work hard.

Now that he has finally become one, you started to train harder than before out of fear that Fushiguro will be annoyed with you for being weak once he has become stronger than you.

Is not that you don’t want him to become stronger, you do, so you don’t have to worry about him and you know that Fushiguro won’t ever think like this to you.

But still, you absolutely wanted to maintain your standard with him so you won’t become a burden to him. Is obviously shown that you are overthinking and you mask it up.

Fushiguro notices your changes in your routine.

You would always wake up early in the morning to go out for a jog to build up your stamina and speed.

Fushiguro would always see that you would always be training with Maki or with Panda every day to improve your skills and your resilience and so on.

Fushiguro would admire you more but notice something strange from you.

When your other classmate is too tired to continue train, you would still continue to train somewhere when it is clearly shown that you need a break.

Or how you always propose to work in a mission when it was announced even when you just come back from a mission like yesterday and often be found in the training room.

He also notices many bandages and scars on you and it keeps getting more every day.

Fushiguro becomes concerned and had enough of this and confronted you about it and insisted to know your sudden changes in your routine. You would usually enjoy doing what you like to do.

Like doing your hobbies, hanging out with your friend, playing with his shikigami and so on but now you are just training like crazy, not even taking a break.

Having no way out with Fushiguro standing in front of you with a stern look, you have no choice but to explain everything to him.

Once you have explained everything to him, he hugs you and places his head on your shoulder.

“Y/n you idiot. I would never think of you like that. I wanted to become stronger so I can protect you just like how you protect me back then, remember?”

You hug him back after what he said, cheering you up a bit and chuckle, remembering those times where you save him before he walks to death. you save him countless of time lol

He would reassure you that you are the most strongest sorcerer that he admired deeply making you feel comforted by his sincere words. He would hide is face when he see your smiling sweetly. tsundere vibes

Fushiguro would also try to get you to be open and communicate with him. After all, communication is the key to a relationship.

He just wanted you to know that you can say anything to him without the fear of criticism and judgment from him instead become comfortable with him.

He would put an effort to be also open with you too as he does not want you to overthink because of how quiet he is. He wanted you to know that he loves you dearly.

You and Fushiguro become better as the relationship goes on. You both are open and trust each other a lot, having no fear to be judges by one.

Fushiguro is just such a good boyfriend to you so please take care and trust him. he is too precious and deserves to loved genuinely by you.

That’s all from me. Thank you for reading and have a nice day!

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thisaliennerd · 4 years ago

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so true blaine, sam and britt are autistic!! but post about it i wanna know why u think that

I literally only needed one person to ask me this, so thank you for being that person, anon! Britt is very self-explanatory, and Sam is also pretty obvious imo (although I do have lots of notes on him too), but since I think Blaine needs a little bit more explaining, here is my evidence as to why I think he’s autistic.

First of all, let’s look at some of the common symptoms of autism in adults:

Difficulty interpreting what others are thinking or feeling

Trouble interpreting facial expressions, body language, or social cues

Difficulty regulating emotion

Trouble keeping up a conversation

Inflection that does not reflect feelings

Difficulty maintaining the natural give-and-take of a conversation; prone to monologues on a favorite subject

Tendency to engage in repetitive or routine behaviors

Only participates in a restricted range of activities

Strict consistency to daily routines; outbursts when changes occur

Exhibiting strong, special interests

I think Blaine exhibits all or almost all of these things throughout the show, so let’s go through the list, point by point (with examples):

First, difficulty interpreting what others are thinking or feeling. Blaine is very bad at this, especially romantic feelings. He doesn’t catch on to Kurt or Tina having crushes on him for way too long even though neither of them are subtle about it. He also doesn’t seem to pick up on most of Sebastian’s stuff. He seems to be aware that he’s hitting on him, but he doesn’t seem to be aware of his rivalry with Kurt or any of his malicious intent. Every time he and Kurt get into a fight he needs Kurt to explicitly tell him what’s wrong.

Second, trouble interpreting facial expressions, body language, or social cues. Blaine is TERRIBLE at this. He doesn’t understand sarcasm, he can never tell when people are lying to him, he often doesn’t understand how to talk to his peers, and he has no idea when people are uncomfortable. I have so many examples for this and the first point, but here’s just a small sample: s2e12 (22:15) - not getting that Jeremiah was very uncomfortable with the song, s5e9 (37:20) - when he’s named valedictorian instead of Artie or Tina, he apologizes to them and says that he thinks that things get handed to him, they sarcastically say they haven’t noticed, and Blaine believes them, s5e14 (15:10) - when he asks Kurt if he’s smothering him, and Kurt lies and says no, he believes him even though Kurt is a terrible liar, and (my favorite example of this) in s6e5 (40:15) - saying that he should thank Sue for trapping them in that elevator because now he and Kurt are just friends, and she says, “So thank me” and he actually says thank you (followed by Kurt saying, “Don’t actually thank her!” - amazing).

Third, difficulty regulating emotion. Blaine is very bad at regulating his emotions, especially negative ones. Most notably, anger. Blaine has intense angry outbursts, which will tie in later. Examples of this: season 3 episode 8 (13:50) - getting into a fight with Sam, season 5 episode 14 (26:50 and 27:20) - yelling at Elliot, and season 3 episode 15 (22:35) - outburst at Cooper.

Fourth, trouble keeping up a conversation. Blaine frequently talks about how he’s bad at communication and talking to people, especially about feelings, outside of song. He often has to sing to say bad news or confess things. Examples of this: Singing to tell Kurt about him cheating (s4e4 - 14:30), singing to confess his feelings to Sam (s4e17 - 21:15), singing to tell Kurt he’s not in June’s showcase (s5e20 - 10:40). When he is confronted by a conversation that makes him uncomfortable or that he wasn’t prepared for, he often has to shut down to think about it. Examples of this are when Kurt confesses his crush in season 2 episode 12 (30:40), Sam telling him he knew about Blaine’s crush in season 4 episode 17 (37:10), and the Frat Boy Physicals incident in season 5 episode 16 (21:05).

Fifth, inflection that does not reflect feelings. Generally, Blaine seems to be pretty good at this, especially in comparison to Brittany, but when he gets upset, he does sometimes get weirdly monotoned or just puts on a strange tone of voice. The best example of this I have is in season six, episode four (9:40 and 10:10).

Sixth, difficulty maintaining the natural give-and-take of a conversation; prone to monologues on a favorite subject. This is definitely true, especially when he gets upset about things. Season 5 episode 7 has the best examples of this, he starts by trying to lead the glee club in Mr. Shue’s absence, but he ends up coming on too strong and speaking over his peers (00:40). Next, when Kurt implies that he’s being a puppet master, he gets very upset, and keeps focusing on and coming back to that, even when Kurt tries to change the subject (6:45), and finally, he starts ranting to Brad, and cuts him off when Brad tries to chime in with his problems (11:40).

Seventh, tendency to engage in repetitive or routine behaviors. Blaine has the most consistent clothing and presentation out of anyone in the show, and as seen in season 3 episode 15 (17:15 and 38:10) and in season 5 episode 6 (28:15), Blaine has been dressing like this and doing his hair the same way since he was a kid. He even owns the same shirt in multiple colors (season 5 episode 6: 27:25). In season 4 episode 17, he talks to Sam about how his daily routine and how he walks the exact same way from class every day (00:45). This is also the first time Blaine mentions efficiency, he measures his routine down to the second, and it being efficient is really important to him. This comes back in season 5 episode 14 when he’s trying to make the loft more efficient (23:05). He also reveals in season 5 episode 20 that he needs to measure the stage before performing in order to improv (7:30).

Eighth, only participates in a restricted range of activities. Now you may be thinking, but Miriam, this doesn’t apply, wasn’t he president of like every club his senior year? Yes, he was, but this actually doesn’t disprove this one. He still really is focused on a few activities like glee club, student council, and school in general. He only signs up for the other clubs in a time of crisis, and he’s never seen doing anything outside of school in college or in seasons 2 or 3 (except for his special interests). And as these are all school clubs, that meet on school grounds, they’re still in his comfort zone.

Ninth, strict consistency to daily routines, and outbursts when changes occur. So we’ve talked about his routines, what happens when they’re broken? In season 5 episode 14, Blaine attempts to set routines with Kurt, making him breakfast every day, scheduling their days rigorously, etc., which leads Kurt to feeling smothered, but Blaine tells Elliot that he feels like he doesn’t know how to communicate. He feels very uncomfortable with the change of living in New York and the shift in the power dynamic between them. This is reinforced a few episodes later in episode 16, when these issues come back. In addition, episode 16 has an example of Blaine having an outburst when a short-term plan is disrupted. He and Kurt had planned to walk to class together, and Kurt had bailed without telling him, and Blaine gets very upset (23:05). Another example of this is when he finds Tina and Sam making out in season 5 episode 10 (24:45, 29:30). Their plans were disrupted, and he has an outburst/meltdown. Another example of long-term routines being disrupted is in season 3 episode 8. Sam has just come back to McKinley, and immediately, Sam and Blaine dislike each other. They’re both trying to choreograph and don’t like each other’s ideas, and they get into a fight that gets physical. Both of them are having an outburst due to the other invading the other’s space and routines (13:50). This then becomes an example of point three, as Blaine is seen boxing (physical reaction) to regulate his emotions (effectively stimming), which he also does in season 3 episode 15 when he’s angry at Cooper (26:40).

Finally, exhibiting strong, special interests. This one is probably the easiest to prove. Blaine’s special interests include show choir (he knows everything about it, he even reads the show choir blogs - s5e11: 6:50), boxing (he started a fight club at Dalton - s3e8: 14:00), Broadway (when he coaches the Warblers, Karofsky mentions that it’s pulling teeth to get Blaine to use any music that’s not Broadway - s6e3: 00:25), piano, and even music in general. To give some specific examples, Blaine is also known for having some shorter-term interests that he gets just as invested in, the best examples of this are puppet making (I know, I know, but it applies, he gets so into it for that week) from season 5 episode 7, dressing up as a superhero (no neurotypical person could do Nightbird, please) from season 4 episode 7 and season 5 episode 10 (16:45), and star wars fanfiction (he and Sam have a whole conversation about how ewoks are obviously polygamists) from season 5 episode 15 (5:20 and 26:35).

Blaine also has some other general traits. If you’ve ever watched him sing, he is constantly bouncing on his toes. He’s prone to incredibly intense eye contact, and is very sensitive to criticism, rejection, and public embarrassment (Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria - I have too many examples of this to name). Little things that could be interpreted as sensory overload: season 5 episode 7 - hating loud chaotic environments, and lashing out because of it (00:35 and 00:55) and season 6 episode 5 - where he’s the first to say that they should just kiss to get out of Sue’s elevator because he’s getting very hot (29:00). In season 6 episode 1 during the break up scene, Kurt says that Blaine initiated a 3 hour fight about Kurt getting toothpaste on a towel (21:30), which is not neurotypical behavior, and Blaine responds in a way that indicates that it really bothered him. He’s an actor seemingly a very talented one, something that would make sense if he’d been masking his whole life. Finally, he has a very deep connection with Sam, who is clearly neurodivergent. He and Britt are the only people who understand Sam, and there are multiple times where Blaine knows how to calm Sam down when no one else can.

Now there’s also a case to be made about him having a terrible childhood and having some trauma from that, (I strongly believe that he feels like he has to be doing things for people in order for them to love him because of Cooper) but I also think that this is pretty compelling evidence.

The episodes that I found the most evidence in if you want to look for yourself are season 2 episode 12, season 4 episode 11 (this one’s also good for Sam), season 5 episodes 7, 14, 16, and 20, and season 6 episodes 1 and 5.

