#a few of those are really well crafted and its also a technical exercises with some specific limitations

[cipheramnesia]

My favorite thing about you is your sense of humor. How does it feel to be the funniest person on this webbed site?

Eh, I've seen funnier people.

[weasley-gal]

Cindy’s Top Ten Movies of 2019!

Ahhh...2019. In the interest of building suspense, I could be all cagey about this countdown, but let's face it: For me, 2019 was the Year of Rocketman. As lousy as the real-world year was, it was salvaged by Rocketman. Someone suggested in jest (maybe?) that Rocketman should be numbers one through ten on my year-end list, and that would be fair enough; HOWEVER...I did like some other movies this year, so I'm gonna give you--yes YOU, dear reader(s)--ten of my favorites. Just know in your hearts that the other nine fall way behind number one. Way, WAY behind.

The usual disclaimers:

A movie's position on my year-end list does not necessarily reflect its original Weasley score. Some films age well, bear up, and even improve under repeat viewings. Some...well...some do not. Also, I live in a rinky-dink town, so great movies like JoJo Rabbit and 1917--pictures that almost certainly would have found spots here or gotten very close--have not made themselves available to me yet. This is disappointing, but unsurprising. I'd hung my entire holiday break on the prospect of seeing 1917, only to discover on Christmas Day that its Christmas opening was limited release, and I have to wait until January 10th. Humbug. Finally, I think three or four of these movies already made Variety's "worst of" list for 2019, so kindly do not be too shocked when I diverge from The Serious Critics (TM).  

Without further ado, presenting my top ten films of 2019:

TEN

"The most important qualification for any leader is not wanting to be leader."

THE TWO POPES

2019 threw me a nice surprise on its way out the celestial door, with the Netflix original The Two Popes. It's a deliberate, thoughtful, and timely film carried by a pair of the year's most exquisite performances: Jonathan Pryce as Pope Francis and Anthony Hopkins as Pope Benedict XVI. While the subject matter is weighty, this movie is an absolute delight.

NINE

"I'm glad I'm a revelation and not a disappointment."

DOWNTON ABBEY

This big-screen adaptation of the popular television series Downton Abbey, is, in fact, something of a revelation. A totally new story in the familiar and much-loved setting, with just the right amount of fan service, it is a joyful exercise that hits nearly every note perfectly. Making its case for the big screen are breathtaking costumes and production design...and Mr. Barrow finally seeing a bit of happiness doesn't hurt, either.

EIGHT

"We're gonna bury Ferrari at Le Mans."

FORD V FERRARI

At a glance, Ford v Ferrari might seem like a film appealing exclusively to car enthusiasts; however, that assumption does a great disservice to both the film and the viewer. Ford v Ferrari is an inspiring story about people. It's a nail-biter from start to finish, it has heart to spare, and it's fronted by great turns from Matt Damon and Christian Bale. Beautifully filmed race action makes this one to see on the biggest screen you can find.

SEVEN

"It always fits...eventually."

SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE

Technically, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a last-year movie, but for me it's a this-year movie, and--despite its being the very first film I saw way back in January, 2019--it's far too great to leave off my best-of list. A Marvel property in the hands of Sony, Spider-Verse is smart, funny, touching, and better than the entire Avengers catalog combined.  

SIX

"This is a twisted web, and we are not finished untangling it, not yet."

KNIVES OUT

Knives Out is a great piece of original cinema crafted from artful twists, clever humor, and terrific performances, layered with a gorgeous Gothic setting and an ominous score. Written and directed by Rian Johnson, this perfect murder mystery is a huge creative and financial win for the cinema, and I recommend it without hesitation or qualification.

FIVE

"This is the worst...and best...and most terrible...excellent thing that's ever happened to me!"

THE KID WHO WOULD BE KING

Hands up if you missed the Kid Who Would Be King at your local cinema? Yeah, I see you, ALL of you. The good news is that one of the year's most wonderful pictures is now available for streaming and download, and you shouldn't make the same mistake twice. The Kid Who Would Be King is a charming movie, great fun for people of all ages. Truly one of the year's best.

FOUR

"Si vis pacem, para bellum."

JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 3 — PARABELLUM

The John Wick franchise has become quite the phenomenon, and deservedly so. Continually upping the action ante in Fast-and-Furious-like fashion, these movies are so much more than just your garden-variety shoot 'em ups and beat 'em ups. John Wick is the role Keanu Reeves was born to play, and Parabellum raises the stakes for Wick while doubling down on masterful fight choreography and stunning cinematography. Here's to many more adventures for John Wick!

THREE

"Bruce is the direct line to all that's true in this world!"

BLINDED BY THE LIGHT

Blinded by the Light is another terrific picture that didn't exactly set the box office on fire. Inspired by the true story of one Springsteen superfan, and built on the Boss's epic catalog, it's a hopeful tale about overcoming prejudice and the limitations set for us by ourselves and by others, one of the year's most inspiring movies.

TWO

"Tell the truth to everyone, whenever you can."

YESTERDAY

Yesterday is yet another of 2019's under-appreciated gems, a beautiful, unique movie fashioned around the timeless music of the Beatles. Himesh Patel is a delight in the lead, and--while the premise requires suspension of disbelief--Yesterday is a charming picture that captivates with its "what ifs?" as well as its iconic soundtrack and enchanting cast.

ONE

"You were never ordinary."

ROCKETMAN

My number one movie of the year, and of the decade, was set on May 31st, when I saw Rocketman for the first time. I saw the movie at least twice a week as long as it was at my local cinema. I've watched at least part of it every day since it became available for home viewing. Outside of a week or so around each of the wonderful concerts I saw this summer, I've listened to nothing but the Rocketman soundtrack since the end of May. My phone and all my desktops have Rocketman wallpapers. I've joked (hmm?) that I only speak Rocketman now. The truth is, I'm not interested in speaking anything else. Pre-Rocketman, it had been a decade since a new movie made its way into my all-time top ten. Then there was Rocketman. Pre-Rocketman, my favorite acting performance hadn't changed since 1993. Then there was Taron Egerton's astonishing turn as Elton John. Pre-Rocketman, I was finding reasons to stay away from the movies. Then there was Dexter Fletcher showing us the beauty of real imagination. Rocketman is more than just a well-crafted film that reflects on an iconic artist's inspiring life. It is a film that uses Elton John's art to tell his story in fantastic, creative fashion. It is a film that uses exquisite detail in its styling and costumes to further its vision. It is a film that draws something sparkling and new out of a classic discography. It is a film that is not bound by dull, linear timelines or small minds. It is a film that surrounds a performance for the ages with others that bear it up. It is a film that shows, however dark the times, you will find the light. In doing all these things, it is a film that is saving lives. Rocketman is a film that is, in every way, magnificent. Thank you, Dexter Fletcher and company, for giving us this beautiful movie. Whatever the critics say and whoever wins the prizes as Awards Season bears down upon us, nobody has done anything more valuable this cinema year.

A few Honorable (and Dis-Honorable) Mentions:

While Taron Egerton deserves all the awards, all the time, for his work in Rocketman, there were some other performances this year that also gave me life:

Jamie Bell (Rocketman): Without Bell's Bernie Taupin as his stalwart cornerstone, Egerton's Elton could not have flown. It's a lovely, understated performance that has been grossly underappreciated.

Tom Holland (Marvel Cinematic Universe): Holland is a real gem, a standout who consistently steals the show from bigger names who get weightier work in the MCU. No matter how good, bad, or painfully bloated the movie, Holland is an absolute delight.

Renee Zellweger (Judy): Who knew it was even possible for me to stop hating Renee Zellweger? Well played, 2019.

Rebecca Ferguson (The Kid Who Would Be King/Doctor Sleep): There was little I enjoyed more this year than watching Ferguson chew her way through this pair of pictures. Oh, and if I start walking around wearing a hat, don't ask, m-kay?

Chris Evans (Knives Out): God, I love seeing Chris Evans do *anything* besides Captain America. Bonus points if he gets to be funny. He's really funny, despite his obscenely gorgeous mug.

John Boyega/Oscar Isaac (Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker): These two, individually and together, draw joy out of what's otherwise a fairly mundane exercise. If Finn and Poe somehow jumped to another saga in the Star Wars universe, I wouldn't complain.

The Cast of Jumanji: The Next Level: Top to bottom, a perfectly cast film, and a lesson in how the right actors can elevate any property.

As a matter of interest, if you watch the Irishman and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood back to back, you can effectively calculate how many hours you'll wish you had back when you're on your deathbed.

I would like a word with Gary Oldman's and Sebastian Stan's agents, please.

Cats: Make. It. Stop. Please, just...make it stop.

As this most challenging year winds to a close, I wanted to offer a sincere thank you to everyone who takes the time to read my reviews, and especially those who engage on any of our various platforms. Special thanks to Daniel for allowing me to be a part of his great page, and for tolerating my unceasing randomness. (Hotel Transylvania 4 in 2021, my friend!) I take no one's support for granted, and I’m ever grateful for you all. I wish our readers many blessings as this festive season comes to a close and we roll into 2020. See you at the movies!

[marginalgloss]

the red telephone

The thing about Control is that I don’t think I’ve ever played a game where I’ve felt such a vast difference between a game’s artistic and technical quality and its total lack of thematic and narrative depth. 

There is a good case for saying that this oughtn’t to be a problem. It’s long been the case that if a video game is entertaining enough, any further ‘depth’ (by the standards established by other media) is unnecessary. This is why we don’t much care if the story isn’t good in Doom. The sense of being there and doing the thing is enough. But Doom isn’t drawing on influences bigger than itself. Clearly it’s been influenced by a variety of things — from Dungeons and Dragons to heavy metal album covers and Evil Dead and everything in between — but Doom is not referential, and it’s not reverential. Doom is complete unto itself. Control is not complete.

Horror films and ghost stories and weird fiction are best when they are about things. Think about The Turn of the Screw and The Thing and Twin Peaks and Candyman, to pick a few examples off the top of my head. They work not just because what we see and hear and read is mysterious. They are compelling because they have intriguing characters and thematic resonance. The Babadook is not just a story about a monster from a book for children. Night of the Living Dead isn’t just about, you know, the living dead. By comparison I find it hard to say that Control is about anything, but it presents itself as adjacent to this kind of work. It is a magnificent exercise in style which trades in empty symbols. It wraps itself in tropes from weird fiction in the hope of absorbing meaning by osmosis.

It feels like a wasted opportunity, because the setup is not without interest. You play as Jesse Faden, a woman supposedly beginning her first day on the job at the Federal Bureau of Control, a mysterious government organisation that deals in high-level paranormal affairs. The FBC is a feast of architectural and environmental detail: a vast Brutalist office complex with an interior that seems to be stranded in time somewhere around the mid-1980s. Everything is concrete and glass and reel-to-reel machines and terminal workstations. It’s frequently stunning.

Unfortunately most of the staff are missing because Jesse’s visit to their headquarters coincides with a massive invasion by the Hiss, a paranormal force which has taken over the building. The Hiss is a sort of ambient infection that turns people into mindless spirit-drones, chanting in an endless Babel. (Conveniently, most of those drones are present as angry men with guns. There are also zombies, and flying zombies, for variety.)

There is, obviously, more to Jesse than meets the eye. She spends a lot of time talking to someone nobody else can see. But there isn’t that much more to her. Like every other character in the game she is a monotone. There is no reason to believe she has any existence outside the plot devised for her here. Similarly, the other characters you meet exist only as the lines they speak to you. It works only when the effect is entirely, deliberately flat: the most compelling person in the game is Ahti, the janitor with a sing-song voice and a near-indecipherable Finnish accent. He is nothing but what he is — he has no past, no future. He has all the answers, if only you knew what questions to ask.

Control is undeniably stylish. The interiors are striking, vast, spacious. Even on the smallest scale the game has a great eye for little comic interactions via systemised physics. You can shoot individual holes in a boardroom table and watch the thing splinter apart into individual fragments. You can shoot a rolodex and watch all the little cards whirl around in a spiral. If a projector is showing a film you can pick the whole thing up and the film will reveal itself as an actual dynamic projection by spiralling and spinning madly across the nearest walls. (Speaking of film, the video sequences with live actors are great fun, and this being a Remedy game, there’s a fantastic show-within-a-show to be found on hidden monitors around the FBC.) And all of this before I mention the sound design — the music, which is full of concrète mechanical shrieks and groans — and the endless sinister chanting which fills the lofty corridors and hallways of this place, The Oldest House. 

All of this is very, very good. And most of the time it’s quite fun to play. I mean, you can pick up a photocopier and fling it at enemies. It’s never not fun when almost anything can be used as a projectile. And then you get the ability to fly! At its best the combat in Control feels messy and chaotic — in a good way — but in a way that has little to do with typical video game gunplay. Staying behind cover doesn’t work because the only way to regain health is to pick up little nuggets dropped by fallen enemies, so most of the time you have to use your powers to be incredibly aggressive. The result is that often you feel like the end-of-level boss — a kind of monster — throwing yourself into conflict with a team of moderately stupid players who think they’re supposed to be playing a cover shooter circa 2005. 

That you are given a gun at all seems odd. The gun feels like a compromise. The gimmick of a single modular pistol that can shape-change into a handful of other weapons is neat, but those weapons are just uninteresting variations on the same old themes: handgun, shotgun, machine gun, sniper, rocket launcher. The powers are more interesting and powerful. But of course the gun has to be there; can you imagine them having to go out and sell this game without a gun in it? What would Jesse be holding on the front cover? 

A gun is an equaliser. It evens the odds between the weak and the strong. But if you’re already strong it doesn’t feel worthwhile. You’re clearly so much more powerful than everyone else you meet in Control that after a while you begin to wonder why the game is also frequently quite hard. The omission of any difficulty settings is notable in a game of this type; it suggests that the developers were committed to their vision in the way that might recall Dark Souls. In fact the hub-like structure of the game is pretty clearly influenced by From Software’s games, and though it’s nowhere near as challenging, it seems to be reaching towards the same kind of thing.

It’s a game which demands you take it seriously as a crafted object. But then it has all these other elements cribbed from elsewhere — the generic level-based enemies with numbers that fly off them when shot, and the light peppering of timed/semi-randomised side activities, both of which made me think of Destiny. So there’s games-as-service stuff wedged in here too, and it doesn’t sit at all comfortably with this supposedly mysterious, compelling world that you’re supposed to want to explore.

This isn’t a horror game. There are one or two enemies with the potential to induce jump scares, but given that you can always respond with overwhelming force, it’s never really unsettling. But it’s clearly been inspired by horror. A source often mentioned as an inspiration for Control is the internet horror stories associated with the SCP Foundation wiki. From there the game borrows the idea that unlikely everyday objects can become sources of immense cosmic power — hence we see items like a rubber duck, a refrigerator, a pink flamingo, a coffee thermos imprisoned behind glass as if they were Hannibal Lecter. A pull-cord light switch becomes an inter-dimensional portal to an otherworldly motel. The great part about this is that these little stories can be told effectively in isolation; it’s always interesting to come across another object in the game and to discover what it does. (The fridge is especially unpleasant.)

But experiencing this kind of thing in the context of an action game is entirely different to stumbling it on it online. SCP Foundation is pretty well established now, but still, there’s a certain thrill in stumbling across something written there in plain text, titled with only a number. When those stories are good, they can be really good. Given the relative lack of context, and the absence of any graphical set-dressing, there’s room for your imagination to do the heavy lifting. 

In Control these fine little stories are competing for attention with all the other crazy colourful stuff going on in the background. You read a note and you move on to the next thing. You crash through a pack of enemies and the numbers fly off them. There’s never a sense of the little story fitting into an overall pattern. That lack of a pattern can be forgiven in the context of a wiki. In Control, these stories start to feel irrelevant when you never come across an enemy you can’t shoot in the face. In a different format, or a different type of game, this kind of rootless narrative might be more compelling. 

But what is this game about? There’s a sister and brother. A sinister government agency. Memories, nostalgia. A slide projector. It’s all so difficult to summarise. When I think about the game all these words seem to float around in my head, loosely linked, but not in a way that suggests any kind of coherence. The game always seems to be reaching towards some kind of meaning but it only ever feels hollow. It feels flat. Yet all the elements that are good about Control must be made to refer back to these hollow, flat signifiers. Sometimes the flatness works for the game, but mostly it doesn’t.

Today, it’s hard to see that anyone could see the point in establishing a website like SCP Foundation if it didn’t already exist. Viral media is not what it was in the first decade of the 2000s. Written posts that circulate on social media have a shorter half-life than ever. It’s almost impossible for any piece of writing over a few hundreds words to go viral in ways that go beyond labels like ‘shocking’, ‘controversial’, ‘important’, etc. ‘Haunting’ and ‘uncanny’ don’t quite cut it. This kind of thing doesn’t edge into public spaces in the way it used to via email inboxes, or message boards, or blogs. 

Perhaps the weird stuff is still out there. Perhaps we only got better at blocking it out. With the arrival of any new viral content, today’s audience is mostly consumed by questions of authenticity, moral quality, and accuracy. If you think this creepy story might be ‘real’, you’re a mug. If you promote it you might be a dangerous kind of idiot. And that’s fair: there are a lot of dangerous idiots out there. Yet there’s something to be said for an attitude of persistent acceptance when it comes to the consumption of weird stuff on the internet. I know I become gluttonous when I come upon such things. I want to say: yes, it’s all true, every word. I’ve always known it’s all true. 

[aveatr-blog]

A definitive Reference Guide – How to earn your Commercial Pilot License (CPL) in India and become a Commercial Pilot!

I get this question from young aviation enthusiast all the time, and despite a plethora of information available on the topic, very few seem to have captured all the elements together. Therefore, in this article I attempt to craft a definitive guide to an aspiring Aviator’s most important First Question.

 YOU Need to study before you Study!

 Minimum education requirements: A student pilot is required to have passed Physics and Mathematics 12th Standard examinations. Science students with Physics and Mathematics as core subjects, automatically fulfil this requirement. On the other hand, if you do not have these Science subjects in your 12th Standard, but still want to take up the flying profession, there’s a Hack! – you have an option to appear for these subjects through National Indian Open School (NIOS). I am deliberately not including links in the article as the links do change over time,information keeps updating, and the best way is use these key words and just do a simple online search 😊

YOU Need to be fit before you fit in the Cockpit!

If anyone needs to be fit, it’s You! But don’t worry, I haven’t come across all athletes in the profession, and you can probably breath. What’s important is meeting the prescribed medical fitness of DGCA Class-2 medical examination - to start your journey as a student pilot. Although, to get the Commercial Pilot License (CPL), you would need to have a fit DGCA Class-1 medical assessment. There a few extra tests in a Class-1 medical examination, as compared to Class-2, and I would suggest you to ask your doctor to do those extra tests too so that you can satisfy yourself that you meet the standards, and if there is any condition that can be corrected through treatment, you can consider that and discuss with your doctor during this early stage of your process. You can check the list of approved medical examiners on the DGCA website. Also, I would like to burst a few myths here – I have seen many misguided students who think they need to have perfect eye sight and other conditions. That’s far from the truth! You can wear spectacles within prescribed limits, and you can treat many other temporary conditions through correct treatment, diet and exercise. Even during the course of your career, you might not fall within normal range of annual / semi-annual tests ( for over 40 years of age / ATPL holders), and you might temporarily be declared unfit for a specified duration to undergo treatment and finally get your fitness certificate again. Under extreme conditions, pilots do get declared permanently unfit as well and this of course could be career ending as a cockpit crew – but these instances are rare and professional pilots are adequately covered through insurance policies as well.

Let’s do some paperwork!

You must apply with DGCA to get a unique computer number, which remains with you like forever!To secure this unique ID, you need to apply on the DGCA designated portal -UDAAN. The website hosts all details of requisite documentation- educational and ID proofs that you need to submit in the prescribed format with the prescribed fees.

 Once you have your Computer Number, you can sign-up and complete your Udaan online profile, which enables you to apply for the DGCA theoretical examinations.

Alright, let’s get to the books now!

It is recommendedthat you do enrol in a good ground school or institute and study the core subjects before you begin your flying training. This not only helps you gain vital knowledge and confidence, it is crucial for your flying as it helps you come into harmony with your aircraft and rules of the air. Most of the flying schools do have a ground school component, but if you would want be proactive and clear your theory exams before you start flying, you would need to enrol with a good ground study institute and appear for DGCA CPL examinations. There are overall 5 theoreticalsubjects, which are mentioned below:

1.    Aviation meteorology

2.    Air regulations

3.    Air navigation

4.    Technical general

5.    Technical specific 

DGCA conducts the examinations in 4 sessions every year, usually in the months of - January, April, July and October. These examinations are valid for 5 years (except multi-engine specific papers, which are valid for 2.5 years).

