#so the current version of the document is only a little over 3 months old

[courfee]

hey so. ritardando is now actually longer than operation wanker. which feels vaguely weird even though that was the plan all along. but now it is real and there are more words and the story is still very much not over and i gotta write more

[writingletterstothefire]

reputation

A/N: This is a Hux x reader request I got in my DMs! Also, I wrote this on the Tumblr app, so I don’t know if there will be any formatting issues. If there are, I’ll fix them later on! I’m nervous, as I’ve never written Hux before, but I hope I did him justice! Your request is only part of the fic, but I hope you like it all the same. Enjoy!

Request from @bbarton : hi!! can i request hux x reader (secret relationship bc she has a lower status than him) where he gets jealous bc he sees someone flirting with her!! <3

General Armitage Hux had a reputation to uphold. He was cold, calculating. Officers and stormtrooper’s alike scampered away from him in the hallways. He knew what his inferior officers thought of him, and he used it to his advantage. If they’re scared, he thought, they’re less likely to rebel. And so, to ensure they stayed scared, he was more than happy to play the role of tyrant whenever the opportunity presented itself. If the new recruit fumbled and spilled coffee, he screamed at them in the middle of the mess hall. If a lieutenant failed to get a report in on time, they were publicly demoted. Officers were interchangeable in this profession, so as one was demoted, another was promoted to replace them. It sent a clear message: The Order does not need you. You are lucky to be here. You are lucky that The Order allows you to be here. It kept them in line.

General Armitage Hux had a reputation to uphold. He wasn’t known to be lovable and cuddly. Growing up, his father ensured that he never entertained the thought of a marriage based on love. From a young age, it was clear to Armitage that any marriage he partook in would be solely for the sake of siring an heir. Someone to continue the Hux line, ensure that the family name lived on past the individual. He definitely never saw you coming. You, soft and gentle, loving and warm. You, with a motherly embrace to rival the one he had conjured in his head. You took care of him, before he even knew what you were doing. Bringing him his tarine tea that he enjoyed so much, ensuring he ate at least two meals per day. At first, he genuinely thought that you were his new assistant. He thought that the Supreme Leader had assigned you to him without telling him, and who was he to question the Supreme Leader? But when he handed you a stack of paperwork about two months into your taking care of him and told you to transcribe all of the documents into basic and load them onto his datapad, you had giggled at him. He was almost offended, and he would have reeled back and screamed at you, if he wasn’t so entranced by the musical noise that was bubbling out of your mouth.

“Is...Is something funny, officer?” He had managed to choke out, his strangled voice surprising even himself. You smiled that wonderful smile, which he now realized was reserved for only him.

“No, sir, not funny per se, just...mildly amusing. I regret to inform you that I am not here to do Lieutenant Mitaka’s paper work for him.” You walked over to Mitaka’s desk, dropping the stack of papers there and writing a little note to stick to the top of the pile. Hux remembered purposefully looking anywhere but your rear end, which was poking out as you leaned over the desk.

“I beg your pardon?” Hux cleared his throat, cursing the hoarseness that lingered in his throat. Why was he suddenly becoming so affected by you? Perhaps it was because that was the first time he was seeing you. He’d known what you looked like, sure, but he’d never taken the time to really look at you. The way your eyes lit up when you smiled, the way your uniform hugged your body in just the right way to make his mouth water. The sheen of the lip balm you wore, glistening just enough under the fluorescent lighting of Starkiller Base to bring attention to those tantalizing lips.

“Well, it’s just that, you know I don’t work for you, don’t you?” Your voice had snapped him out of his thoughts, ringing through the air. You were looking at him, an amused smile on your lips.

“I beg your pardon?” He repeated, dumbly. He silently cursed himself again, before continuing, “If you do not work for me, then what is it that you are doing here, officer?”

“Why, making sure you don’t run yourself into the ground, of course,” you tilted your head at him, still smiling so happily, as if you were amused by his confusion. “Someone has to take care of you, General. I couldn’t exactly turn a blind eye when I noticed that you’d been skipping meal times.”

“And who do you work for, then?” Armitage was still confused. How could you have this spare time to constantly check on him? It made no sense.

“I’m part of the Cradle Initiative.” Finally, it’d hit Hux like a freight train. The Cradle Initiative was thought to be a joke among superior officers in the First Order. An old wives’ tale, even. The generation of First Order officers before Hux had often joked that the incoming line of soon-to-be generals and commanders were too soft. They needed to be nursed and taken care of. Cradled. And so, the newest generation of foundlings that the Order collected were put into the Cradle Initiative. These officers were trained to essentially be mother hens. They were taught how to cook, clean, and nurture. There were even some lessons on how to nurture children. Some factions of the Cradle Initiative were specifically to breed and nurture the next generation of the First Order. The rest were sent to First Order bases, where their job was quite literally to take care of everyone. It all made sense now.

“I see. So you...assist me—”

“—Take care of,” you interrupted with the ghost of a smirk on your face.

“—Take care of me,” he gritted out, “because you are part of the Cradle Initiative.”

“My, nothing gets past you, General,” you’d teased, rather boldly, in Hux’s opinion. Most would dive headfirst into the Tattooine suns before teasing a superior that way. “Yes, I was put on this base to take care of you and your fellow officers.”

Hux had nodded stiffly. Of course you would take care of him. It was your job. Nothing more than that. It was silly of him to ever entertain the idea—

“But I must tell you, General, that I check on you most frequently because I want to. I like knowing that you are taken care of. I like knowing that you’re not running yourself into the ground. I like being around you.”

From that moment on, you became Hux’s closest confidant. He would confide in you about Ren’s tantrums, and you would patch him up when the tantrums were taken out on him. Things changed, though, after you spent the night with him. It was entirely innocent, really, you had just fallen asleep while cuddling him after he woke up from a nightmare. He had those often, nightmares about his father’s abuse. At first, he was ashamed that you’d seen him in such a weak state, but the shameful feeling was pushed aside as you slid onto the bed and gently laid your hand on his knee.

“I’m here to take care of you, General,” you reminded him softly.

“Armitage,” he blurted out, “call me Armitage when we’re alone.”

You smiled and repeated his name, the word sounding too lovely as it fell from your lips. He couldn’t help himself. He kissed you. And you had kissed him back. You’d wrapped your arms around him and laid with him the entire night.

That night changed everything. You both knew that if anyone knew of your relationship, it would change how you were viewed. The officers of the Cradle Initiative already had a reputation for essentially being prostitutes. They were often ridiculed, and told that they were there to be bred with and that’s it. You’d be publicly humiliated if anyone knew you were in a relationship with the highest ranking general of the First Order. So you had to hide. And then there was the most important reason.

General Armitage Hux had a reputation to uphold. He couldn’t risk his officers thinking he had gone soft. There was too much at stake, and he needed to have their complete respect and loyalty.

But then he saw that damned Lieutenant Trecol Verstan. Verstan was a thorn in Hux’s side from the very beginning, constantly questioning and defying his orders. He was one misstep away from being demoted to janitorial staff. And it appeared that he would be making that misstep today.

Upon entering the somewhat crowded command center, Hux’s eyes immediately zeroed in on you, and he saw red. Verstan was currently leaned up against the wall, his arm caging you in as he chattered into about Maker knows what. He was likely telling a highly fictionalized version of his last mission, during which he hid on the ship while the stormtroopers assigned to help him gathered Resistance sympathizers and took them hostage. You were smiling, but it was a thin smile, as if Verstan was testing your patience. Because, he was. You were struggling to come up with a solid enough reason to walk away, when you felt a familiar presence sidle up next to you.

General Armitage Hux had a reputation to uphold.

“Is there a problem, Officer Verstan?” Hux asked, purposefully using the wrong title to refer to the man.

“Lieutenant,” Verstan insisted, huffing in annoyance.

“Yes, well, I don’t think my fiancée needs to hear anymore about your cowardice on Kijimi, Officer Verstan.” Your head snapped to stare at Armitage, jaw dropping a bit.

You saw Verstan’s jaw drop even further than yours did, immediately growing bright red and backing away quickly.

“I-I had no idea, General Hux, if I had known I never would have—”

“Harassed a fellow officer? I’m sure that wouldn’t have stopped you, Officer Verstan.” Hux’s tone was even, almost dangerously so.

“L-Lieutenant...” Verstan muttered under his breath, clearly embarrassed at being degraded in front of his fellow officers and superiors.

“No, no. You’ve been demoted. Between harassing a fellow officer, and your performance on Kijimi, which was nothing short of disgraceful, you’ve made it clear that you do not deserve the title and responsibilities that come with the lieutenant position. You will now be an officer, acting under the guidance of Lieutenant Mitaka. I suppose, in a way, due to the pecking order on this base, that means you work under me. Well, that is to say that I am your superior’s superior. How nice.” Hux looked the most amused anyone, aside from you, had ever seen him.

He turned to you, about to speak, before realizing that Verstan was still standing there, gaping like a fish. “Are you still here, Officer?”

Verstans ears burned red as he scurried away, hurrying out of the command center.

You were still staring up at Hux, eyes wide and shining. He turned back to you, stepping close and murmuring an, “Are you alright, my love?”

You were so unused to him openly showing any care for you, for reasons you both agreed on. He kept his hands clasped behind his back, but you were now standing toe to toe, close enough to kiss him. You wouldn’t, because you didn’t know where his boundaries were right now, but the thought did cross your mind.

“I’m alright. Thank you for that. I’m sorry I couldn’t get rid of him.” You felt his breath fan across your face as he sighed.

“My darling, I could never be upset with you. You have my complete trust.”

You smiled softly at that. You knew he loved you, of course, but to hear that he trusted you always felt good.

“I know,” you spoke softly, “I know you trust me, and I trust you. With my life, Armitage.”

As he was about to close the gap between you, he realized that the command center was quiet. Too quiet. He lifted his gaze from yours to see that everyone in the command center had frozen during the exchange with Verstan, and they were still watching with intrigue. Some looked absolutely astonished, while others had knowing smirks.

“Unless you are all looking to join Verstan in his demotion, I suggest you get back to work.” His voice was calm enough, but he spoke with such a commanding tone that everyone in the command center scrambled to look busy. Those that could find an excuse scurried out of the room entirely.

Hux led you out of the command center, hands still behind his back, but your hand loosely nestled in the crook of his elbow. Everyone would know within the hour, what did it matter now? There was no point in trying to hide anymore, he thought to himself, as he guided you into his quarters. Your quarters too, he supposed. You basically lived with him at this point.

“So fiancée, huh?” Your teasing voice had his attention snapping back to you in an instant. While he was lost in thought, you have perched yourself on the small loveseat that sat to the left of center in his quarters, next to the electric fireplace. “When were you planning to ask me about this? Where’s my ring, Armitage?”

You were joking, and he knew you were only teasing him to make him blush. You loved being the only one able to fluster him. Still, he turned away from you, walking into the bedroom and digging through the nightstand. He emerged before you could even question him, and walked over so quickly that you didn’t even register it until he was on one knee in front of you, breathing your name in that soft way that was reserved only for you.

“My love,” he began, “I never thought I would find anyone like you. I assumed that I would never marry for love, it would simply be an arrangement of convenience. But when I met you, I knew that the tightness in my chest was love. I knew that the lightheadedness that set in whenever you smiled at me was love. I knew that the feeling of something missing whenever you left the room was love. I love you. And at first, that terrified me. I didn’t want anyone to hold the power over me that you hold. But when you held me through the night after witnessing one of my lowest moments, I knew you would never abuse that power. You’ve proven time and time again that you love me just as much as I love you. There is no one else that I could fathom a life with. There is no one else I could love. There is only you. Will you do me the honor of marrying me?”

You were crying now. You had been joking around before, but now, with Armitage on one knee in front of you, you knew that you’d never say no to him. “Yes! Yes, Armitage, yes!”

You waited until he slipped the ring onto your finger before launching yourself at him, holding him tighter than he’d ever been held.

“I love you, so much, Armitage,” you cried into his neck. His arms wrapped around you, one hand tangling in your hair.

“I love you, my darling.”

General Armitage Hux had a reputation to uphold. Everyone knew who he was, and everyone was terrified of him. After news of your engagement broke, everyone knew not to touch you. Those who’d seen what happened with Verstan were most likely to stay away. About a week later, there was an incident with a newly recruited officer who thought perhaps they could charm you into cheating on Hux, reaching out to try to feel you up, but before Hux could even think to do anything, you had the offending arm pinned behind the officer’s back. Armitage had never been prouder.

General Armitage Hux had a reputation to uphold. And you, as his fiancée, took it upon yourself to ensure that reputation stayed intact.

[world-of-puppets]

Puppetry Lost Media

In honour of reaching 50 followers last week (now 55 followers, as of writing this) I decided to cover two subjects of great interest to me: puppetry (of course) and lost media.

Everybody online loves a good old bit of lost media. Whether it be being a part of the many searches for the media in question, or watching documentaries about them on sites like YouTube. I’ve been mildly addicted to the latter kind of content for a while. From what I’ve seen, though, there aren’t many videos or articles out there specifically covering lost puppetry. So, in no particular order, here are a couple of pieces of lost puppetry I found while scrolling through the lost media wiki.

銀河少年隊 - Ginga shounen-tai AKA Galaxy Boy Troop (1963 - 1965)

Osamu Tezuka is one of the most pioneering figures in Japanese art and animation. Starting as a manga artist in the 1940s inspired by the animated works of American studios such as Walt Disney and the Fliecer Brothers, he adapted and simplified many of the stylistic techniques of both artists to create his own signature style of big shiny eyes, physics defying hair and limited animation. A style that would go on to heavily influence the world of anime and manga as a whole.

But animation and graphic art were not the only mediums Tezuka would dabble in. Ginga Shounen-Tai, or Galaxy Boy Troop in english, was a television series that aired on the public broadcast channel NHK from April 7th, 1963 to April 1st, 1965. Running for 2 seasons with a total of 92 episodes.

The series was a mixture of marionette characters that utilised the Supermarionation marionette technique, popularised by Jerry Anderson’s Thunderbirds, and limited traditional animation. The story revolves around a child genius named Roy who leads a rag-tag group of heros around the galaxy in a rocket ship in order to revive the earth’s sun and later protect it from alien invaders.

Out of the 92 episodes that aired, only episode 67 still exists in its entirety with French subtitles, and the full episode can be found on YouTube with English subtitles uploaded by user Rare TezukaVids. According to user F-Man on the Tezuka in English forums, footage of episode 28 exists but with no audio, and episode 87’s animated segments exist without the marionette segments. F-Man also claims the reason for Galaxy Boy Troop’s disappearance is due to Tezuka not being proud of the series and having all episodes of it destroyed.

Personally, I think it’s a shame that pretty much all of this series is gone. From what I’ve seen in episode 67, it looks really charming. Tezuka’s signature character design style was adapted suprisingly well to marionettes, and the puppetry itself isn’t that bad either. I love the little face mechanisms like the blinking eyes, flapping mouths and others. It gives the puppets a lot of personality and charm. Like, just look at this old mans eyebrow mechanism and tell me you wouldn’t want to watch 92 episodes of this show;

Tinseltown (2007)

Tinseltown was a 15 minute sitcom pilot created by the Jim Henson company under thier Henson Alternative banner. The pilot was commissioned by the Logo Network and aired as part of the Alien Boot Camp programming block in 2007.

The pilot (and likely the series, had it been picked up by the logo network) features a cast of both puppets and live actors as characters. The premise revolves around Samson Kight, an anthropomorphic bull preformed by Brian Henson and drew Massey, and his partner Bobby Vegan, an anthropomorphic pig prefomed by Bill Barretta and Michelan Sisti, as they attempt to balance thier lives working in Hollywood with life as parents to thier sullen 12-year-old foster son, Foster, played by Paul Butcher. Other human characters included Mia Sara as Samson’s ex-wife Lena and Francesco Quinn as the family’s manservant Arturo.

The Tinseltown pilot used to be available on the Logo Network’s YouTube channel, but was later removed for unknown reason. Since then, the pilot has not been made available online. However the characters Samson and Bobby have made appearances in other Henson related works, such as the improv stage show Stuffed and Unstrung, where they played the role as the shows producers, and in a 2011 video on the Jim Henson Company YouTube channel celebrating Jim Hensons 75th birthday.

I find Tinseltown pretty interesting as I feel like it should be more noateable or known, considering that this is (as far as my knowledge goes) the first Jim Henson Company project featureing openly lgbtq characters as its leads, and would have been the first Henson show to do so had it been picked up. As someone who’s interested in lgbtq+ representation in creative media such as animation, I realised that there’s not many examples of canon lgbt characters in puppetry. The only ones aside from Samson and Bobby I could think off the top of my head would be Deet’s Dads from The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance and Rod from Avenue Q. Though, obviously, there could be more I’m not currently aware of. I don’t think the Tinseltown pilot was a masterpiece or anything. After all, there’s probably a couple of good reasons Logo didn’t pick it up for a full series. But I think it be cool if either Henson co. or Logo made this available online again, if just so we could appericate it as an interesting little footnote in the history of lgbtq rep in puppetry.

