#This is like my 3rd time posting about this version of Venus how did I get here

[frogonamelon]

Practically All of the Non Hamato and Non Villian characters

(also known as I have brainrot about my turtles’ world and wanted to share the human (or ‘human’) squad with you!)

The closest manhole to the turtles’ lair is in the center of the courtyard of Arcadia Apartments, a small 2 story building with three apartments on each story, the owner’s apartment (although it's functionally abandoned), and a communal laundry/ other uses space. The residents of these apartments are the characters I want to share with you today!

April [Top Left]: A human woman in her early 20s just getting on her feet  while going for her degree in Anthropology at the local community college. She is an amateur journalist who runs a blog about local cryptids and legends that people think are fun but no one really believes. April finds out the truth about these cryptids on one fateful rainy night on her way home from a late night class.

Casey [Bottom Left]: A 20 something year old mechanic by day and vigilante by night under the name The Penalizer. Due to issues with his mom and his dad out of the picture, he lives with and has not so legally recognized custody of his younger sister (although he has a hard time being there for her with everything going on.) He has played every sport known to man but his true love is ice hockey. Despite all logic, he is a morning person. 

Angel [Not Depicted]: Casey’s 15 year old sister who has been mixed up with the Purple Dragons for some time. Due to Casey not being around to check her, she is able to go out with them without intervention.

Frankie and Sydney [Top Right]: A couple in their early 30s who live in the human world with their two young children: Sunita (age 5) and Timothy (age 2) [Not Depicted]. Frankie is an entertainer for rent at various establishments and events while Sydney works as a bartender at Run of the Mill. Sydney is a cool mom type with Frankie being a goofy doting husband. That one couple who give really good advice and are destined to be a cute old couple one day. 

Irma [Middle Left]: A type A very structured and successful hardass (affectionate) woman in her late 20s maybe early 30s. Irma works at Stockman Enterprises in one of their engineering labs. At least… as a cover. She is a robotic human suit being piloted by a smaller yokai being that resembles a gray alien.

Keno [Small in the Center]: A mid to late 20s man who's just living life and working as a delivery man. He games in his free time and is honestly living the most chill life of all of them. Can and absolutely will cook for everyone, as long as they pitch in financially of course. Is the first and only person April told about the turtles after that fateful night. When he inevitably joins forces with the turtles, he is backup tech support, hacking, manning drones, machines, and cameras from their lair (or his own apartment setup) whenever Donnie’s unable to in the field. 

Mei [Center Leftish]: I’m going to keep this brief as I’ve explained her backstory and role here. This is her in her younger days, back when she was more aggressive and inexperienced in the ways of the world outside the arena but after her defeat at the hands of Splinter/ Shen. Despite being a source of wisdom for her neighbors, I could see her becoming an antagonist with the right motivation.

This character doesn’t live with the others but I drew him here:

Yukichi [Bottom Right]: The cousin and mentee of Miyamoto Usagi. After an event in his past, he was shot through the multiverse, unable to find his way back. He travels around the multiverse as a ronin helping/ protecting people and exploring the various universes. He has a sword with the mystic power to control the wind (a la the mythology around Grasscutter and Yuichi having a mystic weapon). 

It's likely I’ll do a separate post about him someday and why I made this decision in depth, but it felt too strange to change Miyamoto this much, but this version of Leo doesn’t match Yuichi’s personality. I thought the premise of taking a naiver and more optimistic character and having him become more like his mentor through experience would be interesting.

[lilacstro]

What could end your relationship through your Venus sign

On the suggestions of @crystalsnshit and @majortomspacex under my post astro observation pt 6 I will be making this post :)

support me on ko-fi :)

How do we find this?

Count the 8th sign and house from your Venus placement and you should know how you could possibly be sabotaging your relationships. How do we do this?

Lets say you have a Sag Venus in 12th house, 8 houses, and 8 signs from there would be, Cancer and 7th house.

You should now be able to find this. Remember, it resonated for me, and people I did readings for. If this does not resonate with you, its ok :)

Combine both of these to be able to look into it :) I will however mention the Venus signs for each of them.

1st house/Aries (Venus in Virgo) Looking at your relationships from a self centered pov, in the sense, looking at things for what suits you, more than what could be better for both of you together, not making sacrifices or compromises your relationship might need. Feeling insecure about yourself/partner. Trying to fit things to fit your future or at the extreme opposite being giving to a fault, that you dont even realize but you are doing everything in a relationship for 2, all by yourself. Getting fierce. Starting to fast just to go crashing down, not being able to take things slow.

2nd house/Taurus (Venus in Libra) Not willing to change opinions, or thoughts about something. In the sense let's say, someone made a mistake and you may keep bringing it up over and over, still carrying resentment for it. Maybe you remember your partner as someone who used to wake up at 5 AM (just a random example lol) and now they dont, it might be hard for you to let go of old versions. Not willing to change old ways, not leaving/pointing things out and getting too comfortable. Could be getting caught up in the "show" (material wealth) at times.

3rd house/Gemini (Venus in Scorpio) Not being aware of what you're speaking and what you're delivering instead. Maybe passive aggressive/argumentative. Getting sarcastic. Not being able to experience "boredom" and wanting something to happen all the time. Being confused about what you really want. Not taking thing seriously when you probably should. Communication gap. Maybe thinking you/your person have too many choices. Trying to act the "unbothered" king/queen, you are not.

4th house/Cancer (Venus in Sagittarius) Attachment issues. Saying/taking actions high on emotions. Emotional instability. Some kind of attachment to nostalgia and how it used to be, which makes it hard for you to see that the person isnt the same anymore and you are probably in love with an old version of them that doesn't exist anymore. Tolerating/Giving silent treatment or isolating yourself within the relationship. Withdrawing. Trying to solve things alone for what should be solved together. Probably wanting to leave all the time but not doing so (attachment issues again). falling into the traps of innocence.

5th house/Leo (Venus in Capricorn) Wanting to be someone's 1st priority on a seemingly impossible level. Not being able to tolerate/express things normally and making it a big deal unknowingly. Getting bored when things seem normal. Could be feeling competitive to your own partner in some ways without realizing, hence building resentment. Anger management issues. Problems differentiating what is happening, and what am I feeling and what is actually real between both of them. Getting bossy at times probably without even realizing. Hyper independence issues at times. Wanting to show your partner off, but making them fit into something they probably aren't for the show.

6th house/Virgo (Venus in Aquarius) Trying to make meaning out of everything, being overcritical and judgmental of things. Trying to take every little thing seriously, getting hurt over small things. Getting used to how things should be "in a certain way" and not understanding sometimes, things aren't actually exactly like plan and order all the time. Picking small fights over things that weren't really important at times. Building frustration/insecurity under the surface. Being available/at service all times, to an unhealthy level.

7th house/Libra (Venus in Pisces) Probably being caught up sometimes in thoughts of "can i do better than this?", "i wonder what they think about my person". Getting caught up in the idea of status/reputation, forgetting that the real important thing is you being contended with your partner and not anyone else. Having this urge/thoughts that "am i settling for the less? should i see if i can do better. Comparing your relationship and your person and getting disappointed for bad reasons. Constantly wanting to choose/being indecisive over what you really want making your partner feel undervalued/underappreciated at times.

8th house/Scorpio (Venus in Aries) Overthinking. Being too attached to someone on a toxic level sometimes. Not opening up about your feelings and expectations and even worse, expecting that to be understood somehow without making it clear and feeling not understood/important when that does not happen and building resentment otherwise. Passive aggressive feelings. Feeling everything too deeply but being unable to talk about it. Fear of things being over so you just decide in your head let's end it already anyways, or you make subconscious choices like that without even realizing. Unwilling to let go/open up about past. Sometimes bearing things to an unhealthy level just for things to stay. Getting overly passionate that you even get blindsided.

9th house/Sagittarius (Venus in Taurus) Rose coloured glasses. Being optimistic about things when you actually should let go/discuss them clearly. Being on the surface, and feeling scared to dive deeper into the feels. Being afraid to feel your own feelings when you are uncomfortable about them. Projection problems. Going, "Oh i don't care" about things when you should probably discuss them. Problems confronting/being confronted. And again, when opening up, getting straight to the throat about things you have been wanting talk about. Sometimes thinking "oh i am just serving the truth" and "they/i can leave, doesnt quite matter" when it absolutely does but you just don't know yet. Wanting to leave/make decisions impulsively at every small discomfort.

10th house/Capricorn (Venus in Gemini) Overthinking things to a fault. Building a plan and expectation of how it should go and having problems when it doesn't quite go like that. Probably, embarrassment over your partners at times. Expecting them to act/behave in some certain way at times? not too sure about this one. Probably picking problems in your partner to a fault because you expect/want them to be perfect. This might come from a place of care, but this can actually get annoying at times making someone feel they aren't appreciated/enough for who they already are. Getting obsessive in a controlling way. Not giving enough thought to someone/someone's feelings and getting caught up at unnecessary places.

11th house/Aquarius (Venus in Cancer) Having no control over your thoughts and feelings regarding the other person. Maybe feeling one day you love them to moons but suddenly feeling you lost feelings the other day. Not being able to differentiate between what is your mood and your real feelings. Making sudden decisions about things, possibly at times without even needing to inform the other. Thinking you are being "nice, and kind and giving or sacrificing" by taking such decisions (probably thinking that if you ghost someone, even if it hurts you, you are doing them favor because they deserve better so technically you are the one in pain, even though you are making a dumb decision) but all while just hurting the other person to ends.

12th house/Pisces (Venus in Leo) Over idealizing your partner and then getting upset when it doesn't happen that way. Feeling disappointed. Having made up thoughts and delusions about something that doesn't probably exist, in both good and bad ways, hence being unable to see what actually is real. At times, this could also lead to misunderstandings at times. Making assumptions and not caring enough to clarify them. At times, ignoring what is real and problematic/makes you visibly uncomfortable just to have peace and your relationship, and getting crushed when in the end, the inevitable happens anyways.

I hope you resonated with this post, leave feedback/suggestions <33

i love you all

[tyrantisterror]

THE A.T.O.M. CREATE A KAIJU CONTEST 3-D!!!

YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE SAFE!  YOU THOUGHT THAT THE TIME OF MONSTERS WAS AT AN END!  BUT YOU WERE WRONG, FOR NOW YOU MUST WITNESS…

THE A.T.O.M. CREATE A KAIJU CONTEST 3-D!!!

That’s right, it’s back!  Celebrating the publication of The Atomic Time of Monsters Volume 2: Tyrantis Roams the Earth! (which in turn completes The Ballad of Tyrantis arc for this series), I’m holding another monster design jam.  The third of such jams, in fact!

Like the first A.T.O.M. Create a Kaiju Contest, the aim of this contest is to create kaiju that would fit within the setting of my big kaiju story series, The Atomic Time of Monsters.  Think of it as me letting you into my sandbox to play with my toys for a bit, or like you’re being put in the director’s chair of a new ATOM-verse kaiju movie.  That means your entry does have to fit into ATOM’s world, which in turn means that yes, there are limitations to your creativity here.  But limitations can be good sometimes - they can make us explore options we wouldn’t consider when given completely free rein to do what we want!

(also you don’t have to make a three dimensional image or anything, the title’s just a pun on how the third movie in a monster movie franchise will often be a 3-D film)

Read below the cut to learn the rules and whatnot:

THE RULES:

1.  You are limited to one entry per person.  Work hard and make your entry count!

2.  Your kaiju must have some sort of description of its physical appearance and its personality - you can submit a drawing or a written description (or both!) for the physical appearance depending on what you’re most comfortable with.  Using the same template/format as my official ATOM Kaiju Files (https://horrorflora.com/monster-menageries/atom-kaiju-files/) isn’t required, but it was cool when people did it in the last contest, so feel free to do so this time too!

3. The kaiju you create must specifically be created for this contest  - no repurposing characters you made for other, wildly different stories.  This is not “trick TT into drawing/canonizing my main OC” time.

4. The kaiju must fit the setting and aesthetics of ATOM.  I’ll explain this in more detail down below.

5. The kaiju should add something meaningful to the world of ATOM. The more unique and interesting your kaiju is, the more likely you will win the contest.

6. Don’t make your kaiju too dependent on pre-existing ATOM characters - no “Tyrantis’s long lost evil brother who’s the strongest kaiju in the world.” These should be to Tyrantis’s story what War of the Gargantuas is to Godzilla’s movies – heroes (well, monsters) of another story in the same world.

THE REWARDS:

I will make pencil sketches of the top 5 entries in the contest.

I will then make fully rendered illustrations (lineart, colors, & shading) of the top three entries.

The winning entry will be made into a model ala the ones I’ve been making for ATOM’s core 50 monsters, which can then be shipped to the person who created it (should they be able to cover the shipping costs).  That’s right, your kaiju could be brought to life in THREE GLORIOUS TECHNICOLOR DIMENSIONS!  (Hey, we worked the gag title in to the prizes!)

THE DEADLINE: All entries must be submitted by July 3rd, 2021.  You can submit it here on tumblr, via the horror flora e-mail, or any other channel you know how to reach me through.  I’m in a lot of places.

THE GUIDELINES (TO HELP YOUR ENTRY FIT THE RULES AND WIN):

The smartest thing you could do if you want to win this contest is familiarize yourself with the world of ATOM by, y’know, reading all the material I’ve published on the subject.  In addition to the many kaiju files that are free to read on horrorflora.com, there are now TWO, count ‘em, TWO novels in this series for you to peruse, both of which establish many of the rules of the setting as well as its general themes and tone!  You can get them in either paperback or e-book formatting (I’d recommend the former over the latter since I lack the technology to make a really nice ebook, but if money is an object, the kindle version is only $1).  Here’s the links again if you missed them:

Vol. 1: Tyrantis Walks Among Us!

Vol. 2: Tyrantis Roams the Earth!

However, since I know reading a bunch of stuff is, y’know, not something everyone is inclined to do, I’ll jot some good bullet points for you in an attempt to outline how ATOM works in a brief, easily digested way:

ATOM is an homage to the monster fiction of the 1950’s and 60’s (i.e. the Atomic Age), and is set in those two decades, albeit an alternate universe version of them where, y’know, monsters and space aliens exist.  If you aren’t familiar with the monster fiction I’m referring to, there will be some reference material provided at the end of this post along with some recommendations for further research.

Kaiju/giant monsters in ATOM work under very specific rules.  There’s a full description of those rules at this link, but here’s the jist:

ATOM Kaiju are created created by the radiation of a mineral called Yamaneon, which naturally converts harmful radiation into its own unique energy.  In natural circumstances, it takes hundreds of years of exposure to Yamaneon radiation for a creature to become fully transform into a kaiju (luckily, Yamaneon radiation slows the aging process while speeding up the healing process).  However, an explosive burst of energy - such as the geothermal and kinetic energy released by an earthquake, or the blast of a nuclear weapon - can speed up the process, turning a normal animal into a kaiju within a matter of seconds.  

All ATOM kaiju can heal grievous wounds within minutes or even seconds, are supernaturally strong and durable, and can convert harmful radiation to harmless energy that they then feed off of.  Kaiju do not have an equivalent of old age, and can theoretically live forever (though their violent lifestyle means that few do).

ATOM Kaiju generally don’t need to eat unless they are severely injured, getting most of the energy they need from solar or geothermal radiation - but many still have instincts that drive them to seek out food from time to time.

Most ATOM kaiju stand roughly 100 feet tall (depending on their body shape), i.e. smaller than the original 1954 Godzilla.  There are exceptions to this rule - younger kaiju can be smaller, while exceedingly old kaiju can be significantly larger, but these are rare.

In general, ATOM kaiju are significantly more intelligent and emotionally complex than people expect animals to be, though most are incapable of speech or complex tool use.  There’s a reason ATOM Kaiju Files have a “personality” section.

Most ATOM Kaiju are tooth and claw fighters - ranged weapons are a rarity in this setting.

While the terrestrial monsters in ATOM look strange, they are intended to fit within the taxonomy of animals in reality - reptiles, mammals, fish, arthropods, molluscs, etc.

ATOM’s mesozoic era was dominated by a fictional clade of crocodile-relatives called retrosaurs, which are based on the outdated paleoart that one would find in the 1950’s/60’s fiction - i.e. when dinosaurs were viewed as trail dragging lizards instead of strange birds.  You can learn more about retrosaurs here (https://horrorflora.com/2016/11/15/atom-kaiju-file-bonus-a-guide-to-retrosaurs/).

Kaiju appear on every continent in ATOM, but certain areas tend to be dominated by different types.

North America is mainly besieged by retrosaur kaiju and giant arthropods.

East Asia is technically also mainly plagued by retrosaurs and big arthropods, though they tend to look more fantastical and mythic - and, often, oddly well suited to being portrayed by a person wearing a monster suit.

Russia is beset by prehistoric monsters that seem to come from the Cenozoic, particularly the Ice Age.

Western Europe is plagued by creatures that vaguely resemble creatures from myth, if they were also prehistoric.  Dragon-y lizards, fiery birds, etc.

Towards the mid-way point of ATOM’s timeline, earth is invaded by a coalition of aliens from different solar systems called the Beyonder Alliance, and as a result a bunch of alien monsters can be found on earth.

Mars and Venus both host (or hosted in Mars’s case) animal life.  The surviving Martians colonized Venus, and sent some of their kaiju guardians to earth to help us fend off the Beyonders (who are responsible for the destruction of Mars’s ecosystem).  Martian and Venusian kaiju have specific anatomical quirks, which you can see by looking at these kaiju files:

Venusians:

https://horrorflora.com/2017/01/03/atom-kaiju-file-29-karamtor/

Martians:

https://horrorflora.com/2017/01/17/atom-kaiju-file-39-kemlasulla/

https://horrorflora.com/2017/01/17/atom-kaiju-file-40-podritak/

https://horrorflora.com/2017/01/17/atom-kaiju-file-41-sombarvot/

https://horrorflora.com/2017/01/17/atom-kaiju-file-38-ullawdra/

Giant robots exist in ATOM, but are big, bulky, and incredibly expensive.  Fancy beam weapons also exist, but are similarly clunky - there are no sleek, elegant machines in ATOM.

Since the fiction ATOM takes inspiration from was made at a time when interplanetary travel was only just beginning to be possible, its scope is significantly smaller than modern sci-fi.  Alternate universes/dimensions were pretty uncommon because the idea of alien planets still held a lot of wonder to it.  So, as a general rule, don’t try to go farther than the one galaxy.

ATOM is a setting for stories that are focused on humanity learning to coexist with monsters, rather than humanity destroying them.  A certain level of sympathy is put into almost every creature of its canon, even the ones that are meant to be villains.

REFERENCE MATERIAL

Here is a playlist of 1950′s monster movie trailers.  

Here is some reference material from various monster comics of the 50′s and 60′s. 

Good movies to track down to understand ATOM’s inspiration and tone include Ghidorah the 3 Headed Monster, Son of Godzilla, Destroy All Monsters, Them!, The Black Scorpion, 20 Million Miles to Earth, Gamera, The Giant Claw, and The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra.

And here’s the intro cutscenes for all the different giant monsters in the PS2 videogame War of the Monsters.

[danni-chuu]

RAD Student Files: Lucifer, The Celestial Realm’s Bastard Pride

before i start the post, Thank you guys for the support^^ it really means alot. and im going to go very in depth with these post, so i decided to make each brother have their own spotlight by making it individual post.  

also i apologize in advance if i cant joke around much with these post hehe^^;

Spoiler warnings, so you have been warned! 

 Background and Origin:

Lucifer,as famous as he is right now. With the Netflix show and other representations of him throughout history, his name has only been mentioned once in the bible.

“ How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer, Son of the Morning,” (Isiah 14:12 King James Version)  

this simple line was said to actually be a foreshadowing of the fall of the King of Babylon, Nebuchadrezzar . Some say it is alluding to the fall of a Pheonician God, Helal who sought after the Chief God’s throne and fell (pretty similar eh? actually dfq too similar) .

some say that Lines from Ezekiel might be marking a prophecy of Lucifer’s faith  (Ezekiel 28: 11-19 , the passage is alittle too long, so if you want to see it just search that up), the passage speaks about King Tyre and what his pride did to him not only that but the passage then goes to mention “ the Anointed Cherub”. This is said by Jonathan Edwards, a Philosophical Theologian is a reference to Lucifer; as Lucifer was made highest of the angels, not only this but is said to be the closest to the throne of God.

