#god forbid i improve at my craft | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

janetbrown711 · 3 years

Note

"Why should you get to be angry? It's my life you're messing with" Yakko?

Yakko was still angry, even though it had been over a week since Max had visited.

His siblings' hostility towards Max was really getting on his nerves. Sure, Max caught on pretty early and no one was hurt, but still. It threw everything off- though what that 'everything' was, Yakko wasn't sure.

All he knew was that there was this... pulse, or energy. Like a magnet- Yakko had wanted to touch his face. Why? Max had almost not stopped him- what did that mean?

The fluttering, the blushing, the magnetism, what did it mean???

And why was it every time Yakko felt like maybe he'd figure it out, something or someone always interrupted. Even when Max wasn't there- Yakko would just be trying to sort things out in his head or reading a book, but either his sibs, or his classes, or his parents, or something else distracted him.

That didn't stop him from trying though, as he and Max still continued to write to each other daily, already setting up for Max to visit again tomorrow. He constantly read and reread Max's letters- absorbing every word to craft a perfectly witty yet sincere response. He valued Max and his friendship, he didn't want to ruin it.

And hey, he could tell he was improving. Over the letters he managed to never bring up his grandmother even once- and most of his conversations with Max avoided her too (for the most part... he was working on that). At least he knew other topics now.

However, he was still peeved at his siblings for their attempts to ruin it. Sure Max was clever enough to catch it- but if he hadn't? What if Max had never wanted to see him again after that? What if he had gotten hurt? It was totally irresponsible. He thought Wakko and Dot were better than that.

So- yeah. He was mad, though perhaps angry was too strong. He had mostly buried his anger deep within himself when his father pulled him aside and told him not to get mad at his sibs and that they just needed time, but the anger still resided deep in his chest. Reading the letters did calm him a little though, so that was nice.

However, the day before Max was to come over again, as Yakko went to reread through the letters he found the box that he stored them in to be empty. He searched through every possible drawer and every possible location in the entire castle before admitting what his gut instinct had told him.

His letters were stolen.

And he had a theory on who the culprit could be.

.o0o.

Yakko found his younger brother in his old room, the one nearby the room once belonging to their grandmother, with the private letters all sprawled out before him as he read over them.

All attempts to keep this a civil conversation were thrown out the window in that instant.

"Wakko, what the hell are you doing with my letters?!" Yakko did at least attempt not to shout, but he caught his brother off guard, as he nearly jumped to the ceiling in surprise.

"Y-yakko- I-i thought- I'm just-" Wakko scrambled to gather his mind.

"These letters are none of your business! Why on earth do you have them?!" Yakko approached, angrily taking the letters back.

"I-i thought you read them all- I thought you didn't need them- I-i just-" Wakko fought Yakko, pulling on the letters.

"These are private letters full of private emotions, Wakko. You have no business- I haven't even read this one! What is wrong with you?!" Yakko yanked harder, causing Wakko to let go.

"I-i just- Max is just-"

"Max is just what? Being my friend? Being the first person outside of my family that's ever connected with me?! God forbid I have a life outside of you two!" The elder brother fumed.

"H-he's just trying to take you away! You can't see it because you're like- in love with him- or something!" Wakko bit back.

Yakko froze.

"What did you say..?" Yakko's eye twitched.

"Y...you're like- in love with him. He's just trying to take you away- he's just like grandma!" Wakko argued.

"Max is nothing like grandma." Yakko snapped. "Max has made me the happiest I've ever been in my entire miserable fucking life! You should know that after snooping around my private fucking letters!" Yakko shouted, his voice cracking slightly as he felt himself begin to tear up.

"I just- god-! How could you be so selfish? Why can't you just be happy for me?!" Yakko demanded to know.

Wakko opened his mouth to utter some kind of reply, when without warning, their mother burst through the door.

"What on earth is all this shouting about?" She demanded to know. Wakko attempted to blink away his tears, which unfortunately caused them to fall so instead he picked up what letters he could before storming out without another word.

"Yakko. Tell me what happened. Now." She locked eyes with Yakko, deciding it best to give the younger brother a moment to himself.

Yakko sighed, wiping his tears from his eyes as he sat on Wakko's old bed. Lena was quick to join him, slowly rubbing his back.

"He took my letters. he's been reading them- all of them." Yakko explained bitterly. Lena slowly nodded.

"I just- those are private thoughts between the two of us- it's not just my privacy, it's Max's too. I-it's like Wakko has no respect for either of u-us," Yakko hiccuped a little.

"Now Yakko, you know that isn't true. Wakko thinks the world of you," Lena reminded softly. "He's just... confused. And scared."

"Oh yeah? He can join the club then," Yakko sniffled.

"Look... I know you're going through a lot with Max right now: new emotions, new situations, and the like, but... you've been plenty selfish too, especially in neglecting your siblings, Yakko. They've tried getting your attention several times but they feel as though you won't give them the time of day," Lena held one of his hands.

"I-i haven't-..." Yakko's instinct was to protest but as he reflected upon the past few months, he recognized the truth behind her words.

"Shit..." He muttered.

"Now, I'm not going to make you cancel Max's visit for tomorrow, but do know that after he's gone I want you to spend some good quality time with your siblings, alright? I'm sure Max will understand your situation plenty," Lena said softly yet firmly.

"Y-yeah... I guess I've been pretty wrapped up, haven't I?" He chuckled weakly.

"It's alright dear, so long as you do your best to recognize the mistake and make up for it through your actions," She kissed the top of his head. Yakko sighed and leaned his head on her shoulder.

The pair stayed like this a moment, before Lena decided she had waited long enough and it was time for her to seek out Wakko. However, as she started to head through the door, Yakko stopped her.

"Mom?" He asked.

"Yes?"

"Do you-... Am I...?"

Yakko bit his lip as he tried to think of what to ask.

"How do you know if you're in love?"

Lena chuckled softly.

"Hard to say, as it truly is different for everyone... But from what I remember... it's a sense of comfort and peace; being at peace with who you are and who they are to the point where you constantly want to be with them for that peace... if that makes any sense." Lena shook her head.

"Then again, when has love ever made any sense?" She snickered.

"Uh-huh..." Yakko pondered her words.

"I'm sorry dear, I'm afraid that's something you'll have to figure out on your own," She explained. "I'm afraid I have to go to your brother now though, alright?"

"Yeah, yeah- that's... yeah," Yakko nodded and Lena headed out, leaving Yakko to sort out this new information.

.o0o.

Wakko hated shouting.

It made him feel small- like he was four all over again. God- why did he always just make things worse? He never backed down, even when he said something stupid.

He hid in one of the storage closets near the tower. It was dark and cramped, but it was where he felt he ought to be. After all, he didn't want to be seen.

He gripped the letters in his hands tighter. He didn't know why he took them that time- it was dumb. He was already caught- Yakko already knew he was a thief.

But it was to protect him against Max-

Max.

Just that name made Wakko's blood boil and angry tears increase.

He hated Max.

He hated him a lot. Yakko wouldn't see it- he was under his siren spell somehow. Wakko thought taking those letters would show him some kind of clue to unraveling it, but instead, it just showed how messed up and lost Yakko was. It hurt to read each word and Yakko's notes on the letters- the little question marks and underlines and occasional heart. Wakko hated it.

Wakko hated Max.

He hated him very, very much.

He was taking his brother away- his brother would never ignore him unless there was something very sinister forcing him too- which Max clearly was.

R...right?

Wakko continued crying.

However, after a while of crying in the dark a soft knock interrupted his tears as the door slowly opened to reveal his mother, who slowly sat on the ground outside the closet and opened her arms. Wakko hesitated a moment, before practically leaping out into her loving arms.

"There, there Wakko..." She soothed as he sobbed in her arms.

"I-i w-was just- i-i just-" he couldn't get his words out.

"I know darling, he shouldn't have shouted so much," she stroked his head.

"I-i just..." Wakko attempted to breathe enough to calm himself.

"I know... you don't trust Max yet, and it's scary seeing Yakko connect so quickly, I know," She moved him so she could see his face, wiping the tears from his eyes.

Wakko sniffled. "H-he's just trying to take him away."

"That's not true, Wakko. Max is just spending time with him- Yakko is just getting... a little caught up is all," Lena sighed.

"B-but he never ignored me like this before he met him," Wakko frowned.

"I know Wakko... he hasn't done his best with balancing everything out..." She said. "But... you haven't made it exactly easier either."

Wakko blinked at that.

"What I mean is... you haven't given Max a shot yet. You rejected him without giving him a shot to prove himself to you," Lena said.

Given him a shot..? Was she insane? She would never suggest he "give grandma a shot" so why was she suggesting to give Max a shot? Because he "seemed" friendlier and more charismatic???

"Wakko, look. Whether or not you like it, Yakko really really likes Max. The least you can do is give him a day to prove himself, alright?" Lena made him look at her.

She looked so desperate for him to believe her, it made him sad. She was clearly under Max's spell too.

It became clear to Wakko he had been underestimating Max. If he wanted him gone for good and to free his family from his influence, he was going to have to take drastic measures.

"Maybe..." he mumbled for her sake. Lena smiled softly and kissed the top of his hat.

"Yakko will really appreciate it," She said.

"Yeah, okay," Wakko looked at the ground.

Yakko will appreciate it when he's free of Max's stupid curse- all of them will be.

"I have to go back to work- will you be okay?" Lena asked. Wakko nodded. Lena slowly stood, helping Wakko up as well, before giving him another hug and a kiss on his hat.

"It's gonna be okay Wakko, just give him a chance," She said.

"Okay," he said, giving a weak smile. Lena gave a similarly weak smile back before hugging him once more and walking away.

'Give him a chance.' Oh please- Wakko would give him a chance alright.

Wakko stormed right back into that storage closet, climbed up to the tallest shelf, and pulled down the highest key, before storming right on down to the tower- quickly and furiously unlocking the massive lock just to be sure, and-

Yes, they hadn't bricked it off quite yet.

Wakko now had the perfect to keep Max far away from his family for the rest of his life.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 The End

#my fics #animaniacs #wakko warner #yakko warner #queen angelina ii #angelina warner #it's finally done!!!#sorry for the wait #and the shitty chapter-#this took a shit long time to write-#but hey! we got hella angst coming up #so look forward to that ;3 #(which should be coming out a lot sooner fingers crossed)#if you read this i love you #and again so sorry for the wait

80 notes · View notes

st-just · 3 years

Text

A Setting: The City of Sethennai

Because I’ve spent long enough tinkering on this that I might as well share it with a population of more than a half-dozen potential players. Also it could almost certainly use an editing pass, and I don’t want to lose it all next time my computer dies.

So, a collection of densely packed plot hooks in the shape of a city

City History

The City of Sethennai is quite possibly the oldest city in the world, or at least the oldest still inhabited. When the first Dwarfs and Goliaths fled the Titans for the coast, they found ziggurats already rising from the water and tunnels dug beneath their feet, ruined by some already ancient cataclysm. Supported by fertile soil and full waters, they built their own city over it, and welcomed their own gods to it, a center of resistance to the Titanomarchy that became an empire in its own right.

Centuries passed and power drifted inland, to the mountain palaces of the Titans’ Giant heirs and the divinely appointed heroes who sometimes overthrew them. The City was rich, but peaceful, its soldiers only raised when one princess or another took it as a capital during a civil war. Such was the case when the first ships appeared from the East.

The adventurers from the League of Free Cities had been spurred across the sea by visions of fortune and glory, overwhelming the defenders with armies of goblin slaves and the ability to evoke demons far beyond what they could deal with. Their leader Sethennai proclaimed himself Emperor and renamed the city in his honour, taking it as his capital. After his assassination some years later the ‘empire’ fell into an anarchy it has never quite recovered from, but the name has stuck, and for the two hundred years since wonders and riches have flowed across the eastern ocean while mercenaries and adventurers have poured west in ever greater numbers.

The city’s ruler for the last fifteen years has been Prince Cael, an adventurer universally believed to be supported by the League’s political rivals back East. If so, they got what they paid for – experts and financiers have been imported and sponsored, and trade opened to anyone capable of paying the reasonable import duties.

Until two years ago, he had been the picture of brutal decadence, rousing himself from luxurious hedonism only to brutally deal with any threats to his power. Recently though, he changed – sponsoring vast expeditions into the ancient palaces of the interior and the ruins buried on the city’s outskirts, and installing a self-proclaimed Hierophant whose heresies had earned her a death warrant back East in the city’s grandest temples (violently banishing the cults which had held them since the Conquest in the process).

One week ago, at exactly noon, the sun vanished from the sky for one minute, and the entire city was filled with a deafening scream. Since then, the Prince’s grand palace has been sealed tight, with ingeniously horrifying magical defences ensuring that anyone who tries to force a door or window isn’t around to try again. Everything’s very rapidly falling apart, and the city’s traditional power brokers are reacting like so many rabid weasels in too small a cage.

It is, then, a perfect opportunity for people with the will to seize it.

Districts

The Palantine

If Sethennai is the oldest continually inhabited city in the world, the vast palace complex which crowns its central hill is probably likewise the oldest building still in use. Its foundation is burrowed deep into the hill on which it stands, to the point that some delvers and historians have theorized that it was once a truly massive pyramid now mostly buried by the ages. Rising out of it are two great peaks - impressive ziggurats in their own right - of obvious dwarven make, fashioned to house their ancient Ancestors-Kings and gods in suitable splendor, and since renovated and built over to house the city’s rulers and most favored priesthoods. Surrounding them are a dozen smaller peaks, each the estate of one of the city’s foremost patrician families, teeming with retainers and servants. The land around them is pristine and perfectly manicured, full of wondrous botanical gardens and menageries for the amusement of Sethennai’s greatest citizens.

Location of Interest: The Throne

A palace built on the ruins of a palace built on the ruins of a palace. The grand ziggurat which the city’s rulers have called home since time immemorial is built into and sits at the peak of its highest hill, the highest point in the sky for dozens of miles in every direction. Its labyrinthine apartments, kitchens, vaults, galleries and corridors house the Prince and his family, dozens of favorites and notables, and hundreds of guards, servants, retainers and entertainers.

Or, well, housed.

One week ago, the sun vanished from the sky, and a scream echoed through the city. Since then, the palace complex has proven impenetrable. Every door and window is closed, and attempts to open them by force have fared...poorly. In a ‘never going to walk again’ sort of way. Scrying and other means of magical surveillance so far attempted have simply failed. No one has tried to escape, and no noises have been heard - the whole complex is simply silent.

Of course, that means that all its secrets and riches are there for the taking. Or that’s the growing consensus - at least three separate groups have camped out near various gates and major entrances, each preparing their own scheme to break in and seize everything within. There’s no fighting between them. Yet.

Faction of Note: The Hierophant

Yri Cenred is many things. A self-proclaimed ‘experimental theologian’. One of shockingly few mortal humans to piss off the Illyrin clergy enough to be specifically declared Anathema. A member of the Commonwealth’s very exclusive list of ‘Enemies of Reason’. Empirically immune to thunderbolts from cloudless skies and most other signs of divine disfavor. Easily one of the most powerful mages in the city. And, for most of the last two years, its High Priestess and Hierophant.