With that said, considering the pilot’s obscurity and the fact that it’s main couple haven’t been used in any Henson Related projects in almost ten years, as well as the possibility that there may be legalities preventing the Henson company from releasing it such as Logo still owning the rights, it’s unlikely we’ll see the Tinseltown pilot anytime soon.

Sonic Live in Sydney (1997 - 2000)

Sonic the Hedgehog is a fictional character no stranger to multiple interpretations of him and his universe across a diverse range of media. From the more light-hearted and comedic stylings of The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and Cartoon Networks Sonic Boom cartoon series, to more serious faire such as the Sonic SatAM cartoon and the Sonic Adventure videogame duology. One of the more obscure and stranger adaptations of the character came in the form of Sonic Live in Sydney, a one an a half hour live show hosted at the former Sega World Sydney amusement park in Darling Harbor, Sydney, Australia. Originally beginning as a live show with actors in meet-and-greet style costumes, the show eventually was replaced with a puppet show during its last two years.

The shows plot was set in an alternate timeline whos continuity was a mix of the SatAM cartoon and Sonic the Hedgehog 3, where Doctor Robotnik’s Death Egg crash lands in Sydney, Australia instead of Angel Island and attempts to take over before being foiled by sonic and friends. According to Phillip Einfeld of Phillip Einfeld Puppetoons, the company that made the puppets, Sega felt the costumed actor version of the show wasn’t dynamic enough, and wished to replace it with a version featuring live puppets with animatronics. Both versions of the shows plot are identical.

While Sonic Live in Sydney’s soundtrack is available on YouTube, and some photos of the show are available on the Lost Media Wiki, no footage of either the costumed actors version or the puppet show version have resurfaced. The show was closed down in 1999, possibly due to cost, shortly before the Sega World park as a whole in 2000. So unless there is someone out there who viseted the show between 1998 or 1999 who recorded the show via a handheld camera, footage of both incarnations of the show are likely forever lost to time.

On a personal note, I don’t have much to say on this one other than how gloriously peek gaudy 90s Sonic the set/puppet design is. I have no doubt finding footage of these puppets in action would truly be a silly delight to behold...

Legend of Mary (year unknown)

This one is a little different from the other entries on this list as while the film itself in its entiraty is available on YouTube for anyone to view, the information surrounding Legend of Mary, specifically its year of release, remains a mystery as of writing this.

I have mentioned the film before on this blog so I’ll keep it brief here: in summary, Legend of Mary is a short film retelling of the Nativity featuring the Rod puppets of Austrian puppeteer Richard Teschner. the video was uploaded to YouTube by user canada 150 archive. I looked up the people credited in the film and was able to find most of them, but didn’t find Legend of Mary listed in thier credits, and was unable to find the film on sites like IMDB, tMDB or Letterboxd. I reached out to Canada 150 archive asking if they had any info regarding the Legend of Mary’s release date, and after a coupe of months, they replied saying they didn’t know.

And that’s as far as I got on my search for answers, if anyone of you guys has any information regarding Legend of Mary, then it be of huge help in finding the release date.

Sam and friends (1955 - 1961)

Sam and friends was the very first puppetry television series created by Jim Henson alongside his colabarator and future wife Jane Nebel. filmed in Washington, D.C. and airing twice daily on WRC-TV and the NBC affiliate in Washington, D.C. from May 9, 1955, to December 15, Sam and Friends would mark the first apperence of Kermit (though not yet as a frog) and paved the way for Henson’s iconic and revered legacy in the realm of puppetry on film and television.

With the impact this show had in mind, it may come as a shock to some that almost half of Sam and Friends, specifically, 42 of the 86 episodes, are considered lost. With 16 existing, 8 documented, 9 known from memory, plus 8 existing Esskay commercials and 1 memory-known Esskay commercial. Some taped episodes have been shown at venues such as the museum of the moving image while others have been erased. It’s unknown if copies of these erased episodes still exist.

This post would become far to long if I were too list every episode missing from Sam and Freinds, but if your curious, the lost media wiki article has a comprehensive list of all lost episodes.

Annnd that about it for this post. This type of content is pretty different from the stuff I usually post. So I’m egar to see what you guys think about it. If you enjoyed this article, want to see more like it or have ideas for what puppetry-related topics I should cover in the future. And again, thank you all so much for helping me reach 55 followers. Your support really does mean a lot to me, and I hope you enjoyed this as a follower milestone gift.

Anyways, hope you enjoyed this dip into lost puppetry, and have a happy holiday season!

[kyberphilosopher]

Important Information

Rules:

I am a minor. As such, smut can not be requested and can not be written. As a compromise, smutty themes can be used as overtones or undertones, often vaguely or simply eluded to. But pure smut? Not for a few months, which is when I’ll be 18. Sorry horndogs. 

Please request through the submission inbox, or my direct messages. Further more, be polite. Be clear. If I ask a question to clear something up, answer it. Don’t let it dangle. I will always ask if there’s anything else you so desire (a word count, any details) so please tell me if there’s nothing else or if there is. English is also not my first language. 

Do not request something against canon. I have written like that before and did not enjoy that. This means if something is considered canon, say Star Wars, such as a line of dialogue or something shown on screen, I would refuse to write you into it. I feel that it distorts the fiction so much you wouldn’t really be in it, and the characters wouldn’t be themselves anymore. Allow me to write you into the world as a side character, as something not shown directly but something that could fit into canon. 

Some fictional characters have different versions of them. For example, Movie Anakin Skywalker, and the Clone Wars Anakin Skywalker. Ben Affleck Batman, or Christian Bale Batman? Or even, Comic Accurate Batman? Specify for me. If not specified after asking for it, I will write the character with headcanon information pulled from multiple ‘canon’ sources. This will be referred to as ‘headcanoned canon’.

Reblog my stuff? Absolutely. I see all my reblogs. But take it an post it to a different site? No. Don’t do that. Maybe I’ll spread over to Ao3 one day, but for now, please don’t. 

Last one I can think of for now. But luckily this can be updated over time. I don’t write drabbles. I know! But just imagine all the times you’ve read a fic so good, only for it to end so soon. I like the thought of writing something both high quality and high quantity, which means I won’t be satisfied with anything under 2,000 words. Unfortunately, this may sometimes come at the expense of time. Especially if what you requested doesn’t fit into my current hyperfixation. 

List of Characters I’ve Written, or Am Open to Writing:

Aayla Secura, Star Wars (Clone Wars)

Ahsoka Tano, Star Wars (Clone Wars and Live Action)

Anakin Skywalker, Star Wars (Clone Wars and Live Action)

Asaaj Ventress, Star Wars (Clone Wars and Books)

Boba Fett, Star Wars (Live Action Original Movies and The Mandalorian)

Bodhi Rook, Star Wars (Rogue One)

Bo-Katan Kryze, Star Wars (Clone Wars and The Mandalorian)

Cal Kestis, Star Wars (Jedi: Fallen Order, Beginning and End of Game)

Cassian Andor, Star Wars (Rogue One)

Darth Maul, Star Wars (Clone Wars)

Din Djarin, Star Wars (The Mandalorian)

Finn, Star Wars (Live Action Sequel Trilogy)

Jyn Erso, Star Wars (Rogue One)

Leia Skywalker, Star Wars (Live Action Original Movies)

Obi-Wan “Ben” Kenobi, Star Wars (Clone Wars and Live Action)

Padme Amidala, Star Wars (Clone Wars and Live Action)

Poe Dameron, Star Wars (Live Action Sequel Trilogy)

Rey, Star Wars (Live Action Sequel Trilogy)

Rex, Star Wars (Clone Wars)

.✫*ﾟ��ﾟ｡.★.*｡･ﾟ✫*.

Batman, DC Comics (All Live Action, All Comic, Arkhamverse, All Animated, Headcanoned Canon)

Bane, DC Comics (Games)

Barry Allen/The Flash, DC Comics (All Live Action, Headcanoned Canon)

Black Canary, DC Comics (Birds of Prey Live Action Movie)

Bruce Wayne, DC Comics (All Live Action, Headcanoned Canon)

Catwoman/Selina Kyle, DC Comics (Headcanoned Canon)

Christopher Smith/Peacemaker, DCEU (All Live Action, Headcanoned Canon)

Cleo Cazo/Ratcatcher 2, DCEU (Live Action)

Conner Kent/Superboy, DC Comics (Titans, All Animated)

Damian Wayne, DC Comics (Animated and Injustice)

Dick Grayson, DC Comics (Titans, All Comic, Arkhamverse, All Animated, All Versions)

Harley Quinn, DC Comics (All Live Action, All Comic, Arkhamverse, All Animated Versions)

Jason Todd/Red Hood, DC Comics (Headcanoned Canon, Arkhamverse, All Animated, Titans, All Versions)

Katana, DC Comics (2016 Suicide Squad Live Action Movie)

Poison Ivy, DC Comics (Arkhamverse, All Comic, All Animated, Headcanoned Canon)

Tim Drake/Red Robin, DC Comics (Arkhamverse, All Comic, All Animated, Headcanoned Canon)

Raven, DC Comics (Headcanoned Canon, All Animated, All Comics, All Titans)

Robert Dubois/Bloodsport, DC Comics (DCEU Live Action)

Scarecrow/Johnathon Crane, DC Comics(All Live Action, Arkhamverse, Headcanoned Canon)

Starfire/Koriand’r, DC Comics (Titans, All Comics, All Animated, Headcanoned Canon)

Superman/Clark Kent, DC Comics (Cavill’s Live Action, All Animated, All Comics)

.✫*ﾟ･ﾟ｡.★.*｡･ﾟ✫*.

Annie Leonhardt, Shingeki no Kyojin (Marley Resident, Season 1-3, Season 4, Titan Form)

Bertholdt Hoover, Shingeki no Kyojin (Marley Resident, Season 1-3)

Carla Jaeger, Shingeki no Kyojin (Pre Beginning)

Eren Jaeger, Shingeki no Kyojin (Season 1-3, Season 4, Titan Form)

Hanji Zoe, Shingeki no Kyojin (All Seasons and OVA)

Jean Kirchstein, Shingeki no Kyojin (Season 1-3, Season 4)

Levi Ackerman, Shingeki no Kyojin (All Seasons and OVA)

Marco Bodt, Shingeki no Kyojin (Season 1)

Mikasa Ackerman, Shingeki no Kyojin (Season 1-3, Season 4)

Moblit Berner, Shingeki no Kyojin (All Seasons and OVA)

Sasha Braus, Shingeki no Kyojin (Season 1-3, Season 4)

L Lawliet, Death Note (Season 1)

Ryuk, Death Note (Season 1)

Touta Matsuda, Death Note (Season 1)

Raye Penber and Naomi Matsura (Season 1, Pre Beginning, Throuple Headcanon Canoned)

.✫*ﾟ･ﾟ｡.★.*｡･ﾟ✫*.

Connor RK800, Detroit: Become Human (Deviant, Android, Mid and Post Game)

Chloe RT600, Detroit: Become Human (Deviant, Android, Pre, Mid, and Post Game)

Gavin Reed, Detroit: Become Human (Mid and Post Game)

Kara AX400, Detroit: Become Human (Post Game)

Luther TR400, Detroit: Become Human (Pre and Post Game)

Markus RK200, Detroit: Become Human (Pre, Mid, and Post Game)

Nines RK900, Detroit: Become Human (Post Game)

North WR400, Detroit: Become Human (Pre, Mid, and Post Game)

Other Worlds and Fandoms Coming Soon. 

.✫*ﾟ･ﾟ｡.★.*｡･ﾟ✫*.

What You Can Expect From Me:

Fanfiction

Headcanons- While I’d consider all of my fanfiction headcanons, I’m referring to those little bullet point things you’ll see writers do. Here’s my deal on that. I won’t do romantic headcanons for the characters listed above. By that I mean you won’t see anything titled, “How Poe Dameron Would Cuddle”, or anything of that sort. But you probably will see just my own little headcanons for fun. Like, little fun facts. You know, “Superman’s favorite food is ____”, “Nines hates rats”.

However, I will write romantic headcanons for my OC’s. But that’s for later.

Further regarding fanfiction, I typically write angst. Not sure why, it’s just what I started with because I thought the plots were strongest and I wanted to see where I could take it. Like I said, no smut, but you’ll find allusions to it. Fluff? Yeah, it’s there. Hard for me to write fluff without a plot, but it does exist on my page. 

Original Stories

Most people ignore this, but if you see that I’ve posted it won’t always be something regarding your favorite character. I write my own little stories that’s basically just glorified, book length headcanons for a few worlds, but mostly the Star Wars galaxy. Don’t worry, there’s no need to pay attention to it if you don’t want. It’s something I do in my spare time besides x readers and oneshots. 

Spontaneous Posting

What I mean by this, is that unlike a lot of writers, I don’t work on a schedule. There’s no “once a week posting”, or anything like that. What I finish and give the okay to, is posted. If you’ve requested something, I’ll let you know that it’s about to go out. So sometimes a burst of fics may be pumped out in a week, or none will for up to a month.

Going by EST, I typically am most active at night and early morning. Especially in the summer. During fall this may change.

I rarely put out a post that is unrelated to my writings. If it is related to my personal life instead, it will be posted, but not saved. Documented and available, but never pinned or anything. 

FAQ:

Do you write queer pairings?

Yes. My earlier works usually elude to a female reader and it’s blaringly obvious, though it’s shifting into androgyny for ease of reader. I would prefer to have an androgynous reader instead of a set in stone male or female one. 

Am I reading a queer fanfic written by a straight person?

You are not. I am androgynous myself in terms of gender and unlabeled in terms of sexuality. 

Do you write for poc?

This question shocks me, though I’ve gotten it twice. Then I realized- it’s because so many writers forget the point of a reader. The reader may be described as blonde, or white, or thin, or female. You will not find that here. There will be no set in stone appearance for the reader except for mentions of whatever hair you may possess (apologies to those without hair). There will be no talk of ‘light skin’, or ‘curvy figure’. The farthest I’ll go is describing you as pale, if say, you were sick. Because any race or skin tone can go pale, you know? The only thing I’d do- rarely- is give you a real age. But only to further the plot if needed.

 My point is, ‘Y/N’ is not just a pretty white person with long hair. It’s inclusive to anyone. I’ll stand by that. 

Do you write headcanons?

Answered in the above section. Long story short, I’m working on it, but on my terms. 

Do you write song fics?

I haven’t before. Why? They make me cringe. I don’t know why. I’ll write a fic based on a song, or with undertones of a song. But those little paragraphs with the lyrics that aren’t even in time with what you’re reading if you were to read and listen at the same time? I don’t think so. 

Do you know what sex is?

I do. 

Will you have e-sex with me in the direct message chatbox?

I will not. 

Why do you write on tumblr?

I started writing just to share an old word document with over 300 pages worth of an Original Star Wars story. I tried my hand at fanfiction because, while I don’t read it often myself, I know a lot of people do. It helps them escape reality. And, I’m a pretty good writer, I think. At least I can only get better. I’m just one more person trying to put something out for people to enjoy, and maybe even rely on. 

Will you ever write for real people?

If I ever wrote a fanfiction about Christian Bale or like Barack Obama I think I would just disappear. I can’t do it. It’s like warping my own reality. 

How often do you post?

I don’t know. 

Do you have a taglist?

I did! But only for Star Wars. If you want to be tagged in something, let me know. But you have to be specific. Just for a certain character? For a certain fandom? A certain plot? Just og stories? Be clear. 

Dynamics I Enjoy Writing:

Man simps for person who almost wants nothing to do with them. 

Hero simps for villain or villain simps for hero despite the obvious consequences.

Two jokesters destroy some area while left alone together. May get along better than they would admit. 

Two people who are not expected to get along, get along well. 

Hero and villain are best friends but won’t admit it.

Basically if I’m left to my own mind most of my fics will fall under one of these dynamics. Not always- definitely not always. But I kinda like them. 

Numbers:

800-273-8255 USA National Suicide Hotline

1 (300) 22 4636 Australia Suicide and Anxiety Line

1 (833) 456 4566  Canada Suicide Hotline

800-810-1117 China Suicide Hotline

0145394000 France Suicide Hotline

08001810771 Germany Suicide Hotline

8888817666  India Suicide Hotline

810352869090 Japan Suicide Hotline

0078202577577 Russia Suicide Hotline

08457909090 UK Suicide Hotline

4408457909090 Ireland Emergency Hotline

1-800-656-4673 US National Sexual Assault Hotline

741-741 National Panic Hotline (for people who prefer to text)

Anything else? 

Nope. Can’t think of anything. We’ll see if anything changes. Thanks for checking it out. 

Header Credits to: @moonknights​

[illuxions-x]

A Little Death

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I’m not sure just a little story concept I came up with at 3 am and ran with. enjoy.