Now, who and what is Helal? the actual Hebrew text has the name “Helal”( which still meant Morning star) instead of Lucifer. both do mean the same thing, an Astrological Phenomenon.

the actual name of Lucifer came from the Latin Vulgate version of the Bible.Lucifer, which meant “Light Bearer” and was directly connected to the Planet Venus. As the bible gets translated over and over again, this later turned Lucifer instead of being just a figure of speech, became an individual being. most of the stories about Lucifer are taken from Poetic literature about the bible  and legends.

there are many interpretations to the fall of Lucifer( the Anointed Cherub), so i will give the most well known and then briefly touch upon the other interpretations.

Lucifer, before his fall was said to be God’s most perfect creation, a Cherub ( some would disagree and say a seraph, but more on that later) whose beauty was unmatched, whose knowledge was above those of his kind; God gave him knowledge that only Lucifer can have. second only to the father himself.he was the leader of the angels but, he grew in pride and decided that being second to the father is not enough. that he has to be equal--no greater than the father. With this, he waged war that caused great chaos throughout heaven. Michael (in some accounts, Gabriel) the archangel second to him lead the army that counters his and was able to defeat him and cast him and those who sided with him out of Heaven. following the Book of Revelations, it is also accounted that third of the angels in Heaven fell with Lucifer.

as he was cast into the Abyss, he is to bound there until the day of Judgement, but with his despise of God, he then goes to the mortal world to tempt and torment the Father’s most beloved creation, Humans. he does this so that he can acquire their souls and keep them away from God( this was stated in the Apocrypha, Enoch). it is said that he appears as a beautiful innocent child and uses this form to easily tempt humans to follow his words.

some interpretations state that the reason for Lucifer’s rebellion is because, God made another being, Jesus, who was Higher than him. as Lucifer only is near the throne of God, Jesus is to sit on the throne with God for all eternity. which infuriated Lucifer.

and in some interpretations, it is said that God permitted Lucifer to be able to tempt humans. and in some Gnostic Christian Sects they believe that Lucifer isn’t even evil, but the first-born of God who is to save humanity with his gift of Knowledge.

Jonathan Edwards, even goes as far as to say the fall of Lucifer to him pleases God, as his fall is for the greatness of God that is to come.

Lucifer in the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the mage, Lucifer is stated to be one of the four Principal spirits. in the True keys of Solomon, Lucifer is identified to be one of the three demons who can command all others of his kind, he is said to rule over demons in Europe and Asia ; the other two demons who have the same authority is Beezlebub and Astaroth . as for other legends, they state that Lucifer is the Consort of Lilith ( weird but okay?). according to Peter Binsfield, Lucifer represents the Sin of Pride; to note, it is said that Pride is the King of all sins, which seems fitting for Lucifer. He is also the Opposing force to Saint John the Baptist.  in the Friar Rush, Lucifer is said to be the “ Prince of Gluttony” .

as for Lucifer’s position in hell, there is some debate over it, on one side it is said that Lucifer is the emperor of Hell, with Satan being second to him and Beezlebub third to him. for some Demonographers, Lucifer is a great Lover of justice in Hell.  and the other side, it is said that it is either Satan or Beezlebub.

So How does it show in the game?

Lucifer in the game is well known as the loyal right hand of Diavolo ( the devil?). He is obedient to Diavolo’s wishes and does everything he can to make sure no one opposes him, even his brothers. this is quite different from the things mentioned above. Lucifer is supposed to be the highest one in Hell, he was able to even rebel against Heaven for it, yet here he is...serving a Demon?

Lucifer is shown to be a sadistic, strict, over bearing, secretive, but caring(?) sibling. he shows to be dealing with alot of problems with the past especially concerning Lilith.

(the sadistic side could be a reference to how he loves to torture and torment humans. just a guess)

the game seems to take liberty of taking shifting and twisting the origins to make a more human Lucifer, his story is also very similar to what his origins state.

but, the thing i want to focus on is Lucifer’s model, in the game he is stated to be seraphim, an angel that has 6 wings( this information was given by Luke during Chapter 5),  but his model only goes to show 4. now, in the information above, Lucifer is said to be a Cherub, so whats with that?

to be technical, Cherubs are angels of Knowledge, which for others means, his sin is caused by his knowledge. Seraphims are angels of Charity, while they are the highest choir, if you try to connect it with his sin, it doesn’t match. but, since the game used the Seraphim interpretation so we’ll go with that.

Lucifer is also shown to have dark hair and his wings have turned black, modern interpretations do this as to show his turn to the darkness, but some interpret it as the result of Lucifer’s wings being burned. his character model shows him with only 4 wings, so where’s the 3rd pair? most likely burned off during his fall to the Devildom , or they were burned during the Celestial war. and the implications that Micheal did it might be likely, since his origins states that Micheal was the one to defeat Lucifer and His army.

Diavolo when he gushes about Lucifer, he always goes on about how Lucifer was so bright and blinding, which could be a reference to his name as Light Bearer.

in regards to Lucifer’s relationship with Lilith, During chapter 5, we were able to find out about that Belphie, Beel, Lilith, and Lucifer used to be very close. hoping this game doesnt take the incest route, we can say that Lucifer and Lilith are just very close siblings rather than the original interpretation that He is a Consort of Lilith. much of the lore is still in the making, so most of the things are just possibilities.

ps. i hope you guys enjoyed reading this very long post ❤❤❤,sorry for taking a while to post :< school’s been taking up alot of my schedule so the time window for researching has been hard to manage. but enough about that, if you have any information you want to share that i wasnt able to include or you want to correct some things, please feel free to comment it :3

references:

The Encyclopedia of Demons and Demonology By Rosemary Ellen Guiley

The Organization of Pandemonium By Maxmilian Rudwin

A Dictionary of Angels Including Fallen Angels By Gustav Davidson

A Field Guide to Demons, Fairies, Fallen Angels , And Other Subversive Spirits By Carol K. Mack and Dinah Mack

The Names of the Damned : The Dictionary of Demons by Michelle Belanger

Dictionary Infernal By Collin De Plancy

And more ( Tumblr doesn't want links so ;<)

[nopperabounet]

Fish Tank 95 Interview with Higuchi Yutaka Reporter: Okubo Yuka Translation: Lola

 What did you do for New Year's?

We released a single and a tribute album right? And I went to the BUCK-TICK cafe.

Did you? I'm guessing you went after hours?

Nah, during work hours. I was there the day before my birthday to sign things for my 'Ongaku to Hito' column.

And did you get to eat a serious bear themed birthday cake?

I wasn't going to, but then they brought out a birthday platter they made just for me. I'm grateful.

So let's get into "THE DAY IN QUESTION 2019",  if you try to look back it again, what sort of tour did it turn out to be?

I think it went well. Makuhari went well too but, with no tour planned that year, and a whole year with only two shows, I mean that's not very much right, so it felt like an unusual year for me. But that's also the very reason why we wanted to do something different from Makuhari in terms of atmosphere, and I thought we had to make it good you know. And then we got to play at Yoyogi Stadium for the first time so that was fun.

Seems you also got to start off your tour at the Takasaki Arts Theater.

The old music centre has been around since we were kids so it's a historical building you know, but it's grown so much since then, it's incredible *smiles*. It was super beautiful. I think our live at Takasaki went well too.

How did you find the set list and the staging?

I wanted everything to be strong and tight, and I think that came across, or to say it better, we have a lot of songs from different eras right, and I wanted them to be able to flow from one to another seamlessly.

I see. You also varied your set list depending on the venue didn't you?

That's right. We talked about how we wanted to put all our efforts into making every show good even if they happen to be in the same venue.  Like we did two days in Osaka right, and when we talked about how it'd be better to change things up at bit from show to show there, we said well if we're going to do it in Osaka, we should do it for all of them. So that's why we were able to change things up. But of course because it was such short notice, there were some things our lighting director couldn't do. Also, we had a ton of potential songs we could do so we figured why not try to do them all, and in this way each show ends up being a little different, which was good I think.

And it was you, Yuuta-san, that decided on "Muma - The Nightmare" to start with as an image?

That's the thing about having a series of songs, the first one has to have impact. And since we hadn't started a show with it until now, I thought it'd be good. And since were able to keep up the same atmosphere with the flow of the songs, and it all went smoothly, I think it was a great set list.

You also changed the arrangement of "SILENT NIGHT" to make it more grand.

The original has that vocals and guitar only feeling but then Imai-kun changed up the arrangement a bit for me, so it comes off differently than the acoustic version, which sounded good I think. We did "Snow white" too as a winter song, and since these two songs were important to give weight to the center of the set list, these were the two that I thought it best not to change, no matter the venue.

Those two winter themed songs were one of the highlights of the show. Also, how did you find performing "Datenshi" in Takasaki actually, since it was the very first time?

I was nervous for sure. I mean it's always that way the first time you perform something, and the thing is we'd recorded it to be put out as a single in January right *smiles*. I mean for us it was like, "Oh, so that's how it sounds" but that's in great part due to the immense amount of thought put into it by our staff. That's why we did it without making even one mistake *smiles*. I mean it's kinda harsh right to be recording something at the end of December for a release in January. But that was already decided on by the record company so I'm just really grateful to everyone in the staff for making it happen.

So that was in part why you were nervous wasn't it? But how did you feel once you were on stage in Yoyogi Stadium, and looking out at the venue?

I was happy to be able to perform in a place that we hadn't yet in all our thirty years. I saw it for the first time when I was a kid visiting Harajuku. And yet I'd never performed there, so I thought it would be good to do it. I think I'd like to play there again, even if it's not for a "THE DAY IN~".  Because it's a place I looked forward to playing in for such a long time, I hope I get the chance to do so again.

I had also heard that Yoyogi Stadium underwent repairs before re-opening due to having poor acoustics. So I was a little worried about how it would sound the day of the concert, but I needn't have worried at all.

The truth is our PA person doesn't only do work for BUCK-TICK. We were about 18 (years old) the first time we met, and they were working on a Taikan Freaks live, and aside from doing work for BUCK-TICK, this person has worked on speaker systems all over the country. So they've gathered data from venues all over the country right.  So they just know what kind of sound you can have in each place. So whenever we get a lot of praise for how amazing our sound is live, I want to say, "I'm sorry, it's not us! We've just got an amazing PA!" *smiles*

That's the strength of being a part of a team.

Because we didn't have many lives this time, our staff really went out of their way to do their best, and I think that's what made the lives so wonderful. They even added more snow *smiles*.

Was it really that much more?

Well, in Yoyogi there was a ton more. In truth, we wanted it to be like that in every place but it depends on the venue, and some places just don't allow for that sort of thing right. This time most of the places we went to had a theater quality to them which made for a good atmosphere though.

It was your idea to have "LOVE ME" as the last song too, wasn't it?

I may have said this before but, even though it was said that, "But we've done it before" it has been a number of years since we ended with it.  Which to me meant that it'd be even more surprising if we closed with it. I also thought that by closing with this song you're left with a good feeling about BUCK-TICK. And also by starting with "Muma~" and ending with "LOVE ME" you're getting our full range as a band.

When it was over, there were excited cheers for the announcements that were made but, did you get to hear them?

Yeah, because I peeked.

You were peeking?! From where?

I was just on the verge of being seen.

Oh, really? *smiles* I thought it looked like 2020 would be a busy year for you.

Part of that is not wanting to lose momentum. Because we didn't put out an album in 2019 right, so of course this year, 2020 being a new year, we want to be able to give everyone the chance to see BUCK-TICK more locally. I'm looking forward to it.

You've only begun recording the album yesterday, but I hear you've finished your first day of bass recording.

Yup. Just for two songs though *smiles*.

What sort of feeling do Hoshino-san's two songs have?

I feel like the difference between Imai-kun and Hide's songs has doubled, they're great songs. Hide really outdid himself this year. Please look forward to his songs *smiles*.

OK *smiles*.  Have you already heard Imai-san's songs then?

Not yet. But I'm sure he'll dump a mountain of songs on me soon enough, and I'll do my best with them.

Has he not told you either about what the album's theme will be?

Nope, nothing.

There was an uproar on Instagram wondering about it because Imai-san posted that the theme was seven characters.

He didn't tell me anything, I swear! But you know, it does make me happy that Imai-kun can always get people so excited like that. I've also been focused on recording because I want to think carefully about what I'm doing right, and I'm thinking about how things will progress from here, but you know all of that is what makes it enjoyable. At the same time, I was also supposed to do Harata Kenta-kun's birthday live on March 3rd, and I was going to do an ARB cover so I've got to keep that in mind, and so I guess I've just been pretty preoccupied recently.

Because the March 3rd performance was postponed, and that was your chance to show your ARB cover.

It's already been about twenty years since this happened but, I got to do an ARB song with Kenta-kun at an anarchy event you know. Obviously it was an anarchist song. And that's when we bonded over our love of ARB. So when Kenta-kun talked to me about doing this event, of course I thought this was my chance to show how great an influence they had on me, and how much respect I have for them. I wanted to show my appreciation, you know.

While we await news on that front, there's the fanclub only live tour starting in May. Would you kindly offer a message to everyone looking forward to it.[1]

I want to have fun lives. I want to carry that feeling through 2020. And what better way to do that than to start off the year with those who have been so kindly cheering us on all this time. I hope we make it a great success!

    [1] The fanclub only lives were postponed, however they have tentatively been rescheduled for the period of February - April 2021. Please consult the official BUCK-TICK site for further information.

[go-events]

GO Rom Com Spotlight: @princip1914​

The marvelous @princip1914​  has claimed Latter Days to adapt for Good Omens in the Good Omens Rom Com Event.

For reference, here’s some information about the source material!

Synopsis of Latter Days: Aaron Davis (Steve Sandvoss), a young Mormon, arrives in Los Angeles with three fellow missionaries to evangelize. The group’s promiscuous gay neighbor, Christian (Wes Ramsey), makes a bet he can seduce and sleep with one of them, and his flirtatious ways help Aaron realize he is actually gay. Returning home to small-town Idaho in shame, Aaron is sent to a faith-based center to be cured of his homosexuality – while Christian, who’s fallen in love with him, desperately tries to find him.

We spent some time chatting about how the adaptation is coming so far, as well as future plans for it! Now, get to know @princip1914 (also here on Ao3) a little better!

goromcom:  You know how if you open a Tumblr chat with someone you haven’t chatted to before, Tumblr tells you two things they post about? Yours reports that you “post about #good omens and #crowley"–which seems legit.

princip1914​: I didn’t know tumblr did that but yes, that’s 100% of my content right now, lol.

goromcom: You chose to adapt Latter Days as your rom com. Has this movie been a favorite of yours, or is there some other reason you chose it?

princip1914​: I picked Latter Days because I remembered it fondly from my high school days when I was a baby gay unsure of myself or my place in the world. It was one of the first gay romance films I ever saw, but I definitely did not rewatch it before I picked it. Upon re-watching it now…wow, it has not really held up. The acting is cheesy, the characters fall in love, like instantaneously, there’s a Black Best Friend™️ character, and there’s a whole lot of ways in which the movie just uses AIDS, homophobia, suicide, and straight up torture as a plot device [ed: which we will talk about later under the cut, to make it easily avoidable for those heeding the content warnings that will be listed above the cut.] That really grosses me out.   But I love working with flawed source material! I think it’s fun to see what I can do with it. The most recent fic I wrote was verrryyy loosely based on some tropes from Groundhog Day, which honestly on a rewatch in 2019 also contains problematic elements. So I think taking these old, somewhat flawed, properties and transforming them is a great feeling!

That said, Latter Days also has some elements that really speak to me even though it is a bit cheesy/cringy at the end. One thing I loved about it growing up is that it really tries to engage with big questions about belief, faith, and being a good person in an authentic way you don’t usually see in Rom Coms. Its storyline–“Mormon and gay playboy fall in love, Mormon learns you can be a good person without organized religion, gay playboy learns how to confront his fear that everything is meaningless and make his own meaning in the world through relationships”–is actually pretty similar to Good Omens, although dressed up very differently. 

goromcom: What’s your favorite moment of your chosen rom com, and are you looking forward to presenting it in your adaptation? Any loose plans for that scene that you can share? 

princip1914​: I have a lot of favorite moments from the movie, it’s hard to pick just one, but here goes. [Spoiler alert for Latter Days and the upcoming GO adaptation fic] In the movie, there’s a character whose long-term partner has just died and the Mormon character (who will be Aziraphale in my version) is comforting her. He asks her if it was her husband who died and she says, “He wasn’t my husband. He was my best friend.” And let me tell you, I CANNOT WAIT to devastate Aziraphale with that line in my fic. [end spoilers] I’m also pretty excited to adapt the sex scenes to be honest. That movie earned an R for a reason.

goromcom: :waggles eyebrows:

Do you plan to stick very closely to the story beats of the original movie, or make bigger changes? And will this be a human AU, or will you fit it into canon?

princip1914​: I think it’s funny because Latter Days already feels like a Good Omens AU. As I mentioned, the themes are very similar and the Mormon character, in the first two acts of the movie especially, has a very similar character arc to Aziraphale.

I think I could stick closely to the movie if I wanted to do a simple human AU. However, the more I thought about it, I realized the more difficult and more interesting fic would be one that works within both the bounds of canon and the tropes of the movie, and actually ends quite differently than the movie. I’m not sure I can keep the apocalypse in play with the ending I’m shooting for, so my guess is this fic is going to end up being a canon divergence fic set somewhere in the ‘90s, which feels about as early as I could go without losing the early 2000s vibe of Latter Days.

Trying to adapt elements of the movie to Good Omens canon and not vice versa, has been a really interesting challenge. It meant figuring out what is essential to Latter Days and what can be changed without losing the shape or recognizablity of the source material. I’m keeping the setting in LA. I’m keeping the central philosophical question of the movie (which is arguably also the central philosophical question of Good Omens). One thing that obviously had to be changed for this story to fit into canon is that while Aziraphale and Crowley have a long history, Latter Days is essentially a meet cute. So, what I’m saying here is that the first lines of my fic are: “What the fuck,” hissed Crowley, “Aziraphale, you’re a Mormon now?” and it just goes downhill from there.

goromcom: That sounds great!

(I’m asking my closing question early, as we will be putting the answer for another question under the cut.)

I am blatantly stealing this question from The Good Place: The Podcast, but here goes: Tell me something “good”. It can be something big or small. It can be a charity you think is doing good work, or you can talk about how great your pet is.

princip1914​:  Well, my pet is amazing. Her name is D'Arcy, she’s a mutt terrier/lab mix and gives the best cuddles. But, since not everyone can cuddle with my dog, I think I’d like to just mention a charity that I started working with this year. It’s called Back on My Feet. Basically, it’s just an organization that sets up running groups in cities in the US northeast and south that connect people who are recovering from addiction or recently experienced homelessness or incarceration with other people in the area who like to run. It meets 3 days a week and we just go on runs and talk.

goromcom:  Exercise and helping people! It sounds amazing. :)

Okay, so other than NOT doing an AU, what’s an interesting decision you’ve made in your planning so far–a notable casting decision, a changing of venue, or some other plan you have to paint Good Omens all over your rom com?