Cheat Code! – If you decide to do your flying abroad, you can choose to study and clear the first 3 subjects (Met, Regs and Nav – as they say it😊) – as once you get your foreign CPL, you apply for conversion and you need these 3 exams to be cleared in India – Refer to the latest DGCA foreign Pilot’s License Conversion Chart on DGCA website.

Another important exam, and probably the hardest - Radio Telephony Restricted license – RTR (A)

RTR examination is conducted by Wireless Planning Commission (WPC) of India. It is a license for pilots to enable them to use radio telecommunication devices in aircraft. Currently, exams are conducted every two months in 5 centresacross India - Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad. The exam consists of two parts – a practical test of communication capabilities, and an interview with a DGCA and a WPC official. Once you pass, a license with a lifetime validity will be issued.

Cheat-code! – If you earn foreign CPL and get your RT licence from a commonwealth country, you can submit the prescribed application with WPC and get a RTR (P) license, which offers the same privileges but is valid for a period of maximum of 20 years or validity of foreign license (per current regulations) – Refer to the current RTR(P) conversion and renewal guidelines on WPC / DOT website.

Also, before CPL is issued, you need to clear mandatory English Language Proficiency (ELP) Test and depending on the level you achieve, Level – 6 being the expert level, you would be issued the ELP certificate with a validity (ELP – 6 has lifetime validity). You can search online to get a list of authorised test examiners.

Go get your wings now!

Select your flying school ! This is the most important step and you need to do a thorough Due Diligence before you apply and select a flying school. Various parameters and elements need to be considered and we recommend using the following checklist:

1.    Define your budget.

2.    Do your research and consider seeking guidance from a Mentor. An Aveatr MentorTM could be your best friend and guide here. Make a list of best flying schools around the globe.

3.    Research the flying schools and consider – its facilities and fleet(India recognized Single and Multi-engine aircraft, simulator, instrument rating etc.), instructors, place, country and weather.

4.    Look for feedback from former students, discuss with your Aveatr MentorTM and shortlist the schools.

5.    Reach out to the flying schools and review their course brochures, duration, fees schedule, terms and conditions and their commitment to your un-interrupted flying training.

6.    Apply to schools and make the final selection based on above parameters.

 If you are looking to do your flying abroad, you would need to get a standardised English Test result (mainly IELTS), and apply for the visa with requisite offer letter from flying school and other supporting documents – your flying school will share guidance on visa application.

Take-off!

When you join flying school, India or Abroad, you will be issued Student Pilot License (SPL) and Flight Radio Telephony Operating License (FRTOL), per specific procedure for each country. You will also need your Class-1 medical here.You can get your medical certificate in India (for most countries) before leaving, or you can get your medical done at the country – it is not really difficult😊

Flying curriculum – be sure the curriculum complies with latest DGCA requirements. I am just including the overall (current) flying requirements below:

You need to clock 200 hours of flying in total for CPL, with 100 hours minimum as Pilot-in-Command (PIC), 20 hours ofmulti-engine flying, and 20 hours of multi-engine simulator flying. Ask your mentor or instructors to suggest you the best combination of multi-engine and single engine aircraft flying – keep an eye on your budget, flying courses don’t have fixed fees and based on your flying hours (you may need to repeat a sortie) and type of aircraft flown, your total fees could vary quite considerably! – Also,Refer to the latest DGCA foreign Pilot’s License Conversion Chart on DGCA website – YOU may need to do some flying checks here in India and do a lot of precise CPL application paperwork!

Congratulations, Captain! You have your wings now!

Cheat-code! – I recommend playing some computer games😊 - You may like to do some virtual flying on - Microsoft FSX / Xplane / Flight1 / Prepar3d, which are some of the best game based simulators and offer realistic flying experience on your personal computer. You won’t believe how much this helps – thank me later 😊

So now you are a Commercial Pilot, what next?

Now, you have two main options – get an Airline Job OR continue your flying school journey as an Instructor.

Getting an Airline Job – Study well and prepare for Airline Assessments! You can either self-study or join a credible Airline preparation course, which would cover the various aspects of Airline assessments – which mainly entail following elements - theoretical knowledge, simulator / psychomotor examination, aptitude test, group task, interview.

OR be a Flight Instructor - To become an instructor, depending on the country, you need specified hours of Pilot-In-Command (200 hours in India), and pass the flight instructors flight test / exam. Be sure to discuss with your Aveatr MentorTM  and your Flying school to understand Flight Instructing program and opportunities before selecting the flight school – you never know this might be the best first job in your flying career, never count out the economic conditions in your Aviation career 😊

There you go – wish you Happy Flying and Happy Landings!

Reach to me for any questions you may have. At Aveatr, I along with our team of aviation’s most qualified AveatrMentorsTM are there to help you, guide you and mentor you to navigate through this beautiful journey called – Flying!

-       Capt. Nakul Saluja, CA, CFE, PGP (IIT-Delhi), Founder & Chief Flying Officer – Aveatr

 Aveatr is one of a kind integrated Mentorship Program crafted with a mission to bring highest Quality Education Advisory, Career Counselling and Training to the ever exciting field of Aviation. Aveatr was founded to address the gap between the guidance needs of aspiring aviators and professional mentorship available in the Aviation sector. The program brings together a team of commercial pilots, top global professionals & academicians, and ex-military officers to pioneer the concept of Mentorship in Aviation.

 Our combined 100 years of experience in professional management, corporate strategy, training & development, aviation and military services has enabled us to identify the Core Advisory Areas that aviation aspirants need guidance on and we are here to mentor you and partner with you to navigate through these.

For more Info : https://www.aveatr.com/

[moonb-eam]

Hi! I just started reading your fics. You're such an amazing writing. Do you have any writing advice? Also what books/movies/TV shows have influenced your writing?

ahh hello darling!! 🧡🧡🧡 these are such lovely questions thank you so much!! 

okay, so i answered a fanfic ask about writing advice here a little while ago, but i’ll reiterate a few points, and add some new ones!!

i do want to say that these tips are just my opinion, and writing, like any other form of art, is so specific in process to each individual writer that what works for me definitely won’t work for everyone 🧡

(these are going to be very general and conceptual, but if you’d like some more technical “craft” advice then please let me know!!)

1. i’m going to keep repeating this until i die - the most important thing is to write, as basic as that sounds! i know some people who write every single day - i don’t, i find that exhausting - but i do try to write as often as i can, even if it’s something i observe on the bus to work that i write down on my phone, or it’s a single line for an opening of a new story. for me personally, i find it important to keep that part of my brain exercised, which is actually why i started writing fan fiction in the first place - so i could make deadlines for myself and keep writing in the midst of a terribly depressing job search, so i don’t lose that part of myself.

2. now, that being said, there are some days where writing just straight up doesn’t work. i sit down at my laptop and i have no words inside of myself, and it’s so frustrating when that happens, especially when you only have certain times of the day/week/month dedicated to writing. when that happens, i don’t force it. i have a friend in edinburgh who bakes every time he’s frustrated with a story - he says it always helps him to methodically create something and see it come to fruition, so he doesn’t feel so mentally stuck whenever he returns to his story. i have another friend who draws whenever she hits a writing snag. for myself, i like to go for runs whenever that happens  - it helps me clear my head and sometimes, gives me new ideas. writing is something that doesn’t just happen at the computer or the notebook. it’s happening constantly, with the media you consume, the interactions you observe, the new words you learn, the  fragments of ideas that pass through your mind. so yes, the actual writing of the words is critical, but so are all the other parts, and above all, it’s so important to take care of your mental state before anything else.

3. it’s also important to read a lot!!! there is no better inspiration that consuming the work of authors you really love and admire! i pretty well always have a book on me, and in the rare moments that i don’t, you know i’ve got ao3 loaded on my phone

4. rules and conventions exist for a few reasons, and one of those reasons is so they can be broken. so often young writers are told time and time again to find their “voice” or their distinct writing style, and what can happen is they feel pressured into boxing themselves up so early in their career - for example, in my master’s program, i wrote mostly science fiction, and was essentially labelled “science fiction girl” - that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because i love sci-fi, but i felt like i could never step outside of that box, because the people in my workshop would say, “this doesn’t feel like you” - but i didn’t even know who i was as a writer at that point, and honestly i still don’t - writing fan fiction has actually been really good for me to experiment with my prose and see how readers react to it. what i’m saying is, try something new, try whatever interests you, whatever you think may be cool, and if it doesn’t work, then it doesn’t, but don’t let yourself be swayed by what you think people may want to see from you. does that make sense? always remember that you’re writing for yourself before anyone else

5. the “don’t be afraid to write badly” advice is overused, but that’s because it’s important. i have a bad habit of self-editing as a write, which means writing a first draft can take me ages. sometimes, the best thing you can do is try to let go, and just let yourself put the words down without overanalyzing them. i described it in a group chat as “no thoughts, only words” asdfjkdf - when i first started in my workshop in edinburgh, i was terrified to write anything that wasn’t perfect, as though i would be judged for it. but the best thing you can do, is to show unfinished, imperfect work to people you trust. it is inherently embarrassing to share your writing, to let people see the inside of your heart, more or less, but it is the best way to improve - to get feedback, and to take it into consideration for your own work. not all feedback is good feedback, but all of it should be listened to! (conversely, if you’re ever asked for feedback, it’s so important to learn the distinction between being critical and being constructive)

6. this is getting quite long 😬 so i think i’ll do just one more - in the midst of practicing writing, receiving feedback, drafting and editing, i think it’s important to remember that, on a base level, what we do is tell stories, and that’s something that is really special. the act of writing isn’t always fun. editing certainly isn’t always fun, but telling stories is. finding new ways to look at the world is. discovering something new about a character is. what i mean to say is, get excited about your own work. get excited by your own ideas. those moments of excitement, for me, always help to carry me through some of the rougher bits

and now for a bit of inspiration!!

there are a lot of writers whose work i really admire - i would never say i’m as good as them asdfjk but i think they all have influenced me in one way or another

for novelists, i’m really inspired by madeleine miller, erin morgenstern, cherie dimaline, maggie stiefvater, leigh bardugo, ursula leguin, kurt vonnegut, mary shelley, shirley jackson, thomas king and kazuo ishiguro 

then there are some writers who do short stories and more experimental work, who have influenced me more in the last year or so: helen mcclory (i highly recommend everyone check out her work!!), shane jones (specifically the short novel light boxes), leanne shapton, and susannah m. smith (specifically the fairy tale museum)

and poets!! anne carson, richard siken, pablo neruda, amanda lovelace, i know there are more i’m forgetting....damn it

then there are a few illustrators/comic artists whose work really inspires me, such as tom gauld, emily carroll, tove jansson (moomins!!) and again i just know there are more i can’t think of!!! 😫

okay, okay lastly film and tv: i love any work by guillermo del toro, jane campion, alfred hitchcock, hayao miyazaki (so i LOVE your icon!!) and joe wright (except the peter pan film...we don’t talk about that...) i also think phoebe waller-bridge and dan levy are such stellar tv writers and i am very, very jealous of them - and OF COURSE skam, and all its iterations 🧡

(and if you browse through my “fic rec” tag on here, everything on there is from incredibly talented writers!!)

alright this got very long, I'm sorry about that!! but i hope there’s something in here that speaks to you in some way ✨ best of luck to you in your writing, and please drop by my inbox anytime if you’d like to talk more about it!! 😚

[the-little-prophet]

BDRP Questionnaire 2019

Posting this on Charlie since I actually talked about him quite a bit! Let’s gooooo

Characters: Berlioz, Hades, Kiara, Nala, Andrina, Merida, Charlie, Apollo, John, Su, Ashleigh, Nemo, Jun

Pick one of your characters and talk about their growth (we recommend choosing an older character, but it’s up to you!) What about their story has surprised you? What are you proud of? How have they changed from their original inception to now?

This one goes out to Charlie. I pitched Charlie very deceptively-- claiming he was a prophet, aligning him, at first, with Calliope, making it look like Charlie’s magic was of the classical, Cassandra-inspired kind. But all along, I knew that what I wanted Charlie to be was more of this sci-fi/fantasy blend as an homage to his movie’s sci-fi bend too. This year, I got to actually reveal that Charlie is a time traveler after two years!! This is very exciting for me! I’ve enjoyed being able to lean into Charlie’s new image systems with this reveal, even though I’m out of my depth and breaking like 67 different time travel rules, probably lol. Still, it’s been great to take him to that place, and to invent Future-Charlie as both a deux ex machina and an expression of identity/choice/free will etc etc. I did not have Future-Charlie in mind when I created Charlie, so that was something I was proud of coming up with!

Pick another character and talk a little about where you WANT them to go. What are your plans for them going into the new year?

I’m going to talk about Nemo if only because everyone else feels like a spoiler lol. Nemo, as a relatively new character though, is still full-speed-ahead on his initial goals that I outlined for him in his application. Now that Nemo’s been established in the school and he has this little group of buddies, I want:

To focus on his wing. I want Nemo to push himself, get himself in a spot of trouble, potentially injure himself.

Reveal his wings to at least one mundus friend

Continuing to infuse his posts with body image issues. This is a slow build kind of plot that really is like...the broth of Nemo’s plot-soup, lol, while training for his placement is the chicken and belonging at school is the noodles….it needs to be this throughline more than like, para a, para b, para c. at least for now.

Pick a thread or a plot that you’re proud of and talk about why you loved it.

I could pick a lot of threads here lol it’s honestly so HARD. But I think I want to shout-out to the Charlie/Jim first kiss thread because it surprised even me and Hannah. We initially planned for the first kiss to be just that-- one kiss, then we done, Jim and Charlie go on to be friends. But like in the best of cases, Jim and Charlie’s palpable chemistry actually informed more of Charlie’s arc and opened up avenues previously closed to me/Charlie since Charlie had been so SHUT to the idea of love. So! I really loved that thread. Also because like, I literally made Charlie experience the big bang after his first kiss. And THAT’S the BEST way to use magic in my opinion. Like when you can infuse magic with an emotional catharsis-- I think the other time I did that super well was similar actually, when Herc kissed Kiki’s cheek and she grew a tree in his room lol. So yeah! Some of my best writing in that thread, amazing chemistry, big surprises. It was an absolute pleasure.

In terms of your own writing, identify 1-3 strengths and talk about why you think it’s one of your strengths.

-Image systems. I dragged myself for this, but I think it’s something that really helps me find a character’s voice and make myself excited to RP them! Also, I think it’s what people like about my writing sometimes. Maybe. IDK, lol. -Complex Emotion: I’m stealing this from my mentor who said I’m good at creating complex emotion and so you know its true. My most introverted characters get the bulk of this naturally--they are introspective and feely and give themselves the space to think and feel. But I really want to try to inject more into my extroverted characters. I think I’m doing well for Nemo, who had undiagnosed anxiety and so that informs a lot of his personality in very interesting-- very OPPOSITE-- ways as Berlioz; Nemo struggles with being alone because ‘alone’ means he gets too in his head. That’s been really fun for me and why he’s quickly become one of my fave voices to write (I know, u all thought it was because I am in love with Jimin (true), but no its bc Nemo is an anxious, big feeling baby and he’s always so Alive to me, plus i was made to write a fairy it was always my destiny.)

In terms of your own writing, identify 1-3 areas of improvement.

-Dialogue: PERSONALLY I feel like I’m not great at dialogue. Some posts are better than others and I think I’m good at like…..texting dialogue? IDK. I feel like I struggle in paras though to craft good dialogue. It’s just, rn, average dialogue. Of course not every post needs to have hilarious, punchy, great dialogue. But do my characters sound different? Am I doing all I can to create rhythm and speech patterns? -Filtering: Im being very picky rn, because actually I don’t do this too much, but I do it enough where I’m like, I gotta go read some really stellar writers adn ban myself from using “Feel” and “think” for like a whole month. What I’m talkinga bout is like: Ber realized/ Ber thought / Ber knew. That kind of writing is totally fine, but that’s about it. I need to come up with more creative ways to talk about feelings and abstract concepts!!!

-Character: I know everyone is probably like………….how dare lauryl put this here. But listen. I don’t think I struggle with character on RP. But outside of RP? Oh boy! The THING about RP is you MUST create a character, that’s your vessel for writing here, and so you do all that development plus u got the four years of worldbuilding informing that character, and literally EVERYTHING CHARACTER DRIVEN ITS...THERE IS NO OTHER WAY.  Outside of RP though I think I have struggled because my natural affinity is worldbuilding and shit like that. I’m type 5 baby, I am attracted to characters who let me poke at things I don’t know anything about, like even Jun, part of it really is like, petitions and grocery store management lmfadsofij. SOOOo idk I just need to be able to focus on crafting characters that are compelling vessels for the cool shit I like to do outside of RP.

Pick one of your plots, or even just a character, and come up with a list of 3-5 “mentor texts” where you can look for inspiration or research, then write a short (2-4 sentences) why you picked those texts. JOHN DARLING BREAKS INTO FAERYLAND 1. Call Down the Hawk/Raven Cycle: It’s no coincidence that my reread of Raven Cycle last winter played a pretty big part in inspiring this new version of John. The descriptions of the magical forest Cabeswater and the hunt for Glendower have the same kind of contemporary fantasy vibe that I really like for John. And of course, Ronan’s dream magic is very much intertwined with the faery realm feeling like a dream (and Ashleigh, obviously, as a dark faery who can manipulate them). More than that though, the attention paid to the psyches of each character and how they drive the plot forward is just… /chefs kiss. 2. The Mabinogian: I want to draw from these classic Welsh/British stories and incorporate them in creative ways! Or just as, like, motifs are something. :) I have tried to do this but would like to be a lot more intentional, instead of just being like lmao let me look up some random shit for this one reply~ 3. The Hazel Wood: This book deals with characters coming into the real world from a book world! This kind of goes along with the Mabinogian as I kind of ish want to do something similar, only treating the Mabinogian as a historical, cultural text as opposed to a fiction. This book also focuses a lot on fairy tale tropes (like numbers) which I really want to incorporate in John’s stuff. I want to ideally write some of my own fairy tales-- I have one in mind actually through Ashleigh but it’s related to John too since he’d the scholar of said stories.  

And now, a wishlist!

-Exploring Nemo’s disability. This is slightly challenging for me since we don’t have many fairies, but I’m brainstorming some ideas and hope to really kick it off in January, leading up to his Talent Placement Test.   -I really want to have a lot of town-centric plots for Jun. Would love to rp with the police officers! I want to have Jun try to get some ppl arrested tbh ahah, like, Fflew for loitering, or maybe reporting Mitte. I would love some arch nemeses tbh-- Mitte does seem like a good one. AND I want to submit at least three petitions next semester!! Maybe i should make that two!! Still!! -Do some Bonfamille plots. I already have something I’m really excited about and have already planned here so this is a teaser… -Keep writing essays. The fairies have been great, getting me really inspired to do these.What’s been an amazing mental exercise, and why I cannot stop writing these, is thinking about how the political philosophy of Pixie Hollow informs how it functions: technically, socioculturally etc. It’s really fun for me to basically build a communist thought project and then enact it for real. I feel like I’m learning a lot about...well, societies, lol, and how the material factors endlessly bleed into, and shape, ideas and beliefs (and vice versa). Also, I literally have to do these because when Nemo is IN the Hollow and I want to write him getting a glass of water, I’m faced with a lot of technical questions: do fairies have running water? Does he have to get it from a stream? How do they keep things cool? Etc etc. And that’s why I go off on these, and I’m excited to keep doing them, as many as I can, with feedback from my fellow fairies. Also, do want to do ones that are NOT fairy related, so we’ll see about that. -Write John backstory. He’s gone on a few other adventures and I’d like to actually one-shot those maybe lol. -Alternate Charlie Timeline: This is something that’s bopping around in my head and I haven’t found the perfect way to make it happen, but I want Charlie to travel to an alternate version of his life and get stuck. When I figure out the right way to do this, my partners will also get to rp alternate versions of their characters lol. That’s fun right!! Of course it is, we do it all the time with AUs, but this one obvi be more personal and more closely tied to canon.

