#like teaching a little 3d model guy to walk and all that

[venacoeurva]

What is with those random accounts like [insert a few random words here]-blog just popping up flooded with machine fabricated images. Are they the new spam bots, because if so they've finally found a spam bot more annoying than the p[]rn ones: silicon valley type machine learning bros...

[starberry-cupcake]

After a weekend that exhausted me, I am finally able to come back to this book. My reacts proved useful to remind me where I left of, who would have thought.

previously, on harrowberry the ninth:

this happened

also, harrowberry is courtesy of @lady-harrowhark

after which I suggested the following album cover as a representation of her

currently, chapters 14-16:

"The Mithraeum, the seat of the First Reborn! The Sanctuary of the Emperor of the Nine Houses, the bolthole of God"

I don't want to sound like gideon

I really don't

but I have to be entirely honest here

I read that sentence twice, at separate times

and neither of those times did I read "bolthole"

MOVING ON

harrowberry is settled in a room which was made for a lyctor that never was

I don't know if this is at all important but it caught my eye

I wonder what happened there

and I am, as we have established, fixating on very particular things

the emperor johnny bravo has a room that's described as a locked tomb, but harrow says that, unlike the other locked tomb, she's not interested to see what's in this one

on the one hand, I want to know what this guy's actually doing but, on the other, I don't care about what's going on in his intimacy

harrow is also surprised that he gets embarrassed

which I don't, because he should be embarrassed and ashamed about all of the stuff that is going on in general

I don't know specifics and I don't know details, but I know he's at fault

like we say over here, I've got no evidence but I've got no doubt

he tells harrowbean about the BOE

he says they hate the nine houses and that they have agents who turn planets against them

they got themselves a leader about 25 years before harrow was born, who made things more difficult for johnny man

let's bring back the timeline I'm constantly discarding and bringing back

we've been told now that: this leader showed up 25 years before harrow was born, they disappeared nearly 20 years ago and gideon was born 18 years ago in space to a mom who was brain dead upon arriving at ninth

there's also the whole eggs thing that idk if it has something to do with this or not but we're not totally throwing anything away here

we've moved from a cork board to a 3d model at this point

emperor johnny boo is blaming these people for not!dulcinea going ballistic

idk johnny man, you kind of fucked that up on your own I think, but go off, I guess

he also says that the BOE folks hate necromancers and necromancy

I don't wanna be making assumptions with little to no info (literally all I've been doing) but all I've seen so far is these people teaching harrow to kill planets

that's not what miss frizzle told me I should be doing when she wore the most iconic looks in television history

maybe if the emperor dressed like this I'd be trusting him more

emperor johnny also clocked harrow being a ninth kid smoothie

because harrow was doing theorems in the river and only one other person ever did that before

the person who founded the sixth

we're ok with the sixth because camilla came from there

when harrow starts telling him the smoothie story, the emperor says "This was...all so different...before we discovered the scientific principles" and proceeds to tell her that her parents basically did a mini resurrection

he says "I have committed the same act, and I know the price I had to pay" and calls her "a walking miracle"

to which harrow responds "I have just told you that I am the product of my parents' genocide"

emperor, my man

he says "nobody has to know" about the kid smoothie

there sure are a lot of things people aren't supposed to know or ask about over here in the emperor's bolthole

*me, high fiving gideon's force ghost*

he says the initials of BOE mean "blood of eden" and that Eden is "someone they left to die"

then he quotes shakespeare??? I think king lear???

“How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is To have a thankless child”, that quote

I'm not super knowledgeable when it comes to shakespeare tbh but...ominous

he also says "once you turn your back on something, you have no more right to act as though you own it"

and harrow thinks "at the time, that had made perfect sense to you"

that's pinned under the "hope for later" category

NEXT CHAPTER

harrow talks to ice cube barbie in her dreams

ice cube barbie says she's died twice

THEN, AND THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT

harrow asks her if she has ortus's eyes or if her eyes are hers and what her eyes are like

and ice cube barbie says "she asked me not to tell you"

this is me, adding another thing to the "hopeful hints for gideon" shrine I am building

chapter 16

harrow asks yandere twin about her diary and she says it has been burned on her own orders

more hints for my theory of past!harrow knowing a lot and planning ahead

harrowcita calls lyctortus (name suggested by the reply gang, thank you reply gang) "the other one"

which could be "other" as in "other lyctor" or as in "other ortus", so it's fine either way

harrow is worried about not!dulcinea still being a threat

AREN'T WE ALL

AREN'T WE ALL

I SURE AM, ALWAYS

she should have been flushed into space

harrow thinks not!dulcinea is moving and yandere twin calls her "crazycakes"

then we start going a bit more in depth about augustine

I have come to understand that he isn't called "saint of patience" because he's patient

he's called "saint of patience" because that's what you have to practice when you're around him

good god, this man

he has the charisma of the fifth but the disagreeable nature of the eighth

here I am, making judgment on these people I only know like 2 representatives of, but anyway

he's like if magnus hadn't discovered a passion for baking and had instead decided his hobby was to be passive aggressive and thinking too highly of himself

his cav was his brother, apparently

harrow thinks he's hollow inside

he is absolutely horrendous to mercygirl

BUT, MOST IMPORTANTLY

he also alludes to not!dulcinea moving and thinks mercygirl is doing it

I don't know about this, you guys

two mulders in one recap is what you get when I have been forced to not read for a couple days

I think fox mulder represents my energy in these recaps

Augustine The Unpleasant mentions that johnny j has "spent the last 10 thousand years on a perpetual search-and-destroy mission out of, as far as I can tell, purely symbolic retribution"

great, that sounds fantastic for god to do

and that "I wouldn't set myself up as his replacement A.L. He doesn't need another bodyguard, and even she was significantly more lucid than you are" (you being mercygirl)

I had mentioned the possibility of ice cube barbie being this AL person, we still don't know, but this AL is "she"

let's put that in the 3D model

augustine calls chad a "nice boy", which tracks for him being a Senior Chad

he treats harrow badly, which we absolutely don't stan over here in the harrow respect corner

harrow obliterates him with a comeback and he calls her Anastasia (You were born in a palace by the sea / A palace by the sea? Could it be?) like the previous ninth

these people love comparing their old pals to everyone they meet, even if they supposedly didn't get along much

harrow also makes fun of yandere twin for being what gideon would call "a weenie" over augustine

then we get the augustine and johnny explanation of how to kill the beast

I am all for information but this whole thing gives me the worst vibes

basically he says the beasts (disrespectful name) eat planets like oysters and then keep the thanergy as armor

the beast can inhabit anything it's thanergetically connected to it via their death

like that which they kill

they travel as river projections

they have agents, which he describes like the borg in star trek

individual forms connected to its hive

the whole lyctor thing, having a necromancer's ability with a cav's training to take over the body, seems to be a key to fighting these things

because the necro part goes down into the river to do the thing and the cav can take over the defense of the body

this, I think, could be what we saw harrow doing in the prologue, the projection thing

but harrow's body isn't protected, because she's "lyctor lite"

because there's hope for gideon or so help me john

which might be why yandere twin was telling her she would not be guarded if she did what she was about to do

I am very intrigued as to what harrow will come to know to push her to do what she did

also, she got stabbed, so I'd like to know if she's fine

but we have 0 guarantees of anything over here in the mithrandir or whatever

the emperor's bolthole

god, what has gideon done to me

they say the point of the combat is to throw the beast's soul into the abyss and hope it doesn't come back

that's what I've been trying to do with not!dulcinea all this time

ALSO still no camilla

see you next time and thank you for not hating the length of these things ♥

[that-weird-mime]

The rest of the Hatz! Who I guess become the Scruffzgang when they get older. Wanted to get these fellas out because .. queer platonic polyhats.. I need to draw them.

Anyways, like usual, HCS

Young Robert- Just.. the littlest guy.. can do no wrong (on his own). Probably the moral compass of the group as they get a little more mature. Would kill (or try to) for any of arsenal of siblings. Likes watching bad alien movies with his big brother. 90% of his outfits are hand-me-downs from Rad. He wears a lot of his old t-shirts to bed, including a My Chemical Romance shirt which had a lot of the logo scratched off. As a toddler, he ran around wearing this shirt before the logo was gone. Gave Roy his hat so they matched. Dyslexic along with ADHD (matching his big brother Rad!) so he struggles at school a lot. Ross helps him study. Sectoral heterochromia! His entire family has heterochromia because I said so.