[ content warning for discussion of conversion therapy under the cut–discussion is firmly anti conversion therapy. ]

princip1914​: I think that this is more of a general change to the plot, but one which I do feel is in keeping with Good Omens rather than the source material. I don’t really like to write (or read) dark fic or whump type stuff (totally fine if others are into that, but it’s just not my cup of tea!). The end of the movie has some very intense stuff that sort of uses horrible things like electroshock therapy to “cure” homosexuality as a plot device/obstacle to getting the two leads together and…yeah I am probably going to signficantly change a lot of that. Even if I wanted to keep it, I think it wouldn’t be appropriate for the Good Omens elements of the story. I think Aziraphale’s character arc is more about his internalized fear of heaven (which can, of course, be read sort of as internalized homophobia) rather than external fear of punishment. That’s the main difference between heaven and hell, right? Heaven punishes through guilt, and hell punishes through pain. I think it just wouldn’t work for Aziraphale’s character to have to go through a series of external tortures, so you can absolutely expect a lot of the 3rd act of the movie will be changed. If I can, I’d like to take it up through canon and have the third act of the fic feature the notapocalypse, but that might be too much of a tall order. We will see…

I’m also going to make full use of the LA setting! I really like LA and I have some complicated yet fond memories of not-dates I went on in various places in LA with a person who was unattainable romantically but a lovely friend.  I think the movie definitely had a tiny budget, which is why the “LA setting” is basically just reduced to the character’s apartments, but damn it, if I want Aziraphale and Crowley to have tense not-conversations about their relationship while watching the skaters at Venice beach, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.

goromcom: Looking forward to reading an adaptation that fits itself into near canon! Should be really thought-provoking.

[yukirena88]

HKT48 Sakamoto Erena Encount Article Part 1

2020.07.16

HKT48 Sakamoto Erena’s encounter with “Kikuchi P” changed her destiny. Her talents bloomed when he endorsed the lyrics she wrote and sent to him “the earliest”

Interviewer: Satoshi Oda

【Interview part 1】 A "Dance Girl" when she was a kid, she was awed by Hamasaki Ayumi and dreamt of becoming a singer 　HKT48, the idol group based in Fukuoka started their first-ever Stream-Only Live performance from their dance lesson room on July 5th. Maintaining adequate social distance to prevent the spread of COVID-19, they limited the performing members to just 10, and 3rd gen Sakamoto Erena, 2nd gen Tashima Meru, 3rd gen Tanaka Miku, as well as other regular Senbatsu members, took to the stage to deliver a compassionate message the people in the regions of Kumamoto and Kagoshima hit by the heavy rainfall and flood disaster. In this article, I will trace the footsteps of Sakamoto who is striving to realize her dream to become a singer while overcoming various obstacles.

　Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, theater performances and handshake events have all been postponed. Unable to communicate directly with fans who support them, it is difficult to deliver messages of comfort to those hit by heavy rainfall and floods. That is why Sakamoto wants to put her soul into songs which she believes "delivers a message stronger than words" and cheer people up. She passed HKT48's 3rd gen audition in 2013, 7 years ago. Since then, she has paved the way to her very own idol career.

　While Sakamoto, born in Fukuoka prefecture, was slightly shy as a child, she was also a very "active girl" who would play outside the whole time during recess time. It may have been a natural calling for an active girl like her to immerse herself in rock and hip hop dance classes for all 6 years when she was in grade school.

　Invited by a friend, she went to watch an "HKT48" stage performance and was charmed by 1st gen Kumazawa Serina's sharp dance moves and decided to audition for the group, but when was the first time Sakamoto thought "I want to become a singer"? Going back, she says she had a role model when she was younger even before she started taking dance lessons.

"When I look at my nursery school and kindergarten album, I wrote 'To become a singer' as my future dream. I drew pictures of myself basking in the spotlight and singing, so I had wanted to sing in front of an audience ever since I was young. Thank to my mother's influence, I really liked Hamasaki Ayumi, and she was the starting point of my dream to become a singer"

However, she had never taken a singing lesson before joining HKT48, and when she first started her career as an idol, "Myself included, everyone around me did not see me as a singer". Coincidentally, something she was told during her Trainee days became her guiding compass.

"I was better at dancing then, and did not have confidence in singing. But during a sound recording, a staff praised me saying, 'You have a nice voice' and that made me really happy and made me think 'I'll put in effort in singing', 'This is what I should work on improving'. I'm really grateful for those words.

Her "Solo A Capella Video" Led To Her First Senbatsu, while Her Encounter With "Kikuchi P" Changed Her Destiny After being promoted to a Team Member from Trainee in 2016, Sakamoto performed in the "6th AKB48 Kohaku Utagassen" held in December for the first time. She was chosen to represent HKT48 as a member of Team Vocal, along with Minegishi Minami & Oda Erina (AKB48), Yamauchi Suzuran & Furuhata Nao (SKE48), and Shiroma Miru (NMB48), the members from each of the 48G who are well known for their singing abilities, and together sang "Mata Anata No Koto wo Kangaeteta" a capella.

This prompted her to start recording her "Solo A Capella Video" which she posted on "Google+" for the first time in March 2017, which later became a video series. In the same year, she was chosen as senbatsu for the first time for HKT48's 10th Single "Kiss wa Matsu Shikanai Deshoka?", released in August of that year.

"I was thinking of ways to express my love for singing. While looking for a way, I saw videos of people singing in harmony, and went 'This is it!' When I started arranging a capella version of songs, I got really good reactions and it encouraged me to continue singing a capella and in harmony. I believe I was chosen as senbatsu for the first time thanks to my 'Solo A Capella Videos', so it was definitely a turning point in my idol career"

Sakamoto is a competitive person at heart, recalling how "When I lost at the trump game 7 rows, I would cry out of frustration." After becoming aware of her own strengths, devoted herself to the path set out in front of her. She was presented with another opportunity, again at the "AKB48 Kouhaku Utagassen." Kikuchi Shin (AKA "Kikuchi P", who has produced various music shows on Fuji TV), the Producer for the event suggested to her, "Why don't you write a song?"

"When I performed at the (7th) AKB48 Kouhaku in 2017, Mr. Kikuchi P praised my singing. I realized it was a great opportunity and spent 3 weeks thinking of a lyric, and while I wasn't sure if it was good enough... I sent it to him while questioning myself, and 1 week after that, he brought the music for the song all the way to the venue of our handshake event. He said, 'you're going to sing this at ZEPP TOKYO (for the music talk show Kikuchi Kara GIRLS' FACTORY NEXT) in summer 2018' and I froze, going 'Huh?' (lol). It all happened so quickly and I was really surprised"

She was never given a guarantee that it would become a song. Kikuchi Producer also talked to other members about it, but the one who "sent it to him the earliest" was Sakamoto, and that enthusiasm gave birth to her original song "Motto, Kitto".

"I'm glad I sent it early (lol). Kikuchi P has made a huge difference in my life. Thanks to his arrangement, I teamed up with idols from other group to form the idol unit 'Gachinko☆(Star)' and was able to gain a lot of experience in singing. My song has not been put on a CD yet, so I will do my best to publish it as a CD"

Sakamoto, who snatched this chance with her own hands and cleared a path to a new stage in her career, would experience a tumultuous time ahead.

(Continued in Part 2)

　□Sakamoto Erena was born on September 12, 2000, in Fukuoka prefecture. In 2013, she entered HKT48 as a 3rd gen trainee and was promoted to Team TII in March 2016. Apart from the dance skills she learned in grade school, she also immerses the audience into her world with her gentle singing voice and is one of the aspiring Divas in AKB48 Group. During her "Stay Home" time, she worked out using the popular fitness program "Billy's Boot Camp". Her favorite phrase is "Everybody Is Unique and Special in Their Own Way"

[imperfekti]

Tenipuri Party: Tezuka Kunimitsu profile translation

TN:

In the absence of an official English version, this translation is intended to help those who can’t read the material in the original language. Please support Tenipuri by getting your own copy of this book - it is worth it! There are various ways of purchasing it even for those not living in or visiting Japan.

The pictures I have included in this post do not show full pages.

On the translation: this time I’m aiming for a more direct, “Japanese-sounding” translation to share the mood of the content more as it is. This will probably cause some sentences to appear weird in English.

On Tezuka’s style of speech: his word choices and sentence structures are mostly polite and serious.

I’m still working on Japanese, so there might be mistakes. Please let me know if you spot any translation errors so I can fix them here!

Tezuka Kunimitsu

U-17 German representative player Seishun Gakuen Middle-school player

Beyond the imagined future - the released challenger!!

Message

“For the support every day, I’m grateful. For the sake of becoming a professional, and for the sake of my tennis, I intend to earnestly keep confronting myself. I think you are the same. In the future as well, together. Let’s go without carelessness.”

Extra prize: A voucher for two at a high-class mountaintop hotel “An undeserved honor. I’m focusing on tennis right now, but… If I can make the time, I will gratefully use it. For two, huh…”

Profile

[DATA] Middle-school 3rd year / October 7th (Libra) / Blood type O / 179 cm / 58 → 61 kg / Left-handed

Special techniques: Drop shot, zero shiki drop shot, Muga no kyouchi, Hyakuren jitoku no kiwami, Saiki kanpatsu no kiwami, Tenimuhou no kiwami, Tezuka zone, Tezuka phantom, Zero shiki serve

Playstyle: All-rounder

Family: Grandfather, father, mother

Father’s occupation: company employee (business) (grandfather is a judo instructor for the police)

Hobbies: Mountain climbing, camping, fishing

Favourite saying: The enemy is within yourself

Favourite color: Green or blue

Favourite food: unacha (a dish with eel carefully broiled in soy-based sauce), Räucheraal (TN: smoked eel)

Favourite book: German-Japanese-German dictionary (to carry with him)

Favourite music: Classical (Beethoven)

Preferred type of person: Trying not to think about it at the moment.

Preferred date spot: Zugspitze

Most wanted item: A mountain model kit

Things he’s bad at/with: Being idle, colourful cakes

Elementary school: Seishun Dai Daiichi Elementary School

Committee: Student council president

Strong subjects: World history

Weak subjects: None

Often visited place in school: The library

Uses allowance on: Books

Skill outside tennis: Woodworking, preparing fish for cooking

Routine during tournament: Keeping a diary in German, watching foreign comedy-dramas.

Favourite anniversary: 23rd August

Preferred travel destination: Macchu Picchu ruins and Huayna Picchu

Present for a special person: Writing a letter of gratitude

Scenes

Injuries, seizing the nationals… Tezuka Kunimitsu overcame numerous challenges that waited for him and seized glory. But he is not a man who would be satisfied with that. From now on too, I want to pay attention to the steep path of him who moved over to Germany.

(Quotes on pictures:)

“I will not lose.”

“Saiki kanpatsu no kiwami!?”

“And then Seigaku’s era will begin once again!”

“Now, let’s go without carelessness.”

Indeed, it should perhaps be called a “Tezuka zone”.

“Hyakuren jitoku no kiwami!?”

This boy’s tennis is certainly Ten’imuhou no kiwami!?

“No matter who I will end up fighting… I will win!”

The German representatives’ strained atmosphere connects to rapid development (*1)

Tezuka-senshu (*2) becoming a German representative was a shock. Did you not have worries about this decision?

If I said no, it would be a lie. However, as to what is important for me as someone aiming to become a professional, I judged it to be fighting as a German representative and based my decision on that.

Specifically, the currently important thing for Tezuka-senshu is…?

Most of all, it is actual experience of fighting at a higher level. At the German training centre, I have the fortunate chance to rally with top pros like Volk-senshu. Even in practice, they are always making hypotheses as to which shot they should hit, what kind of a play they should make in any kind of match circumstances when they are standing on the court. Having put myself in such a strained atmosphere, I can truly feel my level of experience rising rapidly.

Any bewilderment at facing your former comrades…?

Whoever will become my opponent will not be a problem. But, at first, I thought I was feeling sorry. However, at the time of fighting Japan in the exhibition match, I came to realise my heart was throbbing about competing against them. But just fighting as sworn friends, it is not to elevate ourselves. Rather, by putting a net in-between and confronting each other, the light can come from a new angle and hasten growth - that is what I believe right now.

Then, what is Tezuka-senshu’s current objective or dream?

Upon seizing the world, to hold up the flag of Germany that showed in me, a foreigner. If the opponent for that match were to be Japan, there would not be higher joy.

In a well-ordered and non-negligent environment, pleasant days go on

Have you already grown accustomed to life in Germany?

Yes. Everything proceeds very systematically, so in that sense, it sometimes feels like it is actually even more pleasant than in Japan.

What things for example are like that?

Everyone is already gathered around 15 minutes before the set meeting time. The notion of ecology is growing, so most customers carry eco bags for their shopping, and the separation of waste is enforced thoroughly. Everything is done logically, and it’s an environment without negligence.

I see. It suits the serious Tezuka-senshu perfectly. Then, how do you spend your days off?

Touring antiquarian bookshops is currently my biggest enjoyment. From Goethe to Ende, I have been able to acquire several original texts that I couldn’t in Japan. Also, when time and money allow, I try to go to classical concerts.

What about the German language?

The German language too is a very systematic and logical language. There are very few exceptions, as long as one memorises the basic grammar and idioms, it is quite effective to use. Of course I still lack study, and there are many points where I lack experience, but words are not the only means of communication. Rather, sometimes it is facial expressions that speak more eloquently.

Facial expressions…?

Yes. Facial expressions.

Message for Tezuka Kunimitsu

As expected… should I say. Congratulations. (Inui)

YEEES! CONGRATULATIONS!! (Kawamura)

You should still be able to grow one rank higher. Put effort into your training. (Volk)

I will definitely not forget the thing that you taught me. Let’s meet on the court. (Fuji)

I’m glad you seem to be doing well in Germany too. Eat your meals properly! (Ooishi)

Tezuka-buchou-senpai, congratulations. We are protecting Seigaku. (Kaidou)

I’ll win one day, both in popularity and tennis! (Momoshiro)

You’re not planning on ending it at this? I’m waiting for the next opportunity to fight you. (Atobe)

Congratulatioons. But I’ll overcome you soon. (Echizen)

Are you doing well Tezuka? Send something tasty from Germany! (Kikumaru)

This guy is in 4th place!? Gimme a break! You can go higher than that! (Siegfried)

Party talk

Q: Who would you like to inform about this time’s rank and feelings? A: My family. My grandfather too is always supporting me.

Q: You are being served a lot of food. A: Ooishi. I’m grateful, but it’s already enough. I’m eating sufficiently… I tasted Japanese unacha for the first time in a while.

Q: You can also take part in an improvisation skit competition. A: … No, thank you. I was able to enjoy it quite a lot just by watching.

Q: You got excited with Bismarck-san, though... A: … I was merely unilaterally lectured about how to flirt with women.

Q: Who did you come to the venue with today? A: With the German representative senpai. In addition to training, we measured the time and ran to the venue.

Q: Oh? Is there something the matter with Echizen-kun? A: No. I just thought he seems to have gained experience and grown somewhat.

History

Age 0 October 7 Birth

Age 5 Makes a mistake in dance moves in a kindergarten’s play

Age 10 June Climbs Switzerland's Matterhorn with his father

Age 11 Summer Meets Yukimura and Sanada after the Jr. Tournament, has a match Goes fishing with grandfather, catches a sea bream

Age 12 March Graduates from Seishun Dai Daiichi Elementary School

April Enters Seishun Gakuen Middle School Is hit on the elbow with a racket by a senpai in the tennis club Is told to become "Seigaku's pillar of support" by Yamato

Age 13 November Displays a sketch of mountain grass in the culture festival

January Goes to the first shrine visit of New Year with the club’s 1st year members, makes a vow of conquering the nationals

April Becomes a 2nd year Becomes the vice captain of the tennis club

June Participates in a bread eating race in an athletic festivals, places second

September Gets lots of recommendation letters and becomes the student council president

Age 14 Declines the Jr. Senbatsu invitation Around autumn Has an uncomfortable feeling in his arm

October On the field trip (Taiwan), buys tea utensils for souvenirs

November At the Allied music festival (*3) , participates in the class chorus as a musical conductor

February For the first time in his life, forgets something

April Becomes a 3rd year Becomes the captain of the tennis club

May Wins Tokyo preliminaries championship Is mistaken for a teacher at Kawamura Sushi Has a match with Ryoma on courts underneath the railway

June Wins prefecturals championship Declines offer from the special overseas JFH program Goes to the drawings for the Kantou tournament

July Is invited to Hyoutei’s opera appreciation party as the student council president but declines Start of Kantou tournament In the first round against Hyoutei, loses to Atobe in S1 Goes to Kyuushuu for rehabilitation

July 27 Wins Kantou tournament championship

August 14 Drawing for the nationals, returns from Kyuushuu

August 17 Start of nationals Faces Higa in the 2nd round, wins against Kite in S1

August 19 Quarterfinals against Hyoutei, wins against Kabaji in S2 Semifinals against Shitenhouji, wins against the Chitose-Zaizen pair in D2 Yakiniku battle, is one of the last members remaining

August 23 Finals against Rikkai, loses to Sanada in S3   Wins nationals championship Goes to the victory celebration at Kawamura Sushi

Age 15 (*4) September Is invited to Rikkai’s ocean festival, makes guest participation in a play

October 12 Climbs Kitadake with father

November Participates in U-17 camp Wins against Kaidou in the “friendly fire” matches Learns about a fishing mobile game from Marui and Kirihara In the court shuffle between 3rd and 5th court, wins against Yamato Abandons the match against Fuji midway, departs for Germany Aiming to become professional, participates in the German representative team

December Participates in the U-17 Pre-World Cup drawings U-17 Pre-World Cup starts In Vs Japan, wins against Irie-Atobe pair in the second match U-17 World Cup starts Is drawn into a fight about food by Siegfried, eats Japanese food together Wins against South Africa and Canada

Plan

(Pictured: two documents of mountain climbing plans, including itinerary, packing list and map.)

“This is from when me and father climbed during consecutive holidays. When climbing mountains, let’s make plans properly and climb without carelessness.”

Fashion

It seems he didn’t bring much clothing with him from Japan. I will give you something next time. (Volk)

With Kunimitsu’s hair style, clothes from any country would suit him. (QP)

Wearing clothes you received just like that. That’s like you. (Fuji)

Whether the person in question is aware of it or not, wearing a waistcloth is quite stylish. (Kite)

“I am not a person who is particular about clothes, but only when it comes to shoes, I make it so that I can play tennis in them.”

Room

Bedroom of the room I’m staying in in Germany There’s only bare minimums like the bed and desk that were part of the furnishings. But I’m thankful that letters and daily necessities have been delivered from Japan. Overall, I like the things made from wood and seeing the townscape from the window.

TN:

*1 張り詰めた, haritsumeta. Strained, stretched, tense. Not strained in the sense of anxious or having problems. It seems more like everyone is ambitious and focused.

*2 選手, senshu: player, athlete. I chose to leave this as it is since the interviewer uses it all the time as an honorific, and couldn’t figure out a natural expression in English.

*3 連合音楽会, rengou ongaku kai. This seems to be some kind of an annual music event that at least schools participate into.

*4 It seems like a mistake that age 15 is placed at September, not October.

[theonyxpath]

More Q&A – because YOU requested it! Well, maybe not you personally, but we sure did get a great response to last week’s blog…So We’re Doin’ It Again!

“But seriously, why is International shipping so high on the KSs?”

What backers are seeing from us on the Kickstarter pages are the shipping numbers we have received from our fulfillment partners, and no, they aren’t inflating them and we aren’t inflating them – those are what we are hearing from shippers like Fedex and USPS and others.

The fact is: we are not Amazon. We aren’t C’Mon Games or other companies that send out a massive volume of packages. We’re in the same boat as a lot of TTRPG companies, many of whom are dropping international shipping entirely. Instead, we made the call to give our backers the up-front info so they can make intelligent decisions, while we continue to search for less costly shipping options.

“Why aren’t all Storypath Games the same?”

I’m assuming that this is in reference to the Storypath System, and not the settings for each game line that uses it. Because that’s the only way the question makes sense to me.

One of my goals with the Storypath System was that it be flexible enough to work as the basis for any game we care to create with it, and part of that design was that the basic system would then have additional rules attached to it depending on the game line’s needs.

Or, here is more from Eddy Webb, who has been overseeing the Storypath games, as well as doing design work on the system. He sez:

Each game takes the core system and tweaks it in a variety of ways to better emphasize what’s important in that game. A game about myths like Scion doesn’t need comprehensive weapon mechanics, but a game about salvaging equipment like Dystopia Rising does.

