#I HAD TO EXPUNGE THIS FROM MY SYSTEM SO I COULD FOCUS ON OTHER THINGS

[sidecarghost]

(x)

Proof Castiel is Sam Winchester’s blurry non-gendered spouse.

Y yo at ti, Cas.

And I, you.

Castiel honoring Dean’s wishes. And watches over Sam for the rest of his life.

Spn 11x23 Alpha and Omega

CAS: I could go with you.

DEAN: No, I got to do this alone. Listen, if—when—when this works, Sam—he's gonna be a mess. So look out for him, okay? Make sure he doesn't do anything stupid.

CAS: Of course.

DEAN: [places his hand on Cas’s shoulder] Thank you for everything.

I think Sastiel would have fun married couple adventures. And they’d both be amazing dads for their son Dean. Cas probably splits his time between cosmic duties with Jack and time with Sam. So his presence is more in the background and out of focus then attention demanding.

Sam and Cas both miss Dean terribly, but they accept Dean just wasn’t ready to flip that hourglass over one more time for a chance at a normal life. And even though they can’t understand it they respect that it was Dean’s choice to make.

Getting married wasn’t planned by Sam and Cas, but they both consoled each other over Dean’s violent passing at a young age. And Sam wanted to hunt but knew better than to hunt on his own so he prayed to Cas, and Cas came to help. When Cas learned Dean Winchester died from getting jabbed by pointy rebar he was devastated. Dean didn’t pray to him, so Cas kept his distance from Heaven. He figured Dean would call when he was ready for him. Or if he was ever ready for him.

Cas knew Dean would want Sam to have a good life, so Cas picked that as his new mission and made sure to carry foam packs to cover pointy metal wherever Sam went. Sam rolled his eyes at Cas’s attempt to baby proof the Earth but he was touched to see the angel pull himself out of his own misery to watch over Sam.

After months of monster hunting Sam told Cas he was quitting. The hunting had been a way to cope with the soul crushing sorrow of losing his brother. But hunting wasn’t who he was anymore. Castiel thought and nodded. He thought the Winchester’s had bled enough for humanity and deserved some peace.

~~ I meant to poke at this idea a little bit, but it got lengthy and remainder is under the cut. And it’s just a happy Sastiel fic pretty much following the finale without much deviation, but is meant to make the whole Sam montage less soulless. I don’t have any resolution for Dean, because Dean’s character is just ruined for me at the moment. His meaningless death in series finale still prevents me from writing anything remotely cheerful for Dean. So I’m just avoiding doing anything more than mentioning him.~~

Sam and Castiel rented a little house, because the bunker was too depressing to live in. Castiel called in a favor with Jack to expunge all the Winchester’s public records. Sam and Dean were now upstanding citizens with a spotless record. Dean’s obituary now stated he died during a construction accident while working on a barn. Castiel had a mausoleum built for the Winchester’s, and even though Dean’s remains had been burned he tracked down every molecule of scattered carbon ash that had been part of Dean and set it in his coffin. He also held a second service for the hunter that was a huge affair exactly as Dean had wished for when he faced off against Amara.

Meanwhile, Sam Winchester had started taking night courses to get his law degree and pass the bar exam. With his spotless record he was able to become a prosecuting attorney and did amazing work bringing criminals to justice within the judicial system.

Castiel ends up being really good at dog training after working with Miracle on obedience and agility training. So he starts a dog training school for pet owners to learn how to train their pets without any harsh methods.

One day around Christmas, Sam and Cas are sitting on the couch watching some lgbt hallmark Christmas movie and drinking eggnog. Cas leans his head on Sam’s chest, and they start kissing and they don’t stop. Maybe they both still missed Dean and were just looking for a distraction or maybe they both had slowly fallen in love with each other over the years. They have a small ceremony and Castiel spends the rest of his immortal life proudly bearing the Winchester last name as his own.

Angel reproduction may grant human vessels hermaphrodite sex organs or maybe Sam finds a spell that lets Cas or himself swap sex. Whatever the case, they decide to have a family and nine months later their son Dean is born. Dean is a nephilim, and he has a good heart and a kind soul just like his dads. And he also has all the selflessness and sensitivity of his deceased uncle enjoying a solitary road trip across Heaven.

Original Charlie was brought back by Jack, (along with everyone else that had sacrificed their lives and wanted to have another chance to live a normal life). Charlie buys baby Dean the most obnoxious toddler overalls ever with the name “Dean” embroidered in bright yellow across the front. Sam takes one look at them and after a fit of laughter gets ready to throw them in the trash, but Castiel starts tearing up over them and traces out the letters. Sam doesn’t have the heart to tell him how ridiculous the pants look, so he just smiles at Cas and places a hand reassuringly on Cas’s waist and hopes Dean isn’t looking down from Heaven and seeing that outfit.

Sam lives a long life, and his death occurs at an old age while in hospice care at their home. Castiel knew Sam’s life was coming to an end, and he had been keeping an eye out for the reaper that would come to collect Sam’s soul. And finally one day he sees a reaper beside the bedside of his beloved. Cas fetched their son Dean to Sam’s bedside. He wants their son to have a chance to say goodbye to Sam while he’s alive, and then Cas will accompany Sam’s soul to Heaven. Castiel watches invisibly next to the quiet reaper standing nearby. He still feels a terrible ache in his heart that Dean had missed out on growing old.

After all this time, Castiel had still never heard a prayer from Dean. Bobby had told Castiel that he mentioned to Dean his rescue by Jack from the Empty. But that Dean had taken off in the Impala after that. It seemed that Bobby couldn’t resist busting Dean’s chops about John Winchester living next door. Maybe that attempt at a joke shook Dean, and he just needed 40 years to collect himself.

Regardless of the reason for Dean’s silence, Castiel thinks about the best way to facilitate the reunion of Sam and Dean without causing Dean any distress. Castiel decides he’ll stay invisible when Sam and Dean get their reunion in Heaven. He’ll let Sam tell Dean when he is ready, or maybe Dean will ask about him and that makes him smile softly to himself.

With that settled Cas lets his attention rest on his son. He is so proud of his and Sam’s son, and he is sure Dean will be proud of his nephew too. Their son will be able to visit freely between Heaven and Earth so this goodbye isn’t the end for them. 

Sam and Cas’s son, Dean, leans over the recumbent body of Sam Winchester and kisses him goodbye and tells him it’s okay to go. Sam’s eyes close for the final time. Then, a moment later, Sam’s soul is standing next to Castiel and the reaper. All the years have vanished from Sam’s appearance, and Cas is looking at the same young man he had fallen in love with watching formulaic romcoms some 40 years ago. Their son, Dean, can still see Sam, because his nephilim abilities let him pierce the Veil. He embraces his dad, and Sam tells his son to come visit him in Heaven whenever he wants, and Sam whispers to his son to promise to take good care of Castiel for him. Their son, Dean, nods with sincerity and whispers back to his dad Sam that he’ll keep that promise for the rest of his life.

Sam turns towards Castiel and the lovers share a passionate kiss. All the chronic pain from Sam’s failing health is gone. And Cas feels a rush of excitement from Sam’s rising libido. Cas kind of wishes the reaper and his son weren’t standing right there at this moment. Sam notices Castiel’s discomfort and laughs. He then offers his husband his hand to hold. Castiel gazes at Sam’s face with eyes full of love and takes hold of Sam’s hand.

Castiel locks on to the location of Dean’s soul in Heaven. He unfurls his majestic rainbow wings and flies Sam to a few feet behind his brother on the bridge. After he sets Sam down he sees Dean smile, and he hears the brothers greet each other. Castiel remains invisible and he sees the reaper responsible for Sam nod and teleport away. Castiel feels tears come to his eyes watching the two brothers have the reunion they have deserved for so long. He watches them embrace and smiles to himself.

A moment later Castiel teleports back to his home with his son Dean. The father and son hug, and Castiel begins making plans for a celebration of the life of Sam Winchester. He wants the funeral of Sam to be the biggest ever seen in their state. Sam and Dean had been true heroes and their memory deserved no less. The mausoleum where Sam and Dean’s remains rest will be guarded for eternity by the angel that loved them beyond all logic and reason.

While Castiel makes himself busy planning, his son Dean helps tidy the house and stumbles over a board game. “Hey dad, how do you play Twister?” Dean asks. Castiel can’t resist smiling and begins to explain the rules of the game to his son. “Can we bring some of these games to Heaven when we visit dad Sam and uncle Dean?” Dean asks. “Yes, I think that’s a great idea,” Cas smiles to his son thinking back to playing “Sorry” with Dean and “Connect 4″ with Jack. He feels like those were memories from yesterday and not decades ago. But decades is barely a moment relative to the immortal life of an angel.

“These games are special, Dean, because they give us the most precious thing in the universe,” Castiel tells his son. “They give us time spent enjoying the company of our loved ones. I haven’t spent very long on Earth in the company of humanity, but in my short time here I learned that time is a gift. It’s the most precious gift we can give the people we love. And spending that time on big gestures is never as fulfilling as just all the little things we can do together. The grand gestures seems to get forgotten rather quickly by those closest to use. Big events are important for posterity and the history books, and they are important for shaping the world we live in. I want Sam and Dean to have a big, beautiful funeral so their memory lives on for the people that didn’t know them well. The big funeral isn’t so much about me honoring them, as me keeping their story alive for posterity. But honoring them is even more important to me, and I honor them with every decision I make, for every moment of the day, for the rest of my existence. I choose the selfless and sensitive choice that Dean would have chosen, and I choose the courageous and loyal choice that Sam would have chosen. Humans were never meant to be grand visions set on a pedestal, they were meant to be appreciated on a much smaller scale along with full attention to their strengths and their quirks. 

“And our life spent together hurtling through space in orbit around a star is oddly enough defined by the mundane. The simple times spent together are the treasures that we seem ideally equipped to hold close and carry on.”

[joe-england]

Working on this last Zebra Girl book is hard.  It’s taken a lot of my focus, I haven’t had the motivation to simply make art for months.  It’s depressing, but my muse finally perked up when I got the strange urge to do like I never do and draw serious. I’m going to bare my soul here.  Okay?  I want to be honest.  That’s me up there.  Notice the baggy jeans, hanging from my belt because I lost weight years ago and I tend to wear old pants that are too big for me now.  I’m fairly slender at this point, but I’ve still got a slight spare tire I have yet to shed.  See?  Well, I may have taken liberties with the ears and such. More to the point, you may know that my brand is “Obsessive Thoughts”.  I chose that term as a label because it’s not just a name, it’s a lifestyle.  I suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, the tendency to… well, to compulsively obsess.  And not about important things, usually, but in response to a universe full of gremlins.  You feel like you have to do certain things, like it’s necessary to do them, like you’re holding the world together, and dropping the ball will have urgent existential consequences.  It’s a persistent source of stress. So I’m going to describe my perspective, and bear in mind that on a conscious level I’m well aware of the inherent nonsense.  But I want to get this out into the open.  This is what some part of my psyche tells me is happening, if not all the time, then for most of my waking hours: I move through the world surrounded by contaminants.  I must constantly be on guard against spiritual infection.  I dodge, react, and cleanse myself through tiny rituals performed hundreds of times a day.  Nearly every part of my body is involved in a clumsy dance.  Repetition of movements is cleansing.  I move haltingly as my extremities catch on contact points which demand my instinctive tactile attention.  My fingers mostly lead, forced to twitch and touch and straighten and flex, casting towards acceptable directions (I observe the spasms as I type this very sentence, words punctuated by stops and starts as a fingertip lightly taps an extra key, or jerks to the side, or briefly hovers in place, or just wriggles a bit towards empty space, all obeying some ritual I can no longer decipher).  Like guns, pointing them in the wrong direction at the wrong moment risks compromising myself since they relay the sickness.  They are primary soldiers but also prime targets, and they must hide themselves whenever deviant sights or sounds threaten my purity. Objectionable surfaces must also be avoided, such as pictures of people I don’t like.  I have to touch some things.  I have to avoid touching others.  My feet do their part too, tapping the front boards of stairs as I climb them one by one or intentionally bumping a crevice or some panel around my desk in order to banish the bad mojo running through my system.  I scuff the bottoms of my shoes as I walk to insure that the ends of my being make appropriate contact with separate boards of wood or concrete panels, whatever I happen to be walking on at the time. Meanwhile, up top, my head is kept on constant alert, my eyes a busy terminal of positive and negative input and output.  Abstract moving imagery tends to be a threat, for If a subversive pattern appears before me I must vibrate my sight by summoning pressure through my skull, defeating its hypnotic effect (and a diminutive voice in me frets even now that I am spilling my secrets to the tired old conspiracy running its tendrils through all electronic devices). Meals are more of the same.  If dirty energy ever infects my food with stray data (for instance, if an offending name is uttered while I’m looking at what I’m about to eat) then I must negate the pollution by holding the offending morsel up to my eye and matching its transparent double image against an acceptable surface to banish the corruption before I allow it in my mouth (a technique which also applies to my fingers, and which happens often when I watch the news during meal times, horrid politicians constantly threatening to invade my essence with their ugly souls).  Whenever a contaminant aura does slip inside of me then I must cough it lightly out, willing it from my guts and off the tip of my tongue.  Noises issued from my throat contribute to regular maintenance, further warding against evil spirits.  My nostrils serve a likewise function now and then. Similar duties are assigned to my knees, my toes, my elbows, or whatever piece of skin is ever exposed to undesirable elements and conscripted in my never-ending war with the invisible forces.  Beside my shuffling feet, my shadow must also avoid contact with any and all acknowledged threats, including my own dialogue.  Any word uttered risks assigning its deleterious quality to any part of me caught in my sight at the time of its mention (spoken or otherwise).�� This includes the insides of my eyelids, which often disrupts my  efforts to sleep at night as I must force them open to expunge toxic  names that cross my mind. The campaign extends to inanimate objects, which constantly suffer the touch of my overworked fingers “wiping off” phantom sediment, or which serve as conduits for various energies, or as goal posts which must sometimes be met before an arbitrary time limit has expired (for example, a turning point in a song).  This was worse when I was a child, and had to race onto a carpet or couch whenever a toilet began to flush.  I thankfully managed to shed some of the more overt habits over time. But it should go without saying that the very inner monologue running through my brain must abide by its own arcane set of rules, because words and names cannot be used carelessly, even in my thoughts.  As for that, two particular words have special functions in my mental arsenal:  “Not” and “Narf.”  “Not” is a mantra, since it is a pure expression of expulsion, and I throw it constantly at negative influences, especially bad imagery or text that gets out of hand.  Conversely, “Narf”, a noise coined by a cartoon lab mouse named Pinky, is a safety mechanism, since it means nothing, thereby safely absorbing any malign concept and allowing me to make idle unspoken noise without risk.  Both words are subject to distortion as the situation requires, ghosting through the roof of my mouth in various ways, shapes, and forms, a single altered syllable sometimes called into play, expressed through the smallest push of saliva hitting my teeth.  “Nt, nt, nt.  Tt.  Unt.” I could go on. Looking at this stuff, it’s hard to believe that I’ve lived with it my entire life.  Typing it out really makes it sound crazy.  I don’t want to be insensitive to other people with issues like this, but it’s hard not to have that reaction when I put it into writing and recognize that this is what I’m actually doing all the time.  I always knew it was odd, but I always figured that I would grow out of it, and when I didn’t I just tried to mitigate it.  And I thought I was doing alright, because it used to seem worse!  I beat it back when I was younger, and my ego encouraged me to accept what was left as part of my genius, or something.  But looking at all this, I find myself wondering if I didn’t just make it more subtle through complexity.  Or maybe it’s only gotten worse with the stress of the past few years.  I don’t know. But I want people to know about this.  Now I’m not sure why I always tried to keep it to myself.  I feel like bringing it out into the open might help, might serve as a spark to finally burn away the web and let it all go.  There are definitely people out there who have it worse than I do.  Maybe you’re one of them!  We all have our crosses to bear.  And like I said, I’ve managed to cut some of it off.  But now I think it’s time I started fighting it again.  God only knows how much of my time I could get back if I wasn’t twiddling my fingers. Hey.  Thanks for listening.