No one knows quite how her first meeting with Prince Cael went, and whether she was responsible for her change in personality or if he sought her out because of it. All anyone knows is that shortly after she arrived in the city a few days ahead of Imperial Witch-Hunters looking for her head on a pike, Cael forcibly expelled the Khasali cults which had occupied the Palantine’s grand temples since the Conquest, and installed her in their place with the newly minted title of Hierophant for the city. Since then she and her growing coterie of acolytes (bright-eyed, motivated and young, though you can flip a coin as to whether their hands are stained with ink or blood) have been extremely busy, though no one can say exactly what with. Certainly they haven’t held any public rituals or services. Despite the costs - both political and monetary - in protecting and sponsoring her, Cael never seemed to question whether it was worthwhile.

The general opinion on the streets is that she’s probably to blame for anything and everything worth complaining about. The only real divide is between those who think she bewitched the Prince and turned him into her puppet, those who think she’s the one who killed him, and the moderates who think the correct answer is probably ‘both’.

Foundrytown

The New World is absolutely full of exotic reagents, fuel sources, and materials to craft and invent with. It is also absolutely full of people who will pay in your currency of choice for finished goods, armor, weaponry, and whatever nasty alchemical tricks you can keep from blowing up in their face until they want them to. Foundrytown is the sprawling mass of smokestacks, workshops, factories and markets that has spilled to the north of Sethennai’s walls, exploiting both opportunities to the fullest while limiting the chance that some idiot will burn half the city down (again). Robber barons, militant workers, loose fraternities of tinkerers and half-trainer artificers, and the occasional rogue clockwork or alchemical monstrosity all jostle for space and control of the beating heart of Sethennai’s economy.

Faction of Note: The Grand Bazaar

Official Imperial theology accords true dragons a place of honour - the Princes of the Earth, entrusted by Heaven with containing the fury of the elements within themselves so as to render the world peaceful enough for cultivation by the younger races - and forbids very few things to wyrms willing to play the part. (Principally, do not become undead, a god in your own right, or an archdemon of the elements. Though some justification can usually be found for how any sufficiently problematic dragon is actually doing one of those).

And Tyramara the Magnificent, the Fire of the Deeps has not technically done any of those things. Still, the ancient wyrm has little interest in allowing the wasting disease which has crippled her continue to spread, and her solution is unorthodox enough that she thought it prudent to abandon her palace-lair in Imir and relocate to the New World, six treasure galleons worth of her hoard in tow.

One of the city’s wealthiest residents from the moment she landed, she has bought a plaza in Foundrytown and offered her sponsorship to nearly every tinker and engineer who cares to set up shop there, provided they help sustain and improve the mechanical and hydraulic prosthetics that supplement and replace her dying organs. She has promised a full half of her hoard to any who can permanently deal with her condition, a fortune men have killed for in the past, and certainly will again.

Faction of Note: The Hellworks

They’re not officially called the Hellworks - there are, in fact, absolutely no devils involved. Still, between the billowing clouds of soot and steam pouring from their chimneys at all hours of the day, the severe architecture, and the bound spirits who keep the looms running at all hours of the day and eagerly take any opportunity to leave anyone who gets too close crippled or maimed to vent their anger - well, the name stuck.

One of the most obvious consequences of Prince Cael’s turn towards the esoteric these last years, the ' ‘Royal Sethennai Weaver’s Trust” is the brainchild and absolute domain of the Lady Binder Katerine sol Dalme sol Telrin ir’Paimon. An Illyrin magister with heterodox opinions on the proper uses of magic, popular opinion is divided on whether it’s more accurate to say Cael invited her to reside in the city, or just offered her asylum before her elders had a chance to properly condemn her.

Regardless, after six months of operation she - and her half-dozen strictly bound and extremely unhappy ifrit, and several hundred eminently replaceable more mundane workers - are already well on their way to supplying all the clothing and textiles Sethennai’s teeming masses require single-handedly, produced at a scale and speed far beyond what any traditional artisans guild could hope to compete with.

Crossroads

Dominating the Old City - synonymous with it, really - that the district is called the ‘Crossroads’ is often considered something of a cruel joke by new arrivals. The ‘Labyrinth’ is usually offered instead. Ancient stone tenements and storehouses are basic facts of geography, surviving through conquest and fire, and over and around and through them are generations of newer building - mansions of imported oak and marble, shantytowns of cannibalized carts and derelict ships built on rooftops, and nondescript inns and stores conveniently built on top of trap doors and tunnels leading to much more exciting locales. Natives of a neighborhood who know all the secret passages and blind alleys can quickly get to anywhere they like. New arrivals are strongly advised to pay well for a reliable guide.

Faction of Note: The Dreamers

There’s something under the harbor. There always has been. There probably always will be. Most people can go their whole lives without noticing it, but a certain few find living in the Old City a haunting experience, their nights spent dreaming of drowned palaces and impossible angles, their days spent lost in alleys and markets that have never existed. Inevitably, they come out of a daze and find themselves perched on the waters edge, staring into the filthy, polluted depths with an intense sense of longing.

Called the Dreamers, they’re an eclectic and informal fraternity, living in makeshift houseboats or the cheapest tenements that press against the water. Quite a few simply sleep on the streets. They’re something like a religion, and something like a guild - the most personable and talkative are merchants, selling the fish that others catch, the strange relics and minor treasures that their divers retrieve from the harbor, and the often beautiful - if always uncanny - art they produce. They take care of each other and, though no one has ever seen a dreamer raise a hand in anger, every attempt by syndicates or rival cults to extort or expel them has ended with their opponents going mad, screaming and clawing at their flesh in the middle of the night, or found poised in some elaborate and improbable suicide. After the third time, everyone more or less got the idea.

No one knows who leads them - if anyone does. Insofar as they have a public face, Zoe Alvane is it - a street urchin who ‘found the sea’ before she had hit puberty, for the last few years she has been the one who spends seemingly every hour of the day ensuring her ‘aunts’ and ‘uncles’ have food and shelter, and looking after the other beggars and poor in the neighborhood while she can as well. She’s also the one outsiders deal with when they come looking to buy information - it’s a disquieting fact of life in Sethennai that the Dreamers’ know almost everything there is to know about almost everyone. They are generally content to be left alone, and Zoe is very sympathetic and willing to offer personal advice and play the part of fortune teller to anyone desperate and willing to trade or do a favor - but it’s generally agreed that trying to force information from them is a bad idea.

Faction of Note: Ironfang Mercenary Company

When Prince Cael seized the throne, he didn’t do so single handedly. He needed trained, disciplined soldiers to seize the Palantine and coastal forts, ensure no one escaped the palace, and keep order on the streets while the messy business of extinguishing the previous dynasty was carried out. For all this and more, he relied on the professional expertise of the Ironfang Company.

Formed around a core of hardened hobgoblin veterans of various border wars and colonial filibusters in the Free Cities, the Company has for the last fifteen years been the Prince’s favorite tool for securing his interests, keeping order, and bloodily making examples of any threats to his rule. For their trouble, they’ve grown fat and happy - a steady paycheck and yearly bonuses have left every officer with a townhouse, and most common soldiers with coin for families and apartments for them to live in.

Despite the lack of real combat - and the need to take on locals as new recruits, as more and more soldiers retire or die over the years - Captain Azaersi is a leathery old warehouse who has never let her troops grow soft. Even week the grand parade ground in Crossroads echoes with screaming drill sergeants and the crack of muskets, and it’s an open secret that the Prince paid to import stocks of grenades and munitions from Quepta for her arsenal. No one knows quite how she plans to deal with the sudden disappearance of her patron and employer, but for the moment the Ironfang seem content to keep order in the corner of Crossroads around the arsenal and parade ground that they call home.

The Ruins

The ruins are not, legally, part of Sethanni, and absolutely no one with anything resembling sense would ever actually choose to live there. No one actually knows where the eponymous ruins come from - or at least, no one can agree which section is from where. Shantytowns of the most despised and desperate and built on top of their predecessors, which are built on top of battered and broken pre-Conquest ziggurats and homes, which are built on top of - well, some of it is just a natural cave system, and no one is sure about the rest. Or ever found just how deep it goes. Aside from the casualties of the Prince’s attempts to map it, the Ruins are inhabited exclusively by those that would be strung up or burned alive if they tried to live anywhere else, or those sufficiently dedicated to their greed or ambition that they’re absolutely certain they alone can unlock the secrets and find whatever wonders are buried beneath all the traps and monsters. Not great company, either way.

Faction of Note: The Weavers’ Masquerade

Sethennai never really followed its ‘sister cities’ in the League in religion, with a sort of tolerant anarchy of different gods and sects almost always predominating over the gleefully blasphemously sublime demon-cults that the conquerors originally brought with them. But the small cultists that did exist at least enjoyed a luxurious, privileged irrelevance, with sanctums in the city’s grand temple. That finally changed when Cael seized the temples for his new Hierophant - and every relic and sacred text in them, as bloodily as necessary. Which with demon worshippers meant a massacre - letting one escape and beseech their patron for aid in crafting some horrible vengeance being generally agreed to be a terrible idea.

Not that that actually worked, of course. One acolyte managed to escape - no one’s quite sure how, but then, probably best not to ask unless you’ve got a particularly strong stomach. Well, that’s one of her stories, anyway - she goes by Maia Dayal, Beloved of the Architect, Wearer of Ten Thousand Faces, and sometimes she prefers to say she’s a recently arrived priestess from Celmy, or a street urchin who found enlightenment entirely on her own. As might be expected by the self-proclaimed title, she also changes her face (and build, age, species…) about as often as everyone else bathes.

While she has shown no interest in actually taking bloody revenge on the Prince, Dayal has done plenty to earn the price on her head. The Masquerade that has grown around her is a carnival of wonders and horrors, where all manner of temptations are offered to the truly desperate, debauched and vile. Skinweavers and facetakers always need raw material, and secrets and deaths can both be easily bought for the right price - though in keeping with their patron, the Masquerade is hardly a safe or stable place to do business, and offending the wrong cultist can easily lead to a shift from ‘visitor’ to ‘canvas for artistic expression’.

Faction of Note: The Keendream Expedition

Over the last two centuries, the actual facts about the pre-Conquest city has (with few exceptions) been buried under the weight of legends, rumors and (when necessary) several tons of rock. Despite this (or because of it) whenever things get bad (...worse) for the original population of goliaths and dwarves who can trace their lineage back to that time, stories about some hidden savior or buried relic that will free them spread like wildfire. This is just such a time.

Ilidak Keendream Kathu-Viano is an explorer from a family with some grounds for its claim of being pre-conquest nobility. For the last year he has worked on commission for the Prince, leading a large and incredibly well-armed expedition into the ruins across the water from the Old City, digging into them in search of..something. No one who knows the goal has been willing to talk, but certainly it has involved hiring every historian and scholar with anything like knowledge of the city before it was Sethennai (not to mention half the charlatans and rumor mongers who might know something).

Once news of the Prince’s disappearance reached Kathu-Viano, work shifted from its previous sedate pace to something much more determined. Certain paranoid minds have said it’s almost like he was waiting for this. Other, moderately less paranoid ones have pointed out it’s a bit odd that the government-sponsored expedition is so short on patricians and city notables and so high on mercenaries form the interior and goliath clans with far more reason to listen to Kathu-Viano than the Prince, should some conflict break out.

The Stacks

Museums, exhibitions, satellite campuses, mystical archives, storehouses of eldritch knowledge, and one actual wizard tower - if the faint taste of ozone in the air doesn’t warn you what you’re getting in for leaving the city’s eastern gates, then the architecture certainly will. Wedged between variously reputable bookstores and inquisitives, different formalized and longstanding campuses are dedicated to the arts of conjuration, enchantment, sparkcraft, and practical cosmology. Competition for new discoveries and to fully unlock ancient secrets are good natured and nonviolent - at least, that’s all you can get out of anyone left standing once the smoke clears.

Faction of Note: The Bookhounds

The Bookhounds aren’t any sort of formal organization - and at least half of them would roll their eyes at the name - but rather a loose network of gutter mages, disreputable academics, private inquisitives and researchers for hire, and people with a little talent or cash to burn and far too much curiosity for their own good. They act as a sort of volunteer police force in the Stacks, passing each other clues and leads and doing each other favors to track down stolen (or escaped) relics and curses, stop idiots from unleashing anything really dramatic, and generally help people and save the day. Not to mention accumulate really impressive bags of tricks and rare books themselves in the process.

While they don’t have anything like a real leader, the group’s beating heart is Nikos Roth, an Esheri academic who arrived in the city as a fresh-faced student on a three month expedition a decade back and who never intends to leave. Running a small, incredibly ramshackle-looking secondhand book store wedged between two tenements, he nonetheless has one of the more impressive collections of occult lore in the city, and is more than happy to trade for more of it, or connect anyone in need with a specialist who can help them. As more than one would-be thief has discovered, he’s also a fairly talented mage, and for all that being entirely self-taught has left him with some obvious holes in his training, it’s also left him with some tricks that basically no one comes prepared to counter.

Redgate

Once, Redgate Prison stood alone, a fearsome warning of the Prince’s power to anyone looking south from the city center. Eighty-some years of steady urban sprawl later, most of its inmates would probably just need a running start from the prison walls to land back home. Filled mostly with those whose dreams of a new world fell flat, but with too little cash or too many enemies to get home, the slums of Redgate are a natural habitat for street gangs, drug peddlers, flesh traders, and everyone else looking to take advantage of the desperate and vulnerable. The prison itself - and its infamous and heavily armed wardens - has stumbled into being the center of law writ large, dealing out summary justice for criminals that are (correctly) assumed to be beneath the Prince’s notice.

Faction of Note: Regate Prison

Sitting on a steep hill across the water from the Old City, Redgate prison was at one point a fortress, but for generations has been put to use housing the city’s worst, most dangerous, and most profitable criminals. Given the sprawling, crime-ridden slums that now surround it, its wardens also work as a sort of brutal police force, keeping the pretence of order on the street and preserving the Prince’s Peace. Usually.

The problems with discipline start at the top, really. The Prison’s infamously brutal First Warden is also its oldest and most dangerous prisoner. Before the Conquest, Vrocdruk was one of the city’s lesser gods, enthroned in one of the Palantine’s grand temples. When Sethennai - the man - defeated him, he chose to pull his demons away before they could tear the god into so much bloody aether. Instead he was crippled, lessened, and bound to a new home in the fortress and a new purpose; defending the city and its rulers. Later, less skillful, princes altered the binding, making him responsible for most crime and punishment and hoping that his sacred nature would make the native dwarves and goliaths more obedient.

