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centralsaints · 3 years

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mcl headcanon masterpost pt.1 - armin

let's start this off with my long term favourites; the twins. this is armin's part, and alexy is next!

will start this with his full name being armin frederic lemaire

if you name a joint, he has probably dislocated it at least once in his life. he’s always been hypermobile, having chronic pain (mistaken as growing pains) and fatigue, being prone to dislocation. that later becomes a diagnosis of hypermobile ehlers-danlos syndrome.

that makes him also prone to getting migraines and headaches regularly, explaining the whole hating bright lights thing

he has had an eating disorder on and off since he was about 15; partly diagnosed, he meets the criteria for OSFED, so his ed is a bit. weird and all over the place. it’s mostly periods of restriction with a fear/disgust of food, followed by periods of binging and eating more or less normally. he’s closer to atypical bulimia, in terms of specifics, because the binge/purge episodes aren’t that frequent. he went inpatient once, and still jokes about how he was the only guy there. only his family knows about his eating issues as of now.

another thing about the ed is that it was already kind of in the making when alexy had his unaliving attempt, but that was really what kickstarted it all.

around UL, with nathaniel going absolutely off the fucking rails, armin and amber struck an odd friendship. they both could clock the other on their fucked up eating issues, but neither said anything for a long time, until amber did. they agreed to try and recover together.

his favourite pokemon type is ghost (thank you anon, idk anything about pokemon but i wanted to include this)

he plays animal crossing with kentin (who doesn’t like admitting that he plays it because it’s very relaxing for him) and jade.

he’s a gemini sun, cancer rising, libra moon, same as alexy.

he has add (adhd inattentive type) and his most common stims are bouncing his leg and chewing his pens. his object permanence is also absolute shit, if its out of sight, it doesn’t exist.

he doesn’t untie his shoes when taking them off or putting them on, and has ruined many perfectly good pairs of shoes that way.

he has made tik toks starring rocket the ferret

his playlists are lo-fi music, video games and movie soundtracks, and like. twenty one pilot.

his nose is crooked from when he broke it around 11 years old

he also bruises really easily (mostly due to his EDS) and his legs are always covered in various bruises. he’s also very clumsy, which doesn’t help

he doesn’t like alcohol; he doesn’t like the taste, the way it makes him feel and the aftermath; it doesn’t take much to affect him and he’ll sleep for an entire day. but he’ll sometimes drink in social situation just to not feel left out.

he’s bisexual. the less obvious stuff; what’s his type?? I know having a “type” isn't really a thing and u like who u like. with that said i think hed like slightly androgynous looking girls (soft spot for shaved heads. its soft;;), girls who are very very feminine but in an out of the ordinary way (think lolita, hyper pop fem vibe, goth girls in corsets, etc), guys who work out (he has a weakness for back muscles), in general people who stand out in a crowd be it with their appearance, style or their attitude

no i still have absolutely no idea how he would come out. i think he probably didn’t. he just started talking about it naturally, because it wasn’t a big deal. i think one day, either his mom or alexy made jokes about oh, when would he finally take this one cute girl on a date, and he just said, or maybe it’ll be a boy. it just happened like that

ref post for his fashion sense

he can do a killer winged liner. look, man’s into cosplay, of course he can.

he’s played mystic messenger ironically at first and then ended up actually liking it

he actually can draw, because he spent all middle school drawing anime characters in all his notebooks

he always sits kind of awkwardly (proof is the episode 12 illustration lmao) because 1. bi people can’t sit right (source: me) and 2. he’s just. really lanky and has long limbs and doesn’t really know what to do with all of it

this one is from an anon last year: “I have this weird hc about the twins. Alexy sleeps with like a million pillows and blankets , while Armin tries to sleep with pillows but throws it out every time even though he's asleep.” and i love it. he also probably sleep in very weird positions which leads to him waking up hurting a lot of the time

he also has a weighted blanket that he and alexy kind of just. get turns using when they both still live at their parents house. it helps armin’s pain, and alexy’s overstimulation issues. when they leave, armin gets the weighted blanket

armin has a dimple on his right cheek when he smiles

he helped alexy dye his hair until they moved out and started living separately

he has his driving license, but alexy doesn’t

he’s scared of dogs (he probably met demon at one point bc i like him and cas being friends, and he was so nervous about it, poor boy

he likes taking ice cold shower in the evening because the cold water and then sinking in a warm bed make him sleepy and actually helps him fall asleep

he probably played dnd at one point

he smokes ouid occasionally, at first it was recreational, but it kind of helped with his joint pain so

i think this is all of them? i might be missing a few ones i never wrote out or that are buried in my files but i honestly don't feel like going through the dozen unfinished fics and compilation documents that mention armin in my drive or i would still be here next year

#my candy love #mcl #mcl armin #long post #mcl headcanon

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channies-sinful-archives · 6 years

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Destressing-session - Bangchan

Description: Quietly coming back home from being fired from your job, you learn that your fiancee Chan had already found out about it. But as he attempts to help you get your mind off things with sweet gestures, stuff goes wrong, resulting in a heated Plan B "destressing-session"

Word count: Around 3.6k

Pairing: Bangchan x (fem) reader

Citrus Scale Rating: Lemon

Warnings: overstimulation, sex, oral sex, fingering, 2 rounds, fuff!, comfort

Trigger warnings: loss of weight, self-deprication, a series of unfortunate events (NOt intended pun LOL) or just lotsa stuff going wrong (ur getting fired from ur job and spill some coffee...smh ) , suspicion, worried Chan!! :( (+ are love bites a trigger warning?)

A/N: The prologue (?) to the smut is kind of long, but I intended making this a one shot with a bit of story line and including fluff and Bangchan being all lovey-dovey so you feel good !! Or just skip to the important part if you’re really horny or sum lol

Somewhere around the beginning of the lemon part I marked it by placing orange stars (***) so it’s easier for you to find ! Dear god, this is my first time ever writing smut, I’m only experienced in reading it LMAO anyways I hope you enjoy

Quietly closing the door behind you, you slump down on the sofa. It has been a horrible day - in fact, you have been fired from your job and are therefore earlier at home than usual.

Your now former workplace and some co-workers have been nagging you for a long time and you're even partly happy you've finally been freed, but it still feels weird thinking you'll have nothing to wake up to the next few mornings - even though it's been rough.

You're worn out from your both mentally and physically exhausting day and would love a hug from your fiancee Chan now, but knowing he's been in the studio all night and probably sleeping soundly now, you decide to let him be.

Looking over to your left you see that the light in the kitchen's still on. You don't think too much about it and get up to flip the light switch. As you complete your movements, you notice an unfinished cup of coffee and touch it, feeling the mug's warmth.

"Huh? Coffee? Chan doesn't drink coffee, does he?" You mumble.

That being weird enough, you notice voices coming from your shared bedroom. That Chan might have company over is not what you want to be thinking, but you can't help being suspicious.

So while you're carefully taking off your shoes, you take quiet steps to the source of the sounds. Upon arriving you put your ear against the door to hear them more clearly.

But the sounds stop and in that split second the door opens, revealing a surprised Chan with his phone in his hands.

"Thanks, I'll call you back later."

His finger presses the red button and he drops his shoulders "Y/N, what's this?" A frown crosses his face.

"Huh?" You frown too "I could ask you the same thing, Chan."

To clear up your suspicions you look into the all too familiar room behind him and scan it thoroughly for company. But when you see that no one else is in it, you return your gaze to Chan's.

His gaze is intense and you feel guilty for having been suspicious, but you hear a small sigh escape his lips and about a second later you feel his strong and warm body carefully press against you in an embrace.

When he removes himself from you again, you watch his facial expression turn soft, hinting worry "Minho was on the phone just now", Chan says.

Lee Minho is, or was, one of your co-workers and he's been friends with Chan for longer than you've known him. In fact, Minho's the one who introduced Chan to you back in the day. Therefore he knows what’s been going on at work.

You drop your gaze "He told you, didn't he?" is what you ask him in a whisper. Chan probably wasn't mad at you, actually, you know he'd worry. You are indeed very disappointed and you are aware he might be, too, since you two share some important memories at that place. But he doesn’t respond, just continues on looking at you worryingly.

"So the coffee's for me?" You ask, forcing a smile on your lips. He nods, now letting mumbles escape his lips "Mhm, let's go".

Guiding you to the living room's sofa on which you'd sat on just now with a warm hand on your shoulder, you feel more loose. You sit down and he puts a blanket over your legs. "I want you to relax a bit, alright, love?"

You share a smile and he brings you the cup of coffee you have been expecting. He turns the TV on and sits down on the edge of the sofa right next to you.

But the TV is not what you focus on. The news had been playing and they seem to be pretty dramatic, but actually, only now you notice that Chan is wearing the fluffy sweater you love so much and his messy hair stands out to you, too, but not in a bad manner and his broad shoulders will always be attractive to you and you get the sudden urge to hug him again and to brush your hands through his messy, but awfully fluffy blonde hair.

But as you reach for him lost in thought you forget about the mug on your lap and spill some of it over yourself in result.

"Oh no!" escapes your lips with a gasp. Chan quickly turns around and notices the mess. "Hold on, I'll get a towel" he says rushedly and jogs over to the kitchen. Without hesitation you fastly remove the mug and the blanket to see if some coffee has gotten on your clothes and to your disadvantage, there indeed is a small spot of coffee on your pants.

Chan returns with a towel in his hands and you both try to mop up everything you spilled your beverage on.

"I'm so sorry... I seriously can't get anything right today." you let out, self-deprivingly "I'm a failure", is what you add short after.

But Chan doesn't respond. You look up to him, who is standing. He seems upset and you remember how he always tells you to not talk about yourself in a bad way, because that is what you do a lot. And it makes him mad. But everything he does and did for you and feels and felt about you, has always been and is still out of love.

"Y/n, I understand how you must be feeling right now, but try to understand me, too! You insult yourself and how does that make someone feel who loves you with all his might? You are insulting what is dear to me, you know!"

It's awfully quiet there for a second, but he breaks the tense atmosphere by hugging you again. This time it's way longer than before and you just want to take in everything you are feeling right now.

His smell, his touch, his warmth, the feeling of his body on yours - you love him lots and you are aware that he just wants you to be happy, but you can't help feeling down. He understands that, too.

"I should go change clothes now." You say removing yourself from him and try to get up quickly, but he pushes you back on the sofa and replies calmly "Don't. I'll go get you something cute."

You nod to yourself. And not long after he returns with your favorite pair of sweatpants. "Remove your clothes" is what he then says demandingly.

"You're nice and all, but I can change my clothes on my own." You add and gesture him to leave.

"What? Can't I help my fiancee?" He replies to you cockily. You sigh. You appreciate his kindness, but things like these are very senseless to you. At times you think he sees you as a child.

And ever since you're engaged, which is 4 months now, not once has he let you cook (in his presence at least), always demanded to drive you to work and pick you up from it and insisted on doing most of the cleaning in the apartment you two share.

He seems to have pleasure in babying and spoiling you, completely ignoring the fact that you are an adequate independent and grown woman.

But you know that it's hard to talk to him about this, since he is very stubborn when it comes to these things and discussing this now would be more than you could take currently with everything that's been going on. And in the end he's the one who wins anyway. So you remove your pants and sigh.

"Y/n..."

You look up to him "Yeah?" Now meeting his gaze you respond by raising your eyebrows a bit and tilting your head.

******************************

"You know, I get so worried when I see you losing weight"

He comes closer, sitting himself next to you. He rests his hand on your naked thigh, looking at it full of worry.

He's right, you did lose some weight since work has gotten more stressful, but it's nothing new, but you barely see each other, which explains his sudden reaction.

You remember how much you missed his intimate touch. Your insane work hours and his lack of nightly sleep always keep you from sleeping in same shifts. The place next to you on the bed is always empty and only having meals together just doesn't cut it.

You grab his nape and bring his head close to yours for a kiss.

As your lips meet you taste the sweetness of your own lipbalm on his. He returns the kiss passionately and lovingly, but most importantly carefully - all in all, everything he ever does to you and for you is careful. Almost as if he is too scared to break or hurt what is most important and expensive to him, in other words, you.

The grip he had on your thigh has become stronger, catching you off-guard as you have been concentrating on other things.

He leans closer into you, leaving less space than there had initially been and opens his mouth a little more to slip his tongue past, asking you for permission to enter.

Encouraging him, you let him in and get lost in the kiss as it gets deeper, feeling all the neediness he has got to offer.

The second you put your free hand on his chest he pushes you on your back tracing your leg with the back of his other hand, all while your lips and tongues are still intertwined.

Now on your back, him placed over you, lips on lips, body on body you feel a lot safer and loosen up. The touch of the love of your life and the warmth of his kiss are the only thing you want to feel right now.

Holding onto this moment, you bury your hands in his hair and put your unclothed legs around his waist, pulling him even closer to you.

"Babygirl..." he whispers in an unexpectedly vulnerable, but deep voice. And who would have known that this is enough to make your body heat up and fill with desire.

You stop kissing and just look each other in the eye, foreheads touching, noses brushing against each other. His breath is hot. And so is his touch on your face as he embraces your cheek with one head, giving you a last short peck, before lifting his upper body.

He is now straddling you and slowly opening his belt savouring the view he has in front of him. His lust is extremely obvious, making him only more attractive.

While you look at him doing his devine movements you get more excited, already missing his touch.

"I'll help you destress in a sec, baby" he adds, as if reading your mind and knowing very well that you want him and that you need him right now and in this moment.

While he does so, you remove your shirt, revealing your bra and throw it on the floor. Chan bites his lip, trying to hide a smile that was forming on his face. He loved you endlessly and found you beautiful no matter what.

"Right now I am the happiest man alive" he murmurs and quickly leans over you again, as he finishes opening his belt and the pant's fly.

He leaves kisses starting from your neck accompanied by his hands travelling down your body simultaneously. He leaves marks on his way down, first on your neck, then on your collarbone and then on your breasts. To see more of you, he slowly makes your bra undone and places his tongue on your nip as soon as it's removed.

To your surprise, he suddenly bites into your breast, sparking the fire in your body up even more making you moan quietly.

Then he moves on, trailing you more with kisses until his lips reach your abdomen and his palms the sides of it. He is getting close to your incredibly hot core and you are loving the tension.

He now is sliding his hands in reversed direction from your calves to the back of your knees over to your hips, both hands stroking your body.

You can't wait any longer and to your luck, he does not prolong this and puts his lips on your core, exactly over the place where your clothed clit is and gives it a long peck before he starts trailing his tongue around it. You tense up in pleasure, feeling every little movement.

And it's hard to believe, but this would mark the first time he'd go down on you, if he decided to go on, of course.

Eager to know what's next you look over to your partner and your eyes meet, as you feel his fingers brushing against you while moving your panties to the side and stroking your incredibly wet slit with his thumb.

Again you can't hold a moan back and bite your lip in response. It was unexpected for both of you, since you normally wouldn't do so and try to hide your embarrassment. But the surprised expression on Chan's face just turns into a sly smirk.

"So it feels good?"

You want to reply with a nod, but another moan slips off your lips as he pushes his fingers inside of you, hitting your sweet spot right away, deeper than you could've reached with the long fingers he has compared to you.

But looking at his expression, you're not embarrassed anymore, since he seems to enjoy hearing you.

Deciding he wants to take in all of you, he tears your panties from your legs quickly and sets his tongue on your core to lick your wetness up.

You shiver out of pleasure. As he continues, he moves on to suck on your clit and sticks his fingers into you again, this time one more.

He easily reaches your sweet spot again, but intensifies the feeling by curling up his fingers exploring this vulnerable part of you. But this doesn't go on for long "Prepared?"