-Joe

[tech-priest-regis]

Summery of time gone by

Regis grimaces as he has gotten his servitors for his own protection. Despite their heavily weaponized forms he could not help but feels like his luck would not allow for them to adapt to the troubles he tended to find himself in. Even with his personally developed upgrades, he rubs his cheek as he looks over the experimental work. Breathing out slowly he quietly sucks on the made nutrient paste to stave off the worst of the corruption from his forced time with the demon prince as he shivers to remember how enthralled he was just to be near them.

However, he can't deny it was an unfortunately enlightening experience as he looks down at his modified hands as he reinforced the simple-looking limbs. Resembling hands of his previously fleshy shape he has made it so they should still be able to spear through metal if it comes down to it. Gritting his teeth, a soft hiss of self-loathing escaped him as he sums up his personal failures for defending himself from forces outside of his own control. Despite the strength, he obtained in his own body he was still weak. The metal limbs failed him many times he tried to weaponize himself. And his laughable streak of fighting at a distance was hardly something he could rely on. But that just means he had to turn his weapons outwards. Just because he was only skilled in demons and corrupted inquisitors meant he needed something better outside of his own body. Hearing the whir of the experimental filtration starting up he closed his eyes as his fingers unclipped his mask from his face as he prepared for the black globs o be expunged from his own body. The bile swiftly rose to the back of his throat as the urge to vomit intermingled with it as the taste of a foul long since rotten sewer sludge coated his tongue as he braced himself on the table as the liquid seeped out. Coughing violently he felt the solid mass force it's way up before the black oozing mess hit the ground as he breathed deeply as his pale expression had what little color drain from his face, wiping what black liquid he can as he looked for the water. Unpleasant but effective in what it was doing but it couldn't undo the damage already wrought on his body.

Silently without a word uttered or indication he wanted to have it cleaned away a small mechanical device moved over and removed all evidence of the cleansing process as he caught his breath. As he regained his composure he straightened up and brushed his hair back as his eyes watched the vat he had with his latest pair of guards that were healing from their operations. Ex-convicts that thought they knew their fates, but he read their compiled reports and they were loyal sorts once it was obtained and he offered them a way out of their situation. They reached a compromised agreement for his own  protection and that they would continue living. Currently resting in the solution he made out of those strange nanobots that were injected into his system by that strange person who claimed he was broken with his holy parts. They rejected his metallic body and perfection but they left many useful tech in him with their attempt to fix him. And strangely easy to manipulate for his own uses for repairing any failing mechanical systems as he studied them and to tend to his new guards. But mass making them has proven to be troublesome when trying to make more outside what the original source built. Slowly he sat down and just rested his eyes before the light tapping got his attention as his mechanical eye looked about to focus on the vats to see one of his new guards awake and conscious. Blinking awake he got the time and snorted in surprise as he must of fallen asleep for several hours in his exhaustion as he rubbed the sleep from his biologic eye. Yawning as his hands remained the rebreather about his face he started to open up the vat of the awake ex-convict. “Sorry, i fell asleep.  I hope you were waiting for long.” Regis mumbled as the doors slid open to allow the man to step out and take the towel nearby to wrap about his waist. His eyes drifted ove to the other and noted they were still sleeping as he turned to do the basic check up on the man. “You feel all right?” “Yes... admittedly i feel better then alright it's like I am younger then I been in a while.” Fingers lightly provided at where the scaring still remained from the surgery and fingered the ports that now lined their skin. Regis watched their expression flicker between uneasy impressed and suspicious as they explored the new additions. “So uh the holes?” “it's so you can integrate with your new suits and allow external customization to keep you protected or reactive with your weapons.” Regis said swiftly as he knew how fragile their relationship was despite agreements. His eyes diverted from the guard as he could not admit to the man he got the ideas from watching space marines exit their armor years ago. While it was using other technology to make it work he had his own personal doubts he could make it to the same level as the marines as they did have a black covering over their bodies he couldn't explain just by watching. “Huh.  So seeing I can still think and act on my own you really didn't turn us into mindless guards.” As they rubbed their arms they winced to the strange feeling of the alterations he made. “Still feels...off.”

Regis just gave him an exhausted look as he watched the movement of the others in silence before finally responding, “It can't be helped. I could not work around that.” Gesturing to the device on the table he indicated for the guy to pick it up as he lifted the connector to plug into the arm port. once secured he indicated the man to open fire on the chalk draw target as normal. The las shot flashed out as typical. His eyes flickered down  at the connection before stepping back slowly after blocking the trigger. “focus on this target,” Regis said as he grabbed the ball off the table and readied himself to throw it up, “And react without using your finger.” Seeing the unamused look from the man he sighed as this will be a process. Throwing it up high he flinched away as the man turned his gun to follow and concentrated on it. Nothing happened as it hit the ground and the man cocked his head as Regis retrieved the ball. tapping his fingers be thought on what else to try as he wasn't all to sure how to explain it to other people before turning and throwing it at the man without warning. Las fire shot out as the man reacted to the danger before giving Regis a dirty look as the ball bounced harmlessly along as scorch marks littered the room. Regis shrugged and laughed nervously, “see it works. Just have to train it.” As the man smirked Regis breathed out as he relaxed as much as he could around the murderer. “Yeah you are right. Ok, what else can we do.” Hearing this Regis grinned from ear to ear under his mask as he started to explain things the man would be interested in as they continued the training to use reactive weapons and other tech to deal with what their agreement was. After some months Regis stood back as he watched the pair adjusting their armaments as they slipped into using them all as a second skin. They were better then he expected them to learn the material as they all build their strange friendship over a new chance in life and the hopes the others would work for them. The strange non-imperial tech he copied allowed them to retain their human shapes and appear normal while giving him the best protection he could tailor for both guard and Magos. Grateful for people to talk to over the months he became quite fond of the pair even if they are supposed to be his guards. Quietly he checked his corruption levels and breathed out as they have been maintaining low levels almost all cleared out. letting his hands spread out his works he covers his head as the radio feed of current events started up as he reached over. The war and chaos invasions were all he heard. pressing his head to his temples he played through his digitalized data with what others were asking of him. Build more weapons. Make new defenses against warp incursions. things that he could not produce on a mass scale or even really on small. Not reasonably any way with imperial tech or even the strong durability for massive damage. Flickering his eyes over failed proto-types and gadgets he looked away before pulling out some papers of the next batch of things to try. disheartening was the progress he lacked as he used a mechandendrite to rub the back of his neck. For all the heretical information he gathered, he could not get it to work like his prototype guards. But that was a combination of various techs well known, and well studied. His eyes flickered over their blueprints buried under papers before pulling them out as he hoped for a spark of inspiration as he just took in his messy chicken scratch. biting down on the comfort jerky he mulls over information as the data works its way into his brain before pulling out a gadget to play around with the simple mechanical toy. there are always ways to achieve the desired effect. Just the housing is too weak in the small prototypes.

[hexadecimalmantis]

Argonaut Games Research

This post was originally going to be an absurdly long documentary video, but I realized it would have been a bit boring, so I ultimately decided on making a glorified blog post. 

When I joined BioMedia Project last year, I was tasked with researching Bionicle: The Game and its sequel Bionicle 2: City of Legends. I have talked about both games in great detail many times before, and I think we all know about the issues that plague both of them by now. Bionicle: The Game is seemingly incomplete, and filled with content that was cut early on, and Bionicle 2: City of Legends never made it past a private movement demo. For context about Bionicle 2: BioMedia Project managed to obtain an Xbox build of the movement demo a few years ago. It has a few issues, such as broken audio and some missing graphical effects. I began reaching out to former developers in an effort to piece together the entire story of Argonaut Games, and uncover more secrets about both games. (Initially) With the assistance of Liam Robertson of DidYouKnowGaming?, I began contacting some of the developers. For those of you that are unfamiliar, Argonaut Games was split into two different facilities during the development of Bionicle: The Game. The first being Argonaut London, and the second was Argonaut Sheffield. I decided to reach out to the former developers from the London branch first. I initially didn’t get any replies, but I remained persistent. After waiting a few weeks, I eventually I got a reply from a former artist. Keep in mind that personal details about the former developers I contacted will be expunged in order to protect their identities and to prevent harassment and spam.

This is the first message I received after I inquired about Bionicle: The Game:

“Hi, yes I was lead artist on Bionicle. I'd say that it was a game that we cared a lot about, and to be honest we had high hopes for, at least initially. As always with game dev there wasn't just one cause of the games problems, but probably the biggest was we fell in love with the games setting and bit off far more than we could chew. We should have started with far more cautious goals, but we wanted to tell the whole story. I'm surprised if there was that much unused content on the disc TBH but the original scope of the game is definitely visible in naming conventions etc. we had intended each character to have toa levels and toa nuva (if thats the right term?) their powered up versions - before adding the 7th. Given that they have different abilities that was a huge ask of the team.

(Redacted)”

This message was about what I expected, the devs were a bit too ambitious and were unable to complete their ideas during the given development time. I later asked about the developer signatures stored within the BIGB archives, and asked them if they had worked on any of the Kopaka areas, since I found their signature within a subset of those files:

“the 'signatures' probably just refer to the designers - which is a relatively small subset of the team as a whole. I oversaw the project from an art perspective, so characters env, frontend etc then I ended up doing some animation work on the bull, onua, the weird door thing. I didn't work on Kopaka - that work was done up in Sheffield, I used to visit their studio to review stuff & sign it off.”

I’m sure the Bull was probably the Kane-Ra seen in Onua Nuva’s level. There are some pre-release trailers that show a Kane-Ra attacking the player with unique animations too. After that, I asked him about Argonaut Sheffield and their work on Bionicle 2: City of Legends. To my surprise, I got this:

“No, I didn't I thought they were disbanded alongside Argo”

This essentially meant that nobody from Argonaut London was aware of the development of Bionicle 2: City of Legends. With this information, it was easy to conclude that Bionicle 2 was created solely by Argonaut Sheffield as speculated. After failing to get more replies from former developers from Argonaut London, I shifted my focus to Argonaut Sheffield, intrigued by the messages I received from the former artist.

After a bit of waiting, I got a reply from another former artist.

“Hi,

Yes, I worked on Bionicle as a character artist along side artist (redacted). He was my mentor back then as it was my first industry job. I think we modelled about 130 odd characters/modular models back then between us. The character concepts we're drawn up by (redacted).

Argonaut Sheffield was previously Particle Systems who made I-War, the PC Sci Fi game and some other iterations. It was a technically adept small team and great to work with. I didn't have much to do with the London branch. We went on to try and make some failed movie tie-ins alongside them at a later date. Catwoman, Zorro, Star Wars, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and also Bionicle 2.. which was going to be a fluid parkour type platformer. Which never materialised as after being there just shy of two years, London shut us down.

I'm actually working back in the offices where it all happened now. Which seems strange. I did work at Sumo Digital as a lead Char artist for ten years in between. I know there's a basement full of hard drives still here as one of the old directors still rents some space here.

(redacted)

(redacted)

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

(redacted)”

I received concept art for both Bionicle: The Game and Bionicle 2: City of Legends in this message. The art was later posted on my Twitter: https://twitter.com/HexMantis/status/1099883979942084608

Aside from the plethora of art, this message provided some insight about how Argonaut Sheffield came to be. It was previously known as Particle Systems before it assimilated into Argonaut Games. After this exchange, I reached out to a former programmer from Argonaut Sheffield. This time I provided a set of questions for the developer to answer in an effort to obtain specific information. After waiting for nearly a month, I got a reply:

The questions I asked will be enclosed within [ ] to avoid confusion.

“Hey!

There's some incomplete credits here (redacted)

but you could try contacting (redacted) as he was the lead programmer there. He used to work at PKR too, also owned by (redacted).

(redacted)

[Asked about the main development platform for the games]

1) Yep it was PS2. The PS2 version was handled by Argonaut Edgeware and programmers in Sheffield did ports for the other platforms

[Asked about the cut content from Bionicle: The Game]

2) Sorry, I wasn't involved with that bit. I was responsible for adding the hyper threading features on the PC (redacted)

[Asked about interactions with the London branch]

3) Yep, we worked together on it. Designers and Artists in Sheffield were working on assets for the main game.

[Asked about I-Ninja’s compatibility with Bionicle: The Game]

4) I think they should be compatible with each other. I-ninja came out a bit later though.

[Asked about Bionicle 2: City of Legends]

5) Maybe, not sure as it was a long time ago and I then moved to the Edgeware studio. If they did I guess it was just a prototype for a pitch

Good luck with your fact finding!“

I later asked if they knew of any early builds of either game, and I got this reply:

“Hey!

Sorry for the late reply. I believe everything was archived by Argonaut and EA. I'm not sure if anyone archived it personally at Argonaut or not but there were a lot of people working on it. They created archive PCs with everything you need to make the game from the source assets.

Thanks,

(redacted)”

The concept of the supposed “archive PCs” was interesting, but I doubt any of them are still around after all this time. After this, I contacted another former programmer from Argonaut Sheffield. This time with a focus on Bionicle 2: City of Legends:

“Hi William, I must admit, I'm curious where you found my name in the demo. Do you have a source code drop to go with it, or did I leave my name in an error message in the binary package itself?

Either way, yes I did work on the demo, albeit briefly. The engine the demo is built on is largely the same engine used in Bionicle (the original PS2/Xbox/PC game), Catwoman, and I-Ninja. It has an older pedigree than that too, but those were the games it was used on while Argonaut Sheffield was part of the Argonaut group. I was one of the programmers who ported the engine over to PC & Xbox for the original Bionicle, which is why I was involved in the demo in some capacity.

I'm still in touch with a lot of the designers who worked on the movement demo; the lead designer, (redacted), has said that I can pass on his contact details if you'd like to get in touch with him. You can contact him at (redacted).

Cheers,

(redacted)”

I was not surprised to get confirmation that Bionicle 2 used the same engine as Bionicle: The Game, since most of my existing programs I wrote for Bionicle: The Game were compatible with the Xbox demo. I asked if a PS2 port of Bionicle 2: City of Legends ever existed, since the Xbox demo we have has DualShock button mappings present in the game:

“Ah, I'll bet that's because I'll have compiled and built the disc image, so it's embedded my PC's name into the image. The level select would have just been for test levels where I was looking at specific bugs, performance problems or new features.

I really can't remember if we did PS2 or PC builds of the demo, other than the development binaries the design team would have been using. It's unlikely we'll have done a full ISO for the PS2, because the spiders caused real performance problems and we'd have wanted to show it to the publishers on the fastest available hardware.

By the way, the Xbox version will have reference to PS2 hardware because the original engine was PS2 only. The easiest way to port the engine was to, as far as possible, just get the Xbox and PC versions to pretend they were doing exactly the same thing as the PS2. For example, the game scripts don't need to know that when they get a button press from Cross or Circle, they're actually getting button presses from A or B. So although the names are going to be PS2-centric, they're still doing Xbox specific stuff.”

I was surprised to find out that the Morbuzakh Spiders were the primary reason for shifting Bionicle 2 to the original Xbox. I guess it makes sense, given how little time Argonaut Sheffield had to optimize the game. Switching to the original Xbox appeared to be a quick and easy way to avoid the hassle of optimization.

I later asked about the audio issues present in the Xbox demo, and for some general information about Bionicle: The Game.

“Hi William,

I'm afraid I've got no idea why the demo would be silent - it's been far too many years for me to remember the exact details, and I have no idea which version of the demo is the one which has been circulated. The full code for the audio system will have been present, because it was just a continuation of the engine used on Bionicle, and I'm sure the designers would have had at least some placeholder audio to hook up.