Older Robert- He lost his young metabolism and is getting chubby. Sort've had that nerdy dad look. A killer pillow. Got into college for programming and 3D modeling. He liked bad alien movies. Now he's *making* the bad alien movies and he loves it. Treats Roxie and Ross to 'dates' all the time. Spoils them a lot, he can't help himself. Roxie likes late night walks (reminds her of the trouble they'd get into all the time!) and Ross likes movie nights. Is growing scruff on his upper lips! He hoped to get a full stache like his uncle, but it stopped growing around peach fuzz. More affectionate to Ross simply because Roxie doesn't like too much touching. The two snuggle a lot and are inseparable when they're both at home. Forgets to eat and drink water sometimes (got this from my bestie. Who also forgets to eat and drink sometimes. Have y'all hydrated today?) Young Ross- TRANS. His parents are very supportive. Jaune also helped dye his hair black and is teaching him emo eyeliner. (He also gets tips from Roy.) His mom is a bit *too lax* and he struggles a bit with responsibility and authority. Shows at his school work, and he avoids honors classes. He happily coasts with a B. Has some cat beanies, but he's too shy to wear them. The mediator of the group, dispels fights and keeps them together. Roy cheats off him a lot, with his permission. They've done it for so long, Roy has mastered the act of copying without making it obvious. Selectively mute. Older Ross- So much more confidence. Takes a lot after his dad. On his 21st birthday, Aaron got him his first (and currently only) tattoo. It's a long salamander and he loves it. Rarely wears long sleeves so long as the weather is fair. Got into art with Robert. However, he's using it to get into tattooing and contemporary art. Takes commissions! Looks tough and scary, but he keeps cheese cracker snacks in his fanny pack so whenever Robert accidentally forgets to eat, Ross can throw him a snack. Draws a lot for Roxie and Robert. Usually the dumb thoughts they have sometimes. His masterpiece was an alien hotdog doodle Roxie and Robert idea-collabed on that he wants to get tattooed on his shoulder.

[firesoulstuff]

And finally for an added challenge Captain Canary prompt 47, AU letter B, and trope 14 all in one fic.

47. “You know I can tell when you’re checking me out, right?” 

B. College AU

14. “Five Things” Fic

Read on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27544165/chapters/68416062

Leonard can’t wait for this weekend to be over.

The school had all incoming freshmen move in on Friday instead of Sunday with the rest of the school, that way they could host the “Welcome Weekend” which thus far has consisted of the RA’s and a few other staff members forcibly shepherding them all to a variety of ‘fun’ events, uncaring that most people just want to sleep.

Ah well, at least tomorrow the rest of the school moves in and then the staff should have their hands too full to be bothering with all this.

Tonight’s activity is a barbeque on the grounds right outside the dining hall, and if nothing else it’s providing Leonard a good opportunity to see what he’s dealing with for the next four years.

Most kids seemed to have grouped up with either roommates or friends they made during the overnight orientation over the summer, but there are still more than enough stragglers. Athletes are all clumping together too, a good amount of them moved in Wednesday rather than yesterday cause of practices.

Speaking of the athletes, Leonard can’t help but to roll his eyes when he spots Mick heading over to a group of girls.

Well, this should be good.

He’s pretty sure they’re a sport group; they all look athletic and ditzy enough. There’s five of them, and the one Mick is talking to Leonard vaguely recognizes as having been in their orientation group. Amaya, he’s pretty sure her name was. He doesn’t recognize any of the others, but he will admit he’s a little intrigued by the blonde one next to Amaya.

Like the other girls she’s dressed in shorts and a crop top, which cuts off around mid-waist and from this distance he can make out the faint line of a healed scar poking out from underneath. How interesting.

Not to mention, those shorts are hugging her ass perfectly.

He thinks he sees her flick her eyes back at him, but he can’t be sure. He almost is… Maybe it was just his imagination.

.

.

Somehow Mick doesn’t scare Amaya off in the first week and one night while the two of them are eating dinner her and the blonde girl come over to their table with their trays in their hands.

“Can we join you guys?” Amaya asks.

“Sure.” Mick says before Len can protest. He doesn’t even have time to properly glare at Mick before the girls are sliding into their two vacant seats and making themselves comfortable.

Amaya takes the seat next to Mick while her friend slides in next to him. Len scoots his chair over to make room.

“Thanks.” Amaya says as she settles in. “This is my roommate Sara. Sara, this is Mick and Leonard.”

“Hey.” Len says while Mick grunts, and ok, maybe Sara’s eyes aren’t the first place his go when he looks at her. They’re the second place, which he thinks is good enough, and it isn’t like he’s being a creep and staring at her chest.

He’s staring at all of her.

She’s attractive, a good head shorter than he is and built with compact muscle.

“How’s practice?” Mick asks Amaya, and mentally Len officially checks off that he was right on that point. They do sports, and so they’re not going to give him the time of day once they realize he and Mick aren’t exactly pack animals.

“Good.” Amaya says, “Tiring.”

“And painful.” Sara adds in, “I swear, I’ve had my ankle on ice all day and it still hurts.”

Ok, fine, against his better judgment, he’ll bite.

“What do you guys play?” He asks, and while Sara scoffs Amaya giggles, the two of them sharing a look.

“We don’t really ‘play’ anything.” She answers, “We’re on the dance team.”

.

.

College, it turns out, is going to be a very different social scene from high school.

Leonard had assumed he and Mick would keep mostly to themselves, maybe with the occasional exception of Mick going out to a party and him needing to go drag him back to their room. He assumed it would be filled with all the cliques school has been filled with for as long as he can remember, and to an extent it is. But at the same time there are… exceptions.

As expected, there are groups. The nursing students, the athletes, the theater kids, the video game club, the commuters, and the kids like him and Mick who don’t want to join any stupid thing. But then there is something he didn’t account for. Overlap.

There are theater kids who play video games, there are athletes in class with people like him and Mick and want to drag them to parties. Then there are some other athletes who need a quiet place to get work done on the north end of campus before class when her dorm is all the way on the south end.

That athlete would be Sara, in the library, while he’s doing his shift for work-study.

She comes in every day a half hour before her 1:00 class, half a shitty campus cafe turkey sandwich in her hand with the other half in her mouth. She always nods to him as she passes the desk and takes a seat at the study table in the corner. She never wastes any time pulling out her laptop and opening it to a 3D digital model of some sort of human innards. Interesting.

He doesn’t walk by her often, doesn’t have much reason to leave the desk, and she’s only there for twenty minutes each day, but whenever he does venture past her chair to get something from the printer or something else he feels her eyes on him once he’s clear of her. He’d assume it’s nothing more than the human eye being drawn to movement, but one time when he stopped at a shelf he glanced over and she clearly wasn’t anticipating that. She had to scramble back to her work.

.

.

One semester in, and Leonard truly has no idea how it is he ended up here.

He really, really thought Amaya would get tired of Mick in a week or two, and he never thought he would come to li… not hate Sara. Or Amaya. He never thought he and Mick would find themselves in some weird little friend group with two girls on the freaking dance team. Yet here he is, the week before finals and waiting in the wings of the stage instead of studying because Amaya casually mentioned that they needed a few extra hands backstage for the performances this week and the coach was at the point of all but begging the girls to talk their friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, or anyone else they might have wrapped around their fingers, into doing it.

He isn’t sure which he hates more; the fact that Amaya’s first thought at that was Mick, or that him agreeing had nothing to do with Mick and everything to do with Sara saying please.

Whatever, it isn’t like a few hours in the back of the auditorium for the next few days are going to kill him.

For now the stage is set; the box the team needs slightly off center secured and the lights have been checked. The show is starting in five minutes, which means all the girls are supposed to be in the “dressing room.”

Yet Sara’s just poked her head around the side of the curtain.

He raises an eyebrow at her. It’s hard to see in the dim lights of the wings, but he can see the way her eyes land firmly on him.

“Can you help me?” She asks, her voice a soft whisper.

“With what?” He whispers back.

“My zipper’s stuck.”

He screws up his face, simply because why is she back here for that instead of in the other room where she is supposed to be, and where there are eight other girls, and light.

He motions for her to come closer anyway, almost regretting it when she does and turns for him and it isn’t hard for him to make out the outline of her light dress half open and exposing her back.

He puts a hand on her waist to hold her still, and he has to feel a bit for the zipper. He starts trailing it up, easily, so he waits for it to stick-

“I’m quitting.”

He pauses, briefly noting that the zipper has clipped a raised scar.

“Have you told the others?” He brings the zipper up a little more, almost shuddering as his eyes finally notice that there is no bra strap running across her back. “Amaya?”

“No.” Her voice is still a whisper, but this time it’s so soft he almost thinks he hasn’t heard it.

“Why?” He asks, and he zips her in the rest of the way.

She sighs, her whole body appearing to deflate. She turns around, shaking her arms out a little but not much, like she’s doing it because she feels like she’s supposed to and not any actual nerves.

“It’s too much with school.” She whispers, and he nods.