OPTIONAL: Why do you RP? First and foremost, I RP because it’s writing for the sake of writing-- joy for joy. I think this is even more important this year as I’ve had to focus on mentorship writing outside of RP. RP became the place where I didn’t have to think so hard about making everything make sense, lol. It gave my brain a break so I could be less judgmental of myself and just have fun and do the most ridiculous stuff...and some of my fave stuff iS ridiculous because of that...like Nemo and Sindri making flower crowns or the ASC nonsense. It’s this kind of light, fluffy, low-stake (but still High Stake) stuff that provided me endless joy when I needed it the most. Second of all, I RP because I really want to invest in people’s creative energy. I think doing so gives back to myself. Building canon, helping people brainstorm, seeing people grow-- I feel like a proud mom when I get to have this kind of mentorship role myself. I talked to MK about this, but even though Sam left to go off and do greater things, that’s like-- to me, it was a lot like he was graduating from this weird BDRP school I’ve helped create. I felt nothing but pride and happiness for him and really felt like, if BDRP was to explode tomorrow, I ACHIEVED the thing I set out to do when, four years ago, I sat on my computer and drafted BDRP’s mission and vision and committed myself to this admin role. And THAT’S what I want ideally-- for BDRP to be this collaborative place that doesn’t focus too much on what makes sense, on sitewide plots that force people into roles. I have always wanted plots like ASC and John’s search for Excalibur to be able to exist side by side, and I think we’ve done that. Now we just have to tend this garden, don’t we, haha? May BDRP bear many delicious fruit.

[neth-dugan]

Nine Worlds - Saturday

Friday found [here]

I got a full night’s sleep! I was still tired but it wasn’t too bad. I think I grabbed a nap at some point between panels but for the life of me I can’t say for sure when. Just that I really needed it. It was also the first day when I sat on or ran a panel.

ALCHEMY AND CHEMISTRY IN SF/FANTASY

This ended up being more about the history of chemistry and alchemy through time with a few examples of how it isn’t done accurately in either SF or Fantasy. Not what I was expecting, to be sure, but I still enjoyed it. I recognised a lot of it from a programme about the history of science and chemistry by Prof Jim Al Khalili on the BBC. The person presenting used to teach Chemistry and thus knew their stuff.

My only concern is that they said they were probably going to take longer than the slot assigned to them willy nilly like. Which. People have to get to things. Thankfully volunteers do pop their head in near the end of the slot if needed and it over ran a bit but not by too much. 

Something that is important to note, and that not many realise but the presenter here made sure people knew, is that alchemy and chemistry aren’t that different in many ways. It isn’t like astrology and astronomy. Alchemy is where chemistry came from, like its ancestor, more than anything else, and there was this period of transition where it gradually grew from alchemy into what we realise as the modern day science of chemistry. 

HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD APPRECIATION

... behind the scenes footage of the first cast rehearsing the play. Clemmett as Albus and Boyle as Scorpius. Not in costume/wig but look at Albus glomping his best mate. Look!

I went to see this play when it was still new, when we had to keep the secret safe and before the script was published. I loved it. I remember the little girl next to me in utter awe about the stage as we walked in. I remember of the Dementor flying just above my head. The thump that got you in your core as time travel took place. Adoring Scoripus so so much. My heart breaking during the scene with Albus and Scorpius on the stairs, and with the cast at the end when they must let events play out. And I remember learning that a lot of Potter fans weren’t a big fan of the play. 

So when I got an e-mail asking if I’d be willing to be on a panel about appreciating Cursed Child? I was all in. And when we were trying to figure out who would mod it I volunteered and so it began. 

It was a great panel. Me who had only seen it, not read it. Someone who’d only read it. People who’d done both. People who know a lot about plays and how they work and theatre and the like. 

We talked about the legacy of pressure of family, how that impacted Albus and Scorpius, and how there was these two stories - the kids and the adults. How we think it works that the characters aren’t these perfect adults and parents who do no wrong. Harry has a lot of trauma that the others around him don’t and that brushes up against the plot and also the needs Albus himself has. It’s messy and we think it works. There was also a lot of discussion around how it works as a play, how that makes it different from a book and the impact this probably had on reception. Play texts are fundamentally different from traditional prose and this can make it hard for those not used to reading them, who don’t know how to literally read between the lines. And we had huge appreciation for the stage craft from all sides of production.

I’m not turning this into a blow by blow of the panel. But there was a lot of love for the play. And considering this panel was up against the Black Panther panel? I think we did well. I am sad I didn’t get to go to the Black Panther panel but Nine worlds has not yet invented time travel so alas. I had a lot of fun, I hope others did too.

TOP OF THE SFF COPS

...tragically nobody mentioned Odo until I suggested him at the end. So I’m sticking him in here.

This panel is slightly infamous at this point, and going in I had no idea. Whilst I knew there were issues with a separate panel and a serving police officer being placed on it, I didn’t know this one would blow up. So far as I knew there’d been a similar one last year and I’d only heard good things. I also know that I have a lot of privilege being white and despite being queer I pass.... but I’ll go into that in a separate post later. Will post a link here when up.

A lot of genre fiction has police or security type characters in it. From X-Files to Star Trek to Discworld to Alien Nation and way way more. And like many professions who are portrayed on TV or otherwise intersect with it a lot (doctors, archeologists, writers, scientists) a lot of it isn’t done particularly accurately. So a group of people who work in law enforcement in various ways decided to do a session on which characters do their actual job best and in line with actual standards. It was made clear that they were there on a personal basis and not as an on duty or official representative type thing. 

They put forth a set of criteria - things like knows the law, exercises discretion, compassion, does the day to day hard work and not just the action stuff and so on. Mulder? Is right out. Scully however was in, and the only character I recognised. So I was mostly went by who sounded the best and it ended up being the guy from Discworld who wont the vote. I don’t know the books well though so who knows. This was literally the entire panel. Still, I can see in retrospect how it would make some people uncomfortable.

It was an okay panel. I wasn’t expecting it to be a big vote thing, and more of a discussion type thing but in hindsight  that may have caused more issues. 

LET THE PAST DIE: SACRIFICING SACRED COWS IN STAR WARS THE LAST JEDI

This was put into a room far too small for what it needed to be. People were crowding in and it wasn’t great. Not long after it started a volunteer came in and offered up the room across the hall that had way more seating, so we voted on it and unsurprisingly we moved across. This would have been easier for some to do than others but it also have people who needed more space that space whilst letting people in. But it likely caused issues for those who have a harder time moving. I’d had a big dizzy spell on my way to this but seemed to be okay moving. 

Part way through I decided to start live tweeting it and you can find that HERE. I’m not really sure what else to add but it was an interesting panel. Lots of talk about letting whiney fanboys whine to themselves, a lot of stuff they keep going on about was also in or also missing from the original trilogy. Nobody explained Palpatine until the prequel trilogy after all. He just turned up as a vague big bad when needed for plot. One panelist wished them the prequel trilogy ‘they deserve’ which amused me.

What I found most interesting though was a note on the green milk scene with Luke. I’ve seen people joke and deride that scene a lot since the movie came out. But one of the panelists, a woman from with roots in Hong Kong, said that it really struck a chord with her in relation to the diaspora. It reminded her of going into Tesco and finally seeing a noodle that isn’t exactly the same but reminds her a lot of something from home. And this was Luke claiming something that reminds him of where he came from even as he’s far away from it. It had honestly never occurred to me but it makes so much sense, and gives that scene a lot more value. I have no idea if the writers did that on purpose or if they did it as the easy joke though.

LAYERS OF MEANING: THE DIMENSIONAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ENGLISH, CHINESE, AND SIGN LANGUAGE

I loved this! This was hosted by a woman who was born in China and whose first language is Mandarin, but moved to Britain as a kid and later in life learnt BSL and now works as a sign language interpreter. She does this for Nine Worlds in various panels, as well as hosting a few sessions relating this to herself. And so she decided to do a panel that talks about her three languages as they’re all very different and go at language in different ways.

It was awesome.

...Mulan is not at all relevant but she is Chinese this is the best gif I could find that is both nerdy and has the writing system talked about in this session. And also, y’know, Mulan.

She isn’t a linguist, which she made sure everyone knew. But I think that made it work. It was also kinda amused because on the front row on one half of the aisle was a native speaker of BSL, and on the front row of the other half was someone who knows Mandarin better and I get the feeling probably came from a different part of the Chinese speaking world. But I’m just assuming there. And the interplay between the three was informative but also amusing.

I kinda knew the general concepts of what she was talking about. Or very vague versions of the concepts anyway. English is phonetic and the letters themselves have no meaning. D implies nothing when used in dog or door etc and it can be polysyllabic. Mandarin is logarithmic, it’s tonal and uses that rather than multiple syllables and it doesn’t have individual letters. The symbol for ‘female, woman’ 女 but as a radical can become a part of words like ‘calm/peace’ 安 which has the radicals for woman and home. Which, being at home is calming so I get that. There are also some not great words with woman as a radical too. 

And then there is sign language which doesn’t have just the mouth to speak. It has two hands, your face and your mouth. It takes place in a 3D space and adjectives are often included as part of the word, not separate to it. You can say entire sentences with a gesture, and you pick up on ways of expressing things because they look interesting in the same way you’d vocalise something a certain way because it sounds nice..

It was interesting. I don’t know a lot about language, and anything too technically worded would have lost me. But this didn’t and this was another of my favourite panels this year.

THE POLITICS OF ACTIVISM IN MARVEL COMICS

So I don’t know a lot about the comics. I’ve read a couple Wolverine books but that is about it. But I thought I’d go along and listen cause it seemed interesting. Jaime was hosting it, someone who’d worked on the comics was meant to be there but had to pull and out and so Jaime was left by themselves but... Jaime did a good job. 

A lot of the specifics were beyond me. But it seemed to be a common theme that activism within the comics would change the world too much beyond the baseline - a baseline that needed to remain stable. And a fear of how the much vaulted cis het white male would take it I’d imagine though I don’t remember that being touched on a lot.

I did comment at one bit. I tried to do a ‘I only really know the movies so maybe this is stated in-verse’ type of disclaimer and then was given what felt a bit like I’d been shot down with ‘comics only!’ despite others bringing MCU up before including by the mod. If they hadn’t, I’d have said nothing at all. But I may have just been a bit sensitive. In any case, I wondered if perhaps the characters did do things, within the parameters of their non-hero lives. Tony Stark is the CEO of a massive company after all, maybe he funds charities, treats workers well and make sure workers rights are a thing etc, invests responsibly. I dunno. And we just don’t see it much because it isn’t about punching people. I don’t remember a lot of what was said after that as I was too busy berating myself for daring to speak in a comics panel. Note to self, never go to one again, it is not meant for me. The vague idea I had about an X-Men as metaphor panel for next year? Likely wont submit that now.

But it was well moderated. People got a chance to speak, bounce ideas around and I think what I said was taken in as part of that. The session didn’t get stuck on one thing and it flowed through topics and ideas and the like and it was interesting. Except for that one moment I did genuinely enjoy it. Given the last minute alterations due to a key component having to drop out it was very well done.

... why do tumblr gifs all have to be so big? 

DR MAGNETHANDS

This is kind of hard to describe, but it was very adult friendly, It had Captain Picard with swearing crashing the moon onto London, and Theresa May as a monster head fighting against a butterfly made out of lamb chops in some kind of anti-Brexit accidental metaphor. Especially as the lamb chop butterfly was a heroic character that Theresa treated as a bad guy.  Everyone boo’d her at every turn.

It’s kinda hard to describe in any logical way what this session was like. Drawn off of audience suggestions and participation it’s basically crack fic made manifest.

... giant jellyfish in the sky didn’t happen, but were a distinct possibility.

It was just pure fun really. I laughed a lot, I had a great time, it was awesome.

SEX AT HOGWARTS

Another session that needed a bigger room. I got there pretty early and so had a good seat and then being a tad hyper I decided the room needed mood music. So I searched for romantic music in Spotify and played it. This is whilst the room was mostly empty and I did stop before the session started. Those who could actually hear it seemed amused. Not sure if it was at me or the music. And there were lots of tipsy people around.

We were also graced with Professor McGonagall who visited us and gave us all a good staring at. 

Much like the late night panel on Friday, it was a pretty lively discussion with lots of absurdity and very clearly adult only. There was a sensible power point that combined info released after the books about who was dating who, comics and some parodies of what sex ed at Hogwarts might look like. It’s not what I’d have done but given it’s slot it worked out pretty well.

...given the topic, probably best to have a gif of adult characters. Also it’s cute.

There was discussion of what counts as bestiality in a world where all sorts of beings are sentient. I even posited the question that if someone kept up with polyjuice for nine months, could someone usually lacking a uterus become pregnant and give birth? This was laughed down and dismissed as it was meant to. Think it was kinda obvious in how I delivered it that I was being absurd. There was a lot of speculation of what portraits get up to and.... yeah. it was exactly as it sounds.

A lot of fun, and probably nothing teens haven’t heard or thought before but still, a good thing they weren’t there.

I’d have liked to go to bar and play Slash but alas, I was tired so I went to bed. Hoping for sleep and rather sad that the next day would be my last for another year.

[SUNDAY HERE]

[lokbobpop]

Exist

o have actual being; be: The world exists, whether you like it or not. to have life or animation; live. to continue to be or live: Belief in magic still exists. to have being in a specified place or under certain conditions; be found; occur: Hunger exists in many parts of the world.

The verb exist, at the root of the adjective existing, comes from the Latin existere, "come into being," from a combination of ex, "out," and sistere, "take a stand."

Exist exit ex is t ex ist

Writing exist

Do i really exist i mean i exist here in this existence but i also apparently exist in another dimension at the same time like a part off me first i think how is this possible how can this happen i probably wont know this until i die because its way to much for my current brain to under stand lol

Reading exist

To no exist no more look at the people who have died they just done exist anymore well not in this dimension but i hope very much to see animals that dont exist anymore mostly my nan and my grandad as well id like to see them very much.

How do i exist now like in this body i still have ties to my mind construct which is slowly letting go bit by bit and i hope to seen be me completely whole in here this amazing physical i have and love dearly so i can truly live a life that is full happy and full of life it will happen i will do this i have it in me to create this for me to help other do the same i see.

What exists and what doesnt ghosts like do they exist i think old energy’s so but not so much on the ghost side of it all as in the demons they have all gone we are not being fucked with anymore for sure. But do fairy’s exist yes her but on a different dimension big foot i believe he did if he is here now then i dotn know i would say not more here along with all the others ones that are somewhat mythical.

Aliens do they exist ? Well yes they have is there any here yes all of us come from partly another place our physical id from here made of the earth out beingness not we are here to learn how to be with the physical. But Aliens from another place have most definitely been here and and left there technically of and governments have craft of such.

Is it real comes up what is real well for me desteni is the only thing as real its the only thing that has made the biggest difference within my life and it works so im staying with what is best for me and what s will be best for all. So we all change what currently happens on this earth.

To bring into existence liek what you make you bring into existence like making food a diner you create it you bring it into being a factory brings into existence when it makes something as everything is alive.

My thoughts so when i think it brings it into existence so i have to be carful of my thoughts as my body has to deal with these thought it has to take all my thoughts on on a physical level and when there are of an emotional or feeling level it harms me my physical and it also harms another in my spoken word so talking without being in an emotional energy state is optimal for us all to stop the physical abuse and to stop the abuse of others if we stoped we would all see what has happens so stopping my mind in the participation of energy thoughts will be like turning off an engine that is polluting out atmosphere and then i can show another how to turn theres off so they can stop and so on until we all stop and breathe and deal with healing ourselves and the planet as there is a lot of consequences to live out right now it’s going to be tough.

I do exist within this body i am alive and i am changing

Saying exist

How am i existing right now in my mind well i am still prone to anger and feeling hurt mostly when chris says something angrily i feel it i need ot stop this so he will stop doing it i see im assisting it by being reactive if i dotn react he would probably stop. The other is with my daughters i see whe they are in am emotional state i also pick it up and go into one so i have to work on thsi part of me not getting upset.

Its doesn’t exist i her people saying liek true love or people with no ego and are in harmony with life i feel there is a few but not many but so many things don’t exist and need to exist like schools that support the child health care for all food for all shelter for all these things should exist for sure we all need to have equal money for an equal life.

To bring in to existence yes this what I have to do within me bring me in right nose and for ever more and the only thing that I should be looking at in doing oh and some exercise lol

Whe you are just existing your not doing anything you just existing day in day out no true life exists within you you have lost all hope of a real life

The existing building like the old part and you can add to the existing building

There exists a way of change and im here ot learn and show

What is our existence who are we where do we come from its not like i dont know i just can’t remember who i am and when i think of anu and the Anunakki i think how is this possible as this is all i know i no not of any other things than what i can see right now so i see that how can I believe anything else than this yes that makes sense to feel this was i no none other i see none other than what is right here now but i see who i was was wrong and who i am becoming is right and this is all i need to really know about i cant see who is not here in this dimensions so what really is how is it for those who couldn’t even entertain this idea of off world cabal not many which is very understandable yes how can you believe in another you cant see? Ho scan you make it your truth if you cant see it for your eyes only you just cant hey i wonder if i could develop this a bout me so I can clearly see.

Sf

Does this definition support me no not completely a i want to exist more than what i am i see but its a process of moving here and to bring me out bit by bit and it will happen plus i see a slight underlying fear of what exist after her what is it like and how then I appreciate my physical and what i have here to make the most of it for sure

Exist exit

Exist

To be my upmost potential to be here for me in every breathe to be here for another in support to exist as and for me and another at my best in every breathe

I will use this word to support me into coming into existence with my whole beingness to be here present for myself and others

[aion-rsa]

15 Hardest SNES Games of All-Time

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In their move from the NES to the SNES, Nintendo and its development partners often relied on using 8-bit games as the basis for 16-bit innovations. While that approach helped move us towards the future of gaming, it also meant that many SNES games felt spiritually similar to NES titles.

That also means that many SNES games retained that arcade-like difficulty that would, in some ways, define over a decade of gaming. While the average SNES game didn’t feature nearly as many of the technical and design hurdles that contributed to some of the most difficult NES games ever made, the console is still the proud home of some of the most enjoyable challenges in video game history.

Whether you fondly remember them when you look back on this era or whether they’ve become the star of your worst gaming nightmares, these are the 15 hardest SNES games ever made:

15. The Lion King

Much like how Disney tucked Mufasa’s devastating death scene into a children’s movie, the SNES version of The Lion King lures you in with the promise of a whimsical adventure and then stabs you in the back as soon as you let your guard down. 

The Lion King starts off easy enough (at least relative to other games of this era) and even impresses with its colorful visuals and surprisingly faithful soundtrack. However, most new levels introduce a vicious spike in difficulty that will undoubtedly leave you wondering why you suddenly suck. Then, about halfway through, you’re blindsided by an escape level that’s arguably as challenging as the speeder bike segment in Battletoads due to its use of both front and rear threats rendered in not quite ready 3D technology that makes controls frustratingly unresponsive.

While the latter half of the game steps off the gas just a bit, The Lion King’s challenge roadblocks ensure most young gamers never made it that far. 

14. Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts

It’s amazing that Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts is at least as difficult as its predecessor considering that its controls are vastly improved and the action is significantly smoother overall.

However, it appears that Capcom felt that since Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts was much more “playable” than Ghosts ‘n Goblins on NES, that meant that they could make the game noticeably more difficult. This sequel features more on-screen enemies and more environmental hazards but the same iconic health system that essentially leaves you with a razor-thin margin for error that might as well be non-existent due to how difficult it is to progress after a single hit. 

While this game’s hard mode may be the most difficult challenge on the SNES, I’ll “split the difference” slightly and rightfully refer to this title’s normal mode as one of the most punishing experiences in the history of Nintendo consoles. 

13. Battletoads in Battlemaniacs

Truth be told, I debated whether or not to include Battletoads in Battlemaniacs given that the game is probably slightly easier than the NES original. At the very least, it repeats a lot of the original’s best tricks.

However, familiarity does little to diminish just how difficult this game truly is. Once again, the “highlight” of this game’s difficulty is the various vehicle sections that require you to avoid various obstacles while moving at high speeds. The infamous speeder bike section in this sequel is as hard as it ever was, but I have to give a special shout-out to that vertical scroller level that requires you to maneuver between wall spikes that force you into a “safe zone” that’s only about as wide as your character.

I’d consider this the best way to experience Battletoads due to its visual and control improvements, but the game is so difficult that it rides that line between being addictively challengingly and frustratingly cruel.

12. The Simpsons: Bart’s Nightmare

Yes, Bart’s Nightmare is a pretty bad game that suffers from some often awful controls, but it would likely still be remembered as one of the most frustrating SNES games ever made even if it was a bit more refined. 

Essentially a collection of “minigame” levels, Bart’s Nightmare forces you to quickly master a series of entirely new scenarios with their own rules. That’s annoying, but what makes this game so noteworthy is that some of the individual levels in this game are as mechanically challenging as they are conceptually confusing. There’s no better example of those concepts than the game’s Indiana Jones tribute level: a bewildering collection of platforms and traps that would still be difficult to figure out even if things weren’t constantly trying to kill you. 