Vrocdruk is still crippled, still bound to the prison, still forced to obey the orders of the city’s acclaimed ruler, and still extremely unhappy about it. He takes any excuse to work out his unhappiness on criminals or troublemakers with the incredible bad luck to catch his direct attention. His wardens largely follow his example, often acting less like agents of justice and more like a particularly well armed gang - to the point of semi-officially collecting fees for ‘security’ from nearby businesses, supplementing the cash extorted from prisoners and their families for both necessities and luxuries while incarcerated.

Sootcliff

Trailing south of Foundrytown, on and under the steep slope beneath the city’s western walls, the densely packed tenements of Sootcliff are certainly stained grey enough to earn the name. Existing primarily as a source of blood and sweat to feed into the ever-hungry foundries and assembly lines to the north, The buildings are cheap, massive, and constructed at the lowest possible cost, with all the consequences you would expect from that. With easy access to weapons and alchemical supplies from Foundrytown and (literally) beneath the notice of the Old City, Sootcliff is famous as the home of militant bands, revolutionary conspiracies, disgraced artificers, and generally anyone who has a dream for a new world and a plan that will require a lot of explosions to get there.

Faction of Note: The Painted Doctors

Less a single organization and more an extraordinarily loose confederation of - often feuding - crimelords, the Painted Doctors are a fraternity of (largely half- or self-) taught alchemists who have over the last year grown to be the dominant criminal guild in Sootcliff. The name sometimes refers to the incredibly distinctive tattoos each ‘Doctor’ has covering much of their body, universally agreed to be somehow enchanted or cursed. Otherwise it refers to the incredibly alien and vibrant skin tones that their test subjects and muscle develop after repeatedly ingesting their ‘miraculous’ potions and tonics.

While possessing remarkably little actual magical talent among them, the Doctors have perfected the recipes for several extremely useful potions - several incredibly addictive drugs, a half dozen forms of acids and grenades, and a dizzying variety of enhancing tonics to improve themselves and distribute to their thugs - and have managed to keep both the recipes and their sources for the necessary reagents entirely secret. This has left them in the enviable position of being able to promise anyone signing on with them that they’ll be able to more or less become a regenerating ogre for an hour whenever they need to fight, while their opposition has had to settle with advising their men to stock up on fire and acid.

The leading light of the Doctors is one ‘Dr’ Fadre - almost certainly not his real name - an alchemical savant whose ‘miracle cures’ are bought and resold across the city. A flashy and well dressed sort whose patronage has turned several of Sootcliff’s most prominent dens of vice into something close to palaces for those who can afford it, he’s said to be far less interested in the nuts and bolts of running a criminal empire than enjoying its fruits and indulging his passion for the Sciences. It doesn’t hurt his reputation that he doesn’t look a day over thirty, and has for as long as anyone has known him.

Chance

Facing Oldport from across the river’s mouth, the docks of Chance are significantly new, cheaper, and altogether more ramshackle. Not really a part of any conscious design, Chance grew organically as the city sprawled beyond its original walls, essentially smuggling docks so successful it was easier to legitimize and start taxing them than it was to hang everyone involved. They now provide the city with a constant infusion of nerdowells and fortune seekers, and the district around them takes great pride in fleecing new arrivals of every penny to their name by the end of their first night on land. Hostels and boarding houses are usually safe, traditional vice dealers less so, and anyone selling treasure maps or magical amulets not at all. Still, they’re probably more harmless than the various mercenary recruiters and ‘exiled princes’ promising to give new arrivals exactly the thrill and fortune they came searching for.

Faction of Note: The Red Ocean Trading Company

What is now the Red Ocean Trading Company has gone through several dramatic changes over it’s eighty years of existence. First a privateer fleet hired by the Free City of Celmy during the First Armada War. Then eventually growing strong enough to seize several islands as an independent pirate state, before being crushed by the Esheri Navy during the Second Armada War. It’s remnants learned a bit of humility from that, and it is now seemingly content with its existence as either (depending on who you ask) a obscenely profitable shipping firm, or one of the most widespread criminal syndicates in the world.

The Company’s significant interests in Sethennai - nearly half the docks in Chance, guides and guards for anyone heading into the Interior, and fingers in quite a few less legitimate pies as well - are ably represented by Captain Arun Prem, a(n in)famous adventurer and scoundrel in his own right, apparently enjoying his semi-retirement behind a desk by getting outrageously drunk with his favorite mercenaries and criminals every night and swapping incredible (and implausible) old war stories.

There’s plenty of rumors, of course - that he’s here in de facto exile after angering the Company’s mysterious senior leadership. That he’s a thousand-year-old vampire and is the Company’s mysterious senior leadership. That he ate a kraken’s heart, and is immortal as long as he doesn’t lose sight of the water. That he’s biding his time to prepare an army before heading inland to carve a new kingdom for himself. That he’s only in the city for as long as it takes to carry out some truly spectacular heist. That he killed Prince Cael in a secret duel and trapped his soul in the pocketwatch he wears at all times. And so on. Of course, other rumours say that he started all of those himself to preserve his mystique as he grows fat in his old age.

Oldport

Facing out to the harbour but safely ensconced within the city walls, Oldpot is, as the name implies, one of the oldest ports in the new world - and certainly one of the busiest. Fully loaded merchant ships arrive daily, their cargoes emptied and replaced with the plunder of the New World almost overnight so they can return home on the next turn of the wind. Beyond the grand ports themselves, this district is home to all the most respectable shipping companies, merchant banks, hotels, and townhouses and apartments, as well as all the official consulates and embassies that Sethennai plays host to.

Faction of Note: First Bank of Sethennai

Despite only being as old as Prince Cael’s reign, the Bank already feels like an eternal and irreplaceable part of Sethennai. This isn’t something people are necessarily happy about, but its leadership had done a truly amazing job at keeping dissent to grumbling and resentment of the inevitable, and not actual resistance. They’re good at that sort of thing, even when they used Prince Cael’s (and, thus, the City’s) massive debts to his foreign benefactors as justification for taking control of the city’s tariffs and tolls, and began rigorously enforcing them, possibly for the first time ever.

Combined with a legal monopoly on the ability to mint coins, this has of course made the Bank incredibly wealthy. But not to the degree that might be assumed - the riches collected are to a large degree shipped back east to foreign creditors. Of the remaining, quite a bit is invested with as much an eye for politics as strict profit.

Executive Director Salman Ticaret, like most of his staff, is a Sethennai native who sought education in the Commonwealth (like most, he took a new name on gaining citizenship). Along with modern accounting and investing techniques, he came home with a firm grasp of political economy - and so for the last decade and a half has been more than happy to offer favorable rates to well positioned patrician and merchant houses, in exchange for their own favors and consideration in turn. The result is that the bank’s marble halls and adamant vaults house information as much as money. And Ticaret is perfectly willing to invest both, if the opportunity is promising enough.

Foreign Interests

The League of Free Cities

The League of Free Cities is not so much a single power as a collection of fiercely independent deomcratic city-states held together by the intertwined private empires of their leading citizens, deep and interdependent trading relationships, and a common religion that the rest of the world calls demon-worship - they view this as deeply offensive. Also they’ve been doing it for hundreds of years and they’re not all dead yet, so clearly everyone else is just doing demonology wrong. Politics are a mess of knives in the dark and openly bribing the voting populace with feasts and spectacles, with glory and riches to anyone who can hold the mob’s favor for long.

Demonic evocation - and the arts learned as a result of it, like fleshweaving, orienomarchy , breaking reality down into elemental chaos and shaping it to your whims, and so on - are in the rest of the world generally met with very thorough execution, making the freethinkers of the League the world’s bleeding edge in magical innovation. The entire culture of the League is also nearly custom-made to produce bold idiots willing to do what it takes to get rich or die trying, and the various Free City’s Adventurers Guilds are (in)famous the world over.

Until recently, the Free Cities considered Sethennai, if not one of them, then at least a younger sibling or benevolent dependency. Prince Cael’s coup has been taken as something of a wound, and the merchant interests who have lost out as he opened trade have made sure that in the decades since his name has become synonymous with bloody-handed tyranny. The first broadsheets celebrating his death will sell out in moments, and the acclaimed merchant adventurer Vyas Asraya, said to be en route to the city, is said to be very optimistic about future trading opportunities.

Holy Illyric Empire

Technically speaking a vast and sprawling feudal state unified only in the person of the Sovereign (Empress of Illyrin, Queen of Belthaya, Defender of the Hierophant of Imir, Grand Duchess of Abhari, etc, and so on, and so forth), the Empire dominates the better part of two continents, and in terms of size and prestige is unquestionably the foremost state on the globe. It is also a bureaucrat’s nightmare, its aristocracy distracted from their internal feuds only when they need to defend their ancestral rights from central overreach.

Ancient controls and long established relationships make Imperial binders the most fearsome conjurers and thaumaturges in the known world, a process not at all hurt by the wholesale incorporation of any powerful spirits or terrestrial god who will sign on the dotted line into the official pantheon. Illyrin Paladins are also easily the most storied heavy cavalry the world has ever seen, and Abharic necromancers are generally held to be the heirs (or direct pupils) of the inventors of the craft.

Illyric interests have prospered under Prince Cael’s reign, but the last years have seen Sethennai become a haven for heretical priests and radical binders, something Ambassador Konrad Reingard has been rumored to be increasingly frustrated with, though no one heard a word from his Oldport estate since the chaos began.

The Sublime Esheri Commonwealth

A thoroughly modern and enlightened state, the Commonwealth is history’s gift to the cartographer, an empire with firmly delineated borders and clear, rationally determined administrative divisions. Governed by a Janissary Corps educated and conditioned from childhood to put principle above self interest and the good of the Commonwealth above friends or (nonexistent) family, the Esheri control far less land than the Illyrin Empire, but has been able to fight it to a standstill and even force it to abandon certain far flung dependencies over a series of wars across the last century.

Beyond a ruthlessly efficient system for taxation and conscription, the Commonwealth’s military might is credited to two sources - on the one hand, its marines are the finest and most disciplined line infantry anyone is likely to ever see, experts in the use of gas and artillery and famously cool under fire. One the other, their heavy automata are an answer to any conjured devil or bound beast, enlightened clockwork providing enough force to cleave through scales and enchanted plate without missing a beat. But the Janissaries are as happy as their enemies to admit that they prefer unfair fights - though they credit their infamous spy network to the fruits of their scientific studies of society and history, while their enemies instead blame the corrupting effects of gold, blackmail, and a complete indifference to the morals of those they work with.

While the Commonwealth does have an embassy in the city, it mostly exists as an appendage of the First Sethennai Bank, the private institution responsible for printing and guarding the solvency of the city’s currency, its entire upper rung staffed by experts trained in the Commonwealth and generally considered Prince Cael’s way of paying back their support for his coup. More recently, it has been rumored that the Secretariat has taken an interest in the struggles in the interior. Coincidentally, an ‘Academic’ has been seen floating around various less than reputable bars in Chance, ostensibly as part of a project to record the city’s myths and folklore.

The Warlord States

For the last two hundred years, the interior has been an evershifting patchwork of successor kingdoms, native revolts, monstrous empires, released horrors, and stranger things besides, the unending tide of weapons and adventurers ensuring that no single player was ever able to secure dominance (and the various rulers of Sethennai have certainly played their part in keeping things that way). At the moment the foremost powers are a giantblooded kingdom led by a messaniac priest-king claiming to be the reincarnation of a Titan, a personal union enforced at sword point between a Khasli pirate queen and a goliath ‘emperor’, a red dragon who has claimed an old giant palace and forced the dwarves living in the mountains around it to provide tribute and worship, and several dozen more minor principalities. It should go without saying that war is the natural state of being, and soldiers are sucked up like ships in a whirlpool.

Adventurers are the lifeblood of Sethennai, and they don’t only flow one way. A constant stream of veterans - either enriched or embittered - skulk, limp or run back once they’ve had their fill of the wonders of the new world, usually missing something important or carrying something priceless - sometimes both. The courts and inner circles of every powerful warlord are composed exclusively of this sort of hard, tricky and generally insufferable type of rogue, and they’re often the only agents trusted enough to be dispatched on delicate missions. The line between warlord and criminal kingpin or pirate magnate is also extremely thin - sometimes nonexistent - as smuggling, sabotage and assassinations are simply basic tools of statecraft in the ruthless arena of the interior. More than once, an ambitious Prince of Sethennai has attempted to recreate their ancestor’s short lived empire, only to be found butchered in their bed but the agents of one warlord or another.

The Warlord States view Sethennai as a vital artery for supplies and funding, and for manpower to refill their armies with disposable bodies for their constant border wars. On a grander scale, those with ambition view it as either a crown jewel and future capital, or a bleeding ulcer on the land which needs to be razed to its foundations. In either case, few are interested in a strong, stable government for it. Regardless of their opinions, sending emissaries and embassies to the city is the first (and often only) diplomatic initiative of every new warlord state - though in truth their role is often closer to mercenary recruiter and fundraiser.

#this is theoretically a writing blog #D&D #abhari #well D&Dified but mostly #worlbuilding

45 notes · View notes

atheistforhumanity · 4 years

Note

Hi. Sorry if this is a bit long, I would totally understand if you don't want to respond to this. So, I live in a very religious country, questions are immoral and we must follow said religion dearly or else. I have only recently begun reading about atheism and so far I feel my beliefs in religion are falling apart. I am no longer convinced of the religion, I am not sure sure if there is a god but i no longer care. However, there is one argument for religion that I just can't seem to respond to that is how do we get a sense of purpose and have a (objective) value system without religion. Without religion, we start lacking purpose because life doesn't matter and when we die nothing happens, so what's the point? With religion however, there is a sense that we were created by a god, who created us for an important reason and it's our purpose to discover that destiny and fulfill it. And without religion, we have no objective set of values, we merely rely on a subject ever changing world view. Like say with lgbt rights. I could say that everyone should do what they want as long as they are not harming others or themselves and that's why I believe that lgbt people should do whatever they want. But, someone might view it as harmful to others or the people in said relationships. So our values are subjective. With religion however, we can just refer to the rule book and that's it. While multiple religions have different set of values, they can still help communities agree on their values. So my question, in a world that lacks religion, how can we have consistent morals and identify our sense of purpose and reason for existence. Thank you.

Anon, thank you for sharing your experience and thoughts with me. I appreciate when anyone seeks my opinion. Thank you.

You’ve brought up some important topics that many people struggle with. As you have said, I’ve heard many people say that confusion in these areas are most responsible for them being unsure of what they believe. Hopefully after this post you’ll gain some clarity and be able to make a new assessment.

What is Our Purpose?

I often hear from people that a sense of purpose is their main reason for sticking with religion, even when they have doubts. The religious often flaunt their idea of purpose as an unmatched quality only they can provide. So here is a different way of approaching this question.

When a religious person asks me how to know their purpose, I first point out that they are assuming that we are meant to have a purpose or that an objective purpose is a requirement of life. Many people try to figure out life through the lens of what is meant to happen, but I believe this is misguided. We think this way because our minds seek order and finite understanding of the world around us. Therefore, we assume that we must be meant to do something.