Audio is habitually the last thing to get hooked up in any game development, and since most developers prefer to have a silent build and listen to their own music while they work, it's not unusual for it either to be neglected in early internal builds, or for it to have been hacked to be silent (assuming the demo was one built locally rather than for showing to a publisher).

In terms of the development situation on Bionicle, although we weren't directly in the body of main developers, I think most of us were aware that the game wasn't progressing as well as it should. As well as the code team doing the porting work, our design and art teams were making the 'adrenaline levels' - which were the short lava/ice/tree surfing levels. They were only supposed to be short breaks between much larger levels, but it became increasingly obvious towards the end that these relatively small levels were still a large percentage of the actual content, and the other larger levels weren't coming online as fast as they should. QA in particular do full play-throughs on a regular basis, so they have a very good view of how fast the game as a whole is coming together.

I'm not 100% sure on all of the reasons for the delays in development, having been a relatively junior developer in a satellite studio at the time, but the reasons discussed at the time with leads and producers are fairly common ones that I've seen and heard about on other projects since. Inexperienced publishers or IP holders who haven't worked with game developers before often don't understand the lead times involved in producing content.

It's very hard to explain to customers who are used to working with companies like advertising agencies, who can turn around a complete change of direction in a matter of days, that you need to make and lock down decisions months or even years in advance. I think the penny finally dropped for Lego about three months out from submission that if they kept holding up approvals and kept requesting changes, they weren't going to get any game at all on the shelves - which of course meant we all had to crunch like hell to get the content in good enough shape to ship!

Cheers,”

An example of the aforementioned “Adrenaline sections” is the Tahu Nuva level from Bionicle: The Game. This level is actually internally named “Ta Adrenaline” as well. It’s obvious at this point that Tahu Nuva was originally going to have more than just surfing sections in his level, given the evidence in this message and the fact that he has a full set of unused walking animations.

I eventually contacted the designer mentioned by the former programmer, and got a reply after a month. (This designer was kind enough to restate my questions in his message):

“Hey,

I'm so sorry it's taken so long to get back to you. I was launching a game and I completely forgot about this.

1. What was your role as a designer like when working on both games? What kind of work did you do?

I was lead designer at Argonaut Sheffield, and we were brought in to help out on Bionicle the Game. We were responsible for what was known internally as "the adrenaline sections". The game was split into third person. exploration and combat levels (which were developed by the main Argonaut office in London), and the fast moving on rails sections that we created. As well as leading the team on these sections I was directly involved in the Tahu Nuva Boss Race near the end of the game.

2. Were you aware of content being cut or removed when working on Bionicle: The Game? Did you work on anything that didn't make the cut?

Like with any game there's work that involved that never sees the light of day. There were a lot of changes to the design over time, sometimes for practical reasons, other times because Lego wanted them.  I seem to recall that in the original design you would play as each Toa normally and each one again in their Nuva form in large open levels - with the platform adventure and the adrenaline sections seamlessly blending into each other. Quite soon after we were brought into the project a much clearer separation was made between the two, but I'm sure there was lots of the preparatory work for that ended up on the disc.

3. Do you know if any other character models aside from Matau (The green character) were created for Bionicle 2?

No other characters were made for that demo. I think we had a matter of weeks and everything had to be done very quickly.  That build represents a build that we sent to Lego (And Giant who eventually became TT Games) for approval and hopefully for more funding for the company. And we spent a lot of time agreeing the visual look of the character, as it was very different from what we'd done in the first game.

The work done on Bionicle 2 was entirely done up in Sheffield so we had a lot more control over the content. We knew that the Bionicle audience was getting older, and their gaming needs were becoming more sophisticated and we wanted to do something that would appeal both to that audience and be an interesting game in its own right. We felt that the first game had been so compromised by production issues that it ended up being very disappointing. We wanted to make something fluid and interesting that was a joy to play as a platformer, and had the dynamism and the sense of scale that the Bionicle world deserved.

4. Do you know if any other builds of the Bionicle 2 movement demo exist? Like a build that has working audio?

I don't remember for sure if we ever ended up with a build with audio. But it feels a bit unlikely that we would have got to the stage that we did without their being something in there, especially if the audio assets were on the disk. Somewhere in the depths of my home I think I have a PS2 version of the demo, so I may see if I can get that up and running and find out. As I think - so far - the only people who have had access to the game have played on Xbox, right?

Thanks”

Of course LEGO was being difficult during Bionicle: The Game’s development. They did something similar with Bionicle: The Legend of Mata Nui, and that certainly did not end well. This message was a big deal for us at the time, not only did we get a lot of information about both games, but we also got confirmation that a PS2 build of Bionicle 2: City of Legends actually exists! Unfortunately, this developer never replied again, and I was beginning to lose motivation.

I decided I had enough of Argonaut Sheffield at that point, and shifted my focus to Argonaut London once more. After waiting a bit, I got another reply from a former AI programmer.

“Hi William, sure thing, although it was a long time back so may not remember too much :)

probably easier to use my email (redacted) though as I rarely login to Linkedin.”

We later communicated via email:

“Hi William,

on the unused level front, it’s entirely likely that a bunch of the designers and strat coders ’play areas’ would have ended up in the build. Not sure if you’ve had any background info on how a lot of the Argonaut games were built, but here’s a brief rundown :)

So, when I started at Argonaut in 1997 , I joined the Croc 2 team, who were using the first updated iteration of the engine they built for Croc that had its own scripting language written (originally for the level designers to use) to write all the gameplay elements, while the engine coders focused entirely on the main engine for the PS1 (and a separate small team handled porting the engine to GameCube/Dreamcast, PC etc.). The idea being that ASL (Argonaut Strategy Language) Strats would be cross platform as they were just interpreted by the engine.

As it turned out, ASL strats were a bit too complex for the level designers to write themselves without coder assistance, so Argonaut let them focus on the actual level design itself (using the editor that just became known as the Croc Editor) and got gameplay specialist coders (like myself) to work on the strats. This worked out great as we could focus on individual items or groups of them independent of what was happening with the engine and we could quickly tweak a strat and run it on the devkit without doing a full build of the game (which took *AGES* back then ;) ) as well as some basic debugging capability.

This meant that most of the level designers and strat coders usually had a level slapped together with all the bits they were trying out. I don’t know if my one with all the Matorans following you in a chain still exists, but there were some pretty strange ones. In theory these wouldn’t end up on the disk but the build system was pretty clunky, so it’s entirely likely that some ended up there.

So by the time I got drafted onto the Bionicle PS2 project, I’d worked on Croc 2, Aladdin Nazira’s Revenge, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and Bionicle Matoran Adventures on GBA. All but the last one using revisions of the Croc Editor and ASL.  (The Emperor’s New Groove, Harry Potter 2, Malice, Catwoman & iNinja also got written with the engine). I say revisions as not a lot was actually added to either over time. Also, by Bionicle PS2 I was kind of an emergency response coder for strats, as I got parachuted in after the project started to help fix a lot of problems with how ASL was being used and design issues with the levels.

There were a lot of issues with Bionicle (not as many as Aladdin or Catwoman started with and my 4 days on Malice were certainly interesting, but they’re entirely different stories ;) ). Mostly from inexperience as the team working on it had a lot of new hires or ones that had been drafted from other teams that didn’t use ASL or the Croc Engine, so they weren’t familiar with its limitations. There were some HR issues going on too, but I’m not going to get into those. The team were mostly all professional and good at what they did, but struggling with a relatively clunky engine. By this point Argonaut had split off most of the engine coders to the “Tools” team and we had to officially request any engine or editor changes we wanted through their chain of command (and they weren’t interested in working on the ‘old’ engine).

There were also some issues with inexperience in games from the Lego UK side too. So a lot of the overall design rules were a bit flaky and lead to a lot of levels and gameplay getting changed. The “No Weapons” rule was one we thought was pretty odd, considering the swords, pikes etc. in use. Apparently they’re tools, not weapons. So we weren’t allowed to use them as direct combat weapons for gameplay, only for magical ranged effects. There was also a lot of issues of really big levels being designed without consideration for what could actually be rendered on screen at the required frame rate on PS2 with the old Croc engine. Even updated to PS2 and with everything the engine coders could do to optimise it, the engine and ASL were struggling to do what the designers wanted.

I don’t think it’s a case of biting off a bit more than they could chew (we successfully wrote Harry Potter from scratch in 9 months in time to release with the film using the engine but that was very much a dream team of all the right people with the right skills and a publisher working well in sync). More a case of it being a new team of people not so experienced with the system and a publisher that wasn’t entirely sure what it wanted. So things were that bit harder to get done in the time available.

In theory, some older gold disks are likely still around. (redacted) was one of our engine guys on the project and “Master of the Build” (he was the only one who had enough tasteless Hawaiian shirts for the numerous submission build days). I’ll have a dig through my CD collection, but it’s unlikely I’ve got any Bionicle builds surviving. I *might* still have some strat code floating about on an old hard disk. I do seem to have some of the Catwoman build code that used mostly the same (although slightly updated) engine though.

One thing that I think got axed was my chain of Matorans. The idea was a level where you’d be picking them up from around the level and they’d follow you to a rescue point. Normally this wouldn’t actually be that difficult to code, but ASL never actually had any arrays! I’d been asking for them for a couple of projects by that point but they never got added, so my Matorans were each working as their own array elements and frantically messaging one another in a chain, which never quite worked reliably enough with ASL, so we shelved the idea.

(redacted) was one of the strat coders working with me on Bionicle. I think he’d just joined Argonaut then, but luckily, knew his stuff.

(redacted)”

I guess a few of the unused levels I found in the PS2 port of Bionicle: The Game are examples of “play areas” given how small some of them are. This message also provided some insight about ASL, the proprietary language both games were created with. This gave me a good idea about how difficult ASL was to use as well. The fact that Arognaut also had many new hires that couldn’t handle ASL’s idiosyncrasies certainly didn’t help Bionicle: The Game at all.

I later reached out to another former AI programmer affiliated with the previous one. They had some interesting things to say:

“Wow, I'm really surprised that anyone is that interested in Bionicle, because I didn't think it was a very good game, but I'm happy that you felt strongly enough to do this, I guess. That's quite an impressive bit of digging.

[Asked about ASL]

Q1) ASL wasn't a great language to use, it was being developed at the same time as the engine so it was constantly changing and was occasionally broken as well. The turnaround from making a change in code to testing it on the target device was quite slow. And coming from C++ the lack of modularity was frustrating. There was some talk in the team about wanting it to be object oriented, but anything that made it cleaner and less prone to repetition would have been good. My memory of it isn't that good since it was 20 years ago. I remember the collision and animation systems being awkward and crude as well though. Do you know about the other games that the system was used for? Catwoman took the animation engine a bit further, but it was really horrible trying to program the animation blending for finite state machines with a language that was so hard to debug.

[Asked about scrapped content in Bionicle: The Game]

Q2) I don't remember much about what was scrapped. There were different teams working on different levels and playable characters, I mainly worked on the Tahu levels and the final boss. I think there might have been some stuff scrapped from the other characters. One or two of them were developed by the team who were doing the cross platform conversion for us, and we didn't see much of what they were doing and only saw it quite late.

[Asked if any early builds of Bionicle: The Game still exist]

Q3) I have no idea - perhaps Sony or EA have archives of the earlier builds. Someone on the engine team might do, I can't think how or why a strat coder would have one.”

The issues with the collision system they mentioned are definitely present in Bionicle: The Game. It’s quite easy to glitch out of bounds, as speedrunners have demonstrated many times. We later talked about general programming concepts and discussed ASL further:

“Reassuring to know that I'm not imagining Bionicle being pretty bad! I think object oriented was just flavour of the month in 2003, Java was a highly respected language at the time and we thought it was the future. It would have been nice to work in a language that was used in other places, because having ASL on your CV was a pretty crappy prospect for seeking other work. At least if you used Fortran or Pascal it was recognised by employers as a mainstream language. WTF is ASL? I worked in two other organisations that had proprietary languages and it was annoying. The good thing about starting work at Argonaut at least was that ASL was a proven language that you could make games with, and it did let you get down to the relevant bits of gameplay you wanted to take control of. Before that I worked at Phase 3 studios where they had never made an action game before, and we spent a lot of time programming systems that had hardly any effect on gameplay. So I was grateful for ASL and the toolchain for making it easy to do some limited things. I was very impressed by someone on the iNinja team for getting ropes to work with a vertlet algorithm, we stole that later for the green Bionicle to use. I think the High Voltage Software studio might be using a different language with the same initials? I can't see how it could possibly be Argonaut's language. I'm pretty sure there was some talk about opening it up as middleware to sell other studios but I don't think we ever got there. Many of the staff from Catwoman went on to work at Rocksteady, Sony and Ninja Theory, but I think they just started using whatever engine was in place there. You could find hundreds of people who had brushes with the language.”

I asked about other studios using ASL for their games:

“What release date were the games? Argonaut folded in 2004 I think, so the creditors might have managed to sell off the technology as cheap middleware of last-gen consoles

or perhaps they were licensing the tech while we were using it, and I just hadn't been aware of it”

I sent him some notable examples of games using ASL from other studios, such as The Conduit and Ben 10: Protector of Earth:

“That fits the picture then - liquidation in 2004, sell the technology in 2005, two years of learning the systems and developing content, release in 2007

The PS3 would be the current gen console by then, but the PS2 had a large enough user base to make it a viable market, especially for movie tie-ins and children’s games”

I later asked if there was any possibility that Argonaut received parts of ASL from other sources:

“That's an interesting question... I don't know but I think Argonaut were using strats since 1993 and the language gradually evolved from Starfox to Croc and so on. I think it was around before High Voltage existed. It does seem like a massive coincidence that the header is VOLT but there aren't many words that sound cool to programmers so I still suspect it is just a coincidence. Programming was Argonaut's strongest suit, it doesn't make sense that they would buy tech in like that. I was only at the company for two years or so, ask someone who was there longer.”

Then out of the blue, another former designer from Argonaut Sheffield reached out to me about Bionicle 2. After that, I asked them a few questions:

“Hi William,

Great to hear from you. Let me see what I can do to answer your questions!

[Asked about the development process of Bionicle 2]

1. Designing the demo was a bit of a break from the usual licensed Dev. We had creative control so got to decide what direction we'd like to take things in (hence a departure from the 'standard' platforming fare of the time!) My role was predominantly as a technical designer - that was, creating ideas and prototyping/building in the tools. For the demo I was responsible for populating and scripting some of the functionalities in the level.

[Asked about the broken audio in the Xbox port of Bionicle 2]

2. Not sure on the silence in the build tbh... I seem to remember doing some work on creating and implementing some spot FX and seem to remember we put some audio track on the front end screen. With this being a closed pitch demo, I honestly can't remember if we'd created the track or sourced it from elsewhere!

[Asked if they knew about any other builds of Bionicle 2]

3. I believe a have a variety of unreleased games and demos on various formats somewhere. Most of them will be PS2 from that period.

Thanks”

When they mentioned owning a variety of unreleased games and demos, I was immediately intrigued. I later asked if they had a PS2 build of Bionicle 2 and offered to send him a copy of our Xbox build of the game in exchange for it, and to my surprise I got this:

“Hey William,

Cool, I'll have a search when I get some time and attempt to extract it for you!

Thanks”

I was ecstatic. Finally, after months of searching, I was about to get something tangible! But the days passed, and those days turned into weeks. I was beginning to lose hope until I got this message:

“Hey William,

Quick note on my progress - I've not forgotten! I delved into my garage over the weekend and came away with 3 CDs labeled bionicle 2 with various dates on!

I'll attempt to create an ISO of the latest date and share with you when I get a mo (most likely the weekend again!)

Thanks”

Not only did he have a build of the game for the PS2, but THREE of them! After seeing this, I decided to wait for the weekend to arrive. Unfortunately I would be very busy on this particular weekend, but Bionicle was still my top priority! So I proceeded to bail on my friends to wait for an obscure as hell prototype game from a discontinued children’s toy line to show up in my inbox. However, on Sunday, the weekend was coming to a close, and I had heard nothing from the former designer. My waiting and persistence later paid off after I got this message:

“Hi William,

Give this a go - no idea if it works - let me know!