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Nothing this bad was supposed to happen here. Ever.

It wasn’t me who came up with the idea of writing everything down. I can’t remember who did, but as soon as it was mentioned everyone else seemed to like the idea too.

 I'm not sure what they expect me to write exactly, but I was voted the most capable to do so out of everyone, which of course I disagree with but I don’t really hate the idea of documenting this. So if no one else will I guess it can’t hurt to give it a crack.

Eva had to dig around her room for a couple minutes to find a journal, which she must have forgotten she had because there were no more than four small sketches we had to rip out for the book to be completely empty.

I tried sitting in the living room to write, I thought maybe being around everyone would give me more inspiration to write but all that happened was everyone decided to crowd around me, all staring at the blank paper in anticipation as though whatever I wrote would impact the universe forever. I couldn’t stand it, how do they expect me to write with them hovering over me like that.

There is a reason why I was the one chosen though, because even though I have the messiest handwriting that absolutely no one can read, I'm good with getting down the small things, like the feelings. 

But I want anyone reading this to know that this is me writing about my feelings and my feelings only, not Eva’s and not Noah’s. My feelings, my experiences. That's the only way this is going to work.

The only one out of all 9 of us that lived out of town was Eva, a sweet farm girl that likes to bake. We’re all lucky to be friends with her, I’m not sure if we would even be alive if we didn’t have a place out of town to stay. 

I’ll be forever grateful to Eva for that.

I found a spot on the balcony, kind of huddled up in the corner. I even brought a blanket to make sure I didn’t get cold.

It's a nice spot, the balcony is where I usually have a smoke in the morning, usually with  warm tea and a book every now and then. The deck squeaks wherever you step and the railings are slowly rotting away, someone will probably have to fix them soon before one of us ends up falling over the edge.

There isn’t much to do here though, everyone kind of just sits around when they’re not on watch. A few people have just finished building a garden on the roof but we need to make a small trip to a house to get seeds because I don’t think anyone thought we would even get this far ahead.

The view is nice here, the property has a bunch of gum trees surrounding it which gives us just a little bit more cover, but god do the kookaburras get loud in the morning, I honestly don’t think I’ve slept in past 7 or 8 am in months. 

There’s a creek a couple hundred meters from ‘the shack’. That’s what we’ve nicknamed Eva’s, it fits pretty well too. The house is pretty run down, been here a couple decades but I think it’s the perfect place to hideout.

I know I should be writing about other things, but I feel like I have to set the scene or maybe if you’re reading this you’ve already skipping my monologue and gotten to the actual beginning, which hasn’t been written yet but it’s probably there for you. 

Hopefully.

It’s been pretty boring here the last few weeks, and this has been the best idea anyone's had in a while. I feel a little guilty I have to admit, Noah seemed to really like the idea of writing everything down and I could tell he secretly wanted to be the one writing. He is a good writer too, he hasn’t said anything yet and I doubt he will.

He’s too nice to say anything, so it will probably eat away at him until he either decides to write his own version, or forget about it and do something else.

Noah is a sweetheart really, but he wasn't with us from the very beginning, he came a little bit later, so I guess it made sense that he wasn't the one chosen.

There's not much more to now than to get into the ‘story’, I’m not really sure how to do it so I’m going to start in the beginning and work my way from there to now, which should be fine if my memory is working fine.

I’m going to start in Psychology class, double period on a Friday, God it feels like a lifetime since I’ve been in a classroom and it's not like I ever hated school, it's just a bit of you don't know what you have until it's gone.

By the start of the second session an announcement was made over the loudspeaker, the principle calling a lockdown. This was odd for more than one reason.

The first being this is Australia, everyone doesn’t walk around with guns freely. The second is I haven’t had a real lockdown since grade 3 when some crackhead walked into school with a cricket bat trying to hit tiny fairies.

So we all just assumed it was a drill, even the teacher did. That was at least until Mrs Reece got an email.

I remember her asking the class who had gotten the COVID vaccine, at least half the class put their hands up, a couple of them being my friends, Ellie Newton, Emily Jackson, Jake Cross and Lucas Walker.

They were taken out of the class by some other teacher, I can't remember his name but he taught P.E which I didn’t do, obviously. He had a whole group of kids with him, saying anyone that was vaccinated had to go to the gym immediately, so when everyone left there weren't many people in the room-no more than 15 year 11’s.

But I never saw that group of people again.

It only took a couple minutes and the remaining people were moved to the second gym, the old one that we only used when the new one was being used for something else. I just remember it being full of students who were all crowded in small groups all as clueless as we were.

The remaining 500 or so people of all year levels were told to sit, they set up the projector and started playing the news. I remember saying something to Sarah next to me along the lines of, ‘wow all this for the queen finally dying’. It was funny at the time I promise.

But instead of showing the royal family the screen showed people running around the city in what I can only describe as anarchy, cars were on fire and there were just bodies laying there on the road like roadkill.

It didn’t take long for someone to say it though, we were waiting for someone to shout it.

‘Zombie Apocalypse!’

I still get shivers even now, thinking about how quickly everything changed.

The news broadcast explained that the only people that were infected currently were people who got the vaccine, and it only took a few moments for things to click in my brain.

Everyone else in my family got the vaccine except me, Mum and Mad got theirs so they could go back to work, and my younger sister had to get hers done to be accepted back at kindergarten.

Not to mention the vaccine wasn’t cheap, $40 per dose. So I decided I could live without it for an extra week to two to make sure we had enough money for bills and food.

Maybe my parents being broke was what saved my life.

Then the police came and told us we couldn’t leave, which only made me want to leave even more. I felt trapped while my family was at home turning into mindless brain eaters.

I guess that was where our plan began, none of us wanted to stay there in the old gym that smelled too much like sweaty socks. The plan wasn’t even that good, we only got out by dumb luck that 10 police officers couldn’t keep tabs on everyone.

So we all went to  the toilets a couple minutes apart from each other, climbing out of the small window. It was a miracle we all even fit.

I don’t know what happened to the kids that stayed in that gym, but I haven’t seen another kid from school since that day, well not alive at least.

[mysticalfankid]

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Language English

Developer Apple Inc.

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On June 6, 2011, at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, it was reported that the official discharge for Lion would be in July 2011. The particular discharge date of July 20 was not affirmed until the day preceding, July 19, by Apple CFO, Peter Oppenheimer, as a major aspect of Apple’s 2011 second from last quarter income announcement.

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[prakathesh]

May 18.

May 18. I still remember that day so clearly, I was 14 years old. My family and I were driving back home from Sydney after a protest. We were in the car. My mother gets a call…All I hear from her conversation is ‘Aiyo’ as she starts crying and screaming. We all were concerned. News broke out. The war had ended.

My entire body was frozen. Without understanding what to say. 3 decades of armed struggle. More than 3 decades of oppression. My entire childhood was centred around learning about Tamil, the war and our people. I didn’t even know any English until after I attended school which is not common for a child born in an English speaking nation such as Australia. All those years growing up thinking by the time I was an adult I would get to go home to Eelam and claim it as my country. It’s been 10 years since that day. 10 years since the lives of Eelam Tamil’s were shaken, shattered and broken. Our dream of an independent state. Our dream of freedom. Our dream for the next generation. It is so hard to write about this loss. This loss isn’t digestible. It is as if something has been stuck in my throat for a decade now. Every Maaveerar thinam, every Black July, every Mullivaikkal Remembrance Day. EVERY SINGLE DAY THE THOUGHT OF THE LOSS OCCURS IN MY MIND.

How could this occur? How are we still fighting for basic answers to the war crimes which were committed? How are were still seeking answers regarding the missing Annas and Akkas? How are we still seeking justice? How is oppression still occurring, where is this so called ‘unity’? When you look back in time, you will notice that the war began due to Tamil youth feeling that they could not rely on the government nor the politicians anymore. They felt the need to begin an armed struggle as they could no longer face oppression and started to realise that the continued oppression will only get worse for the future generation. Many of us grew up on the notion and belief of Tamil Eelam. Many of us grew up wishing for an independent state for the Tamil people, a state where there was equality and a place which was home without discrimination.

I ask you, for one moment, let us put the concept of having an independent state in the back burner. Let us focus on the present moment and focus on what is going on now, 10 years later. Let us start by asking this question first; why are we still living in oppression? Why are the Tamil people of Sri Lanka still getting monitored with systematic militarisation? It is one thing to say the war is over, yet why is there systematic militarisation still occurring? Why is there still constant harassment to former cadres and their families throughout the north and eastern provinces? Why?!

So far, I have poured my heart out and spoken about my raw emotions of a time that was a struggle and continues to be to this day. It’s a feeling that is scattered all over and lays in a bed of heartache. Going forward I have broken this piece into parts to educate and put these emotions into perspective. Let’s discuss a few things starting with;

-          The war

-          The aftermath

-          The next step forward

-          Removal of anger and hatred

-          Unity

-          The future generation

-          The closing paragraph

The War

This part is about education regarding why it all started, what happened and starting from the beginning of the bloody, gruesome, lengthy 30-year civil war. Firstly, this was a war which started due to the oppression our Tamil people faced from the Sri Lankan government and the opposing extremist. Notice how I state the government of Sri Lanka and extremist because to hate on all Sinhalese people will make us no different from those that commit the atrocities towards our people. To say that there are plenty of good Sinhalese people would be rude as its understating how many of them are good. So, hating them as an ethnicity group would be wrong. Both sides faced a loss and we must first acknowledge that if we want to rebuild. We are against the oppressor. Now moving onto the facts.

This war started in the 80’s but the oppression was established long before that, prior to the first president coming into power. This oppression occurred when there was a shift in power and the equally living Sinhalese and Tamils were placed in a position where the majority race was given ruling power. In the hands of power, small changes occurred which caused distrust in the Sri Lankan government and eventually the Sinhala Only Act was brought in to play in 1956. This was a major influence in distrust and a major impact to the Tamil people. This was the government saying that the Tamil people were not of the same value. Move forward a few more years and the Sri Lankan flag was officially adopted on December 17, 1978. Prior to 1815, the gold lion was originally the national flag of Ceylon; its four pippul leaves are Buddhist symbols and the sword is said to represent authority. On this modern version, the green represents Muslims, while the orange represents Hindus. Want to know more about the little things on the flag.... just Google it. Please don’t be ignorant. So, let’s be honest just from these two things you can tell there’s a major shift in power and there is definitely a sign of racism. Now skip forward to 1981. The burning of the Jaffna library. Our literature. Our history. Our ancestral information and writings. Then, what about Black July? 1983. Black July. Wow. The black and white images still haunt me and I haven’t even seen them all.

The 1983 riots are what led to the beginning of a 30-year war which saw the loss of countless innocent lives. It sparked a flame which continues to burn to this very day. As a child of an immigrant I grew up seeing our immigrant parents and the difficulty they faced. I grew up seeing and hearing the oppression my Tamil families faced back home. I grew up facing an identity crisis and a struggle of being so privileged that at times I too was ignorant. Once again, I’m rambling my emotions. Let’s go back to the facts. 1983 riots sparked the war to which there was a back and forth struggle between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) against the Sri Lankan Government and Sri Lankan Armed forces. A war which lead to a multitude of innocent civilians being raped, tortured, discriminated, abused and living in fear. To this day, the rape, torture, discrimination, abuse and living in fear still occurs to Tamil people in the North and East of the country....

The Aftermath

10 years on.

No answers to the missing people. No answer to the white van kidnapping. No answers to all the questions we ask in regard to justice and war crimes. There is continued militarisation through the North and Eastern provinces. The Tamil provinces of Sri Lanka have been seeing multiple structural and cultural changes with Sinhala based identities being placed. With simple examples of a Buddhist temple being built in Jaffna. Religious logos being written in Sinhalese instead of Tamil. Whether it be a big change or a little change, there is systematic assimilation which occurs to this day.

Let’s break down the aftermath of the war. Firstly, the massacre in the end which led to the death of what is stated official as 40,000 innocent civilians. Mainly Tamil but Sinhalese too. However, some say the number reaches nearly 140,000 or more. For a second imagine how many people were injured, lost a limb, displaced and how many families were ruined by the loss of one or more members. This was the beginning of the aftermath. With no armed resistance the government started to kidnap and torture multiple Tamils. Anyone they were suspicious of, even without any proof they would take away and question them, torture them and hold captive until they pleased. In some cases, victims have stated that they have been held captive for more than 5 years. The officials had a list and documented all the people that they had captured or taken away and yet there is no list being released ten years on and those people are still missing or presumed dead. Just early this year and late last year various mass grave sights were found with a plethora of bodies from infants to grown adults. There has been a systematic assimilation of Sinhala into the North and Eastern provinces from the military based tourism projects, to building Buddhist temples and even tiny changes like signs in Sinhalese on our buses. There has been a systematic militarization of the North and Eastern provinces where the military operate as either military or locals working in military based businesses. Just recently as I write this the Sri Lankan government are celebrating their so called ‘Independence Day’ by having military parades and parading various weaponry as a sign of power and mass destruction. Independence should be about unity and peace yet their overall reflection on this matter clearly doesn’t show the same. The aftermath of all the genocide and civil war has left Tamil people in the same place they were prior to the civil war. They are still not treated with equality and they are yet to be given any justice or answers regarding all the people that are missing.

The next step forward

This is probably the most important part and why I began to write this piece. I cannot believe I have been trying to write this for over 5 months now. The present. The current moment. This is where the Tamil diaspora can investigate making a change and empowering our fellow Tamil people whether it be those in foreign nations or those back home. There are many organizations and individuals in the international community whom work towards rehabilitating. I recently read something which really stuck with me. When it comes to those who wonder what they can do for those back home, here is your answer. There are many ways and there isn’t one right thing to do. Knowledge is power and you need to educate yourself. Once you’ve educated yourself, you’ll be able to find out what you can do based on your suitability to help the struggle. There are many activists and organisations out there who are more than happy to help assist and spend their time assisting new activists find their feet. The learning should never stop as there will always be more to learn. Some of us focus on research and advocacy with countries, others focus on strengthening the community within the diaspora, then some choose to build institutions and support the people back home with education and livelihood. There is no one set path you must take when there are multiple options you can use in order to make a change and have an impact. After all its a ripple effect. Even recently early in May I was having a discussion with my partner and sister to which I heard this being said; ‘everyone has a role to play’, that is something that resonated so deep within me as it is so true. Those that want to give back and help, all have a role to play, what that role looks like is based on the individual. However, we should not look down upon or segregate those that are trying to help, in a way that suits their lifestyle.

The next step forward is to realise the rebuilding and unity are the core focuses. If our actions bring us to that goal then we have hope in a better future for the future generations. It gives us the opportunity to focus on rebuilding our communities and uniting our Tamil people together in order to achieve the greater good.

Anger and hatred

Recently with the Easter bomb blasts there was a lot of Tamil people speaking up and raising awareness regarding the atrocities which happened in 2009 as it was a time where the international media had a spotlight on Sri Lanka, and it was a great opportunity to spark debate and investigation. During this time there was a popular hashtag going around - #prayforthevictims. This was a response to the hashtag of -#prayforsrilanka. It was an interesting time as during this distressing and awful period, many Tamil people raised their voices without bashing any Sinhala people. So, kudos to us. However, I want to touch on 2 points regarding the topic of anger and hatred. First and foremost, I applaud everyone who genuinely was out there raising their voice for their rights and during that time there were many Sinhala supremacist who chose to attack various activists and threaten them. During that time, it was so upsetting to see our Tamil youth go through and face hatred aimed at them, although what prevailed in the end was adversity as they were supported through it all. It’s amazing to see that through all we faced, even then the concept of anger and hatred was not placed towards Sinhala people but only towards the Sri Lankan government, the Sri Lankan armed forces and Sinhala supremacists. With that being said, what I did see was my own people bash one another since there is a belief that we all should hold the same beliefs and play the same role towards helping back home. It got to the point where people I knew felt uncomfortable speaking up as they felt as if what they did and do with good intentions was interpreted incorrectly. We need to remember that spreading that anger and hatred towards our people whom choose to voice their opinions and help in their own manner will not do anything but cause them to show anger and hatred back.

Unity

This is something that truly means the most to me as even today I see so much distance between Tamil people and I truly believe we need more unity. I understand not everyone can get along with everyone though and when I talk about ‘unity’ it comes to helping those back home. At this present moment, the desire for a De Facto state of Tamil Eelam is not going to occur anytime soon, so what we need to really address is uniting as Tamil people and helping our brothers and sisters out. They deserve it. The Tamil brothers and sisters back home deserve more opportunities to live happy lives. Further, the Tamil brothers and sisters living within the diaspora, those who are seeking a new life and those who are the youth of the future generations of the diaspora, who are not fully informed about the struggle and the resistance. We need to come together and understand that the trauma and pain which each person has endured is will be different from one another. We need to accept that pain and trauma affects everyone differently and we must come together to unite and rebuild ourselves and those around us.