This is one of the SNES’ best examples of a game that lures you in with its familiar name and then compensates for a relatively short amount of content by making everything as hard as possible. 

11. Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest

Growing up, I don’t really remember hearing many kids talk about how hard the Donkey Kong Country series is. It wasn’t until years later I really started to see more people give this franchise the respect it deserves as the home of some of the most infuriating platformers ever crafted. 

Donkey Kong Country 2 is the arguable apex of this franchise’s difficulty curve. Once again, the “problem” here is the variety of the game’s stages. Even if you’re able to keep up with a series of (certainly creative) new challenges, you’ll eventually encounter a new stage that uses an old mechanic but makes things roughly twice as difficult as before. To make matters worse, the mechanics are spaced out in such a way that you basically need to re-learn them while now battling a much more difficult version of the concept. 

The good news is that Donkey Kong Country 2 is actually a genuinely well-designed game that encourages you to keep trying even as it mercilessly forces you to doubt your abilities. 

10. Earthworm Jim 2

While the original Earthworm Jim is difficult, not even that game can prepare you for how unforgiving Earthworm Jim 2 truly is. 

If Earthworm Jim 2 only consisted of its side-scrolling stages, it would still be in the running as one of the harder SNES titles. However, we once again encounter a “Battletoads” scenario where the game’s special vehicle and race sections raise the overall difficulty to such a degree that I honestly can’t say I’ve ever spoken to anyone who managed to beat this game as a kid or adult without at least relying on emulator save scumming. 

Oh, and the fact that some of this game’s most infuriating levels also see you, quite literally, let puppies down every time you fail is an exercise in pure cruelty. 

9. Jurassic Park

During the 8 and 16-bit eras, it was relatively easy to buy into the idea that a game was simply impossible. While that distinction was sometimes afforded to action titles that demanded perfect reflexes and pattern recognition, you more often heard it used to describe titles of that era that left you wondering “Where am I going, and what am I supposed to do?”

Few games of that mold are more memorable than Jurassic Park. What starts off as a seemingly simple top-down action game quickly reveals itself to be a labyrinth of puzzles, awkward first-person segments, and enemies that can kill you before you have a chance of figuring out where you’re supposed to go next. It honestly reminds me a little of the notoriously difficult Fester’s Quest for NES. What’s worse is that there are no save points or passwords, which means that you’ve got to beat the whole thing in one lengthy sitting.

I’m actually a little impressed that this much creativity went into a relatively early licensed game, but Jurassic Park is a prime example of the kind of game that essentially demands a walkthrough as even figuring out which direction you’re supposed to walk in is often unintuitive.

Read more

Games

15 Hardest NES Games of All-Time

By Matthew Byrd

Games

25 Underrated SNES Games

By Chris Freiberg

8. ActRaiser 2

The original ActRaiser was also fairly difficult, but its blend of platforming, action, and town building is so impressive that you kind of forgive it for its difficulty spikes. For ActRaiser 2, developer Quintet seemingly convinced themselves that the reason people loved the original was because of its challenging side-scrolling levels rather than its variety. At least that’s my best explanation for why they abandoned the town building elements and instead focused on crafting the hardest side-scrolling levels imaginable. 

Much to the dismay of many young gamers, they accomplished that mission in such a way that ensures the mere mention of ActRaiser 2 can unlock a treasure trove of repressed gaming memories. Some of this game’s challenges are amplified by its sluggish controls and animations, but much of the difficulty comes down to the level design. From floating platforms to the pit of deaths, ActRaiser 2 is like a hall of fame for every controller breaking concept of its era. 

The shame of it is that ActRaiser 2 is really just a few tweaks away from being one of the underrated gems of its time. Instead, the game’s only notable legacy is the crushing weight of its difficulty and some great art direction.

7. The 7th Saga

The SNES is rightfully remembered as the home of some of the best RPGs ever made, but few of those RPGs are necessarily remembered among the console’s most difficult games. That being the case, you may go into a game like The 7th Saga feeling pretty confident. 

If so, then consider this your fair warning that The 7th Saga is absolutely one of the hardest 16-bit games ever made. For some reason, this game’s developers decided to make the U.S. version of this game even more difficult than it already was. The result is a project with typical RPG challenges that are amplified by the fact that enemies can survive an absurd amount of damage that makes level grinding more important than ever. Sadly, the U.S. version of the game makes leveling even slower than before, which means that already challenging battles feel that much more laborious.

The 7th Saga is actually a very good game, but its already challenging puzzles, dungeons, and bosses are made legendary by virtue of one of the most questionable difficulty bumps in gaming history. 

6. Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

I actually love the SNES trilogy of Star Wars games and recently wished that a developer would revisit their core concepts and update them for modern platforms. If that happens, though, then there’s going to be an interesting debate about whether those games should retain the difficulty that has come to define The Empire Strikes Backs. 

The other two Super Star Wars games are difficult, but Empire Strikes Back is on another level. While some of the vehicle stages are annoying, they’re not necessarily the reason so many gamers never beat this sequel. That honor instead belongs to the absurd toughness of the average enemy combined with the need to navigate some tricky levels while battling them. How can so many creatures survive so many blows from a lightsaber? Why is absolutely everything in this galaxy (including wild creatures) so hellbent on killing our heroes?

Empire Strikes Back often avoids feeling cheap or especially cruel, but that’s cold comfort for a legion of fans who have still never beaten this game. 

5. Contra III: The Alien Wars

I don’t have to tell most of you that Contra 3 is a hard game. It is, after all, a Contra game, which means that it was designed to be frustrating. Even still, there are reasons why Contra 3 stands out to this day as the hardest game that many of us played growing up. 

Here again, we have a SNES game where the developers must have thought to themselves “Well, if we’re giving them better graphics and better controls, then we should probably make everything more difficult to compensate for the natural frustration we lost.” As such, Contra 3 ups the ante of the franchise by taking what was already a very difficult action experience and adding a variety of expertly placed environmental hazards that keep you constantly off-balance. It certainly doesn’t help that the bosses are some of the toughest in the series’ history and that the game’s top-down segments offer a uniquely challenging break from the standard side-scrolling action.

This is really just a great action game that so happens to also be maddingly (but appropriately) difficult

4. Hagane: The Final Conflict 

Hagane: The Final Conflict wasn’t especially popular when it was released in 1994, but this is one of those games that was “resurrected” by the internet. Those who did play it spent years passionately encouraging everyone to revisit this truly overlooked gem. 

Before you do play this game, though, you need to know that Hagane is almost comically difficult. While Hagane’s generous controls and incredible overall design mean that you’re not hindered by fundamentally unfair mechanics, the sheer amount of obstacles this game throws at you will leave you laughing at the game over screen as you try to process what just happened. Imagine Shinobi with even more enemies and environmental hazards. That’s the basic Hagane experience.

That said, Hagane’s incredible controls, lightning speed, and excellent level design make it worth every frustrating moment you encounter along the way. 

3. U.N. Squadron

You can’t talk about the hardest SNES games without talking about the console’s collection of side-scrolling shooters. Which shooter is the hardest, though? Super R-Type? Axelay?

Actually, I think that honor belongs to U.N. Squadron. This often underappreciated game initially impresses with its surprising customization options, but it’s perhaps best remembered as a stunningly hard experience. Even though U.N. Squadron isn’t as “cheap” as similar SNES games and doesn’t suffer from as many slowdown problems, this title compensates for its lack of inherent issues in other ways. Actually, U.N. Squadron‘s enemies and levels are cleverly designed to quickly produce some of the tightest death zones you’ll find in any SNES game.

Even genre veterans will find themselves sweating during this game’s final levels. Don’t even get me started on how rough the higher difficulty settings are.

2. Zombies Ate My Neighbors 

At a time when zombie games were still a novelty (which feels like a lifetime ago), Zombies Ate My Neighbors allowed players to test their mettle against an undead horde while enjoying creative and colorful visuals complemented by a fairly tight control scheme. On the surface, it doesn’t seem like it would be one of the hardest SNES titles. From moment to moment, I’m not sure it is.

However, Zombies Ate My Neighbors has truly earned that distinction amongst gamers who have actually tried to beat this game. Not only does Zombies Ate My Neighbors feature nearly 50 levels (each of which is more difficult than the last), but the game’s resource system means that even a minor mistake on a level can make every level that comes afterward even more challenging than it would otherwise be. The constant onslaught of resource-demanding bosses can also easily wear down the patience of even the most composed players.

Even amongst the speedrunning community (to which some of the most skilled gamers in the world belong) Zombies Ate My Neighbors is considered to be one of the most difficult games ever made from a completionist perspective. If you really think about it, you’ll probably realize you never actually made it that far into the game no matter how much you played it. 

1. Castlevania: Dracula X

With Super Castlevania 4, Konami dialed things back a bit by granting the player more control over their character. The game was still difficult, but the fact that it allowed you to do things such as swing your whip in any direction made it much more accessible than anything that came before. 

Castlevania: Dracula X, on the other hand, throws all of that out the window and replaces those expanded controls with more environmental hazards than ever before. Considered to be the “true” successor to Castlevania 3 due to its retro controls and design, Dracula X can also be considered the hardest game in a franchise synonymous with difficulty. There is almost no margin for error in this action title as nearly every jump and swing can end your run if they’re not executed perfectly. 

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The cherry on top of this one is a final boss fight against Dracula that forces you to jump across tiny platforms as you try to beat what would already be a difficult boss even without the gimmick. It’s an appropriate nightmare of a gaming experience.

The post 15 Hardest SNES Games of All-Time appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[clarencenicholsonata]

What Brand Storytelling Is & How To Do It (With Examples!)

Here at Wishpond, we talk a lot about marketing tools -- today, we want to talk a bit more about how to put them to best use to make your company shine.

You put a lot of effort into building your company. It may have started as a side job, probably involved a lot of late nights, planning, research, strategizing and unexpected setbacks. (One thing nobody ever said about launching a successful business is, “it was super easy.”)

You may not think this is something you want to advertise, but the truth is, the human struggles behind the logo are sometimes what consumers respond the most to.

You don’t need to live-stream your company meetings, but brand storytelling is one of the most talked-about trends in marketing today, and one of the most important skills.

By the end of this post, you’ll understand why -- and what’s more, you should have an idea of how to start putting together your own brand story.

What is brand storytelling?

It helps to know what your brand story is NOT. Your brand story is NOT the facts about your company, your founding date, or a few perfunctory paragraphs on your “About Us” page.

What brand storytelling is using narrative to forge a genuine connection with your audience and consumers. Today - with so many messages thrown at consumers every second, from every direction - knowing how to craft one that resonates with them is an invaluable skill.

As much time as we spend pointing out the logical reasons our service and product is the best (which you should keep doing!), it's also important to keep in mind that consumers' emotions are one of the strongest drivers of purchase decisions.

Consumers today want to know that there are people behind the brand. They want to know about their values. They want to feel something about your product, they want to be able to relate, and they want to feel good about buying it.

They’re not just buying your product. They're buying how it makes them feel.

The Science Of Brand Storytelling

(Note: This is actual science, so skip this part of you want to go straight to the marketing tips, but stick around if you want biological proof it's worth your time.)

It takes time to develop your brand’s story and learn how to tell it well, and it’s not something you can integrate into every marketing message. Sometimes, your brand story has to be a standalone campaign, designed and executed separately.

This can seem like a lot of effort if you’re new to brand storytelling. That’s why it helps to know the science behind it.

Our brains respond to stories. We are biologically programmed to respond to them. According to the UNHCR, certain types of stories influence our actual brain chemistry, releasing oxytocin (a hormone so associated with social connectedness it is sometimes referred to as ‘the cuddle hormone’)

This OneSpot infographic has more about the statistics behind storytelling.

That’s the power of a brand story.

How to Do It

So now you know what it is and that it pays dividends.

Now for the most important thing: how do you do it?

As with anything in marketing, there’s not a defined set of blueprints: stories are as unlimited and individual as the companies and the people that tell them.

However, here are a few guidelines we can give you to help structure a good brand story.

Focus on Your Values

Example: Warby Parker

Warby Parker here shows the effectiveness of focusing on their values.

Their promotional video doesn't involve the high tech or high style or high fashion other eyewear brands go for. Instead, it zeroes in on the affordable, fashionable eyewear it's known for, to great effect.

Warby Parker's ads and social media have skyrocketed it to one of the most recognizable and successful eyewear brands on the market.

Tips for highlighting your values in brand storytelling:

If you’re wondering how to get started, here’s a quick exercise. Have you and three other teammates list your company’s top five core values.

Once you agree, brainstorm a list of ways these show up in real, tangible ways in your products or services. This could be in your customer service, in your method of production, in your commitment to quality -- there are several ways values can express themselves! This might be the start of a few ways you can tell your brand’s story.

If you do any social outreach that ties in with your values, don’t be shy about showing it! Instagram, video, do a match-for-match donation program, partner with relevant charities; corporate social responsibility is becoming increasingly important.

Embrace Your Roots

Example: Burt’s Bees

The humble lip balm embraced its image with this charming and simple ad. They openly reject the idea that their founder started the company with anything as buzzwordy and techy as a strategy or investor capital.

What he did have was a bunch of bees.

This is genius brand storytelling. The ad sticks closely to the brand’s colors and text, aligning it both for loyalists and those only vaguely familiar with it.

If you’re not convinced, the proof is in the earnings report. In 2018, Burt’s Bees was reported to have sold, on average, once every second somewhere in the world.

Address Your Customers’ Pain Points

Example: Aerie

We’ve mentioned Aerie before for their mastery of communication through this campaign. They’ve based a lot of their current brand image on their Aerie Real campaign, which focuses on a diverse set of models.

On that note, notice how the campaign website doesn’t immediately appear to be a clothing store: it almost looks like a lifestyle blog or advice column. And they walk the talk with their range of models.

Tips for addressing your customers’ pain points in brand storytelling:

Mine your customer reviews for what customers are saying they love about your product; it might not be what you think! For example, while you might be super proud of your camera’s formidable technical specs, your customers may appreciate that but be more thrilled by its lightweight or incredible battery life. Realizing what’s really causing problems day-to-day for your customers, and adding that to your brand message, is powerful.

Address your customers’ pain points in more than one way. For example: provide content and helpful advice, place relevant reviews front-and-center, if you offer a service, maybe host a webinar offering tips and helpful hints.

Understand Your Audience

Example: Trader Joe’s

While it appears simple, this Trader Joe’s ad demonstrates the uniqueness and effectiveness of their marketing strategy.

It effortlessly dodges alienating any of their audience, as it knows it has a wide base of different shoppers, and it emphasizes its unique value and what all these very different people come to Trade Joe’s for: supermarket shopping that’s friendly, off-kilter, fun, convenient, affordable and, at the same time, tasty, exotic and high quality.

Trader Joe’s is known for their marriage of high quality and low prices. Their tone is relaxed and friendly, but adventurous and knowledgeable: like an exceptionally well-traveled friend who knows all the best spots to eat and has tons of exotic recipes to try.

One article notes about their dedication to their brand story in everything from their job titles to their product descriptions.

(One other point about understanding the audience: note the subtle singling out of their wildly popular product, Cookie Butter, at the start of the video. A treat for Cookie Butter loyalists, and an easy way to promote the product to anyone who’s been thinking of trying it. Nicely played, Trader Joe’s.)

Be Authentic

Example (of how NOT to tell your brand story): Fyre Festival

As marketers and business owners, there’s a sort of morbid fascination in dissecting the entire cycle behind the infamous Fyre Festival. Which is not entirely bad, because there’s a lot to learn from the ashes of it.

One of the best ways to understand the importance of valuing authenticity and honesty in your brand story is watching what happens when you don’t.

The foundations now-infamous Fyre Festival was built entirely on the captivating story they told their investors in a pitch deck and ticketholders on Instagram about the kind of experience they could create.

The pitch deck, promotional photoshoot, and video are on-point in messaging, and you can see why -- with the right hype team, in the right environment -- investors could be excited enough to pour in more than $20 million.

Yet, Business Insider pointed out the myriad exaggerations (and outright fabrications) that Fyre’s brand fable weaved to conjure up their capital. This included:

Wildly inflated attendee estimations

Listing big-name partners that were not involved with the venture (including Snapchat).

Stating they owned land in the Bahamas that they didn’t.

If you don’t know how this ends, the short version is a very public disaster unrolling in real-time on the days of the festival, a media circus, two separate documentaries about the fiasco, and jail time for the founder.

There you have an overview of brand storytelling and a run down on how to think about telling your brand's story.

What are your favorite examples of brand storytelling? Let us know in the comments!

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[orphans-forest-blog]

A Few Quick Tips to Help You Find the Best SEO Company

In our entire world SEO needs no introduction. Carrying away technical SEO for local research engines is really a comparable process. These aspects may involve websites content technique and its user relevance, SEO search engine optimization, length of time since on-line presence was established and more. A good starting point whenever using keywords for SEO will be to identify existing pages that will can use some optimization. You can review your page's SEO health, evaluate SEO metrics for a quantity of pages, and analyze each external and internal links upon any given web page. But, I'm quite certain that by the end associated with 2020, voice search will end up being very common, and you will have a lot of talks going on in the particular SEO world on how in order to optimize the content for any tone of voice search, similar how it's right now about mobile. But there is definitely another significant SEO trend through the rise of voice lookups. The brandname is powerful for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION even though it may not really be a specific ranking aspect.

On the similar note, great SEO articles needs keywords but if a person overdo it, Google and individual visitors will hate it. Seeking to keep a healthy keyword denseness of 1-2% is recommended. SEO is definitely optimizing digital documents for individuals who use search engines. Search engines has stated publicly they think brands” are good for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, as people trust them plus want to see them offered in search results. Even as we appear ahead to SEO in 2018, discover our predictions for exactly what we think will be a single of Google's biggest years however for search. Meta explanation plays a major role within search engine rank of your post so composing an SEO friendly meta explanation is essential for ranking element. SEO is not just about building search engine-friendly websites. When you're working on SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, you need to be conscious of the existing factors that will influence your ranking. We would certainly like to increase visibility, we all want it to show up in Lookup Engine Results Page (SERP), All of us should go with these alleged SEO techniques. Using his special connections in the business globe, he helps ecommerce brands develop their audience through influencers, inbound links, on-page search optimization and specialized SEO -- all rank their brands higher on Google. Whether or not we are talking site rate, personalized SEO, or even Google's RankBrain, we are still speaking about delivering the best feasible experience to the user. In the year 2018, the particular SEO marketers will change their own game and will definitely change their focus beyond the position and revenue issues. 1 SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION may target different kinds associated with search, including image search, video clip search, academic search, 2 information search, and industry-specific vertical lookup engines. From my perspective SEO people are going to have the harder time ranking this 12 months than last based on almost all the changes that are happening. I do find though that will Content is still king plus putting plenty of articles out that will hit your target market's lovely spot may be the way to proceed. Combined with the ever-changing research engine algorithms goes the ever-evolving search engine optimization (SEO) exercise. The use of tone of voice search technology is the cause why voice search SEO may be so popular in 2018. By perfect I not just mean SEO-wise but also content-wise like this article, so you keep people on your own site and also generate business from this. Send me a topic via email and I'll write something to suit your needs. Once you are into SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, Google Zero rank or amount one spot is basically the particular favorite location for everyone. As SEO guidelines evolve, the very unlikely ranking hack will be emerging. SEO helps to develop a great image for the website simply by creating blogs, adding to brand-new material and new site hyperlinks towards the website to create it remain active on various search platforms. Most people in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (myself included) divide keywords straight into three main categories: head, entire body and the (long) tail. A very essential SEO trend to know within 2018 is the mobile-first catalog. To avoid getting penalized and ensure that will a website is fully enhanced, these top SEO trends with regard to 2018 ought to be regarded. Being a good experienced SEO content writer, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION copywriter, copy writer, technical writer, reactive content writer, blog writer, Superb special interest in digital advertising. That means this increases user experience which increases SEO and rankings. Carrying out technical SEO with regard to local search engines is actually a similar process. In Local SEO, citations are referred to as mentions” of your local business on other websites and web pages. That getting said, if you want in order to increase your search ranking, and stay relevant and competitive in your own industry, then you have in order to stay abreast of the present SEO trends and techniques. SEOs will need in order to collaborate closely with designers plus developers to prioritize technical SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and usability search engine rank factors to gain a competing edge. And you can see the section on where you can use key words for more information on integrating these keywords into your SEO content strategy. According to a research conducted by BrightEdge, a innovator in SEO and content overall performance suggests that 57% of visitors as of now comes through smartphones and tablets. On the other hand, SEOs have to understand what our own customers are searching for after which create awesome, relevant, quality content material for them. Without quality links, your web page will probably not rank quite high in search, even if a person have excellent copy or make use of every other SEO ranking element out there. Within case your website is produced up of lower-quality doorway kind pages using old SEO-techniques (which more and more labelled since spam in 2018) then Search engines will not index all associated with the pages and your site ‘quality score' is probably heading to be negatively impacted. Voice search is another one particular of the latest trends within SEO that will be influencing search engine optimization in 2018. SEO is important because may make your website relevant in order to your keywords throughout the research engine ranking process and can lead to improved search motor ranking. Many spamming internet sites have the tendency to make use of such Black Hat SEO methods. From targeting the right keywords using Google Keyword Adviser to sharing valuable information- content material marketing was and will often be one of the most essential SEO trends for a lengthy time to come. Whilst classical techniques will continue in order to be effective, the SEO tendencies and tactics mentioned on this particular page can significantly change the particular way we perform search motor optimization. Content marketing and advertising is maturing and trying out there infographics and video marketing may just add value for your own SEO techniques. ⭐ One of the best strategies adopted by businesses nowadays is an SEO focused content material strategy. John - we have around one, 000 video podcast episodes, plus currently kicking off a repair of our own site specifically to enhance our SEO (we've decided really easier to rebuild than in order to try to fix our frankenstein monster).