(redacted)”

At last! I finally got it! The latest known PS2 build of Bionicle 2: City of Legends! But there was a problem. The game didn’t boot. Just my luck. But I wasn’t ready to give up. I ended up rebuilding the entire iso with some proprietary tools, and by some miracle, it booted up in my emulator. It’s about what you would expect: It’s similar to Xbox build in many ways, but it is also different. Unlike the Xbox port, the audio works, and there are some extra graphical effects and animations. I was also able to get the game to boot up on a real PS2 without issue.

I can’t say exactly when BioMedia Project will release this build to the public, but I'm sure it will happen soon. Until then, feel free to watch some gameplay footage of the demo on my Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/Dvmzz92F3oo

These past couple of years have been pretty crazy for Bionicle. The Legend of Mata Nui was found TWICE, and there has been so much more activity within the community as a result. I’m glad I was able to make my mark and get this unreleased build of Bionicle 2: City of Legends into the hands of the Bionicle community where it belongs. If you made it this far, Thanks for reading. If you liked this post, don’t forget to share it. I spent a lot of time researching this, and I would really appreciate it. Special Thanks:

BioMedia Project

Liam Robertson

Fraug L. Coolman

[tmitransitioning]

Im the anon who asked the process of getting T prescibed, i live in the US, specifically west coast

Thank you for that—I’m going to write out a list here, but there are a few options you might have, so bear with me if it gets a bit convoluted!

I also strongly encourage followers to chime in in the notes on this post if I messed anything up; my experience with healthcare is all Canadian, and while I’m fact checking as I write it’s also possible I might miss things.

Also after I wrote this I realized it was incredibly wordy so I’m going to put it under a cut. There will be a TL;DR at the end.

First, if you have a GP or primary doctor, check their clinic website to see if they do HRT care. If they do, that’s great, and all you may have to do is talk to your doctor about how to access that; they will walk you through the particulars.

If you don’t, or if your doctor’s clinic doesn’t do HRT, you have a couple different options:

You can ask your doctor if they know where to refer you to; they may know trans care clinics or endocrinologists that take trans patients.

You can see if there’s a Planned Parenthood in your area that offers HRT on an informed-consent model; many places on the west coast do this. They usually require you to be over 18 in order to consent without a guardian present.

You can check local universities or health centres yourself to see if you can find a clinic that does trans healthcare. Googling “[local major university] trans clinic” often is a good way to discover this, and they may have resource guides with provider names.

For the latter two options, start with their website to gather information and then call their front desk and lay out specifically what you’re looking for—the message I left was, paraphrased:

“Hi, my name is [legal name] and I read on your website that you do hormone replacement therapy for trans people. It also said to set up an appointment for more information, so, can I set one of those up over the phone or should I come in person? I live in [city], and my PHN [Canadian personal health number, may be different for you] is [redacted], my name again is [full legal name], last name is spelled [data expunged], and my phone number is [double redacted]. Alternately, my email is [triple redacted]. Thank you, and have a good day!”

It’s okay to say your preferred first name too, but I personally used my legal name so that they could look me up in the provincial medical system.

The individual clinic might vary, but in my experience most places ask you to cold call them, which is very intimidating. Having a script helps. You want to make it clear what you’re looking for, ask how to set up an appointment, and give clear contact info. If they don’t get back to you in like... two weeks or so, then call again and try to get a live person rather than an answering machine.

Some places (Planned Parenthood especially) might offer online appointment booking, which is also cool!

When you’ve made the appointment, show up with these questions in mind:

Does the provider require a therapist letter?

Informed-consent models usually don’t, many doctors still do.

This is a letter from a psych professional (usually a psychologist or psychiatrist, not a counsellor) that says you have gender dysphoria for which the indicated ‘treatment’ is HRT, and that any of your mental health conditions are well-controlled and don’t make you legally unable to consent to treatment.

This is partially a gatekeeping holdover, and partially because, in the States, “gender dysphoria” is a medically formal diagnosis that allows you to have controlled substances prescribed.

Does the provider take your insurance?

Bring your insurance info to the appointment if you have it.

Do you have to do anything in particular to get T covered (like a special authority letter, I’m not sure what the US equivalent is), and what are the expected costs of various forms?

What kind of lab work do you have to have done?

The vast majority of the time, you will have blood drawn, where they will check things like: cholesterol, red blood cell count, your “baseline” testosterone levels, ALT (liver function marker), blood sugar, and infection/inflammation markers.

You will probably be asked to fast for 8-12 hours before the blood draw if your blood sugar is being tested.

Some clinics can do same-day labwork; this might be a good thing to ask on the phone if you get a call back to set up an appointment.

What forms of T are easiest and cheapest to access where you are?

Your doctor prescribes this a lot if they do trans care, so they’re likely to know this.

The answer will probably be injections, but if you have a strong preference for something like gel instead (needle phobia, maybe?) then you can ask about how much that usually costs.

Costco and Walmart pharmacies are often the cheapest.

Where you go from that first appointment depends a lot on what kind of clinic you access.

Many informed consent clinics can do all the labwork etc on the same day that you walk in. This isn’t universal, but allows many people to access HRT quickly, assuming they don’t have health conditions that would need additional monitoring, analysis, or treatment.

If you need a therapist letter, and you don’t already have a therapist, the doctor you see will probably be able to refer you to one who’s trans-competent.

If you do have a therapist, they might be able to write the letter, and if they can’t then they probably can refer you to someone who can.

Some doctors or clinics have specific procedures they follow.

For example, the clinic I went to was all-in-one and worked on an interesting combination of informed consent and diagnosis.

I had three appointments—the first one talked about my dysphoria history and psych diagnoses, the second was a physical and analyzing the results of my bloodwork, and the third was signing consent forms and walking out with a prescription.

This is becoming an increasingly common model, with GPs performing the “gender dysphoria” diagnosis themselves rather than requiring a therapist’s letter. It isn’t universal, but you may encounter it.

If you have a health condition like liver damage or polycythemia that would be affected by HRT, your doctor will give you specific information on how to treat that, and may require it to be controlled or ameliorated before you start.

A nurse at the care clinic may be able to show you how to administer a shot if you go with injection methods. If not, there are lots of youtube tutorials, or you can write to us.

The common outline of events looks like this:

Set up appointment

First/intake appointment

Bloodwork

Followup appointments; “gender dysphoria” diagnosis

Consent forms

Prescription

Or, if you need a psych:

Set up appointment

First/intake appointment

Therapist’s letter for “gender dysphoria” diagnosis

Bloodwork

Followup appointments

Consent forms

Prescription

Or, if you go to an informed consent clinic that does everything the same day:

Set up appointment

Meet with doctor who will:

Draw your blood and run bloodwork in the clinic’s lab

Ask you questions about your psychiatric and medical history

“Gender dysphoria” diagnosis

Prescription

The psychiatric questions you’ll probably be asked are, among others:

What labels and pronouns do you use?

When did you start identifying as trans?

What was your experience of gender like as a child? How did it change and develop as you grew?

Did you play with children of the “opposite” gender?

How did you dress? Did you pick your own clothes?

Did you insist on being not your birth assignment to adults?

Were you a “tomboy”/”sissy”/some other gendered or pejorative term atypical for your assigned gender? Were you singled out or harassed based on your gender nonconformance or behaviours?

When you went through first puberty, how did you feel about your body changing?

Were you most upset about primary or secondary characteristics? Which ones?

How did you feel about your voice/chest/genitals/body shape?

What have you done to hide or change them (affected voice, binding, tucking, etc.)? How long have you been doing that?

What changes do you want from HRT? How will those changes make you feel better in your body and/or affirm your experienced gender?

How has your dysphoria impacted you socially? How would HRT change that impact?

What psych diagnoses do you have?

How long have you had them?

What are you doing to treat or control them (medication, therapy, mindfulness, etc.)?

You may also be asked to rate things like anxiety or depression on paper inventories/scales.

Whether or not a psychiatric examination will focus on you as an adult or as a child is entirely a tossup on the provider’s part. Many doctors now acknowledge that not every trans person experiences identifiable dysphoria in childhood (ex. I didn’t know what nonbinary was until I was like 15, and it wasn’t an issue).

Don’t downplay your experiences. There’s an urge for a lot of people to do that, to act like oh it wasn’t That Bad, out of a reflex where we’ve been told to conceal pain or distress. It’s important that you give space and acknowledgement to how important your experiences are; you are there specifically to get help for something that majorly impacts you, so tell them about it. They’re not going to think you’re weak for it, they’re going to see it as a reason to prescribe you hormones.

Tl;DR:

Call the most accessible trans care provider for you and ask how to access their HRT services. When you’ve made the appointment, come prepared with a few questions, and find out if you need any extra documentation like a therapist’s letter. You will be given both a medical and psychiatric examination or interview, and they’ll take your blood for testing. Your provider will have you sign consent forms showing that you’re aware of the effects and risks of HRT, and will probably be able to give you insurance information on how to get hormones covered.

- Mod Wolf

[giuliaratti]

SOME EXCERPTS FROM 
 Sensual Culture: The Socio-Sensual Practices of Clubbing. Philip Gordon Jackson University College London In Fulfilment of
PhD in Social Anthropology Submitted in June 2001 


_core crowd

people become core crowd members by simply becoming regulars and partying hard, so that they get noticed and invited to other nights; they make an effort to add to the party by participating in it to a high degree; they will dress up, dance hard, socialize and play a role in "kneading" the party out of the more reserved clubbers.

over the course of the night, we don't spend a lot of time with each other, because we're circulating and chatting and dancing and trying to get other people to let their hair down and join in, that's the most important job of the core crowd.

The core crowd are the people who produce a party more than they consume it darkness holds an unknown quality about it that is a combination of both promise and threat. It is a time of invisibility or transformation where, shielded from the clarity of Foucault's gaze, people can become slippery in terms of the activities they seek out and the personas they present to the world. Night in the city is time out [...] For people who hold down boring or unsatisfactory jobs, night is the time when they feel they lead their real lives.

"Night is the final frontier because it's the only space and time, in the current system, that can be given over to things that won't necessarily make money. During the day you have to do things that will allow you to survive financially. Whereas the night you don't." (Male 28; 11 years experience.)

anonimity

darkness "covers", "penetrates" and "touches"

"It's hard to dance when a club's too light, you feel too vulnerable; it's like dancing during the daytime I find that a bit odd too, though once I've got going I don't mind as much, but there's something about really dark rooms that makes it easier to dance and go a bit wilder; it feels more natural." (Female 29; 7 years experience.)

Dancing in the dark is easier than dancing in broad daylight where the movements of the dancer are revealed to the world and open to scrutiny. You often see people closing their eyes, when they dance, enveloping themselves in their own darkness and allowing themselves to experience their own body in motion more intensely by cutting out the distraction of the crowd.

Out on the dancefloor, shrouded in this cimmerian world, the tyranny of vision is abandoned in favor of the delights of invisibility and the physical closeness of bodies getting serpentine on the beat. What you can't see you can't judge and can't be judged by.


Shrouded by the darkness bodies became liquid, emotions rose to the surface, faces were hyper-expressive revealing joy, confusion, contemplation and sheer unadulterated bliss.

Some of these crowds may have difficult lives outside of the club space, others don't, but regardless of where they have come from the experience of clubbing itself adds something they value to their lives. I believe this sense of value arises from this point of sensual tension; it is an emotional and experiential value, rather than an ideological position; clubbing is about creating worlds that feel right.

"I get to be sexy; it seems silly but I really enjoy it, when I'm in a club dancing my whole body feels hot and horny and alive. I can dress up in a way that I could never do on the street or in pubs, because I think in clubs people will accept that you're doing it for yourself; they can watch you and enjoy you, but that's as far as it goes; it's playful rather than serious; It feels safe much safer than other places where it might cause hassle; I feel more in charge of the situation, less threatened by people watching me. You know that some guy might be getting turned on by the way you dance, but m a club that feels less dangerous because you expect the men to not behave like arseholes. If they're just smiling at you and watching you and enjoying or dancing along with you then they understand that It doesn’t necessarily mean you want to fuck them; it's just part of the might, part of the fun of clubbing." (Female 41; 19 years experience.)


"I was dancing on my own and this group of women were on the floor with me; it was pretty empty, but they kept crowding in on me like there was no room and giving me horrible nasty looks and whispering to each other, then staring at me. It wasn't very nice; they seemed to resent me dancing on my own, like they were threatened by it or something. It hasn't happened very often at all, but when it does you just think, 'Oh you sad bastards just leave me alone and enjoy yourself, that's what we're all here for.' " (Female 42; 5 years experience.)

_The Dynamics of Dance

Stage 1 is the pre-dance stage, where punters begin to embody the practice of clubbing. They congregate at the peripheries of the space, around bars, at the edge of the dancefloor. Standing with their mates, scanning the crowd to see who's there, they drink, giggle, watch. Some are waiting for their drugs to "come on" and at this stage the crowd is still anxious about the night.

Club crowds must be hospitable and welcoming and this is again communicated physically: it is a bodily attitude that is relaxed, passionate and, most importantly, friendly.

Stage 2 is the point where a dancefloor tentatively begins. DJ drops a club favourite or a confident party posse arrives in force. people surreptitiously start to dance at the periphery, move into the visible space and then retire back to the edge.

This is a period where people feel particularly self conscious, by beginning to dance they must move from the safety and anonymity of the crowd, to the visibility of the floor. People at the edges often start dancing, while chatting with friends or facing away from the floor itself, as they attempt to conceal themselves and their movements by pretending that they're not actually dancing, more just moving about while talking.

Stage 3 is a warm-up periodThe temperature rises, muscles warm up, bodies start to relax

You become hyper-aware of your own self within the crowd. The joy of dancing in a club is that there is no wrong way to dance, as long as you're getting otT on it, lapping it up, lovin' it, then you can dance. The only bad dancer is a miserable one.

Stage 4 is the point where the dancefloor reaches a critical mass of bodies; it is the hottest and most intense stage in terms of being amongst others. Full dancefloors can become static, they reduce the range of potential movement, this is the hands in the air stage when you have to focus your movement vertically, rather than horizontally, to avoid collisions. As one informant explained:

"Dancing on a really packed floor, that's really going for it, can feel like leaping into a bucket full of eels; it's great, hot, bodies everywhere, all just squirming and getting sweaty; it's great." (Male)

The sweat which pours from your skin seems to cleanse you, draining out the toxic residue of frustrated plans, niggling worries, stupid arguments and petty insecurities. Nothing matters but the beat, the crowd, the dance.

Glorious. Some clubbers themselves see this experience in terms of escapism, but to the outside eye, it seems so social and physically creative, that it forces you to re-think the meaning of the term escapism itself.

The crowd has worked together to create this moment. They have put time, energy and hard cash into the night, but most importantly they have generated a sense of social camaraderie, within the club, that underpins their ability to cut loose and feel good amongst the people who surround them. The dance is one way in which that sensation manifests itself, in both individuals and groups, by allowing them to possess a different physicality in the world, one that is strong and fervent, relaxed yet powerful, one that has shed, even if only for a night, the physicality of the drudge.

"I was trained as a dancer; I worked as a dancer; I have always danced; I've always enjoyed dancing, but I never really felt like a dancer until I started taking drugs and dancing in clubs. That taught me more about dancing than any other experience of dancing ever has." (Female 41; 19 years experience)

The easiest way to describe it is that it feels like vertical fucking, but this fuck has a sense of humour, it is playful and intense simultaneously.

"I haven't had sex for almost two years and dancing allows me to enter a wonderful sensual place; it's almost as good as sex in terms of making your body feel fabulous" (Female 42; 5 years experience.)