#blaine anderson #glee #sam evans #brittany pierce #glee headcanon #kurt hummel #klaine #autism #headcanon #gleeposting 😔

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palbabor-writes · 5 years ago

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Moniker

Hawks Week 2020 - Prompt: Rebirth

Character: Keigo Takami - Hawks

Warnings: Angst, some adult language, the drama of growing up

Word Count: 5433

“They need you to pick a name, Keigo. You’re old enough now and the data has shown that you’re learning how to control your quirk. The advancements we’ve seen in the last few months have been outstanding. The HPSC wants you to start making a name for yourself, publicly. We’re hoping, in six or so years, you’ll be operating on a professional level.

So, look over those names and pick one. Once you do, you’ll no longer go by Keigo Takami. No, that name will be expunged from the records.”

Why? He’d wanted to ask. Why can’t he keep his name? Does it really matter? What were they going to do with him? Why was he even in this program?

There were so many questions racing through his mind. But, he just nodded and looked out the window. What good did it do to ask? They weren’t going to tell him anything. This was all just another manipulation. They always tried, so, so hard to let him feel like he had a say in his name, in his life, in anything.

In reality, he was just their little puppet, floating along on a tight string.

Notes: Part of Hawks Week 2020, Day 7 - Prompt: Rebirth.

This fic, like my Shigaraki exploration, Phantasma is part of a smaller series I’m calling Hopscotch. There’s a ton of kids in the BNHA universe that just need a freaking hug, man. But, all this trauma does give me some nice topics to write about...Not beta edited, so all mistakes are mine, and mine alone.

Moniker mon·i·ker /ˈmänəkər/ noun a name.

Keigo Takami is a ward of the Hero Public Safety Commission.

He’s been a ward for most of his life. He’s used to the routine: the daily drills, the daily training, the daily lessons, the daily lectures, the daily monotony of it all.

He’s never alone.

There’s always a few of them hovering. They, being the agents who are assigned to his daily care and maintenance. They’re like black spots, bleeding out against the clean, crisp linoleum floors. He’s shuttled around like a chess piece. As if he needs a shadow to guide him. He knows this building inside and out. He knows just where to perch if he wants to avoid the cameras and he knows the secrets of at least five or six of his handlers.

They blurt stuff out around him. People never think kids are listening. Too bad for them, cuz, he’s got enough dirt to take them straight to the top if he wanted to. Not that he wants to. Some of the handlers are nice, but Keigo has learned that sometimes nice is another way to say: manipulative.

So, he imagines that he can flex a little control over them, too. He’s got the information, he’s just not sure who to take it to. He’s never seen the head of the HPSC. They remain an enigma. The leader of this whole thing is the one piece he hasn’t slipped onto the puzzle. No, whoever they are, they’re mysterious. He only knows they exist because he’s seen their hen scratch of a signature on his progress reports and monthly, “how are you doing Keigo,” emails.

Despite the mystery, the head of the HPSC is the one constant in his life. He can’t say the same of his handlers. Most of the people who surround him shift and change. They’re like a tide.

When he was younger, his father used to take him down to the beach. Keigo was always fascinated by the pull, the drag, of that dark blue water.

Yeah, these handlers of his moved in and out like a tide. Every month it was someone else. One or two might be familiar faces, but they never told him their names. Well, not their real names at least. No, no one ever revealed those. Keigo was accustomed to the secrecy of it all. It was kinda boring.

But, most days were.

It was just him and the various adults who were tasked with his lessons or training schedules. It was a never ending circle, a rotation of sameness that made his teeth ache. There were no other kids at the base. No, lucky him, he was the only one selected to receive this special training.

When he was smaller he’d been a little more excited. He’d wander behind the dark suits, clutching his Endeavor figure to his chest, his eyes scanning every room, every person, every crevice.

You can never be too careful Kei, his father had told him, his golden eyes winking down at him. Always keep your eyes and ears open.

“It’s a special program, Keigo. Starting today, you need to say goodbye to your name. You’re going to become a very special hero, okay?”

It was a younger man who had talked with him that afternoon. He can remember looking down at his toy, the plastic heavy, sticking to his clenched arms. Keigo can recall his small voice asking the man two questions: “Can I be like him? Can I be a hero who beats the bad guys?”

At the time, they had felt so, well, important to him. They were all encompassing, vital queries that needed to know the answer to back then. He disliked them now. They were stupid questions. Besides, what self respecting adult takes the word of a six year old seriously?

He’s eleven now. He’s way past those childish dreams. And, they still hadn’t taken his name from him. Oh, they hinted at it. He’d even caught sight of one of the lists.

The lists were the long rows and rows of potential hero names for Keigo. Not that he was asked much about any of this. His opinion didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. He’d only managed to see one of the lists a few years ago. His handler hadn’t been expecting him back so fast.

He wasn’t supposed to use his wings unless he was in the training facility. Little did they know, he’d been practicing. How could he not? He could feel each and every tiny thing with his feathers. It drove him insane. If he was drifting off to sleep he would feel the electricity humming through the walls. When he focused hard enough he could hear the distant conversations happening on the floors above him.

It was an endless march of noise, emotion, and sensations. He felt like he was overstimulated all the time, his skin too heavy for his bones. He wanted to scream some days: get these off me, I can’t, I-I can’t take it. But, he had to learn how to grapple with his quirk. It was part of him.

Still, sometimes he wished he was someone, anyone else.

‘Turn it off’, they said, ‘dampen the urge to reach out with your feathers’.

Yeah, right. Let them slip into his quirk, see how much they liked the all consuming sensation of it all. It was too much, too intense. Some days it’s a fight to make himself get out of his bed. Everything is just...too close, sometimes.

He’s just a kid, he wanted to tell them. Like that would grant him a reprieve. No, he already knew what answer they would give him. The HPSC had selected you for a purpose, a reason, Keigo.

They fed him such vague, well, bullshit. Yeah, he knows he shouldn’t say words like that, whatever. They shouldn’t be doing this, er, whatever it was that they were hoping to achieve with him. But, it’s not like the confirmed acknowledgement of their preposterousness would stop them. No, he’d learned to keep his mouth shut and his eyes open. It was the best way to survive the endless march of days and weeks. He would nod, practice, and then practice a little more in secret.

It’s his quirk after all. If he could perfect it, maybe they would loosen his leash.

His wings were still a little stunted. They could grow to longer points, but it took a lot of time and a lot of concentration. It was like his body knew exactly what he could, or could not, in this case, handle. More feathers meant more sensations. More sensations meant less sleep, less control, and, worst of all, less autonomy. There would be more tests, more training, more, more, more.

Still, he worked at it. It was a double edged sword. He both hated, and loved, the improvements he saw within himself.

Despite his impeded wing growth, Keigo could flap himself along now. He could even hover in the air for a little while, but his back would protest the strain after forty minutes or so. It hurt to hold himself up. His shoulders just weren't broad enough to maintain his weight. He’d been hoping that eating a little more would help. You know, beef him up a little.

He’d brought the subject up with one of his handlers, one of the ones he actually knew. The man had nodded, his curly blonde hair bobbing around his ears. And, with that, his food rations were extended. He was also given some other choices too. Some steak, veal, higher protein foods. He’d stubbornly stuck with chicken. He liked the taste. Never one to pass up an opportunity, Keigo took advantage of the larger portions and he gorged himself on the succulent meat.

Four weeks later, he hadn’t grown much. Maybe what, half a pound? Nah, most of that energy must have been consumed by his quirk. But, the more he ate, the easier it was to focus on it. Meh, still a win, win. At least from the HPSC’s viewpoint.

He mentioned that there are never any kids around the HPSC training facility, right?

Adults? You couldn’t swing a dead cat and not hit at least 4 or 5 of them, at any given moment. Keigo didn’t mind. He was used to adults. By nature he was quiet, observant. It was his habit to position himself in the corners of rooms. It let him see anyone and everyone who entered or left. He likes watching. But, he’s done that his whole life. Even before the HPSC picked him up he’d learned how to hone that skill.

Now, the trainers and handlers were trying to break him of that tic.

‘You need to curb that Keigo’, they’d say. ‘If you’re going to become a successful hero you can’t just sit in the shadows. We already have plenty of agents who are trained for that. No, you need to be more gregarious. Speak up, talk with people. You’ve been drilled in this skill, now show us what you’ve learned. We want you to be a hero’.

So, he myna birds what they ask. They’ll leave him alone that way. Sure, sure, he’s rewarded with gifts, with praise, with extra free time. But, it’s all so calculated. He can smell their intentions a mile away. He’s seen the books some of them read. They were books with titles like: The Psychology of the Child, The Developing Mind, Playing and Reality.

If that wasn’t obvious enough, he’d heard some of the conversations they passed as they handed off their shifts, the words lilting back and forth, like secret notes.

“Ignore his minor tactics. It’s just him responding to the attention. Only praise him when he’s behaving.” Or, “Give Keigo labeled praise. You know, build his self esteem. He’s so quiet, it’s hard to tell what he’s thinking. Pack a snack for him. That way when he opens up to you, boom! Treat in hand.”

Do they not realize how much he can hear? God, adults are dumb. Smile and give them what they want, or, say what they most need to hear and they’re eating out of your hand. Meanwhile, as they’re congratulating themselves on a job well done, they had no idea what thoughts were racing behind his golden irises.

No, Keigo is motivated by other things. One motivation trumps all the others: he wants to get outta this place. Just for a day, heck, he’d take an hour. Keigo is tired of the same walkway, the same lunch hall, the same dreary views of the city.

It’s springtime in Japan and Keigo can make his feathers molt. It’s a newer skill, one he’s withholding from his handlers for the time being. Maybe if he feigns a cough, he can pretend to be sick? He’s gotten pretty good at acting now. That was another one of his classes. It was like a, how to deceive someone 101. Actually, it was prolly called something like ‘Espionage for Tots’.

It was fun. He liked the smiles and serious faces he was asked to make. They should have slapped a big: “please, Keigo, don’t use these skills to deceive us” disclaimer on the door. He liked the guy that taught it, too. He was a short, unassuming man, but he would genuinely grin at Keigo each time he walked through the door for his session. Oh, wait. Was that just an act? He’d have to ask him. Boy, he’s good if it was. He needs to shore up his own skills…

He could always pretend that an imaginary sick day was part of the lesson. Look! My poor feathers, they’re molting, how sad. Also, cough, cough, I feel ill. No, ill is a bad choice of words. Ahem, I mean, I don’t feel so good. Can I lay down? Maybe prop open my window, for the fresh air. Oh no! I accidentally swooped out. Cough, cough.

Keigo isn’t even sure what he’d do with himself if he could manage to sneak out. It’s not like he’s not noticeable. He’s sporting at least 7 feet of ruby red plumage now. Well, if he’s gonna plan an escape, he might as well do it-

“Keigo,” it’s a sharp voice, and it startles him out of his musings. It belongs to one of the head handlers. Kaori? Yeah, that’s her name. Eh, the one she’d given him at least. She’s nice enough, a little rough around the edges at times, but she’s fair. Maybe, oh, maybe he can ask her about-

“Are you listening, Keigo? We need to go. The provost was expecting us over an hour ago. Where have you been? Mai couldn’t find you so she asked me to look for you.”

“I was up there.” Keigo points, his chin lifting to follow his movement, wings fluttering against his back. Despite her tone, Kaori doesn’t seem too upset. Her heartbeat is normal. But, that didn’t mean much around here.

“Up there?” Kaori’s tone is faint and a little awed. She turns her violet gaze to his, pursing her lips into a thin line. “Since when?”

“It’s been, ah, three months and sixteen days since I first made it to that perch. They didn’t like that I went so far. Eiichi said he was going to document it though. I mean, it ain’t too far. Guess I can go for a lower spot next time. I just like that I can see more up there, it makes it-”

“No, no. It’s fine Keigo. Don’t say “ain’t,” it’s slang. I suppose it has been awhile since I’ve seen you. How old are you now? Ten?”