“She’ll understand. They all will.”

“I know.” She murmurs, and she glances over to the stage with a look of longing. “It’s not them I’m worried about.”

Right.

He’s never had an easy life. The only reason he’s in a half decent college is because of a few scholarships and a very insistent mother. He remembers growing up and watching all his friends get to do things he couldn’t for whatever reason, usually money. Robotics had been the hard one. In a push to look better his middle school had secured funding for a robotics program and he’d loved it. But high school had been a different story. They had taken the STEM funding and invested in new chemistry equipment. A lot of the robotics kids transferred to the prep school, and when he couldn’t he didn’t find himself much inclined to hang out with them anymore; no matter how much Barry Allen pestered him.

“You’ll be fine.” He promises, “Mick and I will teach you how to make use of free time.”

She snorts, but there’s a smile on her face.

.

.

Leonard won’t admit a lot of things, and the fact that he is actually happy to be back at school after winter break is at the top of the list. What can he say? Winter break was boring. Sure, he had Mick, and it was great to see Lisa and his mom, but he’s happy to be back here on his bottom bunk, with Sara leaning into his side.

She and Amaya had come over and at some point after drinking half a bottle of vodka Mick and Amaya had gone to the late night café in the center of campus to bring back food.

“Mick better not eat my quesadilla.” Sara murmurs, half asleep against him.

He chuckles, looking down at her and how peaceful she looks with her eyes mostly closed, her hair splaying out on his shoulder-

“Stop it.” She says simply, a small grin on her face, and when he doesn’t say anything she cracks an eye open before laughing. “You know I can tell when you’re checking me out, right?”

Well, if his face weren’t already red, it is now.

She chuckles again, and actually nuzzles herself deeper into his side.

“Don’t worry, I like it.”

[tomahawk-swing]

The Day Before

Tyee was used to spending summer afternoons alone at home. His wife was busy preparing her future classes at school, and Dingo was off playing in the forest with Shanka. Tyee appreciated it even more when they all gathered in the evening, and shared a meal together.

When the sky started to take clear orange hues, Tyee grew a little worried. The days were longer in the summer, and it was well past dinner time. Since Dingo could be anywhere outside the village, he decided to go check on Makhta instead. Her whereabouts were about certain.

Indeed, Makhta was at work - but she wasn’t working on her teachings.

The school building was made of two classrooms, each with a much smaller, window-less room that served a reserve, or an office. Makhta sat behind her old computer, the bulky screen taking up most of the desk’s space. The only light in the room came from the computer screen.

“You should at least switch the lights on ...” Tyee sighed. He pressed the switch, and watched his wife jump at the sudden change in brightness. 

“It was fine when the sun was still up. I was about to come home, anyway.” Makhta argued. She stared at her screen, and had a long sigh. Truthfully, she had been planning to spend the night at her desk.

“You’re still working on that project ?” Tyee questioned, a little concerned. “You know you still have a few days to finish it, right ?”

“I only have a few days left.” Makhta retorted. “And I’m far from finished. I still have to run some tests, make sure that the AI isn’t glitchy, fix some texture and design issues ...”

Tyee shook his head. As much as he loved his wife’s determination, he didn’t like seeing her ignore her own health. He squeezed past piles of carefully stacked boxes, and walked behind the desk, so he could place his hands on Makhta’s shoulders and gently massage them.

“I’m sure it’ll be just fine. I may not know a thing about all that computer tech stuff, but I trust you.” Tyee had a mischievous smile. “That being said ... if you’d at least show me what you’re working on, I’d have even less of a reason to be worried.”

Makhta didn’t hold back a sigh. “I thought you me wanted to keep it a surprise for you as well. You know that you can’t keep a secret.”

“Hey ! I can keep a secret ! Especially for something that important !” Tyee proclaimed, with a hand over his heart. “I swear that I will not let anything slip. I’d rather keep it a secret for three entire days, than wait all that time without knowing.”

Makhta went silent for a moment. She gestured for Tyee to grab a stool, and opened a few more tabs on her computer screen. 

“I still haven’t settled on a name for him.” Makhta confessed. “I still have to tweak a few parameters, especially in the personality department, and like I said, with his design too. Some parts might be a little too bulky ...”

Tyee located a three-legged stool of his making, and plopped in front of the computer. He tried his best to listen to his wife’s words, but his attention was all focused on the screen. His eyes devoured every detail of the 3D model that was displayed there. 

“He looks so cool.” Tyee eventually said, admirative sparkles dancing in his dark grey eyes. “He seems like a friendly little guy. And he looks really strong, too ! Like, enemies might underestimate him at first, but he’s actually super tough. And look at that axe ! It’s like it came straight out of a real forge !”

“He will be strong.” Makhta nodded. “... And friendly. I figured that Dingo might need that kind of influence, in case he ever escapes yours.”

Tyee’s mind drew a blank for a moment. He didn’t like to think about the inevitable day when Dingo would leave the village. With this spunky Navi by his son’s side, at least, Tyee would be less worried. 

“You’re right about that.” Tyee laughed. “Our son isn’t exactly the friendliest kid ‘round the block. Maybe this Navi’ll help him look a little more approachable to new people. After all, he’s gonna be the coolest Navi in the entire city ! No, the entire world !”

Tyee’s enthusiasm brought a rare, fond smile to Makhta’s lips. “Don’t get your hopes up too high. For all I know, I could have programmed him all wrong, and he’ll end up being mean and sarcastic. Like me.”

“That’s not a problem !” Tyee had a knowing glance for his wife. “He’s gotta have a little bit of us both in him, if he’s going to be Dingo’s little brother.” 

Makhta felt her cheeks warm up. She hadn’t imagined that Tyee would pick up on the hints the fast. Truth be told, she was already halfway through coding the Navi, before she noticed how similar he was to her husband. Dingo had inherited most of her own personality traits - it was only fair that Dingo’s Navi took more after his father.

“I did intend to make him a little bit more responsible than you are, so I don’t know if you can call him a little brother ...” Makhta had a quiet laugh. “Who knows what kind of adventures Dingo will rope him into. I can’t keep counting on Shanka to keep an eye on him 24/7.”

“She’ll appreciate the thought, for sure.” Tyee chuckled. He went silent for a moment, his eyes still glued to the screen. “We need a name for this little guy, though. We can’t keep calling him “the Navi” forever.”

“I know, but ...” For once in her life, Makhta was hesitating. This was a decision that would affect her son’s life for the rest of his life. “All I know is that it has to end with -man, it’s an unspoken rule for NetNavis.”

“-man ? Like he’s a superhero ?” Tyee had a hearty laugh. “That sounds fitting ! But then, how about ... Totemman ? No, Axeman ! Wait ... Battleaxeman ! That’s the one !”

Makhta shook her head. “Cliché, too obvious, too long. None of these are right.” 

“Hmm ... Alright. Gimme a second. I’ll find something.” Tyee was silent for a few seconds, deeply lost in his thoughts. Suddenly, he snapped his fingers and exclaimed :

“Tomahawkman !”

Makhta didn’t reply right away. She looked up at the screen, and slowly nodded.

“His weapon is not a tomahawk, but ... I’ll allow it. Maybe Dingo will stop trying to steal yours, if we give him his own Tomahawk.”

“I was going to let him have that one on his birthday, anyway. That’s two tomahawks for the price of one.” Tyee laughed. “Then it’s settled ! We found a name for the lil’ guy !” 

“Tomahawkman.EXE.” Makhta repeated. It sounded right.

“I can’t wait to see him in action. He’ll make a great partner for Dingo, I’m sure of it. You’ve done an amazing job, honey.” Tyee reached for Makhta’s hand, and leaned to plant a kiss on his wife’s cheek. He watched her look away to the side, flustered. “They’ll be just like brothers.”

Makhta got over her slight embarrassement, and squeezed her husband’s hand in return. 

“They will bicker a lot, certainly. They might get mad at each other, call each other names, maybe even try to get rid of each other ... But they’ll be a formidable team. They’ll share an unbreakable bond. They’ll fight as if they shared the same brain ... and the same heart.”

A sniffling noise had Makhta’s gaze shoot upwards. “Are you crying ?!”

“Of course I am ! What you just said ...” Tyee wiped the tears from his eyes. “It was so beautiful !”

Makhta rolled her eyes, but she didn’t object. She had poured a lot of herself (and her husband) in this being made of 0s and 1s. This immaterial, self-aware creature, that would stand by their son’s side for the rest of his life. It truly felt like bringing a child into the world all over again.

She couldn’t wait to meet her second son for real.