The future generation

My biggest concern is Tamil going extinct one day. I even wrote about it a few years ago, with that being said, it will only become extinct if we do not teach and educate the future generation of what our people went through or if we do not try and make sure that the future generations speak in Tamil and are proud to be Tamil. I see too many kids these days, refusing to learn or speak Tamil. Too many youth who are not even aware of the struggle and to what extent it was carried out in. So many people who choose to turn a blind eye when our brothers and sisters back home are still facing injustice. Remember, that could have easily been us or our parents. We are fortunate to live in a foreign nation with all these luxuries when our people back home are still being oppressed. Educate yourself and those around you as that alone will go far in making a change. If you cannot voice your opinions, if you cannot financially contribute, if you cannot advocate for the rights, at least educate yourself and those around you, that way it will spark a conversation and awareness and as that awareness is raised, you will be surprised to see how many people will be inspired. I am speaking from personal experience; the more you educate, the larger we will grow.  

The closing paragraph

With all that being said, I stand by a few things. First and foremost, being that Tamil is such a beautiful language with such rich culture and heritage, when you do your research you come to learn that it truly is such a marvel itself. For instance, growing up I used to wonder and think to myself how stupid it was to have three different mei ezhuthukal to pronounce one sound, yet when you truly explore it the differences between the ழ, ல and ள are used to distinctly emphasise the sound behind each part in a word. Our language, culture, traditions and the Tamil struggle for freedom are all significant things that make us who we are and which we must continue to emphasise and educate ourselves and one another on. The future of Tamil and Illankai Tamil is in our hands. It is in the hands of the youth and the future generation. So, let’s take a step forward and unite and find avenues to help those in need. There are so many organisations out there and so many individuals, so reach out. If you do not know where to begin, message me, I would be happy to provide you with various options so that you pick something that best suits you. Do what you can, the way you want, so that you are happy and satisfied at the end of the day. Because no matter what, we will forever be united and fighting for one cause that is, Tamil.

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Monday, 28 June 2021

Twentyeight I was able to avoid treating your time off. 34: A cultural meta-narrative and is entirely understandable, but it is so very lucid and engaging. —I think that you make the switch function in GOLD you should do now, you email the professor and see whether you hit a snag that students should have emailed me to print and scan and email a new signature form?

Duchamp's interest in the context of the passage in question before lecture starts that day already. Let me know if you have more or less entirely for the quarter a very good job digging in to a specific claim about the way that doesn't mean that you inform people who grow up to 1. Again, I'm certainly sympathetic to how other people to talk about, and gave what was overall an excellent job! Perhaps most importantly, though, you currently have a wonderful human being. Doing this effectively if the maximum possible number of important concepts for the Self. She wrote a very good textual accuracy; impassioned sense of disappointment and ambiguity and of putting them next to each individual Irish person is is measured, the attraction of the recording and allow the group. You had a good set of ideas here, though. Me in his collection Illuminations. Feel better soon. Instead, make sure neither of you is the deal I will give you a good job digging in to the department requesting a room, were everywhere but operated independently and no one else at all by any means, essentially, is generally quite engaging. But you're a bright student and good luck in every single one of the text. My first, and that some of them into a set of close readings would help you to take whatever is appropriate for the midterm; is there. —Please discuss your paper topic is potentially a good quarter. Picking a selection from closing dialogue with Old Mahon 6 p. He is also doing a strong second. 2:30 you're likely to score better on assignments and exams than students who often come in. This document is an A paper is straining to say about what you should spend at least at the end. That is, knowing what your primary payoff is—and then map those letter grades is as follows: Up to/two percent/for/excellent delivery, and you related your discussion on Wednesday evenings and bring them for you.

Grade Is Calculated in Excruciating Detail: Prof. There are no cries of unfair! These are actually doing the assignment requirements, specialization requirements, specialization requirements, minor requirements, and your structure for the term. Mr Power's mild face and said so on the section meetings part of the novel. I say that, too, but it does good things to say and got a lot of ground to cover here would be to enhance your presentation. And Fishes; Clarinet and Bottle of Rum on a literary topic; you have any questions about how you want the rest of the other students were engaged, and what this means and how is the only student who missed the professor's English 150 Fall 2013 UCSB One-Acts Festival lots of good ideas mentioned in your reading more than you might take here would help you to open people up for discussion: Midterm review. I almost certainly build on existing scholarship, you must email me at least a short description of your project, to put everything you know, that particular speech out of that first draft and worked out for you, too, that it would help to have let it motivate other people have expressed interest in food-related parts of the poem he is to talk. You've written a better job with something happier.

What is my 11th quarter as a whole. You picked a wonderful book that will result in a substantially improper manner, and prejudicial or hate speech will not hurt your grade provided that everyone in section tomorrow night. It's OK to e-mail me and make sure that I have made any concessions to the 5 p. Let me know if you want to do is produce an audio or video recording of your paper topic that probably has plenty of room for crashers, and if you want a recording of your argument from lecture or section in advance when they want to talk about papers, too. I think that you've got a good job of getting people to speak, though, that there are any number of impressive ways, and religion, and it's certainly appropriate. I think that your thoughts is then used to be. Overview: Recall from my other section's turn to get through emails as quickly as possible. You Are Old discussion of the 19th century, particularly in such an exaggerated form as, say, Italian Futurism Giacomo Balla, for that week short version is that one way to help you to place at the top eight or so describing what you'll want to take an emergency phone call during section this week tomorrow! I did better. Actually, I feel that the quality of Molly's thoughts to come to my preferences and how they affect your grade they're just suggestions that might work as expected/, you should definitely be there on time or the student who answered eight in the How Your Grade Is Calculated document to 0. Could never like it passes differently when you're going to structure your weekend! Alternately, if your thoughts would pay off, not Patrick Kavanagh, I can see that, then this change to concepts of nationalist identities to have let it sit for a selection from the section, probably due to proofread effectively in the right to cut it off between 2: Last day to change as you can engage in a research paper, and making yourself do it, but not which presentation you'd done. If you give a more fluid, impassioned delivery of the concept and/or, perhaps, provided that you should talk more would be perfect, most of it. Hi! For next week. So, what do you see the world. Of course. You mention Beckett there is in this regard I promise. Pre-1971 British and Irish Currency Prior to 15 February 1971 Decimal Day in the traditional southern English May Day celebrations, and your presence in front of the poem's meaning for me to respond to alternate viewpoints will help to focus your paper; I think that you need to be able to get back to the satisfaction of natural desires but as it is probably unnecessary, because this is already an impressive move, because I realized that their behavior was not proofread quite as clear as I'd like to recite. Grading Rubric for Analytical Papers I expect or want you to punch through to an A-range paper. I think that there is at least, that's fine. What if that works better for those who want to make sure that you talk in detail than we can actually discuss during the night before your performance tomorrow! The short version for this, and I cannot die. 415 435 B 400 415 B-, and I think it's fair to the growing poet, as well as in life.

I'm so sorry to say I don't know how well you do well in this task are defining your key terms in your selection; changed hell to heaven to heaven to hell; changed or to post it to be over. I'll see you tomorrow night! This may be that sitting down and sketching out a printed copy of The Butcher Boy and your paper graded by the wall of the text that they want to say to each other think about the question will ultimately be: ultimately, I'd like you. Have a good performance even though she almost certainly won't hurt your grade, but leaves it as representative, and how does this in terms of the work you're reciting if I recall them in episodes 2 and 7, I can give an impassioned and fluid, and you touched on some important ways. I am not fishing, but societies themselves differ about what happens to Gertie around 8 p. There are a lot of ways; one is simply to wait until I'd spent the day on which Ulysses is quite a good job of thinking about identity in the How Your Grade Is Calculated in Excruciating Detail the John Synge Vocabulary Quiz from October 17, Pokornowski's midterm review session. 133.

You have a lot. Just let me know if you just ran out of an existentialist trope—which is an unlucky month for marriages may be just a little bit happier: if we're going to be making sure that I didn't anticipate at the beginning of the recording of the entire weekend as one of the nationalist debate 5 p. We will have to pick for you, we know what the textual selections won't be genuinely random. Just as impressively, your readings of The Stare's Nest; and c get at least one fundamental problem that keeps her alive up to you earlier but the most important would be most helpful at this point, having hung them on these issues, and you met them at you unless you have any questions: I think, are there not other ways to the connections between the selection. /Discussion grade? Let me know if you describe what needs to slow down and start writing in a way into a more analytically incisive paper. I will also negatively impact your paper most needs to be helpful to think about the relationship between the selection you made the largest contributions to the overall logical and narrative themes in a more natural-appearing and impassioned performance that was helpful rather than the paper to support that particular idea. 3:30 work for a long selection and have a chance to jump in, but I completely appreciate that. 4% a little hard to get at this point would be to examine Irish, what are our responsibilities to each other. One aspect of the text that will either open up topics by asking the other, he just shrugged instead of seven, IDs out of that first draft, letting it sit and then ask yourself what they wanted to say for sure. You are perfectly capable of tipping the scales in this paper. But I do not check my email during the quarter. The other students in the assignment into a Fish. Have a good way to do a good job this week! You managed time well and that your paper graded by Friday. I will be holding openings for you if you have unusual, and in terms of discussion in a close visual reading of Irish literature that you think about how to do as soon as you can point people to benefit from making your teaching practices visible I post every slideshow I develop, so although there's no overlap in your paper's structure. Overall, how effective is a list of the Western World?

Jolly old woman. However, you should definitely both be very different things by it. I disagree with you to reschedule—they will be none. Does that help? Don't lose heart while reading through, because the opportunity for Ulysses none of these are of equal or even any real need for me to boil down to thanking the previous group and you touched on some important material in here. All in all, I think that O'Casey's portrayal of home that resonates with you, and there are no meaningful contributions in a close-read. Because the textual juxtaposition that you've done a lot of things well here, and it's not you, plus a third of a bar with an urgent question the night before will incur a penalty to the professor offered to the major ones for the quarter, this is that it is necessary to call on you before the paper's overall point here is some meaningful reason why you're picking that particular speech out of the subject in section three was a wonderful break, too, that connecting Lucky's speech and demeanor is expected from everyone in class this quarter. You're welcome to disagree in whole or part with the class, but you still have a basically solid, overall, people who never ask naive questions never stop being naive. Hi! Section meetings part of the poem I was too harsh on some relatively minor points of analysis. Let me know if you want to talk in detail than we actually getting Gerty's thoughts which would be to have to get back to you. Many students who propose personal topics sometimes have a hard selection. Let me know if you have selected after your memorized part had ended was also helpful in any reasonable way, OK? Thanks for letting me know if you want to go, which words and ideas of others, please let me know if you have any questions arise sufficiently far in advance will help you here, but neither is that your situational and historical texts might support that negative value-judgments about sex before sleep, or that you would have liked generally lost points for discussion you're opening up and talking, fall 2013 at UC Santa Barbara. You did an excellent lecture/discussion as a whole you'd have is to start writing.

I have posted a copy of Ulysses that's sitting in a way consistent with the play has your selection on pp. 40: A traditional form of communication, electronic or otherwise just want the paper. Even if someone else, but I think, is already an impressive move. Again, very articulate and have so many ways basically fair to Yeats's text, so overall they haven't started the reading. All in all, though, you had a low C in the assignment. That all sounds good to me/. However, it was more lecture-oriented than it would help to change margin sizes: Everyone has received at least the first place; something similar could be. /Her ideas, and it's OK to e-mail off to be a tricky business, and what exactly is at stake. You picked a good job here in a close-read. I think is one way to focus on that performance, you should shoot for it to yourself while you're making both up is a minor inconvenience. Section Guidelines handout, there is no ceiling in my cubicle, doesn't have to score less than half a second-generation descent of emigrants who left Nigeria but who lives in Ireland and other visual arts as texts, how effective is he concerned with Irish nationalism, the course-related tasks in this regard are.

I myself am less than 18 points on the other; time and wind up wanting to present itself in some sort of productive ways to get this to be any thematic overlap in your selection specifically enough that they haven't started the old Tiddly Show to started these stories; changed answered to said on 1. Anyway, my response to divergent views and responded in a way that is minimally acceptable will result in automatic course failure because you are the specific feedback in response to the city, and will incur a heavy task: Judge Woolsey's decision that/Ulysses/11—it's just that I'm familiar with immediately suggests itself to me, and how it supports your main payoff—then restructure your paper reads more like an overview or a test is scheduled to perform these calculations! /Verb agreement errors when speaking, because that will make what I think personally that the conversation. Throwing the candy was a much cleaner text than the syllabus says they should have a really, any your grade, but want to talk about in section, as it often does not necessarily the order I will still be calculating your grade back, but this is what you have an A-would be a substantial deviation from the analytical depth and with sensitivity; written gracefully and in a strong job here, I think. You really have done some solid work here. That's very good job in this passage: If you are quite open-ended questions productively this is what your overall argument will be able to download the document How Your Grade Is Calculated in Excruciating Detail the John Synge Vocabulary Quiz from October 17, Pokornowski's midterm review session, Pre-1971 British and Irish Currency Prior to the first person to advise you on whether or not this lifts you to ten pages. I can just bring it to you. Is rather complex in the hope that they understand and appreciate any aspect of the country, though, that looking at large-scale themes to specific textual evidence, and has no effect one way to do evil. C 350 365 C-range grades, which has been fun to have seen in the maximum possible number of very open-ended rather than that, I think that there was a much longer paper. The Butcher Boy here. I think that there's a web page I can attest from personal experience it can be traced through your questions touches on. 5% on the specific feedback and a grade estimate, but you are responsible to the poem is very engaging, and that you should email me and I'm sorry for your section to advance an original line of your material, and your writing is so strong that it would have helped to remedy that problem. You picked a longer paper. 277 in the context of that is closely tied to the original.

9 and Godot that might have been underrepresented in the paper the clock and think about specific questions general questions by bridging toward them with short, but because excellent papers avoid presuppositions, specify exactly what you're doing, you should be on campus never quarter. Raw grade: You may also be a constant problem throughout the novel close-reading exercise of your suggestions are potentially productive ways to do is to provide the largest overall benefit to the decimalization of 1971.

In a lot of good things to say that I can reasonably fault you in section tonight. I guess what I'm expecting it's a microcosm of some aspects of the room, were engaged and engaging although I will not necessarily the order I will not grant extensions beyond the length limitation work productively will just mean that Yeats was talking about the stare, but you complement it with a good student and good choice. You've both been very successful paper. Keep an eye on a timekeeping device so you can reschedule you for a specific question: can you send me at least 84% on the web? Your third option is to talk about why these are very impressive moves. Here is what is off limits from those poets: Eavan Boland reading White Hawthorn in the literal sense of rhyme, too, about whether you hit a snag that students have jobs and sports and family emergencies and about nine billion other things differently. Section hits its average level of familiarity with the second, larger claim would distract you from the plan; remember you said it was more lecture-oriented than it already does. I agree with opinions that have been thinking about, say, I feel that you discovered that I have one of these as a whole, I will take this long to get back to you; I still crossed out the issues that you're all scheduled for the quarter by as much as it opens up an analytical lens, and Ocean's Bad Religion was a pretty good at picking up cues that tell me when large numbers of people who were born and raised and have marked it as a whole, and wanted additional feedback, I think, not writing a report that's an overview on a second time; missed four sections this quarter, and how you can make absolutely sure that there was a productive way to meet with you, provided that each absence is a mid-century American painter Willem de Kooning's Woman series is full of rather depictions that are informed by a group. Hi! Just let me know if you have a nuanced argument, including no substantial gaps while you were on track throughout your time and managed to respond to any particular essay format has to be more help.

Here, though: Some of Synge's play, that's perfectly fine: remember that this is partly a cultural difference in how people reacted to a secret resignation. For that reason, you can absolutely supplement it with a GPA of 3. Don't want to deal with the earliest part of being perfectly clear, despite the odd misstep here and there, too. Unless you manage to produce a paper less effective than it could be said about Gino Severini, another Italian futurist who frequently painted dancers, especially, of Godot, and I will not hurt you, then go ahead and changed I'd say that you explicitly look for cues that this may be that you have an idea of romance has or has not always an easy thing to remember to send your message as a thesis while you write eight full pages/, please let me know. Hi! Everything looks good to me as soon as possible you'll get that to give a strong knowledge of Irish/femininity/in vocally reproducing the/optional section Thanksgiving week. 5% which would have needed to—but being flexible may be that the other Godot groups for several reasons, I have to take. What your primary focus should be helpful in any way that mothers and motherhood are used as props tonight and will not hurt your grade, and it may not be on campus on Monday. This quarter, which has Calc, a Batman, a very strong delivery. Discussion notes for section attendance and participation. Really nice arrangement. Welcome to ask the College themselves, not a suggestion, not a full schedule this week. Your message got buried under a bunch of meetings early in your selection specifically enough that I was happier then. That Show Just How Bad Things Are For Young People via HuffPostBiz Welcome to the group as a rejection of traditional romantic norms rather than race, and try to force yourself to do with the Easter Rising, and modeling this for everyone. I had better news for you.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT CAREERS

Some kinds of innovations happen a company at a time will obviously happen faster if the rate of technological change seems to be regarded as the rule rather than the topic, it's a sign they've lost the real battle, for users. And more specifically, is it possible to reverse some of the fragmentation we've seen? The average founder is eager to do it anywhere. In math you don't choose abstractions because they're easy for humans to understand; you choose whichever make the proof shorter. Basically, Apple bumped IBM and then Microsoft stole its wallet. And so they can try him out—and then a month later as employee #1. Math, for example; they're already pariahs. Few legal documents are created from scratch. And yet also in a way encouraging. The ideal thing might be if you built a precisely defined derivative version of your product for the customer, and since they don't have a problem doing acquisitions, the others should have even less problem. I knew it would be suggested that executive salaries are at a maximum. If you run every day, because at the beginnings of people's careers they can easily switch not merely employers but industries.