"Huh?" You didn't expect anything more as the last time you had sex had been what feels like ages ago, but without a lot of ado, he gets his member out of his boxers and slowly strokes him twice, looking at you extremely horny.

"Fuck, I'm so damn hard, babygirl " He says in a weak but extremely horny manner before placing himself in front of your entrance.

Making sure you stay as close as possible to him, he puts his big hand on yours, strangling them over your head and resting his elbow on the pillow. He then, without warning, pumps into you, making you moan louder than before and cuts it off by kissing you intensely again.

As your "destressing-session" goes on he starts to groan, which you find incredibly sexy.

The reactions from your body upon the feeling of his cock inside you shows how much you've missed the sex you had with Chan. The thrusting went on, getting faster and faster, your moans getting louder and higher as you feel your climax getting closer.

His groaning and moaning mess kept wanting to hear more and more of you, kept wanting to pleasure you as much as he could, moving his now cold hand down to your core, rubbing your clitoris both intensely and precisely, moving it in a circular pattern, getting you closer and faster to your climax.

And you can't resist but to free your hands from his strong hold to lift his sweater up to touch his muscular back and leave marks by digging your nails into him.

It most definitely hurted, but he enjoyed it as he moaned "Ah Fuck " all over the place. More loud moans left your lips in response to his powerful thrusting that was increasing in speed with every second.

Then as his pumping reaches its peak you roll your eyes back as you feel your climax washing over you. It goes on for longer than usual and as you feel it ending you hear Chan escaping one last long "Fuck" as he gets off, too.

But it doesn't end here. As he removes himself from you, he keeps pumping his member as he gets down on you again to lick your squirt up, outside and inside, too.

The ticklish feeling of his tongue on and in your slit feels amazing and you feel pushed off the edge when he moves on to your overworked and sensitive clitoris. Sucking and licking wilder than before you feel yourself going crazy. But this time he got you captured tightly, and nothing could have gotten you out of his strong grip.

"This is not destressing, this is pushing all of my buttons" You say, with groans inbetween your words, feeling your clitoris throbbing because of overstimulation.

Your shivering and twitching and trembling is unstoppable and you grab ahold of the sofa's sheet like you have never done before. The edging ends with you both having another climax and Chan releasing and falling onto you giving you kisses all over your face and neck.

"I love you" He says with every peck "Don't ever be suspicious of me again, I'm only yours"

Cozily laying there together body by body after having calmed down, you think about the voices that you had heard coming from the bedroom today, which were, as you had found out after, the voices of Chan talking to Minho over his mobile phone. But what if Chan actually would've had someone over? What would you have done if he in fact cheated on you?

But your face scrunches at the thought of it. "That's funny - how would anyone as sweet and lovely as Chan do that, Y/n? " You think to yourself as you slowly drift into a deep sleep in your fiancee's embrace, the engagement rings sparkling in the warm colors of the sunset's lights that were flooding the room.

- the end -

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diveronarpg · 4 years

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Congratulations, BRIDGET! You’ve been accepted for the role of HERMIA. Admin Julie: Bridget, your application for Hazel was, in short, incredible. Nothing felt unfinished out or out of place -- every word you wrote felt as though it just made sense. It was a true, genuinely pleasure to read; your in-character interview was especially heartrending, and honestly, listening to Hazel speak felt quite a lot like coming home and sitting down with an old friend over a nice cup of tea, or coffee, which is a welcome relief from the harshness that Verona can often personify if you let yourself get too drawn in to the chaos and the angst and the pain. Hazel is utterly human in an incredible way, and you hit that nail right on the head. We cannot wait to see her on the dashboard, and we cannot wait to have you with us. Please read over the checklist and send in your blog within 24 hours.

WELCOME TO THE MOB.

OUT OF CHARACTER

Alias | Bridget Age | Twenty-two Preferred Pronouns | She/they Activity Level | I am currently in a fugue state when it comes to both the perception of myself and of time, so while I will intend to be online everyday, sometimes a few days will slip through the cracks of my conscious and then I’ll realize I’ve been MIA and do my best to do about 123432 replies in an hour to play catch-up. That said, I can guarantee at least four days a week being online for at least an hour if not more. Timezone | EST How did you find the rp? | I feel like I’ve known this RP for years but honestly I’ve been capital-I Intimidated by it, but I was talking to Kay and figured I was finally willing to take the plunge Current/Past RP Accounts | https://rvncorns.tumblr.com/ https://birdieklein.tumblr.com/

IN CHARACTER

Character | Hermia ; Hazel Ruth Accardi

Hazel ; english: the hazelnut tree Ruth ; biblical, hebrew: compassionate friend Accardi ; a family who believes in God above all, following his teachings in all motions of their life

What drew you to this character? |

As mentioned above, I’ve seen this roleplay for years, and I have had friends be a part of it. In the depths of my Google Drive, I have half-started apps that I never finished due to the muse never being quite there, or for fear of submitting and facing competition itself. I’ve perused the masterlist every so often, but no one has quite piqued my interest quite like Hazel.

I think I knew I had to app them after reading the line, “ only a foolish saint believed that they could walk through a city of such sin with unblemished hands and clean soles of feet. ” It was so visceral, and it really made me start imagining this character further than what the biography offered. I could only picture her having found this solid identity, certainly marked by the world, but mostly unstained. I couldn’t help but think that this — being in Verona, that is — is going to change her. She might not realize it, She might not want to believe it, but it will happen slowly and surely.

I do love characters that have crises with identity. There is something soothing in being sure of yourself and who you are, and I do believe that fuels Hazel. She fought and struggled to find herself, and now she will begin to struggle and fight to keep herself as she is, as who she knows herself to become.

There’s room for both growth and regression within Hazel, and I genuinely would love to explore it.

I also was captured by her love and fervid passion for religion. As someone who has personally struggled with religion and their own views of it, I think Hazel will be an interesting projection. I want to see her lean into her faith with all that is coming to trouble her because that is who they are. God is her Shepherd and she is his lamb. He is guiding her through all of this, struggles and all.

I don’t think she’ll ever come to have a moment where she will renounce her faith. It is embedded in her. She is solid and unwavering in it — and I desperately believe that that can’t be changed, no matter what the world — Verona, specifically — will throw at them.

What is a future plot idea you have in mind for the character? |

I always fear that I’m not living right: I want to explore how far Hazel falls in with the Montagues. Is it forging only ? Does it stop there ? Or does it slowly become more and more until she realizes she is drowning in sin she could have never imagined ? I want her to have moral conflict. She loves Verona for its beauty and history — but is it worth the sin ? Is it worth the stain on her godly soul no matter how many times she goes to confession ? I gotta say I don’t think she’ll be necessarily cognizant of her doing more. It just seems like she’s paying off their debts. A gun to the face has put the fear of God in her heart ( — which leads me to wonder how much fear did she have of God to begin with, the righteous and Almighty, and I do suppose I could write a whole thesis on this but I’ll refrain ) and to question it seems like the wrong move.

ALSO HAHA I JUST THOUGHT OF THIS RIGHT NOW pt. 2 : what if she started forging for the Capulets too ? Like, to make more money on the side ? The money they’re earning from the Montagues is basically nil, considering it’s all going to debts. If she wants a little money in her pockets, maybe she’ll have to do what she has to. Maybe there’s no choice. It could be dangerous and risky — scratch that. It would definitely be dangerous and risky. But I think a part of Hazel is still somewhat blind to all of the danger. It hasn’t quite touched her yet ( a gun to her face aside ), so it hasn’t quite struck her how much is at play, at least not in a real, physical, palpable way.

I do have to say that I’m pretty sure she will end up more involved within either the Montagues or the Capulets despite what her initial thoughts are ( because that’s the path I’d like to move with her ). Slowly but surely, she’ll end up in deeper water, but I don’t think she’ll want to get out so long as she feels safe. That’s so important, a sense of safety. She has that in her relationship with her parents, and especially her relationship with God. That said, I feel like I need to add that she will stay involved with the gangs so long as she isn’t hurting anyone directly. She’ll have blinders on, specifically rose-colored ones, of her own making. Perhaps it’s naive, perhaps it’s selfish, but to think too long about it is scary. To add on the thought of hurting someone else by her direct action ? Unfathomable. It’s established in the biography that she saw the world in extremes, and I do imagine that, while she has grown, she still sees some things in black and white. I think getting more involved with the Capulets and Montagues will show her that the world isn’t just her version of black and white. What she sees as wrong, someone else might see it as right. I think she’ll be introduced to shades of grey she never quite was able to perceive anymore. I want her to learn more about people as she learns more about the war between the Montagues and Capulets.

I’m still petrified that I’ll die alone: I can’t imagine that leaving Harley didn’t hurt Hazel at least a little bit. It was the right decision surely — she’ll never think or believe otherwise — but now she’s grown up. I think that she wants Harley to be in her life because she loved them once, partly, not wholly, but as the connection says, Hazel doesn’t know where Harley is meant to fit. I think it would be really interesting to have them reunite and discover who she is now. Though Harley knew herself then, I’m sure she’s changed. I want Hazel to learn that, and I want her to reintroduce herself to her. It would start with a “ Hi, I’m Hazel, ” and it’d be a little shy and a little hesitant, but she’s open to possibilities. She isn’t as closed off as she once was. I really think Hazel needs to figure out where Harley fits, or, and hear me out, where she doesn’t fit. I don’t know if Hazel ever felt true closure from where they left each other before, but maybe she can find it. Whether it’s them together or not, it’s something she’ll work to figure out.

Ok I feel the need to say that obviously it would depend on the Harley writer and myself on whether or not they get back together and also their chemistry ???? okay but so: If they get back together, I think Hazel will definitely feel more pulled into the world of the Capulets and Montagues. I feel like I should state that, one, she would be incredibly glad to be with Harley again, and she would fall in love again, which leads to a very happy mindset and lifestyle, but the most heavy impact it would have on her life is for sure the one it would have on her role with the Capulets and Montagues. Honestly, right now, she doesn’t want to be involved. That’s the end goal. The only thing keeping her with the Montagues right now is her debt. Once she has it paid off entirely, there’s really no reason to keep working with them. I mean, besides money, but I digress. She wouldn’t plan to work for either. She could be pressed / convinced into it. However, regarding the Capulets, she wouldn’t want to put Harley in a difficult position were she still working with the Montagues when they got back together. Can she quit ? Probably not ! Would she try ? Yes ! Maybe she’d offer to assist the Capulets in some way to make it equal. In her mind, it would work. Harley: come work for the Capulets. I’m loyal to them. There’s some safety in Verona with an allegiance Hazel: Good point I think if Harley asked her to, she wouldn’t say no, not right away It would take time to make a decision, and she would definitely think about it ( not just an hour, but days, maybe a week ? ) She would be conflicted between her strength and resolve towards herself but also her loyalty towards Harley If they don’t get back together, I do think Hazel will be sad, but not cripplingly so. She would be the first person to say she isn’t the same as she was a year ago, let alone however long it was ago that her and Harley were together. I think it would loosen a tie between her and the Capulets, if there was one, but also loosen the tie between her and Verona. I sort of see it ( them not being together ) as a reason not to stay. It would cement to her that she wasn’t the person who fell in love with Harley. She’s different, she’s someone new. And that’s not a bad thing. I think it would be almost a relief actually, to know that she's changed. I would hope that they’d still be friends and would get to know each other for who they are now. Hazel wants to be excited for who she is now and what all that she believes in.

I’m still petrified of going broke: Hazel never imagined being in crippling debt, not to a college in the United States, and definitely not to a bank controlled by a mob in Italy. But here she is. This is her life. Is it worth it to stay ? What if she ran home to her parents, embracing their help and their charity until she found her footing once again ? She could do it. Would Verona follow ? She doesn’t think so. But guilt would. She made her bed, shouldn’t she lie in it ? Maybe running wouldn’t do any good, so maybe she should find purpose in Verona. It could start with a job. It could continue with getting out of debt and earning her freedom once more. Then, she could further repent beyond confession with charity and good deeds. Maybe she can set themselves on a godly path once more someway somehow.

To stay: I think Hazel wants to stay because it’s new. It’s beautiful and freeing to be so independent. She’s learning about the world, about herself, and, importantly, she feels closer to God here. She’d have more reason to stay if she had Harley, she’d have more reason to stay if she became better friends with those she’s found friendship ( acquaintanceship ? ) with. Felipe: You don’t forge documents for someone without at least feeling a little loyal to them ! I imagine Hazel is keen to remain in touch with them, to know they’re safe. Also, she told her whole life story to him. If that doesn’t add up to friendship ( in her mind, at least ), then what does ? Ajax: Listen. I just have thoughts about these too. They could become BEST FRIENDS. Obviously, that’s Hazel with her rose-colored glasses talking through me. I just imagine she feels close to him ( with him viewing her as a sister-like figure, I imagine it’s reciprocal ). Also please note that above I said Hazel wants to stay. Despite her debt and moral quandaries, she still wants to be in Italy. That’s how she’s feeling right now. I think staying will impact her self-confidence. She is enough. She is strong and brave in ways she never quite imagined. I think she’ll discover more about humans, the longer she stays in Verona ; rather, she’ll learn more about their particularities and peculiarities — who they are, their beliefs, their loyalties. That’s something that struck me particularly about Hazel, she’s always learning and she’s eager to do so, not just about herself but the world and the people in it, too. To not stay, in no particular order: there’s a war between the Capulets and Montagues going on and she’s somehow gotten involved. She’s in debt. Her ex is here. I think if she got hurt, saw someone get hurt, or knew someone closely who got hurt, she might be convinced to leave. Harm isn’t something she wants to be around. She doesn’t want it to happen to her and she doesn’t want to see someone be affected. Ultimately, though, it boils down to fear. If she’s scared of her life being at risk, she might consider it time to flee. I think this would ultimately cause her to shelter herself further. She’ll seek the familiar, her family and childhood home, perhaps, or somewhere with a heavily-religious population. Either way, she’ll fall back on her faith and the familiar, finding comfort in what she already knows, trusts, and believes in.

Are you comfortable with killing off your character? |

What is life without a little risk ? Kill her if you have to. Let’s go for maximum angst and maximum pain. IN DEPTH

What is your favorite place in Verona?

The cathedral and its pews seemed awfully lonely and awfully cold, and Hazel wondered if one without god in their hearts would simply freeze if they stepped inside. It seemed foolish to wonder such a thing, but the cathedral was such a sacred and holy place. What good came to outsiders who stepped inside ? To come there was to seek God. It had to be for that purpose and that only. “ I found the Cathedral in my first days here — but saying it like that makes it seem like I wasn’t aware of it before I moved. ” Her head was tilted askew, her eyes not upon whom she spoke to, instead stuck on the multicolored panes of the stained glass windows. “ It was one of my reasons I chose Verona, actually. I — I needed a place I knew I’d be able to find God. ”

There was something that felt like home in a church. Hazel had never much enjoyed labeling a place as such, but the wooden pews were as familiar as her father, the velvet kneelers soft and comforting as her mother’s hand on her cheek. She’s staring down at her feet now, half-embarrassed and half feeling like she’s revealing her inner soul. “ This — it’s unlike the church I grew up in in a thousand ways, but I still know what to expect here. I know the prayers and the rites, the taste of communion on my tongue. I come here and find the familiar when I’m feeling lost. ”

What does your typical day look like? “ It’s really not that interesting, I’ll have you know. ” She shrugged her shoulders, brows raised, fingers reaching up to push long strands of hair behind her ears. “ I wake up when the sun peeks through my window and I eat breakfast. Usually coffee and a bread of some sort. I’m a real sucker for a good cornetto, honestly. ”

“ I’m a morning person so I try to get as much done before noon, otherwise I consider the day to be a wash. I — I have a lot of papers to work on. ” She doesn’t elaborate, nor does she plan to. The papers, the forgeries, take up so much of her time and effort. She has to be perfect and precise with them, fear of what would happen if she wasn’t has gripped her so strongly that she’s woken in the middle of the night with a cold sweat slicking her body. “ I can get lost in my work. I guess I can be a bit of a perfectionist. ”

She nodded to herself, thinking of what comes next. Her eyes flicked towards the window, towards the people below. For a second, she’s lost in her staring. She couldn’t help but think that people-watching was becoming a lost art. “ I like having my afternoons open to wander and explore. I’m still getting to know the city, and just when I think I’ve got it all figured out, I find something new. It’s beautiful and historic. A marvel. ” Her words had turned airy and distant ; her body was there but her mind was somewhere else. “ I didn’t think moving to Verona would involve me working so much. ” She snorted a laugh despite herself. “ I had to invest in a better pair of sneakers a week in, my old ones were falling apart. ”

“ I usually go to church every day, too, if not every other day. It’s a chance to think and check in with myself. With God.”