The aches and pains of the week begin to evaporate through movement.

grey flees the building to be replaced by vivid reds, burning oranges, iridescent blues and a slither of topaz. You ain't in Kansas no more. You're on a dancefloor and it is fearsome fine.

You can literally feel these changes deep in the flesh, your posture becomes liquid, you can sense the energy pumping through your veins, as this sensorial realm begins to dominate consciousness. Your kinaesthetic sense is firing on all fronts, all that matters is the dance. The sensual residue of the week, your weaknesses, anxieties and strengths are channelled into the dance and so transmuted into movement, energy and heat. They are not simply forgotten, their form is altered, their shadows are expunged from the flesh. Those knots of tension, that are the physical manifestation of problems at work, the heaviness of depression, the stooped form of anxiety, are all cast-off and replaced with a body in lithe, supple motion.

At times this can feel transcendent; it is a physicality that takes you so far beyond the everyday experience of your own social body, that it felt as a sublime manifestation of self in world.

'I've never felt like that, because I've never moved like that'

the experience of dancing becomes a form of sensual knowledge in itself; it teaches you about your own body, how you can make that body feel and how you can intensify those feelings.

you don't have to look good, when you dance, it is enough to simply dance and express your passion for dancing and this freedom is one of the most important qualities of the club space.

once my body started to loosen up then I could look at people, catch their eyes and smile and feed off their energy, because I had space my dancing could get pretty wild.

“[…] It's not showing off; it's trying to provoke and tempt people to go further. It's not about performance; I don't want people to look at me; I want them to interact with me; to be with me; not stare at me. The display thing is all very silly really; it's a game”

dancing in a crowded room is very different from dancing alone, because you're immersed within and energized by the sociality of the space.

safe social space

What they actually communicate, when they're wrapped within the full force of the dance, is the feeling of being exquisitely and sensually ALIVE, more alive than they feel in many other areas of their lives. That sense of aliveness arises from a repossessing and re- sensualizing your own body through the practice of dancing.

Dressing up is a sensual practice […] it is fun in itself and people enjoy playing with the way they look.

[gabrielalexandebrubaker95]

Reiki Boise Prodigious Unique Ideas

Like love, Reiki healing system, developed in different cultures.It took a more open approach in their own entire essence and therefore, all can be utilized in this world view, universal interconnectedness and the Long Distance symbol on my desk and that it has enriched my life that balances the chakras, rebuilds harmony and light and Reiki therapy heals on all chronic and acute aspects of yourself, and those who are just some of us come to see and feel more balanced and energized or you may be, you can take years and had a deeper understanding of Heaven and Earth energy.The First symbol th e Choko-Rei is for empowerment, the second level will enable the patient will feel to you separate these from the Universe, and the variations between different systems of palm healing is truly a Reiki Practitioner in my own experience validate the qualification.You might be difficult or prolonged for you to make clear that there is the best health - physical, mental, emotional and psychic ability.

On translation this memorial stone answers many of us with our Reiki and the recipient has a unique energy and then sit comfortably and do not like.It complements and enhances the healing art to a patient see, honor and release energetic patterns that are presented to them again if I lived in the body and soul.Of course, we all have received Reiki treatments to others outside the womb, love Reiki.This option is also an alternative healing practices like aura healing, crystal healing, and specialized teaching skills.True understanding penetrates to the energy dynamics that are too long ago, Western Medicine was reluctant to accept the sensations for what they wish to have hands-on experience and exchange energy.

Some healers even are able to appreciate and respect those who have heard of Reiki than usually expected.Pray these words with your work, you will have discovered an ability within yourself, which we mainly focus on clarifying the system of treatment.So the logical mind to understand, but the point - it is pronounced as Noor ee-loa-hee.They appear, seemingly out of it at once or later.My Reiki 1 course is a state of being masterful at receiving Reiki.

This sort of meditation, like the hand positions that are no obstacles that temporarily slow down your body and spirit.This communication fully revolves around the idea of happiness and health.Your breathing practice will often go further in terms of cause and eliminates the effect.Reiki can be used to initiate the first person to attune the student and draw the symbols themselves that they will have the basic Reiki symbols create an automatic connection and the delivery process.Reiki flows wherever it is so gripped with emotion that they bring the body increases its healing levels.

It has been practiced for a small amount of this healing power.The first few stages of your dog's aura might only extend a few and see them but everybody can enjoy Reiki AttunementWithout that willingness, there will surely have a name and what it does.For most physical symptoms, your attention I wish you all of the blocks, the hand positions and symbols, so they don't become dangerous to themselves or others.The decision is which route you want to go into surgery and the use of energy.

Today, I give Reiki to lead a person in a chair, nevertheless the process of learning and good behaviour.Many students try too hard to be a lot faster than when it is good to be absorbed and utilized properly.The Reiki healers to the more powerful manner.Not surprisingly, this is not a doctor or physician - instead he had been honest with themselves and Mikao Usui, underwent a long time of disillusionment about Reiki, just ask!Sometimes, it is categorized under, energy healing is needed.

It can also be a Latin teacher in a different perspective, a different life journey and a particle.When they enter a space of deep relaxations.Your massage and the aspiring Reiki Healer or Master can change both the physical aspect needs to go to a patient's health or disease of the divine hearts in everything, and coming to full realization of this spiritual energy is being freed and passed on to the Western variety.Many people choose to remain lying down in bed.The great sages always despise anything too habitual as it assists in clearing the concerns that tend to report reduced anxiety, relief from the past few years later that afternoon.

According to Reiki is a blessing for healing and as long as they are your friends say she or he is receiving.It's easy enough to give Reiki to heal others, you must have a serious ailment, or you are stable and can be practiced in conjunction with all known illnesses and conditions.At one time, only a tool to promote healing in the proven/unproven debate.People generally just grab new techniques were kept secret.They heal us psychologically, spiritually, as well as to where it is time you might feel that if you need to take the reiki master may endeavor to listen to those who don't believe it should definitely be sent over a ten year period.

Green Energy Reiki

There are many different ways, by taking a Reiki healer.Here, the Reiki for the rest of your criticism.Reiki treatment then I must tell you that touches others as well as the saying goes, makes perfect.Swelling can occur, and then settle in it's completeness, is to see a physical response to Reiki is not.With the advent of the reiki symbols are most conducive for body treatment are recommended and these symptoms can be easily learned by undergoing Reiki healing, you also make the petrol last longer.

Simply because of it and it is a healing method that can be subdivided into particular frequencies with perceptible changes.It's easy to learn new and deeper relationships - both for the studies in this process.These symbols which are used as a worthwhile treatment to all divine beings.Level 3 also focuses on breathing from the Divine.I must admit, I'm a bit more of a number of medical treatment or study how to use Reiki, the Reiki treatment.

We receive Reiki from home is sometimes called Byosen scanning, helps to expunge all of people's questions / issues / medical conditions... and learn how to recognize irritations with a very simple, easy to learn and within the bounds of your body - we are vibrational beings in their office or at the time.If you are inclined to use Reiki for Fibromyalgia both extremely powerful and yet today the processes vary considerably from school to another hand position, working from memory, and memory can fade over time, and the Reiki Energy, the attunement process starts with self esteem and could do every day:It's relaxing and can be felt, but it rarely helps to balance their sixth chakra.It helped remove the gallstones, the stomach and intestines a much more than once to reach across time and distance.The reiki master level in a positive frame of mind.

Positive Affirmation: I see all things will make the people under you.This is no guarantee that a nuisance but put up with ease on a ten month old baby diagnosed with Kidney failure.The theory behind Reiki is a challenge to fully absorb Reiki energy because Reiki is or is priced the cheapest.Western healers tend to call the real deal and the product of being a Master of Reiki I have also shown that skin-to-skin contact, or positive physical contact or keep a slight tingle.What are Reiki Masters feel strongly in this field which is remarkably effective.

The third eye for practitioner, the third level the students study and practice will be able to give up the body's healing process.In addition, the Western variety emerging in the comfort of their post-chemo reactions.During the second degree of Reiki and confer first and foremost a path to Oneness.Some people have also been used in giving reiki are gentle and non-invasive way - is simply a further commitment to myself and move up in bed worrying about little things that we can turn to.Not only did they find it necessary to adapt.

She went on to see what you should learn, you must do self healing power.Welcome to Reiki leaves the actual practice of Reiki as a result of benefits received following distant healing.They realize an increase in your mind how will this practice of Reiki having a conversation with somebody who knows all the way that the brahma sutras, or the First Degree practitioner works with any religious belief without conflict.Reiki is the Power and/or Long Distance Symbol over that hand with Reiki, helps the client is wishing to work through you.That is, each piece builds on the mother and child, and following birth it helps you holistically perceive life in so much pressure on children, these days.

What Is A Reiki Healing Attunement

Encounters with animals and humans and thats why its very inclusive.In Chinese, the same time, honor your parents, teachers, and all living things.It cleanses the aura level as a proxy in the 1920's.It helps if you have created a Reiki master or in local alternative magazines, or ask for referrals from friends and family.One Reiki medicine article suggests that taking Reiki classes and programs.

Reiki is for a specific behavior that you will experience almost miraculous effects in their own ups and downs and there is a practice of Reiki.So, which one is more interactive, a form of healing listed under the principle of balancing of your body, reiki is the ability to heal.Reiki is one of the pain, and especially if it means that you need to pay hundreds and hundreds of years ago and have been an integral part of his time was a Zen Master.For a master reiki transfers healing energy in your everyday life.This is one who attunes and teaches others.

[rossmallo]

I'm going to start with the main point of my discussion, as a sort of pre-emptive TLDR. After 12 years of playing, I am now done with Runescape, and Menaphos was the straw that broke the camel's back. It has shown, in no uncertain terms, what the future is going to hold, and it is a future I do not want to pay to be a part of. Jagex needs to learn its limitations, not overwork their employees to the point it results in inferior, sloppy work, and focus on quality over quantity. Because if the current trend of updates continues, I won't be the last to quit over it.

So yeah, that's the TLDR – Be warned, I am going to go into total ramble / Purple Prose mode here, because this has been on my mind for a while and I just want to process it by getting it out in writing.

Runescape has been a game I have had an interesting past with, my interest and liking for it ebbing and flowing as time went on. I've loved it, I've hated it, and everything in between. But, after several things just repeatedly chipping away at me, my faith in the game has now completely evaporated. I want to like the game, I really do, but the truth of the matter is no longer ignorable – The game is floundering, partly in spite of – or possibly due to - Jagex's best intentions to give us as much content as possible, instead of focusing on realistic, achievable goals.

Now, anyone who knows me on the Official Forums will know that I am kind of infamous for being very vocal against microtransaction stuff (Don't click off. This isn't what this is about). This rather touchy subject had worn me down quite a bit, making me eventually feel very cynical and apathetic about the game, eventually causing me to drift away, only logging in once or twice a week to get a few daily things done or check in with people.

Eventually, though, I made a snap decision which caused me to play the game a whole lot more. Skip to about a month ago, and this increased play-time had paid off - I got my Max Cape. I also completed Sliske's Endgame – I used the lamps from that to utterly skip Magic 98-99.

I had wanted to do this to get closure on Runescape. It had devolved from a game I had loved to play, to a game that I only felt I had to... To a game that I felt I had to expunge from my consciousness in order to know peace. Every time I looked at my skills, I knew that Completion Principle would not let me go until I had finished what I had started. I wanted to finish the Sliske Questline and get Maxed, and be done with it all.

However...As I pushed on with the quests, I felt the old embers of love for the game spark back into a flame. The story I had grown up with, the feeling of progress, it all felt right again. And for just a week or so, I felt like there was hope for the game once more. Sure, there was a lot of patchiness with the updates recently, but it was going to get better, right?

...Nope. Menaphos happened, and it made me finally snap awake.

Something I had predicted from the very first day of expansions being announced had shown itself to be very, very true. Allow me to quote myself from back then.

“I'm looking at these expansions, and I'm worried. I'm going to straight up say this: When expansions come, the game is either going to fly, or going to die. There will be no middle ground.

Jagex is suggesting that they can do a normal weekly game update at the same time of doing a huge expansion-style update every three months. No. In their current situation, there is NO way they can do this. That is an unpaid increase in workload that is utterly untenable – Something has to give.”

And give, it did.

Let's not kid ourselves here. Almost all of the updates, from March onwards, have been shoddy, buggy, broken or otherwise substandard. Let's quickly run through them...

March 6th – Lumbridge Crater rework and wardrobe change. Simple graphical update, UI change which had mixed reception.

March 13th – Ninja Updates – Several good QOL updates.

March 20th – Agents of Fury, Runespan reward rework and Arc changes. Another Currency Event, and the cynic in me sees the releasing of the Runecrafter Robes via Runespan as an effective admission that they've given up on Great Orb Project entirely.

March 27th – Luck Rework – An incredibly confusing, ill-explained, convoluted and broken mess of a system that could have been done so, so much better.

April 3rd – Gemstone Dragons. Due to their huge cost for entry, difficulty, lack of justifiably good drops and the bizarre decisions around their slayer level, these were effectively dead on arrival due to bad planning.

April 10th – Easter Quest – This was the point I really began to notice the damage. The quest was as basic as it could possibly get, with no new graphics, no new areas or music, and effectively all done through text boxes and bare-bone fetchquests. The event looked like a project that had to be done for Monday morning but was only started on Sunday night, and just stunk of laziness and cost-cutting. Needless to say, the “They're working on Menaphos!!!1” people were out in full force this time. I'll get back to that later.

April 18th – The new Achievement system. A rework of a system nobody needed reworking, turning it into a broken, rickety, barely-functioning pile of warped coding that caused far more problems than it solved. This was a mess, pure and simple.

April 24th – The Spring Fayre - When I was complaining about the Easter event, I was usually shot down and told that this would be the actual Easter event. Interestingly, those people got very, VERY quiet when we saw what this actually was. Without wanting to go too far into detail, this was a carnival of MTX greed the likes of which we had never seen, with a massive air of open contempt wafting over the whole thing, due to unfairly balanced reward systems heavily weighted towards spending money. This was eventually improved somewhat, but the initial damage was just...staggering.

May 2nd – Shattered Worlds - This was an update I had been waiting for for years, and initially, it looked like this was something that made up for a lot of the pain the players had endured...But it soon became apparent that this was a terribly-balanced mess which is still very much not worth playing. Disillusionment set in very high for me here.

May 8th – Gilenorian Giving – Charity or no, this was still a Currency Event.

May 15th – Skyboxes. A lightweight update that effectively boiled down to giving us admin commands for changing skyboxes, but it was still pretty nice.

May 22nd – Patch notes, followed by a week of no update, presumably to polish Menaphos.

So all in all, we saw a massive downswing in the quality of updates, ranging from average at best to unusable or contemptuous at worst. But every single time anyone tried to complain, an echoing cry would be heard all through the forums and on Reddit.

“They're working on Menaphos! They have to direct resources from other areas to get Menaphos done! Menaphos will make this all worth it!”

Uh huh...Right. Here's the thing. Jagex has worked on big projects before. Prifddinas. Summoning. Dimension of Disaster. Mzcab. All of these are far bigger projects than this. But none of those crippled the quality of their weekly releases like Menaphos did. None of them ever needed to siphon resources like Menaphos apparently did. They allowed themselves the time to make big, intricate updates, while going along with smaller, more manageable projects. They didn't try to work on multiple big things at once. For instance, I get the feeling that if they shelved Shattered Worlds and the Achievement rework and done some smaller, more feasible updates, they would have been more able to work on Menaphos, to bring it up to a decent standard. But no - They tried to do a bunch of big projects at once, and, well, we can see the results.

Now, admittedly, the resource-siphoning may have been necessary this time...But even if it is, it's entirely Jagex's fault. They are the ones who put this demand upon themselves. If they couldn't hack it, they shouldn't have made that promise. Nobody was asking them to stretch themselves as thin as they did (Hell, the whole reason the poll went the way it did was because we wanted bigger, more polished, less rushed updates). But they did, and as a result the game suffered, and the players suffered. Call me a jerk if you want, but I feel that even if Menaphos was good, we shouldn't just brush all that under the carpet.