“Eleven,” Keigo replies, his back straightening, wings arching beside his head.

“Mmm, eleven. Gosh, you’re growing up fast,” Kaori’s reply is sharp, practiced. Keigo rolls his eyes. She wanted to spark a reaction out of him. See if he’ll puff up with joy or grow sullen with her mistake of thinking he’s younger than he is. It’s easier to assign him extra training than really deal with him. At least, that’s what some of his handlers seemed to think.

“Have you seen the news?” Kaori asks, violet eyes resting on his amber ones. “There’s a mission coming up. Endeavor’s agency is taking it on.”

Keigo feels his wings lifting again, but he quickly suppresses the motion, his shoulders hunching forward. He never, ever, wanted to seem too eager. Not when they’d primed him for such an obvious tell. It’s not like they didn’t know what heroes he admired.

Yeah, Keigo had seen the news. He was permitted two hours of television each day. Most blocks were taken up with watching the latest developments. Sometimes he would shift the channel to a cartoon, but the television time would be lessened if he watched nonsense for too long. No, the tv was for educational purposes only, not for leisure or fun. He’d heard that line enough to have it memorized.

“What about it?” Keigo asks, falling into step with Kaori. She’s taking the long way back to his next lesson. Clearly, she’s wanting to glean something from him.

“Well, I was thinking it might be beneficial for you to observe the mission.”

“What, like on CCTV or something?”

“No. In person. We would need to fit into the crowd, but this mission has been widely publicized, it’s a miracle the villain’s haven’t heard about it.”

“That, or they want the fight.”

Kaori laughs. “Very good, excellent observation. You’ve improved Keigo. Consider this a set date. I will personally escort you to the mission viewing point. At the end of the exercise, I would like to hear your opinion on the matter.”

Keigo bites his tongue.

It’s too slick again, too obvious. The mission Kaori mentioned fits the profile of a raid, not the everyday, run of the mill, villain sting. Endeavor’s agency had been squaring up with the lower level fighting rings for months now. This was just another day for him. The number two hero promised to clean up crime and he was following through with that assertion.

So, why take him to see it now? Why did it matter if Keigo saw it in person? The data and video would be uploaded the next day to the HPSC database, he could just watch it and take notes then.

Why is she doing this?

Keigo chances a glance at her face. She’s pale, stern and stoic above him. Her heels click on the tiles and her back is ramrod straight. A few feathers bristle, feeling, listening, nah, her pulse is steady too. It’s hopeless. Maybe this is the challenge? Something to test him, to try and see if he can get a read on the unreadable?

“What’s the point of me going? What good does it do? My data sheets haven’t slipped enough to call for anything like this.”

“Don’t be so critical of everything Keigo,” Kaori scolds him, her purple eyes lingering on his spreading plumage. “It’s not a test, it’s not a drill. I just...I can remember what it was like to be a teenager and be trapped doing something I didn’t want to do.”

Again, Keigo is silent after her declaration. He’s not really sure how to answer. Pragmatic, logical, even angry responses, he’s used to those. This? What is this? Some kinda misplaced empathy? He never would have placed an empathetic bone in Kaori’s body before today.

They pause at the provost’s doorway and Kaori places an arm on his shoulder, demanding his attention with her strong grip.

“Let me know by tomorrow.”

And, with that, she’s gone, pacing down the long hallway, her heels tapping a sharp tattoo against the flooring. Keigo narrows his eyes, avian pupils dilating, focusing. Sure, maybe it was just an opportunity, a chance for him to get out of the headquarters for a while, but there’s always a catch.

******

The email comes a few hours later.

Keigo is sprawled across his bed, his wings tucked safely along his shoulders as he flips through his textbook. He lifts his head from his pillow and sighs heavily at the familiar chime from his computer. It’s either more geometry problems or it’ll have something to do with what Kaori was discussing: The Endeavor mission.

His wings shift and rustle as he stands. He’s agitated, on edge. He dislikes being maneuvered into a corner. No matter what the email is over, he’ll feel obligated to say yes. Even if it’s by default.

Keigo steps up to his computer, his long fingers racing over the keypad, typing in his encrypted password. As he waits for the screen to load, his eyes fall to the battered figurine beside his monitor.

It’s the Endeavor toy. He’s kept it all these years, safe and sound, in each bedroom he’s moved to. The flames are dull and his bright blue uniform is more mottled than cobalt, but it’s still a tiny piece of his other life.

His father had given it to him. It was years ago. He hadn’t thought he was going to get anything for his birthday, but then, his father had flown in, his own plumage glimmering against the dying sunlight and presented four year old Keigo with the toy. He had clutched it to him, his eyes shining and bright.

“Dad! Ah, how did you know?”

His father had beamed at him, his eyes softening at the sight of his son’s genuine smile. Keigo didn’t smile a lot back then. Their life was too tumultuous, too chaotic. There was too much at stake. His father had gathered him up and pressed the button that activated the toy’s internal voice box. Keigo had squealed with delight and wrapped his arms around his father’s neck.

Now, Keigo traces a single finger along the top of the Endeavor’s head, running along the dimmed flames. He’s seen a decent amount of coverage on the number two hero lately. He’d even gone as far as studying his moves. Not that it mattered. His quirk would never be a match for the flame heroes skills. But, he had to admire the guy.

He was constantly overshadowed, outranked and outclassed by All Might. Still, Endeavor pushed forward. He’s the only one who really tried to overtake the number one hero. It was both impressive and, well, kinda pathetic, desperate even. All the same, Keigo kept hunting for news of the number two. Once you have a favorite, Keigo reasoned, you tend to stick with them.

Tearing his eyes away from the little figurine, Keigo clicks on the new email. He blinks a few times, even rubs his eyes. No, no way. He spreads his fingers along the computer’s trackpad, enhancing the words. Yeah, no, it’s really there.

It’s the list.

Remember? The one with all the HPSC’s approved names for him?

It’s, well, it’s even more anticlimactic than he was expecting. Damn, it’s over three pages of the most asinine, inane bullshit. Two bad words, oh no, and in one sentence. In his defense, this crap deserved a whole string of curse words.

There are names like: REDWING, Darkbird, Vulture, WINGMAN, Canary, Condor, RED Condor, Northwind, Zauriel, Red jay, WING. God, it’s just page after page of trash. Whomever they paid to create this, well, they needed a new day job. Might as well just call him: BIRDBOY or something. Sighing, Keigo clicks out of the email, his plumage lifting and lowering, feathers rustling again, perturbed. Yeah, he’s got wings. So what? That’s not all he is.

Keigo is about to pace back to his bed when another email chimes in. Groaning, he doesn’t even look at the sender before opening it. Oh.

It’s from Kaori and the head of the HPSC. They were wanting to confirm the viewing of the Endeavor mission. Both felt that it was a good use of Keigo’s time and the HPSC’s resources. They just need his answer.

Funny, Keigo thinks, tapping a quick reply, they always like to pretend that he has a say in things.

******

He’s never been a tall kid. He’s not sure if it’s his quirk or something genealogical. Quirk makes the most sense. It’s hard enough to lug his own tiny body around, he can’t even imagine trying to pull someone like Endeavor into the air.

Keigo’s seen the number two plenty of times. God, hundreds and hundreds of times, really. But, he’s not prepared for the hulk of a man that is standing before him. Enji Todoroki, that’s his real name. Most heroes don’t hide their civilian names. No, they’re all listed in the databases of the HPSC and open for public scrutiny. Keigo shifts on the balls of his feet, his toes tapping against the pavement. Apparently, that’s not going to be an option for him.

Kaori had sat, prim and proper, next to him in the long black car as they drove to the mission site. Her violet eyes were dull flints of purple as she relayed the news:

So, look over those names and pick one. Once you do, you’ll no longer go by Keigo Takami. No, that name will be expunged from the records.”

Why? He’d wanted to ask. Why can’t he keep his name? Does it really matter? What were they going to do with him? Why was he even in this program? There were so many questions racing through his mind. But, he just nodded and looked out the window.

What good did it do to ask? They weren’t going to tell him anything. This was all just another manipulation. They always tried, so, so hard to let him feel like he had a say in his name, in his life, in anything. In reality, he was just their little puppet, floating along on a tight string.

Keigo looked over the police tape to Endeavor again. Even the number two hero got to keep his name. What makes Keigo so different?

“They’ll be rushing the entrance soon,” Kaori says, her arms crossed, her pressed suit dark against the bright sunlight. “You might be able to see it a little better if you move to the other end of the street.”

Keigo looks up at her, his eyes impassive. Kaori, sensing his gaze, blinks down at him. “Don’t go far. Consider this a small reward for good behavior. I know what I told you in the car can’t have been easy to hear. Don’t make me regret giving you a little more freedom.”

For a long moment, Keigo is still.

He wants to dash off. He’s never done that. It would be nice to place a little distance between him and his handler. Plus, he’s outside. It’s a beautiful day, just puffy clouds and the fresh, clean smell of springtime. Well, and the hustle and bustle of the raid that is unfolding across the street. He looks up at Kaori and her violet eyes lift away from him. She shakes her head and a small smile creeps across her lips.

“Go on, you better hurry. Endeavor’s about to enter the building.”

It’s all the prodding he needs. Like a shot, Keigo is dashing through the crowd. A few people clamor around him, their voices distant, complaints and admonishments ringing over his golden head. He rounds the street corner and his wings lift, testing the air, trying to tug him into the skies.

Amber eyes flash as he looks for the perfect spot. Ah-ha! There’s a low, tiled roof across the street. If he can get up to the second story he should be able to see into the back of the compound Endeavor is conducting the raid on.

His back aches, muscles tired and straining, but he ignores the sting. His wings lap against the warm air and, just like that, he’s landing on the roof, his sneakers bright against the dark tile. Keigo turns back to the compound. Yes! Perfect! He can see everything. His wings settle along his shoulders, still lifted as he crouches down, the plumage vibrating, listening.

Keigo can hear some of the transmission between the heroes. Their radios are switched up and the static sound makes his nose wrinkle. It feels fuzzy, almost like he’s stepped on a live wire. Apparently, Endeavor is about to move into the exposed courtyard and Keigo sits up straighter, his wings spreading, cupping under the low wind. He’s so focused on catching sight of the number two that he doesn’t hear the warning cry.

No, he only notices the danger when it’s too late.

His feathers bristle, arching, quivering, reacting as a set of talons rips into his delicate plumage. His wings throb. It stings and he feels the anger, the rage that is coursing through the culprit that’s attacking him. Their screams make his ears ache and he rolls away, his hands instinctively covering his head, protecting himself from the sudden onslaught. His golden eyes are narrowed and searching. What the hell-

The pieces fit into place when he sees her.

It’s a hawk. She’s already taken to the skies, her dark wings wheeling her back to the roof. She lifts upward, the strong winds carrying her high, against the clouds. Then, she’s diving, her feathers bracing along her sides, propelling her at a terrifying speed.

She’s headed straight for him.

Keigo, unthinkingly, rolls out of the way, his own wings flaring open and flapping him a good ten feet or so, hopefully placing him out of range. The hawk pulls up, another scream echoing across the sky. She wheels around, her sharp beak and eyes trained on him. Keigo’s foot slips against the uneven surface of the roof and he bites his lip, his ankle twisting painfully.

“Hey! Keigo! Oh, there you are. Come on! The raid is wrapping up, we need to get back.”

Kaori’s voice shudders up his spine, his oversensitive wings making her sound like a foghorn. Wait. The raid is over? He whirls back to the compound, his eyes scanning, flashing in his agitation.

No. No, no, no.

She’s right. Endeavor and his sidekicks are already back at the front of the building, he can’t even see them clearly from here. He’s missed his chance. Damn it.