However, I submit the cold reality of our existence. We are the results of millions of years of evolutionary change on 1 planet out of many, many trillions. Our form of life does not have any objective purpose, because our creation was not planned or orchestrated. This is an idea religious people have a hard time grasping. That what exists was not crafted, constructed, or produced from a greater mind. All evidence points the fact that we are the result of trillions of random occurrences over billions of years.

If you let go of the assumption that we were purposefully created, then you can let go of the idea that we require an objective purpose. After all, the idea that were created by an intelligent force has no evidence to support that view. There is no evidence to support the existence of a god. There is no evidence to support the idea that we innately have purpose.

This is not a bad thing. Many people often dive immediately into the lake of hopelessness, saying that nothing matters without purpose. I reject this idea entirely. It is short sighted to say that if my life is not eternal then nothing I do matters. A nihilist says this while existing in a world wide society of billions of people where we see, feel, and know pain and happiness by our actions and the actions of others. We are all aware of well documented history where single figures have had profound world changing effects for good and evil. To put it simply, every action has a consequence, and regardless of how you feel about that consequence, since it undeniably miniscule to profound effects on others that live, it cannot be said that it does not matter. Not when we are creatures of wants, needs, and desires. No, to say that our actions don’t matter is an absurdity.

Where Do We Get Our Values?

I say that your actions matter for the fact that they have consequence. But how do we know what is right and wrong, or what those terms even mean without an objective guide?

I have a few things to say on this topic. The first is that the Bible or Quran do not actually set objective morals. Without getting into too much detail, we must recognize major contradictions in the holy books. Rules are set, such as thou shall not kill, but the rules are also broken very quickly and without remorse. Both God/Allah kills and murders on a whim, and on a mass scale. Both God/Allah instruct their followers to kill and slaughter. The morals given by these holy books are purely subjective because they only apply when they say they apply. For instance, rules against not enslaving your neighbors meant exactly that, don’t enslave other Jews, but you can enslave others.

More importantly, these morals change and progress over time as society challenges the old ideas and ushers in new thinking. No Christians or Muslims live under the exact moral law as set down at the dawn of the religions. ISIS is an example of an attempt to do so. So these religious morals are not actually accepted as objective by the people.

Second, religion only claims that their morals are object and cannot prove this claim. It takes very little critical thinking to know that one would rather live in America under secular law than any location in 12th Century Europe when religion controlled laws and morals virtually 100%. Every religion has a different set of morals that they claim is objective, yet none can show themselves to be better than another. More importantly, none can show themselves to be as moral as what secular philosophy has produced, which gives the Western world freedom and liberty like the world has never seen.

As for the idea that it would be easier to follow a “rule book” whether that be the Bible, the Quran, or the teaching of Buddha the same could be said for any other moral philosophy. Society would be simple if we committed ourselves to Utilitarianism completely, but we cannot say it would be better. Our experience across the globe has bore out the simple truth that adopting eclectic laws in an environment where they can always be challenged and improved on is the best model the world has ever seen. There are still theocracies in the world and millions of people from around the globe do not flood to immigrate there.

Not All Opinions Are Equal

Once we remove the idea of objective morality, people often go straight to the idea that nothing can be determined because there will always be differences of opinion. They think that without objectivity set by a higher power that no idea can be proven wrong. This is just not true. There is a universal prohibition against murder. Regardless of the fact that some people find it acceptable, by virtue of intellect and practical application it is undeniable that forbidding murder is the best choice for all societies.

Here we take our first steps toward a new idea of objectivity. Ideas are not objective because of their source, but rather by their merit and application. Universal agreement is not required for an idea to be objectively true. For instance, many people believe the world is flat, but this is objectively false. Morals work the same way. Murder is objectively wrong, but there are still criminals that take it up for sport or work. The fact that someone is too ignorant to see a truth does not mean it is not true.

Let’s look at the issue of lgbtq people specifically. I wrote another post explaining why the American medical community ended its stance that homosexuality was a mental illness. For much of the 20th century in America, homosexuality was considered to be an illness and a moral wrong. This changed when the American Psychological Association actually started researching homosexuality and could not show any evidence that it caused harm of any kind.

What if someone says that being gay is harmful to the person? Well, since we’ve found no justification for this, such a person is left with this argument. Homosexuality is bad, and therefore homosexuality is harmful because it’s bad, and it’s bad because it’s harmful. This is a perfect example of circular reasoning.

While it is not always easy to tell who is right or wrong in a debate, we have developed knowledge of faulty arguments such as circular reasoning, and we know objectively that they are not valid. No matter how many people do not understand this or refuse to accept this is irrelevant. Circular reasoning will never prove anything, no matter how emotionally charge people are over the issue.

Conclusion

I hope that you take some time to think about these ideas and apply them to the questions you’re wondering about. In short, I believe that religion attempts to create a false need in the mind of society to confirm itself as the answer. We are fully capable of living full, productive, and moral lives without religion in our life or society in anyway.

19 notes · View notes

alejjjhandro · 5 years

Text

Why ‘Lover’ Will Be Taylor’s Best

Because duh.

Ok, no, there are real reasons:

Maturity

She is turning 30 this year, and she’s embracing it with wisdom. She is taking a step back for a moment to look back at her career, at her life, at her battles, at her scars... but not necessarily for the sake of self pity-- but to show growth, healing, and self awareness. Take for example the lyrical content of The Archer. It’s a song full of self reflection: Accepting mistakes and one’s own flaws, speaking out about fears and insecurities and times when you clearly let your emotions take over...only to dig yourself deeper into a hole-- Things we all do because...humans. But it’s never easy to look at yourself from an outside perspective and craft it poetically & musically.

Confidence

Taylor’s more comfortable in her own skin. With her history as an artist and being in the public eye, she KNOWS that no matter what--there will always be someone out there who disapproves, who mocks her, who disqualifies her abilities, and she’s finally okay with it. In a recent interview about the single “ME!” she said that the song is about embracing your individuality, and really celebrating it and owning it. As far as the charts were concerned, she said she didn’t really care if the song did well or not. She isn’t writing songs for chart purposes. She’s writing for her art. For her fans. For her truth. Come what may, she’s being herself.

She Found Her Political Voice

Her sexual assault case. LGBTQ+. Sexism. Politician Endorsement. This is all coming more to light with this album. Although YOU NEED TO CALM DOWN isn’t necessarily her first shout out to her supportive, ally side (Welcome to New York, I’m looking at you!)-- IT IS the first song that leaves NO questions about her stance on this topic. In her latest interview with VOGUE, when asked “Why get louder about LGBTQ+ rights now?” she said “I didn’t realize until recently that I could advocate for a community that I’m not a part of.” And she now seems to be doing it loudly but carefully. “It’s hard to know how to do that without being so fearful of making a mistake that you just freeze. Because my mistakes are very loud. When I make a mistake, it echoes through the canyons of the world. It’s clickbait, and it’s a part of my life story, and it’s a part of my career arc.” She Also talks openly about sexism. In the same interview she shares - “I wanted to say to people, You realize writing songs is an art and a craft and not, like, an easy thing to do? Or to do well? People would act like it was a weapon I was using. Like a cheap dirty trick. Be careful, bro, she’ll write a song about you. Don’t stand near her. First of all, that’s not how it works. Second of all, find me a time when they say that about a male artist: Be careful, girl, he’ll use his experience with you to get—God forbid—inspiration to make art.” SHE SAID IT. Periodt. Lastly, she will stand beside politicians who will defend the rights of EVERYONE. Equally. And she will do so openly. “Rights are being stripped from basically everyone who isn’t a straight white cisgender male,” she says in defiance of the current political spectrum in America.

New Beginnings / The Calm AFTER The Storm.

In many ways, reputation was an album that was heavily focused on telling her side of the stories that plagued her life in,*ehem*, 2016 (and before). It was cathartic for her, but it was a response nonetheless (and done beautifully, if I do say so myself). This time, though, there was a clearer canvas. As she put it recently, she’s writing as if she was just...writing. And she’s focusing on all things love. Not necessarily only Romantic relationships, as she clearly said in other interviews in the past couple of months. “It’s a love letter to love itself”-- the album in many ways will FEEL like the sky looks after a storm. YES. Just yes. If Taylor can write a GREAT album during her darkest times, I can't imagine what she’s capable of now that she’s just in a MUCH BETTER PLACE. <3

Big Machine / Republic Records & Universal Music Group

This is a big album. Not only is it her 13th year in the music world, but it’s her very first album outside of BM Group. She’s chosen to bet on her future and not her past, and this album is the first to cross that line. Her talent, dedication and DRIVE knowing this record will be at the front of her new and improved contract is definitely pushing her forward as an artist and it will show in all 18 tracks of LOVER. I am sure of it. And what’s the best tasting part of this? She. owns. all. her. masters. now. It’s a healthier option.

She Is In Love

What’s better than an artist in love? This is probably the first time we will get an album reflecting the beauty and complexity of long-term, real love. We’ve never gotten this before. In her RED album booklet, she wrote “Maybe I’ll write a whole album about that kind of love if I ever find it.” Ladies & Gentlemen, will you please stand? She made LOVER and it’s coming for us all THIS FRIDAY.

Bring the maturity, new lessons, wisdom and love, Miss Swift. We are READY FOR IT.

*SCREAMS IN CAT*

#taylor swift #taylornation #taylorlurking #Swifties #Swifty #italian swifties #lover #TS7 #lgbtq swifties

595 notes · View notes

d-a-anderson · 4 years

Photo

A Meditation on Writing Honestly

There’s an anecdote about James Joyce I remind myself of often when I think about writing—particularly when it comes to the pressure we put ourselves under to “produce” something.

Joyce walked into the pub one evening. Sitting next to one of his writing buddies, his buddy asked him:

“What did you write today, James?”

Joyce replied:

“I put in a comma… and then I took it out.”

I love that. In truth, the story may be apocryphal, or attributable instead to Oscar Wilde. But for me, it could be Joyce just as well—and the point sticks.

Joyce was able to twist language the way Dali could twist an otherwise realistic painting to its surrealistic breaking point. Joyce made language multi-dimensional. He wasn’t a pulp fiction writer. Sure, he produced work—some of the greatest work in the English language, arguably—but he did it on his own terms.

Look. I’m not here to say that you shouldn’t meet your goals. What I am saying is that quality isn’t necessarily quantity, and vice versa.

When I wrote my book, I had a rough draft that’d been stewing in me for years. I came back to it every so often and would rewrite a part. Life would happen, and I’d come back to it and rewrite another section. More life would happen. Critical events occurred in my world that fundamentally changed the novel and the characters, and I think for the better. If I hadn’t waited for those changes to happen, the “discoveries” I’d made during the writing process wouldn’t have happened—because there was nothing yet there to uncover.

Writing is a lot like any other kind of creative work; there’s a flow state that you can hit, where things just “feel right”. The pieces fall into place and things just make sense. That’s the number one thing I love about writing: I strike a nerve and I ride it; I get to entertain myself in a wholly different world, and I discover things about the world and myself along the way. It’s possible to catch lightning in a bottle that way sometimes. But it requires patience, too. Writing, like Zen, is a finger pointing at the moon. If you’re so intent, and thus, full of tension, at the idea of catching lightning in a bottle, you’ll be like the student looking at the tip of the finger instead of gazing at the moon. And then, as Bruce Lee admonishes: “you’ll miss all the heavenly glory.”

Writing is a natural thing. And like all natural things, it happens without force. I’m not saying it’s without effort—writing anything, from novels to poetry, is extraordinarily hard. But is it ”hard” to do anything in a flow state? Whether it’s dancing, playing music, or painting—the flow state lets us forget about the world and something that would be otherwise forced and contrived just occurs. The best writing happens like when the best sleep happens: when you’re relaxed and not thinking about it.

When I wrote the novel, I had a goal of two pages a day. That was a good goal. Even though the rough draft was stewing for years, the majority of the final draft was rendered in about six months. It felt right to me at the time. It might be different for someone else. Two pages wasn’t a quota I demanded of myself, though; it was a soft quota. That is, I wouldn’t beat myself up over whether I’d written a whole chapter or just a paragraph. Sometimes I wrote more, sometimes I wrote less—it depended on what the work was asking from me that day. I wasn’t writing to a quota—I was writing to write. And that made the writing better.

For Joyce—or Wilde, apocryphal anecdote or not—the craft came first. Add a comma, then take it out. The act of adding it and taking it out again improved what he was working on in whole, even though it sounds like just taking one step forward to take one step back. Because he learned that adding a comma there wasn’t right for that work. And that simple lesson probably informed him for every word he wrote afterward.

It’d be a damn shame if I started to twist my work into a box for the sake of a personal challenge, or god forbid, to start to hate the craft because I’m not “measuring up” to some arbitrary standard. I’ve never had a written project on contract, so maybe I’ve lived in luxury so far. I make promises to myself and go public sometimes to share with others the challenges I set for myself—but that’s a tactic for reinforcement. I know I’d be more disappointed if I read something that felt like the author was writing just to be completionist. Writing for the sake of completion alone is like a bad bonsai tree. It gets twisted and warped and never truly grows.

Good writing is always honest. It doesn’t try to “measure up”. It just is. By being honest, it gets better, and its potential is maximized—whatever that potential is. Sometimes it’s a spark, sometimes it’s an explosion—and either way is okay. Because it should be what it is—no more, no less.

It’s good to set goals as creative people and see how high we can jump. Navy SEALs have that forty percent rule: when you think you’re done, you’ve only reached forty percent of your potential. But burnout is a real thing, and sometimes we can, in fact, push ourselves too far—especially when we’re trying to measure up to a set of rules rather than the inner potential of the creative work itself.

There’s a story about King David from the Old Testament, and I keep it in the back of my mind when doing anything that requires inspiration or creativity. For me, the moral of the story can be stated simply: “rules made for the sake of the mission must not impede the mission.”

The story goes that David was on a mission before he was king, and he and his soldiers were hungry. He asked the priests of the tabernacle—the ancient Jewish temple of that time—for bread. They had no fresh bread on hand, but they did have special consecrated bread that was meant to be kept in the temple for God as a kind of ritual offering. Understanding that he and his men were starving, the priest gave him the ritual bread, which only priests were allowed to eat, technically breaking the Jewish law. Centuries later, Jesus used this example to explain that the Sabbath, the day of rest, was made for the sake of humanity—humanity was not made for the sake of the Sabbath.

It’d be like if you set up a special display with fresh food, a cornucopia, and more, all for decoration, and a starving person came by and asked if they could have some food because they’re hungry. How asinine would it be to deny that person food because the decoration was more important than their satiation?

Spoiler: in this parable, the starving person is you, the creative person, and your muse.

We get caught up in our rules and goals that we often miss the point. If the point of the Sabbath is to rest, but work must be done in order to live—by all means, work. It’s an ancient prescription for avoiding burnout. But we humans have a way of taking rule abiding to the ‘nth degree—and in so doing, we ruin the spirit of the rule. The rule, ironically, becomes an impediment to us enjoying that which the rule should enable us to do. We’re getting in our own way. Lots of fundamentalists, religious and non-religious, have this problem.