Excellent rule in my SEO agency which usually i instill in all our clients which is ‘if a person want your business top associated with Google, it must DESERVE in order to rank top of Google'. At the same time, the growth of voice search and virtual assistants can become an ideal basis for your development of artificial intelligence systems as well as the promotion of those SEO strategies that take into account current trends. Within the below-mentioned write-up, I did drop my key word SEO” in the beginning by itself. Alexatmedia is an marketing agency with 5 years' encounter In E-Marketing Field, We are usually using that technology to enhance any kind of business plus help the business owners in order to be in the first of most them Competitors, Alexatmedia with the professional team had all the particular secrets to do this, using Interpersonal Media and search engine marketing (seo), web designs, web growth, mobile app designs, mail marketing”, Alexatmedia leading your business in order to the top. With regard to this post, we decided in order to include some top digital advertising blogs that aren't hard-core SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. She provides some awesome tips on SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION for voice search, including considering how people ask questions plus understanding local queries and purpose. In addition, when it comes to Nearby SEO, long-tail keywords become also more important. Nearby SEO will play a excellent role in mobile searches is definitely all about content. That's why optimizing your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION technique for voice search nowadays is of vital importance. To rest guaranteed that the right SEO Organization has been selected, the prior projects must be looked from. See the search positions of the projects on the particular top search engines. Adapting to tone of voice search in your SEO technique calls for careful attention in order to the keywords you try in order to rank for. In other words, content and hyperlinks will still be the creating blocks of SEO in 2018. From the above-mentioned information, crafting link-worthy content seemed in order to be the winning choice, since chosen by 35. 2% associated with the 100+ participants as properly as the close runner-up choice came out to become -- guest blogging on sites along with high Domain Authority for developing reliable backlinks gaining 30. 8%. Outreaching top influencers of the particular niche to write articles and insert links in this; bagged the support of twenty one. 3% of the SEO experts, whereas the option of damaged backlink although being highly efficient in white-hat SEO practices obtained the selection rate of twelve. 7% of the total sharers in the survey. Causing, new SEO trends of 2018 are evolved. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION today, particularly link building, is focused on relationships because ranking highly demands quality links from authoritative sites. Well right now there are more than enough affects of SEO but the almost all worth mentioning impacts of this are typically consisted of elevated website visibility, availability of natural traffic, rapid sales volume, prolonged return on investment (ROI), inexpensive business promotion and marketing, improved website exposure and awareness, long lasting business identity development, and competing edge over the other companies in the global marketplace. Power Suggestion: Like with a blog article, I've found that you obtain a slight video SEO increase by putting your keyword with the beginning of the name. The good news is definitely that there are plenty associated with excellent tools you can make use of to tackle SEO and get the data you need in order to improve your rankings. Once the post is drafted up, it's time for an SEO check always via Yoast (WordPress Plugin). There are usually many guides out there upon the web which can become found quite easy using Search engines as being a search tool to discover them, which will explain exactly how you can SEO your web site yourself "DIY". But more than time, SEOs have identified a few of the factors they think about when ranking a page. Another post of attention might be this one: nine Ways to Use Heatmaps in order to Improve Your SEO” Ways shown include to determine the perfect length of your articles plus its structure, to improve inner links, and to boost sales. It's a complicated and usually expensive process but, as along with social listening, the goal is definitely for SEO experts, business experts, and entrepreneurs to be capable to map how websites web page link to one another and extrapolate larger SEO trends and development opportunities. User encounter signals are a major SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION ranking factor once your content material reaches the very first web page of Google. Within short, content and links will certainly still be the foundation associated with SEO in 2018. To get more detailed details on the use of key phrases in your website visit SEOcious exactly where you will discover many various other important factors involved in obtaining your website in the best 10 listings on Google. In general, SEO had been created like a method of enhancing websites' search engine ranking outcomes. It will end up being difficult part for virtually any SEO man to implement the necessary methods in getting on search outcomes trough voice. Wish already seeing content strategies changeover away from keyword-stuffing, and I had created be prepared to see lots of SEOs going through their content in order to reevaluate just how much worth it actually holds for the particular user. Google's algorithm keeps a track associated with pages and sites that fulfill the user so this requires to be a primary worry for SEOs going forwards. Don't forget to write us in the comments section if you like our article on SEO trends in 2018 or have any questions regarding them. Google blogs have an tremendous advantage over any other SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION blog because, not only may they go directly to the original source, in most practical ways, these people ARE the source. A slow web site is bad not only for that end-user, it is also poor for SEO (search engine optimization), so we share some essential ways by which you may make your site load extremely fast. These types of SEO tactics could boomerang upon you and affect your rank on Google. We're the particular main one Stop for just about all your 2018 SEO marketing attempts, so get in touch along with one of our experienced professionals today and let's plan intended for a brighter future for the particular company. Even more significantly, the tool should give a person enough data points, guidance, plus recommendations to verify whether or even not that particular keyword, or even a related keyword or research phrase, is an SEO fight worth fighting (and, in that case, just how to win). The methods that were the simplest (reciprocal links or directory submissions) perform not work anymore, so the particular SEOs spend a lot associated with time trying different approaches. In my above illustration, the keyword that I utilized is best SEO agency within Manila The trick here is usually to use the site: lookup operator plus the keyword : e. g. site: best Times in Y” to generate focused discussion pages.

For instance, pictures to show that you simply got best position on Google's first web page for high competitive keywords might definitely help to talk regarding google search optimization (SEO) tool. More significantly, you can track exactly exactly how much traffic, leads, and clients you are getting via Nearby SEO and organic search visitors. Rankwatchโ€ A simple SEO Management Platform with geo-specific results allowing users to optimize their local SEO. On-Page SEO is the particular practice of optimizing various internet pages for high rank plus earning more relevant traffic looking engines. In 2018, SEO's need to answer this question: Would I actually be achieving this if search motors didn't exist? Google's mentioned mission has been to offer worth to users, and this furthermore lies at the core associated with great SEO. Showing up during these research features is critical for productive SEO in 2018. Businesses, therefore, ought to align their work frame plus campaigns that complement the most recent SEO updates If you are usually searching for optimizing your internet site that speaks the true vocabulary of internet marketing, call us We all will be there to help you.

When creating a web site for Google in 2018, a person really need to understand that will Google has a large associated with things it will mark websites down for, and that's generally old-school SEO tactics which are usually now classed as ‘webspam‘. White hat SEO's generally follow Google's quality guidelines. Google introduced local SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION as one of their methods some time back, but nevertheless many companies aren't embracing this particular requirement, meaning that they are usually losing out on valuable company on a daily basis. Using keyword-rich point SEO 2019 PDF for internal links is the clear sign of over-optimized web site or overly SEOed, and this will look just like this not naturally made smiley face. Voice search is one particular of the latest SEO developments in 2018. Consumer experience for SEO will turn out to be even more important in 2018. This could mean hyperlink acquisition, building mentions, utilizing the PR agency, building your brand name off site to have the positive effect on your web sites SEO.

Starting from what exactly is usually voice search and why will be it so important for your own online business, in this guidebook we will share with a person 10ย actionable tips on how in order to optimize your content for tone of voice search and various SEO strategies that can specifically assist this particular. Within 2018, SEO is content plus content is SEO, content is definitely digital and digital is content material. As with any kind of industry, it is our obligation to stay aware of any kind of emerging SEO trends so that will we can incorporate them directly into our strategies and be certain we are providing our customers with creative, industry-leading strategies plus business advice. For this reason, in general, the rule associated with thumb here is that, within order to win SEO”, a person want to rank #1 with regard to all of your keywords. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION stands for Seo. ” This particular is a significant process associated with generating traffic from the free of charge, organic, editorial and natural research results on search engines. This enables you to react quickly within case of unwanted new back links, and therefore avoid common SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION techniques like negative SEO episodes. SpyFu is the paid tool that uses eleven years of historical data in order to assist you find your competitors' most profitable keywords and the particular keywords they've employed for SEO plus ads. Hence, a person would not like to forget the importance of content marketing within your SEO strategy 2018. While that theory will be sound (when focused on a single page, when the intent is usually to deliver utility content in order to a Google user) using aged school SEO techniques on specifically a large site spread out there across many pages seems in order to amplify site quality problems, right after recent algorithm changes, and therefore this type of optimisation with out keeping an eye on general site quality is self-defeating within the long run. 1. I don't believe Google uses the content within the comments as an on-page SEO signal. That's why SEOs are usually starting to element in the objective behind each search query plus optimize the content and consumer experience accordingly. As Bing's Duane Forrester said, all SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Ranking signals revolve around content material of some kind” highlighting the particular impact good content has upon your internet site. Coming up with clean and unique ideas day within day out is incredibly difficult, however necessary to keep your own site not only relevant plus engaging for the audience, yet optimized for search engines such as google. Soon after this article focused around a major on-page SEO factors that will impact the search ecosystem was published by Google, a debate about prominent Offpage SEO trends that can disrupt the world of SEO in 2018 sparked in the industry. Nonetheless, auditing your competitors SEO gives you new ideas on how you can grow your local business, improve its SEO, target new keywords, and beat your competition in the process of doing so. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION involves communicating aboutness” in the specific context to both individual users and technology. Google Research Console is, slowly but definitely, getting better Google's getting the much more aggressive about producing rank tracking more difficult (some rank tracking folks I'm helpful with told me that Q4 2017 was particularly gut-punching), plus the SEO software field will be way, way more densely loaded with competitors than ever just before. In this post, we all would be talking about On-Page SEO and some of the very effective ways of boosting your ranks on Search Engines. Some Webmasters will pay 1000s of dollars to a so-called professional SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION expert to have their Sites on top within the search positions. Meta keywords would end up being the least priority in standing factors in SEO. The SEO Trends associated with 2018 are turning in order to impact approach on various other procedures related to Digital Marketing. These types of advanced SEO techniques might not really be the easiest to apply - they actually require even more effort than basic keyword study and link building - yet they are incredibly effective.

[burndownthehousetonight]

(Let’s finally get some baby shenanigens going up in here with @last-of-my-bloodline! (•̀ᴗ•́)و ̑̑)

Taking care of a newborn baby and all the messes that came with one was not fun. It was especially not fun for someone like Scourge.

Even if he didn't like the loud crying, there was one loud event he was completely excited for - New Years Eve. Despite how much he didn't enjoy it, those months flew by as the three juggled raising the same child together. And while the holiday season was a nice way to calm down and wrap up the year, the massive part of New Years was certainly a welcomed change of pace.

"When's the last time we got to go out and celebrate, huh?" Scourge said loudly.  He had one arm around Manic, who had Cassio strapped into a baby carrier around his chest. The three of them were currently with light outside of the city's main street, some small stands for New Years festivities and novelties had been set up. After local reconstruction was more or less completed, the townspeople seemed excited to go back to celebrating regular holidays.

“It has been some time since we last celebrated something, some of us maybe a little longer than others,” he said sheepishly as he had been glad to be able to leave the castle once again n’ take Cassio as well. “Though I wonder how we can celebrate this, as its Cassio’s first New Years?”

Shadow gave a chuckle as he knew there would be a lot of firsts for the child now that he was here. ”Maybe we should start simple?” He asked unsure of opinions, though he was sure fireworks would probably startle the baby.

Cassio didn't seem too concerned about some of the noises. Manic was occasionally bouncing the baby up and down in his arm or feeding him him his bottle. Being a parent seemed totally natural to him.

"Well, he ain't staying awake all night," Manic said as his son drank from the bottle. "Let's just mess around and see what nonsense is going on. Let's pick up some dumb novelties, show off the prince to everyone, let's have some fun!" But among the stands, there was one specific game he wasn't seeing. "I guess that game where you hit cakes with bats was just a local thing..."

"Doesn't mean we can't hit anything," Scourge grinned back. "You think he's strong enough to hold a bat yet?"

"Um, don't introduce him to mindless hedonism yet!" Manic said, play scolding Scourge. "Cassi, tell him off!" He turned so the baby was facing Scourge, babbling something or another.

Light chuckled softly as the oddball moment. “I’m sure it will find its way here in time, but we do have a pinata challenge here. The Riftwind have an odd thing where you choose one from the many n’ you never know what is inside. I recall my friends talking about a crystal necklace being found once, so it can be cheap or extremely expensive. Just an idea if you're in a smashing mood.”

The smashing mood line got both Scourge and Manic's attention. "Let's smash it up."

The stands were more handcrafted than the metal tents in Manic's old homecity, but these ones were clearly well crafted. The many pinatas were in a variety of basic shapes and colors, almost all with some kind of a picture on them. A sun, a windmill, a frog, a violin... none of the platantly unliscenced merchandise Manic was used to seeing, but charming in a more genuine way.

The spider running the both twirled a bat around in his arms in a showy way. "And what kind of pinata is the prince looking for?" He said, asking the baby directly.

It was easy to tell Cassio’s interest as his small hands reached out for a deep blue one with musical notes giving his excited sounds. Light chuckled. “Guess Cassi wants this one, right?” He spoke looking to Manic.

"Alright, baby, wanna destroy the blue orb of mystery?" Manic asked his son, bouncing him slightly in his carrier and eliciting a laugh from him. He faced the spider and nodded. With one arm, he positioned the blue pinata onto a small hook, and used another to offer the bat over. Manic stepped aside, letting Scourge take the wheel.

"Watch closely, buddy," Scourge said to the prince. He gave the bat a hard swing, immediately shattering the round pinata into a mess of blue tissue paper and cheap cardboard.

Light did find it cute when Cassio looked surprised momentarily from Scourge's actions, but it only lasted a moment before he was all squealing n’ chirpy all over again trying to grab at the paper bits fluttering down. “Heh, I’m sure he’s gonna come to remember this somehow,” he chuckled lightly.

His tiny hands managed to grab a few pieces of the dark blue paper, with him seemingly confused at what to do with them now that he had them.

The jewelry story was right. But instead of a fine crystal necklace, it was more a small bracelet with chunky round beads bad of some light purple stone on a cheap but strong string. It wasn't a bad novelty, but it definitely wasn't fine jewelry.

"How 'bout I keep this with me for now," Manic said, slipping the prize on his wrist, "until you don't want put it in your face." Manic held his arm near Cassio, who seemed interested in touching the light purple stones. "Come on, let's go find something else that's not gonna make Cassy cry or something!"

The problem wasn't a lack of activities the prince might have enjoyed. The problem was the phone call Light was about to receive.

“I’m sure that he’ll be alright with that.” He chuckled lightly as he looked to the tiny child he was enjoying the night before he jumped slightly when his phone went off. “Oh, what now?” Light said, picking it up to check. ‘n here I was hoping for a day to enjoy the holiday’ he thought.

It was a general internal number. If it was a specific adviser, it would have been a personal question. When the number was this impersonal, it was something serious.

"Your majesty?" They would hear from a familiar female voice. "This is Altitude. We've just received the analysis of the late doctor's weapon, we need you to return to the castle immediately for briefing."

Taking a sigh he looked to the two. “I get the feeling I can’t pass this off to my brother, can I?” He said before grumbling a bit in his native tongue. “Alright… I’ll be there.”

He then hung up the device. “Of all the timing for something I can’t make wait till later to come up…sorry Cassi, I gotta go do something. I just pray it don’t take too long, think you can look out for ‘em?” he asked his other n’ Scourge both. "Seriously?" Manic looked equal parts surprised and disgusted at this fact. "Man, didn't you take the evening off or summat, what's- Eh, they must be being snobs about something. Yeah, we can watch Cassi, sorry about that. Wave bye, little dude." Manic waved one of Cassio's arms for him. Scourge looked back at the king. "This that Fawlist dude again? Only he'd be that kind of ass..." “Altitude called, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Fawlist that forced the call knowing fully well that I wanted the holiday off from working,” he sighed as he turned to return to the castle, knowing his brother was waiting for him. “Make a note for me, Scourge. I need to teach that damned wolf to understand, I maybe younger than him, but I ain’t no damned dog to be called when he finds it convenient.” "I can tell him for you tonight." Scourge stretched his arms in front of him and cracked his knuckles. "You can also look after Cassio with me and not punch anyone's face in," Manic suggested, his tone making it clear it was not a choice. "We'll remind you, dude, don't worry." The walk back to the castle wasn't long, and Light was exercising better without the added baby weight. But it was a lonely walk, with most of the townspeople in the various celebration areas. There was only one person waiting in front of the castle. Shadow, who seemed to have been ushered out to wait for the king. Shadow was just as unpleased as Light was, but said nothing as he didn’t need to rile up the young king anymore than he was already. “Come on brother, they are inside waiting.”

With a sigh he nodded n’ walked inside the castle once more. “You know how this timing of yours is at the moment?” He said, not particularly angry at Altitude, but rather the others. "Yes, I understand, your majest- Light." Altitude was having trouble dropping the title. They were walking through the castle, into a meeting room far inside of the castle. "But it's an urgent matter. We've analyzed the weapon data and... ..." The actual weapon was on the table, disassembled and with clear tags for reassembly. Castle scientists had made quick work of analyzing the device, and a few stood in the room explaining complicated equations with bizarre symbols. Altitude seemed just as sorry as Shadow that Light was being called in. Whatever was going on, they were going to be there for just a little while. "Do you want a drink before going in there?" Altitude asked in apology and complete sincerity. “it would be nice, at least to take the stress off.” He sighed once more, trying to cool off for the moment.

Shadow nodded as well. “Who made the call to bring Light in? I know you wouldn’t do so unless it is of the most importance, n’ it couldn’t wait till morning?” "Fawlist," Altitude said bluntly as she reached into her pocket and pulled out a small flask, offering it over to the royals. "And- You aren't wrong. We'll be holding off on some technical details until tomorrow morning, but it is very important news." While the two took quick drinks of weak alcohol, she looked into the room, at the many scattered parts of the gun left laying around. What was she supposed to say, this was supposed to be their day out! "Is Ignis enjoying his day out?" She finally asked, her casual voice no different from her professional. “Alright, n’ yes he seems really hyper when I left, though I’m sure he’ll be asleep by midnight.” Light said with a light smile. Once he was ready, he walked inside the room. “What is the report that we need to be aware of?” "Light." The tapir greeted him, standing from his seat and walking towards him. "I'm very, very sorry to call you here again." He was accompanied by a mouse who had just been explaining some of the equations on the boards to some of the others. "The technology behind these weapons is build in a strange coding language," the mouse began, "and some of these components are so small, we had to analyze them under a microscope. It may be delicately built, but this weapon is worse than we've imagined. It doesn't just expel energy like some weapons, it magnifies the energy output from what a chaos gem can normally use." "He should know about Spotless." The familiar voice spoke up from nowhere, and Fawlist stood up from his seat behind the four. "The doctor was worse than ANYONE could have imagined." “Amplifying the gemstones power? This can not bode well for anyone standing against the Foxes that still stand against Light,” Shadow said, concerned as he looked to the device that was now in pieces.