It’s not fair, he thinks, a misting of tears clouding his sight. He’d been so close. And now? Now, he’s gotta go back to that stupid building. Now, they’re going to take away his name and force him to do even more training. Who knows when he’ll get out again. It’s just, it’s not freaking fair.

Keigo wipes his arm against his eyes, pulling the moisture across his sleeve. He can’t let Kaori see him cry. He hasn’t cried in years. He’s not going to give them the satisfaction of knowing that he still...wait...what’s that?

Across the rooftop, close to where his original perch was, is a nest. It looks clumsy, like it might fall off into open space at any moment. It’s held together with a spattering of twigs and sticks, but there’s movement. Keigo lowers his arm, his wings lifting again, feeling. There’s one...no...there’s two chicks inside. They feel soft. Their heartbeats are fluttering, like a butterfly’s wing.

He looks down at Kaori. She’s standing on the street corner, shielding her eyes from the sun as she peers up at him. Keigo lifts his hand so she can see, one finger raised, silently asking her for a little more time. Kaori groans, he can hear her exhale from here, and nods, lowering her gaze, one hand propped on her jutted hip.

“Be quick about it, Keigo.”

He lets his wings bevel over his shoulders and he hops, carefully, slowly, across the tiles. As he gets closer, two pairs of yellow eyes peer at him, half hidden in the tangle of twigs. He grins and leans up, wanting to look a little…

The hawk, quick as lightning clatters in front of the nest, shielding her chicks from his curious observation. Her wings flare at his proximity, her beak open, sharp. She clicks a warning, her feathers spreading. Keigo mimics her display, his own wings fanning out and the hawk tilts her head, surprised. Her eyes blink, the dark orange shifting from agitated to quizzical. Slowly, her wings lower, draping along her back. Talons shift against the tiles and she chirps at him. It’s a different sound, less challenging. It's almost like a question.

Keigo lifts one of his hands, his fingers balled into a fist and gingerly extends his arm, his shoes sliding closer. She lifts her wings and glides a little nearer, her head still tilted in that exaggerated way. She chirps at him again and lowers her head. If he reaches out a little further he could stroke a finger down her feathers. Just a bit…

“Keigo!”

The sound of his name startles him and the hawk. She yanks from his touch and launches herself back into the skies. Keigo watches her, fascinated by the ease, the grace that she moves with. As he’s admiring her fluidity, a single feather flutters to his feet. He almost misses it. The wind starts to catch it, pulling it away, but he snatches it up, his fingers careful to not crush the barbs.

“Keigo, I’m not going to ask again...”

He uses his wings to help him down the side of the building. The verdant plumage is swelling, arching behind him. It feels different. Keigo lowers them against his back, mirroring the way the hawk had draped them, the feathers close to his skin. It helps. They don’t feel like something that he’s untethered from when he holds them like that. He’s still basking in his discovery when Kaori steps toward him, one brow arched.

“You know better than that, Keigo. Didn’t I ask you to not make me regret giving you a little more freedom? Come on, we’re overdue. What’s that in your hand?”

“Nothing,” Keigo replies, tucking the hawk’s feather into his jean pocket. She was so pretty, fierce and quick.

“You put any thought into any of the names on the lists? We were thinking your hero name should be-”

“Hawks,” Keigo replies, his wings stretching behind him, shimmering in the bright sunlight. “I wanna be called Hawks.”

Notes: bb Keigo is too cute, I couldn’t resist.

Tags: @hawksweek2020, @spicy-skull,

#hawksweek2020 #hawks week 2020 #bnha hawks #hawks #keigo takami #takami keigo #hopscotch #hopscotch series #bnha #boku no hero academia #hawks-centric #little hawks #bb keigo

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popatochisssp · 5 years ago

Text

Undergloom: AU Concept

What if...

Premise

This is a ‘verse where monsters aren’t made of hope--it’s something that they have to get the same way humans do, through positive circumstances and sturdy social support networks.

So...being trapped Underground with no real chance of escape was, in a hilarious bit of understatement, kind of a huge bummer.

In Undergloom, the loss of the Royal Family’s children was pretty much it for monsterkind’s hope.

The Dreemurrs never split—lacking innate internal hope, Asgore was never overcome by anger and never declared war on all of humanity, simply succumbing to his grief. Toriel did the same and so they never argued over war, collecting souls, and falling humans.

Meanwhile, without a goal and the promise of impending freedom to inspire them, monsters have largely given up. Physically, most are very weak and lethargic, on the verge of Falling Down—and Falling Down is a depressingly common occurrence. Monsters are all relatively uninterested in any humans that fall or pass through, making no attempt to capture them. Any Encounters are half-hearted at best.

Not being hunted and killed for their souls, all the humans who have fallen (the six souls Asgore would’ve otherwise collected) are still alive and have made a small community for themselves in the abandoned Ruins. They gradually congregated there upon realizing that there was no way to escape the Underground without killing one of two very sad and polite (if distant) Boss Monsters. Their eventual plan is to wait for seven humans, the amount needed to break the Barrier, clumsily learning what magic they can from disinterested monsters in the meantime. They’re all an assortment of ages now, and mages of varying skill-level, just biding their time until the Seventh Human falls and they can all be free.

Major Characters

Asgore and Toriel: They never officially separated after the death of their children, but the loss caused an emotional rift between them. While they remain married, the passion has gone entirely from their relationship and they stay together mostly as a formality, to best co-rule their kingdom. They perform their duties separately, coming together only for public appearances--or when Asgore is tending to the Golden Flowers and Toriel ghosts in to pick one, leaving just as silently as she came.

Flowey: Doesn’t exist. Asriel’s dust was spread on the Golden Flowers in the palace, but no DT experiments were ever done, so his later incarnation never came to be. He and his adopted sibling Chara are both resting in peace.

Alphys: Without the guilt caused by the DT experiments, the Royal Scientist is actually one of the most hopeful monsters in the Underground. She’s been very inspired by the (ultra-shoujo/shounen) anime she’s found in The Dump and keeps trying to create things that improve the quality of life for monsterkind—if they’re all trapped and can’t get out, they should at least all try to be happy and not give up, shouldn’t they? It’s…it’s hard to believe that sometimes, her hope isn’t unfaltering, but she wants to keep trying anyway. It’s what Mew-Mew would do! She…thinks…?

Undyne: The Captain of the Royal Guard is bitter and frustrated with the whole situation. She thinks that they should be (should’ve been) collecting human souls from the beginning, to break the Barrier—or at least they should’ve harvested one for somebody to absorb and go through to get more! But everybody’s such a bunch of weak sad-sacks that they won’t act, doing nothing at all about the tiny tribe of humans just about everybody knows is living it up in the Ruins. …but she doubts herself too, because it seems like she’s the only one who thinks that way. That’s what bums her out the most, wondering if maybe she’s a bad person for feeling the way she does, but at least… At least all the passion pouring out of a certain (very cute) Royal Scientist makes her feel better, on her worst days.

Mettaton: A discouraged celebrity, once very excited when Alphys built him a new body, thinking that he was finally going to be able to achieve his dreams of stardom, but..well. An Underground of very depressed monsters makes for a pretty cold fish of an audience. He still has a viewership because there’s nothing else on... but his performances just aren’t very passionate these days, getting more and more lackluster by the episode. He wants to inspire monsters to rise up and reach their dreams, but he just doesn’t know how to do that when he’s not even sure he believes in his own dreams anymore...

Papyrus: Another monster who has a little more hope left than most, doing his best to stay optimistic in the face of a really bad situation. He...may be in a little bit of denial, actually? He maintains that somehow, monsterkind is going to be free again! He just! Doesn’t know how! But it’ll definitely happen, just you wait, they’re totally not all going to die down here without ever getting to experience all the neat stuff on the Surface!!! He pretty much has selective hearing about anything related to that kind of hopelessness, tuning it out and not responding to it, mostly because he knows if he dwells on it too long, he’s going to have an existential crisis/breakdown of uncomfortable proportions and noooobody wants to see that mess, hahaha… In the meantime, he’s thrown himself into human studies and analysis, full-on Little Mermaid style because it gives him something good to focus on, and hope that life on the Surface will be good, once they get up there! He’s actually very close friends with Alphys because of their shared interest (though he’s not sure how sold he is on those cartoons…). He’s also trying to befriend Undyne, because she’s Captain of the Guard and seems really cool! And maybe if he could be friends with her, and cheer her up, maybe she could help him spread that cheer a little bit…? Or! Maybe he just makes a cool new friend and at least one person around here a tiny bit happier, which is also good!

Sans: A guy under no illusions that their situation is anything but terrible. He’s very weak and very tired, even for the Supremely Bummed Out monsters he lives amongst. His nihilist sense of humor and his brother are pretty much the only things keeping him from Falling Down at this point—that, and the humans in the Ruins. He’s met a few of them, indirectly, through his knock-knock routine, and he knows that there’s six of them in there now; knows that with just one more, maybe…maybe…? …He tries not to hope too hard, there’s a lot of random chance and timing involved, and humans just aren’t as sturdy as, say, a Boss Monster. Something—illness, injury, old age—could happen to any one of the humans at any time before a Seventh Human can fall… but he still checks on the door every couple of days, thinking that impossible, “maybe…”

Frisk: The long-awaited Seventh Human! They’re greeted after their fall by the six humans who preceded them, and are summarily tutored about Encounters and souls and The General Situation. After that, their quest is to go through the Underground, learning and mastering their magic so that they’ll be able to help break the Barrier. They’re escorted by the other mages, but are mostly on their own, as they want Frisk to learn and strengthen their abilities by themselves. Frisk is pretty safe in Encounters, since monsters aren’t really enthusiastic enough to hurt them, even on accident—but maybe, depending on what they say and do, they could reignite the hopes and dreams of monsterkind…?

Potential Outcomes

No Mercy - Frisk kills all the monsters they can on the way to the Barrier. Once it’s broken, one of the mages (randomly decided each run) will turn on them. They may only be a child, but based on what they’ve just done, they’re dangerous and only bound to get more dangerous as they get older—it had to end here. The last thing Frisk hears is the mages arguing over the morality of it before everything ends… and they have the chance to RESET.

Neutral - Frisk only kills a few monsters, or doesn’t kill anyone but does not restore everyone’s hope (major characters). When they get to the Barrier, they find that their magic alone isn’t strong enough to help break it…but the other six mages and any befriended monsters will comfort them and assure them that they can just…live down here a little bit longer. They can try again in a couple years, when their magic is stronger, it’s okay, Frisk! That’s fine, they guess, but maybe…maybe they can do better if they RESET?

True Pacifist - Frisk kills no one and befriends/inspires all main characters. All the monsters show up to cheer them on while they and the mages attempt to break the Barrier. When Frisk’s magic alone isn’t strong enough, the monsters lend their magic too, and all together it’s enough to shatter the Barrier and let monsters and mages finally go free!

Getting the Good Ending

Asgore and Toriel have to be convinced to split--they realize that they don’t fit together anymore, at least not romantically, and after everything that’s happened, it’s time for them to move on from one another and let go of the past.

Alphys and Undyne have to be brought together-- Alphys’ resolve to reach for better things is validated by Undyne’s admiration of her, and Alphys’ belief that she’s not a bad person restores Undyne’s confidence.

Mettaton needs an enthusiastic audience for once. A cheering crowd (even just of one) is enough to make him perform better, which improves his ratings and viewership, which makes him perform better, and so on in a feedback loop of glitz and glamour until he can believe in his dreams and the Underground’s again!

Papyrus is easy-- he just needs to be told of the humans’ quest to break the Barrier. He knew it! He knew monsters were going to be free one day, somehow! And here’s the proof, a band of mages on their way to make it happen as they spoke! Take that, existential nihilist dread, optimism was right!!!