Again, she’s shrugging. “ It’s not exciting, okay ? I’m not — exciting. I never have been. I don’t think I’d want to be either ? ”

Silence hung.

“ I call my parents in the evening. It’s afternoon back in Colorado. Usually I can catch them in their free time. Then it’s dinner. Then bed by nine. ”

She feels like she’s being judged. She doesn’t like it.

What has been your biggest mistake thus far?

A loaded question. Does it mean since coming to Verona or within her entire life ? Her mind is reeling with possibilities of answers. She thinks of a beautiful girl she couldn’t give her heart to. She thinks of the Montagues, who she’s ended up helping in return for paid debts. One seems like the obvious answer, bigger than the other.

Her heart says otherwise.

“ I hurt a girl who didn’t deserve it. ” Her lip curls with self-disgust. “ I couldn’t not do what I did, but that doesn’t mean I wanted to hurt her. If I could have done it gentler I would have, but hearts ache. It’s what they’re meant to do. There was no avoiding it. ”

She rests her head in her hands and talk through her fingers.

“ I don’t like hurting people. It doesn’t feel good. ”

What has been the most difficult task asked of you?

This — this — is the easiest question asked. There is no doubt in Hazel’s mind when she answers. “ If there is a gun pointed at me when I’m told to do something, that goes to the top of the list. ” She leans back in her chair, her arms folded across her chest. It’s such a loaded question. How could they expect her to say anything else ? “ It’s like this. I’m good at forging things. I have to do it. This added pressure, though, it makes me feel like I’m drowning, okay ? I’ve never done it where so much was at stake, where it’s been my life on the line. ” Her jaw is clenched, trembling slightly. “ I just feel like I really played myself, you know ? I fell for a trick and into a trap, and the next thing I know is that I’m staring into the mouths of lions. ”

What are your thoughts on the war between the Capulets and the Montagues?

Her face flushes as more time passes. She doesn’t like being considered ignorant, but as time passes and no words spill from parted lips, it’s clear that she doesn’t have much to say. “ I don’t know much about it. ” She speaks slowly and carefully, considering. “ All I know is that it scares me, and I’m on the precipice of falling into it. ” Isn’t she ? She’s forging for the Montagues. That makes her involved with one side of the war, if not both by association. Still, she wants to stay away from most of it, if she can. “ I don’t know what’s started it, and I know that hate and rage has kept it going. I’m scared of being touched by its bloodshed. No good can come from being involved. ”

Extras:

HEADCANONS

001. Of the few things she brought with her to Verona, very likely her dearest possession, is a pearl and crystal Holy Rosary she received after completing her confirmation from her parents.

002. She learned she had a penchant for forgeries in high school. It started with a signature missed from her parents. Her few friends caught on and asked for a few favors. It ended as quickly as it started, guilt eating at her core. But it always seemed to come back. In college, a doctor said they would fax over a note that would grant her an extension for certain assignments. When they didn’t, Hazel did it herself, making a pastiche out of old notes and documents from the practice. That wasn’t lying, was it ? It had meant to be done by the doctor anyway. But she was offered money a few more times when others found out what she could do. She always found herself feeling a pit in her stomach, deciding the possibility of being blackmailed if she said no was worse than the acts of fraud itself. She thought post-college that it would stop. No more trickery and fooling others. And then she ended up in Verona with debt weighing her down, letters sent to her asking for payments nearly everyday. She went to the bank with a letter, signed by the head of the bank itself, saying she had been granted an extension. Most didn’t bat an eye. It looked good, it looked real. Perhaps the extension was too generous because she was caught. Instead of pursuing legal options against her, an offer was laid at her feet. Make some forgeries, lose your debt. How could she say no ?

003. She has a favorite coffee shop just outside of the little apartment she’s living at. She goes there for breakfast. Sometimes she orders extra pastry to have them at home. She’s considered asking for a job there. Something real. Something legal. Something with low risk.

004. She calls her mother frequently. To not worry her, she says everything is fine, just dandy and golden. It’s a white lie, the teensiest of things, but it’s to her parents. Surely God would understand that she wishes to not stress them out.

PINTEREST BOARD

#accepted: hermia #accepted

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seasaltmemories · 5 years

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Why Leo is the Most Relatable Character in Arc V

Leo is an interesting villain partly because he doesn’t seem interesting at all.

We knew he was the “known” big bad of the series, even before Zarc and Ray were clear concepts there was the feeling he wasn’t the “real” enemy. Academia had established itself as a credible opponent, but it was quite literally a machine that seemed to function on its own. Leo was the “face” of it, but only in the way say the namesake of a business or university is. They’re so thoroughly turned into a symbol, they as an individual don’t have any weight.

And the funny think about Leo, is that even before 126, he was humanized in way evil “emperor” type rarely aren’t. He was Reiji’s father and left him and Himika. As much as evil dads are overplayed in anime, that adds a weight there that rarely isn’t found. While the anime rarely dives past implications when it tackles the concept of a broken Akaba home, shots like the ones of Himika tearing up Leo’s office and Reiji staring in horror are powerful. Not to mention Reiji’s complicated feelings about him. Aside from the original flashback, Reiji’s connection to Leo feels more told than shown. People like Roger try and exploit the connection, yet there seems to be none. That is until Reiji sees Leo face to face, and oh that unemotional distance is so harder to maintain. From Leo trying to persuade Reiji to his side, to Reiji’s shifting to child-like pronouns as he feels himself made into a child again by Leo.

Even those these moments technically happened after 126, they’re all set up beforehand and in theory could have happened even if season 3 went differently. And those alone aren’t what make Leo stand out to me. It is the brilliant yet simple twist that Ray, the bracelet girl’s original form is not a powerful goddess or ancient being, but his daughter. It is basic as basic comes to use a dead family member to turn someone evil. Yet it ties together A5 in a way few other details do.

For one, it heightens that already tense family drama. Leo is not a man who didn’t love his family enough, but someone who loved it so much he chose one child over the other. Add in Reira’s weird placement as a child of Leo who never met him until now, and hot damn you got a genuine soap opera. But even if you aren’t invested in Keeping Up With the Akaba’s, it just makes Leo such a sad, yet misguided figure. He has all the ingredients for a proper tragic hero. Someone who at the top of his game, lost it all because of those very gifts. And even when the world was literally destroyed and was ready to repent for his sins, he ends up losing his daughter and entire world even more.

The simplicity is what makes it so effective. Within two episodes it is beyond easy to understand how Leo became the man he is today. Yet after following our protagonists for so long, we can’t agree with him in any manner. This new world may be only fourteen years old, but it is so full of life and people you were convinced for hundreds of episodes before to root for, it is crazy to switch to Leo’s side. He can’t before more than a blind fool by now.

Until we the audience must suffer what he does. Now it isn’t impossible to have liked the show until now but not been a huge fan of Yuzu, but it is impossible to act as if the show didn’t want you to love her. She is so important to countless characters, from minor ones like Shuzo to our own protagonist, Yuya. Even if you don’t like her, it is hard to ignore her importance to Sora, Yugo, Serena, and so many more. And yet right after the climatic battle, we have to watch an ideal, peaceful world where she doesn’t exist. And in that moment I couldn’t relate to Leo any more.

Because on paper everything is perfect and fine, yet we know something is missing, even if the characters can’t pinpoint what it is. Hell some thought the dissonance was so great it had to be a dream world of sorts. It didn’t matter if the world could function without her, bc we and the characters cared about Yuzu, and our world wasn’t the same anymore.

And what is fascinating is that after this Leo doesn’t appear as a vindictive figure insisting he was right. He doesn’t even seek out the protagonists, just retires back to his quarters to reflect on the mess and try to fix what he can. When Shun comes to him blazing with anger and blame, Leo doesn’t even have any pride to shallow. There was no excuse to destroy a world that was fully real to everyone else, and he only ended up repeating his mistakes over again. He can save the entity that left Reira, but there is no telling if it will be Ray, Yuzu, or a different girl entirely. But he might as well try.

Some are upset that he didn’t get explicitly punished for the pain he caused, and that’s a valid feeling, but I prefer how he just kinda leaves the series in such an understated way. While he is shown in the last episode to be hoping perhaps he’ll this world will become like the one he lost, it is clear to the rest of the cast he just doesn’t matter anymore. All his glamour and power has been stripped away to highlight what he has always been: a sad grieving man. And while there is still unfinished business to settle, putting Zarc to rest becomes obviously more important, bc for a few moments, we were Leo Akaba ourselves. And if want to stop this cycle of pain, we finally have to take a step forward with courage.

#arc v #leo akaba #akaba leo #yugioh arc v #a5 #seasalt talks #arc v meta #meta #lol would never describe myself as a leo stan #but the more I sit on his writing the more convinced of its genius I am

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mysticsparklewings · 5 years

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Daises on Strawberry Hill‪

Well, this looks a bit different from my usual content, doesn't it? Full disclosure that this art was made primarily as art inspired by one of my favorite books of all time (seriously, I have three different editions of this thing)--Looking for Alaska by John Green--as an excuse to talk about the new Hulu series of the same name that's based on the book. Because if you know me at all, you know I am notoriously hard on book-to-screen adaptions, particularly those based on books I love as if they were family members. And originally, this description was going to include a pretty blow-by-blow, lengthy review of my thoughts on the series. However, it's been quite a while since I first started trying to type out said review, and frankly, I've decided instead to, after I talk about the art, to just give some general, spoiler-free thoughts; the most important opinions I have on the series and leave it at that. I am still planning on completing and putting my full-length, in-depth thoughts out, but that'll be at some other time. Perhaps I'll put them in a journal/blog post instead of adding to the description here. Whatever happens, I'll update this description so that those who are interested in my deep-dive can find it when the time comes. That said, let's talk about the artwork now :) LfA isn't a fantasy or sci-fi book, so it doesn't have any cool dramatic scenes or neato devices/objects that have a lot of significance to the plot that would be fun to draw, which is why I never made any fan art or inspired-by-art for it before. But I really wanted an excuse to talk about the series, and so I pondered what symbols or imagery the series might have that I could make into art, even if none of it was terribly relevant to the plot or exciting on its own. This led me to the cheap wine that's mentioned a few times throughout the book: Strawberry Hill. Drawing just a bottle of wine seemed kind of boring and not very specific to the book/series, so I ended up adding in some white daisies since white flowers and daises specifically do have some significance to the plot. (In a way, they're a bit of a crux to it, at least for a key epiphany moment.) Originally, I was going to make this piece traditionally, and I did start with a traditional sketch of the wine bottle and one daisy to use as a template for more to follow. However, I pretty quickly got the idea for doing something more line-art heavy on a black background, as the cover for the book is black and the sort of chalkboard/blacklight look I was picturing in my head seemed fitting for the tone of the story, and despite my best efforts I couldn't think of a way/combination of media to accomplish what I wanted traditionally without also giving myself a major headache and making the project take infinitely longer than I wanted it to. So while I stalled in production, I ended up on my tablet for something else and figure I'd scan in my sketches and maybe make a line art to print off and manipulate into what I wanted traditionally later. But then, just as I started working on that, I figured, "You know what, if I'm going to go through all of the trouble to ink/line this digitally and I wanted it to be more line-focused anyway, I might as well take a crack at just doing the full artwork digitally. I'll get the lines done either way, and if it doesn't work out then at least I can say I tried, I know some of what not to do, and I end up with a digital mock-up for the final version." Fortunately, things ended up working out much better than I expected. I purposefully wasn't too fussy about the lines, partly because I just didn't have the patience at the time to be super precise about it, and also because for this specific project I kind of liked the idea of a more doodle-ish look (even though it's not super doodle-y in the final product). This also made things move a lot faster, which was nice and pretty satisfying. I started with the wine bottle from my sketch, including trying a new liquid drawing technique I half picked up from an art Youtuber I just recently started following that makes drawing liquid in a style similar to this look like a lot of fun. I knew I wanted the bottle to be mostly transparent/just lines, so the goal here was more about getting the wine bottle shape/structure familiar enough than it was about anything else. The label took a bit more though since in my mind, ever since I read the book, I had a pretty specific image of a pinkish bottle with a yellowish liquid and this cream-colored label with dark brown/sepia text, and I had not previously considered the label into that whole primarily line-focused image in my mind. So in the end, I decided the label would be solid so I could get the proper imagery across and the text and stuff could still be seen properly. Additionally, you'll notice I couldn't help myself being a little on-the-nose and sticking a tiny strawberry and mountain/hill on the label for good measure and to fill some space without having to look up wine bottle references just to stare at the labels for a ridiculous amount of time. The daises were also infinitely easier to do digitally since I could just copy, paste, and rotate first the petals to make one flower, and then copy, paste, rotate that one flower a few more times, instead of having to draw individual petals and flowers every time. This also gave me a little more freedom in that I could re-size the flowers pretty easily to make it more visually interesting than just a bunch of flowers that were all the same size. All that ended up being less line-focused than I originally intended, but I acknowledged that happening as I worked, and I'm not upset about the shift in focus. I think what I ended up with still has about the same visual impact I was hoping for, and that's all I really wanted anyway. And as sort of the icing on the cake, I ended up adding in that wisp/smoke trail in the background because of 1. It seemed kind of empty and unfinished with just the flowers and wine bottle and 2. When I tried adding a green vine to fix that issue, it just wasn't working for me. That's when I realized I could have a stronger reference to the book by putting something similar to smoke in the background since the original cover of the book has a smoke plume front-and-center. It took a few tries and some tweaking to get something I was happy with on that front, but I am so glad I stuck with the idea. It just adds something I can't quite place that the piece really needed before. The content is pretty different for me--I don't drink and I don't really endorse the idea--and the style is a little beyond my usual realms, but I do really like how it turned out. I feel like it's done well enough that you can appreciate the symbols and references if you know the book, but it also works as just a kitsch art piece if you're completely unfamiliar with the source material too. I don't think it's super accurate to when a bottle of the stuff shows up in the Hulu series, but it was on screen so briefly and my mind was focusing on other aspects while I was watching, so I didn't get a super good look at it. But I still think it'll suffice well enough despite that. I'm happy with how it turned out, and that's all that really matters, right? Now, then, as for the thoughts I have on the Hulu series that I think need to be shared sooner rather than later. I'll start by going on record to say, as someone that is notoriously hard on book-to-screen adaptions, that I did actually like the LfA series pretty good. I'd say it's about a 7 out of 10, which an exceptionally good score coming from me. It's not my most favorite show of all time, but it's notably better than "just okay," which is historically the highest praise I've ever been able to give a book-to-screen adaption. It had its faults and things I would've done differently if it were up to me, but fortunately, it did an infinitely better job than I was expecting. My main issues, as with all book-to-screen adaptions, come in the form of some of the changes that were made between the book and the screen. Fortunately, this time around the problems I do have are not egregious offenders. Most changes that were made still make sense within the story and while the overall message isn't quite the same as the book, it didn't totally squander what the book was trying to say. All of which are problems that most book-to-screen adaptions suffer from horribly. And while I won't talk too much at length about this (that's for the long-form review later ) I think this has a lot to do with the series being roughly 7-8 hours of content, as opposed to the either extremely rushed 2-hours-or-less a movie would've been, or the more-time-than-we-know-what-to-do-with 13+ hours of...certain book-to-screen adaptions that failed miserably at their job. (*cough* 13 Reasons Why *cough*) As I said, it's not perfect, but I do think as far as allotted time and time-management that they hit something of a sweet spot so that they'd have enough time to give the plot the room it needs to breathe without having so much time that they have to start making stuff up to fill it all. The other thing I'd like to point out is that, honestly, they did what 13 Reasons Why wanted to do way better than that series could ever hope to. They told the story of teenagers experiencing darker themes and elements of life so much more tactfully, and, in my opinion, more realistically. And they didn't wait for a controversy to spike and then do something about it--they didn't bank on the publicity of a controversy. Right from episode one, every episode starts with a warning that this series is meant for an adult audience (because of its themes) and viewer discretion is advised. And at the end of every episode, as the series does featuring smoking and drinking on more than one occasion, they provide resources to visit if you or someone you know has a problem with either of those things. I don't know if the people at Hulu saw what happened to Netflix with 13 RW and learned from their mistakes or if they just knew better, but either way, I'm so glad it was handled so much better, regardless of why or how it happened. As far as recommendations, if you're a John Green and/or Looking for Alaska book fan, I'd say it's definitely worth the watch. For outside viewers...I think you have to really be into the YA drama scene to appreciate it. Just be prepared for some more adult content than you might typically find in a YA movie. It's all done pretty tastefully and the majority isn't there senselessly; most of it serves some kind of purpose to the story, which is why it doesn't bother me (a very prude-ish person) all that much. I think that's everything I feel like needs to be said right now about the series until I can get the long-form review finished. (It's maybe 1/3 of the way done currently...and already getting on the long side ) I have to admit, this does make me more hopeful for the future of book-to-screen adaptions, at least those that end up being handled the way this one was. In fact, I'm actually really hoping that if Turtles All the Way Down, John Green's newest book, ever sees a screen adaption that it's handled in a series form and is done at least as well as LfA was. Time will tell, I suppose. In fact, I believe any day now, Let it Snow, a book that John Green wrote 1/3 of is supposed to have its movie adaption dropped on Netflix. I'm not super confident in Netflix's handling of adaptions for reasons mentioned earlier, but maybe just maybe it'll be okay? ____ Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings I do not own Looking for Alaska and/or associated content ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble | Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