Light looked to them. “Please continue, what all is there to be worried about at this moment?” He asked, staring at this machine. “They could go after Blackwave mines to search for raw chaos crystals to use wither these weapons, if there are truly others made.” "We can't tell if others are made," Fawlist began. He started to stand. even if he wasn't Light's favorite advisor, he was imposing enough that just a glance was enough to get everyone to hush. "The tentail who worked for Fiona knew more than we hoped." He began. "The kid spilled it all. Finitevus had a single Tentail that made the devices the doctor demanded. Spotless drone on about all the propaganda Finny gave 'em... he didn't even realize how wrong it all was." Fawlist huffed and threw his hands into his pockets. "The super weapon's a scaled-up cannon built around this tech right here, supposed to take about 7C of power to work. With this technology, that blast radius'd destroy about a kilometer of land minimum." Fawlist straightened his back. Sure, he'd always act tough and imposing, but he always had his little quirks that belied whenever he tried to cover up some sympathy... even sadness. "Spotless's body was covered in whip scars," he delivered gravely. "The tentails Finitevus is leading with are trying to avenge the fox king... the rest look like they're being forced into working. Spotless is terrified of them." Light sighed a bit as he rubbed his head. “Where is Spotless now?” he asked as he frowned a bit. “None of the tentails that suffered from the war wanted to go back into something revolving from it, n’ I don’t hate them for staying out of the mess…how many tentails are still intent on finishing what their king failed?” "According to Spotless, only three or four at most." The tapir chimed in with. "The boy is being kept in the prison infirmary. He's speaking to a therapist... whatever he was put through traumatized him greatly. You're going to have to make a final call on what we should do with Spotless. Poor kid's been handed a hard life, it almost makes you want to cry when you hear it all." There was one person crying at the moment, though. Cassio. As much as Scourge and Manic tried, the prince wasn't taking his bottle or pacifier, and some of the people in the streets were getting annoyed at the crying. "Alright, buddy friend pal, we'll make you happy, don't worry." Manic told him. The two darted off to the entrance of the main street and stood against a wall. "Think it's time we take him home," Scourge growled, ears lowered at the sound. "Maybe he misses seein' Light..." “I’ll need the first results of tests before I can make decisions on Spotless, but to know it's a few does ease my worries that it was most of them,“ he said, wondering which ones it was still after his fall. “Is it possible at the moment to speak with him or is he in no shape for that?” "He's in no shape to talk to anyone other than his therapist, and you're in no position to be with anyone other than your son!" Altitude almost pushed the king out the door. "The fox needs therapy and sleep, and you need to enjoy your son's first new years! You can talk with him in the morning." "He's a king, Attitude." Fawlist said from his seat. "He's in charge, he can talk to him if he wants. He shouldn't value sentiment over the safety of his country. Those are your words, Lucid." "I know they are," the tapir said. "But he is in control. Neither of you should be making final calls for the king. He should decide what's best." He didn't need to decide. From across the castle, just barely echoing far enough to be heard by his sensitive ears was Cassio's crying as his other father tried to calm him down by singing, to no avail. Fawlist leaned back. "Sounds like the kid's making the last call..." Looking off to where the crying was coming from, he gave a sheepish chuckle. “Well that didn’t go well…if you have some recorded medical records on Spotless, I’d at least like to see that to get a gist of what's gone on.” He said before looking to his brother. “I better go see whats going on with Cassi.” "The records aren't on hand, but we'll get them immediately," Altitude added. The crying seemed to cease, only to pick up again shortly after and get a collective mental groan from everyone in the room. With how piercingly loud Cassio's voice was, it was easy to find him through the castle halls. The cry commanded Light up the back stairs and towards the nursery. Scourge was leaning on the side wall and looking entirely annoyed at the crying sound. Manic was in the chair, shaking a rattle for his son. The flute on the wall, the plushes by his crib, most of his favorite things had been moved in their attempts to cheer up the prince. "Come on, little man." Manic said to Cassio before noticing Light. "I've changed your diaper like three times, can you calm down...? Oh my god, I'm so happy you're here." Manic said, looking just a little weary. "I think Cassi missed you." Giving a nervous chuckle, Light crouched down next to them. “I guess he’s not used to being separated from part of the family yet,“ he said lightly placing his hand gently on Cassio’s head catching his attention. “Something we may need to start working on bits at a time.” Cassio kept whimpering and crying at the touch, but he definitely started crying less at the sight of the king. Manic rocked the child back and forth, humming the same quiet melody to him again and again. "It's alright, buddy, he's here... Look, it's dad!" Manic held Cassio in both arms, offering him over to Light. He did seem to start calming down when he was with the king. Manic and Scourge exhaled heavily. They were used to him crying, just not crying that loud for that long. "Oh, dude, you should've seen it..." Manic tried to put on a happy tone. "He just looked down, and he had one of those new years pastry bun things in his hands... and we've got no clue where he got it!" He smiled and chuckled weakly. Cassio's cries were just about done and he was clutching to the king's fur. “So he’s got some sneaky fingers don’t he?” He said gently running his fingers over the tiny pups back, being mindful of his undersized wings. “He must have gotten scared when he realized I wasn’t there or something?”

When Cassi settled down, Light gave a soft chuckle at the squeaky yawn he made. ‘Cute’ he thought as he looked to Manic. “Sorry bout the mess…” "It's cool, Cassi's just playing primadonna." He motioned to Scourge, who reached down to the pile of toys by the crib and tossed Manic a small starfish-shaped plush. The child reached over and grabbed one of his arms with his small hands. "Let's get him some warm milk or something and see how he's feeling." The warmer was still warming, and Cassio let out another yawn. "Man, it's pretty late... Cassi should go to bed, but I don't want you to miss the holiday, but you'd both hate the fireworks... ..." “Cassio isn’t quite ready to see that yet anyways, n’ my brother suggested I try earplugs to deafen the sound some if not completely. I know they are an interesting sight to see…it's just the sound they give off scares me.” He said to Manic, looking to Cassi n’ checking on the milk for him. A light on the bottle warmer turned green, and the newly-warmed bottle was given to the child. Cassio started drinking from his bottle when Manic spoke up. "I think I've had enough loudness for like... ten years." Manic admitted. He didn't want to act old and complain about loud noise, but a crying baby was it's own kind of evil. "He can project his voice..." "I say bring it in." Scourge finally spoke up. "He's normally sleeping by now, anyways." "But-! But it's Light's first real holiday with him!" Manic said, motioning for the king. "He didn't get to be with him on Halloween! Or Thanksgiving! He's gotta stay up with him, right?" “Even if it's not the full time, I’ve still spent the new year with him, n’ there will be plenty more new holidays that Cassio will experience,“ Light replied calmly as he glanced up to Manic. “Things are still new to him n’ his sleep is needed…as is ours.” He leaned over n’ put a finger on Manic’s nose with an amused smile on his muzzle. Manic just stayed quiet and nodded, not knowing quite what he could say to that. He was technically write, and a much better person than Manic was with coming to terms with these things. Scourge snickered. "How the hell're you a Scourge?" He asked as he walked up to the king and gave him a condescending ruffle of his quills. "You're too damn understanding." Manic reached over and pushed Light's hand away. When he would look down, Cassio's eyes were already half lidded, and soon closed as he tried to sleep. Manic looked up and grinned at Light. "Alright... but you've gotta promise you're gonna see your son on... what's the next holiday, Valentines or summat? You're spending the next holiday with Cassio, okay?" He chuckled lightly as he looked up to Scourge. “I’m just a misfit among them is all,” he grinned up to Scourge before looking back to Manic. “It’s gonna be a weird holiday for him as he’s not old enough to understand the concept just yet, but I promise to spend a full holiday with him even if I have to tie n’ ballgag Fawlist to do that,” he impishly giggled before gently setting Cassio back into his bed n’ covering him up with his blanket n’ his teddy mouse. Manic turned on the baby monitor while he walked Light out of the room. Scourge stayed behind to pat Cassio's quills one more time before leaving and letting him sleep. There was usually a tense moment while Manic decided which of his lovers to spend the night with. This time wasn't any different, with Scourge leaving to the couple's room a few doors down. Manic flopped down on the bed while Light started preparing to sleep. "You need some people who like... aren't going to make you spend time away from Cassi," Manic told him. "You keep getting pilled away, dude. I know a lots going on right now, but... I want you to be there when he's learning stuff and seeing stuff, not just when he's crying." He shrugged and looked at the king. "Aren't you a king, dude? Can't you tell them you wanna stay with your kid for a moment?" “I am…but Fawlist thinks I’m just not quite ready for the task n’ keeps tabs on me a lot…I need to stand up to him more, yet I get nervous if I’d step way out of bounds for even my own ranking” He sighed slightly looking to the roof. “This is a pain if you ask me. Would it be considered jumping out of line by telling him that I wish for a day of peace with my own family?” "No!" Manic almost seemed disgusted he would ask that. "Dude, you aren't a slave to your country or whatever! Everyone takes days off, you've gotta take days off, too!" Light's walk over to the dresser looked week... almost pained. Manic stood up again and walked over to the king. The bags under his eyes looked even worse now, somehow. "Dude, you're been working yourself to death. What's going on?" Light sighed glancing back to where the baby was. ”I worry…about what the tentails are up to…the few that are still out for my head n’ what they may do not only to my people but their own as well.” He replied to Manic. Manic's expression went more serious. "Was that what you were called about?" He asked as gently as he could. He patted Light on the back for his comfort. "What do you mean you're worried about them hurting themselves? What's going on?" The couple stood still and did nothing for a moment, leaving an awkward, piercing silence. "I get Fawlist's a dick, but he's doing everything to stop the Tentails. That's why he's in charge of this stuff. I get it's terrifying... but you're doing everything you can, too. When you're already doing all that, you're totally allowed to stop thinking about it. Don't work yourself to death, okay?" He kissed Light on the cheek. "How about we plan, like... the day after tomorrow or something, you take the whole day off, and we just go to a park or something with prince whiny? You both want to see each other, dude." “Alright…I’m sorry I’ve worried you.” He said shyly “It would seem most of the tentails are innocent to this whole current mess…just a few remain that still hate my kind, n’ they apparently are torturing their own to get people to do their dirty work.“ He decided Manic needed to know what he learned. He only paused for a moment. "Yeah, it's a tragedy, dude." Manic told him. "But everything we learn gets up closer to an answer, right? Finny's gone, their big genius can't help them anymore. They're gonna screw up, and we're gonna get rid of the assholes, and we're gonna help the rest of them." The news struck Manic more than he would admit. "But it's too late to find solutions to massive issues. Besides, it's new year's eve. Even if it's been a crappy day, you should find a little happiness, right?" Manic comforted him, and smirked. "Hey, wasn't our first date a year ago?" Manic asked. "Crap... I should've bought you some kinda gift~" With a soft chuckle Light smiled again. “It would seem so, I’m sure you can give me something whenever you can,” he said in return before he kissed the other green hedgie. “Happy New Years Manic.” "And happy New Years, you royal dork." Manic teased, grinning and refraining from the usual goofy kiss. "I'll get you something in the morning, dude. But right now, your gift's like, getting to sleep through the night." Before he was finished talking, Light was already being walked towards the bed, and Manic maid sure he laid down the overworked king gently. "We're gonna fix everything," Manic assured him. "We've got a whole year to do it, dude." “I know…I just worry a lot it seems.” He said laying in bed. “Guess I’m a big worry wort these days.” Light sighed as he situated himself onto his pillow n’ curled up slightly, his worn out form feeling more so as he struggled to keep his eyes open. “I don’t mean to make you worry…I’ve never had so much trouble like this before.” Manic laid down next to Light and curled one arm around him for his comfort. "You've handled a war, a destroyed kingdom, and a forced pregnancy." Manic told him quietly. "You've been strong for years. You're allowed to be tired, dude." The back of Light's neck was nuzzled against. "Take some days off, see a therapist, cry it out, do what you need to. Just... take care of yourself, okay, babe?" Nodding once more, “I guess that would be wise…we’ll have a talk with Fawlist tomorrow about a new rule when I’m out with Cassi…” he said softly, just before he had fallen asleep from fatigue. The king needed a full night of sleep, and Manic was determined to make sure that he got it. He patted the king's back and gave him a kiss, before standing up and taking the baby monitor with him as he left down the hall. "The king hasn't slept right in a while," Manic said, putting the device down on the counter. It was still a castle guest room, but Manic and Scourge's stay made sure it was still at least a little messy. "So we're babysitting Cassi tonight." Scourge nodded at Manic, and motioned for him to lay down next to him. For once, the king slept peacefully. Slept peacefully he had, as Shadow threatened Fawlist if he interrupted the kings sleep the following morning he’d regret it. It wasn’t till he felt a tiny paw on his stomach that he stirred awake. “Hmm?…Oh morning Cassi, someone bring you in to wake me?” He mumbled with a sleepy chuckle, then looked around for a second to see whom had been Cassio’s bringer this morning. "Morning," Scourge said from one of the chairs in the room. Cassio was grabbing at his dad's fur and babbling. "Kid was crying 'til I took him in here, guess he wanted to see you." He clearly did want to see him. Maybe he wasn't capable of crawling yet, but he still tried to somehow grab onto Light with one of his tiny paws. "Um." Scourge seemed a little uncomfortable delivering the news. "They said they wanted to talk more about Spotless... should I tell 'em to piss off?" “They should let the therapist do their job 'n let Spotless settle down before we push him any further with details,” he replied before returning his gaze to the tiny pup babbling. “I think maybe seeing the files for now on what they discovered is still on the list, but I need to start thinking about spending a little more time with you guys n Cassi here.” "Careful about that," Scourge warned him with a grin. "Manic's been spending time seeing Cassi all night, and he's out cold right now. He was up so late changing diapers and shit, he didn't even make it to the room." Currently, Manic was curled up on the floor of the nursery, slumped onto the large piles of soft toys and snoring quietly. "I'll tell 'em to get that report crap," Scourge said. He patted Cassio on the head. "So where are you bringing the runt today?" Cassio looked up at Light's eyes, ruffling his tiny wings. “I’ll be mindful of this sort of thing, n’ thanks.” He smiled lightly as he lightly ran his hand over Cassio’s back, chuckling softly as he flapped his undersized wings. “It will be quite the day when your swings are finally big n’ strong enough to hold you in the air.” Cassio was lifted into the air by both hands, flapping his wings instinctively like he was trying to fly. Cassio's hands were flung out to either side, almost like they were for support. It looked like he was trying to actually fly right then and there, in spite of the size of his wings. The door slowly creaked open. Manic walked in clearly having just woken up and his quills more of a mess than usual. "G'morning... good morning, babe." Manic said. He laid down next to the king and motioned to hold Cassio for a bit. "You need to stop yelling all night, dude." Manic told him, bouncing him in the air slightly. Initial confusion turned into an amused smile at the weird, fun gesture. "How 'bout we get you out to the park today, buddy?" Manic told his son. He tilted his head at Light. "Like, all of us. You coming too, Light?" Giving a soft chuckle, he looked to Manic with a lighthearted smile. “If things go well I intend to,” he replied calmly then looked to Cassie. “I just hope when he starts flying he does better than I did, 'n not run into a tree ten times in a row.” Light laughed slightly knowing he’ll do great when the time comes. Manic was happy, but for a completely different reason. "Please, he's my son, too." Manic assured him, leaning over and smooching the king right on the forehead. "He'll run into them at least a dozen times straight." Cassi didn't seem to care about the tiny wings at the moment. He was happy being with two of his parents, and he was going to be happy at the park later that day. His love of live was warm and pure, and any concerns the parents might have had weren't going to be there for long. But little did they know, Cassi was going to fly soon enough. Much sooner than he ever should have, in fact...

[aion-rsa]

Archenemy: Glenn Howerton On Menacing Joe Manganiello

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As eager comic movie fans wait for Marvel to roll out Phase Four, or for Wonder Woman 1984 to hit HBO Max; RJLE Films has a superhero sleeper of its own coming to screens on Dec. 11. Adam Egypt Mortimer’s Archenemy is the story of Max Fist (Joe Manganiello), a one-person crime fighting phenomenon, now powerless and sent to our dimension to live on the streets. Though Max’s homeless life might be bleak and muted, the film is full of colorful and outrageous characters. The larger-than-life menace that looms over Max is “The Manager”. A mustachioed, golden blonde Glenn Howerton (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, A.P. Bio) brings this 21st century crime boss to life. Think of him as Michael Corleone, by way of Urban Outfitters.

Stepping into the shoes of an overbearing, take no prisoners, big bad is a new venture for Howerton. It didn’t deter him one bit though, as we learned in our exclusive talk with the actor about the difference between living with a character for 15 years (Dennis of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) to having to create a lifetime for one you only inhabit for a short shoot. What follows is our discussion with Glenn Howerton about bringing The Manager to life, and what it takes to create quality entertainment. Oh, and be sure to read Howerton’s thoughts on the Four Seasons Total Landscaping fiasco over here. 

DEN OF GEEK: It’s always nice to see you do pretty much anything but it’s great to see you as this fun, out-of-the-box kind of villain. 

GLENN HOWERTON: Thank you, I appreciate it. It’s so fun to play bad guys. I know every actor says that but it really is true, it’s just a chance to follow your worst impulses as a human being. It’s like you’re getting to exercise a part of yourself that you can’t in your normal life because you want to be a good person, hopefully.

Well I also feel like this is the kind of the character that you can also create a very large backstory for.

Yeah, for sure. I think it’s difficult when you get used to working in television because with a character, it would be easy to forget that the reason I know how to play Dennis so well (depending on how well you consider I play the character) is because I’ve gotten to live with this guy for 15 years. I also created the character, I wrote the character so I know that character inside and out. I know that if an improvisation were to break out I would know how to answer as Dennis. That’s how well I know the character, because I know how he would react in any situation. 

With a film, you don’t have that luxury. Knowing what makes him tick, knowing what his buttons are…you want to know all that stuff so when you show up to the set no matter what gets thrown at you, you can react in character. I didn’t want it to feel like something that I’d done before so I spent a lot of time talking to Adam Egypt Mortimer. We spent countless hours talking about the character and thinking about it myself and just going over it, and over it, and over it, and over it. Which is not something I normally do, but it’s also not something I normally need to do, because most of my work has been in television.

This is also the type of film where you need a certain confidence in the filmmaker, or it’s going to end up on an episode of Paul Scheer’s How Did This Get Made? What gave you that faith in Adam, for all this?

I had faith in Adam for multiple reasons. One, I’d seen the movie that he made right before this, Daniel Isn’t Real, and loved it. I just thought it was beautiful. It was really moving, and horrifying, and scary, and real, and worked on multiple levels. Then just sitting down with Adam and talking to him about this, I was like, “This guy has a vision for this.” The way he talked about the movie, the way he talked about shooting it, the way he saw the script, the way he saw the world, the way he described it – this guy has definitely got a vision for this. It might be really strange and it might be really odd, but I like really strange and odd things. I didn’t get the impression that there was any world in which it was going to be bad.

Adam’s still technically an up-and-coming filmmaker. So it must be nice to work with someone who is at the point where he could really take chances. 

I don’t understand where his confidence comes from. Because as you say, he doesn’t have a ton of films under his belt and we didn’t have a lot of time to shoot this movie, or a big budget to shoot this movie. 

As a matter of fact, I’ll give you a perfect example. The very first day that I showed up to set, we were supposed to shoot a scene where we pull up, and we grab Hamster (Skylan Brooks), and throw him in the car. Skylan was super, super sick, and couldn’t show up that day. But we couldn’t afford to lose a day of shooting. So Adam, that morning or late the night before, wrote a whole new scene for me and Amy Seimetz to do. 

If you’ve seen the movie it’s the scene where we’re sitting in the car, and we’re talking for a while and then at the end of that scene I go and bash Hamster on the head, and that was just Skylan’s stunt double. We had to conceive of something, pretty much in the moment. Then when we got the script on the day, Adam was like, “I don’t think this totally works,” and me and Amy sat and rewrote it. We really had to be on our toes. But I wouldn’t have been able to do that had I not known the character as well as I felt like I did.

We’ve seen you do action and something like a shootout before, but I’ve never seen you do it in such a smooth and kind of serious aspect. Do all those previous experiences meld into this or is it a different type of training you need to delve into?

I think it’s a product of a few things. I didn’t start out in comedy. I always did comedy, but I really started out down a much more dramatic path. So my approach to comedy has always been a little bit more like the Alec Baldwin approach. It’s really no less real when it’s funny, than when it’s a drama. It’s a really just a slight click of the dial one way or the other where that makes it funny, or serious. That can be kind of a thin line between the two. I’ve always come from a dramatic point of view like making the needs of the character, very, very real. It’s just that when you’re writing it or when the conceits of the character are so ridiculous, that’s what makes it funny – instead of doing some sort of goofy-ass performance. 