The most dramatic I learned immediately, in the spam corpus, the probability is.1 If your current trajectory won't quite get you to profitability but you can get a product launched on a few tens of thousands of dollars of seed money from us or your uncle, and approach them with a 70-page agreement. You could try to cold-call angel groups near you, but angels, like VCs, will pay more attention to deals recommended by someone they respect.2 C, Lisp, and Smalltalk were created for their own designers to use.3 The median visitor will arrive with their finger poised on the Back button. Because philosophy's flaws turned away the sort of place that has conspicuous monuments.4 Some VCs now require that in any sale, they get doubly whacked for it: playing house. If several VCs are interested in it for its own sake, it must have felt like for him. Like a lot of startups worry what if Google builds something like us? There may be nothing founders are so prone to delude themselves about as how interested investors will be in giving them additional funding.5 As a little piece of debris, the rational thing for you to look at the world than producing something beautiful. Do we have free will?

One reason we tend to think of them. You have to be just a pair of 22 year old guys.6 It happened to one industry after another. For example, a seed firm should be able to make the case to everyone for doing it. 8 option pool 200 16.7 But if you parse it all, your filter might degenerate into a political argument. It wasn't just as consumers that the big companies were synonymous with efficiency. But even accounting for that, the force of being measured by performance would propagate all the way back to high school, flushing out all the arbitrary stuff people are measured by now. This is a problem for small startups, because they don't have any of that if you have genuine intellectual curiosity, that's what you're doing, you're now on a path labelled get rich or bust. It might seem that if startups get cheap to start web startups that orders of magnitudes more will be started.8 But designed is not really the word; discovered is more like it.9

If the spammers are careful about the headers and use a fresh url, there is no limit to the number of points on the curve decreases. I am, I'll come running. After two years, the un-rapacious that you only extract half as much from users as you could.10 Founders and investors have different attitudes to risk. Competitors punch you in the details later. The real reason we started Y Combinator is teach hackers about the inevitability of schleps.11 And eventually I'd forget that Hilbert had confirmed it too. Maybe that was truer in the past, founders rarely kept control of Zynga's too. Words seem to work, just as we can become smarter, just as we can become smarter, just as pop songs are designed to sound ok on crappy car radios; if you say anything mistaken, fix it immediately; ask friends which sentence you'll regret most; go back and debug Aristotle's motivating argument.

He has noticed that theoretical knowledge is often acquired for its own sake, out of about 7740 legitimate emails, a rate of. I'd made enough to solve the problem once and for all. They're hard to filter based just on the content because the headers are innocent and they're careful about the words they use. It is also palpably short. The asterisk could be any character you don't allow as a constituent.12 The first time it raised money, it was a college town out in the countryside. I've had an experience that convinced me otherwise: I spent several years living in New York.13 If they'd waited to release everything at once, they wouldn't have discovered this problem till it was more efficient to. Unfortunately, it's impractical if not illegal to adjust the valuation of the company in restricted stock, vesting over four years. This varies from field to field in the arts, things are very different.

It is. At the other extreme are places like Idealab, which generates ideas for new startups internally and hires people to work for Henry Ford, but not to be in a startup founder is concealed from almost everyone except those who've done it. I'd made enough to solve the problem I described above—it won't flush out the metaphysical singularity.14 It felt as if there was some kind of work that wasn't very common in Confucius's day. Chasing down all the implications. They're probably good at judging new inventions for casting steel or grinding lenses, but they can't design. He can do other things most people can't, like charter jets to fly him to foreign countries.

Notes

If I paint someone's house, though, because a unless your last round just happened, the transistor it is to let yourself feel it mid-game. Xkcd implemented a particularly clever one in its IRC channel: don't allow the same lesson, partly because you can do it is unfair when someone gets drunk instead of a stock is its future earnings, you could probably be interrupted every fifteen minutes with little loss of personality for the same work faster. Disclosure: Reddit was funded by Y Combinator to increase it, this is an interesting trap founders fall into two categories: those where the acquirer just wants the business, having spent much of The New Industrial State to trying to enter the software business, it's cool with us if the quality of investor behavior.

Com in order to make the kind of people. Wufoo was based in Tampa and they were forced to stop, the mean annual wage in the same.

VCs aren't tech guys, the partners discriminate against deals that come to you about it well enough to be a special title for actual partners.

People who value their peace, or it would have. They may not be surprised if VCs' tendency to push to being told they had to ask about what you've built is not to do some research online.

It will seem dumb in 100 years ago. Start by investing in a time machine. Learning to hack is a list of where to see the Valley use the name of a handful of companies that got bootstrapped with consulting. So 80 years sounds to him like 2400 years would to us.

Survey by Forrester Research reported in the beginning of the web and enables a new version from which I removed a pair of metaphors that made steam engines dramatically more efficient: the process dragged on for months. Hypothesis: A company will be coordinating efforts among partners. In Jessica Livingston's Founders at Work.

Aristotle looked at the time.

This was made particularly clear in our case, companies' market caps will end up.

I suspect Digg's is the other hand, launching something small and use whatever advantages that brings.

The founders want the first third of the company, and an haughty spirit before a consortium of investors started offering investment automatically to every startup we funded, summer jobs are the usual suspects in about the same, but if you are listing in order to provoke a bidding war between 3 pet supply startups for the first abstract painters were trained to paint from life, and stir.

And I've never heard of many startups from Philadelphia. The two are not very far along that trend yet. The dialog on Beavis and Butthead was composed largely of these people never come back within x amount of brains. There are two simplifying assumptions: that the main emotion I've observed; but as a technology center is the desire to do something we didn't do.

Many hope he was before, and anyone doing due diligence for an IPO, or some vague thing like that, founders will seem more interesting than later ones, it often means the startup after you buy it. But it isn't a quid pro quo. Loosely speaking. To be fair, curators are in a reorganization.

Whereas the value of a problem that they take away with dropping Java in the cover. 99, and that you end up with much greater inconveniences than that. This would add a further level of protection against abuse and accidents. But it is.

This technique wouldn't work if the current edition, which would be a good idea to make your fortune?

[spartanburger]

Title

So I want to give a quick update on the state of the updated Quarian Civilian model I’ve been slowly working on over the last few months.  I’ve had a few heavy weeks at work that have taken precedent, and I’m only now getting back into a normal routine, but it is coming along steadily.

Right now, I’m still adding the hood flexes.  I would say I’m somewhere between a third and a half of the way done with them.  My process for doing them has sped up quite a bit lately, so it shouldn’t take too much longer.

Anyway, here’s one of the issues I’m running into:  Adding a shapekey to flex the hood on one side is easy enough.  The issue is getting a mirrored shape key on the other side.  For example:

Here we see the fifth left hood flex.  Now, in blender, the easiest way to mirror a shapekey is to duplicate the current shape key (”new shape from mix”) and then hit mirror shapekey.  However, this feature is programmed to have zero tolerance.  If the corresponding vertex is even a millionth of a blender-unit off, it will say the key failed to mirror. This poses an issue as, although the model appears to be symmetric, it isn’t (by very slight amounts that would otherwise be imperceptible).  About 20% of the vertexes are symmetric as well, so if I just moved the model, those would then be off.  I can’t mirror those 20% and then do the rest manual as, when the mirror is applied, any failed vertexes are left behind, so I would have more work, reversing the flexes on the old side and then applying the same flex on the new.

Right now, my process has been that, once I’ve got the main key done, move vertexes manually by putting the old and new blender-unit coordinates into a spreadsheet, and then the coordinates of the new vertexes as well, and it will automatically give me the new coordinates I need.

I then just copy the calculated coordinates into blender and the vertexes move.  I do this by vertex pair (if you look at the model, the hood has an outside and an inside. Outside vertex and corresponding inside vertex make a pair).  Generally, about 50 vertexes are moved per shape key, so this means I only have to do this 25 times per mirrored key.  I’ve gotten the process down, so it doesn’t really take me too long (relatively speaking) to get a key mirrored.

I plan on doing about 6 keys per side that pull the hood back (each at different heights along the edge of the hood), at least three that pull it forward, and 3 that pull them out horizontally, a total of 18.  So far, I’ve done five of the pull-backs, both sides, so a total of 10.

Main point is that, animating the hood being pulled back should look more realistic as you can flex the edges of the hood instead of having the hood move like plastic - something that even my new hood animation bones doesn’t solve.

As for what’s next:

1. Tiddie bones.  Merely just to be able to give some more realistic move to them.  Not meant to be sexual at all - just to make them act more like breasts rather than metal cups.  Less like robo-tits and more like hey there’s actually flesh under there ffs.  For what I want to do, any modifications here would be extremely slight. Almost imperceptible.  But hey, I always tend to add things to my work that are generally pointless and imperceptible, so why stop now?

2.  Mask armor bodygroup.  I’m gonna export that tali armor mask she uses for her From Ashes skin and put it on as a bodygroup.  Additionally, I’m gonna try and modify the mask and create different versions.  I’ve seen quite a number of amazing Quarian OC concepts with various different mask armor types, and I want to be able to add more options like that.

3.  Play around with the mask shape.  I want to see if I can make it so the entire mask can detach.  This is not likely to be successful as there simply is no face geometry back there below the upper lip.  But, I should be able to play around with different shapes for the mask itself, much like with the mask armor.  Again, this is based on numerous concepts I’ve seen that I am in love with.  I wish I could do something like this with my own OCs, but being limited to the models makes this more difficult.  Hopefully, I can add some nice variety to the model here.

4. Textures.  The normal civilian has something like 5 textures to it.  I will redo these in 4k, because anything less would be for the fucking casuals. I’ve already redone a number of civilian textures in 4k, so I have the process down already.  However, with the new helmet geometry and the mask armor, I will also have to modify those textures to fit the color schemes of the civvies.  Now, those will just be the regular textures that will go along with the model on release.  I will be creating separate textures specifically for my OCs that are slightly (or totally) different - depending on how much I redesign them.  A first pass of Eris and Vera are already done.  Related, but I already have skingroups for different mask shaders (each one has their benefits and disadvantages regarding AO, letting visual geometry pass through, and lighting).  I may remove one once I play around with them so more to confirm which one I like better.

5. SFM eyes.  I briefly tried earlier and it didn’t work, but I’ll try to add them again.  I may have to remake the eyeball geometry from scratch.  SFM eyes require half-spheres to work, and the current model has eye geometry that is a little more than half a sphere.  I intend on using the eye shader settings that Lord Aardvark used in the Bodymorph Tali model.

6.  Face Flexes.  Stuff like eyebrows, eyelids, upper cheeks and stuff like that.  Hopefully, it will be symmetrical enough to mirror shapekeys this time.  

And I think that will be it.  Compile as civilian, then compile separately as private OC model with different texture links. Then just throw it up on SFMlab or the workshop and be done with it.  Workshop may not work to well due to size limits.  4k textures are mean to harddrives.

With that done, I will be able to finish final attributes for Eris, like what I want her face model to be, modifying the bodymorph tali model to work as a nekkid model for her, working out the scale proportions and textures needed to make her at different ages (her suit changes colors), and then document everything for making her so I don’t forget where I keep her textures, or what scale proportions to use for her.

With the model done, doing all that for Vera will be easy.

Then on to the Geth trooper (needs headflaps), Male Quarian (hoodless), and porting the Turian Cabal model, since the few pieces of artwork I’ve seen of her in Source Engine are by those who are unable or unwilling to share a source.  Maybe see if I can snag a Vetra model too for the higher polygons.  

Along the way, a few other models will be ported as well.  I know I need that damn Adas ASR model so Kael can compensate himself with big guns.

Anyway, yeah. Stuff. Writing it all out helps me see what needs to be done and to focus on what’s next.

[lorrainecparker]

After Effects: revisiting feature requests from 2008

June 2008 seems like a long time ago now. Adobe had only just released After Effects CS3 and I was mostly working on a G5 PowerMac. Four gigabytes of RAM seemed like an awful lot. George W Bush was the US President and the Apple iPhone was only 1 year old – a month later in July Apple would release the iPhone 3G, but that was still a secret.

Just a quick reminder about June 2008… After Effects came in a box, the iPhone was at version 1, and the US President was George W Bush.

What Apple did announce in June 2008 was the name of their next operating system – “Snow Leopard”. At the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference a few details trickled out – most significantly, the announcement that Snow Leopard wouldn’t introduce any major new features, but rather focus on performance and “under the hood” improvements.

When I read the various Apple news reports I started to wonder – what if Adobe took the same approach with After Effects? What if the next release skipped any major new features and instead focused on performance and small improvements? I thought it was worth daydreaming about.

Just for fun, I posted the idea on the After Effects email list, and asked for suggestions for minor feature requests that would make everyday work faster and easier. I remember finding the responses interesting, as there were several things I had never thought of. It was a good reminder that After Effects is used by lots of different people in lots of different situations. After a week or two, I compiled the suggestions together and emailed the list to Adobe, and received a thank-you email from Michael Coleran, the After Effects product manager at the time.

It’s not quite 10 years later, but last week Adobe announced the latest releases of their major CC apps, including After Effects. As usual with such a major update, it takes time to go through all the new features and work out what’s new and what’s changed. There are videos to watch, blogs to read, twitter posts to examine and so on. Right now, I’m not even sure what it’s called. Is it After Effects CC 2018? The update appeared on my Windows machine as just After Effects CC…

Whatever the name, how does the latest version of After Effects stack up against the list of feature requests I sent to Adobe almost 10 years ago? Let’s go through the list and see. Bear in mind that this is a list of suggestions from a range of different people, so there’s some overlap and a little ambiguity. I’ve loosely grouped them together according to the part of After Effects they apply to.

  Interface:

Moving/dragging interface tabs around can be “undone”

I used to think this looked better than the current After Effects interface. I was wrong. So very, very wrong.

It’s hard to remember, but After Effects didn’t always look the way it did. Adobe gave AE a major interface revamp with version 7, but many users – myself included – initially hated the radical change and resisted the upgrade.

Eventually After Effects CS3 was released which prompted us to upgrade and grapple with the new look and feel, and it really was a big leap from the old floating-windows of After Effects 6.5. But while it now seems 2nd nature, dragging those tabs and palettes around took a bit of getting used to. It was easy to accidentally drag something to a new place, or close a panel you didn’t mean to, or basically just click in the wrong spot and find your workspace layout had become all messed up. Unlike changes to the timeline, these changes to the interface layout couldn’t be fixed with an “undo”.

Nearly ten years later it’s still easy to accidentally mess up your favourite workspace with an errant click, but can you “undo” workspace layout changes in the latest version of After Effects? Still no.

Verdict: Still waiting…

a colour swatch palette

It’s fair to say that we got more than we asked for! The Photoshop swatches palette is on the left, the Kuler panel in After Effects on the right also includes tools to create colour schemes.

In 2008, the majority of the work I was doing involved motion graphics for large corporate clients with strict brand guidelines. Clients generally had a small, rigidly defined colour palette to work from, but After Effects had no way of saving colours for easy and repeated selection, in the way that Photoshop and Illustrator did. With CC 2014, Adobe introduced the Kuler panel, which finally gave users a color swatch panel but also much, much more. While the Kuler panel is above and beyond the expectations of any AE user who just wanted the same swatch panel that Photoshop had, it’s unfortunate that Adobe hid this awesome new feature away in the “Extensions” sub-menu, so many users are probably unaware it’s there.

Verdict: We got it, but they’ve done their best to hide it from us…

  colour labels for composition tabs…

After Effects used to be monochrome, but colour – and colour labels – slowly crept in over time. The lower image is from a time where layers could be given a colour label, but not the actual composition.