#lookingforalaska #johngreen #hulu #hulu series #lfa #lfa hulu #book #book adaptation #fan art #art #digital art #photoshop #photoshopcc

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outofoxygen · 6 years

Text

Revisiting HOME

I’m revisiting HOME, because I felt I was too unfair in my last review of it. As such, I will be ignoring my last attempt to review it. [Spoilers for HOME]

HOME is an OFF fangame created by FelixtheJudge, who also was the creator of several Don’t Starve Together mods, which are now left sadly unfinished. I will note that Felix has unfortunately passed, and give my regards to those who knew him. I would also like to mention I have nothing against FelixtheJudge himself, and I think the guy was a very talented individual. Now then, preferring not to dwell on depressing matters, I shall turn towards reviewing HOME.

Part 1: Plot Synopsis

HOME is a fangame in which you play as Pablo, or The Judge. After being awoken in Zone 0 from his rest, he goes outside to find The Batter standing before him, who then declares his intent to purify the world. After The Judge applauds his goal, he then marches back inside, only for a premonition of The Batter’s potential for harm to hit him. He then chooses to head off to Zone 1 to warn the Guardian.

Zone 1 mostly plays out similarly, just this time you venture to find Alain (I’ll talk about him later) in the basement of Pentel. You then voyage off to the Meatworks to fight Pentel himself. Of course, you head off to Shachihata, meet The Batter and optionally fight him on a roof, then go off to Alma where you fight Dedan.

Zone 2 also plays out similarly, this time allowing you to wander the residential area instead of being booted out quickly. You then head off to the Library, where Japhet reveals himself on the roof. This time, however, you rescue Valerie (somehow alive) and head off after allowing The Batter to kill him.

I don’t need to repeat myself for Zone 3, do I? This time, you don’t get the pipe minigame though. Sad.

Zone 4 is, however, a new zone. It’s edgy, and it’s full of diseased inhabitants and crazed gunmen. In an OFF fangame. If you haven’t played HOME and haven’t reached Zone 4, let me tell you, I’m not joking about that. The lovable elsen are depressed, diseased, and/or a gun-toting maniac looking to riddle your cats with bullet holes. You fight Shachihata, the apparent postman turned into a crazed burnt general in Zone 4, before heading up to fight the Guardian herself, a kind-of lame Hugo ripoff. Oh sorry, you fight The Witness, a fluffy black cat with an add-on. You’re supposed to snipe the add-on, by the way, because The Witness is overpowered as all living hell. So after suffering through fighting The Witness, our favorite capped, bat-toting Batter runs up and smacks The Witness real hard with his cast-iron.

Then, you’re forced to go on a romp through the purified zones where The Judge decides The Batter is awful, despite being rude and churlish to The Batter before he ran around the purified zones. Well, you finally head off to the Courtroom, a depressing slog.

Anyways, flowery bits aside, you fight The Batter in the end (removing the choice) and you win. There’s two endings, one where the Judge’s party gets wiped in The Batter’s dying moments, leaving The Judge a sick puppy. The other ending is a happy-go-lucky ‘the world got fixed, yay’ that lacks the potency of OFF’s ending.

Part 2: Characters

The Judge - Our favorite enigmatic, eloquent, knowledgeable feline. Unfortunately, it’s hard to keep a character enigmatic whilst keeping them playable, so.. he’s an eloquent, knowledgeable feline. However, The Judge has to pause every five goddamn seconds to get exposition, so he’s an eloquent feline. I guess it works. Either way, he’s The Judge we all know, this time just with a pure-good paint on.

Alain - Here’s where I get to praise HOME for a character. Alain is written entirely as a neutral character. He is only looking out for himself, and he only seems to really care about himself. He’s selfish and starving, and only follows along with The Judge to prevent himself from starving. He is, however, loyal enough to stick around, and in the end chooses to stick around with The Judge and crew. I’d say he turns out well enough in his ending.

Valerie - To be honest, he’s played as The Judge 2.0. Of course, from what we know, Valerie was a shy, soft-spoken cat who enjoyed books and soft, cool colors. However, here, he basically acts like a second Judge. I, to put it bluntly, think it’d be better if he was killed by Japhet. Yeah, The Judge might have sat around on Zone 2′s roof, screaming at the top of his lungs, pretending the echoes belong to someone, someone he used to know, but his party could’ve dragged him off to finish the game. It’d give him a reason to hate The Batter. (Edit for clarification: The reason being: The Batter is just standing around and doesn’t even assist him in helping to remove Japhet from Valerie. That’s what I was thinking when I wrote this.)

Jozlyn - This.. ‘character’ is the anti-Alain. An original addition, Jozyln is a ‘cute’ ditzy lunatic with barely any good character to speak of. She’s annoying, the token girl, and basically serves little purpose other than filling up The Judge’s party. Every time her facesprite appears next to a textbox in the game, I feel like I’ll have a stroke and an aneurysm at similar times. That hideous ‘:3′ she includes next to every. fucking. sentence. is nowhere near charming or endearing, and instead gives me minor brain damage and a serious migraine. Honestly, I hope no one on this Earth likes Jozlyn, because if you like Jozlyn, then I don’t think you know what a good character is.

The Batter - Yet another point where I get angered intensely by HOME’s lacking characterization. The Batter in OFF is a focused and dedicated purifier. His mission is not presented as wholly evil; in fact, it can be viewed as good in some circumstance. However, I hold the stance that The Batter’s mission was entirely neutral, as he did destroy the impurity, but also took down the whole broken world of OFF with him. However, HOME took the liberty of personally raising its middle finger in The Batter’s face, then shooting him in the knees and head. By that, I mean it took no time to examine the good and neutral parts of his mission, and instead painted him as purely evil. The Batter is, even worse, portrayed as a horrendous dick. Yes, The Batter was entirely apathetic to the suffering of elsen. Yes, he clearly didn’t care about the loss of innocent lives. But, in the end, The Batter wasn’t so much of a dick as he was an apathetic stoic until the very end.

The Witness - This character.. she also disgusts me. For a different reason. The Witness is a shoved-in plot device and, unsurprisingly, massive mary sue. For some unknown reason, The Witness is inexplicably overpowered, and cannot suffer damage lest she renders your party entirely wiped by her overpowered abilities. RNG forbid you get a status effect on her, because if you so much as touch her with a single one, she will be ‘targetted’. See, if The Witness is Targetted, she will automatically perform her annoying 100 damage attack, thus causing annoying amounts of damage just because she may have gotten poisoned, stopped, insane.. Just don’t get a single status effect on her, or else she’ll maul you to shit.

Part 3: Basic Enemies

I’ll make this simple: The basic enemies don’t fit in with OFF. At all. Aside from odd style differences at random points, only a few enemies have the hand-drawn and quirky feel of OFF’s enemies. I couldn’t imagine fighting a Burnt and one of HOME’s countless enemies side-by-side. The Plague Doctors, at least, look slightly like they come from OFF.

Part 4: Merchants

Okay. If you’ve read my criticism about merchants from CONFINIUM: Act 1, then you know I hate how that masked chucklefuck always seems to he-he-he his way into every single goddamned fangame from here to Mars. Is it that hard, that physically excruciating to try to think up another merchant who you can’t just copy-paste that whole ‘Show me the colour of your credits’ speech from? Zacharie is a well-made character, and I have no problem with the way he’s written in OFF itself. However, every single fangame has to have him ripped straight from OFF, with a bland ‘amigo amigo he he’ personality.

Oh, and there’s another merchant named ‘Viola’, but I don’t think she’s too important. Especially since I hate her character too, because it’s blander than the taste of bleached cardboard. By the way, I think I mentioned that Viola was a tumor, and I stand by that fully.

Part 5: Lore

It takes place in the world of OFF, so obviously it uses OFF’s lore. Zone 4, also Bordeaux, is basically just a hellhole because a disease came along and screwed over the whole place. Let’s just hurry along to Part 6 so I can finish up.

Part 6: Does This Game Fit In With OFF?

Does this game fit in with OFF.. Does it? I’m partly confused about what to say. There’s points where I think HOME is genuinely clever and enjoyable, and I don’t hate the story. Unlike CONFINIUM: Act 1, I clearly don’t enjoy HOME immensely, but I also don’t hate the fangame, to be honest. I guess it could? But I’m not sure on that.

Part 7: Conclusion

Now that I’ve gotten this far, what else can I say? This revisit just reminded me that it has more than 1 tumor (specifically 4), and it reminded me that there is a few things I like about HOME.

However, would I recommend this fangame? Maybe. Probably. I’d recommend it as an example of a highly polished fangame, and as an example of an okay fangame, but not as an example of a good fangame. There’s better fangames, and I know plenty.

Altogether, play CONFINIUM or NEW instead of HOME if you want. That’s this revisit wrapped up.

#HOME #off #off fangame #a revisiting

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fakesurprise · 7 years

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Stepping Into Truth

I gulp two fingers of scotch, shoving the plastic bottle back into the backseat of my car, my hair still wet from a shower an hour ago that did something to counter the cigarettes I had this morning. I turned twenty one last week; most people would guess me for thirty. Helps that I don’t need to lie for the booze, doesn’t help the contents of my fridge at home. The drink helps with the cold, and stops my hands from shaking a little.

I hate my job. It’s the only thing I’m good at. I pull the old doctor’s handbag out of the passenger seat of my car, close the door carefully. Wouldn’t do for the door to fall off. Bad image. The client is waiting at the door to the home. Two storey house, basement, brown picket fence. Looks like the rest of a cookie-cutter street except the for sale sign is worn almost to nothing in contrast to sold signs down the street. Windows shuttered, lawn overgrown, and the client’s car is parked half a block away.

Moria Larsen is thin and stern, with eyes like scraped chalkboards and an expression to match But she paid the retainer fee up front and judging by her clothing can afford a bonus as well. Pretty much why I showered, that. From the look on her face, my effort doesn’t make much of an impact.

“You’re late, Mr. Dover.”

“Vance.”

“I have been waiting outside for four minutes. You will go inside, do the deed, and that will be that.” She walks past me, giving me a berth. I probably should have shaved as well. Or not slept in my clothing. Moria moves swiftly, the haste perhaps overkill. She doesn’t want to be here, and definitely didn’t want to wait outside. Fair enough, given what happened here. Sometimes all ghosts do is make a wound that never closes.

I walk to the front door, take the key I was given yesterday. It turns in the door, and I push it open. The air smells stale. No lights, but I have a flashlight in my bag and flick it on. I have three others in my bag, some chalk, a few candles. Also a gun I’ve never used. The gun is pretty much for show: I’ve yet to run into a ghost that could be shot. But you never know.

The flashlight is cheap, but the beam is decent. I walk across carpet, scan the living room. The house is mostly furnished; finding a removal company to take everything away is hard after the press has poured over your life with combs meant only for gouging flesh. The gist had been that Moria’s husband left her a week before she had a business trip to attend. She left her son with a sitter. The baby sitter left with his boyfriend for a few hours and got in an accident so never made it back. And her son, at some point, fell down the basement stairs and died. Broken legs, desperate attempts to get out. Windows closed tightly and no one hearing him.

It doesn’t take much to make a ghost. Sometimes the rumour alone can do it. But it doesn’t take much to get rid of them as well: a strong will can do it, and that Moria hadn’t was interesting. I was the third exorcist she’d tried. Also the most expensive; dealing with the dead isn’t fun, and neither is putting them to rest. But the flashlight works, I don’t sense cold spots: not that I would, given my clothing is better suited to the summer and I don’t have much of it.

I shake myself free of the mundane. “Jamel? Jamel Larsen?” I wait. Sometimes they come to their names. Nothing moves, nothing flies toward me. Expensive living room furniture, the kitchen beyond is as sterile as a magazine photo. I head into the basement from the kitchen. One freezer, a pantry, the rest cement floors and unfinished wood walls. My flashlight doesn’t flicker. There are stains on the wooden stairs and the cement floor. The stars aren’t in good condition, the pantry door double-padlocked and the freezer the same. Odd, but I let it go and head back upstairs. The second floor has two bedrooms, bathroom, master bedroom with its own bathroom. I check the spare bedroom and master bedroom first, and then head to the room that belonged to Jamel.

The door opens. The room is plain, like the other bedrooms. White walls, beige carpet, no paintings. The bed covers have rocket ships on them, the only sign the room was used by a child at all.

“Jamel?”

There is an intake of breath, the closest thing to a cold spot yet. I move to the bed, look under it. The ghost is crowded against the wall, pale eyes and skin glowing faintly as he wheezed for air. He looks too scared to haunt anyone, but fear can be a strange master. He moves back against the wood, eyes wide. I move the flashlight slowly. Eight, the same age as when he died. I saw no pictures. Didn’t want to.

But this Jamel is still eight. Chubby, pale, scared. His legs look whole. I flick the flashlight off and stand.

“You want to talk?”

It is almost five minutes before the ghost crawls out from under the bed. I move back to avoid stepping through the ghost as he stands. He’s wearing a t-shirt that’s almost too small, jeans whose button can’t close and covers his belly. His cheeks flare red with a ghostly blush.