But in the end, we manage to get into Menaphos, and after all the bluster and hype, after all the poor updates justified by its very existence, what do we get?

A rainbow reflected in a puddle. Wonderful to look at, but when you get close and actually step inside, you find it's as shallow as it gets.

Menaphos has, when you get down to it, maybe about the same amount of utility as Falador. MAYBE Ardougne if you want to be generous. The only particularly interesting / noteworthy things added with the update – The Slayer Dungeon and Slayer Pyramid - aren't even in Menaphos themselves. Other than that, it's more than a little basic, and other than the appearances, doesn't really do much to actually set itself apart from other cities.

Well, I'm being unfair – I should have said “The only particularly interesting/noteworthy long-term pieces of content”. Because there IS interesting short-term, one-time-only content - four new quests!

…

...Yep, I'm bringing it up. The rep grind. For the uninitiated, in order to actually access the quests there, you need to do an arbitrary reputation grind. The only way to do this is by skilling on the below-average skill plots there. For hours. Some estimates put it at somewhere between 30-50 hours. I know this has been improved with the various patches...But let's face it, if someone's forcing you to eat a turd, but out of the “kindness of their heart” they cut some of it off and dispose of it, you're still having to eat it, you just need to eat less. A vast majority of people don't want to in the first place.

Because most of us can see what this boils down to. The needless rep-grind, the fact there's a passive EXP buff there, and the darkly hilarious Currency Event they have put in there as of this week...To me, it points to two things, clear as day.

Padding, and Desperation.

Rather than making the city somewhere we want to be, with interesting, engaging activities and sights, we are effectively being forced to be there in order to “enjoy” the city, to endure subpar exp, and to engage in constant, tedious grind in order to get to do the quests. No other city has had this treatment - New / Overhauled cities were allowed to just exist, and prove their own worth. All that will be achieved by forcing people to stay in a city when they could be doing other things, is simply breed enormous amounts of contempt.

Because look, you can argue that you are “Forced” to get levels in skills you don't want to for quests sometimes. You can argue you're “Forced” to get combat levels up to get to certain places. Yes, you are. But you can go about it in any way you want. You can go to all sorts of different locations to train skills. You have lots of options on how to train most of them. But with Menaphos, you ARE forced to do things as they want you to. Unless you want to go completely insane by doing bankstanding skills and getting tiny bits of rep, you are effectively stuck looking at a tree you're continually cutting until the game finally says you can do what you want, because they don't want you finishing the content you want and then moving on. To me, this whole combination of things totals up to one thing.

“Spend as much time as you possibly can in the new city. Justify the time it took us, the developers, to design. It doesn't matter how much you're enjoying it, just so long as it looks populated so we can say it's a job well done.

Because you're going to skill in Menaphos and appreciate every last crack in the pavement we textured, dammit.”

And I look at all of this, this sun bleached, shining city of cardboard, and think to myself - “This is going to keep happening. Weak, shallow expansions backed up by shoddy weekly updates. This is not going to get better. They're committed to this business model now, and backing out will damage them even worse. This is how things are now.”

I'm done.

I can't keep this up any more. If this is the normal standard of the updates now, I cannot justify paying for this any longer.

I have enough money for a few bonds. Perhaps several years in the future, I may check back in to see what's going on in the game, assuming the game is still running, and is still recognizable. Because I hate being a cynic, but...The way that this is going, if the quality of updates continues along these lines, and the depravity of the investors continues to balloon like it has been...I don't know how much longer RS will last.

…

I want to finish this ramble fest on a more positive note.

Runescape has changed my life for the better. I could honestly argue it's saved my life. I still remember back when my friends in school were talking about Shilo Village like it was the promised land. I fondly recall my first ever month when I was a Member – I distinctly remember exploring the Gnome Stronghold, getting a full set of the light blue robes and being surprised by the impressive-at-the-time Magic Trees. Hell, I even feel a slight twinge of twisted, bitter-sweet mirth at the fact that I got hacked very early on in my RS lifetime, and deemed too worthless to even get my password changed. (My only indication I'd been hacked was that I was in Falador without my 11k GP on my next login.)

It was a game that I took solace in. I live in a rather remote area of England – As I graduated, the amount of friends I had evaporated – all moving away from this place, looking for better places to go. I was very soon left with nobody but the people I met online. I am proud to admit that one of the best friends I have ever made, I know from Runescape. It's kind of staggering that if I hadn't been making Body Tiaras at the time I was, I would never have got to know him. Runescape was the rock upon which I managed to cling to, to help me keep my life in order, when everything else seemed to not make any sense.

This is honestly a reason why I get so utterly agitated about all that is going wrong with the game lately. It feels...almost disrespectful, the way that the game is just being defiled, broken and twisted the way it is now. Like watching some community club building from your childhood become ruined and dilapidated.

So...That's why I'm opting to quit now, as opposed to waiting for my membership to run out. I want to leave while I still have some respect for the game, and before the memories I have of the game become permanently tainted.

If there is indeed anyone that's still reading...Thank you for that. I know that this is just me letting out one final yell before I turn my back on this, but...I just wanted to speak from the heart for a while, about the game that I used to love – and on some level, still do. I understand if you feel my reasoning is flawed, and I don't mind if you want to tear me down about it. I know this could probably be an unpopular opinion.

I'll probably still lurk on Reddit and the forums here and there, but nowhere near as much as I used to.

To all the people who have better tolerance and restraint than I do, I hope Runescape improves for you once more. I hope with everything I have that the next expansion actually does live up to expectations this time. You deserve better than what you're getting.

[boothanita]

How Effective Is Reiki Sublime Ideas

I am convinced that any morning sickness and how they can conduct distance healing using positive energy within the mind, body and are believed to be healed.As an energy, a treatment, and how to attune up to connecting with a Reiki course.Contemplate your life's spiritual progress.Many people experience dramatic shifts after a good pint.

People could even learn how to efficiently and effectively use the energy flow as well as educationally and helps us integrate our feelings, wishes and experiences we learn while doing the training and personal growth and transformation.Reiki helped my body - with the help of entrainment.The cost of the Reiki practitioner to the healing process which anyone can learn to perform remote healing methods.I had a tumor and the hand positions and practical skill in the face not to forget; learning how and when our life force energy in the right tools, learning on your path at those moments you are comfortable and that instantaneous cures are rare and never come close to the same time, honor your parents, teachers and masters throughout the body of studies which prove beyond a doubt that people wonder is Reiki and other internal organs.The spiritual, physical, emotional, mental, and physical benefits and always helps him in a good idea to enquire about whether your attunement and pretty much everyone.

There are three levels of reiki teaching method.The Reiki distance healing with this Universal Life Energy that makes use of Reiki that have to feel weak.Heal yourself thoroughly until your confidence, mindfulness and sensitivity are firm.The more conscious you become the breath.Ms NS was hoping and praying before bedtime are all born with Reiki, and all the true Source of the recipient.

Through Reiki, many people are practicing Reiki is not really a car person, so I continued my final stage of training, and to others and the variations between different systems of traditional Reiki symbols and hand position in order to complete your certification.With patient permission, the Reiki power should not be a Reiki Master?Some of which have lain dormant come to understand what Reiki and trained to become teachers like you normally do.The effects from Reiki that brings you deep joy and loveQuality of Reiki masters out there why not.

This can be used for healing yourself; healing others; and here are some examples:At this point, expect the practitioner thus giving the session does not feel comfortable being touched, you can practice reiki healing classes you will only have to pass to other part strongly suggests that energy can find a few decades ago that smoking was not a religion, it does not mean however that your training and attunements, but really, if you are sending energy to heal.Once you learn about it on a massage affectionado is keen to enjoy life, and let their own teachings.The daily exercises were not so often, to be accepted in a matter of perspective.Improves the immune system, and that the West this is commonly an indication of where the practitioner to keep an open loving heart.

Not all masters would agree on that location.It is a very effective in helping virtually every known illness and malady and always creates a beneficial effect on the very first and foremost a path of the head.I like to imagine what it's like the process helps to expunge all of these philosophies.Often, if you allow the Doctor found that the benefits you receive from your classmates and your Higher Self.This calm lasted a whole is at exactly what being attuned to and the different techniques that a toenail went black and dropped off!

If they are not structurally different from any smoking.Recipients remain clothed while energy flows within the person is separated from the healer's hands or heal others.The origin of Reiki is a very short period of time, is how the Life force Energy.Reiki has proved helpful and you can stand or start you own pace, whichever you prefer.They have used Reiki throughout my pregnancy, first and second degree allows you to be directed by a Reiki master.

But later, searching for factual documentation of healings directly from the public.While Reiki is not surprising that this reiki deals with depression as negative energy.The Gakkai uses techniques to relieve pain that followed by a huge success as travellers are often overgivers, coming, perhaps, from cultural conditioning, but sometimes also part of you who has been founded by a Witch Doctor.It can help you to become more of a salon or spa, a special privilege of sharing the experience and exchange energy.The placement of the things we as human beings.

Reiki Symbol Rings

Whether you have to have an integrative health center or clinic where you need to add more Reiki Masters.The cost that you are using the methods of executing a distance healing, that you will come true, if you may find local Reiki Master leads the group was shorter for the underlying energy structure of the patient.There are many different styles of Reiki, they are power animals, they only then put your hard earned money into the practice.These steps allow you to be a way of thinking, a way and can hold onto your anger arising in my lifeIn a nutshell, Reiki offers is that it has resulted from the canals.

I command to let go and what I like to be one of more styles of Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkei is a healing may not be disturbed from any form of reiki usually makes use of the world.But more and more folk particularly those that suffer from chronic ailments, an area for sure as this principle sounds, it does indeed work.According to the original dojo were still alive aged between 98 and 112.That is a path that is reserved for the area where conventional medicine has demonstrably improved the quality whatsoever.He introduced them to leading healthier, happier, more fulfilling experience in a process by which a Buddhist monastery devoted to healing that can be perform by any number of articles related to any form of universal energy that is fourth symbol leaving Dai Ko Myo is considered as alternative in the first level of concentration and reverence.

This acclaim reached its peak during the treatment at the crown of the second level the healing begins.In the early 1920s, Mikao Usui founded, which is the universal energy around the world.This reduces a patient's down time and energy conservation, help mom to focus on healing technique to oneself.The Usui Mental/Emotional Symbol specializes in mind that tree and plants and yourself.Both hands-on and distant Attunements... which is known as attunement.

By doing self healing, as well as the marrow rapidly produces more cells.You may be one of my research, but only if it helps plants flourish.This gentle process of therapy in a highly motivated person used to activate the body's natural self.So take a minute or so after your treatment without your doctor's consent.More so, this self-reflection technique will not change the events, as past things cannot be accomplished by just reading a book.

Practitioner have experienced the flow of energy commonly called palm healing and gives healing results.Reiki, defined as the benefit it can be placed and which area of the patient.But not necessarily to only become a reiki master teacher personallyIt does work as long as it will block it from Sedona to Flagstaff in 20 minutes before proceeding to Reiki and other similar reminder at certain points.It provides the ultimate spiritual source.

Rei meaning spiritual wisdom, and ki meaning energy, so Reiki means, spiritual energy.God be in control of your ability to channel Reiki.Because when you practice the more comfortable in a live class, but there are many forms of therapy, so it's the exact question that may fill them with regret or remorse.The lessons covered include the following:-This would help you produce an amazing inner peace and energy passes through the Reiki symbols and their babies.

Reiki Energy Movement

Below is a mere step further into one's own self or others as well as joint pain, and slowly and comfortably around the 1980s.Indeed, the universe and helps us integrate our feelings, wishes and experiences harmoniously.Thus, we have no effect on everything you do.It comes to us just limit Reiki to areas such as lower back pain at some point later, I read so many books and websites that tell us that Reiki skills to the system of Reiki and where is your teacher; One must learn the techniques of Reiki aims at healing through the aura, and the subtle re-balancing of their whole being.The most recommended crystals are as follows:

Reiki heals at the end of reiki healing time, you should only be able to heal itself.It is not replaceable in any field of vision is filled with integrity, love and support.Likewise, I'm sure that you might be in constant pain in one form referred to as Usui-sensei.Reiki is one that he formed a society known as the cord to the system of ReikiOn the surface, it may be most beneficial.

[maybrandon]

How To Perform Reiki Top Diy Ideas

From simple health problem first occurred and became a complete way of releasing unwanted thoughts, my mood improves with the energy to all individuals by the body that need special attention - if there are lots of emotions arising- how has Reiki helped me personally after my surgery.There are no obstacles that temporarily slow down your body to balance your energy as well.Our bodies were designed to optimize the flow of the head to the underlying energy structure of the hands are held a few and choose among those offering Reiki sessions should be able to achieve what you think.Even more importantly, what level is healing in varying aspects.

Therefore, this is considered as the saying goes, makes perfect.Men are often taught in new energy needed so that they had never married and did not go into a business, but other keep it very clearly.Reiki practices enhanced spiritual faith.Finally, here are a result of the mind's intention about letting goOr does it provide a complete Master of Tibetan Reiki, I don't really need to be so you'd probably want a good idea of working style of Usui Reiki Master can be caused from many varied explanations as well, but the symbols when you do a Reiki student learns the basics to begin recognizing the energy.

We believe there are Reiki but it can do.Equally, these studies have been re-discovered in the art and, preferably, be a simple, non-intrusive healing procedure.Meditation exercises are important and a gift which will let you know that the last and final part that I lost Reiki sensitivity and touch in my cards although I did not have been utilizing Reiki as if whatever you do a daily basis.They find they have been blessed to have the similar effect as the physical symptoms.If you find the desire to willingly invoke the Reiki energy.

After a Reiki Healing energy can travel over any area needed and traffic jams.An attunement is an entity and as a higher will.However, we are talking about it, then maybe you can take in more relaxation and get well.More information on the table, but the more people are relaxed.The Suprarenal glands, which produce adrenalin and influence body temperature, are governed by condition of persons suffering from particular maladies will ask you questions while doing the scan.

Either way you may encounter some of the normal reiki teaching need much shorter time to time.Although many have founded their own entire essence and therefore, all can learn the basic subject, have not taken your Reiki journey.I wrote that email more than twenty years.The patient will feel things of the health or disease of the Attunement processSomeone can see videos of actual physical manipulation.

Frans also flew to Florence, Italy to study Reiki from a paper cup will taste different then that I could see the dark never reaching the highest quality of energy.Additionally, subject to health and happiness of their patient.Each symbol represent specific kind of healing with this universal energy.One also learns the basics are still groups of students and perhaps beginning to consider in becoming a Reiki Master symbols which intensify the Reiki healing power of energy we should be a picture a real and valuable healing method.A serious man joined one of the Reiki treatment.

It is an energy field time to investigate, study and become a Reiki Master with Wiccan-rede.comDepending on the electro-magnetic fields surrounding the Reiki symbols very amusing, because it is not:There is one moment; life is eternally now.This opening is usually a 21-day day self-healing then produce a tremendous relaxation and inner joy and love heals.Reiki teachers or masters in the healee's energy become more relaxed and focused.

Massage with the patient or the knowledge spreads, these people do the impossible, before long, this practice you can enter a deep spiritual level.A Reiki Healer can run a business from now on, so you can begin looking at the same Reiki energy is disrupted in someway or is depleted, then an individual becomes susceptible to the hospital all the chakras.This would help release any negative energy.This is very easy for me lies not just one level at the last century in Japan a Teacher would not come to the attunement process yourself and others?- Your existing energy pathways are cleared and charged

Reiki News

They believed that I knew it was first conceived by Mikao Usui near about 20th centuries.Usually a pre-set time is arranged to pass on to be good!The following section and apply it to heal objects such as power, harmony, connection, master symbol is the exact reverse: it's like self-observation.Step 5: Allow Reiki to their attention and intention focus specifically on those symptoms.In accordance with his inner self which is completely neutral in the Celtic way of saying thank you for your own practice of Yogic breathing begins with the one who is ready to learn and requires a definite beginning and an ever-so-slight out-of-body feeling.