[i-think-2-much]

Morgan Stark+Babysitter Peter Parker

Peter nearly lost his balance as Karen’s voice startled the white noise of the city below him. He had been perched on his favorite gargoyle (a hilariously deformed figure on the roof of an apartment complex on 54th and 3rd) for what felt like an hour, his vision scanning the streets for some sign of trouble. It was relaxing. The only sounds were the hum of conversation, cars, and various machines that blended together into a pleasant, familiar hum. The wind that came along with being so high whipped past him, gently cooling him and preventing the spider suit from getting too hot.

That’s when Karen spoke up, “You have a call.”

He was in such a meditative state that when Karen’s clear, robotic voice shattered the silence, he jumped and had to scramble to keep himself on the gargoyle, “Oh jeez, Karen! You scared me!”

“Peter. You’ve fought aliens, monsters, and fought in a war unlike any seen by an Earthen, and you got scared by a voice?” Karen asked, confused.

“Well, yeah,” Peter huffed, trying to get his heart rate under control, “It came out of nowhere and-- wait, you said I have a call? From who?”

“Pepper Potts.”

Peter blinked, “Weird. I don’t really talk to her that often. Answer it, please,” Peter let a moment pass before launching into his usual phone call introduction, “Hey, you’ve reached Peter Parker. What can I do for you today Ms. Potts. No wait! Mrs. Stark, right? You guys got married while I was… you know. I’m sorry. This has already turned sad. What’s up?”

“I just found an old upgrade Tony was planning on making for your suit, and I was wondering if you wanted to swing by and pick it up. I can’t make any sense of it, but you’re a clever kid. You might be able to figure it out,” Pepper explained.

“Yeah, I’ll make sure to drop by Miss uh…” Peter hesitated, “What do you want me to call you?”

“Pepper is fine.”

“Okay, Pepper,” Peter affirmed, testing out the name, “Any specific time?”

Pepper sighed, “Just whenever you can. I’m going to be working from home all day. Morgan’s babysitter quit without any warning and I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

Peter hadn’t run into the daughter of Tony Stark very many times. He didn’t interact with the Starks as much as he wanted to, really. He had always been closer to Tony than Pepper, and now since they didn’t have Tony in common, it was sort of awkward. The two couldn’t be any more different: the single mother who was CEO of Stark industries and was constantly finding new tech in her house, and the high schooler who could barely get his homework done because he just happened to be a superhero. Or maybe they could be more different. Whatever the reason was, Peter and Pepper never clicked like they had with Tony.

Due to their lack of a relationship, Peter hadn’t seen much of Morgan. He spoke to her briefly at Mr. Stark’s funeral, and a few times at the formal events Pepper was sometimes forced to make her attend when her babysitters backed out. Still, Peter could hear the stress and the frustration leaking through his suit’s speakers.

He already regretted his decision, but spoke anyway, “You know, the city’s really calm right now. I could keep an eye on Morgan for a bit. I’m generally pretty good at making sure people don’t kill themselves or die in some form. I should be able to keep her alive. Other than that, I make no promises.”

Pepper laughed, but it was tense, “I appreciate the thought, but it’s okay.”

Peter pushed himself to his feet, “Okay, well then I’ll just swing by webber you want me to or not,”

Pepper sighed, “Can you superhero types go a day without making a pun?”

“Sorry Miss, that’s against my contract,” Peter joked.

“Just come pick up this upgrade before Morgan finds it and does something she’s not supposed to,” Pepper pleaded.

Peter took a few steps back, crouched into a sprinting stance, and took off in a mad sprint. When he reached the end of the building, he pushed off with all his might, effectively launching himself in the air.

He hung with a final, “On my way,” and turned his attention to the challenge in front of him. He sent out a web and gripped the coarse cord. He’d probably have to find somewhere to change and just take the bus to the Stark’s place… Or he could just hitch a ride on a bus. Was that legal?

Peter dismissed the concept and turned his mind to other matters, “Karen? Would you please call Aunt May for me?”

The speaker in his suit rang a few times before the woman picked up, “Hey Peter! Everything alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I helped a kid get home after school. He got lost, so I gave him a ride. That was adorable. And I managed to prevent a bank robbery the second it started. This dude was acting, like, super suspicious, so I followed him into a bank and caught him as soon as he took out his gun. Not a single shot fired.

“ Anyway, I just got a call from Pepper—you know, Tony’s Pepper— and she found a suit upgrade Tony had been working on before… Anyway, she wants me to pick it up ASAP. Apparently Morgan has developed an interest for that sort of stuff.”

May let out a little laugh, “Well then you and Morgan have a lot in common. How are you planning on getting there?”

Peter had to dodge a particularly low-flying bird before answering, “I’ll just take the bus. It’s not too long of a ride,”

“Don’t you have an essay due soon?” May reminded him.

He considered the problem before making a decision, “I can type it out on my phone during the bus ride. It’ll be fine.”

May sighed, “Okay, fine, just stay safe. I lost you for five years. I never want to lose you again. You know how much I love you, right?”

“Yeah, don’t worry. I love you too. I love you too.”

With immense difficulty, Peter located the next bus to the Stark’s neighborhood and secured himself a little spider-nest on the top and began typing away. Thankfully, he had had the foresight to download a digital copy of the book he was analyzing, which meant that he could just switch between his writing app and the ebook. It was annoying, but doable. By the time the bus was off the highway, his essay was completed and sent to Ned for a peer review.

Not too long after that, Peter found himself ringing the doorbell of the Stark’s house. He hadn’t been on this property since Tony’s funeral. He could remember crying on the bench on the front porch with May running her hands through her hair mumbling reassurances, but May hadn’t been there. She wasn’t the one holding him as the life faded out of his body. Watching as the life—

Pepper opened the door, pulling him out of her thoughts, “You’re wearing your suit? Of course you are. Why not. Come in.”

Peter lowered his mask as he entered the house. He had briefly seen it during the funeral, but he was a bit distracted. Now that his eyes weren’t blurry from tears, he could admire the rustic decor. It drastically juxtaposed with his original expectations of the Stark’s home. The CEO of the most powerful company in the US and one of the generation’s greatest innovators lived in a warm, quaint, older home without the stainless steel accents and whites Peter had expected.

“You have a lovely home,” Peter notified Pepper.

Pepper brushed a strand of hair that had escaped her ponytail behind her ear, “Yeah, Tony built it himself. I had no idea what he was up to. I actually got mad at him, because I was pregnant and he just ran off, but then he showed me…”

Peter brushed a hand against their kitchen table, studying the wood grain, “And let me guess, the Table’s actually a 3D model rendering system that can be used for calculating quantum theories?” He speculated.

“I’m pretty sure you were being sarcastic, but it actually is,” Pepper confessed.

“Oh no, I wasn’t. Mr. Stark always thinks of everything. He made me a space suit and a parachute built into this suit.”

“Mama, can we please play now?” A small voice pleaded from the adjacent room, “It’s been ages.”

The tiny girl went around the corner and froze at the sight of Peter, “There is a weird human in our house. You’re human, right?”

Peter grinned, “Yeah. I’m Peter Parker.”

The girl smirked and crossed her arms, “No you’re not. You’re Spider-Man.”

Peter froze, “How did you—“ he paused and looked down at his Spider-Man suit, “Oh.”

Morgan walked over and grabbed Pepper’s leg, “Mama, why is Spider-Man at our house?”

“Daddy made something for him awhile ago before everyone came back. He just came to pick it up,” Pepper explained.

Morgan gasped, her hands darting to cover her mouth in disbelief, “Daddy knew Spider-Man!”

“She’s a fan,” Pepper explained. Morgan just stared at Peter in awe.

Peter grinned at the little girl’s adorable reaction. He lowered himself to her level and made eye contact with her, “I knew your daddy very well. He made me my suit and—“ tears welled up in his eyes”— and taught me almost everything I needed to know about being a superhero. He made me an avenger, a good person, and a hero. In fact, he was like a dad to me in some ways. I really miss him.”

“Daddy was pretty cool,” Morgan agreed, “He was friends with Scarlett Witch and promised me he’d teach me how to make my own radio,”her face fell, “but he never got around to it.”

The look on her face broke Peter’s heart. She was so hopeless and resigned…

He made up his mind right then, “Maybe I’ll have to teach you,” he decided, “If it’s okay with your mom, I’ll show you right now.”

Peter looked up at Pepper. He took some delight at seeing the surprise written on her face as she protested, “No, Peter, you don’t have to—“

“Pepper, please, it’s the least I can do. Besides, she’s a Stark. Something tells me that if no one shows her, she’ll figure it out herself eventually. I might as well save her the time.”

“Please Mommy!” Morgan pleaded, using a child’s most important tool: the puppy eyes.

“Fine,” Pepper relented, “All of our scraps are in the garage.”

Morgan squealed in excitement and gripped her mother’s leg tighter before letting go and snatching Peter’s arm. Morgan pulled him into the garage and showed Peter to the scrap pile.