I sit down on the bed. After a bit, he sits beside me, not looking over.

“What happened to the other exorcists?” I ask.

“They tried to hurt me,” he whispers. “I scared them away. In the b-b-bbasement, I scared them.”

“You didn’t try and scare me?”

“I don’t like it. Being down there. It scares me.” I glance over. Jamel hugs himself, lets go quickly, refusing to look at me. “And you feel different,” he adds. “Like I couldn’t scare you.”

“Perhaps not. I had a few drinks earlier. That helps.”

“Moria sent you.”

“She was outside. Briefly. Was that why you were hiding?”

“Partly,” the ghost says. The bed creaks as he shifts position. Most ghosts that can move things tend to use it to harm others. I’m not sure he’s even aware of doing it.

“I am good at exorcising ghosts, but I don’t know what happens after that. No one does. I try not to, if I can avoid it. Knowing what happened here could help, if you can tell me.”

The ghost says nothing, his breath a thin wheezing.

“Your mother took to locking up the freezer and the pantry because she had a fat son. That much I can guess,” I say softly, and the ghost turns his head and nods once. “I don’t know when you fell. Or who caused it.”

“The baby sitter. Austin. Mom told him I wasn’t to – to get more fat. Everything would be better when she got home. Like a command. He – the fridge, I... was hungry, and I hate, and he thought mom would – mom would...”

“Hurt him?”

“Maybe? I don’t –.” Jamel is quiet for a bit, hands tight against his belly. He moves them apart when he realizes I’m looking at him. I just wait. “Austin pushed me. He didn’t mean to. I fell, my legs broke. He said it was because I was so fat, said he’d get help. He called his boyfriend. They were going to – to get a doctor they knew. A vet, maybe? Someone to help, and they never came back.”

“They had a car accident. And have left the city, as far as I know. Austin was in a coma for three days; I don’t know about his boyfriend. They were speeding, the police followed, they crashed. Some people think your mom killed you.”

“She – she – she –.” His voice cracks. The floor shakes a little bit.

“She did, without touching you. Shame is a weapon used against children.”

“She wanted me thin, Handsome, like my name. A p – a proper son.” The ghost stands. Swift, angry, though not at me. He pulls his t-shirt off.

The headline of ‘exorcist involved in ghost porn’ goes through my head. I don’t move; most ghosts can’t remove what they wear, in my experience, and I have no idea what might happen if I interrupt. Jamel has another shirt under it, a spandex affair that makes me wince at how tight it is. That his clothing is tied so deeply to his image says too many things.

“Mom wanted to make sure people don’t know I was this fat,” the ghost whispers unsteadily. “I have spandex pants, too, under my pants –.”

“I don’t need to see that,” I say quickly.

The ghost stares at me, and lets out a sound. “I... I didn’t...” He pulls the shirt back on, faster. His face is red, and the rest of him is pink as well.

“I’ve never been subjected to a ghost stripping before. That’s probably scarier than what I’d see in the basement,” I add dryly.

Jamel stares, then lets out a surprised giggle. “Your face was.... I think I surprised you?”

“Yes. I’d rather not be surprised like that again.” I stand. “I can help you, if you let me.”

He stands as well, not moving. I step through the ghost. Being possessed is painful; possessing a ghost even more so. But it takes a moment, and another, and I’m back onto the bed and shaking from the cold.

Jamel stares at me in confusion.

“Shirt,” I get out from between my teeth.

The ghost lets out a small gasp.

“You couldn’t access what you were; I jogged a few things loose.”

Jamel blinks. His shirt fits perfectly now, with no other shirt under it. His pants do as well, and his breathing is less of a wheeze as the ghost moves slowly about the room.

“You can alter your appearance better. Move things, if you need to. And you’re no longer tied to this place.”

“What do I do?” he asks in a small voice.

“What you wish, but nothing that will lead to an exorcist being called. That’s our arrangement.”

He nods. “I could talk to mom. I could explain, if that would – wouldn’t lead to –.” The ghost boy looks away from me. “It would.”

“Probably. Moria has demons enough of her own, I imagine.”

I have no idea if she does, but it helps him a little. He nods. “There is this shop I liked, a candy one....”

And the ghost vanishes a moment later. I let out a breath, take a few more minutes to gather myself, and walk outside. I tell Moria Larsen that it’s done and that she can go inside.

I walk away without waiting for payment, or to find out if she does.

#writing #prose #abstractprompts #poeticstories #stepping through the ghost #haunted

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chrisbowler · 7 years

Text

A Better Approach to Managing Tasks

Before I say a word about Things 3, I’ll address the elephant in the room. I switch between productivity tools … a lot. Likely, too often. There is a cost to switching from one tool to another.

However, I will say that it’s become a fairly quick and easy switch these days. Like email or Twitter clients, I find that I can move from one task management tool to another in a short amount of time these days. That may be partly because I keep my life’s list of tasks and responsibilities pretty lean these days. Much of my home and non-professional areas of responsibility are comprised of a consistent set of recurring tasks.

And so this past year I gave Todoist a try because I was curious about the long term affect of their karma feature. It was an interesting addition to a task management tool, but Todoist itself never felt like a long term solution for me. It’s spartan UI was not endearing (like most cross platform apps) and the feature set was similar to all the other option.

So when I got a first look at Things 3, it sufficiently got my attention.

Some history

If you're not familiar, I did not start using a Mac until a while after Mr. Jobs made his return to Apple. It was 2004 or so when I started paying attention to the company, but it was not until 2006 that I got my first used Mac. And one of the critical aspects that drew me in was the well designed software. And the original version of Things was one of the most appealing apps.

But that feels like a long time ago. Since then, my pattern of managing my work has looked a little like this:

Things > Basecamp/Highrise > OmniFocus > 2Do > Todoist > Things 3

There were a few others in there (anyone recall Remember The Milk?), but these were the major players. One of the main reasons that I moved away from Things was the lack of a good sync solution (this was before Dropbox and working from multiple devices was so common) and how slow they were at improving the app.

But one look at the new version of Things and I immediately thought there was a chance I would give it another shot. Why?

Let me explain.

Things I like about Things 3

The most important aspect of Things 3, the part that immediately grabbed my eye, was how projects are treated. They feel somewhat like a document.

In all the services I’ve used over the years, there has been a gap between managing the actual tasks and the information that is required to work on those tasks. There always needed to be a secondary piece of software required. That might be apps like Yojimbo or Evernote or Ulysses, or it might be parts of the macOS (files/folders in Finder).

Things 3 is the first tool that made me think there was a chance I could handle it all in one place. First, any project or area can have different content types. You can add comments to a project or a task, including smart links to content in other apps. You can add tasks, sections, and checklists to a project or area. And best of all, you can easily move stuff around.

This is a big improvement for me.

Here are a few of the other things I like about this app:

• you can have checklists within a task • it’s super keyboard friendly • multiple windows make daily/weekly planning real nice • and one unexpected feature that got my attention right away, how dates are handled ◦ you can have dates or deadlines or both

◦ when you want to work on something is different than when you have a hard due date ▪ the first allows you to include intention in your task list, where as the second still gives you the ability to set a hard line for yourself ▪ and so, incomplete tasks (without a deadline) just move to the next day • plus, you can set reminders (alarms) at specific times

This last note is such a breath of fresh air to this genre of tools. Previously, I would grow frustrated with my tools because my intentions would result in a growing list of overdue tasks. Now, the list just rolls over to the following day.

As Drew Coffman says:

In Things, repeating tasks placed in the Today menu simply move to the next day when unfinished. No angry overdue colors, no need to rearrange dates. The Today list simply moves forward, ready to be viewed and accomplished.

The treatment of dates and how projects or areas feel like a document are what caught my attention. But this is also one of the most well designed, delightful macOS apps I’ve used in a while. It gives me a similar feel to Ulysses … a feeling that gets me thinking it’ll be in my dock for a long while.

Things I don’t like about Things 3

It’s not perfect though. Some of the vertical spacing is funny (see the calendar entries compared to a task). And although projects and areas feel like a document, they’d feel even more so if it supported Markdown formatting in the notes.

Last, it’s limited in terms of creating custom views. However, Things has always been an opinionated tool with less functionality. The overall experience of the third version is so solid, it overcomes any lack that I’ve felt in my usage.

I’m solely onboard with it as my primary tool.

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elrondsscribe · 8 years

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The Seventh Avenger: Chapter 1

Nothing here's mine, of course. Tolkien and Marvel Studios own it all.

April 21, 2012

Glorfindel let himself into his apartment and hung up his keys on the rack next to the door. He set his phone down on the counter by the sink, opened the dishwasher to retrieve a clean glass, and retrieved an open jug of distilled water from the refrigerator. He drank deeply, the cool water soothing his dry throat.

He had been running, partly because it was a beautiful day but mostly because he'd needed the exercise to loosen himself up for the day's exercise routines. Now that his profession was so demandingly physical, he had to take better and more intentional care of his body than he'd had to in a few centuries. He quite relished the challenge.

He was just about to go for a much-needed shower when his senses belatedly went on the alert. He stiffened, and looked around.

Someone uninvited was in the house - was in fact in the next room, which was the living room. A tall, completely bald black man with a patch over his left eye was sitting comfortably on the couch holding a book. "You know, I used to love fantasy novels when I was in high school," he said conversationally. "Maybe that's why I still believe in heroes."

Glorfindel could honestly say that he had not had a genuine surprise like this for a solid decade. "Should I know you?" he asked suspiciously.

"You don't?" The man with the patch finally looked up and turned his head so that he was facing Glorfindel directly. "I'm surprised. Didn't you save my ungrateful ass from, to quote you directly, 'a Houseless in service to the Enemy' near forty-three years ago?"

And then Glorfindel remembered the lean, long-limbed boy who had come within an inch of death and worse that hot summer night. "You are Nicholas Fury," he said, and cocked his head. "I didn't recognize you at first; you've changed much since then."

The Man Nicholas Fury looked gave him a searching look. "You haven't."

Glorfindel's mouth tightened. "Is there a reason you are here, Mr. Fury?" he asked sharply.

But the Man smiled. "Now we're getting somewhere," he said, and he shut the book and turned the cover toward Glorfindel. "I'm now the director of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division, or SHIELD."

Glorfindel tensed, and wondered briefly if now after all these years he would be exposed. "What is SHIELD?" he asked warily.

Fury tucked the (rather large) book he'd been reading under his arm and got up. As he came into the kitchen Glorfindel saw that he was also holding a folder. "SHIELD is an international extra-governmental counter-terrorism intelligence agency," he said. "Our focus is on protection - specifically, protecting the world from alter-natural threats, and from alter-natural secrets they're not ready to hear yet."

And with these words he swept the book from under his arm and laid it on the kitchen table, and its title, The Lord of the Rings: One Volume, gleamed in large gold letters.

Glorfindel stared at the book and pursed his lips, trying to hide his unease. "Secrets people aren't ready to hear?" he asked. "This work -" he pointed to the book. "- is known the world over - been translated into heaven only knows how many languages."

"It's even been made into a motion picture," said Fury. "You probably already know there's another one scheduled to come out in November."

"That's the point," said Glorfindel. "Hobbits and Elves and Dwarves are popular everywhere -"

"Isn't that convenient," rumbled Fury.

Glorfindel became silent. He couldn't afford vehement denial.

"Then, on the other hand, maybe not," Fury went on. "See, a little while back, I remembered what you said to me that night. I started doing a little research - Fellowship, Silmarilllion, Unfinished Tales, Book of Lost Tales, Peoples of Middle-Earth. Hell, I even went through online forums and fan articles. I had a theory, see, based on what you said."

Glorfindel gritted his teeth.

"Like I said, I did some digging," said Fury. "And I found this story about an Elf called Glorfindel. He came back from the dead and was sent back to Middle-Earth as an emissary of the Valar, like Gandalf was later on. Glorfindel, I hear, was an extraordinary warrior, but he was even more than that. He could send Sauron's most terrifying minions running like a bunch of dormice just by showing up."

In spite of his worries, Glorfindel found his lips curling. "I wouldn't quite say that," he hedged.

"Too humble?" asked Fury with a smirk. "Not surprised."

Caught. Red-handed.

"Is there something in particular you need?" snapped Glorfindel.

"Well, I'm here for two things," said Fury. "The first one you already took care of - admitting to, you know, that." He gestured to the large volume. "You haven't been nearly as careful as you should about trying to protect your secret."

Glorfindel gulped. "What do you mean?"

Fury opened his folder, and began drawing papers and photos from it one by one. "Taylor Alexander, principal dancer with the New York City Ballet for three years, been with the company for ten. Laurence Matthews, flute teacher in Maryland for twenty-eight years until a fatal car accident in 1971. Adam Bartlett, promising intelligence agent during the Second World War, killed in action in 1943. Jonathan Davis, professional photographer that went down with the Titanic after nearly thirty years in business. Rare photo of Samuel McCarson, famed abolitionist and post-war Reconstruction activist, killed in a riot in 1875 - you have no idea how many strings I had to pull to get that one -"

Glorfindel felt his heart come into his mouth as all his last aliases were displayed one by one.

"- and those are just the identities we have photos for," Fury went on. "We've got painted portraits of a Bernard Mandeville, a Herman John Walker, a Raymond Vandeleur, and a Charles Williamson. I won't bore you with the entire list, but you get the idea, right?"

Glorfindel's jaw was tight. "What do you want from me?"

"What do I want from you?" Fury shook his head. "No, that's not the question here. The question here is, what do you want from me? See, there aren't too many people even in the intelligence community who know about all this -" he pointed to all the photos and documents on the table. "But when it comes to secrets, two's plenty and three's a crowd. You dig what I'm getting at?"

And just like that, when he'd thought things couldn't get worse, they'd worsened. "You're not the only one who's guessed about me, have you?" asked Glorfindel.

"I'm willing to bet I'm not," said Fury. "So here's the deal: I can make you disappear from every record about you that exists - SHIELD's good like that. Nobody'll ever find you - or any others of your kind, I might add -" Glorfindel let out a small groan. "- the way I did."

"Should have known I wouldn't be the only one," sighed the Elf, rubbing his neck again. "What's the catch? And don't play coy with me, I know there's a catch."

"Not a catch, per se," said Fury, his single visible eye gleaming in amusement. "Just a favor I'd like to ask, which you're actually free to turn down if you really want to. I do owe you that."

"What's the favor?" asked Glorfindel.

Without a word, the Man laid down the folder and turned it toward Glorfindel, who raised his eyebrows at the title, printed in large black letters under a logo designed like an eagle. "The Avengers Initiative?"

"Call me an idealist," Fury's expression was enigmatic. "Earth's mightiest heroes, coming together to fight the battles we couldn't."

Glorfindel opened the folder, and his jaw fell. "These are your other candidates?"

Fury's smile was shark-like. "You got an idea, now, what I'm asking you for?"

A slow grin spread across the Elf's face. He looked back up at Fury. "If I agree to this, may I ask a small favor of you?"

April 21, 2012

A bright yellow sun with eight rays set inside a larger circle of deep forest green glowed on Fury's office wall.

"So he actually wants to use the original Golden Flower device?" asked Agent Maria Hill, gazing at the icon.

"He said he was ready to 'step out of the shadows'," said Fury. "Thought it was 'time for the age of marvels to begin.'" His tone turned mocking at the last words.

Hill was not fooled. "You're enjoying everything about this, aren't you?" she asked, arching her eyebrows at her superior.

Fury's single eye glinted. "Maybe. Get the thing put on a suit of armor."

Hill took a look at the numbers underneath the image. "A suit of armor for a seven-foot-two creature out of an adventure novel. Should I put in an order a sword?"

"What else would he use?" snorted her superior.

She shook her head. "You know the Council wouldn't be happy to hear you're still working on Phase One."