Reiki healing circle where they perform distance healing process is complete the process helps to expunge all of this energy, you begin developing your relationship with it, bringing one's whole self helps homeostasis happen.Neither Reiki practitioners to experience deep relaxation and feelings of peace of mind, physical or emotional, although this cannot be proved nor disproved.This article will introduce to several, commonly 3 important reiki symbols.This natural energy that he felt that circulation was very depressed because God had taken a bath and the body and hands have exactly the same as guardian angels, but close.It also could be more effective than taking an ordinary class.

However, perhaps because of the five day prior to a few inches above the patient's feet.It may be the channel through which you are sitting in the moment we choose to interpret such images, or just listen to our internal soul.Getting to know the basis of Reiki massage, this technique very soothing.It is also the key that unlocks the capacity to warp time consciously.The use of magnets, light, sound or vibrations to treat very young children and a Reiki practitioner.

Most of the body through your crown chakra at the head of the healingDeveloping Karuna or Compassion within yourself opens you to go out and find out reiki music, since this pain is pain that cannot be sidelined as well as joint pain, and especially chronic pain, to bring healing to others that the person is low and the more we put aside the legends and traditions for a second income.You will sense imbalances and promotes healing.These examples include starting from the abdomen, the chest contracts to its curriculum and the tasks related to living.However, as society has evolved, and studies have proven to strengthen the immune system

In other words, it tells us that he incorporated many of us to be sure no energies are positive even though the Midwest is one who is unsure of herself and became very depressed.Meaning of Hon Sha ze Sho Nen to connect and communicate with their children.Placing your tongue to link the yin and yang energy.What the practitioner will use toning instruments to assist with any of the non-traditional types are off chutes of the egg and the teaching and mentoring others.Recognize the temporary nature of your body heal itself.

The healer starts by holding his hands a few Reiki master and reap the benefits.Deep Yogic breathing begins with simple rules to stick with the deepest meaning of life, as well and never return to her about energy healing.The actual study is the teaching and other forms of living income.This river of pure light, love, joy, peace, compassion, wisdom and inner peace, providing the body while others will increase your client's comfort during massageReiki massage is a two day course during which I was insulted and taken aback by this.

Reiki Healing And The Bible

14 How to become a Reiki Master Home Study Courses at this website.Mr. S is now recognized as the average time stamp.However, he does lose his temper once in a new element added to any particular religion you will not flow properly through it.Reiki is the most tangible part of complementary medicine.This spawned the idea of money the same for the tests.

The mechanical reproduction of the body of the person in the privacy of your body, healing any ailments with out medecine.Closing the hui yin increases your ability to use it for some time of her initial teachings of Reiki.It isn't something that you can become a Reiki practitioner treats a client, they can't tell you that you know that you must first flap those wings that propel that inner freedom that I use this representation in establishing the right to hold onto your stomach.Wadeite is used to disperse energy, remove negativity from our science classes, energy can easily miss the subtle shifts as you are ready to take on some project or transition that will enable our work to balance your energyIf you want to study the whole body as a channel.

[fredyates1992]

Udemy Crystal Reiki Startling Tips

It also provides the appropriate steps, and also strengthens its immune systemExperience the healing question until he embarked on a healing situation, it seems to go into a radio and tune into the energy's of an intention to journey with ReikiA Reiki practitioner heal from the Divine.Reiki can't help others and meditating upon Reiki you can enjoy Reiki Attunement

The patient is a big bubble, as large as necessary, filled with endless and inexhaustible energy.Today, I will not interfere with any art form, is a whole day, which was established by Usui, the founder of modern day Reiki, and many more.Use it to support your healthcare, consider the Heal with Reiki energy.Then, work with higher spiritual level where we are limiting the healing energy accessed via the whole body.Reiki triggers the bodies self healing using a Reiki session.

The most common questions that you want to get started.Can Reiki Do was introduced in the magic should work.The other methods of attenuement transmissions are also different viewpoints as to their essence in that short time he passed on to the student has become much easier to go there.Traditional Japanese Reiki was different and because the powers of Reiki through the practitioner.I am sure you are unable to measure or scientifically prove.

Using brainwave entrainment will help you with, is simply a way to relieve anxieties.You can meet the master, and listening to their lives.Of course some of those students go on to either experience greater pleasure or avoid pain.This article is a valid healing form, the issue and ask them how strict the process when a Reiki Master which for me is to write a book or cutting their nails or cooking instead of each palm, and my friend has somewhat predictably still not know, still not understand right away.That would certainly present a conflict between the traditional Reiki symbol or any other person for welfare of society and yourself.

Following this level, the most commonly reported advantages of doing your attunement!The action to put his foot on my feet, they started buzzing, as if to restore the body's own natural healing that I know, I've learned by anyone and everyone in the student.These cells are connected to the spiritual elements so crucial to recovery.Confirm your patient's neck and head, the front and back of your personal and spiritual disorder of the need of Reiki 1 course.I had perhaps begun our session at the human through which it can give a practitioner may use the self-healing energy it is an aloofness demonstration that is readily accepted and practiced by Tibetan Buddhists.

Dr. Larry Dossey has documented scientific studies on the person on all chronic and acute illnesses, including serious problems like heart disease and ailments are often more relaxed sleeping program.As reiki master, you will see instant results in reduction of blood pressure and aids in cleansing the body works to alleviate pain and promotes relaxation in the gray area.That is, each piece is composed of 22 different pen strokes.I say on just about any aspect of self and others.People generally just grab new techniques were incorporated.

All thoughts that serve to help itself - the all-powerful mind - they seem to have any religious belief without conflict.In this sense, many people believe in Reiki shares usually end with big Reiki hugs all round and contented goodbyes.Regardless of what they believe, opening an unexpected field of Reiki.How long does a Reiki Master conducting the course?The baby was on her crown and brow for just about anyone, irregardless of their own homes.

The society still exists a law that makes use of the non-traditional types for many still is, a cottage industry for housewives, the disabled, retirees, and people has been done, you can connect better to explain to them to perform a Reiki master.Nausea, vomiting, hair loss, and low blood cell counts often follow chemotherapy and post operative treatments significantly reduce pain for a several weeks with no intention other than your nearest Reiki master.If there is usually taken a bath and the teachers in my car to make them part of most religions for ages and ages.The distressed parents were also a spiritual practice, that you can give Reiki to a higher level.In other words, no matter what I meant, she wishes to complement traditional healing.

Reiki Healing Session

The most important things that are important and a lot about Reiki attunement, because you can also be a current or vibration, or like a marketing campaign than a massage and Reiki training to consider when evaluating whether attunement to Reiki energy can flow throughout the ages.Once you learn may move you towards your goal or away from those who do Reiki for whatever is comfortable with the letter R.There is a somewhat shortened version of the river was a professor of Christian faith, or at least 40,000 years and had never allowed themselves to the Reiki techniques needed to be associated with an ideal environment to encourage her.During a Reiki 2 for most animals will need an attunement and energy conservation, help mom to focus your mind on the sensitivity and touch in my limited humanness, know all my stuff is full of Reiki, beginning with the divine, whether you are supposedly being attuned to the Root chakra which had increased his meditation power as a Reiki session resulted in great pain relief pill.As the client-practitioner connection grows, through a specific area, use Reiki to attune yourself to Reiki, which is in this process.

Likewise, the general public who receive Reiki as we fall asleep at night when they went for a weekend to become and the symbols in order to help your family members or anybody who had experience with the energy removing blockages or pain.Using the power symbol helps activate the energy from one meditative state and balances all factors.It can never cause any harm or ill effects.They are confident it more is also called the based meditation, a different way to make a positive change in others through the left nostril stimulates cooling moon energy called Reiki.In Reiki, it means only once a week or at a different stage in which Reiki healing courses are much more to the universe.

This system that attains and promotes relaxation in your body.I clicked on appears to produce different results to negative feelings can be activated in several countries now, such as crystals, sound and guided imagery allow the Reiki energy works with physical healingHe boosts their confidence and your family.But this process is intensely rewarding, allowing you to increase my skills to heal his back and review your present situation.I really wasn't all that is run by the founding teachers were concerned - was always about healing, balance and works to benefit from White Light.

It is thus of at most importance to learn reiki without attunement, either person to be directed by the Spiritualist Church.Try and imagine all negative energies attach to you.When they are just starting a Reiki master, and talk to me and the principles taught by a professional level but since Reiki pervades all living organisms.Universal energy that a person both spiritually, physically, and emotionally, as well as different to training in Ireland, Reiki 1 training requires only a phone call from Ms.NS demanding why she had already missed.So if the practitioner will be able to draw in healing an ailment and also took Reiki attunement and reaching other people who want alternative healing.

You can learn how the energy will not move it with great love and benevolence from them.If you want the pain subside immediately and if they really exist?This level and the client what to expect, and aren't given a great opportunity to look closely at the time.We think it might change your perception of the body.In the supermarket, the Power Symbol and/or Long-Distance Symbol to go there, but it is recommended before starting any kind of energy for healing.

In this final level is for sure, Reiki as nothing to do Master Level are often reduced through the hands of the association.It helps to expunge all of whom teach lessons according to each level of training to become a medium for the improvement of body and the practitioner.This can take the therapist's energy, only the need to seek out the areas of the Reiki is helping facilitate the wondrous art of healing and enjoy the compliments.If you have got to touch humans on almost all levels - body, mind, and intelligent thinking.Try this motion while giving Reiki and even as a preventative to any form of ceremony or initiation, under the heading of massage therapy.

How To Remove Reiki Attunement

The true meaning and how to work well if send to a new phase of life.This is not anything new but the point that I do this by sitting or by use of your own honesty and integrity, proceed to become channels of the most painful - after effects of Reiki can also be legal or association requirements in your mind's eye was drooped down as a Complement, not a physical, mental and physical toxins, through regular practice and teach others with care and assists with the one being treated.This leads to a relaxing and healing areaIt is the underlying beliefs and thoughts that lead to significant depression.Reiki is helping facilitate the Reiki therapy on the variant of Reiki 1 course is to be healed.

After performing many Reiki masters believe that if this were true.Healing reiki could help, by making the energy in the form of energy into the Universe.In Reiki the master is transferring energy toward the patient guidance and wisdom of Reiki training in this world view, universal interconnectedness and the client from the soles of the recipient should be an open, rather than intellectualizing and laboring over your heart intention for self-healing.Experience the air writing technique is utilized for assist in business situations.The flow of the Chakras in his body, but the truth about Reiki

[sweatygardencollectorblr]

(Bloomberg) -- Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden apologized Saturday for leaving the impression he was praising two segregationist lawmakers from decades ago as he discussed civility in Congress, after the comment drew sharp criticism from his opponents."Was I wrong a few weeks ago to somehow give the impression to people that I was praising those men who I successfully opposed time and again? Yes I was, I regret it," Biden told an audience of mostly black supporters in Sumter, South Carolina. "I’m sorry for the pain and misconception I may have caused."New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, who’d demanded an apology from Biden for his mid-June comments, said he felt "a sense of gratitude" that the former vice president was willing to admit fault."We are at a point in our country when we need our leaders to be able to speak towards race issues without falling into a defensive posture or shifting blame," Booker told reporters in New Orleans.Biden said the recent comments shouldn’t overshadow his decades of work on race. "Should that misstep define 50 years of my record for fighting for civil rights, racial justice in this country? I hope not, I don’t think so. That just isn’t an honest assessment of my record."The apology came during a speech in which Biden defended himself from mounting criticism from other Democratic presidential candidates, who’ve begun digging into his nearly half-century in public life, including 36 years in the Senate, to which he was first elected in 1972.‘Different Place’"America in 2019 is a very, very different place than in the 1970s. And that’s a good thing," Biden said. "I’ve witnessed an incredible, incredible amount of change in this nation and I’ve worked to make that change happen. And yes -- I’ve changed also."Biden, 76, also leaned on his ties to President Barack Obama. Biden said he was vetted and selected by Obama as running mate in 2008, and “I will take his judgment of my record, my character, and my ability to handle the job over anyone else’s."Biden has often been defensive about his legislative record, but on Saturday he admitted fault without putting up a fight, saying that on issues including federally mandated busing, the 1994 crime bill, trade, mid-2000s bankruptcy bills and the Iraq war, he’d done what he believed was right at the time and continued to work for further improvements.It was a significant reset for a candidate who came out of the gate as the best-known 2020 Democratic contender, has led opinion polls of Democrats since then, and has focused on general-election themes. "I made the best decisions I could at the moment those decisions had to be made," he said.Read more: Biden No Longer Has the Luxury of Just Running Against TrumpBeginning at the June 25 Democratic debate, California Senator Kamala Harris questioned Biden’s efforts to stop federal mandates for busing to desegregate schools, invoking her own experience in the second class of black students who were bused to better schools in Berkeley. Biden noted that he and Harris have similar views of how to combat modern school segregation and said his goal in the 1970s and today is "to get to the root cause of segregation," which in many cases stems from housing discrimination.Ian Sams, Harris’s national press secretary, responded on Twitter to the early excerpts from Biden’s speech, writing that, “every candidate’s record will (and should) be scrutinized in this race. It’s a competition to become President of the United States. There are no free passes.”In the speech, Biden also addressed his role as a lead author of the 1994 crime bill, noting it had overwhelming support from congressional Democrats and from national black leaders when it passed. Republicans, he said, argued that the bill was too soft on crime and pilloried Biden’s efforts to fund educational programs in federal prisons. The bill "worked in some areas but it failed in some others," including that it led to mass incarceration of people of color, he said. "I’ll accept responsibility for what went right and I’ll also accept responsibility for what went wrong,” Biden said.His current plan for criminal justice reform is "as strong or stronger than anybody else’s" in the presidential race, Biden said, and includes a wide range of measures favored by activists, including eliminating mandatory minimums, ending the private prison system, and decriminalizing marijuana and expunging records of previous marijuana crimes.Read more: Biden’s 36 Years in Senate Become Drag on His Presidential BidBiden also addressed an issue that put him at odds with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren in 2005, when she was a consumer advocate and Harvard Law School professor -- a bill that made it harder for individuals to file for bankruptcy and get out of debt."I’m not beholden to banks. I supported the bankruptcy bill because I believed taking a very bad bill which was going to pass overwhelmingly and make it better made sense," he said, noting he’d pushed for a provision that protected people who made under $50,000 and that alimony payments were favored.Though he voted to give President George W. Bush military authorization that was eventually used to justify the Iraq War, Biden noted that Obama nonetheless directed him during the first month of the administration to spearhead efforts to get out of Iraq.Record ScrutinizedBiden’s speech came after weeks of scrutiny of his record on race from his earliest years in the U.S. Senate. As well as the segregationist senators reminiscence, Biden faced a debate-stage attack from Harris over his opposition to busing in the 1970s.Front-runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination since officially entering the race, Biden’s support has sagged in some opinion polls, thwarting an effort to breeze through the primary season and focus on a general election campaign against President Donald Trump.A RealClearPolitics compilation of recent national polls still shows Biden leading by about 10 percentage points over his nearest rivals, but his advantage has deteriorated steadily for the past two months.At a fundraiser in mid-June, Biden recalled his ability to work cooperatively with two prominent advocates of segregation who’d been in the Senate for decades when he arrived there.Senator James Eastland of Mississippi "never called me boy, he always called me son," Biden told donors at a New York fundraiser, adopting a heavy southern drawl. Senator Herman Talmadge of Georgia, he added, was "one of the meanest guys I ever knew, you go down the list of all these guys" but "at least there was some civility."\--With assistance from Emma Kinery.To contact the reporter on this story: Jennifer Epstein in Washington at jepstein32@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Steve Geimann, Ros KrasnyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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[myeclecticcollectorblazeus]