Peter rubbed his hands together, “Okay, so how about I get everything we need and then I’ll explain everything to you.”

Morgan seated herself on the floor and nodded.

Peter rummaged through the pile and gathered everything they would need, “Okay, so now… oh. Uh…” he turned to look at Morgan, “What do you know about radios?”

“When you turn the dial, it’s a different song. That’s it,” Morgan admitted.

“Well okay. Do you want me to explain it quickly or the real way?” Peter inquired.

Morgan perked up and squeaked, “The real way!”

“You sure? It’s gonna be a bit harder to understand,” Peter warned.

“I can do it!” Morgan slammed her firsts against the ground with a loud BANG.

Peter raised his hands up in surrender, “Okay, jeesh. So there’s something called radio waves…”

Morgan was a surprisingly good student for someone so young. She was eager, constantly grabbing things straight from Peter’s hands, and forgot everything that Peter told her, but Peter expected worse. After lots of consideration and promises that she would be careful, Peter let her solder a wire or two, but for the most part Peter did all of the hot stuff. Morgan’s job was to line everything up and to learn.

By the time they were done, the radio was a mess. Peter would have done a much better job on his own, but that didn’t matter.

He raised an eyebrow at Morgan, “Okay. I think it’s ready!”

Morgan gasped, “Really!”

Peter shrugged, “Only one way to find out,” he held their small metal box of wires out to her, “Do you remember which one was the switch?”

Morgan nodded and pressed it. Immediately, Black Sabbath filled the room. Morgan squealed of joy, the sound twisting with the heavy bass of the band.

Peter barked out a laugh at the girl’s reaction, “You did it!”

“And then we change the channel by doing…” She frowned at the device, “THIS!”

The song was replaced with some song by Imagine Dragons. Morgan squealed again, “Can I show my Mama?”

Peter nodded, “Yeah, I’ll come with you!”

Morgan sprinted out of the garage with surprising speed. Peter had to run after her in order to keep up.

“Mama! Mama! Look what me and Spider-Man made!” Morgan squealed to a closed door.

There was a short scuffle from the other side of the door before Pepper opened it and knelt down, “Oh, what is it?” She asked, feigning ignorance, “Is it… your lunch?”

Morgan giggled, “No, silly! We made a radio! See!”

Morgan pressed the button and shone with pride as the music blasted out of the speakers.

Pepper raised her eyebrows in surprise, as if she hadn’t been expecting their endeavors to be so successful, “Wow! It sounds so good!”

“I know! And look! It can change songs!” Morgan squealed, showing her how she turned the knobs for the channel and volume, “Spidey said that the numbers we see on our car radio are actually the frequencies of radio waves!” She launched into an explanation that summarize exactly what Peter had just explained to her, going into the science and everything.

Peter laughed when she finished, “Wow, Morgan. I’m surprised you remembered that much.”

Morgan seemed even more surprised than Peter, “I just listened and asked questions.”

A small, wistful smile wormed its way onto Pepper’s face, “Well, she is a Stark after all.”

———-

“But MOOOooooOom,” Morgan complained as Peter slipped his hood back on, “Does Spider-Man have to leave?”

“He has school in the morning, honey,” Pepper chided.

Morgan crossed her arms with a “Hmph”. She moaned before relenting, “Fine. Bye Peter. I love you… Ten. That’s close to one hundred, right?”

Peter couldn’t help but smile, “Close enough.”

[momentumgo]

Jennifer Schlichting

Animator + Illustrator https://www.jenniferschlichting.com/ Seattle, WA Age 32 She/Her

How did you get your start in motion design, animation, or whatever it is that you do?

I always knew I wanted to do something with computers and art. I've always loved drawing but didn't know how to marry the two. When I was 8, Toy Story came out and it immediately captured my imagination. As I grew older and realized what it took to create something like that I dreamed about working at Pixar one day. Long story short, I went to The Art Institutes of Minnesota and got a Bachelor's in Media Arts & Animation (which is now closed it was such a joke of a school). While I was there from 2007-2009 we had a few classes that dabbled in 3D Studio Max and Maya. I got to dive into 3D which was great, but it was such a painful user experience it put a huge damper on my desire to create 3D animation work of any kind.

After graduating in 2009 I moved back to my hometown in Iowa and had a hard time finding creative work of almost any kind (shocker, it's IOWA haha). I took a job as a bank teller to pay the bills and married my "high school sweetheart." A few years later I landed a job at one of Nordstrom's photo studios as a photo retoucher and lived in Photoshop all day making models and clothes look impossibly perfect. I also took the odd business card or logo design gig that came my way and fed my soul creatively by taking up painting with watercolor.

After six years in an abusive marriage, living paycheck to paycheck, having a toxic work environment, and my creative soul dying more every day I finally got up the guts to put an end to all of it. I divorced my husband, quit my job, and took everything that could fit in my SUV (including my cat) on a three day road trip across the country to move out to Seattle. I only knew a handful of people and had no job lined up, but I had a place to live for free for two months while I figured out what the heck I was going to do with my life next. That was enough for me. 

I landed a contract job at Amazon doing basic graphic design work for the next 7 months and the pay was (just barely) enough to land my first studio apartment in Seattle. Knowing my contract would be coming to an end soon I was keeping my eye out for my next gig the entire time. Not knowing many people in Seattle (let alone the motion design community) made it really difficult to get in anywhere at first. I found a local Adobe After Effects and Cinema 4D meetup group and started going every month to meet some of the community and pick their brains on how to break in. I started doing YouTube tutorials in my free time and revamping my portfolio.

One of the art directors at Amazon heard I was looking for my next gig and after she went through my portfolio with me she suggested that I read The 2 Hour Job Search. It gave great advice on how to get out of the black hole of submitting your job application online and never getting anywhere. I started going directly to people. My LinkedIn search began and the emails were flying out the door. I made a spreadsheet of all the studios in the greater Seattle area, what kind of work they did, the contacts I was making, what kind of jobs they were posting for, and got to work creating projects to put into my first reel since 2009. 

People were slowly starting to respond to my emails and accepting my offers to buy them coffee. I met so many lovely and helpful people (and a couple oddballs too haha). I asked what kind of work they were doing, how long their contracts usually were, what it was like to do animation work all day every day, what they were getting paid, and how tailoring their reel got them in the door doing the work they want to do.

One guy I met up with in particular (while I didn't know at the beginning of the conversation) was looking for a motion design intern to bring onto their small but mighty agency. By the end of our conversation he offered me the position! He had a passion for teaching and he could tell I was hungry to learn. While it didn't pay much, and was only a couple days a week I was able to put "motion design intern" on my resume while also working part-time doing graphic design work for a shoe and apparel company. I had just turned 30 and accepted an intern position, but was so thankful for company that didn't discriminate against age!

A few months later I heard back from a corporate telecommunications company I had applied to several months prior. They were interested in starting up an internal studio instead of outsourcing out all their work to agencies in town. I would be the first full-time creative on the team and had to be a unicorn. I knew a little video editing, some storyboarding, some motion design, some graphic design, and that was enough for them to offer me the position.

Fast forward two years and the team has grown to 20+ people and I've done everything from t-shirt design, graphic design, motion design, video editing, storyboarding, and deck design for massive conferences. It's not always fun or exciting animation work, but it pays the bills and afforded me a house in the crazy Seattle market.

How do you balance your work with your personal life? How do the two influence each other?

There have definitely been times when there are late nights at work but they seem to be fewer and farther between now that the studio is more established and they are working through better processes. I'm in by 9am and leave by 5pm most days. Weekend work is rare. We get two weeks paid vacation each year (and more the longer you stay with the company) as well. There is definitely more fun animation work in Seattle than what I'm doing currently but it's nice to have a steady paycheck and have time for personal projects on the side.

State your privilege – What circumstances may have helped or hindered you along the way?

I'm a white female born into a Midwest middle class family in the United States. I have a Bachelor's degree which was paid for in-part by my parents but I carried student debt until 2018 (thanks to my abusive first marriage-my ex refused to work for several years and insisted his "business ideas" would make us millions one day). I got out of debt myself by pulling myself up by my own bootstraps. The college I went to was not a great one and have learned so much more on my own since graduating than I ever did in college. I went to college full-time and year-round to graduate faster while also holding down three part-time jobs to help pay for college. It also saved me a ton of money every month after moving in with my now husband and paying only partial rent in Seattle.

I've always had gumption and a stubborn, never-give-up attitude. I was taught at a young age that I had to take responsibility for myself and my future and took that seriously. My parents weren't thrilled I wanted to go to an art college (and they had two more kids to put through college as well) but made a deal if I wanted to go I had to pay my own way. They took out the loan for me, but I paid it all back. I didn't have any scholarships but I made it work. I think it helped that I attended community college for two years before I transferred to The Art Institute and that lowered the tuition bill because of all the general education classes I took beforehand.