Fury fixed his eye on Hill. "Sure they wouldn't, if they knew jack about it."

[From the classified personal file of Director Nicholas J. Fury]

May 1: Destruction of Project PEGASUS; arrival of hostile Asgardian force identified as Loki; brainwashing of unknown number of PEGASUS participants including Agent Barton and Dr. Erik Selvig.

May 2: Reactivation of Phase One: Avengers Initiative - call in and brief the following candidates: Captain Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, Dr. Bruce Banner, and Laurëfindel/Glorfindel (alias Taylor Alexander).

"This is out of line, Director," said Councilman Malick sternly. "You're dealing with forces you can't hope to control."

"You ever been in a war, Councilman?" snapped Director Fury, gazing up at the group of screens in front of him in a virtual conference room. Each of the screens displayed a real-time image of a member of the World Security Council. "In a firefight? Did you feel an overabundance of control?"

"You saying that this Asgard declared war on our planet?" demanded the American Councilman.

"Not Asgard, Loki," corrected Fury.

"He can't be working alone," interjected Councilwoman Hawley, a representative from the United Kingdom. She was writing busily on a notepad. "What about the other one, his brother?"

"Our intelligence says Thor is not a hostile," said Fury. "But he's worlds away. We can't depend on him for help. It's up to us."

"Which is why you should be focusing on Phase Two," said Councilman Malick. "It was designed for exactly -"

"Phase Two isn't ready," Fury cut him off. "Our enemy is. We need a response team."

"The Avengers Initiative was shut down," Councilman Malick's voice held a hint of warning.

"This isn't about the Avengers," said Fury dismissively.

"We've seen the list," said Councilman Singh, arms folded.

"We're running the world's greatest security network," Councilman Malick leaned forward. "And you're going to leave the fate of the human race to a handful of freaks."

Fury's frown deepened. "I'm not leaving anything to anyone," he said emphatically. "We need a response team. These people may be isolated - unbalanced, even - but I believe with the right push they can be exactly what we need."

"You believe?" asked Councilwoman Hawley, with a smile that held no warmth.

"War isn't won by sentiment, Director," added Councilman Malick.

"No," said Fury, and his voice rang with conviction. "It's won by soldiers."

Yeah, this chapter was slow. And brief. Sorry. The next ones will make up for it, though I can't guarantee they'll come very quickly.

Couple things straight off the bat - in case you couldn't tell in the first chapter, I've made Glorfindel the focus of my story, not Legolas. He's a lot older, more powerful, and in my opinion more the Avenger type than Legolas (at least canon Legolas). He will also be by far the oldest Avenger.

Also, I referenced the real 2012 schedule for the NYCB to see what a real dancer in Glorfindel's position would have been doing at this point - which on this particular day is nothing, since the winter season ended February 26 and the spring season didn't begin until May 1. [Which means that Glorfindel will get the call to come in at a really bad time . . .]

#elrondsscribe #fanfiction on tumblr #fanfiction #fanfic #avengers #lotr #lord of the rings #glorfindel #glorfindel the avenger #the seventh avenger

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nebris · 5 years

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My Education in the Patriarchy

Garry Wills

In 1962, I began teaching ancient Greek in the graduate school of the Johns Hopkins University. I was twenty-seven and looked younger, and some of my graduate students were almost as old and looked older, so I tried to adopt the manner of a Hopkins “Herr Doktor Professor,” hoping that would give me some authority in the classroom. In my first course, which was on Homer’s Iliad, an argumentative student kept up a disagreement on one Homeric point. When I could not convince her of my position, I huffily quoted Dr. Johnson to her: “I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.”

When I told my wife, Natalie, about that day’s class, she was shocked. I had used my position to humiliate a student who was just trying to get to the truth. When I told her the student was a woman (the sole woman student I had amid that hostile university atmosphere of 1962—undergraduate “co-eds” would not be admitted to Hopkins for another eight years), Natalie was distressed. I was not only humiliating a student but bullying her. She asked how I would feel if that happened to our then one-year-old daughter, Lydia, when she went to college. After being put in my place by Natalie, I tried to stay there (it is very helpful to marry someone smarter than yourself).

Even after that correction, I was ill-equipped to cope with the presence of women in a university. There were none in my classes when I was a graduate student at Yale, where they would not be admitted as undergraduates until six years after I got my doctorate. The fact that there was a woman in my graduate class at Hopkins was an oddity, as it would have been at many of the major universities in America. Women had been admitted to graduate programs at Hopkins beginning in 1907, but in a probably apocryphal but typical story, the great classicist Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve (1831–1924) complained that he could not teach the racy Athenian comic dramatist Aristophanes to women. His class was known for its scholarly thoroughness in dragging to light all the slyly dirty jokes in the plays. If he was forced to admit a woman to his Aristophanes class, he said, she would have to sit behind a screen, presumably so he could not see her blush and she could not see him squirm. That was the condescending attitude toward “the fair sex” of the day.

But our day at Hopkins was not much better than Gildersleeve’s. Though I kept the respect instilled by my wife for the one woman in my class, I did not appreciate the effort that student had had to make just to get there. I learned a little about that at my first faculty meeting to allot fellowship money to applicants for the department. When the résumé came up of a woman who clearly merited admission, our archaeologist, John Young, said that no fellowship money should be given to her. “That is just throwing away money that should be saved for those who will advance the profession. Why give money to a woman who, as soon as she becomes pregnant, will drop the profession and start taking care of her babies?” Young was no shining star of the classics world himself, and I would find over the years that some of the people most intent on showing that women could not meet high standards had barely met those standards themselves, if at all. Yet I did not argue with Young. Since I knew that the head of our small department was with him on this, I went along with the policy. No woman received any money over the six years I was in the department.

I knew that opposing the admission of women to protect the standards of the classics profession was a phony argument. I had come to Hopkins from the inaugural year of Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, where I was part of the first class of six junior fellows (young scholars of promise given time off from teaching to develop their research). There were three fellows from America and three from abroad—one from Germany, one from England, one from Italy. The Italian, and our lone woman, was Anna Morpurgo. She was the youngest and clearly the brightest of us. She knew more languages than we did and knew them better.

One day, when we were debating which of Dostoevsky’s novels we considered his greatest, we were struck to find that she had not read any of them. But we soon learned the reason. She said she was waiting until she learned Russian to read him—which, we suspected, might happen tomorrow. Though all the members of this group except me went on to bright careers in philology, she became a particularly dazzling light at Oxford. Even while spending her year with us, she was making the world’s first lexicon of Mycenaean Greek, (“Linear B,” which had been deciphered just five years earlier), and she would prove later on, at Oxford, that the famed Hittite Hieroglyphics were not, in fact, Hittite. I cannot imagine any standards high enough to exclude (or even to faze) Anna.

My next full-time teaching job, after a decade as an adjunct professor at Hopkins, was in the history department of Northwestern University as its first Henry Luce Professor of American History. The opportunities available to women had changed dramatically in that interval. They were being hired for all kinds of jobs—never, of course, in proportion to their numbers in the population, but with increasing frequency. Once, when Natalie and I got on a commuter flight with a woman pilot (at a time when the major airlines were not hiring women), she said, “We were never safer,” since we knew that this pilot had to pass twice the scrutiny any male pilot did. Even advances for women, then, were also inhibitors: they had to earn it twice over.

The Northwestern history department that I joined in 1980 had a few women on the faculty, but two of them were especially overworked. There was such a demand, beyond their fields of American and Renaissance history, for their help—with women’s study groups and for individual counseling of women students—that the women on faculty kept asking for more women to be hired. That should not have been a problem, since there were plenty of candidates, as well as pressure from feminists to add female members of faculty as a mark of diversity.

That very demand made some uneasy about hiring women—or, for that matter, blacks or gays: Would we be seen as hiring them primarily because they were minorities? (Not that women are a minority except in the professional and governing ranks.) So there was especially intense scrutiny given to any of the women brought up for consideration and, once again, the most dubiously qualified male members of the faculty were often the most severe judges of candidates. This process was repeated often enough that our two star women faculty members soon left Northwestern and accepted offers at another school where they would not be overburdened in a department with so few women. That is, we lost two superb women colleagues because we would not hire completely qualified women who might not have been quite at their level.

This dynamic became clear to me when it was my turn to lead a search for our diplomatic historian post. The position had been empty after the retirement in 1980 of Richard Leopold, who had educated many political figures in his popular courses on international relations. Other searches had failed because diplomatic history was in that time a sensitive, if not radioactive, field: it had been in turmoil over cold war history, since bright young revisionists had put much of the blame for competition and escalation of nuclear threats on the United States, rather than laying all of the responsibility on the Soviet Union and its allies. To hire an eminent scholar—even if he (and they were still all men) were willing to move from the embattled post he had won—could be read as siding with the establishment, while hiring a younger voice might be seen, rightly or wrongly, as joining the revisionists.

Two searches had already foundered on this problem by the time my turn came to lead another. Prior effort had revealed that the least controversial senior professors were not interested in leaving their eminent posts, and the younger and more controversial ones had not found a receptive audience among my colleagues. Rather than repeat the earlier baffled searches, I corresponded with prominent older scholars who were above the field’s polarization, asking if they had recent or current students who deserved consideration and might be free of the bitterness of their seniors. After getting almost a dozen recommendations, I started reading just-finished or almost-finished dissertations of young candidates.

I circulated the more promising of these pieces of work to other members of the search committee, we conferred, and we agreed on what seemed an ideal candidate. She came with an enthusiastic recommendation from a famous scholar at the University of Chicago, who called her the best doctoral student he had ever had. Her dissertation was not complete, but it was already so solid that we sent it around the whole department and invited her to Evanston for an interview. She was asked searching questions, which was the praiseworthy practice of our history department, and she answered them carefully but timidly. She was understandably intimidated by a barrage of people determined to show they were not going to hire a woman unless she was above any suspicion of being chosen mainly or even partly because of her gender. Some said granting a position on the basis of an unfinished dissertation would set a bad precedent. I argued that her other work and interests, along with the championing of her adviser at the University of Chicago, made it certain that she would get the doctorate with honors. But she was rejected. I was so disgusted that I resigned my tenure as the Henry Luce Professor at Northwestern. I had spent most of a year hunting for this superbly qualified woman. I saw the same consideration at work that made us lose the two A-level women professors.

The university president, Arnold Weber, invited me to lunch to talk over my resignation. He asked me what had made me take such a rare step. I said I could not do the tasks rightly asked of me as a tenured professor: the time-consuming meetings for hiring, for firing, for tenure advancement, for curriculum changes, for debate on affirmative action and diversity. I told President Weber that these were appropriate debates, but I did not want to be perpetually embroiled in them. He said I could be excused from such debates and still maintain my tenure; but I did not think that was fair to other tenured members of the department. I said I could maintain a light teaching load as an adjunct professor spared all duties of tenure while I concentrated on writing books and long articles of political reportage for The New York Review of Books.

After observing the problems women encountered at the elite colleges where I taught, I noticed similar problems in the protest groups and radical communes I observed as a journalist covering the social turmoil around opposition to the Vietnam War. One commune in the Boston area was a kind of halfway house between the academy and the antiwar movement; several of its members were students or professors at Harvard. They claimed to be free of the “personality cult” found in other insurgent movements, but in fact they found it hard to ensure that they took turns at the “worker” chores with perfect equality. The most publicly recognized member was asked to write manifestos and recruit well-known participants to demonstrations, which made it hard for him to do his share of buying food, cooking, washing dishes, house-cleaning, ironing clothes, and taking out garbage. I was not surprised to find that the minority of women in the commune were doing a majority of these menial tasks.

In a different commune I wrote about in Canada, I found a tougher world of military deserters and draft refusers, and there as well I saw a natural leader doing the propaganda work of these activists, while the women complained that the political revolution their group was calling for did not reflect the sexual revolution actually happening in the world outside that of these radicals. The women were expected to service the men sexually, and they made little headway with their protests other than deserting the deserters.

The fact that such sexism was common on the left as well as the right really came home to me at the progressive Institute for Policy Studies in Washington. I had become a friend of the co-founders, Dick Barnet and Marc Raskin, who put me on the institute’s board. One of the most stylish and winning young fellows there was Ivanhoe Donaldson, the campaign genius of “Snick,” as the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was known, who then became the campaign genius of Marion Barry, the District of Columbia mayor. Both Barry and Donaldson went to prison later—Barry for a few months on a drug possession charge, Donaldson for several years on an embezzlement conviction (he stole nearly $200,000 from city funds).

At the time I met him, though, Donaldson was a star of the early civil rights victories. He liked to tease a young fellow at the IPS for her earnest feminism. She had taken an early stand for a married woman’s keeping her maiden name, and Donaldson used to chant her “important” name as a way of lampooning her feminism. She called him a clear misogynist, but I wasn’t sure. Then, one night when I had been arguing with Donaldson and said I needed to drive home to Baltimore, he wanted to keep the argument going and invited me to dinner, saying I could spend the night in the apartment of a rich patron (he seemed always to have one) who was on a trip to Africa. On the way to dinner, we stopped by the home of a black congressman, who had a liberal white South African woman guest. She was defending a gradual elimination of her homeland’s apartheid system, and when she tried to shout down Donaldson’s objections, he slapped her, hard. He and I were thrown out of the house. Then I was ready to believe the common complaint of women that many of the civil rights leaders were sexual chauvinists.

The commune where I found the most nearly equal division of labor between men and women was different from others in that its pacifism was professedly religious. But this commune in Baltimore had different problems in sharing its workload. The political demonstrations it organized sometimes led to arrests, trials, or imprisonment. Those who were, at any time, engaged in an “action,” as they called it, or in court, or in jail, had to have their domestic assignments taken up by the members who remained at the communal home. And when their numbers were reduced in this way, the less committed members reverted to the stereotypes of “women’s work,” which reasserted themselves even here.

That I found women in these very different situations—the academy and the communes—having to fight for their rights is, with hindsight, not unusual, given the constraints that women faced until very recently. When my wife graduated from Sweet Briar in 1955, for example, there were few professional paths for women in her small town of Wallingford, Connecticut. They could marry and have children, a subordinate role economically, or they could try to make a living on their own—but as what? Friends of hers had to choose from a small range of possible jobs: some were teachers, some nurses, some nuns (who were themselves liable to work as teachers or nurses).

Natalie wanted to leave her small town, but her options were few. One path that was available was to become an airline stewardess (now called a flight attendant). But here, too, since the supply of women was ample, the demands of the airlines could be high: in those days, they hired only single women, chosen partly for looks, preferably with a college education. If a stewardess married, she lost her job. This made stewardesses a cut above a Playboy Bunny and a cut below a Miss America—all three emblems of that paternalistic era. An airline ad of the time promised “We really move our tail for you,” and showed attractive stewardesses serving food and drinks to airplane passengers like airborne Bunnies.

When Natalie went to Eastern Airline’s stewardess school in Florida, she was taught how best to use cosmetics for her face type. Though there was no swimsuit competition, her male interviewer asked her to wrap her skirt tight around her hips and derrière and turn around (it was a “New Look” skirt, voluminous and mid-calf, popularized in the 1950s by Christian Dior). The pretense for this demand was that it showed she could fit down the aisle of the plane, but it was clearly a way to grade her figure. As objectionable as this all was, I am glad she ran the gauntlet, since I would not have met her otherwise. She did not move her tail for me on the plane; she moved her mind, criticizing the book I was reading.

Today, though it is only a short time ago, it can be hard to remember the condition of women then. My wife and daughter often compared the differences for women in each of their generations. Natalie went to Sweet Briar, a women’s college, and became a stewardess. Lydia went to the recently gender-integrated Yale and became a literary agent. After Natalie and I were married, she could not get credit at our bank without my authorization. Just as I had seen at Hopkins and Northwestern, well into the 1960s, women were considered bad risks for professional positions.