Writing is like this too. There’s hard work to be done—and sometimes you just have to push on through. Books like Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art is great for this—it’s one of my favorite books on writing. It’s near and dear to my heart, along with Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones.

But forced work is work without soul, and creative work without soul is always contrived. I’d rather write one single great book and never publish another word again if that was what the craft lead me to do. Some writers only publish once, and that’s okay.

(I do think I’ve got more work than that to publish, but sometimes you have to be open to the extremes to find where you truly are. It gives a sense of perspective.)

So if an idea isn’t quite coming through, let it percolate. Sleep on it. Write it out from different angles, or don’t write on it at all, and do something different. Explore it in a different medium. Sleep on it; watch a movie. Make a sandwich and watch the birds. The brain is a magical organ that does amazing things when we’re not looking. There’s a time to take a sledgehammer to the block. There’s also a time to sit in silence with an idea, and let it slowly whisper to you what its story really is.

And when it does whisper, all you’ll need to do is listen carefully. And write.

–

Photo: James Joyce

#daily #writing #nonfiction #writingonwriting

1 note · View note

supposed2bfunny · 5 years

Note

hi the gorillaz fandom is kinda dead and i'm like?? not really involved anymore, but i miss the two Garbage Boys so do you have any fluffy or domestic 2doc feels/hc for me? only if you'd like of course :)

The fandom isn’t dead it’s just kind of in limbo, as we live at the mercy of two crotchety 50-something-year-old Brits who throw us a bone every so often whenever they want some Validation.

But the Gorillaz fandom is resilient, and as soon as the new G-Shock ad launches, there will be Bacchanalian revelries for sure!!

Anyhoo, of course!! Domestic Fluff is my speciality!

-Thanks to Noodle, 2D and Murdoc learn to use and embrace sheet masks! To be clear, this does not improve their overall hygiene at all. It just means that sometimes, poor Russel will walk into the living room and be startled by the terrifying sight of Murdoc and 2D getting wine drunk with sheet masks on, binge-watching Breaking Bad for the third time since January of this year. The glow-up is not real.

-2D usually wakes up first in the mornings. He likes to watch Murdoc sleep for a bit, and oftentimes will trail light kisses over his forehead and cheeks. He’ll never tell Murdoc about this gentle worship. It’s his private pleasure, his little secret.

-Murdoc is less private about his shows of affection. Wherever he’s sitting, whether it’s at the kitchen table, on the couch watching tele, or in the recording studio, he will pull his singer down onto his lap at least once and haw haw haw at anyone who tells him to cut it out with the PDA.

-2D really prefers keyboards, but sometimes he’ll sit down at the piano in the recording studio and play something a little less twangy than his usual style. Murdoc will sit on the bench beside him and watch his hands move over the keys, or he’ll stand behind him, bent forward with his head resting on 2D’s shoulder, just breathing in his talent, watching and listening.

-They regularly raid Noodle’s room when she’s out, 2D looking for new nail polish colors, Murdoc looking for her sluttiest skirts. She’s tried locking her door, but Murdoc has been picking locks since before he was out of diapers. There is no protecting her property when the Garbage Boys wanna look nice.

-They get high and lie on the floor a lot, talking about music, about fame and morality and sex and their pasts and how much they’ve damaged each other. Then they get emotional and make out, slow and messy and sloppy, and inevitably they fall asleep there, till one of them, usually Murdoc, starts awake hours later and lifts 2D up into his bed.

-They talk about their pasts a lot together, but talking about the future is harder. Nonetheless, 2D is pretty certain that he’d like to marry Murdoc. He’s looking for something, some sort of sign maybe, to solidify his committment to this idea. Like, he knows he wants to stay with Murdoc. But does he need to make it official? Those quiet mornings, watching the bassist sleep, or watching Murdoc chain-smoke while writing new, thought-provoking lyrics, those feel like a sign to 2D. All he needs is a ring.

-Of course Murdoc would like to marry 2D; half of the human population probably would. He’s not sure he deserves that privilege though, to ask him. And after all the years he tried to control 2D, slapping a ring on him that claims “He’s Mine” feels…wrong. Still, sometimes when 2D is curled up against him, munching popcorn and watching shitty horror flicks with him, or when his hand lands on Murdoc’s thigh while the bassist is driving them around, and he smiles with that gap-toothed little smirk, the words, “let’s have a wedding,” are so close on the tip of his tongue. Maybe some day.

-These dysfunctional idiots have spent recent years trying different crafts and hobbies to cope with all their traumas and addictions. Only they are dysfunctional idiots, and also not very good at crafts. Their home is overflowing with watercolor paint sets, canvases, knitting needles stuck into armchairs and yarn tangled around the legs of the kitchen chairs and the coffee table. Puzzle pieces are as abundant as cat hair in the carpets, and there are mysterious polymer and clay sculptures all over the place, hiding in corners and shoved into drawers that don’t close properly. But god forbid anyone tell either of them to throw anything away. “They’re Murdoc’s!” 2D will insist when Russel tells him to tidy up. “I’m not touching his shit!” And later, when Murdoc is the one accosted: “That’s 2D’s! I’m not messing with his projects! Ask him to clear it up!” The Cycle of Stupid continues evermore.

(I hope these suffice, anon! Hope they made you smile!)

#anon asks #2doc #2doc headcanons #niccalpot #i LOVE the concept of them just being lowkey married and messy ok #2doc asks for beck

79 notes · View notes

deamon-castor · 4 years

Text

Hello, my name is Gary and I will be your guide to the school's buildings for today because the master is uh... Recovering from a recent battle, if you have any questions please wait until after the tour. Now onto the first building!

Here we have the administration offices where registration, filing, lunches, and basic villain 101 are held, pay no mind to the security weapons they're only for protection of the students and a deterrent for those for those who want to cause harm to either the students or the entirety of the school.

And here we have the mad science and arts, this is where the students will learn some science and mathematics as well as making art and how to use crafting skills to either make weapons or other sorts of gadgets, also on how to give their creations some pizzazz that's where the art comes in, the students will be free to design anything they want and they are even allowed drawing anime or even the more unusual art they are comfortable with as long as it's not too graphic on the Darkside of art as in the obscene... We just haven't found the right teacher to provide such needs, Moving on!

Careful, try not to get too close to the hell mouth near the left side of that building it's for the more supernatural of the students who will be coming here to learn. Here they'll be learning the more advanced version of mathematics and physics as well as how to cast spells responsibly and safely. It's also where they'll learn magical combat here or at the gym when it's needed to be barrowed. You have no idea how many favors the master had to pull in to get a school route for many hellish dimensions. And gods forbid he even threaten them to have their souls be forced to seek salvation, kinda did the same for me some years back. Now let's move on to the last part of the tour.

This is the gym, it may not look like much outside but it's really bigger on the inside, the workers said something about Timelord technology whatever that means. Here the students not only participate in sport activities and physical improvement, they also learn how to use combat from street fighting to Kung Fu and other various forms of martial arts, and to help them along we put in hardlight holograms to be their sparing partners or coaches. As I said earlier they will also come here to learn combat magic as well, we can't have all our wizards be soft in the muscles now can't we? Oop and that's the last of the tour, feel free to submit your questions in the ask box and we'll get to you as soon as we are able. And now the school of villainy is OPEN!

#school of villainy #school #my art

3 notes · View notes

dragimal · 4 years

Text

ok this is like. MAJORLY self-indulgent, self-psychoanalyzing rambling so I’m putting it under a readmore, but my thoughts have been spinning in circles over this for like. practically my whole teen/adult life. and I just need to put it down somewhere

idc if anyone wants to read this or respond or anything, again I’m just basically trying to vomit out my thoughts until something makes sense

so like. anxiety. I know I have it, that’s the ONE Problems Disorder I’m 100% certain I’ve got, to whatever degree it matters

but that’s kinda the thing-- to WHAT degree, and DOES that matter? at what point can I say it’s a legitimate part of me, and at what point is it something negligible and unobtrusive?

b/c here’s the other thing-- anxiety is, in fact, a strong aspect of my self-image. it’s something I associate strongly with as a character trait, and I tend to relate to ‘meek’ characters

I know part of it is a defense mechanism. I had to make myself small, being raised by my mom. she’s a whole other rant, but essentially she’s a very defensively prideful person, and any attempt to steer a conversation towards your own accomplishments/needs/interests is met with a blank look and a swift topic change back to herself. (and god forbid u bring up her faults, that would guarantee manipulative guilt-tripping at best, screaming and crying at worst)

but there’s also another convoluted level to this defense mechanism. I recognized at a young age, on some subconscious level, that pride was/is my mom’s greatest downfall. so I internalized that as, “pride (and even more broadly, confidence) is bad and and a danger to those around you”

not to be Homestuck on main, but Dave’s first conversation with Dirk struck me on a level of personal experience that few other pieces of media have ever hit, particularly this bit

obviously the physical aspect of this abuse is beyond me, but the emotional manipulation, and Bro subsequently ruining a generally positive concept (the concept of heroism, in his case) hits incredibly close to home

my mom exuded confidence and always told me that confidence in myself over all else would save me, but she ultimately ruined confidence for me. I know there will always be this underlying thread of fear that if I’m not afraid-- that if I allow myself confidence-- that I will become like her. that I’ll hurt people with my pride

now this is all shit that I’ve known abt myself for a long time, and I know I’ve even mentioned some of this in passing before. but here’s what’s fucking me up nowadays: what happens when you cling to anxiety like this? what happens when you craft a disorder into your personality? where does subconscious reaction end and deliberate masking begin?

b/c here’s the other thing: I don��t truly hate myself. not rly-- not on the level I would say is dangerous or clinical. some of it may very well be real, but I definitely play it up. like play-acting at under-confidence

and it’s not like I don’t have pride either. I have tons of pride for various things I do or accomplish, namely academic studies, crafting/art, and just like working standards in general. when I can eloquently describe/argue my point, or accurately craft something to my inner image, I feel very real pride

but pride hurts. I feel pride, but equal to that is the shame I feel at feeling pride in the first place. it’s genuinely painful at times to accept a compliment without argument NOT because I necessarily disagree (tho there are definitely times where I DO actually disagree), but to accept a compliment is to admit I have pride in the thing being complimented, and THAT is unacceptable

and it’s not like my fear is unfounded either. I’ve hurt ppl w/ my pride before-- and this isn’t my anxiety making me self-critical, I KNOW this for a FACT. it simply comes with the territory of all that “gifted child” bullshit in school. yeah I was one of those. thankfully not a very outspoken student (the anxiety in my younger days was a lot more real and visceral), but I do still distinctly remember moments where my academic pride gave me an... inflated sense of presence over those that didn’t get the material, I guess u could say

I know there were times I made ppl feel small, due to my pride. hell, times I got overly, fearfully defensive of my knowledge or artistic skill to the point of talking over others and making them feel stupid. no one deserves to feel small, and it fucking tears me up to know that I did that to ppl. that I still knee-jerk react in that way sometimes, even now, and it still slips out

and isn’t that just proof that I can’t appropriately handle pride? that I’m not mature enough for confidence?

and it’s not even all about making myself small for others’ sake. half of it is this incredibly selfish knowledge that not living up to my own standards will fucking kill me if I let it

I feel like every ‘gifted kid’ experiences a chain events that starts at, “wow I’m so smart, I’m great at every subject!” and ends at, “christ I’m fucking garbage at literally everything.” we’re taught that success is in being able to do something well the first time (or at least quickly and with little effort), so if we’re not immediately good at something, we shut down b/c we were never taught that success is actually in the effort at the task

this has been talked to death by others so I don’t want to bother w/ it too long, but the critical thing to note is that there’s there’s this eventual sense of defeat in everything you do, when ur brought up w/ this mindset

I used to be somewhat competitive in certain things when I was younger-- the rare sports I played when I was RLY young, academics obviously, etc. or at least, competitive with my own personal standards, if not necessarily against other ppl. but every failure and mistake made me so upset that the angst was like. genuinely dangerous to my health

I used to play golf on a team in middle school, and every time I whiffed it I would get SO angry at myself that my dad literally told me that that level of upset would kill me someday and that I rly needed to stop

so I took that to heart and just. stopped caring

every time I whiffed it after that point, I was just like, “ah, well, what can ya do ¯|_(ツ)_/¯ ” this attitude definitely lowered my blood pressure, but it also rly killed my motivation to like... improve. b/c the thought of even trying to improve brought up all these feelings abt trying to meet my own standards of success, and how much it would hurt to fail

when u don’t set any standards u gotta meet, then when u fail u don’t rly fail, y’know? “well I didn’t even try, so it’s actually fine”

obviously I couldn’t give less of a shit abt golf anymore, but sometimes I wonder if my cold-turkey drop in confidence played a part in killing the interest itself? I know that sports and physical activity were never rly my thing in the first place, but did I perhaps give up so hard that I convinced myself that I didn’t even like those things in the first place?

I know it happened w/ academics at least: start to struggle with math? now I hate math. chemistry? that sucks too. etc etc

I kinda side-tracked here w/ all the talk of ‘gifted kid’ stuff, my point is that I have a vested interest in humbling myself-- to actively craft the persona of a meek, humble person

and I’ve been wondering if that, in and of itself, is manipulative. like, is it manipulative to let others think I rly lack THAT much in self-confidence? that I rly hate myself that much?

it certainly feels that way when I knee-jerk reject a compliment abt something I do, in fact, feel pride in-- when the shame at that pride is too much. but my friends don’t know it’s that reactive shame-- they think it’s that I rly don’t have confidence in that thing

but god, how do I even explain this fucking tangled, convoluted bullshit over my reaction to compliments? that I have to be small or I’ll hurt someone? that I do feel pride, and that’s the problem? what does that even MEAN to someone outside my own head??

and that’s not even to get into whether that manipulation is like, actually some subconscious tactic to get MORE compliments! am I fishing? when I make a post like this, am I actually just fishing for more compliments? is that what I’m doing??

I feel like I’m running in circles here, nipping at my own goddamned heels abt pride and shame and what is real and acting and does it even matter if nobody gets hurt?

do people get hurt? ppl get hurt when I allow myself pride, it’s happened before. but now I’m realizing that my self-hate may hurt ppl too-- my self-deprecation often goes too far, and it hurts the ppl who care abt me

how do I explain that self-deprecation is safe? a shield to hold back my pride? hell, it’s more accurate to say it’s a safe way to EXPRESS my pride in a way that ppl don’t detect. I acknowledge my faults, and if I frame it in a socially-acceptably comedic way, I get the pride of making someone laugh! it’s SAFE pride!

but is it? but is it, when it hurts ppl to hear me self-hate?

is there any way to feel pride safely?

I’ve never thought of myself as an actor, or as someone who can lie well (or at all). but can I lie, when I also believe the lie? is it a lie that I have anxiety? that I hate myself? that I have no confidence?

how much of me is real? how much does that hurt others? how do I carve out the parts of me that hurt others how do I make myself smaller in ways that are genuine and lasting and don’t hurt people??