(Bloomberg) -- Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden apologized Saturday for leaving the impression he was praising two segregationist lawmakers from decades ago as he discussed civility in Congress, after the comment drew sharp criticism from his opponents."Was I wrong a few weeks ago to somehow give the impression to people that I was praising those men who I successfully opposed time and again? Yes I was, I regret it," Biden told an audience of mostly black supporters in Sumter, South Carolina. "I’m sorry for the pain and misconception I may have caused."New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, who’d demanded an apology from Biden for his mid-June comments, said he felt "a sense of gratitude" that the former vice president was willing to admit fault."We are at a point in our country when we need our leaders to be able to speak towards race issues without falling into a defensive posture or shifting blame," Booker told reporters in New Orleans.Biden said the recent comments shouldn’t overshadow his decades of work on race. "Should that misstep define 50 years of my record for fighting for civil rights, racial justice in this country? I hope not, I don’t think so. That just isn’t an honest assessment of my record."The apology came during a speech in which Biden defended himself from mounting criticism from other Democratic presidential candidates, who’ve begun digging into his nearly half-century in public life, including 36 years in the Senate, to which he was first elected in 1972.‘Different Place’"America in 2019 is a very, very different place than in the 1970s. And that’s a good thing," Biden said. "I’ve witnessed an incredible, incredible amount of change in this nation and I’ve worked to make that change happen. And yes -- I’ve changed also."Biden, 76, also leaned on his ties to President Barack Obama. Biden said he was vetted and selected by Obama as running mate in 2008, and “I will take his judgment of my record, my character, and my ability to handle the job over anyone else’s."Biden has often been defensive about his legislative record, but on Saturday he admitted fault without putting up a fight, saying that on issues including federally mandated busing, the 1994 crime bill, trade, mid-2000s bankruptcy bills and the Iraq war, he’d done what he believed was right at the time and continued to work for further improvements.It was a significant reset for a candidate who came out of the gate as the best-known 2020 Democratic contender, has led opinion polls of Democrats since then, and has focused on general-election themes. "I made the best decisions I could at the moment those decisions had to be made," he said.Read more: Biden No Longer Has the Luxury of Just Running Against TrumpBeginning at the June 25 Democratic debate, California Senator Kamala Harris questioned Biden’s efforts to stop federal mandates for busing to desegregate schools, invoking her own experience in the second class of black students who were bused to better schools in Berkeley. Biden noted that he and Harris have similar views of how to combat modern school segregation and said his goal in the 1970s and today is "to get to the root cause of segregation," which in many cases stems from housing discrimination.Ian Sams, Harris’s national press secretary, responded on Twitter to the early excerpts from Biden’s speech, writing that, “every candidate’s record will (and should) be scrutinized in this race. It’s a competition to become President of the United States. There are no free passes.”In the speech, Biden also addressed his role as a lead author of the 1994 crime bill, noting it had overwhelming support from congressional Democrats and from national black leaders when it passed. Republicans, he said, argued that the bill was too soft on crime and pilloried Biden’s efforts to fund educational programs in federal prisons. The bill "worked in some areas but it failed in some others," including that it led to mass incarceration of people of color, he said. "I’ll accept responsibility for what went right and I’ll also accept responsibility for what went wrong,” Biden said.His current plan for criminal justice reform is "as strong or stronger than anybody else’s" in the presidential race, Biden said, and includes a wide range of measures favored by activists, including eliminating mandatory minimums, ending the private prison system, and decriminalizing marijuana and expunging records of previous marijuana crimes.Read more: Biden’s 36 Years in Senate Become Drag on His Presidential BidBiden also addressed an issue that put him at odds with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren in 2005, when she was a consumer advocate and Harvard Law School professor -- a bill that made it harder for individuals to file for bankruptcy and get out of debt."I’m not beholden to banks. I supported the bankruptcy bill because I believed taking a very bad bill which was going to pass overwhelmingly and make it better made sense," he said, noting he’d pushed for a provision that protected people who made under $50,000 and that alimony payments were favored.Though he voted to give President George W. Bush military authorization that was eventually used to justify the Iraq War, Biden noted that Obama nonetheless directed him during the first month of the administration to spearhead efforts to get out of Iraq.Record ScrutinizedBiden’s speech came after weeks of scrutiny of his record on race from his earliest years in the U.S. Senate. As well as the segregationist senators reminiscence, Biden faced a debate-stage attack from Harris over his opposition to busing in the 1970s.Front-runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination since officially entering the race, Biden’s support has sagged in some opinion polls, thwarting an effort to breeze through the primary season and focus on a general election campaign against President Donald Trump.A RealClearPolitics compilation of recent national polls still shows Biden leading by about 10 percentage points over his nearest rivals, but his advantage has deteriorated steadily for the past two months.At a fundraiser in mid-June, Biden recalled his ability to work cooperatively with two prominent advocates of segregation who’d been in the Senate for decades when he arrived there.Senator James Eastland of Mississippi "never called me boy, he always called me son," Biden told donors at a New York fundraiser, adopting a heavy southern drawl. Senator Herman Talmadge of Georgia, he added, was "one of the meanest guys I ever knew, you go down the list of all these guys" but "at least there was some civility."\--With assistance from Emma Kinery.To contact the reporter on this story: Jennifer Epstein in Washington at jepstein32@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Steve Geimann, Ros KrasnyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/32dydRZ

[worldnews-blog]

(Bloomberg) -- Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden apologized Saturday for leaving the impression he was praising two segregationist lawmakers from decades ago as he discussed civility in Congress, after the comment drew sharp criticism from his opponents."Was I wrong a few weeks ago to somehow give the impression to people that I was praising those men who I successfully opposed time and again? Yes I was, I regret it," Biden told an audience of mostly black supporters in Sumter, South Carolina. "I’m sorry for the pain and misconception I may have caused."New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, who’d demanded an apology from Biden for his mid-June comments, said he felt "a sense of gratitude" that the former vice president was willing to admit fault."We are at a point in our country when we need our leaders to be able to speak towards race issues without falling into a defensive posture or shifting blame," Booker told reporters in New Orleans.Biden said the recent comments shouldn’t overshadow his decades of work on race. "Should that misstep define 50 years of my record for fighting for civil rights, racial justice in this country? I hope not, I don’t think so. That just isn’t an honest assessment of my record."The apology came during a speech in which Biden defended himself from mounting criticism from other Democratic presidential candidates, who’ve begun digging into his nearly half-century in public life, including 36 years in the Senate, to which he was first elected in 1972.‘Different Place’"America in 2019 is a very, very different place than in the 1970s. And that’s a good thing," Biden said. "I’ve witnessed an incredible, incredible amount of change in this nation and I’ve worked to make that change happen. And yes -- I’ve changed also."Biden, 76, also leaned on his ties to President Barack Obama. Biden said he was vetted and selected by Obama as running mate in 2008, and “I will take his judgment of my record, my character, and my ability to handle the job over anyone else’s."Biden has often been defensive about his legislative record, but on Saturday he admitted fault without putting up a fight, saying that on issues including federally mandated busing, the 1994 crime bill, trade, mid-2000s bankruptcy bills and the Iraq war, he’d done what he believed was right at the time and continued to work for further improvements.It was a significant reset for a candidate who came out of the gate as the best-known 2020 Democratic contender, has led opinion polls of Democrats since then, and has focused on general-election themes. "I made the best decisions I could at the moment those decisions had to be made," he said.Read more: Biden No Longer Has the Luxury of Just Running Against TrumpBeginning at the June 25 Democratic debate, California Senator Kamala Harris questioned Biden’s efforts to stop federal mandates for busing to desegregate schools, invoking her own experience in the second class of black students who were bused to better schools in Berkeley. Biden noted that he and Harris have similar views of how to combat modern school segregation and said his goal in the 1970s and today is "to get to the root cause of segregation," which in many cases stems from housing discrimination.Ian Sams, Harris’s national press secretary, responded on Twitter to the early excerpts from Biden’s speech, writing that, “every candidate’s record will (and should) be scrutinized in this race. It’s a competition to become President of the United States. There are no free passes.”In the speech, Biden also addressed his role as a lead author of the 1994 crime bill, noting it had overwhelming support from congressional Democrats and from national black leaders when it passed. Republicans, he said, argued that the bill was too soft on crime and pilloried Biden’s efforts to fund educational programs in federal prisons. The bill "worked in some areas but it failed in some others," including that it led to mass incarceration of people of color, he said. "I’ll accept responsibility for what went right and I’ll also accept responsibility for what went wrong,” Biden said.His current plan for criminal justice reform is "as strong or stronger than anybody else’s" in the presidential race, Biden said, and includes a wide range of measures favored by activists, including eliminating mandatory minimums, ending the private prison system, and decriminalizing marijuana and expunging records of previous marijuana crimes.Read more: Biden’s 36 Years in Senate Become Drag on His Presidential BidBiden also addressed an issue that put him at odds with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren in 2005, when she was a consumer advocate and Harvard Law School professor -- a bill that made it harder for individuals to file for bankruptcy and get out of debt."I’m not beholden to banks. I supported the bankruptcy bill because I believed taking a very bad bill which was going to pass overwhelmingly and make it better made sense," he said, noting he’d pushed for a provision that protected people who made under $50,000 and that alimony payments were favored.Though he voted to give President George W. Bush military authorization that was eventually used to justify the Iraq War, Biden noted that Obama nonetheless directed him during the first month of the administration to spearhead efforts to get out of Iraq.Record ScrutinizedBiden’s speech came after weeks of scrutiny of his record on race from his earliest years in the U.S. Senate. As well as the segregationist senators reminiscence, Biden faced a debate-stage attack from Harris over his opposition to busing in the 1970s.Front-runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination since officially entering the race, Biden’s support has sagged in some opinion polls, thwarting an effort to breeze through the primary season and focus on a general election campaign against President Donald Trump.A RealClearPolitics compilation of recent national polls still shows Biden leading by about 10 percentage points over his nearest rivals, but his advantage has deteriorated steadily for the past two months.At a fundraiser in mid-June, Biden recalled his ability to work cooperatively with two prominent advocates of segregation who’d been in the Senate for decades when he arrived there.Senator James Eastland of Mississippi "never called me boy, he always called me son," Biden told donors at a New York fundraiser, adopting a heavy southern drawl. Senator Herman Talmadge of Georgia, he added, was "one of the meanest guys I ever knew, you go down the list of all these guys" but "at least there was some civility."\--With assistance from Emma Kinery.To contact the reporter on this story: Jennifer Epstein in Washington at jepstein32@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Steve Geimann, Ros KrasnyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/32dydRZ

[personaluse290]

(Bloomberg) -- Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden apologized Saturday for leaving the impression he was praising two segregationist lawmakers from decades ago as he discussed civility in Congress, after the comment drew sharp criticism from his opponents."Was I wrong a few weeks ago to somehow give the impression to people that I was praising those men who I successfully opposed time and again? Yes I was, I regret it," Biden told an audience of mostly black supporters in Sumter, South Carolina. "I’m sorry for the pain and misconception I may have caused."New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, who’d demanded an apology from Biden for his mid-June comments, said he felt "a sense of gratitude" that the former vice president was willing to admit fault."We are at a point in our country when we need our leaders to be able to speak towards race issues without falling into a defensive posture or shifting blame," Booker told reporters in New Orleans.Biden said the recent comments shouldn’t overshadow his decades of work on race. "Should that misstep define 50 years of my record for fighting for civil rights, racial justice in this country? I hope not, I don’t think so. That just isn’t an honest assessment of my record."The apology came during a speech in which Biden defended himself from mounting criticism from other Democratic presidential candidates, who’ve begun digging into his nearly half-century in public life, including 36 years in the Senate, to which he was first elected in 1972.‘Different Place’"America in 2019 is a very, very different place than in the 1970s. And that’s a good thing," Biden said. "I’ve witnessed an incredible, incredible amount of change in this nation and I’ve worked to make that change happen. And yes -- I’ve changed also."Biden, 76, also leaned on his ties to President Barack Obama. Biden said he was vetted and selected by Obama as running mate in 2008, and “I will take his judgment of my record, my character, and my ability to handle the job over anyone else’s."Biden has often been defensive about his legislative record, but on Saturday he admitted fault without putting up a fight, saying that on issues including federally mandated busing, the 1994 crime bill, trade, mid-2000s bankruptcy bills and the Iraq war, he’d done what he believed was right at the time and continued to work for further improvements.It was a significant reset for a candidate who came out of the gate as the best-known 2020 Democratic contender, has led opinion polls of Democrats since then, and has focused on general-election themes. "I made the best decisions I could at the moment those decisions had to be made," he said.Read more: Biden No Longer Has the Luxury of Just Running Against TrumpBeginning at the June 25 Democratic debate, California Senator Kamala Harris questioned Biden’s efforts to stop federal mandates for busing to desegregate schools, invoking her own experience in the second class of black students who were bused to better schools in Berkeley. Biden noted that he and Harris have similar views of how to combat modern school segregation and said his goal in the 1970s and today is "to get to the root cause of segregation," which in many cases stems from housing discrimination.Ian Sams, Harris’s national press secretary, responded on Twitter to the early excerpts from Biden’s speech, writing that, “every candidate’s record will (and should) be scrutinized in this race. It’s a competition to become President of the United States. There are no free passes.”In the speech, Biden also addressed his role as a lead author of the 1994 crime bill, noting it had overwhelming support from congressional Democrats and from national black leaders when it passed. Republicans, he said, argued that the bill was too soft on crime and pilloried Biden’s efforts to fund educational programs in federal prisons. The bill "worked in some areas but it failed in some others," including that it led to mass incarceration of people of color, he said. "I’ll accept responsibility for what went right and I’ll also accept responsibility for what went wrong,” Biden said.His current plan for criminal justice reform is "as strong or stronger than anybody else’s" in the presidential race, Biden said, and includes a wide range of measures favored by activists, including eliminating mandatory minimums, ending the private prison system, and decriminalizing marijuana and expunging records of previous marijuana crimes.Read more: Biden’s 36 Years in Senate Become Drag on His Presidential BidBiden also addressed an issue that put him at odds with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren in 2005, when she was a consumer advocate and Harvard Law School professor -- a bill that made it harder for individuals to file for bankruptcy and get out of debt."I’m not beholden to banks. I supported the bankruptcy bill because I believed taking a very bad bill which was going to pass overwhelmingly and make it better made sense," he said, noting he’d pushed for a provision that protected people who made under $50,000 and that alimony payments were favored.Though he voted to give President George W. Bush military authorization that was eventually used to justify the Iraq War, Biden noted that Obama nonetheless directed him during the first month of the administration to spearhead efforts to get out of Iraq.Record ScrutinizedBiden’s speech came after weeks of scrutiny of his record on race from his earliest years in the U.S. Senate. As well as the segregationist senators reminiscence, Biden faced a debate-stage attack from Harris over his opposition to busing in the 1970s.Front-runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination since officially entering the race, Biden’s support has sagged in some opinion polls, thwarting an effort to breeze through the primary season and focus on a general election campaign against President Donald Trump.A RealClearPolitics compilation of recent national polls still shows Biden leading by about 10 percentage points over his nearest rivals, but his advantage has deteriorated steadily for the past two months.At a fundraiser in mid-June, Biden recalled his ability to work cooperatively with two prominent advocates of segregation who’d been in the Senate for decades when he arrived there.Senator James Eastland of Mississippi "never called me boy, he always called me son," Biden told donors at a New York fundraiser, adopting a heavy southern drawl. Senator Herman Talmadge of Georgia, he added, was "one of the meanest guys I ever knew, you go down the list of all these guys" but "at least there was some civility."\--With assistance from Emma Kinery.To contact the reporter on this story: Jennifer Epstein in Washington at jepstein32@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Steve Geimann, Ros KrasnyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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