Sans is both the hardest and the easiest-- he needs you to inspire everybody else first, but then it’ll just happen on its own. When he sees all of monsterkind rallying together, having hope for once...it really makes him believe in that ‘maybe,’ more than he ever could before. Ah, hell...he’ll be rootin’ for you, too, kid!

Aesthetic Notes

Mostly muted, washed out colors and plenty of monochrome, big The Neopets Gray Paint Brush vibes.

Monster magic is mostly shades of gray: the default is white but pretty much only children too young to understand everyone’s predicament remain white. The more hopeless a monster has gotten at their worst, the darker and grayer their magic gets. It’s easier for magic to darken than to lighten, so it will take many years of living on the Surface for monster to see their magic work its way back to white, and some may never recover completely--but they can always get just a little bit better! Even if it takes time!

Asgore and Toriel: Very neat and well put together, but overwhelmingly dour--the vibe you’d expect off a very proper and serious Victorian couple. Perfectly respectable black clothing (for mourning), with little to no ostentation. Crowns are pewter instead of gold. Asgore’s hair has faded from gold to more of a dishwater blond, and his beard shows several streaks of gray. Toriel wears Chara’s locket and plucks a fresh Golden Flower every day to place behind her ear, in remembrance of her children.

Alphys: Some of the brightest colors in the Underground--but in comparison to monochrome, even the soft pink and blue pastels she favors look bright. She wears a lot of cute dresses under her lab-coat (sometimes Lolita style), and always has some kind of ribbon tied in her crest or onto her tail-- it makes her feel cute and pretty and she likes the ego boost it gives her.

Undyne: Droopy fins, scales lacking in luster. She wears her hair down, long and loose about her face, but generally has the same fashion and body type as her canon self. Her appearance is one of those things she hasn’t given up on just yet!

Mettaton: A very Apple tech-esque look, clean white and sleek minimalist lines, basically an iPad on wheels. It’s pretty, but...also kinda boring. His Ex form is a lot more fun, still a little bit of a JJ Abrams look, but with a splash of Daft Punk--the Ex form can do rainbow lights and in comparison, it’s mind-blowingly, eye-searingly flashy...and suits him so much more.

Papyrus: No battle body, and not so much of a Strapping Young Lad--he’s a little slimmer in the chest and shoulders, and dresses like the sweet Boy Next Door he is. His magic is a pearly color, almost white but with a faint tinge of gray.

Sans: Not overly different-looking, favors soft and comfy clothes, anything that’s easy to pull on and cozy enough to sleep in. Extra Rounde™, precisely one notch up from however chubby-looking you normally imagine your Sanses to be. Deep shadows beneath his eye-sockets, and eye-lights that match the color of his magic--ash gray.

Not a major character but I had a cool idea for him so

Grillby: Mostly the same, but his flame burns low and rounded, more like a match or a candle wick than a freely flickering fire.

If you made it this far through all of that, thank you for listening to my idea! That’s all I got. :3

ETA some other stuff, since I’ve been asked some other stuff! XD

More about Grillby

Muffet and Napstablook

The mages’ powers

Burgerpants and Nice Cream Bunny

More about Frisk and Toriel

Various Skelebros Stuff: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII

Monsters’ reception on the Surface

#undergloom #meta #Aus #undertale #concept #no projects planned #just a sandbox #hope it's a fun one!#uwu

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polyamorousmisanthrope · 4 years ago

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📷I took five minutes to vacuum my closet the other day. It was part of my routine cleaning, no big deal. It was just a quick thing to check off on my cleaning list. I removed some boxes of stuff in the bottom, a few pairs of slippers, and vacuumed. I replaced the stuff and went on with my---

No. I didn't.

No, I looked at the bottom of the closet in a state of shock and burst out laughing.

I have spent a large portion of my life trying to get organized. When I was a child, "cleaning my room" really did mean tossing everything I could think of where to put it in a closet so that it looked tidy when Mom poked her head in. I was the child with the cubby under the desk in grade school so stuffed with papers and junk that it was simply impossible to add or find anything.

This level of disorganization bothered and embarrassed me. It really hurt and made me feel like a failure.

As a teenager, my backpack also became a mess of papers, random items, books, and paraphernalia (no, not that kind. In many ways, I was hopelessly square)

As an adult, it wasn't much better. My desk was full of bills to be paid, papers I didn't want to face, things that were vaguely sentimental but not enough to display anywhere. My closet?

That was still the place where I hid stuff I didn't have a place for but wanted the room at least to appear a little tidy.

How long from a stuffed closet to a tidy closet?

It took about thirty years.

I wasted a lot of that time, though. I addressed it in cycles. "Starting now, I'm finally going to get organized!" I'd spend several hours a day over a few weeks cleaning, organizing, and playing possessions Tetris with my home. After a month or so, know what? The house would look great!

Then, inevitably, the house would no longer look great. I'd clean the kitchen well enough to prevent food poisoning, but more than that? Not so much.

Ever done that? C'mon, it's okay. We all have.

Being tidy over time is all about consistent action.

You can, indeed, get the house clean with heroic effort, just as you can work really hard to train for an athletic event.

The problem comes in when you do something intense for a short period. As I mentioned in my last post, heroic effort is unsustainable.

Several of my favorite housekeeping systems (Flylady and Unfuck Your Habitat) talk about starting very small – shining your sink or making your bed. They are so right!

It's not about getting tidied or organized quickly. It's about developing consistent habits. For a lot of people, that's enough.

But for some…

Executive dysfunction can interfere with consistency.

If you have organizational or distraction issues, habits may not be enough. Autism, ADHD, and a host of other neurodivergent issues centered around executive dysfunction make it hard to do things that seem pretty obvious to the neurotypical person. What? You need to wash the dishes after a meal? No kidding. Go do it!

As I was writing this article, I broke for dinner. Guess what is in my sink right now?

I thought about it, got up, scrubbed the pan a little, realized it needed to soak some more, and sat back down here to write. Sure, sure, I'll get to it after I finish this, no biggie. But if my sink was full of dishes other than that pan, if I had laundry on my sofa, a desk drawer full of unaddressed bills, and my phone beeping that I needed to get up and get my car to the garage to get the brakes done, would I be getting back to that pan in any reasonable amount of time?

*Hollow laugh*

People with executive dysfunction issues can find their problems painful.

Maybe some people laugh and think it's cute to be disorganized. It never felt cute to me. It hurt because I had a hard time doing what I wanted to do. I was utterly desperate to get my life under control. Completely and utterly desperate from the time I was nine years old. That's a heavy load.

Jokes about executive dysfunction aren't cute.

I know the whole "squirrel!" joke about distractibility is mean to make people feel better and okay with themselves. I never wanted to be okay with chaos. I wanted the chaos to stop. It hurt. It interfered with accomplishing what I wanted to. It was exhausting. It used up time I wanted to spend on other things. I wanted a clean canvas so that when I jumped from obsession to obsession to obsession, I could feel like I was using that time intelligently rather than as a distraction from things that were bothering me.

Late fees, court cases, and lost jobs aren't cute, either.

There's an ADHD vlogger that I really like named Jessica McCabe. She's brilliant and adorable, and being a little bit of the manic pixie thing is part of her brand. It gets people to listen to broad issues of executive dysfunction. People will accept and listen to that stuff sometimes and find it palatable if someone is small and young and cute. (She's a LOT older than her looks or mannerisms would indicate, by the way).

So, the brilliant part. Quite sure McCabe knows what she's doing with that because sometimes she drops the adorable thing. The pain of being disorganized or having a hard time directing attention is very, very clear. If she weren't so cute, it would be unlikely as many people would listen to the important things she is saying. There's more to her than cute by a long shot. (And don't get me started on the sexism of it).

But that whole "cute" thing about disorganization. It's not so cute when unpaid bills land you in court. That has happened to me. With money in the BANK, that has happened to me! (Or without money. *shrugs* That, too). It's not cute when you have to buy a car at interest rates that are close to what you'd pay on a credit card. Yeah, that's happened, too. That we're in good financial shape now is a miracle.

There is a cultural narrative of *giggle* *giggle* "I'm so distractable!" to try to ameliorate the pain of being disorganized. Know what? It's not funny. It hurts.

Proscriptive solutions won't work.

I use a Bullet Journal just about with the out-of-the-box method that Ryder Carrol posted in that first video he did about it. I tried it, and it clicked.

Know what wouldn't have clicked? Someone making me do it when I was fifteen.

This is where you, if you have problems with executive dysfunction, might wonder if I can provide an answer for you. Know what? I can't.

I can say, "You need a Bullet Journal." I mean, I'll think it. I wouldn't say it. Know why? It won't necessarily work for you.

What I will say is that you need to find methods that work for you.

"Okay, smartybrat," I hear you cry, "if you can't offer a solution, what do I do?"

Create systems that support you

This is going to look different depending on how you think. Does a beepy reminder go bing! and prompt you to do stuff? Do you like to have a menu of tasks that you choose from depending on how easily they grab your attention in the moment?

What primes you to take action?

What plans have you followed through on (c'mon, you do have some if you're alive past 20), and what about them made you feel good?

My husband doesn't use a Bullet Journal. He plans his day using a calendar app. If there's an interrupt to a task, he'll move it to another free time. When you first try this, I strongly encourage you to multiply your estimation of task time by at least four until you get good at estimating how long something will take. If you have executive dysfunction issues you're struggling with, I'd bet at least a nickel that you're not good at estimating how long things take yet.

What stops you from taking action? Can you remove the interrupts?

A simple example would be to take the dirty clothes hamper's lid off if that's enough to discourage you from tossing your clothes in the hamper. Still, I'm not talking about "Tips 'n Tricks" here. I hate tips 'n tricks! They're like taking a Tylenol when you cut off your leg. You need to extrapolate that to life systems to support how you want to live.

Your system is useless until you define "good enough."

I could skip the next two or three times I need to vacuum my closet, and I wouldn't care. If I get to it every year or so, it's absolutely good enough. "Good enough" means I address my paperwork file once a week and clear it out. I don't have to do it every day unless I feel like it. "Good enough" is walking for five minutes on the hour around my living room until I get my 10,000 steps in. I don't have to walk for three miles unless I want to. "Good enough" is spreading up the bed and tossing the shams at the head. I don't have to bounce a quarter off the damn thing unless I get a wild hare to do that sometimes. Don't give yourself an image of perfection you have to attain, or you'll do nothing.

It's okay for "good enough" to change

Remember how it took thirty years to get to vacuuming a closet? There was a time when that chore wasn't on the "good enough" list, and ya know what? That's fine. Have your "good enough" be slightly, but only slightly, ahead of what you're currently doing if you want to make improvements. Incremental improvements over time, and I mean decades, are pretty dramatic when you look back.

Good enough can stay good enough

My exercise parameters have me getting in an average of 10,000 steps a day as measured over a month. That is never going to change. If the Spirit moves me, I'll do more. But I'm not going to keep raising the bar over and over and over. This is it. I'm good. I'm maintaining.

It takes decades to get your life in order. What small thing will you do today?

#executive dysfunction #adhd

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matt0044 · 5 years ago

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Ninja Steel is Fun Actually or How I Learned To Stop Worrying & Love Victor Vincent.

1. The season seems keen on chilling out for most of its run with a dash of goofiness, each episode being its own adventure with the thinnest of Myth arc sown together. The Ninja Rangers themselves don’t have to answer to any higher power aside from the semi-sentient Nexus. No Zordon and especially no Gosei. They feel like high schoolers who choose for themselves to be heroes.

This is honestly my favorite kind of team similar not unlike with Lost Galaxy. They’re not Rangers because they were bestowed these powers by somebody but because the powers deemed them worthy. While Mic plays mentor, he and Redbot are mostly two Alphas working as one. It feel like an unofficial after-school club down to how their base is located in the high school ala Fourze.