Basically, Storypath was never intended to be exactly the same with every line that uses it, like a generic system, but to allow a base level of familiarity so players just need to look into specific, game line intrinsic, additional rules.

“Why won’t you publish all the Clan/Tribe/Tradition/etc books again?”

OK, that’s a multi-part answer, so let me unpack a bit on this one.

First, and very specifically, we aren’t recreating the “Splat books” as we do new editions because those lil’ books aren’t cost-effective to create with our current publishing model. We do however, love to gather the “splats” into larger books like we’ve already done with Lore of the Clans, or Lore of the Bloodlines.

Which brings us to the second part of this, which is what I touched on in last week’s blog, which is that we don’t have carte-blanche to create just any WoD (or CofD or Exalted) books that we want to create. We have to have their pitches approved by our licensor, White Wolf/Paradox, before we can do any work at all on projects.

So what I’m saying is that we wouldn’t just recreate the old splat books, but we would do a differently formatted version, and that version still needs to be greenlit by our licensor. And right now, that has not happened.

Aeon Aexpansion art by Pat McEvoy

“Why are there approvals stages for Scion or Scarred Lands- don’t you own those?”

The business productivity answer is that we try and keep our processes the same in game book creation to make them go through the stages consistently.

The RichT answer is that I want to be able to review, tweak, and fine-tune the game lines my company owns. I mean, I do it with our licensed game lines, so by crackee, I’m doing with my own durn games!

“What stores carry your books?”

Y’know, I don’t actually know all of them at this point! What we hear from our sales partners at Studio2 and Indie Press Revolution, is that more and more stores are ordering as they become aware that we are putting select books into the distribution/retail channel.

So the notices I see are focused on which distributors have ordered what, although I do still get a chance to chat with retailers who pledge during our Kickstarters. Some of those folks have been with us since our first KSs, like our friends at Trollune in France, and more come on board with each KS.

Mighty Matt McElroy is a lot more hands-on with stores and retailers, and maybe we’re at the point where he’d be willing to pull together some sort of Retailer list we could post on this site. I will ask him very, very, nicely if such a thing could be added to his already massive workload.

But be sure that we truly appreciate each and every order from retailers that our sales partners receive. A Friendly Local Game Store is one of the best places to learn about all sort of games, new and old, and we’re glad we were able to figure out a way to once again get books into those shelves!

And if your FLGS doesn’t yet know that they can order books from their favorite distributor like Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition, or Scion: Origin and Scion: Hero, or Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau and others, with even more yet to come like V5 Chicago By Night and the Trinity Continuum books, then please, let them know, let us know, let the world know, that you want them to order our books for you!

Witch Queen art by Nate Pride

“What are YOU excited about that’s coming from Onyx Path?”

Scion: Demigod and Titanomancy to continue the core Scion mythological experience, and Dragon and Mythos to show how Scion has potential beyond that experience. Trinity Continuum: similarly, very excited to bring back Aeon and Aberrant as lines and especially to revisit Adventure! and deliver an exciting game that emulates all the Pulp Genre excitement that I’ve loved during countless hours reading Doc Savage and The Avenger, but in a way that’s compelling for a modern audience. Then, to finally expand from the three original game lines to other time periods and genres with new games that we’re working on but haven’t announced yet.

Legendlore is another game line I’m really looking forward to. In fact, I think the developed text should be coming my way later this week, or next week, and I can’t want to see what Steffie De Vaan and team have done to take this long-established world and bring it up-to-date and relevant like I mentioned about TC: Adventure!

White Wolf gamelines: For CofD, I’m champing at the bit to start sharing Deviant: The Renegades during its Kickstarter. I’ve loved the concept of the wronged seeking revenge for what was done to them since the project was conceptualized, and Dave and Eric and crew have really delivered on that premise, and more! It’s gut-wrenching, horrific, but also empowering!

For Exalted 3rd, I’m really glad we’re finally doing the Storyteller’s Guide, which combined with another book we’re waiting to hear back on from WW, will provide players and prospective Storytellers with a lot of answers and material that fill in some of the blanks in the core EX3 rulebook. Hopefully, these sections will allow even more players to “get” Exalted 3rd, and so they’ll all want to GET Exalted 3rd!

And, of course, I really can’t expand on much for WoD without the OK from WW/Paradox, but we’ve been so thrilled by the reaction to the V5 Chicago By Night Backer PDF that I’m really looking forward to the next WoD projects from Matthew Dawkins, as well as finally delivering our outstanding 20th Anniversary projects!

Distant Worlds art by Rutledge

They Came From…!: Speaking of Matthew, he is gravely hard at work digging into new sources of fun and inspiration for the follow-up They Came From game, and I’m such a fan of the whole genre/time period it covers that I can’t wait to read it!

Creature Collection 5e: for Scarred Lands looks to be gorgeous! I’m both jealous that Johnny Hodgson was able to pull together so many fantastic artists, and thrilled that our efforts with his Handiworks Games is producing such a fantastic book. Look for its KS soon!

These aren’t advertising blurbs here folks! I truly am excited to be able to bring all of these game lines to life, and to be part of bringing them to all of you – as well as those poor misguided souls who don’t yet read this scintillating blog, or know of our:

Many Worlds, One Path!

BLURBS!

Kickstarter!

Keep an eye out in this space as well as on our social media for the Deviant: The Renegades Kickstarter that will be launching after August wraps up!

Onyx Path Media!

This Friday’s Onyx Pathcast features an interview with one of the unsung new talents of Onyx Path and one of the nicest people working in the TTRPG industry: Meredith Gerber! Go to https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/ or to your favorite podcast venue!

No Onyx Path News this week, with Matthew having been away at Tabletop Scotland! But here’s a nice photo of his group at that convention enjoying a session of They Came from Beneath the Sea!

Here’s our upcoming Twitch schedule, and as you can see, it’s getting very full of content! Between Travis Legge’s Myths & Matchmakers for Scarred Lands, Near Dark Studios‘ Chicago by Night, our very own Pugmire: Paws and Claws and Aberrant: Collateral Damage, and more, we think you’ll find something to entertain you! Even if you don’t, we’d very much appreciate a follow on www.twitch.tv/theonyxpath!

Outside our Twitch channel, the Botch Pit have started up a new chronicle for Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition! And if you’re not into actual plays, they also do breakdowns of lots of our other games: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQfcGvYILEV1vznP5__bOWg

Did you check out the www.gamerstable.com for their actual play of A Slippery Conspiracy? No? Well, now’s the time to catch up and give their actual play of They Came from Beneath the Sea! a listen!

Devil’s Luck Gaming continues with Pirates of Bloodwater for Scarred Lands right here: https://www.twitch.tv/DevilsLuckGaming Also check them out for an excellent Shadowrun actual play they’ve started. We know it’s not our game, but we’re happy to promote such a fine cast of players.

If you’re a fan of Scion, check out https://ragnarokandroll.podbean.com/, a podcast that tracks all the way from first edition Scion: Hero to Scion: Ragnarok, but is now looking into the second edition of the game!

We’re going through Wraith: The Oblivion character creation over on our YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/jflNxrN3i6o And part two will be uploaded this week!

Drop Matthew a message via the contact button on matthewdawkins.com if you have actual plays, reviews, or game overviews you want us to profile on the blog!

Please check any of these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games!

Electronic Gaming!

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)

On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these fiction books:

Our Sales Partners!

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scarred Lands (Pathfinder) books are also on sale at Studio2, and they have the 5e version, supplements, and dice as well!: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/scarred-lands

Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And NOW Scion Origin and Scion Hero are available to order!

As always, you can find most of Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!

On Sale This Week!

This Wednesday, we’re offering our monthly Exalted 3rd Edition PDF for Hundred Devils Night Parade!

Conventions!

Save Against Fear: October 12th – 14th GameHoleCon: October 31st – November 3rd PAX Unplugged: December 6th – 8th 2020: Midwinter: January 9th – 12th

And now, the new project status updates!

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM EDDY WEBB (projects in bold have changed status since last week):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)

N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Creating in the Realms of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Redlines

Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Wraith20 Fiction Anthology (Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition)

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad (Scarred Lands)

Vigil Watch (Scarred Lands)

Pirates of Pugmire KS-Added Adventure (Realms of Pugmire)

Second Draft

Tales of Good Dogs – Pugmire Fiction Anthology (Pugmire)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #1 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Titanomachy (Scion 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum Core)

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Development

M20 The Technocracy Reloaded (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Creatures of the World Bestiary (Scion 2nd Edition)

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Scion Companion: Mysteries of the World (Scion 2nd Edition)

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

TC: Aeon Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Manuscript Approval

Creatures of the World Bestiary (Scion 2nd Edition)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

W20 Art Book (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

Post-Approval Development

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

V5 Chicago Screen (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Let the Streets Run Red (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

WoD Ghost Hunters (World of Darkness)

Scion LARP Rules (Scion)

Geist 2e Fiction Anthology (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

Oak, Ash, and Thorn: Changeling: The Lost 2nd Companion (Changeling: The Lost 2nd)

Editing

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

TC: Aeon Ready-Made Characters (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)

Chicago Folio/Dossier (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

Post-Editing Development

Memento Mori (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e Companion)

DR:E Jumpstart (Dystopia Rising: Evolution)

Pirates of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Indexing

ART DIRECTION FROM MIKE CHANEY!

In Art Direction

Contagion Chronicle

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant

Hunter: The Vigil 2e

Ex3 Lunars – Contracted.

They Came from Beneath the Sea! – Contracted. Sketches still coming in.

TCfBtS!: Heroic Land Dwellers

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed

Ex3 Monthly Stuff

DR:E Threat Guide – Helnau’s Guide to Wasteland Beasties – Contracted.

Deviant (KS) – Contracted. LeBlanc’s art already in.

Trinity RMCs – Contracted.

Cults of the Blood God (KS) – Sending out art notes.

Chicago Folio – Art notes going out this week.

Mummy 2 (KS) – Got Matthew’s notes.

In Layout

CoM – Witch Queen of the Shadowed Citadel

Dark Eras 2 – Files with Aileen

Trinity Continuum Aeon: Distant Worlds

VtR Spilled Blood – With Josh.

DR:E Jumpstart

Aeon Aexpansion

Proofing

C20 Cup of Dreams

V5: Chicago – Inputting errata.

Geist 2e – XX’s and then Indexing.

Signs of Sorcery – Inputting errata.

M20 Book of the Fallen

DR: E – Inputting errata.

At Press

Dragon Blooded – Deluxe at Studio2, shipping wrapping up.

Dragon-Blooded Cloth Map – At Studio2, shipping wrapping up.

Dragon-Blooded Screen – Shipped to Studio2, shipping wrapping up.

Trinity Core Screen – At Studio2.

TC Aeon Screen – At Studio2.

Trinity: In Media Res – PoD proofs coming.

Trinity Core – Printing. PoD proofs ordered.

Trinity Aeon – Printing. PoD proofs ordered.

Shunned By the Moon – PoD proof coming.

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

On this date in 1346 – Hundred Years’ War: The military supremacy of the English longbow over the French combination of crossbow and armored knights is established at the Battle of Crécy. Thus spawning whole rafts of longbow lovin’ moments in gaming! (Also can be seen as a victory for the common man that will echo through history and turn out even more badly for the French nobility 400-some years later).

[lovehaswonangelnumbers]

New Post has been published on https://lovehaswonangelnumbers.org/karmic-tools-weekly-forecast-october-6-12-2019/

Karmic Tools Weekly Forecast: October 6 – 12, 2019

Karmic Tools Weekly Forecast: October 6 – 12, 2019

By Kelly M. Beard

The video version of this forecast, as read by Kelly, is available here.

The Karmic Tools Weekly Forecast covers the current planetary transits which affect people in different ways and to various degrees of intensity. Take notice when it is a Personal planet (Sun / Moon / Mercury / Venus / Mars) interacting with a Social (Jupiter/Saturn) or Collective planet (Uranus / Neptune/Pluto). And pay extremely close attention when it is a Social planet interacting with a Collective planet because that means something *big* is brewing that will move large groups of people along their evolutionary paths. Tuning in to the energy and rhythm of the planets can serve as a useful *guide* as you move along your Individual Path. It also helps to understand your place within the context of the larger Social & Collective Story. Below, you will find out how these energies tend to manifest, as well as guidance and direction. 

*NOTE*  There are some days when there are NO CONTACTS (besides the Moon), please note that there are no missing entries, we just list the actual Activations of each week + the day they happen.

Weekly Forecast: Septembe

Note from Kelly:

I do have a few additional thoughts that I’d like to put on your radar this week because we are truly blessed by the energy of balance, but often that too entails noticing where you’ve been in extremes or where you’ve been imbalanced. Just know that you are tremendously supported to do some personal restoration this season. So let’s dive in …

Thanks to Pluto’s 16-year journey through Capricorn (2008-2024) and Saturn’s 2+ year journey through Capricorn (2018-2020) and the North Nodes 18-month journey through Cancer (Nov 2018-May 2020) and Chiron’s 9-year journey through Aries (2018-2027) and most recently, Jupiter’s 1-year journey through Libra (2016-2017) and Uranus’ 7-year trip through Aries (2011-2018) … thanks to all that big energy, our little annual cycle of Winter, Spring, Summer & Fall is constantly a time of intense evolution for one and all. No one is exempt. Everyone has the Cardinal Signs somewhere, ruling some Area of Life (House) even if you do not have any planets animating those energies. It’s good to know your own natural, seasonal rhythm and now that is more important than ever. I look at it like: when you commit and take one step (in the direction of your goal) then the Universe carries you three more steps. If you can co-create with the energies available that are shifting your personal, individual fundamentals, then you are ahead of the game! You are choosing your destiny and you are also making greater strides, in a shorter period of time because this is accelerated growth that the big-boys always generate.

So with all that in mind, I just want to remind you that Libra time is also the one-of-two times per year that we have access to actual, literal balance. So no matter what extremes you’ve been dealing with, and whether you are in the Southern Hemisphere moving into the Light or here, as we move into the Dark time of year, you can call in balance at this time, you can restore your equilibrium, you can experience harmony even while the worldly chaos continues to swirl. The “theme” here (if there is one) is balance and compromise (Libra) … on the heels of sacrifice & purification (Virgo). We have also re-defined “sacrifice” as *Gift or Offering*. In every instance you feel that the Universe is asking you to “sacrifice” something for your own greater good, you could say out loud: “It would be my pleasure to offer this GIFT! I am delighted to give in this way, knowing I am clearing a space for You, Great Spirit, to fill me and my life with that will serve my Highest good, now and always.” What did you have to give up in the last month? Last 6mo? Last year? Whether you think you did or you didn’t, rest assured that the sorting and sifting got done and there are parts of you that have permanently shifted or been born completely anew. Now is a time of integration and restoring balance so you can function at a higher level than before. If you need some help with this, reach out! That’s what the Mystic Mentor is for!

Also heads-UP! Mercury entered Scorpio Oct 3rd and will be there until Dec 9th (Retro: 10/31 and Dir: 11/20) so that is actually going to help us with our integration process. We will be processing everything that’s come up in the last 1-5 years – on a soul level. We will dare to dig a little deeper into our conscious & subconscious terrain to see what is serving or undermining true evolution. I did talk about it in last week’s follow up ~ Video HERE(49-min).

Mars also entered Libra on Oct 3rd and will be there until Nov 19th and it hasn’t been there since Oct-Dec 2017. It retrograded in Libra in 2014(Dec 2013-July 2014). Mars rules our desire nature, our energy & fuel – and how we direct it – our passions and the Sacred Masculine, which is the part of you who can negotiate on your own behalf, get your ideas in the world and keep good, healthy, effective boundaries. I always suggest that we can co-create with Mars when we check in with our true Natures, every 2-years. In my experience, Mars’ Retrograde has Mars lingering in a Sign/House for 8-months – so I say: we invest 8-months of conscious self-work for a 16-month return. We get a chance to renew our passions & desires – as well as how we go about achieving them – every 2-years, which is how long it takes for Mars to move through all 12-signs.

Anytime Mars is in Libra, we get an opportunity to tune into what we deeply desire in relationships of all kinds. Fairness, balance, justice & equality are all something Mars is willing to fight for when in Libra – and awaken within the rest of us. It is time to access your inner balance where you have integrity and graciousness, as well as fierceness to stand up for what you believe in. Here’s a snapshot from my Your Soul’s Path Series, where I created a workbook for every planetary cycle. The Mars in Libra one says: This is a time when you have extremely high ideals; you’re shooting for the BIG dream! Not easily dissuaded, as you weigh all aspects of each circumstance as it presents itself. Avoid indecision and step confidently in the direction of your goal. Don’t focus too much on how others are directing their energy as much as how you are directing yours. Teach, guide & lead by example, that’s going to be the most powerful and effective use of your energy. Refined strength, rather than brute strength is necessary at this time to accomplish the current goals.

I just feel like we got to reset something during its retro through Libra in 2014, which evolved by Oct-Dec 2017 (in a way we should be able to track a common or continual thread) and now we are getting an opportunity to do some incredible work this go-round. And the reason I feel like the “relationship work” is really up and good to dive into whole-heartedly, is because next year, Mars is going to retrograde in Aries, the sign it rules, and here is when you will get a chance to invest 8-months in YOU – who you are, what you truly want and what your purpose & passion really is and it will really help if you’ve worked out some of this ahead of time. You all know, my thing is CYCLES & PATTERNS ~ if you’re interested in diving deeper into your own, so you can be more effective, feel free to reach out for a reading or a mentoring session.

10/7 ~ Mercury (thoughts) ~oppose~ Uranus (radical shift):

This energy tends to make your mind work in over-drive. Not that you think too much, but rather you may tend to think, speak and process information faster than usual. However, when you are moving that fast, sometimes you can overlook something vital. The negative expression of this energy tends to make you feel scattered and disorganized, but the positive side of it is making those brilliant connections that are normally just out of reach. Your perception and intuition are picking up so much in such a short period of time that you will want to review the details later to ensure that you didn’t overlook something crucial to your development. You may be impatient with same-old/same-old routines or responses but check in with your body to make sure it is not just your monkey mind playing tricks on you. It is a good time to breathe and be flexible because if you are impatient with this energy, you are more likely to make mistakes. Anytime Uranus is involved, radical shifts and ah-ha moments are totally possible on an internal level, however, on an external level you may tend to blurt things our without proper forethought. Be sure to engage your Heart and some kind of filter, especially when communicating with others this week.

10/7 ~ Sun (essential Self) ~square~ Saturn (responsibility):

With this energy, it is best to understand that you will have two distinct pulls within – obligation to others versus responsibility to Self. It’s not nearly as bad as it feels, however, it does bring up something we all work really hard to balance to some degree or another – SELF & OTHERS. How much do you owe your Self and how much are you obligated to others? Balance and reciprocity come to mind as guides. One of the challenges of this influence is making negative assumptions that there is no support for you when in truth, you haven’t asked for any and *help must be invited*. Saturn brings up our relationship to Time, and some people may feel restricted, as if life/other/outer is all too demanding and there’s never any time just for the individual. This activation is a push to grow. It’s time to hold your own structure in some way and reclaim your Inner Authority (also Saturn’s domain) to direct your own life. Others may find their lives falling apart because they have avoided responsibility for so long and now there’s no more “wiggle room”. Rather than have a meltdown, take a nap and resolve to wake up with a plan, a strategy for taking the next step, even if that means simply asking for help or guidance from someone older and wiser. It’s time to deepen your dedication and commit to your Self in a whole new way. Recognize any current limitations and work with the resources at hand for now. The Sun usually illuminates the core essential nature or the Self, so see where you may be stuck and need to break out of a rut of some sort and trust that taking charge and making a decision and choosing a direction is *inviting help* from the Universe to support your new direction.

10/12 ~ Venus (values) ~oppose~ Uranus (freedom):

Any time Uranus is involved, it becomes the “wild card” and hard to predict how things will unfold, but right now there is a push-pull between your apparent values and your unique individual self. Venus also represents relationships, so you may begin an unusual relationship or you may have something unusual happen in an established relationship. It is not necessarily a “good/bad” thing, as much as an unpredictable shift or sudden awareness, which requires some compromise & integration. This energy works beautifully if your personal Truth and values are in alignment. It will be very disruptive if they are not. Be open and flexible, while looking for the win/win situation for all involved.