At a 1992 American Bar Association meeting that I attended in San Francisco, there was a crowded lunch for the Bar’s women’s caucus. A speaker at the dais asked those in attendance to stand if they were, or had been, the first woman to be the editor of her law school’s journal, to be a partner in her firm, to be the dean of a law school, to be a state judge, a federal judge, a member of her state’s supreme court. By the end of this roll call, hundreds of women were standing, and this had all happened in their lifetimes. Nearly the same thing could have occurred at meetings of doctors, business executives, military leaders, or religious leaders. When I started using the library of the divinity school at Northwestern in 1980, almost all the students there were men preparing for the ministry. Today, most of the students I see in the library are women.

Alter the status of women and you have affected all the most intimate and significant nodes of life: the relation of wife to husband, mother to child, sister to sibling, daughter to parents, worker to coworkers, and employee to employer (or vice versa). This change in women’s standing that happened what seems like yesterday, and is still happening today at an accelerated rate, is the most profound revolution that can take place in a society. It takes and gives energy to all the other reforms of our time. After all, the civil rights movement involves black women, the LGBTQ movement concerns lesbians, the disability rights movement affects disabled women, health care reforms implicate women care-givers and the objects of their care. Raise any part of our society to a more just condition and justice for women is centrally at issue. It is the reform of all reforms and the basic measure of our progress.

November 4, 2019, 10:45 am

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/11/04/my-education-in-the-patriarchy/

#The Sisterhood #feminism

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ciathyzareposts · 5 years

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Game 323: Ultizurk II: The Shadow Master (1992)

Ultizurk II: The Shadow Master

United States

Independently developed and published

Released in 1992 for DOS

Date Started: 26 March 2019

“This is the one–this is the one I’ll be remembered for,” Ed Wood says, completely unironically, as he revels in the cheesy opening monologue at the premier of Plan 9 from Outer Space. This happens in Tim Burton’s film, anyway, but it’s entirely in keeping with the personality of Wood–a man so in love with making movies that he didn’t much care how he made them, whether anyone ever saw them, or whether they were any good. If you’ve ever seen Plan 9–and if you haven’t, you really should–you probably agree that, as bad as it is, there’s an inescapable earnestness about the thing. That’s why it makes all those “so bad it’s good” lists.

I think of Ed Wood occasionally when I encounter an RPG developer who kept cranking ’em out despite what must have been virtually no audience, and Robert “Dr. Dungeon” Deutsch of Allentown, Pennsylvania, must be preeminent among these. Ultizurk II is not his second game but something like his twentieth: the series went through at least nine Zurks (maybe 10) and three Heritage of Zurks before the first Ultizurk, and he had other series called Gork, Babysitter, and Spookhouse. I think Ultizurk I was his first non-text game, but it’s tough to get information on a lot of them. Whenever you see a ludography for Dr. Dungeon, it tends to include a lot of games that were unfinished or existed only as a title.

The Shadow Master begins with a sci-fi framing story.

There is evidence that Deutsch, unlike Wood, eventually got good at his craft. By Ultizurk III (1993), he’s managed to nearly mimic the Ultima VI engine, and his re-release of Madman! (2017) plays a bit like a combination of Ultima VII and Diablo. (Both of them are still pretty weird, but we’ll deal with that when we reach them.) But in these first couple of Ultizurk games, he’s just starting out with graphical interfaces, learning as he releases, and he has quite a bit to learn. Ultizurk I had monsters that couldn’t move from their squares. He’s conquered that–perhaps overly so–in time for this game, but it still has plenty of problems. And yet, like the first one, there’s a kind of goofy earnestness about the game that makes me like it more than it deserves.

Add caption

Despite sounding like parodies, both the Zurk and Ultizurk series are completely straight games that pay homage to, rather than make fun of, their inspirations. Both series feature the same persistent protagonist, who (I gather) becomes a “grandmaster” over the course of the Zurk series. But every time he arrives in a new world, the teleportation process has stripped him of his skills and knowledge, and thus he has to build himself up from Level 0 again. In the first game of this series (which I played about a year ago), he helped King Eldor combat an invasion of monsters by re-powering an ancient race of servant robots. At the end, the protagonist’s efforts to return to his own world are interrupted by an old enemy called the Shadow Master (the antagonist in Zurk II, I gather) who has his own intentions for the Grandmaster.

The introduction to Ultizurk II sets the game, like the first one, in a blend of fantasy and science fiction. The computer at Andromedan Relay Station #5 is in the middle of a report to its superiors, indicating that “eco-system project 1752RG9 is entering phase 11 decline” because of an imbalance in the water cycle. The life forms on the planet are dying. The computer is advising that the project be terminated, when suddenly its monitor beacons show that two “unknown bipedals” have arrived. It cancels the termination to monitor the events.

The character arrives.

There’s no character creation. The Grandmaster begins with 85 hit points, no experience, 50 sling stones, and 5 rations of food. Nearby, he finds the Shadow Master, or a projection of the Shadow Master, who says that they are on a planet in the “Arcturian Star System,” although somehow in parallel realities. Each one of them will be working on a quest to power up some machines with crystals, which will somehow get them back to Earth, and whoever achieves it first will become the new Guildmaster. The Shadow Master suggests that the two competitors confer now and then to trade clues.

Despite the planet’s water crisis, the Shadow Master is standing next to an overflowing fountain.

The opening area turns out to be a small, deserted city teeming with monsters that the player must dodge while desperately trying to find some equipment. Eventually, among the buildings, you find some more rations, sling stones, a sling to go with them, and a club. Monsters are pretty tough, partly because their movement is tied to the game clock rather than to the passage of rounds. Thus, depending on the speed of your machine (or, of course, emulator), monsters might flit all over the screen in between any two of your own movements or attacks. But you don’t want to set the speed too low because it seems to exacerbate the game’s persistent failure to read many of your inputs. But it also caches every keypress that it does read, meaning that you don’t want to hold down any of the movement keys because that will lead to a situation where your character bumps into an object for 40 minutes while you write your blog entry and periodically check back to see if the buffer has cleared yet.

Hurling sling stones at a “rock troll.” Other enemies include “desert gryphons” and “sand stabbers.”

Another problem is that the author had not yet figured out how to realistically block ranged attacks with obstacles. Monsters capable of missile attacks–and a lot of them seem to spontaneously acquire this ability–can hurl rocks or whatever through trees and walls and even from off screen. If you don’t want to waste your own limited supply of sling stones, you have to make your way to them under bombardment and beat them with your club. I died a lot during the first couple of hours. Fortunately, “death” has you immediately resurrected next to the Shadow Master with no loss of items or attributes.

Finding items in the opening city.

During your explorations, you come to realize that many of the plants on the ground can be harvested for their herbs, yellow and blue ones healing you and green ones causing monsters to freeze for a few rounds. Other items that you find include a tent, a watch, and a map. Using the map gives you a little auto map of the area. Using the tent has you sleep for the night and restore all hit points. This is something that you want to do every night whether you need it or not, because the game simulates darkness (a la the early Ultimas) by having the window close in around you, making it a nightmare to try to find anything. Best to just sleep until morning. Resting also levels you up, which gives you more hit points and I guess maybe combat skill.

Camping with the tent at night.

There are other issues with the interface. My character icon looks like a woman in a track suit. Half of the screen is wasted until you bring up the inventory. The inventory screen only lets you “ready” one item at a time, meaning that either it doesn’t support armor (I haven’t found any yet) or you just have to trust that armor items in your inventory are doing something. If you pick up an item, you can only ever drop it on a tiled floor, where it will then block movement. On the positive side, the game follows the Ultima convention of mapping each action to a key and also displays valid current commands on the screen. Targeting, for both attacking and using the “Look” command, works pretty well, although I wish the game remembered the last enemy you targeted.

The game tells me that the object in front of me is a “sign” but offers no command for reading it.

Eventually, you exhaust anything to do or find in the first city. Other than the Shadow Master, there are no NPCs to talk with, although the manual suggests they’ll show up eventually and will (as in the first installment) respond to the Ultima IV prompts of NAME and JOB.

Once you’ve explored enough, conferring with the Shadow Master gives more clues to the main quest. He believes that returning to Earth requires you to find five orbs and place them in a machine in a nearby building. Furthermore, he believes that each orb will be found by using a “mind machine” to briefly enter some kind of dreamworld. (As with Ultizurk I, there’s a faint Martian Dreams influence on the plot.) The mind machines, in turn, run on crystals found in the dungeons. I’m glad he figured all that out because I never would have gotten it.

He’s basically the most helpful person to ever have the title “Shadow Master.”

Ultimately, the game world consists of several outdoor areas, or cities, linked by long, winding, maze-like dungeons. In dungeons, the problems with enemies is multiplied. They can fling missiles at you through walls that take you hundreds of steps to circumvent to bash their skulls. I discovered the hard way that I needed to level up several times and bring plenty of herbs before attempting the dungeons.

Wandering the dungeon. All of these enemies can attack me at range despite the walls.

Weirdly, the map itself doesn’t work in the dungeons, but “mixing” a yellow herb produces an automap. The mechanic is so illogical that I feel the programmer must have been compensating for some inability to port the same code used outdoors to the indoor environment, but for the life of me I can’t imagine what the problem would have been. Anyway, the map just shows the dungeon layout, not exits, so you still have to wander around to find those. With the movement issues I described above, I found it easier to save at the entrance and reload when I hit dead ends rather than retrace my steps.

You think he could have made the map fill more of the screen?

Ultimately, I found the first three crystals in the first three dungeon levels, titled Coprates Chasm, Australis Tholus, and Albor Tholus (all features on Mars and thus strengthening the Martian Dreams connections). I also found a huge cache of rations and sling stones. Not having to engage enemies in melee combat is a big bonus. I returned to the surface, figured out how to drop the crystals in the mind machine in the right order, and entered the dream world.

Using the crystals in the mind machine.

The dream world was a thin set of catwalks through a firmament. To get to the orb, I had to find two “magic star carpets,” which create bridges across the void. I had to use them strategically to reach an otherwise isolated area. Soon, the first orb was mine.

Laying carpet to reach the first orb.

By now, it was clear that, unlike its predecessor, this wasn’t going to be a single-entry game, so I’ll have to continue exploring in future entries. I’ll make a prediction now, though: The Shadow Master will get back to Earth first because I’ll sacrifice time (or some other resource) helping this planet with its water problem. Nonetheless, despite technically losing according to the rules, I’ll get a bunch of extra points for Gryffindor for “having done the right thing” and thus end up the Guildmaster anyway.

I know my description makes the game sound pretty bad. But while the interface issues should make Ultizurk II essentially unplayable, occasionally the developer pulls an original idea out of a hat and manages to lure me along for the next chapter. This is not the one he’ll be remembered for, but there’s still something memorable about it.

Time so far: 4 hours

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/game-323-ultizurk-ii-the-shadow-master-1992/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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jonahgrownsinsp · 7 years

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Lil Peep

Lil Peep’s style is what made him so great and shot him into close mainstream territory of stardom. He inspires me more than anyone. For me his stuff is kind of hard to describe as there's so much to him. I dont want to give a 10,000 word essay of why i like him so much so ill try keep it brief.

His stuff uses a lot of samples guitars and such to give it the sad vibe and a lot of reverb on sounds and his voice. The vocals are really what makes his music, the sound of his voice, the emotion and the way he sings and raps it. A lot of his lyrics are really dark and deep. I find a lot of his stuff really relatable, i dont find that with any other artist. His stuff reminds me a lot of Kurt cobain. I do feel like in a lot of ways, sadly he is my generations version of Kurt cobain and people have made lots of comparisons between the two, other than that they are both dead of course.

There's a lot to his sound and his music. A lot of his stuff before his studio album wasnt greatly produced or mixed. But again i think it adds something rather than taking anything away. It sounds raw, heartfelt and painful. It’s not for everyone but his music takes my favourite genres and combines them. You’ve got the trap style beats but with guitar samples kind of slow and melodic. Then you have dark sounding, sad lyrics that sound like real pain is being relived when he sings.

I think the reason i love music so much is because it’s one of the only things that can really bring people together. I feel like music is a way of people sharing an emotion, and reliving a moment or feeling. And good music can make you relive a painful experience but in the best kind of way. It takes the pain out of the memory or feeling and lets you feel it in its purity. That might not make sense to some but it’s the best way i can describe why i like and have always been obsessed with anything creative and love music. There's a big difference between noise/sound and music. And i think that it’s for the listener to decide that.

His music, i think has an unrivaled level of expression. I love nirvana and the way they sound and i think you get a lot of that with peeps music. The grunge, drowny kind of sound but in a new way. I think even though he’s gone he had a huge impact on the music scene as whole and the trap and hip hop scene as well as fashion.

I find it pretty hard to find exactly why i love his sound so much. But i think the combination of him having great music and being a great person just made me like his music more.

For a comparison i'll be comparing 2 of his songs to each other to show how he progressed through his career and changed/ evolved.

The first song ill be reviewing and looking at is called let me bleed. The song isn’t studio produced and the lyrics are really basic and repetitive, which i dont usually like. The beat has a sampled guitar and the piano might have been sampled as well i’m not sure. It has 808′s but they're quite quiet and mixed to a pretty low volume so the focus is really on his voice and the sound of the piano and guitar. I think this kind of sound overall is what really sets him apart.

You can listen to Let Me Bleed here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0A1vs-ZWAE&ab_channel=.sad%E6%82%B2%E3%81%97%E3%81%84

The second song im going to be looking at is called Avoid and its the last professionally produced song released before he died. I say that because a lot of his unreleased and unfinished stuff got released after he died.

The song starts off with a guitar sound the vocals as well and soon after the beat comes in but it sounds very drowned out. His producers for this song Smokeasac & IIVI did this by having an automation on a reverb effect and taking the dryness out and then increasing it and taking the wetness down as it increases. Most of the beat is fairly just standard trap sounding apart from its very skippy and focus a lot on the vocals. And it also has a lot of open hi hat sounds.However this beat is much more clean sounding as its done in a studio etc and took longer on mixing it.

You can listen to Avoid here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1G86lhKL18&ab_channel=LilPeep

The difference between the 2 beats isn’t that much, but it shows how his music released before was already sounding good. Avoid has more emphasis on the 808 and bass sounds and the guitar samples are toned down a bit and they dont drown out the beat like the other song does. I dont particularly think it drowning the beat out is bad on Let me bleed, but it does show how his music did progress just to sound more clean and well polished. His style stayed very similar throughout his career. And i think that's good as when he gained a larger following as he became more mainstream. The people like me that had been listening to him for a long time still liked his music and didn't have to deal with what not liking his music as his sound changed like a lot of other artists styles do.

Overall i think Peeps music was very unique and he had a big impact on the music industry as a hole and birthed a lot of new artists and helped them grow.Such as Bexey who is from london and met him over here when he played a show. Bexey was making music before but didn't have the following he does now. He gained a following partly though peep as peep featured on his song Nightslayer and a few others.

You can listen to

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douchebagbrainwaves · 7 years

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YOU GUYS I JUST THOUGHT OF THIS

The cure is to visit them. It is just as true today, though few of us know, except about people we've actually worked with. Higher ranking members of the audience, not the teacher; the student's job is not to make the poor richer. '' The second assumption I made because the proportion of spam in fact, Gosling makes it clear that the way to take advantage of new technology. There's a second less obvious component of an angel, but using other people's money, and partly it's yet another consequence of the tree structure that every large organization is going to come up with some other solution. Resourceful January 2012 A few hours before the Yahoo acquisition was announced in June 1998 I took a snapshot of Viaweb's site. Since most powerful people operate on the manager's schedule within the maker's: office hours. But it seems more as if there was any signal left. Understanding all the implications. A web site is different from growing one. As a condition of funding, regardless of its de facto purpose. But no visitor would understand that.