Mic Kanic was a fun character, owing to Kelson Henderson’s being able to show his on-screen chops after being on voice-over duty. He’s the one who dispenses the moral of the story not unlike with Keeper, illustrating his points through reverse engineering them not unlike... a mechanic. Damn, that’s good.

Unlike with Keeper, he doesn’t feel as though he’s “there” for the sake of moralizing. He’s the one forging the Ninja Power Stars whenever the Prism displays a new weapon to wield along with Redbot. He doesn’t pretend to be smarter than the others, he’s just helping teens out in his own weird way. Not that his shape-shifting couldn’t have been played with in more episodes IMO.

2. The episodic nature feel far more like a feature than a flaw. In addition to the Rangers being high-schoolers, we have ourselves a light-on-plot format not too dissimilar to Mighty Morphin’ way back when. Now as an anniversary season. this can feel like a problem when many expect it to be “Go big or go home.” I get that yet... I also enjoy how one could go back to any episode in isolation.

That’s not to say that I don’t feel like it can’t feel held back at time in adhering to this format. I can say that giving each Ranger more pronounced character arcs while maintaining this structure wouldn’t have been impossible with a bit more focus on Story Editing. Preston reconciling with his father could’ve been set up if Marcus Tien had more of a presence up to that episode for one thing.

3. Victor and Monty. Where do I even begin with these two goobers? Chris Reid and Caleb Bendit go absolute ham with their characters ever scene they get. The latter is an over enthusiastic nerd who I swear has the hots for Mr. Vincent. The former has such a flare to him in bringing this young Gaston to life with such delicious arrogance.

Now... I get why they’re (charitably speaking) not exactly fan-favorites. Their C-Plot antics can feel divorced from the story compared to a lot of Bulk and Skull’s escapades way back when. To say nothing of some of their... bowel-based comedy routines.

Yet for me, there was just an unabashedly enthusiasm to their wacky hijinks that I could never hate for the life of me. They could be so juvenile yet did it without ever feeling an ounce of shame. Even their fart jokes don’t just settle for less.

One episodes they’re cocooned by a spider monster and float into the sky in their inflated wrappings. Another they try to turn the entire class into one big Dutch Oven to avoid a test they didn’t study for... only for the teacher to pass out gas masks. The cherry on top? They don’t get any.

It leaves me in a sense of “Oh my god,” but in the best way possible. I shouldn’t like them. I really shouldn’t but... I’m too much of a late 00s kid to grow out of it. Go ahead and call out my bad taste, I don’t care.

Now this isn’t to say that there were things that couldn’t have been improved upon from small adjustment to pretty major tweaks that I’ve often pondered.

1. The villains were a tad hit or miss. Odious was a good Star Scream in how she schemed behind the scenes and got the likes of Ripcon to take the fall when her fake Aiden plan didn’t precisely go as planned. Cosmo Royale is a huge ham in the best way as Galaxy Warrior’s host, playing up each monster of the day.

That said, Galvanax and Ripcon were the weaker of the lot. The latter could’ve had more of a rivalry with Brody. Maybe as a former master who gave him the skills his father couldn’t, leading them to clash when out in the field. It would help him stand out as a villain.

The former should’ve been less of a gruff brute like Sledge and more watching from the shadows ala Doctor Claw, stepping in when stuff got real like the season finale. The camera could hide him from view until he stepped into the fray. He could also do with a smooth yet menacing voice so to speak. You know, hype up his final showdown in the end.

2. Brody’s time is space could’ve been expanded upon. Perhaps a few of Galaxy Warriors’ contestants crossed paths with the young ninja and are in a conflict of interests. Be it a noble warrior or a former foe. Again, Ripcon could sort of be the Shadow Weaver to Brody’s She-Ra of sorts.

Wait... does that make Odious Catra?

Um...

Additionally, maybe show how out of touch he is with Earth customs due to living on an alien ship for a bit of comic relief. Think Super Sentai’s comedic Reds but more chill and far less obnoxious, being a good leader even with his eccentricities. You could have him be the ones to weird out Victor and Monty.

3. Sledge’s crew should’ve been a rival to Galaxy Warriors in Super Ninja Steel as they catch onto her ruse and return. You could actually have him bring over the Galactic Ninjas with Fox Bots replacing the Viviks, making them more of a big deal.

Odious would go along with it to boost rating for the show and attract more warriors for her benefit. She could try to play both side leading up to the finale with Badonna as a spy so to speak. She has magic so while not let her shape-shift.

4. I get the sense Dane Romero was meant to be dead but it was deemed a tad dark and brought back since they had three Akaningers to adapt. He could’ve acted as a secondary mentor for the Rangers as he caught up with his sons and taught them more advanced skills.

Despite this, Ninja Steel was a fun ride even if it was a touch mellow. I feel like some of the hate is a touch overblow for the sake of hyperbole but I don’t fault anybody for finding this to not be their cup of tear. The anniversary element is another post entirely so I’ll save that for later.

Alright, guys, tear me apart.

#Power Rangers #power rangers ninja steel #power rangers super ninja steel #ninja steel #super ninja steel #ninja rangers fear no danger

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caffeinecortisol · 4 years ago

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So, contextual downsides (showing the bad here to emphasize the good, hang in there)

brought the kids back home from 3 weeks out of town, have been living with my parents for longer than we ever expected, stressed about finances and now I'm stressed about finding somewhere else to move, somewhere good for all of us, suddenly pretty soon

the kids got me sick - really sick - and I'm still stumbling around after two miserable germy toddlers all night, scared out of my mind for them while they cough, finally have a COVID test scheduled for this weekend, but have missed way more work than they originally gave me as time off

my husband came home at last - was away for almost two months, though we just visited him there in the middle of it - and is furious, adjusting poorly, mad at me for doing too little or needing too much from him, having a fight I totally expected but can't manage right now

But then today. The sun comes out, it's 75 degrees. I open the window and I'm - not exaggerating, it's surreal, all at once for the first time in months - totally at peace. Resting in bed, feeling more well and calm than I have all week. In my childhood bedroom, familiar trees swaying and birds thrumming, light shining all green as it filters in. My secret that the screen is out, still calming for no reason, still secret. I hear my children in the yard, in the sunshine, far off, happy.

Outside, my husband, under the window. Being kind to my mother's requests, though he didn't plan to work on chores today. I know that's monumental generosity, even if nobody else knows. Discussing amiably. She needs him to dig up another baby tree that's growing too close to the house, and has been ignored there a few years until it's become too big to forget. I know he'll do it, of course, he always does - but I'm surprised when I hear him talking about packing the dirt so he can get it all up at once, about watching to make sure he's not tearing any roots, trying to get the whole ball of the thing without hurting it.

Again, I realize, he's going to adopt another orphan tree, he's going to grow it in a giant pot on the front walk, like all the line of saplings he's collected for the past three years, I can see it at once: we're going to end up moving away someday soon and bringing a whole baby forest with us. I love trees so damn much. I love my husband like it punches me in the chest sometimes, all at once for new small things.

I'd given him one condition, when we went to look for houses, before the lockdown - more trees. Whatever you think I want, it's more. Way back in high school, we used to argue in class over his dry state or my green one; it was always down to the same unwinnable comparison, in the end, the determining factor for only me - we have infinite perfect trees here and so I probably can't survive elsewhere. We dreamed up a home someday, way before we were in love with each other, all the fantastical joking teenagers do about the future: a treehouse, we agreed. Actually, one big home all inside a giant tree. Spiral staircase I never wanted to climb so he promised he would bring up the groceries if I'd give him his kitchen on the top floor. Sure thing. That was before he went to the desert, to war; when the promises we made each other were light, and comfortable, easily shifting things. He left me some hand-me-downs when he enlisted: a necklace I've never taken off; a t-shirt with a picture of a treehouse. I loved him tremendously by then, I was so mad.

He doesn't care about forests really, likes mountains and open landscapes, but he loves me. And he loves gardening, once I got him on it, for therapy - a surprise to him, which, that part surprised me. It occurs to me now, remembering the first home and the very bad years and making a garden and planting things in it, just because I wanted them, when he didn't care at all about the garden until it was suddenly the thing he cared about most, worked all day maintaining and improving, a routine in the morning and a success story in the evening, a quiet thing to enjoy without fear - it occurs to me like a knife to my eye, and I'm ashamed I never gave him credit: the house he chose, he moved me to, he said because it was good rent in a fine neighborhood, away from trouble, close enough to base. I liked it outside there, wanted a garden and to be outside, in the backyard best of all, because the whole woods grew up behind our yard for miles. I figured it was an accident. It's seven years later, now, and I can't believe I've never known better.

My husband gets our son to put the shovel in the dirt a few times, and I can hear them and nobody knows it, they're just having fun for themselves, just the way it should be. I'm in my original bedroom, a whole different person than I originally was, and still in love with him. I love how he thrives on cultivating and improving small details over time, he's got so much energy for parenting and just two boys to wrap up in it, he stretches that love and sensitivity over unexpected things. He's proud of his little trees here. Every year he gives them each a bigger pot. I secretly think he's named them, never seriously, but little petnames in his head. I know I catch him when he's watering them in the evening, talking to them, spinning them again to get even sunlight. Reminding them they're doing a good job. I realize for the thousandth time, I need to remind him of that, more. He's doing a good job.

I've never noticed before today, but I've never lived in a home without trees behind it. Not as a toddler, before real memory. Not as a child, and not in the college dorms. Not when I moved to our first place, sight unseen, with a car full of stuff and troubles to unpack with my new husband. Not our next rental when he got out, and we landed in a split-level while I was 8 months pregnant - every step of the way, I've been at the edge of the woods. And of course, even now, back at home, listening out the window. Smelling green air and feeling green breeze. I could move again, probably, when I'm feeling better. The boys can grow up by a forest. Could move the whole family somewhere, if it's green. Move there and make it greener, together. Things will probably be good. I'm glad already for the best parts, and still often surprised by sweetness. We're growing lingering moments of peace.

#spring weather is all in my head so i PUT WORDS TOGETHER #personal #this got long which is because my writing sentiments are out of practice #but I'm keeping it because it's for me and good to remember #i guess this is about a lot of things but also being married to a vet with PTSD #like - to clarify - even in the bad stuff there's just acknowledging and not throwing blame around #so if you have a grim relationship comment i request you don't share that with me #but if you love TREES i DEF wanna hear about it!!#recovery

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personalcoachingcenter · 5 years ago

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Cracking The MODERN LEADERSHIP Code

New Post has been published on https://personalcoachingcenter.com/cracking-the-modern-leadership-code/

Cracking The MODERN LEADERSHIP Code

Business people and psychologists have developed useful frameworks that describe the main ways that people lead. When you understand these frameworks, you can develop your own approach to leadership and, as a result, become a more effective leader.

There are traditional approaches and styles of leadership. Let’s. Take a look at some psychologists, Kurt Lewin developed his framework in the 1930s. It provided the foundation of many of the approaches that followed afterwards.

He argued that there are three major styles of leadership: one, autocratic leaders, these make decisions without consulting their team members, two Democratic leaders. These include team members in the decision-making process.

Three laser fair. These leaders give their team members a lot of freedom and how they do their work and how they set their deadlines. They mostly provide support. The Blake Mouton managerial grid highlights that the most appropriate style to lead should be based on your concern for people or your concern for production and tasks.

The path-goal theory states that the best leadership approach should be based on people ‘ S needs the task. They’re doing and the environment that they’re working in. However, in this video we will discuss more modern styles of leadership.

Among these, we can find one charismatic leadership to transformational leadership. Three visionary leadership for transactional leadership; five servant leadership; first, let’s; talk about charismatic leadership; many of history’s; most effective leaders are labeled charismatic, Martin Luther King jr., Malcolm X, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill, Hitler Fidel Castro and many Others, charismatic leadership is leading by dint of personality and charm. Instead of relying on any external power or authority.