Then to kind of click over into drama – I mean it’s definitely challenging and it was definitely scary. I think the scariest thing for me in doing something this dramatic was the fact that I’m not a menacing person in real life at all. I’m 155 pounds and Joe Manganiello is 200 pounds of pure muscle, six-foot-four, and audiences have to be able to watch the movie and go, “Joe Manganiello’s character has to be scared of that guy.” Or at least within the world of crime…I’m a crime boss I have to be intimidating to other criminals. That was a little scary for me because I haven’t been asked to do anything like that in a long time, but it was fun. 

I gotta say, you definitely had the best running in a different direction while shooting behind you pose I’ve ever seen. It was very smooth.

That was one of those things where Adam asked me to do that and I was like, “Oh my god…” In my head it’s like I went back to being a kid and thought about watching you Die Hard or watching action movies and I was like, “Oh shit, I forgot I’ve always wanted to do that.” I’ve always wanted to do an action scene where I get to shoot a gun and run around doing action-y stuff. It was like playing and being a kid again. It was so, so fun.

During these pandemic times do you find yourself honing different skills like that on your own? Getting yourself ready for when things can return to normal.

I don’t know if other actors do this but I’m a little bit insane. When I read scripts, I often find myself acting them as multiple characters. Even if I’m watching a movie, and I’m by myself; I’ll pause and sort of take on the persona of the character. I’m getting very personal here, this is really nutty behavior for the average person. But as an actor, I really do kind of get off by climbing into the skin of somebody else and just getting to think a different way and behave a different way and I’ve always been obsessed with that ever since I was a kid. Just understanding the psychology behind how someone can behave the way they behave.

I talk about the pandemic as if the world seems to be shut down, but obviously you guys are still getting scripts and you’re still writing. For instance, has it led to any delays in the scripts for season 15 of Sunny?

No, it’s not, because Rob has been working on the second season of Mythic Quest. I’ve just been working on other things, developing other projects that I’m excited about, finishing a script that I’m writing with a writing partner. I’m mostly focusing on reading a lot and writing a lot and kind of studying the craft of screenwriting because I kind of fell into it. 

I certainly didn’t have any training but when I’m writing I want to live up to … I take what I do very seriously. I don’t take it for granted that I’ve been offered the privilege of being able to write scripts, so I want to be good at it. I want to know what I’m doing. I don’t want other screenwriters who actually studied and worked hard to become screenwriters to look at what I do and go, “This guy’s just kind of sailing through it.” I want to be educated.

I mean that’s the way to do it right? Even when you consider something like, for lack of better term; slapstick. Doing it right means having the training behind it.

There’s of course nothing wrong with being naturally talented at something. There are a lot of naturally gifted actors who can just kind of do it. Or for whatever reason they’re just good at it. They didn’t have to go to Juilliard to get good at acting. 

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That was Brando’s thing, right?

Yeah, and there’s nothing wrong with that. What I do have a problem with is if there’s a sort of an inability to acknowledge that it might be easy for you but it’s not just because the craft of acting is easy. I would also argue that you might be an extraordinarily gifted actor naturally without training, but you’re probably only good at one thing. You might be able to be really good at writing comedy but if you haven’t studied the art of screenwriting, you’re probably not going to be able to write a drama. Whatever you lack in terms of your knowledge of structure, you might be able to make up for a lot of that if you’re super super funny and you can write a comedy, but you won’t be able to do that if you’re writing something else. I like to do a wide variety of things. I like to write screenplays, I like to write TV, I like to work in drama and comedy. I like to work in a lot of different genres; so it keeps me on my toes.

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[gallyg]

Extended Thoughts on Breath of the Wild (spoilers below the cut)

Breath of the Wild simultaneously feels like an idealized distillation of what Zelda is all about, and a very un-Zelda-like experience. The resulting experience feels both nostalgically celebratory, but also unfettered by traditions that don’t benefit the experience. I went into the game with some degree of cynicism, as I don’t care for survival mechanics and the game seemed to be drifting further and further from a formula that I basically liked as a Zelda fan, but I was pleasantly surprised on both ends.

Perhaps I would have known  more about what the survival mechanics in Breath of the Wild were going to entail if I had paid more attention to the pre-release information, but I was trying to stay away from it since I am a doormat for Aonuma and will buy the game anyway, even if I thought it'd be bad, just to keep up on what's going on with the franchise. Or maybe it was never clear. Either way, I don't really care for the idea of having to hunt for food to feed myself because I get hungry. I was relieved to discover that there isn't actually a hunger mechanic. You hunt for healing items or elixir ingredients, but you only need to cook them if you want to heal yourself or create a potion to give you specific buffs. Cooking is a rather tedious, boring process, but at least you only need to do it on occasion to stock up on healing items and elixirs. You can even just eat the fruits and meats raw for a small heal if you don't want to cook anything.

The interesting consequence of this is that you don't have straight-up hearts to collect anymore. Grass drops almost nothing in this game and monsters only drop cooking and crafting material. This is part of a trend Zelda has been on lately with cutting out random consumable drops like arrows and bombs. It all started when Twilight Princess decided not to have random bomb drops, and it comes to a head now when enemies only kind of have random arrow drops if they had a bow and arrow. This makes me curious what exactly the "hard mode" DLC they have planned for Breath of the Wild will entail. Hero Mode is the recent Zelda standard hard mode, and its main feature is the lack of heart drops. The only difference here would be increased enemy health and damage, which really just makes the game more annoying than hard. Here's hoping for more of a Master Quest approach to the game's difficulty, as the puzzles in Breath of the Wild are significantly less demanding than the combat.

This leads me to the other big part of Breath of the Wild's survival mechanics: weapon degradation. The Master Sword is the only weapon you have that won't break, and even it will need to recharge every once in a while. Everything else? Shit breaks after a few skirmishes, at best. If you're fighting a stronger enemy like a Guardian or a Lynel, you will often have to burn through two or three swords just to take a single enemy down. This is substantially more annoying than the cooking, as it is an omnipresent fact that every single weapon you find that you like is either going to be relegated to "too good to use" territory or be quickly disposed of, as there isn't even a way to repair damaged weapons in this game, as far as I could find, anyway.

This is a small annoyance that never really stopped nagging at me, but it is basically the only negative to this game's combat. Wind Waker gave the combat a more fluid feeling, and Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword gave you more ways to act in combat, but the core issue of enemies being weak and passive has only ever been slightly addressed. In Breath of the Wild, running from a fight is not an easy get-out-of-jail-free option, because enemies tend to be quite aggressive in chasing you down. Rushing headfirst into battle is also not a mindless exercise in button mashing on most enemies, because the monsters of this game actually attack when you'd expect something trying to kill you would. Nothing like Twilight Princess's bokoblins dancing and screeching an inch from your face for thirty seconds before finally doing a half-heart attack. The enemies in this game will mess you up if you let your guard down. If you decide to invest in stamina over hearts in the early game, you can find yourself regularly getting one-shot by normal monsters. I think this change is especially welcome in The Breath of the Wild, as it does make the more substantial resource management of its survival mechanics feel more relevant.

I mentioned earlier that the puzzles were a bit easier than the combat, and while I stand by that, I don't want that to come across as a slight against the puzzles, because the puzzle design of this game is absolutely brilliant. This game takes full advantage of its systems when it comes to the puzzles. While you might find a Sheikah shrine that clearly wants you to use all your abilities to move some blocks in such a way that they stay in place and finish an electrical current, you can also just throw all your metal weapons at the circuit to make the connection. You might be expected to use stasis to launch an object at a button across a long body of water, but you can also just build yourself a little bridge with ice blocks, three at a time, until you can push the button yourself. You might be expected to manipulate the room geometry to carefully maneuver yourself higher up, but you can also just use your high jump if you've already completed the dungeon that gives you that. This all technically makes the puzzles "easier", and even the intended solutions tend to be pretty straight-forward, but the way you are allowed to experiment and abuse all the games mechanics to achieve success makes for a great system of player expression. Or to put it less pretentiously, it's fun.

All in all, I like the exploration in Breath of the Wild. It's freedom from the moment you finish the tutorial, and there's always more to find. My only complaint really is that the visuals can get a bit boring. The vast majority of the overworld feels the same with the repeating theme of fields and trees and mountain ranges. There's a few areas that are a bit different, of course, but it's mostly just the dungeon quests around those aesthetics, so most of the exploring still happens in that eternal green field. Fun to traverse, rewarded with finding tons of shrines with interesting puzzles, not a whole lot to look at while you're doing it.

I've heard people complain about the enemy variety, and I do think it makes the world feel a bit bland when combined with the above point, but I think it's made up for to some extent by how many references to the rest of the series there are. Nothing to Spirit Tracks, sadly, but Phantom Hourglass's cast has some islands named after them, Tingle's brothers get some islands, Koholint gets a mountain, Fi gets alluded to, the Wind Waker races are back, even Minish Cap gets a shoutout. And of course, Ocarina of Time gets referenced plenty because of Ocarina of Time privilege.

I am a timeline theorist, so the fact that all these references seem contradictory is exciting to me. It's been a long time since Hyrule Historia and we haven't really had a game that muddied the timeline since then. The Sheikah, Rito, and Zora all co-existing in healthy numbers like they do here makes no sense, even if we grant that every name on the map is just a coincidence. It's fun to think about, and the general conclusion I've come to is that if it is meant to make any literal sense, the Hyrule Historia timeline is useless in discerning that sense. Aonuma even confessed that the timeline he works off of changes to suit the purposes of whatever game they're currently developing. Three games and six years have passed since Hyrule Historia. The timeline they work off of has definitely changed as well. And that's even ignoring my general opinion that the authorial intent does not matter when it comes to theorizing.

That's just speaking literally, though. What the game feels like, to me, is the metaphorical resolution of the Zelda series. The last major game introduced the concept of Demise's spirit and felt like the true origin of the legend. This game features Calamity Ganon, an ethereal spirit/eldritch horror that feels like a spirit that has put up with dozens of lifetimes and thousands of years of anger and frustration. It has degraded into a horrific form, a return to that force of nature Demise was before being reincarnated as Ganondorf so many times. You are not fighting a man or a beast, you are fighting hatred and malice incarnate. This combined with the inclusion of may beloved elements from all the games, timeline coherence be damned, makes me believe that this game is meant to be the definitive end of the story, not just of the adult, child, or downfall timeline, but to Zelda as a whole.

Or maybe it's just after Adventure of Link, I donno.

Random Thoughts:

The Koroks in this game are tear-wrenchingly adorable in this game. Only the ones in the forest, though. The Koroks in the overworld don’t have any unique character or dialogue.

I played this game with my girlfriend and she put forth the amazing idea of having to find replacement Champions for the Divine Beasts as an alternate version of the story. Riju pilots Vah Naboris, Teba pilots Vah Medoh, Yunobo pilots Vah Radunia, and Sidon pilots Vah Ruta. I love this idea and consequently hate that they just had ghosts pilot the Divine Beasts instead.

Remember not that long ago when Twilight Princess, Phantom Hourglass, and Spirit Tracks made it seem like we were headed toward a Steampunk aesthetic? Funny how the somewhat cybertech aesthetic of the Twili are what seems to have stuck around more, with Fi being basically a robot, Skyward Sword having literal robots, and now this game straight up just giving Link an iPad.

So the magic meter is never coming back, right? Right. Damn shame. I don’t like the stamina meter as much.

Much as I enjoy the more open games, I do hope that we eventually see more linear Zelda games. I love the more structured take on things as well. Both of the last two mainline games opted to give you every relevant item from the start over the traditional approach of gaining items throughout the game to unlock the ability to get to new places, which as a Metroid fan I love. Even if it is technically less freedom, it feels more rewarding because when you get somewhere and beat the challenges there, your prize is basically more ability to explore the world.

People complain that this game had no good music but Stone Talus is right here:

[topfygad]

Top 20 Best Things to Do in North Island of New Zealand – I am Aileen

New Zealand is a coveted vacation spot by many and within the two most important landmasses that comprise it, it’s no information that the South Island (Te Waipounamu) sometimes steals a lot of the vacationers’ consideration — nevertheless, there are a number of superb issues to do in North Island (Te Ika-a-Māui) that everybody ought to NOT miss out on too!

Actually, aside from the standard elegant mixture of forests and mountains, the North Island is very recognized for its wild surf seashores (notably on the west coast and Coromandel Peninsula), geothermal exercise (as per Taupo and Rotorua’s wonders), cultural focus (provided that the Māori are primarily concentrated there), and LOTR origin (consider the well-known Hobbiton and Weta Workshop).

Clearly, there are an array of spectacular actions you could verify off of your bucket record right here. Actually, to make it an entire lot simpler for you, I’ve listed under the highest must-do’s and must-see’s on your New Zealand journey within the North Island! The most effective half…? You are able to do most of those epic actions if you happen to be a part of a street journey journey with Wild Kiwi!

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The place to Keep in North Island?

High photograph of Whangarei Falls from Shutterstock.com .

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Issues to Do in North Island

#1 – Have some ocean enjoyable

Cathedral Cove from Shutterstock.com Pristine seashores, legendary surf, and rugged cliffs — North Island’s shoreline is the right place to chill out or catch some waves!

Auckland: Known as because the “Metropolis of Sails”, you shouldn’t go away this hub with out exploring its coast and close by islands — from the famed Rangitoto Volcano to the plush Waiheke Island. In any other case, you’ll be able to frolic across the black sand seashores of Karekare and Muriwai, after which pop over to Piha to surf and discover Lion Rock. For those who’re fairly in search of a crusing expertise, you are able to do a harbour cruise tour or higher but, get a style of what it’s wish to yacht race in a single the world’s most prestigirous crusing regata. .

Bay of Islands: With over 140 subtropical islands in its enclave, this can be a nice vacation spot in the summertime because it is filled with hidden seashores and nice terrains. Begin your journey from the ocean port of Russells which is the primary everlasting European settlement in New Zealand as you discover historic buildings and promenades. Afterwards, a number of the issues you will need to see on this group of islands are Urupukapuka Island and Rainbow Warrior (shipwreck in Matauri Bay). TIP: Wanna journey with ease? E book a tour to the Bay of Islands and Waitangi right here. .

Coromandel Peninsula: This pure surprise has two prime highlights…

Sizzling Water Seashore at Mercury Bay = This place is exclusive for its underground geothermal scorching springs that may simply be ‘accessed’ by digging by the sand as a result of it’s then that the recent water escapes by the floor — thereby forming considerably of a scorching water pool for guests.

Cathedral Cove (Te Whanganui-A-Hei) Marine Reserve = With its lovely white sand, turquoise waters and towering rock formations, this place is kind of a sight! I guarantee you that the hike to this cove is well worth the effort; in addition to, the pathway right here that’s well-known for being the opening scene from the film Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. .

Raglan: This small coastal city is legendary for its general surf tradition and its black sands in Ngarunui Seashore. As one of many world’ longest left-hand surf break, will probably be fairly an expertise to surf right here! .

#2 – Expertise pure spas

Photograph by Polynesian Spa The place to be is in Rotorua given its distinctive geothermal exercise which steams up from nearly wherever: from the city’s pavements, the geyser fields, the mud swimming pools and the recent springs. As such, it is best to reap the benefits of this thermal expertise by visiting the next…

Polynesian Spa: Voted as one of many world’s prime 10 spas, this lakeside institution is famend for its therapeutic waters and decadent therapies for the reason that 1800s. Principally, waters from two pure springs are fed into their 28 scorching mineral swimming pools, so there’s lots to go round for everybody! (See their web site right here). .

Hell’s Gate: For a distinct expertise, Hell’s Gate is finest recognized for its mud baths and sulphurous spas, as harking back to the showering and sweetness therapies practised by the Maori folks. If I’ll share a tip, comply with it up with a standard Maori ‘Miri Miri’ therapeutic massage that they’ve. (E book your rest retreat right here).

TIP: You would additionally uncover thermal swimming pools to wash in on the forest of Kerosene Creek or on the ‘scorching water seashore’ of Lake Tarawera.

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#3 – Attempt white water rafting

It is a good thing to do with your loved ones or pals when in Rotorua’s Kaituna River! That is really one of many issues to do in North Island that I made positive to verify and it absolutely turned out to be a unprecedented expertise!

We went by steep native bush canyons and over 14 rapids and three waterfalls, together with the world-renowned 7-meter Tutea Falls which is the ‘Highest Commercially Rafted Waterfall within the World’! Fact be instructed, this was my first white water rafting exercise of all time and it was completely a fantastic first. (Finest to e book this with Kaitiaki).

TIP: One other place the place you are able to do that is in Tongariro River close to Taupō.

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#4 – Go to breweries, wineries & vineyards

Not lots of people know this however New Zealand doesn’t solely have nice wine however additionally nice beer! The most effective place for this within the North Island must be the premier wine area of Hawke’s Bay which has been usually known as because the ‘Wine Nation’. So for starters, go loopy on the purple and white wines there — however extra so on the purple for the reason that area is a number one producer of full-bodied purple wines. In the case of beer, be aware of the craft beer of Hawkes Bay Brewing Co. in Napier.

In case you’ll be able to’t go to Hawke’s Bay, try the excursions under which might be held close to the most important cities of the North Island:

#5 – Go up excessive

Because the land of journey and breathtaking landscapes, admiring New Zealand from up excessive is a MUST in your issues to do in North Island!

Sky diving: Dive with highly-trained tandem skydiving instructors and free fall from hundreds of ft within the air — it’s positive to be an expertise that can go away you speechless (and also you’ll even get to go residence with bragging rights!). For this, I counsel doing it both in Auckland or Taupo within the North Island. .

Sky Stroll: Get the very best vantage level of Auckland metropolis from the 192-meter Sky Tower, the best constructing in New Zealand! (To e book your spot, go right here). On this expertise, you’ll principally stroll on a 1-meter vast platform with no handrails, however with a security harness in fact. Whilst you stroll 360 levels round this tower, you’ll get to cease at numerous factors to have your photograph taken, study extra of Auckland’s historical past, in addition to lean over the sting. .

#6 – Go soar

Photograph from Taupo Bungy Do you know that New Zealand invented bungy leaping? …Effectively okay, technically, folks in Oceania have been leaping from tall towers for hundreds of years — BUT, it was a bunch of Kiwis who commercialized bungee / bungy leaping within the 1980’s, and as you realize, the remainder is historical past. Given this truth, will probably be a blast to problem your fears and do a bungy soar within the nation that began all of it. For the very best locations, see under…

#7 – Go quick

Photograph by Huka Falls Jet There are numerous issues to do in North Island that can allow you to undergo a quick and thrilling expertise…

Luge: Considerably of a mixture between a go-kart (with out the engine) and a toboggan (with out the snow), Rotorua’s “Luge” is a enjoyable and fast-paced journey exercise that’s nice for folks of all ages! I loved this a lot and lots of people even say that this place is best than the Luge exercise present in South Island’s Queenstown, so go and provides this a attempt! .

Jet Boat: That is an adrenaline-pumping exercise that was invented by New Zealand. So if you happen to like velocity, spins, and thrills mixed with marvelous water surroundings, happening a jet boating exercise might be price your whereas! I’ve gone by this expertise myself with Hukafalls Jet in Taupo and it was a great deal of enjoyable! .

Zorb: Additionally known as as ‘globe using’, zorbing entails rolling down a hill inside an enormous inflatable ball. Invented in 1994 in New Zealand, this has turn out to be one of many ‘must-do’ actions when within the nation and it usually offers you the possibility to decide on the type of path that you just’ll undergo — could or not it’s zigzag or straight! .

#8 – Kayaking

There are numerous kayaking alternatives within the North Island whereby you’ll be able to rise up shut with the character’s spectacular coastal formations in clear subtropical waters. A few of the finest locations to do it are in Auckland, Bay of Islands, Lake Taupo,and Lake Rotoiti (Tasman) amongst many others.

…Higher but, if you happen to ever sight a physique of water, search for the closest kayaking store to lease some for you and your loved ones and pals! .

#9 – Chase After Waterfalls & Lakes

Whangarei Falls from Shutterstock.com With New Zealand’s majestic pure terrain, there may be at all times a beautiful waterfall or lake close by — wherever chances are you’ll be. A few of the notable ones might be…

Lake Taupo: It is a breathtaking lake that’s really the caldera of the Taupo Volcano. As the most important lake by floor space in New Zealand, one of many well-liked issues to do right here apart from kayaking is crusing with the intention to take pleasure in its waters or to go fishing. Plus, one spectacular stopover on your issues to do in North Island would be the iconic Mine Bay Maori Rock Carvings which is made up of a number of particular person carvings that every has its personal story and that means. .

Bridal Veil “Waireinga” Falls: Present in Pakoka River in Waikato space, this plunge waterfall is 55 meters excessive and with its energy, it has fashioned a big pool at its base over time. .