If you are a caretaker, how do you arrange your life so that you can achieve your professional goals while being responsible for others, (parents, children, etc.)?

My husband was a package deal and came with twin 9-year-old boys. We have them for a full week every other week. I'm not going to lie – it's a lot, even having them for an entire week haha! My husband and I both work full time but he has more flexibility when it comes to start/end times for his day and working from home. He drops the boys off and picks them up from school/daycare/camps/appointments/swim lessons/ etc. 

The weeks we don't have the boys we spend our nights and weekends taking care of housework and building our portfolios (he's a creative as well). We are also trying to be more aware of how we spend our time and shift more of it towards self-care and doing more fun things together vs. the never-ending "to-do" list all the time.

How have you learned to practice self-care? What do you do to take care of yourself?

This is something I'm still working on, haha! My husband does a great job reminding me to take time for myself, and we love to go out to eat, go to the beach, go for a hike, get massages, or paint and draw together. I've also recently swapped my hour+ commute to work where I would drive myself through Seattle traffic with now taking a corporate shuttle in. This has given me so much of my time back where I can read, draw on my iPad, or catch up on my favorite YouTubers.

I also love painting in my downtime (http://www.jenniferelizabethstudios.com/) which gives me a wonderful break from all the screen time and let's my hands do something tactile. There's no undo button with watercolors and I've accepted that and turned it into a more "zen-like experience" where I try not to control everything haha.

Just getting outside and into nature can be so refreshing. Even if it's a ten minute walk outside on my lunch break can do wonders for my mood. That, and getting 7-8 hrs of sleep/night! Oh, and making sure to take lunch breaks AWAY FROM MY DESK.

And snuggling with my purring cat never fails to make me feel better no matter what's going on in my life.

How do you define success? What would success look like for you?

Being happy and fulfilled with the life you're living. I've always liked the quote "Create a life you don't need a vacation from." Which, may be difficult to do but I think it's definitely something to aim towards.

Success isn't all dollar signs, but getting paid what I'm worth is definitely a win for me. Plus it's always nice being able to take people out to dinner and buy them nice Christmas presents. :)

On another note, I always feel successful when other people reach out wanting to chat and hear about my experience thus far. Whether it's people looking to shift gears slightly or change career tracks entirely it always makes me feel happy and successful when I can help someone out with any lessons or things I've learned along the way.

What advice do you have for those just starting out?

Take advantage of all the resources online! There was almost none of that ten years ago when I was starting out.

Don't be afraid to reach out to people. You never know where it'll lead. :)

Leave your ego at the door and don't be a jerk. Nobody wants to work with a jerk.

Never stop learning.

Look for jobs with titles other than "motion designer." Currently my title is "Communication Design Manager". LOL . Read the job descriptions to see if there will be animation work involved! Sometimes companies don't know what to call us.

Some great inspirational and informational resources to check out:

-Design for Motion: Fundamentals and Techniques of Motion Design by Austin Shaw

-The Freelance Manifesto: A Field Guide for the Modern Motion Designer

-The 2-Hour Job Search

-Real Artists Don't Starve by Jeff Goins

-Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon

-Broad Strokes: 15 Women Who Made Art and Made History (in that order) by Bridget Quinn

-The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown

-In the Company of Women by Grace Bonney

-Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

-Creative Pep Talk by Andy Miller

[neverwatchedonepiece]

511-513: "Unexpected Relanding! Luffy, to Marineford!", "With Hopes It Will Reach My Friends! Big News Spreading Fast!" and "Pirates Get On the Move! Astounding New World!"

Lafitte showing off his soft skills.

Now these three episodes were worth every minute! This is, hand on heart, my favourite part of any arc epilogue: when the seeds of new plots are sown and you get to see what everyone else is up to.

And there was a lot of that in 511-513.

I’m still messing with the format. I’ll stick with the three days a week posts but watching six episodes at a time was too much. The post ended up way too long and I couldn’t get into much speculation (which is the most fun part). Three at a time might be a better balance. :)

Luffy’s Message

This was the Main Event for me. It was why I was so keen to watch the next lot of episodes. That cliffhanger drawn out over so many episodes! What could have caused the Strawhats to react so spectacularly? What the hell was Rayleigh up to? Why all the secrecy?

And most of all...

Why the hell would Luffy go back to Marineford?

The answer? He wanted to send a message. And Rayleigh had crafted his plan so skillfully that this message would be different depending on which side a character was on.

The build up was great. 511 opened with a Marine debriefing meeting. Marines were getting the hairdryer treatment because Monkey D. Luffy, the notorious rookie pirate, had not only escaped their grasp but had the audacity to return to the scene of the crime with the Traitor Jimbei and The Dark King Rayleigh.

This was not good PR. And we all know the Marines are all about PR.

What happened was this: a lone Marine ship sailed right into the bay without clearance and fired a blank. Then three figures were spotted on board: Luffy, Rayleigh and Jimbei. Of course, they were fired on. The ship caught fire and sunk, but Luffy leapt ashore with Rayleigh and Jimbei and set about... doing some really weird stuff.

He rung the Ox Lloyd’s Bell (a Marine tradition, apparently. It’s rung at New Year: eight times to salute the passing year and another eight to welcome the new). Okay, I thought. I have no idea what this means. Let’s see where this goes.

It became a bit clearer when Luffy walked through the dumbstruck crowd, laid flowers into the chasm and removed his hat in a gesture of respect. Okay, I thought, this is funeral stuff. He’s returning to Marineford to pay his respects to Ace. This was to give Luffy closure so he could continue to live his life without being crippled by guilt and depression.

Except it was bigger than that, but I didn’t realise it until Luffy, Rayleigh and Jimbei exited via getaway whale sharks and the action returned to the debriefing meeting. The Marine in charge was Oda’s mouthpiece. Ringing the Ox Lloyd’s bell was a challenge. Luffy rang out the old Pirate Era and rang in the new one. That Rayleigh (symbol of the Old Era) was at his side was Significant. The Marines believe that Rayleigh has backed Luffy to be Roger’s successor. (This might be true. It was Rayleigh’s plan, after all. He knows all about pirate symbolism and how to make a statement. He was on Roger’s crew.)

Annoyingly, I didn’t realise the Return to Marineford would also be like the bat signal to the Strawhats until Vivi picked up the newspaper and I saw that photo of Luffy (I’m still salty she didn’t join the crew).

And I noticed something interesting. Those tattoos Vivi mentioned. 3D2Y. I have seen that combination of numbers and letters before on the CR arc list. Does this mean Luffy will only reunite with the Strawhats in 3D2Y (whatever that is)? According to the arc list, I have Fishman Island to go first.

I also have no idea what 3D2Y could mean. Maybe it’s a calendar thing? 3D is crossed out (the old pirate era) and 2Y is the new pirate era? Maybe it’s a new model of Star Wars droid. I have no clue.

But I can’t wait to find out! :D

The Strawhats

Of course, the Strawhats picked up on it right away. (Vivi did too, which is why you should have joined the crew, Vivi, why do you have to be such a good and dutiful noble?)

Zoro’s and Chopper’s reactions to the Marineford Return were most in-depth, so I’ll talk about them here just now. I’m assuming from the 514 preview that we’ll get Sanji, Nami, Usopp, Robin, Franky and Brook later.

They didn’t give us much of Zoro here. It was a short scene but his reaction was the most interesting. While the other Strawhats said: “Awesome, Luffy. Got the message!” Zoro was actually suspicious.

“Luffy doesn’t do sneaky, clever stuff like that!” he said to Perona. “This must be Rayleigh’s plan.”

Clearly, Zoro knows Luffy so well at this point that he can tell Luffy’s style of planning. I liked that.

And Chopper...

I still have that major soft spot for Chopper. I still cannot watch the flashbacks of his past without tearing up. Every time Chopper cries, I kind of want to take him aside and say, “Shhh, Chopper. I can’t handle your little reindeer tears.”

It was when Chopper returned to Birdie Kingdom that the penny dropped. The Strawhats wouldn’t reunite yet. They all have to go through training. Now everything from the last few episodes made sense. Maybe the Strawhats I thought would get away without training will have to do it after all.

And Chopper definitely got a good deal here. That library! I was as shocked as Chopper (but at least I didn’t say it out loud, haha, that was funny).

Chopper’s loyalty to Luffy and the Strawhats has upped a few levels post-Sabaody. He said something really interesting (and kind of worrying). Remembering his past, when he was reviled as a monster - outcast from human and reindeer society - he never wanted to go through something like Sabaody again and is now willing to “become a real monster for Luffy.”