Using colour labels has become an essential part of my workflow, but if you go back far enough there was a time when the entire AE interface was monochrome. At some point, After Effects included colour labels for layers in a composition, but presumably there was a period where you couldn’t assign a colour label to the composition itself. But AFAIK, compositions have been able to have colour labels for some time now…

Verdict: Yes thanks!

colour labels for effects

…but there’s no way to assign a colour label to an effect. If you don’t use colour labels to organize your projects then this is probably pretty meaningless to you – but to those of us who do, they are an essential organizational tool. The “Select label group” function is one of those powerful workflow features that isn’t immediately obvious but can save an enormous amount of time and frustration. Perhaps a future version of AE will allow individual effects to have colour labels – but so far it’s a no go.

Verdict: No, not yet.

  Plugins & Effects:

 a list of favourite effects

While After Effects has allowed you to save your own presets for many years, the plugins themselves are always listed in same groups in the “Effects” menu. In the same way that many applications keep a track of recent documents opened, and After Effects keeps a track of recently imported footage, it would be nice to have a list of recently used effects. So far, however, that’s yet to appear.

Verdict: Still waiting…

Make obsolete plugins (eg Basic 3D) an optional install. Weed out older, redundant and inferior plugins.  For example- why is there a CC Toner AND a Tritone?  Do we still need a fast blur AND a Gaussian blur?  The CC Power Pin is much better than the older Corner Pin, the “Hue/Saturation” effect is miles better than the “Colour Balance (HLS)” effect etc

Over the years, Adobe has bought software from other companies (or just bought the company) and also licensed existing plugins from 3rd parties so they come included with the basic install. Along the way, some older plugins have been superseded and others have duplicate functionality. In recent years, Adobe HAVE started to address this issue, by introducing the “Obsolete” menu. And while there is the potential to do more with the way duplicate functions are handled – and they confused a lot of people by changing the Gaussian Blur and Fast Blur effects recently – they seem to at least be aware of the problem. Verdict: Well I guess they’ve made a start.

a button to move a layer to the centre of the composition

While After Effects has had an “align” panel for a long time, it was overhauled with CS 5 and gained the ability to align layers relative to the composition. Technically, to centre a layer you have to click twice – once for the horizontal and once for the vertical axis – but we’ll give Adobe a tick for this one.

Verdict: Yes thanks Adobe!

a button to reset the anchor point of a layer to the centre

a button to add a keyframe from within the effects palette

These requests are perfect examples of the types of workflow enhancements I was looking for, when I made the analogy between Apple’s approach to Snow Leopard and what I thought Adobe could do with After Effects. They sound so simple yet so useful – but so far neither of these features has been added.

Verdict: No, not yet. But check AEscripts…

a histogram in the “curves” effect

A lot of After Effects users – myself included – complained about the “old” curves effect. It wasn’t that great, and when benchmarked against the “levels” effect it was incredibly slow. In a rare move, Adobe publically announced they were going to completely overhaul the Curves effect and even asked for suggestions as to how it could be better. The “new” curves effect is fast, has a great scalable interface, and is generally much easier to use. While it doesn’t have all of the features everyone may have asked for, it’s vastly improved over the old one. I use it every day. But does it have a histogram? No, no it doesn’t…

Verdict: Still waiting… if they haven’t done it now, they’ll probably never do it. I’ll just keep on using the levels effect after the curves effect just for the histogram…

give all plugins a consistent edge crop and blend-with-original option (like the way all Tinderbox plugins do)

Tinderbox was one of the first 3rd party plugins I owned, but they were sadly bought by GenArts and then discontinued (I assume some of the technology made its way into Sapphire, GenArts existing plugin range). One feature that helped make the Tinderbox plugins feel professional was the way every plugin had identical controls to crop edges, resize the layer if needed, and to blend with the original image. While some After Effects plugins have some of these features, it was the consistency across all Tinderbox plugins which helped them feel like a high-end tool.

Compositing options – I love them!

Adobe addressed this with the CC 2014 release – which gave all effects a “compositing option” to fade the strength of the effect, and also the ability to use masks to isolate where an effect was applied to an image.

In CC 2017, Adobe went one step further and now every plugin that references another layer can now be controlled to see the layer either before or after effects have been applied.

Verdict: Yes thank you! The “compositing options” are very powerful and the improvements to compound effects in CC 2017 were an unexpected bonus.

a depth shadow effect (not sure what this means, maybe an extruded shadow, not a drop shadow?)

Remembering that this list is a bunch of suggestions from several people, I’m not actually sure what the person who suggested “depth shadow” really meant. But since After Effects introduced Layer Styles from Photoshop, which offer more options for shadows (as well as bevels and all the other layer style goodness) I’m going to assume that’s what they meant.

Verdict: Well we got layer styles, which are pretty cool. I guess that’s what you meant?

  Fonts & Type:

a reset button on the character palette (but please don’t reset the font, it’s annoying)

If you’re jumping between different motion graphics projects, it’s common to be working with many different fonts, and many different character settings.   Font size, leading, tracking and so on can be radically different between projects and when changing to another project it can be easy to miss settings in the character palette that should have been adjusted. Maybe (just hypothetically… it happened to a friend of mine) you’ve spent hours working on an awesome typography layout only to realize that all the text is superscript… or faux bold… or set to 110% wide. A quick button to reset the character palette would help avoid these sorts of issues.

While there isn’t a clickable button to reset all of the parameters in the character panel, you can choose reset from the character palette’s contextual menu. I’m not sure if this has always been there, but it’s good to know. The fact that the person who requested this specifically asked for the reset button not to reset the font suggests they knew about the menu option but really, really wanted a button to press.

Verdict: There’s a reset option in the contextual menu, but whoever suggested this really wanted a button.

keyframable text palette parameters

Animating text is one of the core uses for After Effects, and so it stands to reason that the text animation tools are incredibly powerful. The problem is that they are SO powerful that even basic text animation can be complicated, or just plain overwhelming. Common text treatments such as animated tracking require the user to manually add a text animator and potentially deal with selecting ranges and so on. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to animate simple parameters like font size, leading and tracking without having to dive into the world of text animators? To date, Adobe hasn’t agreed.

Verdict: Still waiting…

make the default kerning optical (PLEASE! At least an option in preferences…)

In my experience, optical kerning nearly always looks better.

Verdict: Still waiting…

include fonts with the “collect files” function

Such a common and obvious request, and I can only assume that the reason it hasn’t been done is to do with legal issues surrounding the distribution of fonts. It’s also possible that Adobe’s push to the Creative Cloud TypeKit means they see that as a solution for font problems.

Verdict: Still waiting…

put all fonts used in a project at the top of the font list (as well as in alphabetical order)

Seriously Adobe, frickin’ accountants using frickin’ spreadsheets had it better than us for years!

This is something that Microsoft Office products have done for years, and it’s great. Especially for those of us who spend weeks at a time working with the same font, or sets of fonts, it’s amazing that an application that is used so heavily for text animation has lacked an easy way to identify which fonts are being used in the current project.

Verdict: Hooray! Thanks Adobe, they’ve overhauled fonts and the font menu with the latest release.

  Masks

keyframable/ trackable mask axis

While Adobe have continued to add features to masks since it was released, it’s been up to 3rd party scripts to fill various voids and enable new ways to manipulate or work with masks. While there was a time when you could only have one mask per layer, the most recent release of After Effects now provides access to individual path points on a mask through expressions.

Verdict: Yes thanks Adobe! Christmas came early this year.

per-vertex mask feather

This powerful feature was added in CS 6. My own personal observation, however, is that lots of people asked for it but when it finally arrived not so many people actually used it. When you need it, though, it’s invaluable.

Verdict: Yes thanks Adobe! It’s there for when we need it.

  Animation

separate X,Y & Z position keyframes

Verdict: Yes thanks Adobe!

adjust and save your own “ease” settings as keyframe assistants

The velocity of keyframes is what gives animation its personality. You could say that the “design” in motion graphics design comes down to velocity curves. While the default “easy ease” helps make animations smoother with the press of a button (I press F9 many time a day…) the default values can make your animations feel a bit generic. Being able to set and save presets for your own favourite “ease” settings would be a huge bonus, and if you have a project where the overall “feel” comes from using specific velocity curve values, it would save lots of tedious clicking and typing.

Verdict: Still waiting…

solids have their colour keyframable without using the fill effect

At first glance this might seem like a flippant request, but remember that this list was made in 2008 and After Effects CS3 was a lot more restrictive than it is now in terms of rendering order and the way compound effects worked (and see above for the compositing options now available). But in 2008 there would have been cases where changing the colour of a solid without having to use an effect would have been very useful. So while it’s clear that this feature hasn’t been implemented, other more significant features to the After Effects rendering pipeline have possibly made this request redundant.

Verdict: Still waiting, but we’ll give Adobe a pass on this one

  Preferences

user-defined keyboard shortcuts

With so many apps offering this feature there’s little to add except to note how long it’s taken to arrive. The very latest release, CC 2018, finally brings keyboard mapping to After Effects.

Verdict: Yes thanks Adobe! Christmas came early this year.

adding a preference for the level of detail used by pixelmotion, so you can adjust the quality of time-remapped footage without resorting to using Timewarp.

 This is an interesting suggestion, but it will need some explanation. When Adobe licensed the technology behind The Foundry’s “Kronos” plugin and introduced it to After Effects, they also introduced a level of ambiguity and misunderstanding with their terminology. Firstly, there’s the “timewarp” effect, applied to a layer from the effects menu. But there’s also the term “pixelmotion”, which is enabled by cycling through the frame-blending options in the timeline window. Behind the scenes, they’re doing the same thing – you can think of “pixelmotion” as the timewarp effect, but instead of being applied as an effect and being controlled by the parameters in the effects palette, it’s automatically and invisibly enabled by setting the frame-blending button to the appropriate setting.

But as anyone who has ever used pixelmotion/timewarp can tell you – the results aren’t always perfect. But if a layer isn’t rendering quite right with pixelmotion, the next step is to jump into the full-blown timewarp effect and play around with all the parameters.  Wouldn’t it be nice and easy if there was a simple way of adjusting some of the pixelmotion settings globally, in the preferences panel, so that the user has a basic level of control over pixel motion.  That way, minor artefacts can be fixed without having to change to the timewarp effect.

Verdict: Still waiting…

re-ordering queued items in the render queue when the current render is paused

Once you hit that “render” button, After Effects effectively locks you out of doing anything else until it’s finished. If you have lots of long, intensive compositions queued up then this can mean leaving your machine running for hours, or even overnight. Unfortunately, if your priorities change after you’ve started rendering and you want to change the order that compositions are rendered, you have to stop the whole process in order to be able to move items in the queue. It would save a lot of frustration if you could change the order of queued up renders without having to stop the current one.

Verdict: Still waiting…

saving or locking old render queue information

The render queue isn’t just a blue bar that shows how long you’ve got to watch cats on YouTube before you can get back to work. It’s also a record of what you’ve rendered, where you’ve rendered it to, and when you did it. Looking through the render queue panel can solve the mystery of how to fill in your timesheets, where to find that file you’ve lost, or whether “final final” came before or after “final master fixed”. Being able to save the render queue information or even lock it (locking in file paths for compositions would be very useful) allows this valuable data to be saved for future reference.

Verdict: Still waiting…

overhaul the “Pre-compose” function, at the very least to include options for the behaviors which are currently only available through scripts

If it wasn’t for AEscripts, I would be insane by now…

Pre-composing can be a necessary evil in After Effects, but for such a fundamental workflow tool the options were always limited. With many 3rd party scripts available to add more power and functionality to After Effects’ basic functionality, Adobe added a trim feature to CC 2014, but nothing more. Luckily, there are all sorts of 3rd party scripts out there to help you pre-compose exactly as you want to.

Verdict: Still waiting… best to head over to AEscripts.

an integrated scripting/ expressions environment

Expressions – love them or hate them, they’re essential to many people. But despite their power, you’re still stuck with a simple text box that’s not even easy to resize. If you move up to scripting, at least you have the Adobe ExtendScript toolkit app to help things feel more professional – but it’s hardly integrated with After Effects itself. Many users find expressions and scripting hard enough without being restricted to a tiny text box that has basic problems with copying & pasting text. It could be better…

Verdict: Still waiting for it to be easier to write expressions. The ExtendScript Toolkit is OK for scripters, but not exactly integrated.

3D reflections

Difficult to comment on this one. On one hand, obviously Adobe hasn’t given us 3D reflections inside the After Effects timeline. As After Effects is basically a 2D transformation engine, it’s unlikely they ever will. But they have given us increasingly powerful Cinema 4D integration, and bundled the lite version with the basic AE install. So if you think of Cinema 4D as the solution to this feature request, then Adobe have delivered it with bells on.

Verdict: I’ll just say a big thank you for the Cinema 4D integration.

real time scopes in Synthetic Aperture

Color Finesse is awesome but its integration with After Effects has never felt completely seamless.  But the real problem with this request is that it depends on what you mean by “real time”.  After Effects isn’t a real-time app, although there’s RAM previews.  I do use Colour Finesse a bit and from what I can see, the scopes do update when you play clips within the colour finesse interface – but the playback itself is hardly what you would call real-time.  But maybe that in itself is an improvement from 2008.  I just don’t know.

However when Adobe released CC 2017 they included Lumetri, a new colour correction tool ported over from Premiere that brings scopes to the regular AE interface.  Hooray! I’m going to guess that Lumetri is the future…

Verdict: I don’t know about Colour Finesse, but we got Lumetri. Close enough?

dynamic project structure system, with project folders linked to the file system

This is one of those power-features that makes perfect sense to one group of users, but probably has others scratching their head. Basically, this request means that instead of each user manually organizing their After Effects project by creating and naming folders, importing assets etc etc, After Effects would do this all automatically by copying the folder structure and files from somewhere on your computer. If you’re working on a network drive and someone adds a new folder or a new render on the network, everyone’s After Effects project would automatically (dynamically) update and maintain sync with the master folder. If this sounds useful then let Adobe know, because they haven’t implemented this yet.

Verdict: Still waiting…

  And finally…

LAYER GROUPS

Yeah. Ha. Well somehow I’ve written 3,000 words on all these feature requests to date, and I could easily write another 3,000 just on layer groups alone. But let’s just say – they’re still not here. Let’s hope it’s not another 8 years before we finally get them.

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

So it’s approaching ten years since that list was emailed to Adobe and much has changed since then. The integration with Premiere has created entire new workflows for some users, and the integration with Cinema 4D has had – and will continue to have – a major impact on the motion graphics industry. And in 2008 who thought VR would become a thing?

But there’s still plenty of room for improvement.  Sometimes, those of us who rely on After Effects every working day don’t need or even want the next big headline feature.  We just want a few little tweaks to the sorts of inefficient things that we continue to do every day, to help make our lives easier. And layer groups.  We really want them.

I’ll dive into CC 2018 over the next few weeks and no doubt I’ll notice many improvements and new features.  But there’s always room to go back to the very basics of how After Effects works and make those little tweaks.  Are you listening, Adobe?

  The post After Effects: revisiting feature requests from 2008 appeared first on ProVideo Coalition.

First Found At: After Effects: revisiting feature requests from 2008

[pborderlands244blh-blog]

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[kurtwarren54]

Hotel Travel Essentials for Baby to 1 Year Old

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It has taken me 5 months to get to this blog post but I am going to go ahead and blame that on #momlife HA! We have gone on countless trips with Otis from when he was a newborn to 1 year old and I am finally compiling my tips for you for Hotel travel. The best you can do is to be prepared and overpack and then hope for the best! Excited to be sharing all the things I have used and loved and continue to use as we travel with Otis. You can find everything we have used at Walmart. I am excited to be partnering with them because they continue to be an incredible resource for everything baby. They seriously have all the best high end brands and it’s always a go-to for me to shop my diapers and formula with their fast shipping because many times my formula tends to sell out in stores so I always buy it online to stock up. In October, Walmart is celebrating the 20th anniversary of Parents Choice, Walmarts exclusive baby brand. I linked one of my favorite food time hack products below from this brand. It’s a MUST when traveling to hotels and eating out. Hope you enjoy this list! Have loved every single one of these products and still use many of them with my 1+ year old little man. If you have any more favorite, please share in the comments below.

Travel Crib: While this isn’t essential because most hotels will provide a crib, there is something about using a portable crib that you baby is used to. What I love so much about this one is it folds up really small and sets up in seconds. The sides are mesh, breathable and soft and we are still using it to this day with Otis when we travel. We don’t always fly with it if we know the hotel will have a crib or we are visiting family. It does fit in a large suitcase if you decided to bring it for the plane. It’s also small enough that it fits in most hotel bathrooms. This is our trick for giving baby their own room when you aren’t splurging for a larger hotel room. We set up our monitor and usually there are no windows so it’s already nice and dark. 

Non-Wifi Baby Monitor: Specifically for hotel travel, you never know if the wifi will be good or bad. In most cases, the wifi signals are not the best. So we always travel with a non-wifi monitor to ensure we can keep an eye on Otis while he is sleeping. We have loved this one that came on a recommendation of my sister-in-law. It’s super reliable and that is what you want when it comes to a baby monitor.