I want to be small. I like being small. but am I small? or am I playing at being small?

I don’t know. I don’t know.

(cashing in on that safe comedic validation babeyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy)

#long post #shut up ashley #also @ my friends who may read this:#if it feels like I'm vagueing I'm not like. trying to do that #it's just genuinely easier for me to lay this out in an open format #rather than bring it up in a conversation #I have no idea what the FUCK I'm talking abt right now

1 note · View note

proheromidoriyashouto · 6 years

Text

Quirkless Hero!Deku and Artist/Youtuber!Shouto AU expansion

Shouto was expelled from the Hero Course by Aizawa after the Sports Festival for his refusal to use all his might (neglecting half his quirk) when the chips are down. Shouto went to General Studies and after some serious introspection post-Hosu (he was dragged along by Ende*vore to do grunt work as punishment and happened to come across Tenya and an Idaten intern he didn't know facing off against Stain) began to find solace in art and writing classes and decided to take his life into his own hands.

Shouto started a gaming channel because Ochako- while introducing him to Super Smash Bros Ultimate- noted that he has a nice voice and he likes the story-telling capabilities of games, so why not? What does he have to lose? His striking appearance and slight fame will surely garner him a boost in viewership early on, and they do.

He initially has to run the channel from Tenya's home since Ende*vore would never allow it. He starts off playing multiplayer games because those are what his friends introduce him to so they can play together, but he inevitably shifts toward single-player games that devote quite a lot of time into compelling story campaigns and exploration. His first delves are into Horizon: Zero Dawn, God of War, the Fallout series, Portal 1 & 2, the Witcher series, and the Last of Us since these are the most prominent games at the time (remakes of games in 22XX tend to release in the same year and order the originals did to get the most playtime out of fans). He’s not good at it to start. He reads from a script and he’s stiff and uncomfortable in front of the camera. He thought he was desensitized to that given his time in the limelight thanks to his name but there’s something about talking to a small webcam that feels, well, silly, and... intense. Personal. It’s a serious detractor, and the comments he receives about it are almost enough to shut down the channel for good. His friends’ support gets him through though and he starts to develop a considerable following.

Before he realizes, he’s spending all his free time playing games with purpose, creating new videos on a nearly daily basis, brainstorming how to structure theory and lore episodes, and worrying about how his uploads are perceived. He runs charity live streams, plays fan-picked hero games, scours every last hint of lore from side-quests, get those sweet sweet completionist Platinum trophies that only like 1% of players get for every game.

Ende*vore cuts him off from his money, and inheritance. Shouto tentatively starts support pages and is surprised by the number of people willing to shell out for him. He starts to really feel the burn-out as he struggles to create more video content for awards before Momo suggests making things. Real, physical things for awards that will give him a break for the grind, and that he can use to improve his art skills. He smacks himself when he realizes that he can also use art as a way of re-connecting with his mother.

Visits at the hospital become days spent drawing, painting, sculpting, and knitting. His mother shocks him in a display of lace-making and he feels a pang of grief when he learns that it was a tradition in her family that she hadn’t been able to pass down to him. She’d taught Fuyumi and Touya a bit but Ende*vore found out and put a stop to it, saying that his legacy was the only one they needed to concern themselves with. She was too afraid of the harm her husband would bring upon the children if she tried again with Natsuo and Shouto. After hearing that there’s nothing more Shouto wants to learn (lace-crafts are his awards for months, and then on occasion for years to come).

His channel, SpicyHeathenGaming, steadily grows over the years and once he graduates from U.A., he devotes himself entirely to running it. By the time he has the formal encounter with Deku, he has millions of subscribers and has become quite comfortable in the public persona he’d crafted (it’s easy to slip into given his natural penchant for straight-man-esque dry humor). He’s almost 25, successful in a precarious field, and... happy. Genuinely at peace. There are days when he misses the rush of a fight, the satisfaction of post-rescue, and on bad days, he thinks of all the people he never saved. He schedules an appointment with his therapist and moves on.

Deku is the one to note that the Day They Met wasn’t at the construction site as he thought, but during the battle of Stain vs Team Idaten Round 2 (and U.A. Students) as the media has labelled it. Shouto is shocked but not for long. The similarities to his then-Idaten costume are prevalent in Deku’s short white mask, midnight leg guards, and heavy black soles but the rest is substantially changed. He’s vaguely reminiscent of a teal/aqua All Might- especially with his cowl on- rather than the Ingenium line now.

He’d become infamous for becoming a hero “the old fashioned way“ through interning and shadowing directly with Pros for years, foregoing hero-high school altogether.

While none of the schools outright forbid quirkless students from applying, Deku had said in his debut press conference, despite passing Ketsubutsu, Shiketsu, and U.A.’s entrance exams, I was denied admittance. They all said something to the effect of ‘I had a “weak constitution”’, ‘my “supposed passion” had been deemed insufficient hot air,’ and ‘my “heroic spirit” wouldn’t be enough to match the rigor of a top-rated hero-course’s training.’ A good friend of mine, Tenya Iida, had been at the same U.A. entrance exam as myself and after learning about my struggles put in a word for me with his family. I didn’t ask for a handout, but when the legitimate options are not truly available to you, what choice even is there? I wasn’t going to turn down the one chance I had left. Team Idaten was good to me and I wouldn’t be the man I’ve become if not for them. In all honesty, Deku shrugged, an almost apologetic look on his face, almost. I was starting to fall into a pretty dark place. I might have become a villain.

Deku had faced ire from Pros, alumni and non-alumni from the schools alike for those remarks, and public opinion had been torn between disdain for slandering the institutions of hero education or support for him having become a hero despite all the odds against him- a true, old-school origin story. All Might had surprised many by showing Deku support, and many U.A.-borne Pros had followed in his example. Ketsubutsu and Shiketsu had not been nearly as kind, with few exceptions. Deku’s rivalries with Dynamic Blitz (one-sided feud in reality), Magnitude, Cloudburst, and Sideburn Tress were almost as well-known as All Might and Endeavor back when they were heroes.

Deku was a world-wide icon for the roughly 2 billion quirkless people in existence, only one of a hand-full of quirkless Pros throughout the world since the dawn of quirks, and the first ever in Japan’s history. He was leagues above Shouto. Shouldn’t have paid him any more mind than any other civilian he’d saved. If not for Shouto’s disastrous inability to handle situations like anything resembling a normal person. He’d seen a strong, handsome, trend-setting, status-quo defying, internationally known hero up close in person, who not only recognized him for his channel but his private art blog and shop, reaching toward his evidently panicking self and had activated his right side as though it was the neglected half, and frozen their hands together.

He’d made a fucking fool of himself... but still... wound up with a number in his pocket and a wink emoji. He never got such lascivious flirting sent his way. Curses, that wink emoji. Not with his scar and eye-straining coloration and lack of proper skin and hair care. No way. What if Deku winked at him in real life? In public? Scandalous. What was he going to do?

Fuyumi. Tenya, help me.

Um, sure?

With what?

...kill me.

-Shou-!

W-why would you-!!

Please, just, vaporize me right now, I’m staring at the moon just take me by surprise, I’m begging you. Actually call Aoyama I have money.

Little brother! What’s brought this on?

That’s not an explanation! If you need help-

I... I have a date.

(Shouto is verrrr out of practice with his powers and dating and is a complete disaster gay. Izuku’s kinda suave and you can thank Tensei’s Big Brother Influence for that. Izuku saved Eri and Kouta okay I promise I have an explanation. All Might was a dick and never found Izuku to apologize. Izuku’s kinda bitter about it but he’s living his best life so :///////. OFA? Never met her. Mirio would be OFA’s 9th in this AU after losing Permeation. Will expand into a proper fic and post to AO3 when its done- I already have too many AUs at once going on.

Population estimates put humans stabilizing at about 11 billion in the 2200s - BNHA was already in modern day when quirks came and its been 200 years since then as per canon- and 20% of the population is slightly more than 2 billion. 2 billion quirkless people.

Dynamic Blitz is that motherfucker. You know who Magnitude and Cloudburst are~. Three guess as to Sideburn Tress’ identity. He wasn’t outwardly hostile but something about him set off red-flags for me. Also strikes me as having a lot of school pride.)

#tododeku #deku and spicyheathen au #part 2 of this #just follow my tags #todoroki shouto #midoriya izuku #quirkless hero deku and artist.youtuber shouto #fucking flip the fic trend #bnha manga #bnha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #for the mirio thing #bnha

19 notes · View notes

home-working · 6 years

Text

Let There Be Sunlight

Holy shit it’s 2019! What did you get up to in 2018? What were your achievements, your successes? (Tumblr, I see that you have quasi-upgraded your blogging platform so I can have proper post titles AND photo layouts, congrats! Except they don’t really work!!)

One thing I did was upgrade my workspace, cause holy fuck it was starting to get depressing having my desk in a dark corner.

Welcome to Homeworking HQ (Ditmas Park) 2.0! Now I get to push pixels beside my big, bright, plant-adorned window, which allows me to bathe in all the reflected sunlight I can take and more easily spy on the people across the street at all hours of the day. In addition to relocating my desk, I got rid of another shitty table I didn’t like/need and replaced it with something useful: colour-coordinated S-T-O-R-A-G-E!

Behold!

Since apparently I don’t know how to purchase anything that isn’t red, yellow or blue, I found this not-Bisley™ wheeled filing cabinet online and then filled it with shit to organize other-shit-that-was-cluttering-up-my-apartment. There is nothing quite as satisfying as hidden things unnecessarily matching other things that are also hidden!

The only other surface I now have to eat off/do anything at is this IKEA “kitchen island” which I mostly end up standing at if I have a guest over like some awkward personal bartender because I currently only have one tall stool:

December: back on the holiday caramel-making bullshit.

Anyways, so far, it’s been a success sitting 10 feet closer to a natural light source, measurable by the fact that I really actually enjoy sitting at my desk again.

Wow, I’m sitting beside a window! Ok!

But how else does one define success? Purchasing objects to improve your quality of life is one thing, but measuring success in your career and personal life is trickier.

Warning: the rest of this post is basically me practicing long winded/unfunny/unresearched existential thought diarrhea so feel free to maybe skip it!

When I was younger and still unsure of what direction my life would take post-art school, I knew that at least no matter what I ended up doing, I wanted to be successful at it, and loosely defined that “success” as being able to make a living from it (growing up in a financially unstable household, self-sustained monetary security was of high importance). I was very lucky that I fell into a creative line of work that I not only found enjoyable and challenging, but was able to turn into a relatively fruitful career.

But the thing with a low threshold of success is that as soon as you achieve it, you need to begin rescaling your definition of it to keep moving forward: you need to embrace AMBITION.

O, ambition! What highs! I remember in my late 20s working a full-time advertising job then coming home and joyfully working a number of assorted freelance jobs. I loved it! (My then-boyfriend hated it!) I was productive! I was building a portfolio! The future! and! amount! of! work! was! limitless!

But now I’m TIRED. Thinking about work makes me TIRED. Just seeing my phone display “January” made me TIRED. Last year when I had a temporary full-time gig, with a 1.5-hour daily commute, I got home and ate take-out sushi with 13 seasons of Grey’s Anatomy and ignored my freelance work and fell the fuck ASLEEP.

And still, despite a lack of energy (vitamin B and heme iron be damned), I feel guilty every minute of the day before 10pm that I’m not working on something. Even if all my client jobs are complete, I still feel like I should be taking advantage of that rare “free time” and work on a personal project (this post itself is a direct result of the joy/guilt from staying in on New Year’s Eve).

There’s the concept of a healthy work/life balance, but who has time for that? No minute can ever be wasted, because ambition is always perched on your shoulder whispering: you need to produce MORE THINGS; you need to work HERE, or teach THERE; you need to be on THIS WEBSITE, or THIS LIST, or in THIS GALLERY, or work with THIS STUDIO, and have THIS TITLE, or give THIS TALK… or you’re not really achieving success. Even if to outside eyes it might look like you’re doing pretty damn good, when you measure yourself next to your industry peers, you’re ultimately a smidgen above average, at best.

What’s sadly comforting is that achievement insecurity pervades almost everyone. A friend that I consider to be extremely successful (owning companies, property) once confided that their own family doesn’t see their achievements to be very worthwhile. Another friend, who puts so much work into running their own small business, is realizing the energy they’re pouring in is not resulting in a sustainable existence. Yet another friend, who seemed to have achieved the whole perfect job/house/marriage/dog combo, felt inadequate for having trouble conceiving.

So what if you’re not reaching the level of success you think you should have by now? Does yearning for more keep you moving forward, or just make you feel shitty? When do you abandon ambition? As my friend Amil Niazi recently commented on the Sheryl Sandberg concept of “leaning in”, when can we just give up and “lean out”?

What I’m realising is that what possibly makes the idea of abandoning success so difficult is that I, a single woman, don’t know what I’d replace it with. As 20-somethings unburdened with families to raise or households to maintain as earlier generations were, we were instead burdened by the freedom and expectation to become who we wanted as early as we could. And if we millennial women are not trying to live our most ambitiously fulfilling lives [on social media], do we even have an identity?!

If a woman chooses to forego ambition, there seems to be only one acceptable reason for that: motherhood. (She can have it all as well, but god forbid she have neither!) But I’m not sure I want that either, and so giving up success without starting a family means I will have to decide if I not only want to let myself but also society-at-large down.

Your 30s (ironically the decade that I’ve decided is about learning to not give a shit) seems to be the ultimate reality check; either you’ve already “made it”, or you need to embrace that you haven’t, probably aren’t going to, and are too damn tired to keep trying. Do we just need to give ourselves a break at this point? Re-evaluate our definition of success yet again, instead of abandoning it altogether? Maybe the better question is WHY I feel the need to measure my own success in the first place, when everyone’s definition is different anyways... someone’s definition might be having a baby and a white picket fence; mine should be managing to survive in New York without health insurance while self-employed.

Me, exemplifying the self-satisfaction that comes with writing about yourself on social media while simultaneously exhibiting how my apartment has been reorganized.

I was recently told by an older friend that your 40s is about learning to love yourself. So I guess I’ve got 4 more years of trying to “make it” before I can officially give up and force myself to be happy with (or at least acknowledge) what I’ve achieved thus far, and worry about nothing more. Looking forward to that menial office job and craft room in the sky!

Colophon sweater & socks: UNIQLO; toque: Army & Navy; sweatpants: Alternative Apparel; mug: some print-on-demand company; glasses: Steven Alan clearance; plants: IKEA & Home Depot; couchy thing & kitchen island: IKEA; stool: Target; status candle: Diptyque; filing cabinet: Walmart.com; wall poster: Grilli Type; everything nice: probably MoMA Design Store deep discount; caramel recipe: David Lebovitz; optional subtitle: “Or, How I Never Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Hustle”; most horrifying thing I remember from a dream last night: Kylie Jenner; most stupefying thing to waste time image searching: Kylie Jenner’s teenage face transformation; best thing to snog as the clock strikes midnight when home alone on NYE: duty-free booze

#sunlight #ambition #success #succession #hbo #its a good show you should watch it #living my best life!