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[femalebookworm]

Okay, I picked this book at random on my Kindle shelf — because damn, I needed to escape… and instead of hitting my head against a massive wall, I have decided to charge my Kindle again (third time in over a month) to read. Following suit of my devil no-care attitude towards summaries… I picked not knowing a thing about this book, and first-time author. What else is new? The bad thing about the free books I have been getting is that they are all part of a series, which I might not even follow up due to current life stuff. As a warning: first-time author, you read the summary below, and its a series I might pick up later or not… and the spoiler-y screenshots, as usual. But first things first: summary.

He’s loved her since the moment they met. Now a spell might tear them apart forever.

All Jacob Evans wants is to win the heart of Emilia Gray, but with order in the magical world crumbling, war threatening, and Emilia’s boyfriend living across the hall, he may never have the chance. After losing everything he has ever known, Jacob is tossed into a world of magic. The Dragons, a group of rebel wizards, are threatening to expose the existence of magic to humans. Jacob is determined to find a way to fit into Emilia’s life, but as his powers grow, so does the danger. With the death toll mounting, Jacob is accused of murder and must fight to stay in a world he’s only just beginning to discover.  When Emilia’s life is threatened, Jacob risks everything to save her. Does he have the power to rescue her in time? And what could their survival cost?

Enticing isn’t it? Personally enjoyed it, but you will find this review threading the lines of "it was great" and "it was blah", often. I just read the summary, and damn… glad I didn’t cause I was not actively looking for PRN books. But here it is. Can’t shake it off, Taylor Swift. And yes! I did realize early on that it was PNR by the title alone… Anyway, as you can tell I often start writing the intro before reading the book, cause I love the feel of being right or wrong on my assumptions if I have made them. These reviews are mainly written for me, I just happen to post it and share it on social media… and sometimes I talk to myself in 3rd person. I am that weird. And totally not following the rules of actual writing. 

So, The Tethering is part of The Tethering series (4 books in total, for its last volume estimate release: Aug 13 - 7 days to release from the date I picked this book up) showed that sometimes your main character is a boy in high school and that sometimes another POV, the girl’s, can show up. Jacob has a very unfortunate life - he’s lost his mom (can’t remember how, sorry! Awful memory) and lives with an absent father, and from an early age all he wants is to stay invisible in school (just get through the fucking day, as Joe Hammond would say. Santa Clarita Diet, anyone?)— but not to his best friend Emilia, who one day just get up and go away leaving our main character confused and hurt. 

Jacob plans on being invisible and following Joe’s advice to a t, are rudely interrupted when the news of his father’s death and a blow-out in his school threatens everything he knows. The brighter side to his ordeal is that Emilia is back, and without too many explanations from her, he jumps into an unknown world of magic (honestly he’s too numb and happy from her presence to think clearly!). And his magic seems to be powerful enough from the-go (which left questions: was his father running away, was his father aware of the powers, was his father a wizard, was his mother this and that, and so on..).

It’s a pity to let you know that Emilia has a boyfriend (he’s an asshole), and that some rivalry will be shown as you turn the pages of this book. It will be annoying, but remember that these characters are around their 16-17…. Everyone is annoying. The adult characters felt more disconnected than anything else. 

Jacob will learn his magic, you will get the feel of Harry Potter with this, but it goes a much lighter venue than the movies (only watched one movie, though, can’t attest to the rest of it), but you will know what's coming up. Why is this negative? Because this genre has been around for a decade or more, and honestly, there’s no such thing as originality. We have seen it all, and we have read them all.  It can only end one way (because the other, no one goes there — I can be wrong, though. Will be surprised then!). So you already have The End figured out, yeah? The surprise, or lack thereof, will be the middle. The flavored piece of the book that will either make you love the story or hate it. But that can be known only by reading everything, at least for me. Some people need more data to make a decision, some people don’t.

I know this review sounds negative, might even be — and for that I am sorry, but I did find the story to be a tad different and fast-paced with double POVs, but not many, but damn, when my parents asked me what I was reading and my answer left them highly confused because it sounds exactly like the book I have read a few months ago, a few years ago, etc.. You get the gist. I was ready to rant about these two paragraphs ago, but thought better of it… cause I wanted my opinion and review on the book first and then this: 

I got the feeling that this book was a male version of Rachel Morgan, Stacey Marie Brown, Andrea Cremer, Larissa Ione, Lara Adrian, and many others — all authors I have read and enjoyed, but if you’re not careful, you can end up mixing them all together, because let’s be real, they are the same with different writing styles, character’s name, fantasy focused beings (fae, witches, wizards, demons, vampires, werewolves, angels, hybrids, etc), with the same ending. What differs from each of them is the New Adult and Adult twist they can introduce to their stories; this one is very teen-friendly (Stacey, Larissa and Lara’s follow the Adult-adult scenarios - and I am not just talking about sex). As always, and as I said before: to each their own. Some people will love, some people will hate it, some people will feel like this story/genre is a ping-pong match of love and hate (“tug of war” seems too old fashioned), the curiosity to discover if your ending was chosen when the writer wrote these words can only be discovered when you read the last two pages… maybe even the last word… and that will motivate the hell out of dodge. I will leave you to the screenshots below, and if you have gotten this far, kudos to you… I rambled a lot. Guess my muse was here to tell my POV and to rant. 

[kuuxkat]

[EN]VOICE BRODY Magazine - Interview with Aida Rikako

Original CN TL and Pictures: here

CN TL： Toraiba食堂 (逢田文明博物馆)

Disclaimer: This is a Chinese to EN TL, there would be things that would be lost in translation between the languages.

I’m not posting the image of the TL, sorry about that. Stealing images aren’t cool.

Please refer to my policies for more details and do not use the translations for commercial use.

Since there’s no QC - pardon my bad engrish.

The contents are under the cut.

With regards to the point of not giving up,

It has a very strong resonance (with me).

Q: We can see that in a recently published magazine about Aida-san, you really do like curry?

Rikako: Yes, I love curry the most. Although I’m not that picky about it, but what I really like is a certain franchise’s limited curry soup. And also I can cook some by myself too.

Q: …. Do you really make them?

Rikako: I REALLY DO MAKE THEM!!!

Q: Did you make the sauce yourself too?

Rikako: I used pre-made stuff (laughs)

Q: Not bad (laughs). But today’s interview and shoot is after the 2nd season of the TV anime has ended, in what frame of mind were you in when watching episode 13?

Rikako: I watched it together with the fans and everyone during the screening at the end of the year (2017), and it feels different from what we saw at home. To be able to see each other’s joy first hand, there’s a feeling of security to it. And as expected, as I love everyone in the TV anime, I would still feel lonely although there’s still a movie version. But, thinking that it is a “happy end”, then there aren’t any regrets. Although at the end the school has to close down and they would have to combine with another, but everyone in Aqours did do their best. This can be said to the style of Aqours. So I do not doubt the ending for a single moment.

Q: Speaking about the unique points of Aqours, as the stage isn’t at Tokyo, they are still able to get a different resonance as compared to μ’s.

Rikako: That is the case. For (Sakurauchi) Riko-chan, it’s the same too. As I was born in Tokyo too, it did broaden my vision. But there would be a girl somewhere in this world who is living in a place like that, with similar thoughts right? Thinking in that way would have lots of it’s own rewards as well, for children like that, we could say that they are mentally strong right?

Q: Having performing on stage since 16 years old, what are the parts where Aida-san, who had went through rigorous training, empathize with?

Rikako: Indeed there’s parts like this huh? For myself, the degree of the thoughts of: “I can’t give up at this level”, could perhaps be a little stronger than the others. So, for children who worked hard to progress, and the feelings of not ever giving up, I do have a strong resonance to that. And, for school idols themselves, isn't that something that they can only do when they are in high school? So as they legitimately do have that limitation, it’s exactly because of that that when it is nearing the time to end, they could give off that dazzling shine in that very instant. I could deeply and sincerely feel that particular point.

Q: For Aida-san yourself, as a member of Aqours, when you step on an actual stage for an event, would you consciously leave behind flashbacks or moments behind you?

Rikako: Holding 1st Live, 2nd Live Tour and Live&Fan meeting all during last year (2017), it does feel that time flew by quickly. So there would be feelings of anxiety and a little loneliness. Events are being completed one after another, and 3rd Live is in the midst of preparations too, of course there’s a far way of before it ends… but I do feel that time has flew by in a blink of an eye. And wondering whether the days of being part of events with Aqours would gradually decrease, there would be feelings of loneliness. At the very moment where I start feeling that at any single moment I would be able attend an event like this. It would mean that every single precious feeling would also start flowing into the depths of my memory instead. I can’t let it end up like this.

Q: What was asked previously: “What was the shine that everyone found?” what Aida-san wrote was: “To not regret” That answer and this topic are connected to together, right?

Rikako: I feel that to shine is something very difficult to do, but to be able to do it to your full extent and not leave behind any regrets, wouldn’t you say that your life is already shining? Until now, I’ve always lived a life without missing anything. So right now, it does seem to be the shiniest time of my life (laughs)? Of course all this is due to everyone in Aqours, I’ve never once imagined to be able to stand on such a big stage to conduct events.

Q: Should we say that it’s a sparkling and shining world then?

Rikako: I originally just wish to be a voice actress, so I didn’t crave to be on stage and perform. Of course the work that I have right now is very fun. It’s because of that, that I wish to put in my all to properly finish my work here. As it’s something that was achieved with much difficulty, so I wish to unreservedly put in my all into it, not carrying with me any doubts of whether I can do it, and instead put my all in and do it.

Q: Going back to Aida-san’s replies from before, we can see Aida-san’s thoughts on the process of moving forward. You did say before that: “You wish to chase the backs of μ‘s”. Moving on one  year later, it changed to the thoughts of: “The time where we only looked up to is already over”.

Rikako: I did indeed say something like that (laughs). It’s probably when I was replying to last year’s interview, and I felt that if we continue this way, it won’t do. If we just look up, nothing would ever change. I now feel very happy being part of the members of Aqours in my work, so thoughts like to surpass members of μ‘s or to be shoulder-to-shoulder with them, it changed to how I wouldn’t even consider these. I guess, it’s at this point that changed.

Q: You won’t confuse yourself with μ’s right?

Rikako: That’s the case. Although we are both projects of “LoveLive!”, but if we are able to separate the two, we would instead be happier. It’s how I think so recently. As we hope to work hard as part of Aqours.

Q: To chase and search for “the light belonging to oneself”, you’ll be able to properly find that light, right?

Rikako: We aren’t engaging in a comparison, I feel that the songs by Aqours have their own uniqueness to them too. There’s a kind of power that came from somewhere unknown. It’s the same for (Takami) Chika too. It’s exactly because Chika doesn’t stop trying to express these to us, can the members work hard together as a team.

Q: But  it's because she (Chika) felt that because she was ordinary, that this story could begin.

Rikako: I feel that being ordinary is itself a very amazing thing, there’s limitless potential, it’s exactly because Chika is that ordinary, that is the reason why everyone could resonate with Chika, and isn’t that even more attractive? Especially for me who doesn’t have a single specialty, very ordinary, and I did think that way when seeing everyone at the recordings. Everyone have such distinct personalities, everyone of these children are a little odd (laughs).

Q: You did think that huh (laughs). As for the positives and style of songs by Aqours, “WATER BLUE NEW WORLD” really did sang out the past and future of Aqours, right?

Rikako: When I first heard the sample tape, I felt: “This is an amazing song”. This song can be said to a culmination of many things to be something great. It wasn’t the right time to sing this song at the 1st season, and it’s a song that can only be sung now. The lyrics themselves are also trying to showcase this. I’m confident that this song can move many people, although it wasn’t made by me (laughs). But when I was singing this song, it really encompasses lots of feelings inside.

Q: Are you able to foresee the “light that will come” then?

Rikako: The days where I'm part of Aqours, I wish would never end any time soon, I believe that there are lots and lots of very amazing things waiting for us. We can still continue walking forward. I feel that we haven’t gone all out yet. I believe that there would even more people who would know about us. This allows us to continue working hard, and to be even more united. I guess I would forever never be satisfied with the current situation? No matter where we end up, there would always be another step forward, as I do wish to keep in my heart the feeling of always improving. It won’t do without that intent, but when I am dancing together with everyone, that instant, I really am very happy. When I dance, I carry with me the feelings of, if I can convey this feeling more to everyone, it’ll be great.

Q: For last year’s 2nd Live tour, I was blessed to participate in Numazu and Fukouka’s Live&Fan meeting. At that venue, the atmosphere could be said that: “we’ve already sent the message” right? Especially at the venue itself, it’ll have a totally different feel to it.

Rikako: I really felt it’s simply amazing! We can say it’s passionate, that it’s sincere, but it felt amazing. In “Landing action yeah!!”, the part where Suzuki Ainya-san would sing “Tsugi no basho wa doko darou?/I wonder what place will be next?” solo , was very fitting to how it felt then, I especially like that part.

Q: At that time, your tear ducts were easily hit right (laughs)?

Rikako: I carried with me feelings of wanting to continue on endlessly, and wishing to go to where everyone was and share in everyone’s feelings of having met them. At the same time I felt the loneliness of it all coming to an end hitting me, so it’s really a very very amazing song.

Q: Did you think about what you want to do in the days from the TV anime ended till the movie version where you would meet with Riko once again?

Rikako: I’m trying my best to leave my hair long (laughs). And it’s also because everyone has worked so hard in the TV anime, so for it to end like this is impossible. From this point on, the actors everyone, would have to continue working hard too. Riko too would always be by my side accompanying me.

Q: If you were to say something to Riko now, what would you wish to say?

Rikako: For Riko, she’ll be able to endlessly continue on, and she’ll be able to emit even a more dazzling shine than before. But for now… what are you doing now? If I think of it this way, I’ll feel a little lonely. But as expected if it’s them, they’ll be in another world living on fine, right?

Q: I look forward to that the day where the two of you would meet. Lastly, Aida-san, if you were to look at “LoveLive!” again, what would it’s charm points be?

Rikako: As expected it’s cohesiveness, everyone’s feelings have become one. Even the staff too. The actors and fans, everyone’s feelings have become one. I feel that everyone is inseparable now.

Q: And this particular “feeling” is?​​​​

Rikako: What will happen this year, and what would happen next year, what will happen on the road to the final destination is something no one can foresee, but is something everyone are eagerly anticipating… that is the feeling I meant. Mm, the road to the future.

[queen-of-hearts92]

Revue Starlight 7: Living in the state of dreaming.

Her life is a play, is a play, is a play....

For the previous episode go here!

To go to the start of these posts, go to the Prelude!

WELL. THAT ESCULATED QUICKLY.

The tipping point is here my dudes. And it’s fucking, amazing! Absolutely incredible! Blew me out of the water! The storyboarding is amazing, the fucking music the lighting like everything is so well done I can’t believe it! I’m telling you guys, masterpiece right here!

Theres a lot to talk about regarding this episode so be prepared for a very very long post.

If you haven’t seen Revue Starlight or episode 7, TURN BACK NOW. I’m spoiling everything and you REALLY don’t want to be spoiled for this! 

If you haven’t seen this show yet, please PLEASE do so! Seriously, I can’t empathis enough! Don’t ignore this holy shit! Really! Seriously! I’m screaming this from the rooftops for a good reason, this is extremely good! It’s not yuri bait, it’s not an idol anime just, for the love of god don’t ignore this series! Don’t let this slide under the radar Western anime fandom! It deserves so much better than that!

Ok now that the PSA is done, here we go! 

The title and caption of this post is from the song “The State of Dreaming” by Marina and the Diamonds. It’s, pretty fitting for here for sure.

>*Daft Punk voice* One more time!

*deep breath* Alright, here we go.

We open the episode in the past, this is mostly a flashback episode. It’s March 3rd, 2018, the Starlight play is being performed and we get to see more than we ever have of the play. Claire and Flora ascend up a fuck ton of stairs to get the star together, they have to pass through seven other goddesses as they climb upwards. The seven goddesses all seemed to have tried reaching the star itself in the past but failed, and they tell Claire and Flora why they failed and to not seek the star themselves. Nana’s character refers to it as a cycle of despair. Claire and Flora make it to the top and it goes how we know it does, Flora is zapped down and Claire ascends without her. As the play ends sand (or maybe it’s supposed to be stardust) rains down from the ceiling, the audience applauds as the girls take their bows. We focus on a very happy Nana who says its bright.

Wow it looks like she just put them in a...gilded cage. *Foreshadowing intensifies*

We now go to March 5th, 2018, the play’s run is over and the girls are having an after party. We get several shots of the Venus De Milo here and throughout the episode. Junna and Sanai (head play writer in case you don’t recall) walk in front of a Venus and a small scale version of the star tower and make a speech, congratulating everybody on the play’s success. The party continues with the girls talking, taking pictures, eating, etc. We go to Nana who has her phone camera in front of her eyes, she’s taking pictures of her own.

She first takes one of Junna telling her good work, Junna gets flustered and says that this play was only the first year and they gotta prepare for next year soon. Nana then walks to Karen and Mahiru and takes their picture, Nana tells Karen she did a good job and Karen says Nana was really good too. Nana asks if Mahiru was nervous, she says she wasn’t thanks to Karen. Nana walks to Maya and Claudine congratulating them on a good job, Maya thanks her and Claudine says she did NOT lose to Maya thank you very much. Maya is like “ok let’s face off again at the next audition”. Maya then looks directly at Nana and tells her essentially that she would like to face off against her too. Nana seems confused, but no matter. Nana goes to Futaba and Kaoruko next. Futaba is like idk how to play a goddess but it worked out somehow, Kaoruko starts to tease her when they both notice Nana. The two run up to her and Futaba gives her a hug, she thanks her for helping her out during this whole play. Kaoruko also thanks her for the same reason. Mahiru and a few rando girls also thank Nana for helping them during the play production.

Karen picks up a banana muffin and comes up with Nana’s legendary nickname while Nana, Kaoruko, and Futaba are doing a message train. Karen reasons that Nana is like a banana because she’s sweet and good for everyone. Junna, who had just joined the group to get food, is confused. But Mahiru thinks the nickname is cute, Kaoruko and Futaba like it too. Kaoruko says its because Nana is tall like a banana, Futaba says its because Nana smells nice. Wow Futaba. Nana laughs, she also likes the nickname. But her laughter soon goes into crying, much to the alarm of her friends. Futaba and Kaoruko ask her what's wrong and Nana smiles and says she’s crying because she’s happy. It turns out Nana’s crying caused literally everyone at the party to notice. Nana says she’s glad she came to the school and says she’ll never forget this play. Internally Nana says she found her forever friends and her destined stage. On this day, Nana was reborn as a Stage Girl. Then we get the opening.

Ah yes, the message train. A theater kid tradition!

We jump to spring break, March 26th, 2018. All the girls but Nana and Junna leave the dorms to go home for break. They say bye to Nana, who has her camera phone in front of her eyes again, and watches everyone leave. We get a few shots in the empty dorm with Nana in the same pose, she comments that it’s very quiet with everyone gone. Nana goes back to her room, Junna is reading. Upon seeing Nana holding up her camera she’s like you’re taking pictures in our room why?? Nana responds saying that she needs to take photos of all the important moments for the next school festival. Junna asks if Nana was fine not going home, Nana is surprised by this question. Junna says she isn’t going back home until she graduates (reminder note: Junna’s parents don’t approve of her being at this school) so if Nana was just staying to look after her she probs shouldn’t. Nana smiles and, after offering udon, says she’s here because she wants to be here. Junna smiles and says yes to the udon.

Fellas is it gay if you take multiple pictures of your room mate everyday?

Now it’s a new school term, they’re second years. It’s April 9th, 2018. Nana is recording Junna finishing tying her school bow on, she’s like hey Junna got a speech for the new year? Junna is like hold on I’m the class rep I gotta not do anything embarrassing! She puts on a new pair of glasses and Nana says they are the same glasses but look like new ones. Nana and Junna go to school into their new classroom, Nana goes to the front of the room to record everyone. The girls in the class wave to her, Nana shifts to the back of the classroom.