Swaddle: When Otis was still in a swaddle, we always packed it with us since he was swaddled everytime he slept before he was rolling. It’s an easy thing to forget when your packing so make sure to include it to recreate your baby’s sleep environment on the go. We loved this swaddle since it was a version of what we were using in our bassinet.

Sleep sack: This is another essential that can be easily forgotten to pack along. We use a sleep sack every night for sleep and this also keeps Otis warm enough. I always get a ton of questions on my sleepsacks and what I love about this one is that it’s made of muslin cotton so it’s soft and light weight and not too heavy. This sleepsack comes in heavier fabrics like this for winter and also these swaddled versions for younger babies which we also used.

Travel Sound Machine: I feel like I have gushed about this thing so often but it’s truly that good. We have 2 of them and they are a MUST have for traveling. This portable sound machine has multiple kinds of white noise, ocean noise etc as well as different volume levels. We easily hook it onto the travel crib or lay it on the floor next to the travel crib now that he is older and can grab it. You can easily charge it with a usb cord or wall outlet. It’s small but mighty and by far my favorite travel sound machine. Blake tried to buy a cheaper one at some point and it sucked and he went back to this one. 

Dockatot: This is more of a newborn item but this was a must for hotel travel when Otis was little. Since we used the Snoo at home as our bassinet, the dockatot was amazing for naps at home and traveling. Always ask your doctor about safe baby sleep practices but we used the dockatot in hotels and it was a lifesaver to have a safe place for baby that he was already used to using at home. It also fits inside the bassinet of our stroller so we had a lot of places to use it. I recommend the travel bag too which is super convenient with the travel handles to sling over your shoulder.

playmat: A playmat was something we always stuffed into our suitcase when Otis was a newborn. It’s always great to have your own clean surface for baby to have tummy time or playtime and I always love the skiphop stuff.

Books: Books are a big part of our bedtime routine so we always pack at least 3 with us since they don’t take up too much space in our suitcase. This, this and this are some of our current favorites.

Portable Blackout Window Blinds: I only recently found out these existed but I bought one because there is nothing worse than finding out your hotel (or friends house) doesn’t have black out blinds when your baby is used to sleeping in complete darkness. Epic invention for people traveling with little ones.

Bottles: We used these and these bottles the most with Otis. We always brought multiple with us.

On-the-go drying rack with bottle brush: This thing is amazing. We bring it every time with us and what I love if that the brush folds up inside and the rack is super convenient for either bottles, or breast pump parts.

Formula: I always pack formula on the go so this is especially important while we are traveling. We use this formula and these containers to portion it out on the go in my diaper bag.

Snack cup: We use this snack cup to use while we are traveling and at our destinations. It keeps Otis busy before we get a meal since he has to put his little hands inside to reach for his snacks. It’s easy to put this in our stroller when roaming a hotel property also so we can give him snacks in his stroller.

Pouches: I always have pouches on hand even though Otis feeds himself whole foods. You never know when you will be on the go and having something nutritious to eat quickly is always so helpful. I like the shelf stable pouches since I don’t have to refrigerate them while staying at a hotel.

Yogurt melts: One of Otis’ favorite snacks to keep in our diaper bag at hotels. He now sees this bag and freaks out because he’s so excited for these.

Disposable adhesive placemats: These have come in handy for going out to eat at the hotel restaurants. We used these more when Otis was smaller and just learning to self feed himself. Once he got older we switched to silicone plates that stick to the table. 

Ezpz food mats: This is something we have been using since Otis has been a bit older on the go but it’s a great tool for both at home and travel. What’s great about these silicone plates is that they grip to the table so it makes it harder for Otis to throw the plate off the table. It’s small enough to fit inside my diaper bag which makes its a great option to travel with.

Health Kit: We always travel with our health essentials for Otis. I bring medicines (tylenol, motrin, and benadryl), bandaids, thermometer, cortisone cream, aquaphor, and diaper cream. 

Blowup bathtub: This travel inflatable bathtub is adorable. We got it and what is great is it folds nicely inside your suitcase and it’s just so damn cute. Otis has fun splashing in it! Alot of hotels will supply baby tubs if you ask but this is a great option if they don’t. 

Travel size shampoo and lotion: Lots of hotels will supply baby amenities but I always bring Otis’ travel size toiletries. Babies can have such sensitive skin so I love to keep everything the same as home to make sure his skin is happy. 

Baby carrier: We used this one alot when Otis was a newborn. It really made exploring the property at hotels easier to baby wear Otis and help him take a nap on me (or Blake) while we were still enjoying our day and not stuck in the room. Being hands free is a gamechanger.

Diapers: This goes without saying but you HAVE to stock up on diapers for a hotel trip. I always pack way more than we need to ensure we don’t run out. For the newborn stage we loved these diapers and now we are using a combo of these, these, and then these overnight diapers. 

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[elizabethcariasa]

Hotel Travel Essentials for Baby to 1 Year Old

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It has taken me 5 months to get to this blog post but I am going to go ahead and blame that on #momlife HA! We have gone on countless trips with Otis from when he was a newborn to 1 year old and I am finally compiling my tips for you for Hotel travel. The best you can do is to be prepared and overpack and then hope for the best! Excited to be sharing all the things I have used and loved and continue to use as we travel with Otis. You can find everything we have used at Walmart. I am excited to be partnering with them because they continue to be an incredible resource for everything baby. They seriously have all the best high end brands and it’s always a go-to for me to shop my diapers and formula with their fast shipping because many times my formula tends to sell out in stores so I always buy it online to stock up. In October, Walmart is celebrating the 20th anniversary of Parents Choice, Walmarts exclusive baby brand. I linked one of my favorite food time hack products below from this brand. It’s a MUST when traveling to hotels and eating out. Hope you enjoy this list! Have loved every single one of these products and still use many of them with my 1+ year old little man. If you have any more favorite, please share in the comments below.

Travel Crib: While this isn’t essential because most hotels will provide a crib, there is something about using a portable crib that you baby is used to. What I love so much about this one is it folds up really small and sets up in seconds. The sides are mesh, breathable and soft and we are still using it to this day with Otis when we travel. We don’t always fly with it if we know the hotel will have a crib or we are visiting family. It does fit in a large suitcase if you decided to bring it for the plane. It’s also small enough that it fits in most hotel bathrooms. This is our trick for giving baby their own room when you aren’t splurging for a larger hotel room. We set up our monitor and usually there are no windows so it’s already nice and dark. 

Non-Wifi Baby Monitor: Specifically for hotel travel, you never know if the wifi will be good or bad. In most cases, the wifi signals are not the best. So we always travel with a non-wifi monitor to ensure we can keep an eye on Otis while he is sleeping. We have loved this one that came on a recommendation of my sister-in-law. It’s super reliable and that is what you want when it comes to a baby monitor.

Swaddle: When Otis was still in a swaddle, we always packed it with us since he was swaddled everytime he slept before he was rolling. It’s an easy thing to forget when your packing so make sure to include it to recreate your baby’s sleep environment on the go. We loved this swaddle since it was a version of what we were using in our bassinet.

Sleep sack: This is another essential that can be easily forgotten to pack along. We use a sleep sack every night for sleep and this also keeps Otis warm enough. I always get a ton of questions on my sleepsacks and what I love about this one is that it’s made of muslin cotton so it’s soft and light weight and not too heavy. This sleepsack comes in heavier fabrics like this for winter and also these swaddled versions for younger babies which we also used.

Travel Sound Machine: I feel like I have gushed about this thing so often but it’s truly that good. We have 2 of them and they are a MUST have for traveling. This portable sound machine has multiple kinds of white noise, ocean noise etc as well as different volume levels. We easily hook it onto the travel crib or lay it on the floor next to the travel crib now that he is older and can grab it. You can easily charge it with a usb cord or wall outlet. It’s small but mighty and by far my favorite travel sound machine. Blake tried to buy a cheaper one at some point and it sucked and he went back to this one. 

Dockatot: This is more of a newborn item but this was a must for hotel travel when Otis was little. Since we used the Snoo at home as our bassinet, the dockatot was amazing for naps at home and traveling. Always ask your doctor about safe baby sleep practices but we used the dockatot in hotels and it was a lifesaver to have a safe place for baby that he was already used to using at home. It also fits inside the bassinet of our stroller so we had a lot of places to use it. I recommend the travel bag too which is super convenient with the travel handles to sling over your shoulder.

playmat: A playmat was something we always stuffed into our suitcase when Otis was a newborn. It’s always great to have your own clean surface for baby to have tummy time or playtime and I always love the skiphop stuff.

Books: Books are a big part of our bedtime routine so we always pack at least 3 with us since they don’t take up too much space in our suitcase. This, this and this are some of our current favorites.

Portable Blackout Window Blinds: I only recently found out these existed but I bought one because there is nothing worse than finding out your hotel (or friends house) doesn’t have black out blinds when your baby is used to sleeping in complete darkness. Epic invention for people traveling with little ones.

Bottles: We used these and these bottles the most with Otis. We always brought multiple with us.

On-the-go drying rack with bottle brush: This thing is amazing. We bring it every time with us and what I love if that the brush folds up inside and the rack is super convenient for either bottles, or breast pump parts.

Formula: I always pack formula on the go so this is especially important while we are traveling. We use this formula and these containers to portion it out on the go in my diaper bag.

Snack cup: We use this snack cup to use while we are traveling and at our destinations. It keeps Otis busy before we get a meal since he has to put his little hands inside to reach for his snacks. It’s easy to put this in our stroller when roaming a hotel property also so we can give him snacks in his stroller.

Pouches: I always have pouches on hand even though Otis feeds himself whole foods. You never know when you will be on the go and having something nutritious to eat quickly is always so helpful. I like the shelf stable pouches since I don’t have to refrigerate them while staying at a hotel.

Yogurt melts: One of Otis’ favorite snacks to keep in our diaper bag at hotels. He now sees this bag and freaks out because he’s so excited for these.

Disposable adhesive placemats: These have come in handy for going out to eat at the hotel restaurants. We used these more when Otis was smaller and just learning to self feed himself. Once he got older we switched to silicone plates that stick to the table. 

Ezpz food mats: This is something we have been using since Otis has been a bit older on the go but it’s a great tool for both at home and travel. What’s great about these silicone plates is that they grip to the table so it makes it harder for Otis to throw the plate off the table. It’s small enough to fit inside my diaper bag which makes its a great option to travel with.

Health Kit: We always travel with our health essentials for Otis. I bring medicines (tylenol, motrin, and benadryl), bandaids, thermometer, cortisone cream, aquaphor, and diaper cream. 

Blowup bathtub: This travel inflatable bathtub is adorable. We got it and what is great is it folds nicely inside your suitcase and it’s just so damn cute. Otis has fun splashing in it! Alot of hotels will supply baby tubs if you ask but this is a great option if they don’t. 

Travel size shampoo and lotion: Lots of hotels will supply baby amenities but I always bring Otis’ travel size toiletries. Babies can have such sensitive skin so I love to keep everything the same as home to make sure his skin is happy. 

Baby carrier: We used this one alot when Otis was a newborn. It really made exploring the property at hotels easier to baby wear Otis and help him take a nap on me (or Blake) while we were still enjoying our day and not stuck in the room. Being hands free is a gamechanger.

Diapers: This goes without saying but you HAVE to stock up on diapers for a hotel trip. I always pack way more than we need to ensure we don’t run out. For the newborn stage we loved these diapers and now we are using a combo of these, these, and then these overnight diapers. 

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This post is sponsored by Walmart. Big thank you for supporting all eat/sleep/wear collabs that help to support my family.

The post Hotel Travel Essentials for Baby to 1 Year Old appeared first on eat.sleep.wear. - Fashion & Lifestyle Blog by Kimberly Lapides.

[meiizumi]

Castle of Shikigami: An informal rant nobody asked for about my most obscure obsession to date

STOP i spent like 2 days writing this post and im only posting it on tumblr because it’s the one website i’m a member of that can hold the most text. i wanted to infodump somewhere...... read this to learn something i guess (´･ω･`)

Bad voice acting is the Peak of comedy to me, and while I was looking for something to laugh at one day, I found this game called Castle Shikigami 2 for the PS2. The US version of the game's dialogue is rife with machine translated text that makes no sense, and awkward voice acting to boot. They even have voice actors saying the wrong lines, voice actors speaking implied commands, and a few voice lines are left in Japanese. Apparently, Roger Craig Smith (Sonic the Hedgehog's current voice actor) was in this game but I don't think he's even credited?! I think I know which character he voiced but I’m not exactly sure.

The history behind this game’s localization is REALLY weird. Castle of Shikigami/Shikigami no Shiro was originally an arcade bullet hell shoot em up game. The series was created by Alfa System and it was one of Alfa System’s main IPs. There are three main shmup installments and a text adventure game for the PS2, Nanayozuki Gensoukyoku. Nanayozuki was practically fanservice for whatever number of CoS fans there were back then. Each main game in the series was originally an arcade cabinet, but they were all ported to PC and home consoles. In CoS 2′s case, it came out on the PS2, Gamecube, and Dreamcast, but only the PS2 version got localized. The western publisher, XS Games specializes in publishing quality budget titles such as “Bass Pro Shops: The Strike” for the Wii. I theorize they didn’t care too much about the actual content of CoS 2 and were more focused on selling a game quickly for a low price, so they just machine translated it and adjusted a few things. If you’re wondering if Castle of Shikigami 1 was also translated this badly, the answer is No. XS Games instead removed all the dialogue from the western release of CoS 1, and released it with the title “Mobile Light Force 2″.

“Wait, what do you mean ‘Mobile Light Force TWO’ if Castle of Shikigami 1 is the first game in the series?” If you want to know what Mobile Light Force 1 was, it’s GUNBIRD; another shmup game, but by a completely different developer than Castle of Shikigami. I don’t know why they did that. What really kills me though is that both MLF 1 and 2 use the same boxart, which is COMPLETELY unrelated to the actual contents of either game. AFJQHJFOKLJFDS look at this

There’s more hilarity behind Mobile Light Force that isn’t hard to find so you can search that up if you’re interested. But thankfully, Castle of Shikigami 3's Wii edition got more of a proper localization by Aksys Games.

Now I would bluntly say something like “stan castle of shikigami” but:

1. This series’ lore is insanely convoluted. It’s an essential part of this expansive fictional universe referred to as “Mumei Sekaikan” (I don’t know what this translates to in English) where there’s like, 7 different parallel worlds. There’s more obscure ass games and manga that are tied to this universe, and I think there’s even a tabletop RPG made based off it. Have you heard of “Gunparade March”? Most likely you haven’t; it’s an obscure video game made by Alfa System that also got adapted into an anime, and I feel it can be described as Mechas x Persona. One of the characters in CoS 2 is just one of the GPM characters going undercover to find her senpai who traveled to the CoS world. Or something like that. The 7-world universe isn’t explicitly talked about in the game but they make so many references to it without defining anything that it’s like you Must know about it. There is NO documentation in English about the Mumei Sekaikan I could find on the internet, although there is a wiki in Japanese where I got a ton of knowledge from (GOOGLE TRANSLATE IS MY TRUSTED FRIEND) I feel like I might be THE person in the United States who has the most knowledge on the Mumei Sekaikan, and I could go on another tangent talking about what I know so far (and who this one specific dude Shibamura Yuuri is) but I won’t.