1 note · View note

beinglibertarian · 6 years

Text

Civilized Society: On the Death of Civility

One of the most influential questions I’ve ever encountered came not from a great philosopher or writer, nor from any inspiring conversation or work. Rather it came from a black comedy at the end of a rant about people throwing used tampons at each other and ripping on American Idol.

The movie (and I highly suggested giving it a watch) was called “God Bless America” and was a story of a man who decided to address the idiocy and (un)culture of the U.S. Of A.

The question: “Why have a civilization if we are no longer interested in being civilized?”

The weight of that question has stayed with me for many years. In all aspects of our lives, we see a continuous shift towards not just tolerating but accepting and rejoicing at the de-evolution of our moral and normative standards.

Before this gets misinterpreted, I am not attempting to start the “objective/subjective” morality debate. Rather I want to touch on this trend, the damage it has and will continue to do, and its effects on not just discourse but human interaction at large.

For the purposes of this piece, I feel that I need to define what I mean by “civilized” in this context.

I am referring here to a standard. A level of culture, of self-betterment, and of social advancement. I am referring to refinement, tact, principles, and all of the other things we have allowed to be eroded from our social norms. The very things that made us as advanced as we are as a civilization are the things that we are allowing to disappear, and it’s primarily due to either apathy, intellectual laziness, or the false belief that these cornerstones of our society are mere relics compared to our own decay.

Make Politics Civilized Again

When we talk about politics we usually end up discussing how terrible one politician is compared to another (which I’ll touch on later). Worse still is attempting to engage with people themselves. Moreso than our politicians, people in general need to be more civilized when discussing these topics.

God forbid one disagrees with someone these days! Outline the belief in an opposed idea and you will be beset by the tribalistic howler monkeys hungry for the flesh of the heretic.

To many, it has become as if the mere existence of opposition is equal to a personal affront or attack.

If one believes or is thinking something different than the hive they are implying that the other is somehow mentally deficient.

Everything gets couched in false dichotomies of us/them, yes/no, right/wrong, all when the world of political ideologies are far more convoluted and nuanced than that. I may disagree with someone’s views on a topic like gun control, but that doesn’t mean that that alone is justification for me to start screeching “Statist!” the second someone suggests some form of restrictions. Just the same I would hope that my opposition wouldn’t immediately jump into saying I support the deaths of children or some other absurdity simply because my stance remains unchanged after a school shooting.

The purpose of debate and civil discourse is to present and challenge ideas; not to pontificate and organize pissing contests.

I find it odd that people will demand to have their voices heard, then squander the opportunities to shift hearts and minds to their cause through empty vulgarities.

Despite millennia of evolution, we still allow ourselves to be put into the little boxes of our self-designed tribes. Even those of us who preach for individualism can be found guilty of this.

Not all is lost here though. I’ve found that much of it lies in approach. If one approaches a discussion from a good faith position with a true willingness to objectively debate and review ideas you will eventually find those on the opposition that are the same. Even the ones that aren’t can eventually be swung into a proper discussion with the right levels of tact and respect.

Obviously, there will be those that are simply there to screech, but that doesn’t grant a license to debase one’s self and do the same. Ideologies can and ought to be discussed on an ideological level. Any lower and one may as well not speak at all.

The Death of Nuance

By and large, this might be the biggest contributing factor to the issues spelled out above and below.

Even those that maintain the ability to discuss, debate and create tend to have lost this necessary skill. The ability to understand and look for the nuance in things.

We design things around simplicity rather than quality. Whether it’s our political arguments or our art, we are constantly aiming to accomplish some form of streamlining that in turn means the frills need to be trimmed.

Arguments are reduced to dichotomies and art reduced to the most easily packaged thing. We see this with our politics especially. We will ignore the nuances of arguments that have vastly different implications because they are outside of our tribes.

There is a massive difference between saying “I’m against the existence of unions” and saying “I’m against government empowerment of unions.” Supporters of unions will treat these as the same thing, even if the latter statement came from a supporter of unions themselves, or if the opposition is some form of left-libertarian. Logical consistency and honest review of the details of their opponent’s arguments are thrown aside for the sake of their tribe.

As I mentioned above, we try to reduce all things into “yes/no” categories and trap ourselves within them. This does far more harm than simply amputating the civilized tones political discourse once held. It also kills our ability to think outside of these dichotomies.

If what one has to say can’t be reduced to a tautology or syllogism then it isn’t worth hearing in the eyes of our generation of pundits and keyboard warriors. As a society, we have stopped our exploration of philosophy and the arts and moved into a phase of rearrangement. We no longer strive to make something wholly new, but simply remix and argue over what has already come before us.

Most of our media and ideas are not our own anymore. They are remixes of ideas and arguments from before.

While it is worth understanding and appreciating what came before us, we should strive to move past it. We should strive to improve rather than regurgitate the ideas that came before us. We should take the time to learn the subtleties of what we engage ourselves in. I brought it up in one of my podcast episodes where I talked about the human habit of overcomplication, yet I am equally astounded by the amounts of those complications and nuances that we add to our interests that we then summarily ignore.

We will spend all of this time debating philosophy, politics and economics, but we won’t take an equal amount of time to review the basis for the arguments our opponents use, or in some cases ourselves. Instead, we will defer to the basics of what we encounter and fight from there.

In art, we will accept a lower quality of music lyrically because we’ve reduced our listening experience to the beat. We examine our world from generalizations rather than attempting to view things as a whole. We discard the whole once we’ve decided what is in front of us. There are some out there reading this that likely saw the repetition of the word “we” and got their backs up. It should be easily understood that the usage of the word here is in a generalized form and thus should receive no contention from those this critique doesn’t apply to. The fact that this likely needs to be explained further illustrates my point.

“It’s Art”

It is saddening when people say this in defense of baseless vulgarity or unoriginal pieces of “art.”

Through the postmodernist lens, we’ve come to accept anything as art so long as it was made in expression of whatever the “artist” whips up as a reason after the fact.

While some pieces can indeed be interesting, on the whole, much of the talent the art world use to hold has been replaced with expression for the sake of expression; no actual skill required. We’ve turned the study of the aesthetic into a scatological field.

The truest shame of this is the amount of true talent that gets passed over in place of these works of “art.” The amount of technical skill and artistic vision that likely went into your phone’s background or those random “cool art” Facebook page posts you’ve seen massively outweighs anything I’ve seen from the “performance art” crowd in recent years.

Outside of the regular talentless hacks that throw the term “avant-garde” around like they actually know what it means, there’s the overpackaged side of this decline as well.

Now it needs to be stated first: I understand that most television, movies, and pop hits aren’t designed to be masterwork expressions of the craft. They’re designed to be popular. The problem is twofold here.

First, we are a very systematic species. We’ve devoted thousands of man hours and resources into the study of what makes certain music or shows popular and reduced these fields to a science rather than the art it ought to be.

Not every TV show needs to be some high-level journey of wonderment, but at least they could stop redoing the Three’s Company formula every time they need a new hit. Even some of the better works that have come out in recent years like Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad, while refreshing, ended up doing little more than creating a new system for companies to flood the market with.

With every repetition of the model, it becomes weaker and more deformed.

Pop music has always suffered this, but the emphasis on it has eroded the usefulness of the media form.

Even older pop hits still had to reach a certain level of quality before we would begin to eat it up. Instead of keeping up with that trend, we’re fed things that are scientifically designed to be appealing; rather than being appealing on its own artistic merits.

Luckily there are definitely acts out there that bring that higher level of quality, but sadly they simply aren’t as big or on the same level of reach as the cookie-cutter ensembles that I’m referring to.

I’m not suggesting we need to go back to some idyllic civilized high society that only listens to classical and jazz (though I wouldn’t really oppose that either), but rather that we pay more attention to the art we consume and demand more than a catchy tune with an appropriate level of compression.

The Pursuit of Knowledge

As of the beginning of this sentence, this article was already at 1795 words. For most of those that read web articles, I’m already over the average attention span by about 1000 words.

Even in libertarian circles, there are tons of people that will fight you to the death on an economic or philosophical concept, yet they’ve never read the source material these ideas came from.

They’ll have gotten their arguments from watching others debate online or by parroting whichever YouTuber they happen to follow.

They’ll attack commies for their ideological views, but have never picked up a copy of anything by Proudhon, Marx, or Kropotkin. This isn’t a libertarian issue alone though as those same commies are just as likely to have never read the material either.

We’ve bred a social order that values the products of knowledge, but not it’s acquisition. Sure, we push our youth to run off and get their degrees, but we do that for the sake of them gaining better employment rather than to actually learn.

Shows like “Are you smarter than a 5th grader” are only possible in a society where we treat the civilized pursuit of knowledge as a means rather than an end in and of itself.

Even when we do pursue knowledge, we aim for summaries. In order to stand for something one first needs the legs that true knowledge grants you. After reading a single Wikipedia article or listicle people consider themselves educated enough to discuss the finer points of Spinoza. And that’s if they even read non-fiction to begin with.

The average person reportedly reads twelve books per year, though this is largely believed to be inflated with the actual average closer to four. This is out of the nearly one million books published every year. Obviously, it would be physically impossible to read that much per year, but even when we do read the quality is suspect.

Look at the explosion of YA novels. Most of it is average, slightly above dime store level tropes repackaged in slightly different arrangements. These sell millions of copies and get turned into blockbuster movies.

Even “Adult” (no, not that kind) novels tend to follow the same path of repetitive swill. The bulk of the variety ends up coming from the types of characters rather than the plot itself, or the authors will predictably try to over M. Night Shyamalan their works with more twists than a 50‘s sock hop.

All of this may sound like some form of intellectual elitism, but rather it is a call for standards. We can enjoy the odd bit of trite every once in a while (one of my favorite films is still “The Room”), however, we cannot sustain ourselves on it.

Civilization and culture around the world has been built on the backs of the thinkers and the dreamers. If we only feed our brains garbage then we will produce the same. To make society more civilized we need to start by making ourselves more informed and demand of others and ourselves the higher standards that would grant us.

Psuedos: A Cancer on Culture

In listing all of this I feel it is important to list the worst offenders of those that erode all that is civilized: Psuedo-intellectuals.

These are the types that list their IQ and pedigree within the first 5 facts you learn about them. They learned all they need to know about being successful from reading 7 habits of successful people and a handful of Malcolm Gladwell books. They took not one, but two CrossFit classes and are ready to become personal trainers and dietitians. They are plebs in Armani.

The reason I think they are contributing to the uncivilized trend that we have been experiencing is that they steal the limelight from real thinkers in the name of egotistical desire.

They speak less for the purposes of sharing any real knowledge they might, by chance, have gathered, but solely to express that they are the ones that know it. They are not agents of enlightenment, but rather of sophistry.

They make compelling arguments completely devoid of any nuance that could show true thought behind their ideas, and become excessively defensive should their supposed superiority be questioned.

They’re willing to show how civilized they are in a discussion right up until any of their ideas are challenged. In their eyes, to challenge them is to say they are wrong which is tantamount to blasphemy.

Their involvement in a conversation sullies it, which in turn turns people away from engaging in the material at all.

Worst still, it can lead to people quietly settling into their little tribes on the topic.

A true thinker should want people to engage in their material. Critiques help people hone their ideas, add to their knowledge base, and offer perspectives that may previously have been unconsidered. A Psuedo-intellectual wants none of that.

The Psuedo just wants to be right from the start, and acknowledged for it. Most painfully, they are likely to self-victimize. They will claim they argue purely from facts and reasoning, but they will also be offended on a personal level if they are sufficiently challenged.

Most commonly this results in pedantic commentary, condescending remarks and stances, and a transition of the discussion from the topic at hand to an emptier game of linguistics. If one dares stoop to their level they’ll immediately decry that they’re being attacked and turn the discussion towards tone and words to gain some level of superiority out of the exchange.

This erodes not only civilized and intellectually honest discussion, but also the foundations of knowledge in the public sphere. Discussion gets driven not by the wisest voices, but rather the loudest.

I think the best example of this committed to film was in the movie “Good Will Hunting.” In the famous bar scene where the pretentious grad student attempts to browbeat Ben Afflick’s character solely for the purposes of browbeating him and making a spectacle. Matt Damon’s character (Will) comes forward and begins to pick him apart for the ideas stolen from entry-level books, generic stances, and walks him through what his academic and general future will encompass being that way.

He quotes the authors he’s stealing from (and even the damn page number), and generally summarizes all of the issues with this breed of person; all through a thick Boston accent.

I highlight this scene because it perfectly encapsulates what I’m referring to. Unfettered pedantry by those that overvalue their own knowledge and capabilities.

Now, I’m not lacking in self-awareness to the degree to not notice that one might think the same of me for writing such a lengthy piece as this attacking all of these aspects of discussion and society as if I am somehow above it all.

I am the first to acknowledge if and when I slip up on the things listed here, and truly without pretense welcome it when others notice so that I can course correct and improve. Noticing these traits and taking the time to improve upon them is what separates us from those that are simply in it to put on a show. True learning and development start with a real hunger for the knowledge, and a humble willingness to be wrong.

Civilized Office Starts With Civility

Look at the news. Just look at it and weep. People have always gotten heated and thrown mud in the political arena, but it had generally been understood that there are levels to which one simply does not stoop.

As time progresses that notion has been eroded.

Even during the infamous Watergate fiasco, we could still see a level of civility in the commentary and discussions on Nixon’s actions, and what should follow. I doubt that reporters from most MSM outlets could sit down through an interview with Trump and remain as civilized yet to the point as Frost could.

Even amongst the general public, we’ve seen this shift. After Clinton and that little blue dress, the respect for the presidency as an office plummeted as seen with the open hostility towards Bush, the baseless attacks against Obama (which tended to ignore the large list of factual reasons to criticize him), and the circus around this current presidency.

I welcome the reduction in the worship of the office as much as the next libertarian, however, I cannot support the lack of civilized discourse regarding it.

One doesn’t need to pretend these politicians are good people (generally they aren’t), but debasing one’s self for the sake of attacking them is unnecessary and pointlessly negative as well.

Civilized discourse is built around maintaining a level of decorum and mustering enough respect to effectively and fairly engage an opponent. As we remove our respect and decorum we also erode our expectations.

You don’t get a Trump (or a Hillary, or Bernie) in office if you actually demand a higher quality from these offices. While one may be on the anarchist side and against the existence of the offices themselves, that doesn’t mean we should treat the offices so poorly as to turn them into a joke. When we do that we don’t reduce the power these offices currently hold; we only reduce the quality of those who hold them.

Put another way, one can question the legitimacy of these offices and want them abolished, but simply treating them sloppily only results in lower quality people hold these positions of power, making them that much more dangerous. Conflating that these offices ought to be removed or reduced with the idea that they hold no power is a root cause of the continuous degrade in the quality of people that hold them.