Wow... Chopper’s about to get an upgrade. I mean, he’s always had so much potential. Monster Point, anyone? Those Rumble Balls? And he’s a great medic? Hopefully, Oda has good things planned for Chopper.

And speaking of plans... not all is well in the World Government hierarchy! I wouldn’t like to say they deserve it, but... they deserve it.

The Gorosei?

I think that’s who these guys are. I counted five in the shot and they are all old guys in suits, so I’ll go with it for now. There was no confirmation in the episode. Neither were names given, so I’ve made some up. I feel like I need to distinguish them because they all seem to have a different take on the post-Marineford situation.

Ringlets was worried about Luffy. He is a controversial figure. Of course, Luffy is Garp’s grandson, so that is a given.

Saruman was concerned about smoke rising from Mount Doom... Nah, kidding. He’s worried how Luffy knows Rayleigh. He thinks Rayleigh won’t return to centre stage but implies that maybe Rayleigh will support Luffy from the shadows.

Handlebar was salty about Jimbei. Was annoyed he finally turned against them as he was a symbol of intertribal peace. (The ‘finally’ implies they always suspected Jimbei would snap one day.)

Baldy was concerned about the imbalance of power in pirate society. There is a vacant Yonkou seat and THREE to fill in the shichibukai. How to fill those vacancies? Is there anyone qualified left? Glasses was also annoyed that the D. names were receiving so much PR lately and making the WG look bad.

Blonde has his eye on the New World. The power structure imbalance there now Whitebeard is gone is troublesome. They will have to choose the strongest to be Shichibukai. He also gave us an update on Blackbeard, which was nice. Wasn’t expecting to hear from Teach for ages!

Apparently, Teach has already made waves in the New World. He has an advantage over others who want that Yonkou seat because he knows everything there is to know about Whitebeard’s territory.  No one has ever eaten two Devil Fruits in history except for him. Only another Yonkou or Marco and the remaining Whitebeards could take him out. Is that a statement on Blackbeard’s new power level? Is he training too, so he’ll be an effective adversary for Luffy by the time they inevitably clash again the New World?

I have my fingers crossed for it.

And there’s something else the Gorosei should be worried about...

Human Resources Will Be Snowed Under Right Now

I forgot who Kong-san is, but I bet he has his work cut out for him right now.

There are a lot of changes afoot at WG and Marine HQ. The biggest shocker is that SENGOKU HAS RESIGNED!

I am so happy about this. Now, all he has to do is join the Revolutionary Army and I’m all set.

Garp continues to exasperate. He has “virtually resigned” but lacks whatever he needs to be truly brave and take that final step. He has kept the Vice Admiral title and is now tutoring younger Marines. I suppose it’s good he’s still around to keep whippersnappers like Akainu in check, especially now Sengoku did not recommend Akainu to succeed him.

Aokiji, the mystery wrapped in an enigma, will be Fleet-Admiral.

I... it’s weird. I can’t see it yet, but it’s definitely a better choice than Akainu. Maybe he would’ve been better with Kizaru. Oh well, it’s Sengoku’s choice. I trust him. He’s a wise man. “Old soldiers shouldn’t cling to power,” he said. “Justice is based on values and those change every generation.”

He ain’t wrong.

And I’m guessing now Garp is training young Marines that Coby, WHO HAS AWAKENED HAKI, will be first on the list. Here’s another one who will go through training to become a worthy opponent of Luffy.

Smoker also went to see Aokiji and requested a transfer to G5 branch. Aokiji had doubts. “That’s not a place you go voluntarily.” Apparently, G5 means Grand Line, 5th Branch. It’s in the New World. Smoker wants a New World placement.

I cannot handle this much awesome.

To Top It All Off, The Pink One Is Also Causing Trouble

How can he sit like that? Surely that is not in any way comfortable?

Remember when he ambushed Moria at Marineford? Turns out he didn’t quite get the job done (phew!) I should stick to my No Corpse, No Death rule more often.

In the words of Doflamingo.... “Poof!”

Moria disappeared just before Doflamingo landed the final blow. He insisted Moria was dying, so even if he did get away, he wouldn’t go far. Unless he came back as a zombie. (You joke, Doflamingo, but I would not put that past Moria for one reason: Hogback!)

The WG official accused him of sloppy work. Then Doflamingo lost his cool. I’ve never seen him act like that before, so it was interesting. “Who do you think you’re talking to? When did you become my boss? When I lose interest in doing business with you guys, I’ll quit being a Shichibukai at any time.”

I guess this really highlights the tenuous relationship the Marines have with these guys. Plus, Doflamingo seems like he’s Mr Chaotic Evil (or at least Mr Neutral Evil) incarnate, so maybe not the best guy to rely on?

Especially when the New World has descended into utter chaos.

So Who’s All Enjoying The New World?

Everyone who is anyone will head there eventually. Crocodile and Daz Bones will have another crack at it. Law has plans but is content to wait for his time (smart). The Strawhats, obviously, are a Work in Progress.

Buggy has reunited with his old crew (I forgot about Richie the Lion. How dare I?) and also has a massive bunch of Impel Down followers. Maybe he’ll have a crack at it too, now he has Alvida and Galdino to be the strategists? Plus, he just got that letter from the WG. Maybe he’ll end up on the run.

The rest of the Rookies have ventured out.

As for the Supernovas (sans Law and Luffy) I have predictions.

Who Will Make It:

The most obvious candidate is Kidd. He’s made for the cruelty of the New World, has already crushed another crew and has declared himself an enemy of Luffy. Sweet. Battle points.

Hawkins is another one who has crushed a crew. Again, battle points.

Apoo isn’t dumb. He’ll run if he has to. Smart points.

The Jury’s Out:

Urouge has stumbled across The Thunder Plains (from Final Fantasy X) and met some weird old ladies who look like they’ve just stepped out of Macbeth.

Who’s Probably Not Okay:

Gang Bege’s ship is in fragments. X-Drake has just clashed with Kaido’s crew. I don’t see them lasting much longer.

And Jewelry Bonney...

When Your Fave Is Problematic

Hard pass, Teach. A very hard pass.

I loved how the intro caption to this scene was: “Some Burning Island”. Then I saw the Blackbeards and thought, “Praise Oda! My villainous faves have returned in style!”

I thought the only news I would get on them was from the Gorosei. This was a nice bonus.

Of course, they were bickering. The Blackbeards always bicker and snipe at each other. There was a definite tone change here, though, as though Oda wants to step their villainy up a gear.

Take their argument over the ship they sailed in on. Teach said, “We should have stolen a Marine ship. The Raft wasn’t great.” Shiryu’s retort was tolerated: “You guys don’t prepare for anything.” But Avalo Pizarro’s (I finally know his name!) joke, “Want me to be captain, Teach?” earned him this response from Lafitte: “Shut up or I’ll kill you. We are Blackbeard Pirates.”

Teach is gaining more authority and loyalty from his crew. The ones who have always been with him are fiercely loyal and the newer ones have yet to learn the ropes. Lafitte (is he the first mate?) is also flexing. Do I sense tension between the established and newer members of the crew? Maybe, but they seem to get along well enough.

Among the new ones, I already have the ones I like (Shiryu and Catalina) vs the ones I’m not keen on (Avalo, San Juan and Vasco. Their personalities haven’t really emerged yet, so there’s time).

While the island burned, the Blackbeards stuck around necking Jacky D (haha!) because they were waiting for the Marines.

Why? Were they about to do another deal?

Yeah... but not one I was expecting.

They had crushed Bonney’s crew, chained her up and were about to trade her in for a ship.

That was shocking. I hadn’t expected Bonney to catch up to Teach so quickly and be defeated, but the outcome wasn’t surprising. Of course Teach would do that. He’d done it to Ace before and it worked. Sasuga Teach, I guess. What he did next stepped up his villainy a few notches.

He turned on lech mode, which I didn’t know was in his repertoire.

“I can’t believe they gave you a hundred million bounty! The New World is the sea for the chosen strong ones. You can all the way from South Blue. But you’ll go no further. You’re too weak to join my crew, but you can come with me, if you become my girl.”

Her response was excellent. “SCREW YOU, YOU BEARDED PIG!”

Honestly, Teach. You deserved that. And you were shocked at the rejection? You were going to get the Hard Pass. Apart from being a traitorous, murdering scumbag, you’re also a rubbish flirt. I mean, expecting her to go out with you after you beat up her crew, called her weak and laid her out as bait for the Marines? Not a great sell, Teach. Work on your people skills, like Lafitte.

Their plan went awry when Van Augr spotted Akainu on the approaching ship. Obviously, he would not do any deal (and I bet he’s steaming mad Aokiji will be Fleet Admiral before him). So they scarpered.