Charismatic leaders seek to fulfill organizational goals by instilling devotion. Charismatic leaders are essentially very skilled communicators individuals who are both verbally eloquent, but also able to communicate to followers and deep emotional level.

They are able to articulate a compelling or captivating vision and are able to arouse strong emotions and followers. Charisma is really a process, an interaction between the qualities of a charismatic leader, the followers and their needs and identifications with the leader.

When it comes to charismatic qualities of leaders, the emphasis is on how they communicate to followers and whether they are able to gain followers. Trust influence and persuade them to follow next up.

We have transformational and visionary leadership. Let’s start with transformational leadership similar to transmat leadership. This time focuses on inspiring people to follow and achieve different roles or changes in an organization as formation.

The leaders accept even out speeches and they use their great communication skills to create a sense of commitment in their followers, the people working for the company. They first have to internalize the company’s mission and then serve these go to other employees.

In a way that they will take the company’s, values as their own, this means that everyone will work to achieve the company’s vision. Instead of pursuing their own personal interests. They do not all need others and tell them what to do.

They also do part of the job everyone else does, and they do it in a very energetic, enthusiastic and passionate great to try to inspire others to write in the same fashion. The main differences there are between transformational leadership and charismatic leadership is the level of legitimate part they have.

This means the job position. They hope if someone is giving a lot of responsibilities and has certain authority over other people Plus, is given the power to make changes and take important decisions within the company, but still going to chance of every employee making that his or her disposal, while doing this Is some transformational leader, while a charismatic leader has most of this quality they do not necessarily have legitimate polit do means that they can be employees working at entry-level positions when you have a job within the company.

The next one is stationary leadership. This type of leadership is similar to transformational leadership, in that they also focus a lot on the people. However, they did not try to inspire the employees to achieve the company’s yield tonight organizational goal.

The bladder focus a specific sure to medium term objectives. Another difference is that they do not try only to get the employees to strive for the company’s mission. We also boost this employees, self-confidence inspiring them to give their best and become better persons.

They give a lot of importance to personal and group interests, not only the companies. Some of the characteristics of visionary leadership are the following. As soon as visionary leaders see something is going on or the business environment is challenging, they anticipate this change and start working practically.

Rather than wait for the moment, they have to make changes like in the traditional leadership style won’t. It say that this type of leaders are ahead of the curve with their proactive work stuff, which will end up saving a lot of money for the company.

Therefore, the company will be heading in the right direction. They are constantly making changes and corrections and whenever they see a problem with someone or something up affecting the employees, they will approach them and talk to them about the problem.

Valuating a lot of good energy and showing a trustworthy person, Molly Vanessa focus on developing team spirit and showing to have great morality and values. Now we have transactional leadership or also known as management leadership.

This type of leader usually focuses on results guiding himself by the structure of organization and the company’s, way to reward and penalize its employees depending of the employee, meets or not the comparation stunts.

These leaders usually have a type of formal Authority or a precision or responsibility within the company. This leader is held responsible for foreseeing and providing solutions to each situation that may occur.

The leader is in charge of maintaining order and routine and can be achievable by managing performance as a group or performance of each individual. Now let’s. Have an example. Little gates was born in 1955 in Seattle.

In his early teens, he meant Paul Allen at the Lakeside school, but they pulled the veil of computer programs as a hobby when gates went to Harvard, and I went to work as a programmer for Honeywell and Boston around 1975.

They started Microsoft together and by 1978. The company had brought 2.5 million dollars when Gates was 23. Around 1985 Microsoft launched Windows, though Gates is now one of the richest people around the world and as a transactional leader used to visit new product teams and ask difficult questions until he was satisfied that the teams weren’t track and understood the goal.

Now we have servant leadership, this type of leader focuses on serving others or even helping them. Servant leadership begins with a vision for providing a resource such as employments, public service or even education.

It requires leaders to be optimistic and empathic for people in many types of situations. Certain leaders identify complex problems and are able to implement workable solutions in a timely fashion. By planning ahead.

It could go all the way from initial project planning stages to final limitations. Servant leaders think about how they can best serve your community. The objective of serving others encapsulates every facet of their activities from establishing healthy communities to building prosperous businesses and worthwhile public entities.

As an example, I gather an example of Reverend Donald K macho. If you guys don’t know. Mr. macho was a Rear, Admiral achievement of chaplains in the US Navy. He recalled several men to suit items, to the importance of building character through self-improvement, while recognizing the diverse cultures and faiths of every youngster.

He said quote. It is clear to me that essential elements of leadership that distinguished successful and effective chaplains Corps. He also said, above all, our chaplain must have a servant. Heart others have to come first to make a leader.

You need to be a good servant in order to follow. Source : Youtube

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islamicrays · 6 years ago

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I read this sentence once and it cracked me up: "Trying to clean the house with kids around is like trying to brush your teeth while eating an Oreo."

Is it possible to have small kids and a clean house at the same time?

Yes.

It can be hard initially, but it's totally possible.

I'll admit it: I'm a tiny bit OCD and really need my house to be organized and clean. Otherwise my brain can't function.

Obviously my house is not always immaculate, but if things reach a certain threshold of messiness, the visual clutter starts to get to me. When things are messy or dirty or cluttered, it gets in the way of my productivity and sanity, and I NEED to clean stuff up before I can do other things. I can't deal with sticky surfaces or crumbs all over the floor or toys in every corner of the house or dishes piled up in the sink for too long--but obviously, I have babies and toddlers and young kids, which is typically kind of like having 4 tornadoes in your house!

But over the years, I've realized that it's not impossible to have both: little kids and a clean home. You can do it. It's just a question of how.

My strategy includes 2 parts:

1. Teaching habits of cleanliness and tidiness (phase one: 2-4 years old)

2. Assigning set daily chores (phase 2: ages 4 and up)

Part 1: Building Habits of Cleanliness

I try to instill in my kids the importance of being clean and neat when they are still very young. As young as 2 or 3 years old, a child can begin to understand that something is dirty, that a space is littered with toys, or that there is a spill and the floor is sticky.

We have a mantra in our house that all the kids (except the baby, who's 1.5) know by heart: "If you make it dirty, you have to clean it."

I try to set the expectation that nobody will clean up after anybody else. You clean up after yourself. You make a mess, you clean it. You spill your milk, you mop it up. You use crayons, you put them away.

Mama won't clean up your mess because Mama didn't make your mess. Mama won't pick up your toys, because Mama didn't play with your toys or scatter them everywhere.

I got this idea from my dad, who used this method with us when we were kids. I remember one day, my sisters and I used our pencils to draw on the wall of our hallway as little kids. I remember my dad's reaction very well: instead of getting angry at us or yelling about the wall we'd scribbled all over, he calmly told us that since we had drawn on the wall, we would clean it. He showed us how to take an eraser and erase the lines we'd made in pencil. Thankfully, it didn't take that long between the 3 of us, but I still remember the lesson. You clean up your own messes.

When my kids are in the age rage of 2 or 3 years old, I start requiring them (based on their readiness and capacity) to "clean up" little messes they've made. We start small. If a toddler was playing with toys with a lot of pieces, when he's done, I'll gently take him back to the toy-littered area and ask him to pick up the toys and put them back into their respective baskets. The first time he picks up, he might not get every toy that's on the floor, and he might haphazardly put them in random places in the general vicinity of the toy baskets. That's good enough at first. I praise him and give him a high five, commenting on what a good job he's done. The idea is to build long-term habits, starting with baby steps.

Everything has a home, a place where it goes, and I show the kids exactly where that is for things that they are responsible for. For example, the toys have a specific place they belong in when they are not being played with, the clothes have a specific place (hung up in the kids' closet or folded in their drawers) when they are not being used. Whatever system you want to use, make sure it's simple enough and intuitive enough for your kids to understand and follow it inshaAllah. Toys and clothes should be within reach if you expect your kids to put them away.

In general, I try to teach my kids to be careful when they have sticky hands (like after a meal) or as they're coming back home from a romp in the mud, not to get the whole house dirty as they walk to the bathroom to wash their hands. This is an ongoing lesson--not something they've mastered. But the whole idea is just to train them, which means that it's a long process that will take time.

Part 2: Chores

Once my kids are a bit older, probably around 4 years old or so, I start assigning them more set daily chores.

What we do currently is that every morning, we have a specific routine that we rarely deviate from. After breakfast, we start chores.

My 4-year-old picks up the den (toys, books, etc) because the next thing on the schedule is Homeschool, and we have our Quran class in the den. Picking up toys minimizes distractions (most days!).

My 5-year-old clears the table of breakfast items, and wipes down the table and chairs.

My 7-year-old sweeps the floor under the breakfast table.

These are the main daily chores, to be done in the morning. Other chores include:

*Before we leave the house to go on an outing for the day, the kids must pick up the toys (we do a few different toy pick-ups throughout the day in order to maintain the chaos).

*After each meal, each child must take his own plate and cup from the table to the kitchen near the sink.

*When I do laundry, each child must put away his own clothes in the kids' closet (the older kids are more capable of this than my younger ones).

My focus on right now is not that they do their chores perfectly or meticulously, but rather that they do them regularly and as well as they can.

When we first implemented the chore system, it was super hard. The kids thought it was play time, and would play around instead of actually clean up (especially my oldest with the broom, and his brother with the cleaning cloth!). I would find that most days, I'd have to go back and re-do the work they did myself, because the areas they'd "cleaned" were not really clean. It was frustrating and seemed like just a waste of my time, and with 4 kids, I have no time to waste.

But slowly, over time, kids are able to learn and improve their concentration and the capability to effectively carry out a task.

My husband suggested a reward system for chores well done, so some days, I'll announce that whoever does his chore well will be rewarded with some chocolate chips. Works like a charm.

Finally: are there any benefits to kids doing household chores?

YES. TONS!

Via Umm Khalid

#parenting #parenting tips #kids #home #muslim #muslimah #deen

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iturbide · 5 years ago

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@cianidix replied to your post:

That would-be Ace Attorney fic sounds awesome :o

You know, despite the fact that I was mostly a non-presence in the AA fandom back in its heyday, the series is still very near and dear to my heart. I actually wrote a ton of fic for the series once upon a time (recently I went digging through a lot of it while looking through other old writing; I even posted the old intro to Crime of Passion while I was looking through that stuff -- it’s the last chunk in this particular post), and part of me really does want to go back and pick up some of those old ideas someday -- but this one in particular has a special place in my heart. When I think about this series and my engagement with it, that’s the fic that always comes immediately to mind, and barring the unexpected I really do think that’ll be my magnum opus for Ace Attorney on the whole.

Of course, there’s no telling when I’m actually going to get it written, or even get it completely planned out -- so there’s no harm in talking about it a little.

To start: it is canon-compliant up through AA3, at which point I just omit the case that would lead to AA4 because Phoenix needs to keep his badge. He’s a good man and a good defense attorney and I’m not putting him through that if I don’t have to. So he keeps his career, which is good, and Edgeworth decides to stick around rather than heading off to parts unknown again.

As is expected with an Ace Attorney case, everything is convoluted. That’s just the Nature of the Series. And a lot of things hinge on seemingly inconsequential bits and pieces of information -- apparent mistakes or oversights, little things that get overlooked, information that changes context once new evidence comes to light. But, as is maybe expected of me by this point, character relationships are the backbone of everything, and the relationships here run deep.

I’ve always felt a very strong sibling connection between Nick and Maya. They banter and biker and tease each other in a way that feels so much like family; there’s a kindness to the fact that even though Maya loses so much over the course of those three games, she still has family in the form of Pearl and Nick. Despite the fact that she’s going through her Spirit Medium training, I’ve always loved the idea that she wanted to honor her big sister’s memory, too, and applied herself in her spare time to studying for the bar exam so that she could become a defense attorney, too.