Then, Nana realizes something is off. Mysterious creepy music plays as we see our girls and the girls in the class, Nana is doing a headcount. As the number 99 zooms slowly towards the camera Nana says two of her classmates are missing. The music cuts out, Junna tells Nana that the two girls had dropped out of school. Later Nana and Junna are in the locker room, Junna is removing the dropped out girl’s name tags from the locker. She laments that it’s sad this is the first task she got as class rep, but it’s time to move forward. Nana pauses before simply saying, yeah.

It’s now May 16th, 2018, the (regular as far as we can tell) auditions for the play have started. Nana stands in the back of the practice room with the camera in front of her eyes, through the camera screen we see Claudine declaring she’ll have a perfect victory over Tendou Maya. A picture is taken, Karen pops in declaring she’ll be Flora. Another picture is taken, Mahiru pops in saying if Karen is Flora then she’ll be Claire. The next photo adds Junna, Kaoruko, and Futaba to the mix, Kaoruko is like I’ll be in the main cast this time bitch! We go back to Nana, Maya appears next to her. Maya asks if Nana had a moment to talk after class and Nana says sure, Junna notices this exchange.

Kuro is best wingman pass it on!

And now...Now is when things start taking a turn.

Maya and Nana walk outside, Nana reminisces about the starlight play as they walk. The girls pass by several buildings, some girls are there and Nana waves to them briefly. Nana wonders if they could make the exact same play as they did last time. The music changes, Maya says that even if they have the same components as the previous play it won’t be the same. While Maya is speaking we see several other girls around the area. She continues saying that the girls (the ones who dropped out) chose their own path, with their own hardships. That sometimes there are people who can’t make it even when they try their hardest, so they leave the stage. Maya says she will challenge Nana for the main character in the play this time around. Maya tells Nana that she’s very talented so she wonders why she doesn’t step it up more. And then, after we zoom in on an empty locker, the music suddenly drops out and ALL the girls we saw earlier snap their heads up and look in the direction of the screen.

After that haunting sequence, which legit startled the fuck outta me, we go to Futaba and Kaoruko standing between two vending machines. Kaoruko is taking her time deciding something and Futaba tells her to just pick already. We go back to Nana and Maya, Maya says to Nana that if she doesn’t try to give her all and refuses to change. She will never forgive her. Nana is shocked.

Later nightmare fuel aside, the framing of this shot is so good oh man!

It’s now the evening, the sky is purple. Nana sits on a bench looking through her photos from the after party. Junna, Karen, and Mahiru come on in, they look at the photos and reminisce about the party and the play. Nana says how much she loved doing the play and the three other girls also say they loved it too. Nana wonders again if they can put on the same play, she looks at her photos fondly. Karen then is like, well I hope I can be on the stage again. She says the stage is alive and always changing, therefore it can’t be the same play at all. Junna points out they also are missing classmates hence it really isn’t possible to make the same exact play. Karen stands up on a bench, ripping open a bag of dried banana chips, and is like we’ll make a WAYY better play this year! Junna is like, you dumbass don’t stand on the bench! Karen says this is her stage now and it’s fine since she took her shoes off. Junna is exasperated. Nana tunes out of the conversation, staring at the sky.

Now Nana is in the changing room at the dorms, she’s lying down staring up at the ceiling. She wonders if they’ll be successful in creating a better play. She thinks the play they did in the past was perfect as is. And then, her phone rings with a VERY familiar ringtone. Giraffe has texted Nana for the first time, Nana thinks the giraffe is cute.

We go to Nana on a stage, a very bright stage of yellow light. Behind her is a piece of the prop star tower hanging out. Giraffe is standing in front of the real one, he greets Nana with a good evening. Giraffe asks if it was too radiant, Nana doesn’t really give an answer instead she’s like giraffe?? As Giraffe explains what a revue is, we get shots of the underground stage. It’s in ruins, the chairs are messed up, there's rust on the machines, everything is cracked and ruined to hell and back, and the whole thing is partly flooded. Or really it’s sinking. We also get a shot of the props from audition duels we’ve seen already. 

Nana is confused by what Giraffe means by radiance, he explains whoever shows the most radiance will get to be Top Star. After we hear a bizarre sound we get a shot of the tiara, Giraffe says that she will stand on in the Stage of Destiny if she gets Top Star and will radiant forever as an eternal star. Nana says she isn’t interested in that. Giraffe understands, so he offers her something else. What wish she did she have then? What kind of stage would she like to stand on? He says Nana has a radiant stage inside her, one so bright that she might not even be able to reach it. Nana asks if she could choose any stage she wanted, and Giraffe is like sure just join the auditions. Nana accepts joining them.

Hm, seems legit. Nothing bad will happen here.

It then cuts to, Nana winning against Maya. Nana stands in the light looking spacey and she speaks in a robotic dead sounding tone, Maya is shocked and said “so this is your true self?” she asks what made Nana change. Nana responds by asking if it’s too bright, because it’s too bright for her. As the curtain comes down, Maya asks why she’s doing this but all Nana says is she can’t reach it. Maya tries to ask what drove her to go to this extreme but she’s cut off by the curtain falling down on her. Nana claims position zero but, she doesn’t announce her name. Instead she says again she can’t reach it because it’s too bright. We see a shot of the rankings board, Nana is at the top at number one.

In the next scene Giraffe congratulates Nana on becoming Top Star. He asks if it’s too bright. Nana says yes. Giraffe asks what stage she desired, Nana says she wants to perform the Starlight play from the previous year again. Giraffe is like, alrighty then. The tiara drops at Nana’s feet on position zero, there are bright pink lights and a buzzing sound. The script with the frog on it we’ve seen Nana with before falls from the sky and we go to black.

Never underestimate the power of fruit.

The next thing Nana knows, she’s in class. The teacher announces that they will be doing the Starlight play for their three years, the class is excited. Futaba and Kaoruko don’t know what it is. Nana is like ??? what, she turns to Junna and is like hey wtf is going on. Junna is shocked and flustered at Nana using her first name, she calls Nana by her last name. Nana stares at her shocked. She realized what just happened.

She went back in time. It went from May 25th, 2018 to April 17th, 2017. We see the Starlight play being prepared and practice while Nana reveals something else. Nana going back to the past like this, isn’t a one time thing. No, it’s been done many times before by her. Nana….has trapped everyone in a time loop.

Holy shit.

Anyways, Nana has convinced herself that being in a time loop is a good thing. She has nothing to fear, no one has to grow up and feel the pain of being alive and growing. Nana says she’ll protect everyone, she’s doing this for everyone's sake. It’s fine. Nana smiles, whole holding the script close, in the bright yellow stage under the tower prop. There's a giant box with the number 99 painted on its side behind her. We learn that every loop she fights Maya, every loop she beats her. She makes the same wish. It all starts over again. But she still can’t reach the light, it’s still too bright.

And then, one day. Something different happens.

After winning again, Nana tells the Giraffe it’s still too bright. Giraffe (standing by a sudden random tree) says he has lost count in the number of times these loops have happened but he will grant her the same wish anyways. Nana asks him, why does he do this for her. Giraffe says when a Stage Girl becomes Top Star she releases a powerful radiance, a shining stage. He wants to see that, he wants to see shining stages. But, it seems like Giraffe has gotten bored of Nana’s same stage so. Something is gonna change it, or really someone. A knife is thrown down smack in the middle of position zero at Nana’s feet. It’s Hikari’s knife. Nana is shocked, she looks up and sees Hikari’s blue cape in the tree. Hikari herself stands under the tree, staring. The scene goes to black, Nana is back at the start of her loop wondering who the fuck that was.

COME TO THIS WEIRD STAGE TREE IN 5 MINUTES FOR AN ASSWHOOPIN.

Nana’s loop continues as normal, until. Until May 14th, 2018. Nana wakes up and knows something is off right away. We see the scene from episode 1 where Karen falls off her chair, Hikari is in the hallway with her suitcase. The teacher tells the class that they are getting a new transfer student, Nana is shocked.

Nana is like holy shit this is new. We then see a bunch of lines go by, they are time loops that have happened. When I slowed it down, I counted 60 lines total. So there have been 60 time loops, each one is a year and 5 months….Nana has been doing this for 60 years.

Jesus fucking christ Nana.

We then jump back to the present, the sun is going down while the girls walk home. Haunting music plays while Nana stares out a window at Hikari. She wonders how this change even happened at all, she wonders if doing the same play for 60 years really gets boring. Geez Nana, ya think? 

However, Nana says her world will never change. She says Hikari’s name, and turns creepily to the camera staring directly at it. She’ll put that girl in her play. No matter what. The episode ends.

The ending theme has no vocals.

Nana...what have you done...

>We never saw it cominnnng!

-Holy mother of fucking god. I. This. Was incredible. My mind is still blown! What an excellent twist! I love this show so fucking much! I told y’all this was something special! I fucking told you! Episode 7 proved it! They could fuck it up at the end but my gut feeling is still good! Fucking anime of the year!

--Also there were AMAZING shots in this! So much good storyboarding holy shit!

-In my episode one and five write ups I took note of the dates but at the time I said they “probably aren’t relevant”. WELL GUESS WHAT PAST ME. THEY VERY MUCH ARE RELEVANT! I picked up that the show was showing us dates but not why. Gdi.

-With time nonsense happening, I made timelines (here and here) so we can keep track of what’s going on. Will update as needed and put in future write ups as needed.

-I wanna address something real quick, a lot of people are quick to make comparisons to Madoka Magica and Homura’s time travel powers. I can see why people make that comparison but the time travel here isn’t really the same at all. Homura can start the time travel whenever she likes, sure it’s limited to going to a certain day but if say she was three days into the timeline and Homura decides to go back again she can. Nana can’t do such a thing. If Nana was three days into hers and she wanted to go back she can’t, she has to become Top Star to go back in time at all. Higurashi is a closer comparison but even that isn’t too close to Nana’s time looping either, without spoiling anything in Higurashi the length of the time loops vary and aren’t the same. It can go for many years or not. Funny I think this kind of time travel in the show is closer to the movie Groundhog's Day but instead of just one day it goes for a year lol. Another comparison I’ve seen is Steins Gate but I’ve only seen one episode of that anime so I can’t comment too much on it. 

Point being here is, not all time travel is the same and often isn’t compatible to each other. Nana’s time loops continuing lies solely on being Top Star, if she didn’t become Top Star no time loop will happen. It’s not superpowered base like Homura’s is nor is it like Higurashi’s which is….uh. Let’s say why the loops are happening are much more complicated than either of these shows. So, let’s stop saying Nana is pulling a Homura cause she isn’t (Homura also isn’t the first time traveler in fiction you guys, you can use other comparisons). Don’t mislead people into thinking it works like Madoka Magica’s ok? Ok.

-I feel silly now that I worked out the possible ranks in episode 5 cause as it turns out the ranking board is a lie and doesn’t matter as much as we thought it did! Maya isn’t really in first, she’s in second. Nana is first, Nana is the strongest of all of them. This means that poor Kuro is actually in third place, ouch. If she finds that out she’ll be very unhappy about that.

-Funny, I thought how this show was gonna go was Karen blasting through everyone and then they fight the evil tiara bullshit together but now that this time loop is involved, everything has fucking change. Everything! Nice!

-Interestingly, it appears there is no visual uniform difference between the years. As in first, second, and third years all have the exact same uniform. That’s not super common in high school anime I find, it’s nifty!

-There were some differences in the ending credits this time. In the past several episodes we’ve had a character sing the ending theme Fly Me to the Star. But not here, Nana doesn’t sing fly me to the stars. It’s only the instrumentals and Nana is with Giraffe instead of either by herself or with someone. Another difference was with Hikari’s hair clip, it’s usually a hand (probs Hikari’s) reaching down and touching it. But this episode, Nana is stepping on Hikari’s hair pin. I’m sure that implies nothing bad, oh wait yes it does. Hahaha she’s gonna fucking try and kill her isn’t she? Hikari is fucking screwed. ono

Another difference lies in the background, in the previous credits there’s always items that are related to whoever is singing the song slowly falling in the background. It always includes the Starlight play script but with Nana’s it’s JUST the Starlight play script and nothing else. Yikes. The last difference is at the very end, normally it has the girl(s) who sang the song standing in the spotlight. This time it’s just the frog Starlight script in the spotlight. Both of these things show how obsessed Nana is with this play, it’s consumed her entire life and her spotlight for that matter.

-After Nana wins the duels she doesn’t declare her name when claiming position zero. That’s very very odd considering everyone who’s declared position zero says their name right afterwards. Loss of identity maybe?

-At the end of the Starlight play it rained sand on the stage just like it rained water in episode two on kuromaya stage after they fight. Not sure what this means yet, instead it brings something else to mind.

-This series uses and brings up water a lot! There is several bodies of water on the campus, it’s raining after Karen’s duel with Maya and this reflection happens, it’s raining at the end of the kuromaya fight, the whole damn stage is surrounded by water, Hikari goes to aquariums in episode 4, swans are aquatic birds, we see the stage flooded in the past, and of course there is the goddess Aphrodite’s connection with water. She was born out of the ocean, you could even say she was reborn since she came from a nutsack (myths are fucking weird man). Water has a TON of symbolism behind it, it’s been used symbolically for centuries. It often symbolises birth or rebirth, cleansing yourself, purity, and there's a ton of mythos involving water and many religions practices that involve it. What’s not super known is that water as a symbol was used a lot in early sapphic literature, as were birds.

What this all means is hard to say but I think it does tie into the being reborn theme this show has. It’s a metaphorical rebirthing as we’ve seen it. Karen is reborn when she became a Stage Girl, Junna describes falling in love with theater as a child as being reborn, and Nana also refers to herself being reborn after the Starlight play after party. What being reborn really means in this show is being drastically changed by a life experience. I’m really excited to see this theme continued.

-The Venus de Milo statue makes a frequent appearance again (5 times!) and while I do think it still ties strongly to Maya there is something weird here, it seems like the statue is involved with the play somehow? It’s present at the after party, even being in front of the star tower so one would think it’s involved in the play somehow. But what? What does this statue have to do with this play? Is it cause Venus is also a star? Maybe? It’s hard to say.

-When Nana goes to the underground stage for the first time, it’s old and shitty. And flooded/sinking. Meaning this point is ground zero of when and where the duels started, it supports my idea of the stage being alive. I’ll elaborate on that point in speculation but I’ll say that the stage looking so fucked tells me it’s been a very long time since it’s been used.

--Also during these flashbacks, the Tokyo Tower isn’t in the underground stage at all. So, does this mean Hikari’s presences brought the tower there? It’s an important place for Hikari and Karen so that would make sense, the stage would have no reason to have it unless they are involved. But why? Since episode 8 looks like a focus episode on Hikari maybe we will have a better idea after that.

-Junna notices Nana and Maya talking in the practice room. I think that’s an important thing to note here cause I think Junna will be very important in getting Nana to stop the madness.

-Is the star in the tiara or the tower? Both? Or maybe the star just uses the tiara as a medium of sorts? This shit is mysterious man.

-The frog script Nana has, is it a soul gem/horcrux like thing? A timer? Can it affect reality? Looks pretty worn, I mean it has been through lots of loops. This script makes me go hmmm.

-I’m still shook by the fact Nana has kept all her friends in this gilded cage for 60 years! Nana what the fuck. Now you are probs wondering how anyone outside of the school would not notice that? I think, because Hikari and Karen went into the city, this time loop doesn’t just effect the campus it effects the city. Hell it might even effect more than the city. The whole country? The world? Like literally everywhere being time looped would match up to the lack of freaking out from outsiders. Like Nana, Nana the fuck did you do? Holy shit.

-Something I noticed right away, and got really excited, about is the fact Claire and Flora have to pass through seven gates/goddesses to get to the star. That’s just like Inanna’s myth! She had to pass through seven gates each with a gatekeeper to get into the underworld. Like holy shit that’s really cool that an Inanna has a reference again! Also the stairs were going up right? You could say, it’s a stairway to heaven? Eh? ;D

-The part when Maya and Nana are talking, we pass by all these girls. When it gets to the height of the conversation, suddenly the music stops and all the girls heads snap up and look the same direction. That scared the piss out of me! What the fuck was that?! I can’t figure it out? The best answer I got maybe is it’s something to do with the school or the stage and it didn’t like what Maya was saying? Maybe? Is this like the fighty Greek Chorus in the stage musical? Is that what happens when you get booted out from the auditions? Why did only Nana acknowledge the girls were there via waving? I?? I don’t know but that scene makes me very nervous.

--The part with Nana turning towards the camera at the end was creepy too. The shadows, the red, and the too fluid animation of her turning was all off putting but the real kicker I think is the fact she’s staring directly at the camera. Like is she talking to someone we can’t see or, is she addressing us the audience? Please no Monika I don’t wanna see anyone getting deleted.

-Right after the creepy scene with the girls all fucking pulling an Exorcist, we go to Futaba and Kaoruko talking about something seemingly unrelated. Cutting from something so intense to something so mundane seems like an odd choice right? I was stumped too at first but I figured it out! Futaba and Kaoruko are between two vending machines, one is red and one is blue. At this point in the story we’ve learned that Maya and Nana are foils to each other, I’ll elaborate on the ways they are foils later but the super short version is Maya and Nana have a conflicting way of how to see the future. Maya prefers going forward, not dwelling on the past, and so she sees the future as a good thing. Nana on the other hand is afraid of it and sees the future as something bad taking what she loves away from her. The vending machines represent that split.

When you have a scene set up to be a clear split like this then it usually indicates opposite paths or choices or in this case opposite viewpoints. Also red and blue are very often used to show opposites. This is a crossroads, do we hang on to the past or let the future come? Which direction, or vending machine, should we chose? Or will be chosen really, whoever won that first audition duel would decide what path to take. Unfortunately Nana won, and she chose the past. Now everyone is fucked.

As for why Futaba and Kaoruko were the ones in the center, it has to do with the yin and yang parallel around them we saw in episode six. While those two are in sync despite being different, Maya and Nana's views of the future cannot be in sync or coexist together. A conflict will always come. In the scene after Maya and Nana talk, the sky is purple. A combo of red and blue, or in this case a collide. This foreshadows the duel that takes place on May 25th, it’s a clashing of view points.

-It’s obvious by this point that Giraffe is not a benevolent figure, all his actions are for him and/or anyone he is working with so he can gather starlight and see shiny revues. He doesn't care about stopping Nana, he's just bored and wanted to see what would happen if everything was thrown off balance. Giraffe is the Kyubey of the situation here, the devil in dealing with the devil. All for starlight and seeing brighter revues. This isn't a revolution, it's an experiment. Seeing Giraffe as a benevolent figure is the mistake Nana made, so we the audience shouldn't trust him either. I never trusted this fucking giraffe in the first place so it doesn’t surprise me that he is pulling this shit. But, if he is a Kirin then why? What makes a Kirin turn bad like this? Hm.

-In the Starlight play gears pop up again! Mmm love the gear motif. Also wow this fucking stage is impressive, how much fucking money does this school have?! Lol.

-So the Top Star position grants wishes it seems like? Can you wish for anything or just things related to the theater? If it can cause time travel on a possible world wide scale, then what else can it fucking do? I don’t trust this Top Star wishing, nope.

-The way Giraffe was talking about starlight makes me think that yeah the system does indeed gather and/or feed off of starlight. So, is Giraffe the Starlight Gatherer? The stage itself? The mystery continues.

-During the flashback while the stage is in ruins, we see props backstage that are from previous revues. The stars from Hikari and Junna’s stage, the cat in a baseball outfit from Mahiru’s stage, a lantern from Futaba and Kaoruko’s stage, one of the glasses buildings from Junna’s stage, and Maya’s stairs and pillar and chandelier and big ass bird from her stage (geez Maya, hogging space much?). Claudine’s is there too but its not grouped with the others, it’s right over here! It’s likely not with the other ones cause IT’S A FUCKING HUGE BUILDING. Kuro goes big or goes home. But the odd thing is, the duels haven’t even started yet. So what are these doing here? Have they been, preprepared?