That varies enormously, from $10,000, but to learn and do. But when phrased in terms of the visa that they couldn't have multiple people editing the same code, because it is a particularly useful strategy for making decisions in complex situations because it's stateless. Nor has anyone there ever even sent us an email. There are also two practical problems to consider: jobs, and most decent hackers are capable of that. But if this still bothers you, let me add from experience that the rule against buying stock from founders is a stupid one, this is the third counterintuitive thing to remember about startups: starting a startup in a place with restaurants and people walking around instead of in an office. I realized that somewhere along the line I had stopped believing that.1 What about the other. I didn't miss it at the time. When there are just two or three to one would be $1 million.

Young professionals were paying their dues. It's due to the worshipful attitude biographers inevitably sink into, and who instead let themselves be swept into the intake ducts of big companies. Similarly, if you saw Jessica at a public event, you would never have come to be associated. This Moore's Law is not as frivolous a question as it might seem. You could expand on something the author said, but he seemed right for the next generation of computer technology has often—perhaps more often than, say, every 20th person leaving the polling place who they voted for. But I'm uncomfortably aware that this is a good way to learn about entrepreneurship. What made Google Google is that they worry it won't scale. The millennia-long run of bigger-is-better left us with a lot of people, you've found an adult, whatever their age. Historically investors thought it was. Here parents' desires conflict.

It takes time to come up with new ideas is practically virgin territory. Notes Stiglitz, Joseph. If you look at the options available now, and we've seen a bunch of domain knowledge. In hacking, like painting, work comes in cycles.2 The cause of this problem is that they either have to fire good people, to make great buildings, not to make too much of a problem is already half its solution. Though most VCs are suits at heart, the most obvious examples is Santa Claus. It's not something people tend to be tweaking stuff till it's yanked out of their grip; he'll even run in the wrong direction as well.

The board will have ultimate power, which means all those Boston investors got the first look at Dropbox, and none of the startup ecosystem that few except the participants ever see: investors trying to convince VCs to invest in startups, they might have revenues of $50 million a year or a hundred times as much. I grew up in Pittsburgh and went to work for and apply to join them. When Mark spoke at a YC dinner this winter he said he wasn't trying to start a startup that has to be good at programming, and learn a lot about why startups are most productive at the very beginning. Whereas if you ask, could one open-source is probably the optimal state of affairs.3 You may be wasting your time. The level of trust and helpfulness is remarkable for a group of kids than from any individual bully, however sadistic. I need to be done in the case of the former will seem to investors no more than whatever collection of qualities helps people make the right choice, it had to learn where they were forced to eat because they were living in the wild. Do you want your kids to be told.

What they mean by blogger is not someone who publishes in a weblog format, but anyone who thinks east coast investors act that way. One thing all startups have in common is that they don't enjoy it. Obviously they have the right idea, but they know better than to get into the habit of going where it's not supposed to supply job training. What makes a startup a few days. People tell the craziest lies about me. Really hot companies sometimes have high standards for angels. 7 that matter: Yahoo, AltaVista, Excite, Infoseek, Altavista, Inktomi. Notes Is what we measure worth measuring? They grab your sleeve as you're staring at your phone and say will you play with me? Now I feel as if I've learned, to some degree system administrators as well. In a startup, you're probably imitating an imitator. Here's the thing: If you were investing more money you'd want to live at home, I have to bother being diplomatic with a British audience.

And frankly, if you're going to build something, make it very high, or spammers could spoof you by packing messages with more innocent words. And this rule isn't just for the nerds. Indeed, that's practically the definition of an organization whose structure gives each person freedom in inverse proportion to the size of your investment till it's an amount you wouldn't care too much about them. Programming languages are how people talk to computers. It's not unusual to get a line right. Mitchell and Jeffrey Quill and I realized that it reflects reality: software development is an ongoing struggle between the pointy-haired boss had to think of startup ideas, you're probably going to learn that the number was over 90%. One of the less imaginative ones, who had been ambassador to Venice, told him his motto should be i pensieri stretti & il viso sciolto. Recently it hasn't been. So you'll break even if you are not in the final version of an app currently available in the late 1950s, it was. Someone who goes to auditions. Version 1.

But you can never safely treat fundraising as more than one level of abstraction. If you're hard enough to sell to them. For example, I doubt it will change much. But Lisp is a slow AI language with a lot of people to sit around having meetings. I've now worked with over 200 of them, is practically nothing. Appendix: Examples of Filtering Here is an example of a spam that arrived while I was writing about spam filtering.4 It's not uncommon for investors and acquirers to get buyer's remorse. Err. And in fact, it could save you ten lines of code every time you tie your shoelaces. If they wanted Perl or Python.

Notes

It's hard to predict precisely what would our competitors had known we were working on some project of your mind what's the right thing to do and everything would have for endless years of bank dependence, reinforced by the National Center for Education Statistics, about 28%. Other highly recommended books: What is Mathematics? If you treat your classes, you can make things: the source of food. San Francisco.

So what ends up happening is that it was. I did manage to think about, and indeed the venture business barely existed when they say this is the last batch before a consortium of investors caring either.

Heirs will be out of school.

Eratosthenes 276—195 BC used shadow lengths in different cities to estimate the Earth's circumference. So managers are constrained too; instead of Windows NT? If by cutting the founders' salaries to the sale of art are unfinished. Founders at Work.

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marie85marketing · 7 years

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Are You Being Difficult? How the “Hidden Work” in Your Onboarding Emails Kills New User Engagement (And What You Should Do About It)

Have you ever tried to take apart a high-end file cabinet?

We’re talking about the kind built with such thoughtful design that it makes a room look like the “after” shot on an HG-TV home makeover show…instead of the dingy unfinished basement “before” shot.

If you have, you know that taking apart a cabinet like this one is no easy feat. You have to pull out the drawers, crawl inside, and poke and prod all afternoon.

After 3 hours of guessing, you might give up. Or you might press on until you finally crack the code on how it’s built–and then marvel at its brilliance.

You either walk away defeated. Or you finish your project and exclaim that the designer behind it is actually a genius.

What does high-end furniture have to do with your SaaS app?

You may have built the best, most genius, most user-friendly app that completely blows all of the other apps out of the water.

But if you hide your app’s brilliant usability behind opaque instructions, you might lose your new users before they even have a chance to get started.

How do you bring your app into the light? You need to get rid of the “hidden work” in your onboarding emails.

Hidden work is the work you unintentionally create for your new users when you send them onboarding emails that don’t give enough information for readers to do what you’re asking them to do.

Onboarding emails that eliminate hidden work are the difference between new users giving up on your app–and declaring that it’s actually genius.

If you’re already sending triggered emails to free trial users based on who they are and how they use your app, great. If you want anyone to actually stick with you, your onboarding emails need to clear a path from your new users’ inbox to the task you’re asking them to accomplish. Any resistance you add decreases the likelihood your new users will engage with your app both now–and every time you ask them to do something in the future.

According to a study published by Nobuhiro Hagura, Patrick Haggard, and Jörn Diedrichsen out of University College London, we decide whether we’re going to do something based on whether the task at hand seems easy AND based on whether we’ve faced resistance when we’ve performed similar tasks in the past.

“…we demonstrate that the motor cost involved in responding to a visual classification task is integrated into the perceptual decision process. Our everyday perceptual decisions seem to be solely based on the incoming sensory input. They may be, however, influenced by the preceding history of physical cost of responding to such input. The cost of our own actions, learned through the life-long experience of interacting with the environment, may partly define how we make perceptual decisions of our surroundings.“

What does this mean for you?

It means that if the first few interactions new users have with your app feel like work, you’re risking two unwanted outcomes:

Your user decides to do nothing today.

The next time they see your name in their inbox, they might already be programmed to think that your app = work, and so they decide to do nothing again.

Eliminating Hidden Work: The 3 Questions Your Onboarding Emails Need to Answer for Your Readers

No matter what you do, you can’t reduce the amount of new user work to zero–nor should you.

In fact, Nir Eyal’s research on habit formation suggests that the work customers invest upfront in learning to use a new tool increases the likelihood that using it will become a habit over time. When we invest our time or other resources in something, we value it more and are therefore less likely to walk away from it. Behavioral psychologists and economists call this “the endowment effect“.

That’s why your goal isn’t to eliminate all work from learning to use a new app. Instead, you need to make sure you’re eliminating the hidden work that you create when you don’t give your readers the ability and motivation to act. According to BJ Fogg’s Behavioral Model, ability and motivation are 2 of the 3 ingredients your new user needs to complete a task. The third is a trigger.

Your email tool sends the trigger. Your email copy provides the ability and motivation.

To make sure you have all 3 ingredients in your onboarding strategy, your email copy needs to answer these 3 questions for your new users.

Question #1: “Where do I do this?”

Imagine you’re lost in the middle of the woods. You meet a fellow hiker and ask where the closest shelter is. He replies, “Oh you just go find the trail and follow it. It’s simple!”

Only you don’t know whether you should head north or west. You don’t know if it’s a 10 minute walk or a 2 day trek.

If you’re stuck in the woods, you keep going because….you’re lost in the woods! But if you’re learning a new app, you might give up. You might try a competitor’s tool instead. You might decide that learning the app is more work than the problem the app solves.

Your new users can and will give up when things get difficult. That’s why you need to provide a crystal clear path forward for your new user to complete the task at hand. You can do this by joining the conversation happening in their head.

Your reader is asking, “Where do I do this?”

Your onboarding emails need to say, “Go here to do this.”

This means actually linking to the in-app page where users can do the thing you’re asking them to do.

Unfortunately, onboarding emails frequently fall short of this goal. Take a look at this email:

I’ve drawn red outlines around all of the places where this email asks its readers to do something without showing them where to do it.

This email asks its readers to do at least 8 things in at least 3 places (it’s hard to tell for sure), but there is not a single link or screenshot to make it easy for readers to do anything at all. When you force a reader to figure out where to go next, you create work. When you create work, you create enough resistance for users to give up and do nothing.

The Fix: Point your reader to their next click

When I began but didn’t finish the signup process for a free trial of Privy, I got this email.

Instead of telling me all the different things that I’ll be able to do with Privy, this email is focused exclusively on getting me to complete the setup process–and it shows me exactly where to click in this email to make that happen.

The button is clearly labeled and centrally positioned. If I’m unsure how to install Privy code on my site, I can click the link that matches my platform and get more instructions.

Not only does this email show me where to go next but it also gives me support links easily marked so I know which one is right for me.

Question #2: “How do I do this?”

The new Customer Engagement Automation tool (CEA) from Kissmetrics gives you the analytics to help you figure out what people are doing and whether they might need help–but analytics alone don’t close sales. It’s up to you to combine analytics with copywriting to send emails that make it easy for readers to do what you’re asking them to do.

When I signed up for a job posting app, I got an email with the subject line: “Would you like to post a job on [platform name redacted]?” Unfortunately, I opened it and saw that there were no instructions on how to actually post a job.

This email pulls a bait and switch. The subject line asks if I want to post a job, but the body copy doesn’t show me how.

Sure, it might be helpful to show me how to write job descriptions, but writing job descriptions and posting job descriptions are not the same thing.

Maybe one day I might need help making my post public instead of a draft, but that’s not the messaging I need to hear before I’ve actually posed the job description.

Since I still haven’t posted a job I need someone to show me how to do that first.

The Answer: Provide all of the info on HOW to complete tasks in the email (or one clear click away)

One of my all-time favorite examples is this email from video hosting and analytics company Wistia.

It’s a powerful tool, but you can’t do anything with it until you upload your first video. Fittingly, this onboarding email doesn’t say, “Hey, having trouble getting the analytics on your videos?” before I’ve uploaded my first video.

Instead, it says: Here is step 1. Just do step 1. Here’s a link to do it, here’s a video that will show you how to do it, and here are some links for support if you need it.

This email asks me to do just one thing, shows me how, and gives me ways to get help if I can’t get it done on my own.

Just how powerful is eliminating the hidden work of figuring out how to do something? This email and the other 7 in its sequence (authored by the team behind Copyhackers and Airstory) generated a 350% lift in paid conversions for Wistia.

Question #3: “Why should I bother?”

Someone at book club last week brought up webinars. The conversation went like this:

Friend 1: I had to do this webinar for work.

Friend 2: Uuuuugh webinars. I hate them so much.

Friend 3: Oh I love webinars! I love chatting in the margins. I love the buzz.

You can offer training through webinars, help articles, live demos, on-demand demos, or support videos. But whatever support medium you choose, you’re guaranteed to choose a medium that feels like “work” to some of your new users.

If your new user isn’t signing in because they don’t know how to use your app and the only support you offer them is with webinar invitations, then you’re asking them to do work–and increasing the likelihood they’ll bail.

Additionally, scheduled training forces your reader to consult a calendar in order to learn from you–and context-switching gives them a chance to decide not to come back.

You might have really great stuff in your webinars! But if you don’t explain what’s in it for your reader, it feels like work. And if it feels like all work and no gain, your best prospects won’t do it.

The Fix: Focus on the outcome, not the delivery

The truth is that a webinar is a big commitment and you won’t keep everyone. 60, 30, or even 20 minutes is a lot of time to give up. But even small amounts of time and seemingly small asks can be just as inconvenient to your readers without the right context.

Anne commented on another Kissmetrics copywriting post and she’s right: even simple CTAs sound like work.

To overcome the objections that your readers will inevitably have to taking you up on your offer of support or the small task you ask them to do, your email copy shouldn’t position the medium or the task you’re asking users to complete as the benefit.

Instead, you should answer one of the biggest questions on your readers’ minds:

“So what?”

You want your readers to attend a webinar? So what? What’s in it for them?

You want your new users to start a project? Why should they bother?

Your support channels are like your app’s features: your customers care way less about them than you do. They’re much more interested in the benefits of your app and your support. If you want your prospects to respond to your webinar invitation or to do anything else in your app, stress benefits, not features.

How? Focus on the outcomes your readers can expect as a result of taking you up on your invitation.

Here’s an example from Sumo that positions a webinar as a must-attend event:

This email has everything: 1. Specific results someone got in a specific period of time. 2. Growth techniques I won’t find anywhere else (which means if I don’t show up, I won’t get them). 3. Specifics about what I’m going to get from this webinar. 4. Urgency and scarcity.

In this email, the value is the information on how to grow your business–the webinar is merely the delivery mechanism.

Why Eliminating “Work Words” Isn’t Enough

I’ll be honest: I planned on writing this post to be all about “work words” as a follow-up piece to an earlier Kissmetrics post that kicked off this discussion. I thought it would be a great idea to have a list of “work words” for product marketers to avoid in their CTAs.

I wondered whether the word “workflow” right in the middle of the CTA might make Zapier–which is mind-blowingly easy to use–seem more complicated than it is.

Sean Kennedy (of Zapier and Really Good Emails) also wondered whether the word “Build” could also suggest that there may be “some assembly required” in getting your first Zaps set up.

But it wasn’t long after I started researching and writing this article that I realized a piece on “work words” in CTAs wouldn’t be enough. So much of the “hidden work” in SaaS apps happens before the CTA–which mean that’s where the biggest opportunities to improve engagement are hiding.

While you can and should use language in your CTAs that doesn’t suggest work, that’s only a starting point.

To keep your new users engaged, your onboarding email copy must answer your reader’s questions about where, how, and why they should do what you’re asking them to do.

About the Author: Alli Blum helps SaaS apps build messages that get customers. Want to make sure your emails don’t create hidden work for your prospects? Click to get her copywriting checklist for high-converting SaaS onboarding emails.

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samiam03x · 7 years