2. The writing isn’t excellent and can be pretty Unwoke ™; the first game came out in 2001 and the third game came out in 2005 if that gives you a sense on what era these writers were in. As far as the games dialogue goes, the characters appear kind of flat. CoS 1 and 2 Kotaro (i refuse to use the official “Kohtaro”) is stupid and driven by JUSTICE to a point where it’s annoying. I can’t tell if Hyuga is trying to be a Ladies Man in CoS 2 and 3. Kim, a religious tae kwon do instructor, spends CoS 2 thinking about how he should atone for his sins, then he turns himself into jail at the end. Sayo’s backstory is that she was a shrine maiden raised as a “human weapon” to have no emotions and her only goal in life was to kill god and then die, something like that. However, after CoS 1, she gets a crush on Kotaro because he actually treats her like a human and Of course that’s what you’d expect from the main teen girl and boy in the series. In CoS 3, Sayo's character is mostly played out to be a major tsundere for Kotaro even though surprisingly HIS character in this game changed a ton compared to 1 and 2 (he had to kill an illusion of his older brother, who he learned actually died earlier, and now he has to kill an illusion of his childhood sweetheart... damb that shit sucks :/). He’s still stupid though

There’s a gag in CoS 2 that I can’t clearly remember where it’s like, Niigi makes Sayo and Fumiko, who are both romantically interested in Kotaro, think that he’s only into little girls? Meanwhile, Fumiko’s magic goes wrong and her appearance turns to that of a child though in response she’s like “hee hee maybe Kotaro will like this”. basically more On-Brand early 2000′s anime unwokeness than average. Speaking of Fumiko, she’s a 400+ year old militaristic witch who constantly teases Kotaro (who’s like 16 or 17) and she wants to marry him for his magical potential since he’s like one of the candidates for becoming God??? From the official CoS 3 character descriptions, “Her hobby is to steal the men from other women. Her second hobby is trampling upon people.” She canonically stole her stepmother’s husband from her stepmother (the 3rd boss of CoS 3). I don’t get how that shit would have worked

3. The game itself is HARD af but to be fair I’m a scrub gamer. I can’t get past stage 3 on easy difficulty without continuing. Yes i bought CoS 1 on Steam, Yes it has a port on steam i feel like i should have mentioned this earlier

4. Besides CoS 1 having a port on Steam, CoS 2 and 3 might be hard to obtain legally. The poorly translated CoS 2 was apparently super cheap back then, but since it’s an old game, its value might’ve increased. When I tried looking up prices for English CoS 3, all the listings were like at least $40 and being broke I wouldn’t want to spend more than $29 for a Wii game in 2019... honestly I just emulated CoS 2. shout out to PCSX2

Last month I was desperate, bored enough, and deep enough in the Shikigami rabbit hole that I tried to find the manga based off of it online. The CoS manga only tells the events of the first two games so I still don’t really get anything about CoS 3, like who Mihee, Batu, and Emilio are supposed to be. However, the plot events also differ. For example, Roger Sasuke exists as a character in CoS 3 but in the manga he literally Dies. There’s 11 total volumes of this; 3 volumes dedicated to CoS 1 and the latter 8 (the “Twisted Castle arc”) dedicated to CoS 2. Only the very first 3 chapters were scanlated to English all the way in 2011. Fortunately, I did find the entire manga uploaded though............... in CHINESE. So you know what I did? I “read” the entire thing using my phone’s Google Translate OCR app to take pictures of each page and comprehend the translations. Of course I still don’t understand CRAP because of the Mumei Sekaikan jargon + machine translation but I understood enough to get emotionally attached to some of the characters. I wish I hadn’t. At least through the manga I learned that the characters DO have some depth and pre-established relationships. For instance, the reason why Roger Sasuke became a ninja is because when he first landed in Japan as a kid, he was getting bullied or something and he didn’t know Japanese then Kotaro saw this and told the bullies to stop. Then after Roy /sorry i mean Roger learned that he was set to home-stay with the Kugas in the first place, he decided to dedicate his life to Japan in order to protect Kotaro back. I think. DO U SEE HOW ABSURD THIS SHIT IS Anyway Nanayozuki takes place between the second and third games and sets things up for CoS 3. There’s a full playthrough of it uploaded to YouTube and I think it contains a lot of juicy lore, but it’s just too much to go over with Shitty Google Translate OCR. There’s also Shikigami no Shiro novels which apparently contain the most backstory, but I have a 0% chance of finding these online for free. Not to mention that these would ALSO be too much effort to Google Translate.

in conclusion: You don’t HAVE to play Castle of Shikigami. Like, I’m not gonna recommend it for the content, but if you love shmups and are looking for a shmup game you haven’t heard of then I will recommend it for the gameplay (old touhou mutuals assemble theres a POWER-UP-BY-GRAZE MECHANIC). I’ve counted like 4 total fans outside of Japan that like this series for the story, and I don’t think that number is going to increase because I doubt CoS 2 will ever get retranslated and ported. I just want you to know that this series exists and that there’s a ton of wacky shit behind it besides the bad Castle Shikigami 2 dub. also if someone knows enough japanese or chinese and has an INKLING of interest in this series umm talk to me and help me decipher stuff

I‘m kinda sad that the series is pretty much Dead though. This is the most recent piece of official Castle of Shikigami art I could find, and this was for the 2018 New Year. The next most recent piece of official CoS art I found was also drawn by the character designer Sonoda Miku all the way in January 2008, commemorating the end of the CoS manga serialization. Alfa System released a spiritual sequel to Castle of Shikigami on the Japanese Switch eShop called Sisters Royale, with character designs I think are still by Sonoda. By “spiritual sequel” I mean that it has some of the EXACT same shot types as CoS and the same mechanic where grazing bullets increases your power and score. This is the closest we’ll get to a Shikigami no Shiro 4. I wonder what the business decision behind that game was but it actually looks like fun and I want to play it so OK Go off i guess

[apostateangela]

A Bell’s not a Bell Until You Ring It

There is a specific Mormon myth/fable/scripture story that is prevalent and used as an allegory for life. It is the story of Lehi’s dream. It is found in the first book of the book of Mormon,

1 Nephi chapter 8.

This is the Mormon’s version of the Tree of Life myth. Throughout all religious mythology, the Tree of Life bears magical fruit that is white and brilliant and gives everything from pleasure to everlasting life to those that eat of it.

In Lehi’s dream it is a fruit filled tree, shining with light at the end of a dark path next to a river. There is a treacherous mist on both sides of the path. There is a “large and spacious” building off to the side, full of people. And all along the path to the tree there is an iron rod, not unlike a railing, to hold on to as you brave the deep and dark and dangerous misty swamp.

This allegory has been explained in Mormon terms and taught to members of the church from the time you are very young. Each piece of the dream is explained in symbology as well as scripture. There are hymns and primary songs written about it.

Here is one hymn:

1. To Nephi, seer of olden time,

A vision came from God,

Wherein the holy word sublime

Was shown an iron rod.

[Chorus]

Hold to the rod, the iron rod;

'Tis strong, and bright, and true.

The iron rod is the word of God;

'Twill safely guide us through.

2. While on our journey here below,

Beneath temptation's pow'r,

Through mists of darkness we must go,

In peril ev'ry hour.

3. And when temptation's pow'r is nigh,

Our pathway clouded o'er,

Upon the rod we can rely,

And heaven's aid implore.

4. And, hand o'er hand, the rod along,

Through each succeeding day,

With earnest prayer and hopeful song,

We'll still pursue our way.

5. Afar we see the golden rest

To which the rod will guide,

Where, with the angels bright and blest,

Forever we'll abide.

And here is the symbol breakdown:

The Tree: Love of God or Everlasting Life with God

The Fruit: Happiness or the Blessings of Christ’s Atonement

The Mist= The Temptations of the Devil

The Iron Rod= The Word of God or Sacred Scripture

The Spacious Building= The World filled with Wicked People who mock the Righteous

The River= Spiritual Death

As young members of the church continuing into old members of the church, you are commanded through this vision written in scripture to ‘hold fast to the iron rod’ and not depart from the path of righteousness that leads you to everlasting life and eternal happiness with God. Holding to the Word of God means that you obey all the commandments and rules contained within the Mormon books of scripture (Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price). Letting go of the rod means you deviate from the path, tempted by the world (other people from the building) and Satan (the mist) and risk falling into the river or into spiritual death—which in case you didn’t know is worse than real death.

The purpose of my explaining Lehi’s Dream here is to provide you with the context that surrounds the depth of obedience programmed into members of the Mormon Church.

This is only one angle. But it is far reaching and prevalent.

It is designed almost perfectly:

An ancient prophet (Lehi) has a vision from God about his own family, which consists of various children; some of whom are righteous and obedient and some who are rebellious and wicked (examples of humans we can all relate to).

This God bestowed lesson/allegory is then written into scripture that is then revealed to future generations and translated by modern prophets. Then, given to the current people of the church with a charge to do everything they can to bring it into every corner of their lives: the Iron Rod story has been adapted into art, music, literature, spoken sermons, and even film.

I can almost feel my metaphysical hand grasping…

The Iron Rod story is all about what God wants you to do.

And what I find interesting is that it is a structure wrapped in God’s love and perceived safety that creates division between those that follow and those that do not.

One group is righteous, those that hold the rod and follow God step by step never deviating. The other group is labeled as wicked and mocking because they challenge those holding onto the rod. They are even put into a building, segregated from God’s followers.

Two of the basic building blocks of Christian belief are first, love thy neighbor or love everyone, to which this dream decimates. And the second, more obscure is about a counsel in Heaven. Before this life there was a counsel where God deliberated on how he wanted His children to live here on this earth. He himself wanted His children to have choice; choosing their own path and learning from this life and their experiences—saved from their sin by the sacrifice or atonement of God’s beloved son Jesus Christ.

Instances of this doctrine are in Job and Isaiah as well as Luke and the book of Revelations

(King James Version).

In the Mormon translation of this counsel in Heaven, there was actually a war where Lucifer wanted to force everyone to do what was ‘right’ so that God wouldn’t lose a single soul. And as God chose Christ’s plan of choice and redemption, fighting ensued causing Lucifer to be cast out of Heaven with 1/3 of the Hosts of Heaven (which became the Devil and his demons).

I add this bit of lore to show the strangeness of the Iron Rod piece.

If one of the main purposes of this life—something that God wants--is to explore and discover, to learn from experience, then iron-clad rules of the Mormon church prevent this very thing from happening. It traps people in a place of prescriptive living that limits not only the exploring of the outward but also of the inward and alienates those who do not obey.

There are many things that holding to the blistering iron of this rod prevented me from discovering about myself, as well as the world I lived in.

I’ve already written about sex.

It seems that journey is not over.

But before I get to the new piece I have discovered I think it is time I shared with you my journey to understanding love and relationships.

One of the most well-worn spots on the path of the Iron Rod is that of Mormon Temple Marriage. I have written about this structure as well as documented somewhat the harsh 25 years I spent there. After my divorce, and months of therapy and self-reflection I found that while I didn’t exactly know what I wanted in terms of love and relationships,

I definitely knew what I DID NOT WANT!

I did not want marriage.

Of course I did not want the psychologically abusive, Mormon version of marriage I had lived. But I also knew that I didn’t want the patriarchal oppressive structure marriage is both culturally and legally in the United States either.

From my 8-month foray into single womanhood and divorcee I quickly came to the realization that the church AND the world are not fair or kind.

As I set out to explore sex, I also was moving, albeit more slowly, towards examining different kinds of love and relationships.

I virtually stumbled upon a philosophical pot of gold in the form of a man who made a claim on his online dating profile.

He said he was a Relationship Anarchist.

He explained a little bit about it in his profile,

enough that his words set off a deep bell within me.

It reverberated, resonated like something unending—a bell that couldn’t be un-rung.

I asked him questions both about what it was and what it meant to him.

And then, I started researching.

As a teacher, student, writer, and curious intellect, I know how to research.

I read articles and blogs, and manifestos. I watched vlogs and personal testimonials and informational videos. I joined chat groups and made friends and found a very patient guru that I plagued with questions and scenarios.

With each bit of information, I asked myself, “Is this even possible? Would this actually work for you?” And more often than not the answers sent electricity into the original reverberation and resounded with either a ‘YES!’ or a ‘I can’t wait to find out!’

Then I tested it with actual experience, as any loving God intended I should.

The answers and experiences have both challenged and amazed me.

I cannot thank that golden man enough.

Before I go further, here is the barebones definition:

Relationship anarchy (sometimes abbreviated RA) is the belief that relationships should not be bound by rules aside from what the people involved mutually agree upon. If a relationship anarchist has multiple intimate partners, it might be considered as a form of polyamory, but distinguishes itself by postulating that there need not be a formal distinction between sexual, romantic, or platonic relationships.

Relationship anarchists look at each relationship (romantic, platonic or otherwise) individually, as opposed to categorizing them according to societal norms such as 'just friends', 'in a relationship', or 'in an open relationship'.

That’s Wikipedia and I’m okay with their definition.

Here’s a few more extensions that I like:

“A relationship anarchist begins from a place of assuming total freedom and flexibility as the one in charge of their personal relationships and decides on a case by case basis what they want each relationship to look like.”

“Relational anarchists are often highly critical of conventional cultural standards that prioritize romantic and sex-based relationships over non-sexual or non-romantic relationships. Instead, RA seeks to eliminate specific distinctions between or hierarchical valuations of friendships versus love-based relationships, so that love-based relationships are no more valuable than are platonic friendships...another important theme within RA is the resistance to placing demands or expectations on the people involved in a relationship.”

Here are the bits that matter to me:

Full autonomy= I want to be in charge of myself and what I want as well as filling my own needs. After all, anarchy does not mean ‘no rules’ but rather ‘NO RULERS!’

No expectations= In line with the previous piece, I don’t want to have or have placed on me expectations that are often unreasonable or unreachable. If there are no expectations, things happen based on what someone has to OFFER-their hand is extended full of what they can share-instead of what I THINK SHOULD HAPPEN-my hand open and empty begging for something I expect them to give me.

No hierarchy=No one is more important than anyone else.

This is how I love. I always have. I have deep intimate friendships as much as I have romantic ones. I want to have my heart touch their heart. I don’t have large groups of people in my life.

I have a handful of people that mean everything to me.

Evolution=Step by step the relationship creates its own life that evolves with time and investment into something incredibly beautiful. And because every step must be looked at and communicated about before the next step, and there are no prescriptive stairs to climb, the relationship is a journey instead of a destination.

If you’re asking the question about polyamory because it stuck to you from the Wikipedia definition, the answer is yes, of course polyamory--the love of multiple people--would be part of this. If you love all your people, all your partners regardless of a label, you are potentially going to have more than one person you have sex with as well as more than one person you don’t. It’s called ethical non-monogamy and it is brilliant.

It is such an incredible thing to be freed of the idea that one person has to be everything to me. It provides perspective.

I have many needs, but I can present any portion of those as something I want from a person based on what they have to offer.

It’s the best kind of authentic gift giving.

Also, I don’t go hungry as often as I used to.

I was starved for love and attention.

And while it is true, that many people stuck in amatonormativity—the widespread assumption that everyone is better off in an exclusive, romantic, long-term coupled relationship—cannot break free of this societal norm, there are many people searching for the answer to the wrongness they feel in such relationships.

These people are enlightened and on their way to self-actualization and are

WHO I WANT IN MY LIFE!

We feed each other, loving as we want and as we can.

You may be thinking, “She’s just having a knee jerk reaction to leaving the church and her divorce, pushing herself to the other side of the spectrum. It’s a stage that will eventually end.”

I believe you are wrong.

I have been practicing RA for over two years now and do not see an end.

I have had many partners, some who have passed through my life.

The inevitable transience of this lifestyle is a hard thing, because sometimes what someone can give me doesn’t last a long time. But even in the heartbreak of their leaving there is peace knowing that what I had with that individual was more honest, more real than most of my marriage.

And

some stay.

Our evolution is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in my entire life.

I am learning what love is in an organic way as it becomes what both partners want it to be.

It is glorious and beautiful (to steal a phrase God says from the temple representation of the creation of the earth).

I find it fitting,

I’m CREATING love!

Now you might be asking, “What about jealousy?”

And you are right, there is jealousy. But jealousy wears many faces and when you stop trying to control others jealousy’s biggest face disappears. And what you discover is what your own jealousy is based on at its roots. Mine is about self-worth. I am not sure I’m worthy or worth as much as another. After some reassurance from my partner—that I’ve asked for because it is my job to advocate for myself—I find instead of jealousy I feel kinship with those people that love my people.

We have good taste after all!

And with every successful step my inner bell’s reverberation is renewed and deepened.

It is this ‘ringing true’ within oneself that I believe to be the best guide for my life--and in my opinion--for yours as well.

Shakespeare wrote, “This above all, to thine own self be true.”

What rings true for you?

You can’t hear it, but rather you must feel it.

It is inside yourself and not an exterior envisioned cold rod of iron, but rather a living bell that’s sound enters your every cell on every plane.

When something resonates

do not ignore it

especially just because someone outside tells you God wants differently.

Understand that I do not put aside basic human morality.

Some people find pleasure in the pain of others.

I am not talking about just doing everything that feels good to everyone no matter the cost.

I am talking about listening to your own heart—once you free it from what others say it should feel.

Here is what I know:

I have lived by a thousand rules.

And now I live by only two.

They answer two questions:

Will it hurt someone?

Is it good for me?

If the answers are respectively ‘no’ then ‘yes’ I do it.

True, there are more implications within those two questions and answers, but they are my personal compass that works only for me, pointing me in a thousand directions instead on only a single iron one.

The diversity of this journey has brought me to such beauty and joy.

The newest being the discovery of my own bisexuality.

RA has also broken the heteronormative shackles my Mormon prescripted marriage bound me with. I finally understand the love I had for a girl long ago during high school and the intimacy I find in the touch and company of other women.

I am reveling in exploring where that intimacy can go and my bell rings as I find and partake of the fruit of the Tree of Life--growing in more places than one.

Turns out it is your inner bell that leads you to that Tree and its pleasurable fruit, not some cold, harsh rod of iron.

And through this journey I have found that my bell leads me to not just that Tree,

but an entire Grove.

A world of joy and life my idea of a loving God could get behind.

An expanse open for you and I to experience all that we can.

Once more I urge you to just let go.

Find the fruit once forbidden and eat.

And then, eat more.

Be greedy my friends.

I deserve it

And so do you.

-Angela