-So we’ve been told that if you get booted from the duels then you lose the most important thing to a Stage Girl, knowing what we know now I really wonder what the fuck that could possibly be? The other girls had to have lost in the other loops for Nana to keep winning Top Star and we don’t see what happens to them at all. Is it a thing? Is it the starlight draining theory I’ve talked about before? I don’t know like, man these loops made everything more complicated lol.

-In the credits, Nana leaning towards Hikari and she’s also right over position zero! Fuckin, that foreshadowing man! I love it!

>So, about Nana, Maya, and Hikari.

There’s so much to talk about regarding these three that they need their own section. They are very deeply involved with this time clusterfuck. And, wow who knew that Nana and Maya would end up as foils to each other? That’s fucking wild.

-Nana

Let’s start with the one who kicked all this shit off. Oh poor Nana, I really do feel for this girl. For starters I don’t think Nana is evil at all, no she’s just a scared lonely girl who’s been preyed upon by the stage. She’s made a huge mistake, making a Faustian deal with forces that she doesn’t understand, and everyone pays the price for it including her. Nana’s backstory must be really fucked up, I mean I don’t think it will go too fucked up but it will be sad as hell I bet. She probably didn’t have any friends before coming to the school and I’m betting she either has dead parents or stage parents.

If she has stage parents then they likely pushed her into being the most perfect Stage Girl, being controlling and overbearing as hell. And they treated her like crap the entire way. Maybe Nana didn’t want to come to this school at first but when she did, oh look she has freedom for the very first time in her life. Nana having these kind of parents would also parallel Maya’s who are famous stage actors, and the two of them reacted differently to the pressure placed on them during their lives. I’ll talk more about their similarities later.

So after Nana came to the school she made friends for the first time, what she did was considered good enough and she got praise and loved by others. Positive attention is something Nana likely never had before so she ended up associating love and happiness with that specific point in her life, and this caused her to grow very attached to that point in time. Nana being so love starved made her crave going back to that time, in her mind that’s the time where she’s loved and appreciated and she can’t even imagine that she can get love and appreciation outside of that specific chunk of time. Hence she clings to it hardcore, and becomes upset when being told she can’t ever go back to that time. So when offered a way to go back she jumped at the chance, not considering the consequences this will bring. After Nana said she didn’t want the power Top Star gives you, Giraffe changes his tactics and says she can choose any stage she wants. Any stage at all. And so, we ended up here.

I totally understand Nana is coming from, it’s hard to leave happy past experiences behind. To never have the same ones ever again. It’s hard to grow up and be thrown into a cold adult world. Life changing is hard, and when you grow up sad and miserable you want to cling to any happiness you can get. I very much understand why Nana keeps this time loop going. That being said however, what she’s done is a horrible thing to do to her friends and it is so incredibly selfish of her to keep it going like this.

Nana has rationalized her time looping as she’s doing it for everyone's sake, to spare them any future pain. But, just cause she thinks that doesn’t mean it’s true. Her friends never asked her to do this and I’m pretty positive they wouldn’t want to be stuck in this time loop, but Nana never asks them or considers that hey just cause you’re afraid of the future doesn’t mean you should take away other people’s choices and make the choices for them! Nana resetting any character development is also a very fucked thing to do, like for example if she did reset it like normal now that means that Mahiru never detached her self worth from Karen. Futaba and Kaoruko’s relationship issues never got resolved. Karen and Junna would never become friends. Any development Maya and Kuro would’ve gotten would be tossed out the window. Nana is taking all growth away from them every time she resets, just cause she doesn’t want anything to change.

It’s cruel, keeping them in this gilded cage and never letting anyone move forward with their life or get over their hang ups. I have a feeling the other girls are going to find out about this, the fallout will be bad. Very bad. However at this point Nana is pretty overpowered with starlight and 60 years of experience, she won’t be easy to beat. The starlight itself I think, while very useful, is a corruptive dangerous thing especially when someone is overloaded with it. Maybe it’s even addictive. Nana and Giraffe appear to both be obsessed with it and this overload of starlight is likely making Nana’s mental state even worse. This is gonna turn messy.

I think Nana can still be saved, redeemed even! I’m pretty positive Junna will be a huge factor in that. Nana obviously has a crush on her, just look at all the pictures she takes of Junna alone. We haven’t seen these two a ton together but enough to know they are close friends with each other. There will be more in future episodes I think, it’s gonna be wild. Help us Jun-Jun! Go go save Banana! We need ya!

Nana is someone who represents the past, she can’t let go and she can’t/doesn’t want to move forward. She’s dragged everyone else into this bullshit because she is so afraid of the future. The future is unknown and scary. The past is easy and comforting, as well as predictable. But it’s stifling, no one can grow and change. It’s a gilded cage, and Nana has trapped everyone including herself in it. She has to let go of the past and move forward understanding the future isn’t hopeless and that she can still get positive attention and love going forward.

-Maya

Oh Maya, oh dear. Amists all this time looping is Maya, it’s unknown if Maya has any memories of previous time loops but regardless if she does or doesn’t it’s fucked for her either way. If she does remember all the loops then she’s been failing to stop this and reliving the same block of time for 60 years, it’s amazing she hasn’t lost her mind! If she only remembers some loops or bits and parts then there's probably this endless feeling of dread and paranoia plus the fact she keeps failing over and over. If she doesn’t recall anything at all then she’s been doing the same fruitless quest for years without realizing that it’s all pointless. Another possible idea is her memory slowly returns during the year then she loses AGAIN and it fades away no matter what she does. Jesus christ how horrifying. 8(

Nana always fights Maya for the Top Star and Maya always loses, mostly cause the cards are stacked against her. Not only does Nana have all that starlight power but she's been fighting for 60 years and remembers doing it. So Maya can’t ever beat her, she’s extremely outmatched. I can only imagine how stressful that would be if she recalls anything, remembering endless failure to break her and her friends out of this hellscape. If Maya does indeed remember, then she is likely aiming for Top Star not to really use it for herself but to stop the madness. If she wins she can break everyone outta the loop, but she keeps losing over and over and she keeps tackling the problem alone. We gonna need everyones for this task Maya!

Maya is someone who always looks to the future, always restless and never fully satisfied where she is in life. As someone who also rarely feels fully satisfied, this feeling is both a blessing and a curse. It gives you a drive for sure but it’s also painful in that nothing you do will ever be good enough. I can tell ya for sure that this feeling 100% comes from having anxiety. Wooo. This kind of drive however, ended up keeping her from making any sort of deal with Giraffe. I think Maya and Nana were the first people contacted and offered the deal, show off starlight and get your stage with whatever you desire. The system aimed to take advantage of the most fucked up of the Stage Girls, but the thing is. Maya has nothing to really gain from a Top Star wish. Any stage the Top Star could grant would not be good enough for her to want to make that wish.

So Kuro was right in episode four, it’s VERY weird that Maya is in these auditions at all. She wouldn’t go back to the past like Nana has, not for any reason. Maya wants to move forward, and she wants everyone else to move forward too. That’s why she pulled Nana aside to talk to her, Maya feels Nana is wasting all her talent and potential. That bothers Maya, a lot. She’s probably even offended by it. Maya greatly respects things like passion, growth, and determination so Nana damping her own growth when she can do so much more just pisses her off and that’s why Maya is so worked up during their conversation. She talks to Nana, and is very blunt about her point, because she isn’t going to stand by and let someone so talented do that to themselves. Hence I think it’s possible Maya first entered the audition duels to stop Nana from doing something foolish. It’s also possible she did it to give others a challenge, someone to defeat, but that still begs the question of what the hell will she do if she gets Top Star? We don’t really have an answer right now cause we are still missing info about Maya, but it’s a question to keep in mind.

Maya’s monologue this episode is about the beauty of choice basically, people choosing a path and doing their damndest to follow it. And even if they can’t get to their original goal and drop away from it, that’s fine because it’s their choice and they are still moving forward with their life. I think Maya really respects people who choose to rise to a challenge and face it head on. That’s one of the reasons why she fell for and respects Claudine, she’s willinging to confront and challenge Maya who is believed to be untouchable and Maya loves that there’s someone who can not only match her like that but keeps pushing to be even better than she was before. She loves a woman who can kick her ass (or tries to). Anyways, Maya’s monologue ties in well with her character. Also the Venus De Milo statues are back again because Maya plays quite a big role in this episode and in general. She’s the one Nana has to beat every time after all.

Y’all might be wondering why I referred to Maya as one of the most fucked up out of the girls, well I did say she likely had a similar childhood to Nana’s so. I can tell you from experience that you don’t get someone like Maya out of a happy childhood. Maya’s parents are famous stage actors so from the moment she was born she had expectations placed on her. Lots of pressure to be as good as they are, a very stressful thing to put on a child. I talked about her possible past in episode five’s write up so I’ll try not to repeat myself too much here. Like Nana she probably didn’t grow up with many, if any, friends and always had the expectations from others hanging over her head all the time. I think it’s possible what made Maya and Nana’s paths split is because there was someone in Maya’s life that positively influenced her and Nana never got that. I dunno who in Maya’s life did that and it could’ve been an event in her life instead, either way this would be the moment she was “reborn” as a true Stage Girl. This is a guess from what I know about Maya and Nana but I think it’s possible.

What Maya and Nana strongly have in common is loneliness. Maya is used to living her life alone at the top, she believes this is the cost of being at the top and that’s that. She’ll accept it and move on, but people are social animals. We need interactions with someone or we go mad from the isolation, so really Maya hasn’t moved on from that. But since Maya always moves forward to the future, she probably hasn’t reflected on that aspect at all so she just tries to keep going. However ignoring your emotional hang ups doesn’t work forever, but Maya isn’t going to ask for any sort of help or talk to someone about it. Maya probably never learned how to do that. Nana doesn’t do it either, she probably doesn’t think it’s important enough to bother anyone by it. Both of these girls got a lot to sort out and the stage can be turned around and used to help instead of harm! That’s what I’m expecting anyways.

Another comparison is their roles they have for the stage and system itself. Maya is a symbol of what the system wants, she’s talented and full of radiance. And while this gives her power, she’s still only a symbol. She can easily be taken down by the system. Nana’s role is an enforcer, she’s the true guard dog of the system. She enforces the status quo and literally prevents change coming into the system. Nana has a ton of power hence she can take down Maya, but Nana is still just a cog in the machine. The system uses her, she isn’t very free from it either.

Maya represents the future, she’s always looking forward and always aiming for progress. But you can’t look away from any ghosts of the past forever. Looking at the past can be painful, while looking at the future is hopeful. It’s going to be hard to watch Maya having to confront herself so to speak but she needs to do that or the past will weight her down and prevent her from moving forward like she wants to.

Quick note: If Maya isn’t aware of the time loops and finds out about them, she’ll be beyond fucking pissed. Like jesus christ heaven help you if a livid Tendou Maya is coming for ya!

-Hikari

Well, Hikari is full of surprises isn’t she? There’s still a lot we don’t know about this girl, but we did learn something huge about her. Hikari being here changes everything, like she fucks the entire loop up! The auditions started two days earlier than they normally do for starters. Hikari being here caused Karen to join the duels which causes more chaos. And at this point, as you can see on the timeline I made, we’ve passed the normal reset date! No wonder Nana is like fuck fuck what the fuck is happening.

We still don’t know why Hikari came here in the first place but my best guess is she was either told or found out that Karen is in danger so she came to save her. It’s likely Giraffe is the one who let her know, he was getting bored after all. He likely chose Hikari because she’d have a motivation to come and stay, the motive would be of course Karen. There’s a theory that Hikari comes from a timeline where Karen died thanks to the auditions so she wished to go to one where she never joined the auditions, and that caused her to crossover and crash Nana’s time loop. Why Hikari is so desperate is because unless she wins Top Star, this is her only shot to save Karen. It’s a pretty plausible theory! Regardless of why, Hikari is here and she’s causing change.

Hikari is the present, she changes both the past by crashing the time loop and therefore changes the future. She’s very much the wild card around here, who knows what else she will change?

Now here we are with these three girls all involved in this time fuckery, Hikari and Maya already conflict with Nana due to her desire to keep everything the same. But what about Hikari and Maya? Would they get along at all? That I find to be quite a mystery. The most interaction we have had is Maya’s reaction to her in episode one, which is this and this if you don’t recall. Knowing what we know now I have a guess actually. It’s a bit out there but, it’s what I got for now. When Maya loses her duel with Nana the curtain falls on her right? We’ve seen at the end of two and six’s audition duels that the curtain doesn’t automatically teleport you outta there, so. Maya could still be behind that curtain, how long she’d be there I dunno but it’s very possible she’s still there just off stage. If that’s the case then Maya could have seen Hikari backstage, maybe even spoke with her. There's enough time for a brief meeting since Giraffe rambles about starlight for a bit before Hikari throws her knife.

So, maybe her expression from Hikari looking at her is surprised and confused because Maya recognizes her. But because of time travel shit, Maya doesn’t know how or why she recognizes her. I imagine that would be very confusing hence why she looks like she’s thinking deeply in the shower, wondering why she recognizes this girl she’s never met before. The comment about Hikari’s heart later I think is just Maya being Maya and answering Kuro wondering if Hikari was rival material. I don’t think she’d tell anyone that she recognizes this stranger for pretty much no reason at all, Maya probably doesn’t want to sound nuts. Like I said, I know this theory is out there but at this point who knows what could happen?

I’m eager to see how this plays out, Karen is actually a wild card too since she’s never joined the auditions until now. But unlike the other three, the lack of awareness of how fucked this situation is prevents her from being too involved at the moment. I hope everyone can make it out of this ok, they deserve happiness!

>Speculation! Here we go! Here we go again! Now here we go again!

-Hikari maybe has fought before has already had something taken from her, that’s why she hasn’t been super successful during her duels. I dunno, throwing it out there cause at this point I’m very ??? a lot about Hikari.

-I think the stage is alive. It’s an eldritch location kind of deal, hence it can bend reality within its domain and shoot Hikari outside in episode three. Giraffe is it’s avatar of sorts, a means of communication. It lives deep under the school, and it’s probably been there a long time. Sleeping or maybe waiting? I think the stage is activated by something, the something I’m thinking of is the Starlight play. It plays songs from the play and has the same exact grey tower with the star inside so it must be closely related to it. When the play is assigned to a class is the time where it awakens. Judging by the state of the stage when Nana first goes there, it’s been a very long time since a class got this play. 

After it awakens, it decides on what girls will be chosen as Stage Girls. It chooses the girls with the most possible release of a lot of starlight, which it feeds off of, and then its studies the chosen girls. It can probably do shit like reading minds and such, hence it creates props for the stage girls. All ready to go. Then the time comes, the play is performed and in May the girls are summoned. And the revue commences! It feeds, it’s pleased. Guess we will find out what happens when it’s not please. O_o

-OK SO, there might be another goddess involved here. This one has less evidence so take it with a grain of salt. I’m thinking Hikari has a goddess association too, Ariadne. How I got to this is from reading about the circle of stars again. So Hikari’s hair decoration on her stage outfit is a circle of stars, Ariadne is strongly associated with these stars. The star crown either was put in the sky when she died or she wears it to make her immortal hence a goddess. Ariadne is known for leading Theseus out of the labyrinth/maze, in a way Hikari is doing something similar. Trying to lead Karen away from danger. Ariadne is the goddess of labyrinths, mazes, paths, fertility, snakes, and passion. Yup, another goddess associated with passion! Speaking of passion, there was an ancient cult that worshiped both Aphrodite and Ariadne, they had a sacred grove. Not a ton of info has been found about this cult but I do think it's interesting that we got the goddess Maya is associated with here. And if two major players have goddesses associated with them, then Nana must have one too.

Hers is harder to pin down right now, but underworld goddesses seem to suit her. Like Persephone, besides being an underworld goddess she is also the goddess of flowers, vegetation and springtime. She’s also associated with a fruit, the pomegranate. Another is Ereshkigal, queen of the underworld and sister to Inanna. She kept Inanna and her husband trapped in her realm until they were bailed out by Inanna’s sister in law. Now these connections are very loose and I might be reaching here so take both Hikari’s and Nana’s with a grain of salt. I’m gonna keep it in mind for the time being.

>Things I picked up on a series rewatch.

-Nana suddenly having an interest in Hikari in episode two became much creepier. Hikari glaring at her in the elevator also makes more sense. Nana cornering her to give her pudding was quite a power move lol. But I also think Nana was trying to befriend Hikari, remember Nana wants positive attention more than anything hence she tries the peaceful way first. I wonder if they talked to each other while dancing? I also still wonder if they dueled like I thought they did in my episode two write up.

-Several of Nana’s lines saying shit like “I’ve never done this before!” look so different now man.

-You can see Nana’s surprised reaction in episode one!

-Nana might be able to teleport? She pops up by Hikari twice so fast in episode two. I don’t know though??

-I get why Giraffe sat with Junna, Nana probably wants her crush to be as comfortable as she can be so she’s like “hey Giraffe pls sit with her”. Or that’s my guess anyways.

-Nana’s and Maya’s brief convo in episode three is quite different now. It can be taken two ways. If Maya doesn’t remember the loops then she’s probably happy Nana is finally doing something with her talent. If she does remember the loops at all she’s probably thinking “Oh this is new. Maybe she won’t pull that time travel shit this time.” *later* “I was wrong.”

-Her talking about the past Starlight play is so much more off putting now. Like dude, isn’t 60 FUCKING TIMES ENOUGH FOR YOU?! JESUS.

There’s a lot more than this most likely, but I forgot to write them down and I don’t have time to go through the episodes any more so this is what I got!

>THIS SHIT IS BANANAS, B-A-N-N-A-N-A-S!

Holy banana nuts, this show is soooo fucking good! Like holy shit it’s better than I even imagined! I’m very much looking forward to episode 8! I fucking, I’m so happy I chose to watch this series. This is fucking amazing holy shit! Spread this show like wildfire! Please! I’m ascending. Yes, oh my god! Bless! Bless this show! \^w^/

See you on the stage for episode 8!

[auburnfamilynews]

Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports

Uh.

Don’t know if you heard, but college football got canceled last night because of the pandemic. That’s right. We didn’t get to play Georgia in Athens, and we definitely didn’t get our doors blown off and we definitely aren’t waking up this morning thinking about everything from the good old days to coaching changes and all things in between.

I wish.

SNAP JUDGMENTS

Thanks Gus. I’m done

-James Jones

We’ve been prolonging the inevitable for some time now but here’s the truth. Gus Malzahn has a clear ceiling & a clear floor. He’ll keep this team bowl eligible & he’ll give teams hell at home but he won’t win another championship as Auburn’s head coach. As much as it pains me because I genuinely like the man, we are being left behind by the top tier SEC programs. Tonight was an embarrassment to everything Pat Dye did for this Auburn football program. We will likely have to wait a year due to COVID but the truth is that Gus is done. Here’s to hoping we can knock off LSU in Jordan-Hare.

War Damn, ya’ll.

-AU Nerd

Well..... I picked Georgia to win this game because I couldn’t trust Gus to win a game in Athens. Man I hate being right sometimes. But the omens were there yesterday.....

#1 - This day started bad when news came out that Cam had tested positive for COVID.

#2 - Then on the basketball side, JD Davison, as I figured, committed to Bama.

#3 - It was announced that SEC Freshmen of the Week Jaylin Simpson was out due to injury, a huge loss.

#4 - We didn’t have Shaun Shivers or Eli Stove on offense, also due to injury.

So we were behind the 8 ball before this thing started. And then it just snowballed from there.

I will say in a positive that Tank Bigsby lived up to his name and I’m excited to see him continue to get better.

Basketball starts in 7 1/2 weeks though.

War Eagle!

-Will McLaughlin

I said before that this was a game you absolutely could not lose. You were going against a walk on quarterback who was 5th string earlier this offseason. Georgia looked like garbage against a team that hadn’t won an SEC game in three years. Auburn’s 3-10 against Georgia in the last decade.