Meanwhile, for all that I love Phoenix and Miles as a couple, I can’t help but imagine that things would be...difficult, at first. Despite his marked improvement over the course of three games, Edgeworth still tends to keep people at arm’s length, avoiding emotional attachments to a fairly significant degree -- let’s not forget, this is the man who feigned his own death and then ran off almost immediately after his return to more parts unknown, returning only when he got word that Phoenix was in dire straits. He seems to have trouble understanding some of his own emotions (not unreasonable, honestly, given how he was raised), and therefore tries to keep them out of everything he does, personal and professional; not only that, he struggles with a need for control (again, this is very much a product of his upbringing where perfection was a requirement), and doesn’t deal well with losing it. And all of this plays into his personal life, as much as the professional one: for all that he and Phoenix are spending more time together, in and out of the courtroom, and for all that Phoenix cares deeply about Miles, Edgeworth keeps him emotionally at arm’s length, willing to broach something like friendship but never more.

Phoenix doesn’t deal well with that. If the games have shown us anything, it’s that Nick holds nothing back when it comes to his heart. He puts his all into every case, believing with everything he is in his clients’ innocence -- which is why finding that one is truly guilty of the crime they’ve been accused of comes as such a crushing blow. Even if it was mostly a puppy crush, Phoenix still put his very life on the line to try and keep Dahlia from being charged with murder, and his devastation and heartbreak when he thought that Edgeworth really had died led him to lash out at the man when he found out that it was just a ruse. Phoenix loves wholeheartedly: he’s just not capable of doing anything less. It means he has some pretty steep emotional needs, though, and with Edgeworth maintaining that distance...it wears on him. Badly.

Relationships are not easy things. They require time, care, understanding, and effort to maintain. And if only one side is putting in that labor, things are bound to crumble and fail eventually. And that’s where Crim of Passion starts: with Phoenix reaching the very limits of his ability to endure and starting to fail. He and Miles routinely face one another in court, and though private matters should stay private, it’s difficult to entirely displace private feelings in public settings. Things get...tense in court: barbs are cast in the halls outside, implications made toward the prosecution’s ill conduct toward the defense, and low blows dealt against the defense’s capabilities. The bad feelings linger through the case, simmering away on both sides...and Phoenix realizes that there won’t be reconciliation this time. He’s too tired of putting in all the work, of always being the one to accept and forgive, and getting nothing back in exchange.

So when Miles calls him to make amends, Phoenix intends to tell him that this is the end. That he can’t go on this way anymore.

But before he can, someone arrives at the office. And the last thing Edgeworth hears before the line goes dead are shots fired.

Despite his best efforts, Miles is by no means immune to his emotions. Without ever meaning to, Phoenix has gotten so much closer to him than he ever intended, slipping past his guard without the prosecutor noticing. The sound of gunshots sends him racing to the defense attorney’s office, where he finds bullet holes in the window and a blood trail on the floor, ending at the street...but when he calls the police to report a crime, he’s the one taken into custody as a suspect, a decision motivated by the known enmity between prosecution and defense. So once again, Miles finds himself behind bars -- only this time, Phoenix isn’t there to defend him; and once again, Maya has to confront the death of someone she loves, and her internal conflict as she tries to provide Edgeworth the defense counsel he deserves is enough to tear her apart.

#replies #cianidix #ace attorney #fanfiction #crime of passion #i love this thing so much to this day #also if i can play it right it's going to have some absolutely stunning turnabouts #including evidence getting completely recontextualized by a chance find #and a murder victim arriving to his own trial in the eleventh hour

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tellywoodtrash · 6 years ago

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Sanjivani - Weeks 2 + 3

This is now my lunchtime show (replacing random topical news comedy like Late Night with Seth Meyers, Last Week Tonight, Patriot Act, etc.) It’s a nice show to consume that way; I’m not super-involved in it, but it decently holds my interest for a solid 20 minutes as I shove something in my gaping maw.

Overall Plot

Marginal improvement in plot as the show and characters settle in. We learn more about the backgrounds of Ishani and Sid, and their relationship becomes much better. The Shashank/Anjali/Juhi/Vardhan dynamics are also nicely built up, and frankly the more interesting overarching plotline of the show.

The Medical Stuff

They seem to be going for a Grey’s Anatomy type of vibe, I think, focusing on one or two cases over the week. Nothing as interesting as in Grey’s, here it’s more routine kinda cases, but there does seem to be more focus on medicine than there ever was in DMG, which I’m kinda thankful for. While yes, I’m interested in the interpersonal dynamics, I also wanna see these people do their jobs (rather than just canoodling/having angsty fights in stairways and on-call rooms.) With other shows, I really really hate when a day goes on and on for weeks, but in this show, it’s realistic. Residents do often have to do 24 - 36 hour shifts, and each week being about one shift, it’s well-encapsulated; I like how the show flows from one day/shift/case to another.

The Acting

The seniors (Mohnish, Gurdeep, Sayantani) remain the best part, as expected, turning in consistent performances. Surbhi’s performance has toned down considerably, and that’s a big relief. The show would have been unwatchable if she hadn’t. Namit is still weak in some regards (like crying; god that one scene in Week 2 was really bad) but is getting better. He’s best in scenes where he has to be soft and considerate (comforting Anjali/Ishani/Sanya/Neeti etc.) or taking charge of things, coz he plays both these aspects confidently. I also like the chemistry when paired with Surbhi, because he plays off her really well. Only upwards from here, I should hope. The others are.... eh. They’re background characters, so they do what is expected of them.

The Characters

Sid: Sid’s the character that’s grown on me the most compared to the first week. They’ve thankfully toned down his fuckboy-ness waaaaaay down (not sure why they decided to introduce him that way, when it doesn’t even seem to be true of his character aside from in the pilot.) We find out a little more about his social background/family, and it explains why/how he is the way he is. I appreciate his camaraderie with Ishani; he’s obviously fond of her, and attracted to her as well (but in a casual way), but knows she has a lot to learn about how this place works and tries to be a good supporting team member to her, but not to the point where he lets her run amok. He tries to justify his ways to her, but is also willing to let her try her own things in the off case it does pay off; but always has a Plan B in his back pocket, because he knows things don’t work out as expected around here. I like his quiet confidence and integrity, but that he’s also willing to not mince words and/or throw hands if and when absolutely required. Not very realistic of a doctor, but eh, this is Tellywood. Chalta hai.

Ishani: Thankfully, Ishani has mellowed down quite a bit and isn’t as intolerable as she was in the first week. She’s quickly learning that things at Sanjivani are not as they appear and that her initial judgement of Sid was way too hasty/harsh, and has formed a delicate alliance with him. Not to say that she isn’t a stickler for rules anymore, or approves of his on-the-fly, jugaadu/sometimes outright wily ways to skirt around the rules, but she’s trying her best to maintain a balance; in how she tries to help the people who need it, in the most forthright manner. But she’s definitely more comfortable being flexible with “the rules” than she realizes. Her germophobia prevents her from getting comfortable with Sid’s physical proximity whenever he tries to comfort her/express thanks, but I think she appreciates the sentiment.

Shashank: God, I’m so grateful he’s still here. He’s kind of out of sorts due to the surgery, but he’s still very aware and involved in what’s going on in Sanjivani. His gentle battle with Anjali persists, with the latest episode making him give some leeway to her, quite unwillingly though.

Juhi: Beyond Shashank’s surgery, she didn’t really make much of an impression on me in these 2 weeks. She takes the COS job in a spur-of-the-moment decision, purely in an emergency situation, than really actually wanting it. She does a good enough job, stern and smart with the rioting mob/Vardhan, and compassionate and understanding with Ishani, but I do anticipate lots of trouble coming her way in the position. Especially with Rahul lurking mysteriously in the shadows, in cahoots with Vardhan.

Anjali: NOT ENOUGH ANJALI AS I WANT!!!!!! All we do see Anjali doing is either be hysterical during surgery, or sulking over not getting the COS post. For godssake, she’s an HOD, a competent doctor in her own right, can we see her at work too? I want to see her be the kickass boss bitch I know she is; maybe taking a few of these many million juniors under her wing and mentoring them? (She seems to have a good relationship with Sid, it would be nice to see that extend to some others too?) There was one good scene between Shashank and her where they peacefully discuss their issues at the end of this week, but I really need Anjali to DO more than just be standing around feeling bad for herself/manipulated by Vardhan/sniping at Juhi/being passive-aggressive at Shashank. I like that she was upfront enough with Juhi about not liking her, but I don’t like how they’re centering her whole character around just that. You’ve already done this character dirty in one iteration (DMG), please do not waste this chance to showcase the complex personality she is!

Vardhan: A kinda compelling asshole. He has a son that he keeps talking to on the phone, whom seems to dote on and wants to make the best impression on. But harkatein kaafi kameeni. But I also feel marginally sympathetic to him, because he’s trying his best to keep Sanjivani afloat financially. Drs. Shashank and Juhi’s bleeding-heart ways are admirable and all, but the ground realities of running an organization are quite different; and Vardhan is answerable to multiple people above him about it. So yeah I do hate him when he’s doing pettyass evil shit like booting a poor person off a donor list, but in some cases - esp. PR/admin/financial issues, I can see where he’s coming from. I just wish they’d stop making him so caricatureish in his villainy at times and kept him a slick evil, like most corporate types are.

Rishabh: Asshole Jr., but not at all compelling or complex like Vardhan. Just an outright classist asshole, looking to suck up to Vardhan and other richie-rich fuckers and get Sid in trouble. He’s the most annoying part of the show, honestly, constantly lurking around with his phone and filming Sid. Jeez, get a damn life, loser.

Rahil: So sweet and unproblematic, why don’t we see him more (instead of the irritating Rishabh)????? GIVE US MORE RAHIL!!!!!!!

Asha & Aman: They might as well have made them twins, coz they’re so alike (even have matchy-matchy names!) I despise when they unthinkingly run their mouths and blurt out whatever the hell they’re thinking, even to waaaay senior doctors like Juhi and Shashank. Their no-filter admonishments are quite welcome in the case of Ishani though, where they drill some sense into her head. Ultimately, they do have their hearts in the right place and are sincere doctors (if not the most knowledgeable), and I enjoy them in limited amounts; like in the scene where they’re watching Sid and Ishani brawling over the liver.

Asha: Tu idhar mitti ka dher bana khada hai, inki fight rok na??? Aman [watching Sid and Ishani literally bucking at each other while holding an icebox with a liver inside it]: Abbe pagal ho gayi hai ke, baukhlaaye hue saand se ho rakhe hain. Dulatti nahi khaani maine inki!

Neil: Like Rahil, he seems to be sweet and unproblematic, but I get the feeling that he suffers from some kinda health issue? He fainted at the first case out in the field (the bomb blast), Aman mentions he fainted again seeing a corpse that could donate a liver, and he seemed very out of breath when he came to inform Sid/Ishani about another liver donor. I find it hard to believe that a first year resident could be this squeamish about things you get used to by the end of med school, so I really think there’s something else going on here. Is he going to be the Dr. Omi equivalent (the tragically ill character) of this season? I would like to see more of him (than the other jr. residents), because the actor is very measured and likable.

Rahul: We haven’t SEEN him yet, but we have heard him and what we’ve heard......... Does not bode well. I haven’t seen Sanjivani 1, so I don’t know the character as such, but wasn’t he the lead? They’re bringing him back but as an antagonist? Seems quite out-of-character, but I am veryyyyyyyy intrigued about this development, and especially how Juhi fits into all of this.

Overall Rating: 3.5/5

#sanjivani #sanjivani (new)#tt reviews

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