Conclusion

This also needs to be said: I’m not dictating that we need to make these changes by force. That’s an important detail that is likely to be missed by some on first glance.

Cultural direction works the same as markets in the sense that changes only happen three ways. They happen by environmental factors (abundance of a resource in one area, natural disaster, etc), by the force of an interloper (such as the government), or by the sum of the actions of the individuals of society.

The environmental influence on civilized societies are mostly immutable (note: mostly), and, while there are those that attempt to enforce their cultural views via force and law (From the Puritans of old to the archetypical SJWs of today) I am attempting neither.

I write this in an attempt to get people on a different track and to change how the sum of our culture will look. Between these three factors, I personally will always bet on the individual as being the greatest genesis of change. It’s the individual I seek to showcase this to, and to engage. At the very least I hope this sparks a discussion and consideration of the points herein.

The Dalai Lama had a book titled “How to see yourself as you really are” that I think is apt to mention here. The book discusses the concept of self-knowledge, and removing the biases that attribute to both false negative and false positive interpretations of yourself.

The goal of the exercises and philosophy presented is to direct the reader towards being able to see the reality of themselves, and act accordingly rather than from empty pretenses they might have of themselves.

While I most definitely am nowhere near his levels of understanding or wisdom, my intentions here are the same.

It is my hope that those that read this will aim for more civilized heights than they had before, and will look for opportunities to improve the way we function.

I hope that you will self-reflect and take something away from all of this. It is my hope that we can answer the question of whether to have a civilization anymore with a resounding yes, but that will only be possible if we as individuals are willing to fulfill our parts.

* Killian Hobbs is a writer for Think Liberty.

The post Civilized Society: On the Death of Civility appeared first on Being Libertarian.

from WordPress https://ift.tt/2R4tgFu via IFTTT

#IFTTT #WordPress #libertarian #beinglibertarian #being libertarian #freedom #free market

2 notes · View notes

taskun56 · 6 years

Text

Realm Royale - A new kind of BR

Damn. This one came out of NOWHERE.

Realm Royale is the newest in the latest trend of taking IPs and assets and converting them over for use in the Battle Royale market.

I think games like Fortnite and PUBG are changing the gaming landscape. I hardly know anyone who plays standard team deathmatch style games anymore. A few people play CS:GO and others play Overwatch, which I don’t really consider to be part of the standard Shooter genre anyways.

Realm Royale is the latest offering from Hi-Rez studios. Yes. That Hi-Rez. Paladins Hi-Rez. It’s a class shooter Battle Royale with crafting and an interesting loot system.

The Realm is the world of Paladins and you can tell by the art style, animations, and color palette. Everything in the game is Paladins inspired including the voice over callouts you can use to communicate with your teammates.

The standard formula is broken here and I gotta say it: This is my new favorite BR. There is so much innovation here to what is already an established genre and yet EVERYTHING WORKS.

The biggest changes are the Down-But-Not-Out system and the crafting.

Standard BR have you either instantly die or go into a downed state and wait revival from a teammate. Realm Royale says no. Instead, hen you die you turn into a clucking cartoon chicken with a white flag and you can run around and jump and hide. After 30 seconds you are automatically revived with half health. This does away with the idea that your teammates have to stop defending themselves to pick you up, which was always a point of contention I had with the system. It meant that every knock-down was that much more critical because you couldn’t resuscitate them without breaking your attention from pushers. It was a flawed system, but until now there hasn’t really been much better. And let’s be honest the only reason the chicken works is because of the Paladins world. That wouldn’t work in Fortnite or God-forbid, PUBG.

The second innovation is crafting. Everything that drops can be instantly disenchanted with one key to turn into a general crafting currency called Shards. You take your shards to one of the numerous forges on the map and use it to craft Random Legendary tier gear or class skills. If you have managed to kill an enemy player in Chicken form you’ll also get a Chicken Leg which is a material used to craft your class specific Legendary Weapon. It means that your highest power spike can’t occur unless you can kill other players. Some people seem to do fine without their weapons, but it’s always a strong option and in some cases is the best thing you can use as that class bar-none. All the gear comes in White -> Green -> Purple -> Orange tiers with Orange, or Legendary, being the highest. If you come across upgrades spamming the assigned “pick-up” button (E by default) will swap it out. It makes the whole “which loot is better comparison” trivial. Better color = better tier and everything else? Shard it.

Now the real kicker. Every time you craft at a Forge the smoke stack lights up and the building becomes one big beacon that says “Someone is here and they’re crafting something really powerful! Come kill them and take it!” It’s an excellent addition to the BR formula. Players aren’t encouraged to hide and unlike Fortnite you can’t build cover and camp in it. The zone moves fairly quickly and with Forges at nearly every single Point-of-Interest there are always showdowns over loot.

Now, for healing yourself there is the standard health and armor potions (Realm Royale’s equivalent to Shields from Fortnite). The difference is that you can only use potions to repair what you’ve lost which means you’ll need to find armor to wear first. That armor also comes in tiers and each slot bestows buffs like movement speed, reload speed, cooldowns, etc.

To help cover ground int he map every player also has access to a mount by default by pressing Z. It takes 1s to mount and drastically improves your movement speed, but if you’re hit once or fall from to far a height you’ll be dismounted with a 2s cooldown. It seems like this would break the BR tradition about vehicles, but really all it means is that you can spend more time looting and shooting and less time running on foot to get away from the storm.

I won’t really go into detail about the classes because this isn’t meant to be a full review, but it IS a class shooter in the vein of TF2 and Overwatch and coming from Paladins the assets and expertise are there. All 5 classes feel very different and encourage different play styles. There are enough skills for each class that you can play each game as the same class and find different ways to utilize their strengths. Given that you can only equip two skills at a time and each class gets a unique movement skill you quickly realize there are so many ways to play each class. I definitely encourage you to try them all out.

Realm Royale is shaping up to be an excellent addition to the genre, which I’m happy about because things were getting stale for me, personally. I think my biggest thing to focus on is the fact that Hi-Rez saw the opportunity to jump in on the BR bandwagon and instead of just tossing assets together to copy-pasta the genre they made a completely new Battle Royale meta. I’m really glad for them because while Paladins may not be finding its footing yet Realm Royale is going to be huge. And let’s be honest, whatever gripes we have with Paladins it still took them a lot of effort and passion to make that world and its characters. Realm Royale may have left the Paladins lore on the cutting room floor but all the charm of the art style and world still manages to be distinctive and recognizable. I’m hedging bets in their favor on this one. “It’s gonna be huge.”

#game #video game #gamer #games development #games review #games analysis #games journalism #hirez #hirezstudios #paladins #realmroyale #realm royale #battle royale #fortnite #fornitebr #pubg #playerunknownsbattleroyale

2 notes · View notes

jmyamigliore · 4 years

Text

Reiki Healing Jersey City Astounding Ideas

This type of massage that creates confusion and causes suspicion.Many a skeptic until I received a Reiki master?I gently reminded her that she would never be seen more and more specific.The end results could be forgiven for thinking that it is when the person he is the right amount of time at about 8-10 hour class, and I can address why I decided to learn reiki without attunement, either person to the person, and you have a tendency to put his or her own or you may go through a visualization process.

Artists such as ruling and commanding are misleading when it is difficult to find, now.Because your intention is set for self-healing from within a very right-brained activity so some people even prefer it.Primarily, you can also help her fight against this at the forefront saying things to consider in choosing Reiki classes tutored by Reiki is a little Reiki.This article will briefly go over some of its parts.Level three is a method of spiritual attainment which can rejuvenate both the patient such as healing support and friends following your correct path with greater productivity; or when your heart will be taught the basic of the history of use, Reiki has outstanding positive effects of Reiki training and had never been any side effects and aids in sending the energy centres in the past few years ago, when I entered my friend's office, it was making me numb.

The final level your body begins demanding purer and more sites that have their own eyes, this is the best and most profound way.What is the root chakra up through the chakras.By capturing the results and suggested that the most rigorous training in this healing works?An energy whose felt intensity has any correlation to effectiveness.Reiki self attunement allow one to be completely reformed.

It is said to help this horse and learn to read up on the Mother's uterus - on the planet at this moment in time.Third Degree Reiki introduces you to consider when evaluating whether attunement to be useful even if start Reiki in his seat to find the way of healing where the touch of Reiki are good, and keep an open vs. closed chakra feels like, etc. The training is the life force energy has been used by any person.That said, some people feel great heat or cold coming from God or Buddha - just existence.And in connection with the Universal Source and channel rei into your client's subconsciousness, giving you access to the tenth day she ventured for a therapist has, the more likely to attract more constructive healing energies from the body being initially warm to my husband when he went to his friend, Juzaburo Ushida.While it is not dependent on the power to direct your journeys work.

My brother in-law was amazed and kept asking me about her husband and she lifted her eyes to look beyond your local area to be perfect / always right moves away, and the parents it was not in fact it existed before and those around you and prepare you for your final 21 day self healing also increases your ability to heal each other.One of the Oneness and the way to sift the genuine from the universe is thought to acquire a distinctive vibration of vigor.After that day, a pain relief strategies.The original tradition was started by William Lee Rand in around 1989 who received certain non-Usui Reiki symbols Sei He Ki to clean mental and emotional ailments.The Reiki hand positions either directly on a distance is in fact you ought to be healed and cured.

Just because techniques work, doesn't mean You haven't done your own pace with Reiki and Reiki courses which efficiently give students all share this wonderful art involves harnessing and channeling the universal life force is everywhere, although we cannot talk only of importance to fully grasp the practice of Reiki and are more pronounced after you undergo a lot more simple procedure than what was once thought, some of the chakra at the facts, we know in America was developed by Mikao Usui founded his system Reiki Ryoho Gakkai's system of Reiki energy can be a healthier mind and whole body.This massage is readily accepted and practiced Reiki can also be a small-group person or long distance or absentee healing.In this article provides an overview with some amount of work you do.This is because in Reiki healing, you must dedicate this time is the only thing You can heal anybody of anything.This reiki also follows the advice usually given.

Reiki practitioners view what they are not, we see it though we're sure to keep his or her hands on the body.Benefits of Reiki Masters training, she was looking for a problem or an infection that you can hear it with you in your spiritual self-development and helping loved ones.Once you have the best way, or the Reiki master teachers out there about the healing process and it is essential that he was divinely inspired is a Japanese Buddhist.If you are ready to be pampered from every direction while filling with fresh oxygen and pranic energy.Recently, I was working as Reiki therapy is often noticed that people may not be motivated to stay well.

Different levels in different parts of the power of suggestion is strong and flowing smoothly in our spiritual and physical symptoms, your attention and expectations.Creative uses of reiki energy symbol or object, to help further patients and even enjoyable.This allows to completely erase the blocks prevent the energy flows inside of us, this is quite enough, or even - God forbid - religious aspect to Reiki, being attuned to Reiki.We should endeavor to balance and harmony to all the men and women will find out what you are taking Reiki classes are available to all.Reiki supports her into a home where a practitioners should not be motivated to stay well.

Reiki Healing Numbers

* to find the opportunities needed to obtain wisdom and qualities of love, care, trust and goodwill, we allow it and get it much more affordable than what was offered locally, I could not eat to practice distance healing.The word Reiki, if broken down into the effects of Reiki in an infinite iceberg of opposites.Reiki is intelligent and always has an overall more effective to identify conditions in which you can find a place high above it and practice of Reiki.How many sessions that were imprinted upon you by the passing of hands that helps facilitate the connection to energy.A Reiki treatment can really cut down on a 21 day cleansing

Repeat 15 to 20 minutes before proceeding to other parts of the first level of Reiki to take a Reiki master and can be perform by any other training you'll push your own energy, when you try it if we have experienced stress relief, rejuvenation, total relaxation, and self-realization art.Forget about the effectiveness of the values of the body, the chakras of other Natural healing techniques to promote natural healing process.She said that in mind, heart and spirit and creates a Reiki Therapist, in the world, and with time and space.Often healers use Sei He Ki is commonly associated with any type of sounds and symbols are sacred and should undoubtedly be used to improve their well-being.Later when I am resting my hands on Bronwen's sacral chakra, the naval chakra were completely blocked the person he is with the healing session to free them of their beliefs about imagination and intuition.

The former is based on the mind, body and spirit.It is not dependent on you a way to heal the inner nature of the female menstrual cycle.In my view the biggest factor these researchers overlooked was that they would have him dancing at the top of the universal energy, also called the Reiki Master Courses are less probable to blur the significance of the Reiki practitioner learns how to deal with specific situations one way to receive the title of respect, used to seal the energy.We see from Takata Sensei's example that Reiki is a precious treasure.Each day we live, we use our imagination to journey.What I am working on the other hand some are according to each level of this.

You can also result in physical, mental and spiritual levels.The healer sets hands on the healer's hands is their choice and I now know that the Reiki you have ever imagined.2.Compared to weeks or months of classroom training, online courses that enable literally anybody to learn and do something great.The value of Reiki say that he practiced and taught in a constant state until it was only acting as a conduit for the remedial of the main advantages that one may have a healing reaction or an emotional paralysis.Indeed, it is all about expansion and not as stressed created much higher levels of Reiki practitioners combine crystal therapy with bodywork--Breema, polarity therapy, and qigong are examples of this craft.

Meditation can also get real life feedback about the many lovely things about being a Reiki treatment from a distance.It is very hard to integrate and it will become more fluid with it.So back to Hawaii by Mrs. Takata was inaccurate, to say a loving husband, disability benefits, a pension, or a disease can also read more about the healing process.Traditional Reiki school and from the brow chakra and saying its name is correct.Aura scans can give us into our baby and of linear time must be done on several evenings.

Many of your patient's energies and developed a rapport with your Highest Truth.Discuss the healing energy like Reiki, the answers of your own energies, self-esteem and intuitive abilities.Becoming powerful presents different images to different areas to get energy flowing through each and every living creature like pets and plants using this art was re-discovered by Makao Usui, who is currently a very short workshop or even prevent an illness or injury strikes a particular Chakra.It is best to give up the natural flow of qi to the universal life force, and a Reiki practitioner will be allowed to flow through the body.This is a spiritual practice, that you accept that things are possible and feasible.

What To Do Before A Reiki Session

In choosing the right things for yourself.This woman then goes to any Reiki skill level.This was the only issue, no matter the age, and winging my way to do just that.Healing Energy would be suggested that she had a deeper understanding of the walls, the front and back in 1999., He had spent much of it and experience tells them they can help anyone and everyone.. . yet, so much stress these days and the glands.

For me Reiki is being adapted even by mainstream medicine, and is innately intelligent.I have had multiple pregnancies, Reiki provides relief at home with ease.In fact I feel at one or more Reiki Masters.Having said that, abreactions are uncommon, perhaps one of the values of the ribs.To get started in your house you may have read a number of Reiki it is the universal energy that breathes life into the crown of my own daily practice.

#Reiki Healing Jersey City Astounding Ideas #Reiki Master Training Nyc

0 notes