Well, we lost that one. There’s no X’s and O’s needed. You just got punked. Sure, it’s one loss in a weird year against an Uber-talented team, but it’s indicative of where this program is. Can we beat anyone? Sure. Are we a top half SEC team? You bet. But I’ve given up hope that this regime will ever get us to the top. War damn.

-Ryan Sterritt

The better program won this game tonight. It has been over a decade since this series has been competitive, so tonights result should come with no surprise. Simply put, our standard that Pat Dye built has been diminished into a distant memory. We’re extremely comfortable being 3rd in a division on a regular basis with 3 wins over our in-state rival in 8 years, all at home, while we simply do not compete for Sixty Minutes on the road against the teams that we want to beat.

For as bad as this defense looked tonight, we should be appreciating what the championship-level defense of 2016-2019 was, all led by a generational talent up front who is now starting as a rookie in Carolina. This defense was always going to struggle by comparison. But it’s the offensive side of the ball that has been an inconsistent disappointment for large chunks of every season since 2015. And truthfully, our offensive line, which was patched up in 2017 with transfers, has not been right since around 2016, or around the time the prior staff’s recruits funneled out (Braden Smith excluded, but it’s clear he’s an outlier with regards to recruited talent along the OL from this current program). This version of our offensive line is probably more gifted than last year’s in some aspects, but they have yet to have 4 consecutive weeks of practice thanks to COVID. Even then, at an upward trajectory we should expect this offense, led by a legacy quarterback, to be misused through various points of this season and into next. It’s our standard, after all.

So, it begs the question. Not for today. Not for this year. Maybe not for next year. But at some point, who are we going to choose to be when it comes time to take a good long look in the mirror? We’d all love to go there now, but fiscally you are kidding yourself if you entertain it. So, I’ll just say when that day comes what I want to be able to say when we look in the mirror is that we want to be a program that consistently contends for championships. We want to be a program that will outwork our rivals. We want to be a program that expects to beat Georgia, LSU, and Alabama or have a fair shot no matter if the game is in Jordan-Hare Stadium or the very gates of hell themselves. I hope that’s what we’ll want. But my fear is that we’ll beat Alabama in Auburn next year and just enjoy the memories of when we were a legitimate program that built upon itself. That’s what Pat Dye did. And that’s what’s been wrong with Auburn ever since we stupidly decided to let him go. We once could look in the mirror and say that we were the toughest team anyone on our schedule had to play. Now? We’re telling the truth when we say that our opponent is supremely more talented than we are. And that’s a damn shame.

And until we are at that crossroad of having to answer that question, this numbing feeling of normalcy over performances like tonight are more painful than the loss itself. This should not be normal. This should not be numbing. This should be a wake up call. But if history has shown us anything, it’ll just be another lost night in Athens, GA until that day of self-confrontation arrives.

-Josh Black

Lopsided, brutal 60 minutes. How does this team bounce back next week? That will tell us a lot about this team, their coaches, and their leaders.

-Josh Dub

-AU Chief

Everything that’s been said or needed to be said about the game has been said above. Listless effort. Less talent. No heart. No prep. No adjustments. No will to win, save for one player, a freshman. It doesn’t need to be rehashed because you all watched what happened last night and that was as embarrassing an effort as we’ve seen likely since Baton Rouge in 2015.

Josh Black talked above about Georgia being the better program, and it’s true. We should be mad at Gus for not being able to manage the roster so that we don’t have total turnaround on both lines to go against the recruiting behemoths on our permanent schedule. Despite his faults as a head coach, Gene Chizik’s staff was built to recruit, but he had to bring that standard up after Tuberville’s failures. Not to shove blame off of Gus, but there’s a reason that Georgia and Alabama were able to find their footing and become top tier programs so quickly Auburn had the upper hand. Auburn was it. Tuberville was able to turn those 2 and 3-stars into SEC stars. He didn’t need to get the blue chips. BUT WHAT IF HAD TRIED? Imagine if Auburn was winning six straight in the Iron Bowl and going against Mark Richt at the same time as they were signing 5-star players. Alabama never gets its footing after one year with Saban, because he’s got real competition in the state. Auburn would have been established. It began there.

Now, it’s been too easy to recruit against Gus. He makes it easy on himself. When you see what Alabama does with a Jaylen Waddle, you’d like to go there and become him instead of Anthony Schwartz. Yeah, they tried last night with Schwartz, but it didn’t hit. You hit a couple of those plays and everything loosens up. We’re supposed to be good enough to convert those plays. Meanwhile, there’s little solace taken in the fact that Gus was right when he said that Georgia had the best talent in the SEC, and Kirby was wrong when he said we did (even facetiously).

10 years since our last win in Tuscaloosa, 15 since our last win in Athens, 21 since our last win in Baton Rouge. Those are staggering numbers. What do you do? Fire Gus? It’s already been said, and it started as early as the second quarter last night. Who do you get? Therein lies the rub. You can’t grab some hot young assistant. You have to compete now. Would we give a Dabo type of hire the time he needs? Clemson didn’t really get competitive until his fourth season. Take three years of beatdowns and then we start to play? Nobody’s patient enough for that.

We may be stuck here with that kind of a game every so often, quite honestly. There’s likely not a better alternative at this point, but there are things that need to change. We can’t get trounced on the recruiting trail anymore, but there’s no reason we shouldn’t be getting wrecked by our chief rivals. We can’t mismanage a roster like this, and we can’t go into a road venue and show literally nothing. Damn.

-Jack Condon

from College and Magnolia - All Posts https://www.collegeandmagnolia.com/2020/10/4/21501195/snap-judgments-4-georgia-27-7-auburn-6

[arishamod]

Arisha’s 3rd Fan Meeting Experience

ARISHAMOD FINALLY SEES KOMIYA ARISA IN PERSON

As many of you have seen from my updates, I finally had the chance to see Arisha live at her Fan Meeting, which happened on 16 July 2017. Here is a small report of what I could remember and my spaghetti on everything that happened!

More under the cut~

(Warning a lot of spaghetti/random fanboying happened while I was typing out this post...)

Day 1 & 2

Let’s start with the trip~ I flew from Singapore to Japan on a 7 hours Singapore Airlines Flight. Rather enjoyable flight since it was SIA and I was with my Dia neso : >.

On day 2 I did a little shopping in Akiba on the second day, buying UOs and Mari nesos for the SG squad :3 Kinda regretted after someone showed me how easy it was to get them from crane games... But meh I’m not paying for most of the nesos anyway :3

Arisha 3rd Fan Meet

I woke up and saw a tweet about fans queuing at at 7am and i knew i wont be able to secure Arisha Merchandise ):. So i went out with the rest who were in Tokyo on that day at Akiba. We went around looking at merchandise at Kbooks.

After having lunch, Fotc, Nozoheh and Astrobunny (from the /r/ll discord) went to the Sega cafe while i went back to my hotel first since i have forgotten my money that i left aside for the merchandise in my hotel (and since the venue was really nearby too). I went down to the venue early at 4pm for the sales of the goods and it was crowded AF. 

Flower stands:

Here are the merchandise i managed to grab:

I didn’t manage to grab the Happi and mini photo book TT (WHICH IMO WAS THE MOST IMPORTANT ONES WTF WHY DIDN’T I QUEUE EARLIER GREATEST REGRET WHAT ARE YOU DOING ARISHAMOD?!)

I waited a while for Fotc (who was my plus 1) and we went in together and i was really, REALLY EXCITED. THE KIND OF EXCITEMENT WHICH MAKES YOU WANT TO THROW (or maybe it was just me being super nervous meeting my #1 favourite). Once the lights deemed and Arisha started announcing her fan meeting was about to begin, everyone went crazy!

When she came on stage, my heart skipped so many beats x.x SHE WAS IN A PINK DRESS AND HAD BRAIDS THAT ENDED IN TWINTAILS OMGOSH! She immediately started singing “Natsu Matsuri” ( 夏祭り ) and we started going along with the chants and waving our Kingblades. Some of them even broke UOs the moment she came out (which i regret not bringing TT) Her voice was so good omgosh and the song was sang really well.

She then ended the song and introduced the MC for the day, Maeda-san. He was pretty good, since he was able to lead the conversation and did everything a MC did. They chatted a little, welcomed everyone and moved on to the second song.

(This is how Maeda-san looked like btw)

Holy sheets the second song! I saw it from the song lists that were leaked from tweets from the first session and already knew what it was. I changed my Kingblade to yellow and followed the calls to “Busters Ready Go!”. It really brought back memories and Arisha's take on the song was so good! Not biased at all! She sang it with some rock in her voice and the chances of that is so rare outside of her fan meets. It was really enjoyable!

Next was sailor moon's " Moonlight Densetsu ". This song really brought about the 90′s vibes LOL. Now that I am thinking about it, the two songs were significant since she mentioned that she started dancing and performing by pursuing two of her favorite shows, the sentai series and sailor moon series. I didn’t know the calls to this song very well (since i never saw it when i was young as my mom never let me near it and the song came out before I was born ) but i knew some of it while researching on Arisha. After that they had a skit segment for Arisha (sad face coz no Q&A). She was to pick out from 4 boxes and perform a small skit based on it. (Imagine the skit segments in Aqours’ Niconama). First box was the theme, second box was the location, the third box was the person, and the last box was what she was doing. There were funny scenes like -Preparing for dance with a male partner while eating leftover food. (She perform the skit where she was dancing and eating at the same time and it was hilarious) -Eating an entire cake at a hospital and getting caught by her Senpai (i forgot the name of the senpai... sorry!)  I either couldn’t remember the rest or i was not able to catch what they were saying. (Sorry im still not great at listening to japanese especially when they were sometimes talking at super speeds for the segment) The segment was fun because she was showing off her acting skills omgosh i almost fainted x.x After that she performed “Seikan Hikou”( 星間飛行 ). I recognised it from Macross but didn’t really know the calls, but it was a pretty fun song to wota to ^^. Once again her voice is really good omgosh the highs (even though her lows are much nicer :x)

She then performed "Platinum”.( プラチナ ). Cardcaptor Sakura! This feels so much like my age group :x (thinking of it we are pretty close in age maybe we can get married)

After the songs there was a present chuusen. Basically it is like a lucky draw where they gave out signed version of her merchandise. She would pull out a number and if it matched your ticket number you can redeem it after the show. 

The highlight of this portion was Arisha encouraging people to shout "YAY" if they got it. (Imagine the same yay she did at Kanshasai Gu~rinpa segment). Someone went "YATTA" and the MC, Maeda-san told him it was YAY and everyone laughed when he was asked to YAY instead LOL. After that she perform her "last" song, “Touch” (タッチ)  and ended the performance. But those in the second session knew about the song list anyway so we chanted for an encore. 

She came back for an encore!!!! YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYY. She was in this skirt and her Arisha Happi over her shirt (im sure this picture came from the 1st session though cause her hair...)

The last two songs she performed was still the most lit. “ Cruel Angel's Thesis”   (残酷な天使のテーゼ ) from Evangelion was so hyped and her voice was so amazing! She did her own version though :x

The last song she did was “Lion” (ライオン)   and omgosh even though her voice waver at some parts, her take on the song and her energy while singing it was soooooo good. The best way to end it off! After that we had post encore MC and she ended it off with group photo taking. She took pictures with 3 different part of the crowd. Each separated by pillars at the venue. She really is the dorky Arisha that I love cause she keeps YAYYYYY-ing with all of us 

Some random thoughts from the fan meet:

-i was kinda salty cause the venue was an open area except for this three pillars in the middle that blocked the view of those at the back. I was one of the few that had moments where i could not see Arisha TT -The site did mention that there was a female sitting area and males were in the standing area.  There were seats on the second floor that were exclusively female only. When Arisha point or waved at the center portion of the crowd you could actually hear them fangirling from the second level. Arisha talked about the girl only area and then they started to fangirl again. The funny thing is that the guys on the first floor felt left out were imitating them and screaming in high pitch voices together with the girls. The MC picked up on it everyone laughed about it.

-Someone collapsed or something happened to them (it was on the other side of the venue so i couldn’t see what happened) during the skit segment and they handled it so professionally, letting the staff take over, taking the opportunity to remind everyone to stay hydrated cause of the weather, and continued on. -When we were taking photos at the end, Arisha took a photo with each section of the crowd from the stage. At the start everyone was cheering for Maeda-san to join them. He reluctantly accepted and Arisha proposed that they take a picture without him, and one together with him. At one point of time after taking a group picture with the center audience, everyone was shouting for Maeda-san to come in and were patronising him. Arisha stood up and reminded everyone that this was her event not Maeda's and everyone laughed. She got jealous in my opinion omgosh so cute

And yeah that is the end of whatever the hell i could remember from the event! (well... I blanked out a lot cause I couldn’t believe Arisha was in front and her beauty and her voice and ane’fglkasdpgd)

[dominicrowespom]

MD6311 Major Project Evaluation

Background, Concept and Ideas

At the beginning of third year Ben and I came into this project with the intention of making a 13 track semi conceptual album based around seasons, having three songs for each season starting in Autumn ending in Summer. The hope was that it would propel ‘Two to a Room’ from an unknown name into exciting duo, the songs naturally being influenced by the music we listen to. 9 months later we’ve created a 12 track conceptual alternative hip hop album based around the same thing we originally intended, released 3 singles with 3 music videos, have a combined total of of just over 4000 steams on Spotify as well as an active following on Instagram.

Hip hop is traditionally known as a raw and honest genre of music, many artists have detailed the entirety of their life experiences onto their music in a very purposeful way. We have taken hip hop and altered it so that it applies and relates to the experience of uni students. It gives a voice to the people who are struggling during this period of life where everything seems a bit uncertain.

Some of our influences include:

Cosmo

King Krule

Loyle Carner

Rejjie Snow

JJ

Easy Life

Bakar

Many a time we’d find ourselves listening to one of their songs and being inspired by the way they’d mixed a bass line or how they added interesting/unique sounds and sections. We’re probably on the whole most similar to Bakar, however we bring our own style.

Audiences and Markets

Before deciding an audience and an artist identity we simply began playing and making music. We had a general basis as a band, having played a couple of shows under the same name in first year. Two to a Room somewhat subsided second year giving us a completely fresh start in third year, new music, new social media pages and a new image. We created personable tracks some light and some dark sounding, both instrumentally and lyrically quite downtrodden. While creating the album this helped us realise our sound, we were making the music of and relating to University students, depressed, drinking, smoking and in search for some sort of love and placeholder in this world. We continuously found ourselves adding Trippy elements to our music creating a stoner induced drug fuelled aesthetic.

The album is aimed at 16 to 24 year olds, teens and young adult transitioning into adulthood and the working world, getting by smoking spliffs and drinking a lot. For this reason we decided it would be best to push everything onto every streaming platforms though ‘distrokid’, an independent digital music distribution service. Through stats on (https://www.ifpi.org/news/IFPI-releases-2018-music-consumer-insight-report) I found that 86% of us listen to music through on-demand streaming. Young music consumers are most engaged streamers, with 57% of 16-24 year olds using a paid audio streaming service. This makes it the perfect place for our audience to find our music. We intend to release 10-50 exclusive copies of our album on CD due to peoples love of exclusivity and giveaways.

Our work is best understood sat back in a comfortable environment, where you can digest every word and feeling we were attempting to portray. There are hints of what our style, vibe and thought process is throughout our Instagram and music videos. The album can be related to if you’ve ever; gone on a night out, worked a dead end job or if you’ve ever just felt a bit stuck in life, so everyone. The reason it’s aimed at uni students is because they’re most likely to feel the entirety of emotions and lifestyle that we’ve displayed on our record.

There’s definitely already songs for sad people and a community for alternative hip hop but because our music experiments with so many different sounds and genres it’s hard to pigeonhole us into one that is preexisting. However the Cheltenham’s hip hop scene is the community closest to us, diverse in the artists and sonics that it holds. We’be home from hoping to get a foot in with the Cheltenham crowd, to wanting to unite it further and push it forward, there’s a lot of talent here.

Our only competition is ourselves, and that’s not the answer this evaluation requires but its the truth. If we solely see ourselves as the ones to beat and the ones to better taking influences from all sorts of places, we have no need to be in competition with anyone. I’d rather do the opposite and bring everyone so no one has competitors, just allies.

Promotional Strategies

Our journey for the public began at the start of October, our first Instagram upload being posted on the 3rd. We released a demo shortly after, mixed and mastered by ourselves to show our audience what we were about stylistically and aesthetically. For a demo it did far better than expected, accumulating close to 100 views in it’s first week, in time surpassing that. This gave us confidence to continue doing what we’d already set out to do. We kept our Instagram relatively busy, using photos taken by 1st year student Curtis, We then released our first single to all major streaming platforms mixed and mastered by Beau Peep. At the time none of this process had fully gone as we had planned, the song was released later than intended, videographers dropped out/couldn’t film for us and the B-side wasn’t mastered the desired way. In hindsight this moment was a good learning curve for future releases, we discovered the importance of planning properly and having everything set way in advance. It was also successful in how it was received, getting over 1000 listens in it’s first month.

In the time before our first and second single we wanted to keep our audiences attention so we decided to come up with a potential series idea named ‘In the Living Room’ airing our first episode on the 9th of January 2019. The idea was to do an acoustic set up, similar to The Tiny Desk concert, but in our living room. It was so that we could have a place to display the raw version of our music and potentially other artists as it’s something we’d found that a lot of music listeners enjoy hearing their favourite songs in a different setting sounding a little different.

We next turned our attentions towards Astronaut, we had the song finished and ready to release mid-January so we decided to begin a promotional campaign, doing a photoshoot a with friend of ours, third year student David Richards. We showed Ben Sanders the song, he enjoyed it and asked if he could do the visuals for it. We gladly accepted as it seemed like he was very keen, it took a few months to shoot it leaving a small amount of time to edit the video. In the meantime we uploaded several rows of promotional pictures to our Instagram building the excitement for the video. The video was eventually released in a hurry, and was still a little below the standard we were aiming for. As it was uploaded a little later than first anticipated it gave us less time to promote the album as a whole. But because we’d been promoting astronaut for so long we leaned into theme with a few more photos from another friend and third year student ‘Ryan Free’ who helped us reflect the feeling of the album being spaced out in a very concrete environment creating that juxtaposition in his photo by having us wear astronaut costumes in a fancy, old fashioned looking restaurant

We recorded the video for our third and final single a month before releasing the album so we could use it as part of the promotion cycle once the album was released. We organised for ‘drreproductions’ to shoot it for us and they agreed to get it shot in what turned out to be a very busy April. We played 2 gigs in the run up to the album launch while finishing the mastering of the album and organising both music videos. We hosted an album Launch at Smokey Joes on the 8th of May bringing in acts, photographers and videographers from uni to create a communal experience where we’re all helping each other. The laugh went very successfully, we were able to gain a profit from the night as well as a couple of new fans. At the time of writing our Instagram sits at 230 followers, the album has been streamed 3250 times

Evaluation

The album itself was successful. We released a 12 track solid body of work that will most definitely propel us into better things. There are a couple of standout tracks, Cruisn, Black Mould and Streets and Towns truly showcasing our maturity in terms of songwriting and storytelling. There were several songs that were dropped from the album and there were some last minute additions. ‘Hitting the Mark’ was one of the late attendees because we found the voice note on my phone from a few months prior while looking for vocal snippets to add to the album. Every new addition had to fit the tone of the project so it was difficult at times getting the order of tracks right, but eventually we settled on one that we both thought told our story best.

The album launch was a slightly stressful but very fun event. It took us several months to sort out, booking the venue in February but doing most of the leg work in April. We charged £2 at the door, over 60 people bought a ticket which helped us gain a profit from the night. The atmosphere was good the whole night, Toby Catt opening the evening, Beau Peep got the crowds arms moving, Real Triggz and KingOBithy brought the hype, local acts JPDL and Yogi Beats got everyone dancing and we were blessed to end the night.

In this major project we delivered what we set out to do and have surpassed it. We have the intention to continue as a duo past uni and bring this work with us. We have 2 festivals to play in the summer, the rest only the future knows.