Whangarei Falls: Arguably essentially the most photogenic waterfall in New Zealand, this 26-meter watefall has ample walkways round and alongside the river and is a well-liked picnic spot since th 80s. .

Huka Falls: This highly effective but astonishing set of bluish waterfalls on the Waikato River drains onwards to Lake Taupo. It’s stated that per second, the quantity of water flowing by it usually approaches 220,000 liters! For a unprecedented expertise, don’t overlook to attempt jet boating with Hukafalls Jet right here! .

Lake Waikaremoana: Positioned in Te Urewera, you can see right here considered one of New Zealand’s 9 “Nice Walks” which is the Lake Waikaremoana monitor that entails a Three to 4-day tramping (vigorous strolling). This roughly follows half of the lake’s circumference as you undergo a pristine rainforest, wetlands, valleys of mist, waterfalls, rivers, and a magical ‘goblin forest’. .

#10 – Biking

For those who’re into biking, irrespective of if you happen to’re a newbie or not, New Zealand is a good place to do it in — relaxation assured, there are many rental suppliers that yow will discover throughout your keep. To start out off, there are a number of “Nice Rides” in Nga Haerenga (“The Journeys”) path to select from for each age and talent and a number of the locations to do it in are in…

Hawke’s Bay Trails

Rimutaka Cycle Path

Nice Lake Path

For an entire record, see right here.

#11 – Witness Maōri Tradition

Powhiri ceremony photograph by Graeme Murray The Māori are the indigenous Polynesian folks of New Zealand and Rotorua in addition to its surrounding cities arguably has the best focus of Māori villages.

With that in thoughts, it’s a should to go to not less than a type of villages with the intention to immerse your self with the historical past and customs of the Maori folks — a tradition that the nation is very happy with. I visited the most effective villages, Tamaki Maori Village, and a number of the many superb issues that you just’ll expertise and which I personally cherished was witnessing the grand pōwhiri (welcoming ceremony with waka or warrior canoe), practising hongi (conventional greeting through which folks press their noses collectively), seeing the highly effective haka (conventional conflict cry), studying in regards to the Maori historical past, partaking in a hangi (conventional Maori feast), and extra!

Another villages that you could possibly additionally verify are…

Mitai Maori Village: Fairly just like Tamaki Maori Village whereby the expertise is completed in a pure bush setting and the welcoming ceremony (powhiri) is completed with an historical warrior canoe (waka). To e book, go right here — in any other case, you may also purchase a bundled ticket the place additionally, you will enter the Rainbow Springs in Rotorua (a compact zoo with a kiwi hatchery and interactive animal encounters). .

Te Puia: The performances on this village are carried out in a contemporary makeshift constructing (in contrast to Tamaki and Mitai whereby it’s carried out within the bush or forest), however the distinctive factor about this place is that apart from the Kiwi Home (the place you’ll be able to witness the elusive kiwi), you may also marvel on the geothermal wonders which might be unfold over its 60 hectares of land, together with the well-known Pohutu Geyser which is the Southern Hemispheres largest lively geyser. In your immersion, you’ll be able to select both a day or evening expertise (however I personally advocate the evening portion since you’ll be able to take pleasure in all the pieces below the starry sky). .

#12 – Do metropolis/city excursions and stops

Throughout your entire journey, the next excursions and stops needs to be excessive in your issues to do in North Island…

Auckland Metropolis Highlights

Auckland Harbour Cruise

Wellington Shoreline Tour

Wellington Te Papa Museum Tour

Feilding: A relentless winner for being known as because the nation’s ‘Most Lovely City’ given its beatiful Edwardian structure, boutique buying and rural appeal.

Napier: Common for its beautifully-preserved 1930s structure of art-deco buildings.

Raglan: An excellent coastal group with a ‘boho’ vibe. It additionally gives the very best browsing within the nation.

Russell in Bay of Islands: The primary everlasting European settlement in New Zealand.

Te Mata Peak close to Hastings metropolis: A picturesque peak providing views over the Heretaunga Plains, Hawke’s Bay and Napier.

Whakatane: Present in Bay of A lot, it’s often known as being New Zealand’s ‘Sunshine Capital’. .

#13 – Go to Center-earth

For the ‘Lord of the Rings’ and ‘The Hobbit‘ film followers like me, a visit to New Zealand is your once-in-a-lifetime probability to enterprise off into your personal Center-earth journey! The excellent news? Most of it’s discovered within the North Island. The highest two locations for you’ll be…

Hobbiton Film Set: That is the well-known 12-acre film set of the enduring village of the Shire. As a customer, you’ll be guided by a two-hour strolling tour to the totally different hobbit gap homes (e.g. Sam and Frodo’s home) and different quintessential landmarks just like the Mill and the Inexperienced Dragon Inn (the place you may also seize a complimentary drink that’s brewed solely in Hobbiton!) TIP: For those who’re up for it, you may get a packaged tour the place you not solely get to go to Hobbiton but in addition the Waitomo Caves from Auckland. .

Weta Workshop: That is the place you get the unique ‘behind-the-scenes’ tour on the workshop of the inventive geniuses who’re behind the movies of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, District 9, King Kong, The Chronicles of Narnia and extra! All through the expertise, you’ll be up shut with all of the props, armor and automobiles created for the aforementioned movies and to cap it off, you’ll cease by the Weta Cave store the place there’s a mini museum, collectibles and film merchandise for all of the followers on the market. (For this you’ll be able to select a day tour or an prolonged night tour with the start line being in Wellington). TRIVIA: The co-owners of Weta are Peter Jackson, Richard Taylor, Tania Rodger and Jamie Selkirk.

TIP: For a fuller expertise, you’ll be able to partake on this half or full day Lord of the Rings tour that explores the movie units throughout Wellington metropolis, together with the Shire, Rivendell, Isengard and the Nice River Anduin. It would additionally cease over at Weta and capped off with an orc-sized LOTR-themed lunch on the Scorch-O-Rama cafe.

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#14 – Watch a rugby recreation

All Blacks doing Haka from Shutterstock.com For those who’re mad for rugby just like the Kiwis — most particularly to their beloved ‘All Blacks’ nationwide staff (who I first found by watching a viral video of their highly effective ‘Ka Mate’ haka efficiency) — then, there is no such thing as a higher place to indulge on this affair than to observe a recreation of the All Blacks of their residence floor which is in Eden Park in Auckland!

For a nationwide recreation, costs are normally between NZ$20 to $30 per individual, whereas worldwide video games are about NZ$60 to $150, relying on the place you select to take a seat. .

#15 – Eat, eat, eat!

New Zealand’s delicacies is essentially influenced by America, Europe and Southeast Asia and closely-related to Australia. Whereas Maori delicacies is a distinct factor altogether; however to provide you an thought, under is a listing of meals that you will need to attempt!

Afghans: Crunchy chocolate cookies

Crayfish: For those who’re from the Philippines like me, shelling out about NZ$80 is perhaps overkill, however New Zealand fishermen delight themselves when catching this so give it a attempt!

Fish and chips: This won’t be an authentic of New Zealand however it’s an important a part of the native meals

Hangi: You possibly can finest do that conventional Maori cooking methodology if you happen to be a part of one of many Maori cultural village excursions

Hokey Pokey: A vanilla ice cream blended with caramelized sugar

L&P (Lemon & Paeroa): It is a softdrink that’s proudly made by Kiwis. I’m not into softdrinks however I really like this for its candy lemony style

Lamb: This meat is cheaper within the nation — in any case, the sheep inhabitants is bigger than New Zealand’s human inhabitants!

Manuka honey: You’ll discover a number of issues in New Zealand blended with this and it is sensible to convey residence a jar as a memento too

Paua: A big sea snail that’s eaten uncooked, fried, and so on. (The shell of this snail is gorgeous, by the way in which!)

Pavlova: I’m in LOVE with this meringue dessert which has a crispy outer layer and mushy internal core

Meat or mince pie: Kiwis love their mince pies and that is principally a pastry stuffed with meat and gravy

Tuatua: Consuming this sort of shellfish is believed to be a Maori custom

Whitebait fritter: A type of omelette blended with small juvenile fish

Wine and cheese: New Zealand has a fantastic wine area and for the very best indulgement, pair a fruity purple wine with cheddar cheese .

#16 – Go climbing or trekking / tramping

Tongariro Nationwide Park from Shutterstock.com Select from any of the next…

Any of the “Nice Walks”: See the whole record right here.

Wanna trek by Mordor? Verify the Tongariro Alpine Crossing in Tongariro Nationwide Park.

Do the Cape Brett Walkway: It is a difficult but rewarding coastal hike within the Bay of Islands.

Coromandel Coastal Stroll: Meanders by forests and offers nice sights over Coromandel Pinnacles, Nice Barrier Island, Port Charles and Cuvier Island. .

#17 – Climb mountains and summits

Mount Ruapehu from Shutterstock.com Key choices could be…

Go to mountains:

Mount Ruapehu:That is the best mountain within the North Island, and although it’s an ative vlvano, it’s loved by a number of hikers, skiers and snowboarders.

Mount Taranaki: The 2nd highest mountain in North Island. Climbing that is fairly laborious however the views from up excessive might be price it.

Mount Taranaki: Additionally known as as Mount Egmont, that is an lively volcano which is alleged to be essentially the most completely fashioned within the nation. Climbing its prime ought to solely be tried in good climate and by skilled trampers — with good climate being from February to mid-April. (For extra data, go right here). .

Go up Rangitoto Summit: An Auckland icon, this grants nice panoramic views of the cityscape as you undergo lava fields and forests. .

#18 – Marvel at glow worms and discover caves

Photograph by Waitomo Glowworm Cave Waitomo is a village that’s well-known for its intensive underground cave methods, and as a customer, you are able to do the next…

Waitomo Glowworm Cave: Do you need to see stars up shut — or higher but, see a galaxy of ‘tiny residing lights’? With this tour, you’ll be gliding silently on a ship by Waitomo River as you undergo the “starry” wonderland of the Glowworm Grotto which has hundreds of tiny glowworms (Arachnocampa luminosa) that radiate a luminescent bluish mild at the hours of darkness. Thoughts you, these creatures are distinctive to New Zealand solely! TIP: For those who’re up for it, you may get a packaged tour the place you not solely get to go to the Waitomo Caves but in addition Hobbiton from Auckland. .

Ruakuri Cave: Very like the principle Waitomo Glowworm Cave, Ruakuri Cave tour gives the magical expertise of sighting glowworms up shut; however greater than this, you’ll be winding your method by spectacular limestone formations and crystal tapestries. TIP: If you need a extra adventurous expertise, black water rafting is your best option for you as you abseil, weave, soar, climb and float by the beautiful underworld of Ruakuri Cave and some waterfalls too. .

Aranui Cave: Although that is the smallest out of Waitomo’s Three most important caves, visiting Aranui Cave will fairly provide you with a better have a look at all of the stalactites, stalagmites, flowstones and different limestone formations. .

#19 – Witness the wildlife

Photograph by Zealandia New Zealand has lengthy developed right into a continent with distinctive natural world, so if you wish to sight its native wildlife, go and go to any of the next spots…

Zealandia Sanctuary: It is a protected pure space in Wellington whereby 225 hectares of forest is being restored. So far, that is stated to be the world’s first fenced city eco-sanctuary and it has since helped elevated the variety of sightings of species akin to tui and kākā. Aside from these, you may also see the Little Noticed Kiwi, glowworms and different native wildlife right here. (To purchase a ticket, go right here). .

Rainbow Spring Nature Park: A compact zoo in Rotorua with a kiwi hatchery and interactive animal encounters. (To purchase a ticket, go right here). .

Cape Kidnappers: This cape is residence to the most important and most accessible gannet (seabird) colony on this planet. .

Crimson Rocks Reserve: This straightforward coastal stroll from Owhiro Bay will lead you to an incredible fur seal colony with pups. .

Tiritiri Matangi Island: This island on the Hauraki Gulf is a surprising wildlife sanctuary for the nation’s native birds and endangered species. It is usually residence to a 150-year previous lighthouse, a community of trals, and pristine seashores. .

Tāwharanui Marine Reserve: One of the simplest ways to take pleasure in this reserve is to do both diving or snorkelling to be able to observe its colourful reefs and fishes. Fact be instructed, dolphins and orcas are even usually sighted within the space. .

#20 – Go to geothermal wonders

Wai O Tapu from Shutterstock.com Rotorua is filled with a number of geothermal parks that can go away you in awe, and if I’ll counsel, it is best to select from any of those prime Three locations (after which metal your sense of odor!)

Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland: This showcases New Zealand’s most colourful and distinctive lively geothermal components which were sculpted by hundreds of years of volcanic exercise. (E book your ticket right here). .

Te Puia: Aside from being a Maori cultural village, Te Puia is legendary for its geothermal exercise particularly that of its Pōhutu Geyser which is alleged to be the most important geyser within the southern hemisphere. It additionally erupts a couple of times each hour at heights that would attain 30 meters! .

Hell’s Gate Geothermal Park and Mud Spa: Aside from witnessing boiling swimming pools and erupting waters, you could possibly additionally take pleasure in their scorching spring companies which might be coupled with a therapeutic mud and sulphur spa. (E book a spot right here). .

White Island: That is the nation’s most lively cone volcano and it’s discovered on the Bay of A lot. Regardless of its roaring gases and effervescent mud swimming pools, it’s really doable to step foot on this reside volcano’s internal crater by a tour! So if you happen to’re up for a once-in-a-lifetime journey, go and seize this opportunity. .

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IMPORTANT: New Zealand has STRICT quarantine legal guidelines for undeclared meals and different biohazards. Which means that it is best to not herald any type of contemporary meals akin to bananas, apples, honey, and so on. as you just remember to eliminate them earlier than going by the luggage declare space. Processed or packaged meals could be accepted however you’re alleged to declare them in your arrival card. For those who’re ever doubtful, ask for clarification — in any other case, you’ll be charged with a hefty high quality.

For those who’ve received outside gear like diving gear, climbing boots, and so on. you will need to clear them earlier than you journey to New Zealand to ensure that the inspection course of to go extra shortly for you. Be suggested that New Zealand is agency about this given how they’ve sniffer canines and bio-sensitive X-ray machines to detect any undesirable objects.

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What’s the forex in New Zealand? New Zealand Greenback (NZD) whereby about NZD 1.40~ is the same as USD $1, €0.85~ or Php 50~ (that is as of Might 2018).

When exchanging your cash to NZD, I extremely recommendation that you just do NOT trade it on the airport for the reason that charges there should not aggressive. So what do you have to fairly do? Both trade your cash at a financial institution or at a cash exchanger in your house nation or in any of New Zealand’s metropolis facilities. Higher but, simply withdraw from an ATM together with your debit/bank card (do one massive withdrawal to attenuate charges together with your financial institution). Talking of playing cards, a number of New Zealand’s institutions settle for bank cards however it’s at all times advisable to have money available.

When is the very best time to go to New Zealand? Technically, there may be NEVER a nasty time to go to New Zealand; but in fact, since each the North and South Islands are lengthy and slim, climate just isn’t uniform. However as an summary, under are New Zealand’s seasons:

Summer time: (December to February) That is the preferred time; therefore, the busiest — however the seashores are nice throughout this time of the 12 months. Take word by the way in which that January would be the warmest month. Serious about this, New Zealand is a good escape for these months of the 12 months if you wish to get away from harsh winters.

Autumn: (March to Might) This time is attractive because the leaves change colours and it’s additionally the most effective instances to plan a getaway or a climbing spree for the reason that summer season crowds are principally gone. So as to add, charges are on an ‘off peak’ degree.

Winter: (June to August) Queenstown as an example might be your winter wonderland, however there absolutely are a variety of ski areas across the nation. For those who are available June you’ll be able to benefit from the Queenstown Winter Competition.

Spring: (September to November) This is among the ‘off peak’ seasons as you get to take pleasure in hotter days and longer daytime.

Methods to get to New Zealand? By air. Auckland Worldwide Airport (AKL) is New Zealand’s largest airport, adopted by Wellington, Christchurch, Queenstown and Dunedin. To seek for the very best flight offers, I extremely advocate scanning by SkyScanner. In the meantime, you’ll be able to attain the town from the airport by Airbus Categorical (NZ$16), shuttle vans, or taxi (could be NZ$50 to NZ$100). Uber has a flat charge of NZ$70, wherereas Zoomy expenses between NZ$39 to NZ$66.

By boat. Auckland is a significant cruise ship port of name with its most important cruise terminal situated on Queens Wharf.

How can I am going round New Zealand’s North Island? By air. Doing home flights from one place to a different may be very straightforward in New Zealand and they’re usually cheaper than driving or taking trains. A few of the airways you’ll be able to select from are Air New Zealand, Virgin Australia and Jetstar.

By automobile. Driving in New Zealand is completely calm and nice (you drive on the left), that’s why a number of guests choose to go on street journeys when visiting the nation. It helps to notice although that fuel and rental charges could be fairly costly, this is the reason lots of people who’ve a protracted vacation within the nation would fairly favor to purchase a automobile or van after which resell it earlier than leaving — or higher but, they only be a part of street journey excursions that can take them to the very best spots! My advice? Try Wild Kiwi! I went with them throughout my keep in New Zealand and I had a blast!

By bus. It is a comparatively low-cost option to get round New Zealand however it helps to notice that companies between main cities are normally solely as soon as per day and that the buses are likely to get full, so it helps to e book a couple of days upfront (doing so may also enable you rating bargains). A few of the main traces are Atomic Shuttles, Flying Kiwi, InterCity and Kiwi Expertise.

By practice. Each Auckland and Wellington have commuter rail companies and they’re operated by AT Metro in Auckland and Metlink in Wellington. In the meantime, inter-city rail passenger companies are operated by ‘Nice Journeys of New Zealand’ and so they fairly deal with vacationer trains which go by spectacular surroundings and have a working commentary, panoramic home windows and an open-air viewing carriage (an instance of which is ‘The Northern Explorer’ which runs between Auckland and Wellington).

By bicycle. For those who’re up for the problem, using a motorbike or biking is a good way to go across the landscapes of New Zealand, and it’s pretty straightforward to get a rental.

TIP: For navigation on street journeys (other than utilizing a GPS) or for navigating your self by public transportation, you should use Google Maps. To remain linked on-line, you’ll be able to lease a pocket wifi through Tep Wi-fi. (Use code “IAMAILEEN” to save lots of 15% off in your Tep Wi-fi pocket wifi rental!)

The place to finest keep (for lodging)? There’s in fact a spread of lodging in New Zealand so that you can select from. To seek for the very best lodging at the very best costs, I counsel trying out Agoda and Reserving.com. However if you happen to’re fairly excited by renting snug homes, verify AirBnB.

For a listing of the highest lodging, see my posts under…

Ought to I get a visa to go to New Zealand? You possibly can verify this record of nations to see who does NOT want vacationer visas to enter New Zealand. Naturally, if you happen to’re NOT a citizen of any of the listed international locations, you’ll then want to use for a vacationer visa within the New Zealand embassy that’s close to you. For those who’re a Philippine citizen like me, you’ll be able to learn my information on ‘Methods to Apply for a New Zealand Visa‘.

Useful Māori phrases English is the dominant language spoken by most Kiwis (New Zealanders) however the nation’s de jure official languages are Māori and New Zealand Signal Language (NZSL). Relaxation assured, Māori persons are bilingual and might communicate English too, however they’ll be blissful to listen to you attempt to communicate the Māori language.

If you wish to study a couple of useful phrases, just remember to pronounce the next correctly!

Good day (to 1 individual, formal): Tēnā koe (Te-na koy) Good day (to 1 individual, casual): Kia ora (Key-oar-rah) Thanks: Kia ora (Key-oar-rah) ~ pronounced with a rising intonation Sure: Āe (I) No: Kāore (Kao-re) Goodbye (stated by individual leaving): E noho rā (E-noho ra) Goodbye (stated by individual staying): Haere rā (Hayre ra) . I’m sorry: Aroha mai (Ar-ro-ha-mai) Assist!: Āwhina! (Af-fin-nuh!) Cheers!: Kia ora! (Key-oar-rah!)

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I hope this record will enable you to raised streamline your New Zealand journey itinerary! Actually, to raised make your journey hassle-free, think about checking the street journey excursions of Wild Kiwi. Get pleasure from!

What do you consider these items to do in North Island?

Or have you ever been to the North Island earlier than? How was it?

Do you’ve another ideas so as to add?

Did you want this text? Observe me on Fb, Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube and be notified about my latest posts and updates!

from Cheapr Travels https://ift.tt/36Psp2Q via https://ift.tt/2NIqXKN

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