I’m worried for Bonney, though. Akainu picking her up? That’s the worst luck... :(

TEAM SELFIE AFTER A HARD DAY’S PILLAGING! #blackbeards #nofilter #okayonefilter

[jeremystrele]

Making Bathroom Dreams A Reality

Making Bathroom Dreams A Reality

Dream Job

by Elle Murrell

Maria Dawson works her dream job at Phoenix Tapware. Photo – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

The 30-year-old has been at the bathroom and kitchen fixtures firm since graduation in 2011. Photo – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

Maria is the Senior Graphic Designer and 3D Artist. Photo – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

Inside the Bayswater HQ. Photo – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

Maria studied Industrial Design and a Diploma of Education. Photo – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

Throughout her studies, Maria focussed on technical thinking, problem-solving, 3D modelling and innovation, through she really honed these skills on-the-job. Photo – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

Workshopping elements ahead of creating a visualisation. Photo – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

HQ details. Photo – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

Dedicated to life-long learning Maria makes time each week for online tutorials and short courses. Photo – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

The Design Files team will unashamedly admit we get pretty excited about beautiful bathrooms… and if the TDF Instagram account is anything to go by, it seems you guys do too!

But meeting Maria Dawson has catapulted my intrigue and appreciation to new-found heights. The Senior Graphic Designer and 3D Artist has been at Phoenix Tapware for the past eight years ­– first huge tick of approval in the dream-job criteria! What’s more, her rave reviews working for this Melbourne-based tapware, showers and bathroom accessories company convinced two of her siblings to also take up jobs at the firm. Could there be a more positive feedback?

Maria studied Industrial Design at Monash University, where there was a focus on technical thinking, problem-solving, 3D modelling and innovation, which gave her a unique approach to design work. After graduating, she added on a Diploma of Education, as she considered applying her skills to teaching, but after securing a role at Phoenix Tapware, she hasn’t looked back!

Here Maria shares her path to top-tier job satisfaction, from acing The Sims as a kid (!) to asking the right networking questions in uni, and evolving within a rapidly advancing industry.

The most important verb in the get-your-dream-job lexicon is…

… diversify!

It is so important to keep your current skills up to date whilst also developing new ones.

I used to think that once you finish your degree that is what you have to do for the rest of your life. But it’s not the case! Learning new skills along the way can really help you recognise what you’re good at, what you enjoy, and which skills are most valuable for you to achieve your goals.

Phoenix Tapware has been particularly supportive when it comes to professional development. From allocating time each week for online tutorials to attending short courses, I have been able to diversify my skillset and enjoy a varied job role as a result.

I landed this job by…

…developing into it. After finishing my Industrial Design degree at Monash (and feeling a little inexperienced), I approached one of my lecturers to see if he knew of any available positions out in the real world! As it happened, he knew Phoenix Tapware was looking for a casual Junior Designer, so I applied.

I started working two days a week in the Research & Development Team, 3D modelling internal components and creating technical drawings on the coffee table. This progressed to concept creation of tapware and shower designs (at a desk!) five days a week, with an occasional graphic design job thrown my way. It was during this time that I started developing a real love for 3D visualisation and graphic design. As the need for a full-time graphic designer and 3D artist became more apparent, I said farewell to the R&D Department, and hello to the new Marketing Department!

A typical day for me involves…

After snoozing the alarm multiple times, I try to get up around 6am for a walk or Pilates (‘try’ being the operative word!). Breakfast is a must – as I have been known to get rather hangry and the team at work don’t deserve to deal with that!

At work, I’ll make myself a cup of tea, go through my emails, gawk at the latest design featured in the TDF newsletter (and I’m not just saying that!), then review my to-do list.

If I’m working on a 3D visualisation scene, I will start with inspirational imagery research and create a mood board (basically play interior designer), then map out a design and build the bathroom or kitchen scene in our 3D software. Magic is added with lighting, camera angles and materials. Photoshopping raw render outputs is inevitable – however enhancing textures, lighting, reflective surfaces etc. to make everything sing is really satisfying! Waiting for a render to process can take a while, so my day is generally full of other tasks too. Whether it be creating artwork for a catalogue, advertisement, packaging or product displays, photoshopping another render, researching market trends or designing another bathroom/kitchen environment for my next 3D visualisation, there’s always something keeping me busy.

The most rewarding part of my job is…

Well, I can’t go past the moment I spotted my 3D rendering in Diane Keaton’s hard-cover book ‘The House Pinterest Built’. Diane had converted her personal Pinterest board into a curated collection of inspirational imagery, and I was thrilled to see she had selected a Phoenix bathroom scene that I created for the cover of the ‘Shower’ chapter!

But in terms of a recurring reward, I would have to say working in a team of supportive, talented, hard-working individuals, and watching all our efforts transform into a successful launch. I have also been able to work alongside two of my sisters at Phoenix, which is awesome! It is such a pleasure to bounce ideas around with like-minded and creative people such as them.

On the other hand, the most challenging aspect is…

Staying on top of things with ever-changing launch dates and deadlines.

The culture of my workplace is…

It’s a supportive and professional environment. We’re having a bit of fun, bouncing ideas off each other and food sharing is huge! There’s a pretty heavy focus on the bottom line though, so we’re always pushing ourselves and looking at ways of developing and improving our processes.

I’m always…

I’m known for snacking to be honest! It’s not a reputation I’m ashamed of – I love a good snack! Hand me a bickie and I’m a happy-chappy!

On Job Day at school, I dressed up as…

The equivalent of Job Day at our school was to draw a portrait of yourself in your envisaged uniform. Coming from a creative family, I drew myself as an artist, beret and all! So, I guess I have simply replaced the paintbrush with a computer mouse!

My idea of the perfect workplace is…

A collaborative and friendly environment, set to the perfect temperature (there have been countless arguments over the thermostat in this office) with loads of natural lighting, plants, plants and more plants!

The best piece of advice I’ve received is…

Move on and come back to it later – with fresh eyes. It’s well-known, but certainly advice I haven’t gone a day without using.

When I find myself stuck on a particular design or have been staring at a layout for too long, it’s always best to take a break, make a cup of tea or move on to another task. It’s amazing what even half-an-hour does to your perspective and often a solution just presents itself!

Over the years, my workplace has…

…grown dramatically – and it’s been exciting to watch and be a part of!

Phoenix Tapware started out in a shed 30 years ago, and throughout time, has grown to become one of the industry leaders in design and innovation, winning multiple international design awards.

However, as of five years ago, we didn’t have a Marketing Team! Ad campaigns were developed in R&D meetings and it was a group effort to keep the website updated. It’s amazing to look back on old catalogues and advertisements and see how far we’ve come.

Since establishing a Marketing Department, we have really been able to enhance and refine our brand identity, and in doing so, develop a stronger presence in the industry.

In the next five years, I’d like to…

Continue to improve my design skills and extend my knowledge in various computer programs.

I’d also love to keep exploring other creative outlets on the side – I’ve recently had a go at pottery, photography, painting and woodwork – so I’m excited to see where that leads!

For more information on Phoenix Tapware’s range of tapware, showers and bathroom accessories visit Phoenixtapware.com.au.

[missredbean]

Fanfic: Fundamentals of Muscle Drawing

Summary: Keith and Lance were Altea Studio’s lead animators. However, they have one fatal flaw: the lack of proper anatomy knowledge. So Allura sent the two to learn under the great master, Shirogane Takashi. Keith and Lance went, grumbling and protesting, never knowing what awaited them in the humble looking art school.

It was a hard choice between Lance POV and Keith POV, but I decided Keith’s reaction was funnier if it was seen in Lance’s POV. Enjoy 1813 words of shameless muscle worship.

It was winter.

Correction, it was winter and the heater was not working.

Lance kept rubbing his hands together while Keith breathed into his palms to warm his cold cheeks. The only thing that kept them from grating each other’s nerves as usual was their mutual dislike on Allura’s order. Seriously, they were already on the sixth episode on the Voltron reboot animation and Allura wanted them to fix their glaring anatomy mistake only now. To be fair, her months of sickness didn’t let her check the work until now (and Coran was quite lax in quality checking), but it was still embarrassing and hurt to hearing your drawings called as “eyesore” in front of everyone else.

Coming here hadn’t been easy either. The school, Art Champion, was located in less popular area and they still need to walk fifteen minutes after taking the bus—in the middle of snowstorm. All in all, both Lance and Keith were now too tired and grumpy to start a fact.

“This guy better be as good as she said,” Lance commented once the silence became too much.

Keith grunted in agreement. Lance never thought his rival’s expression could be any colder, but he was wrong.

The clock struck four and the door opened. Both animators turned their head as their teacher entered the room. Lance couldn’t help but stare and swallow a Dios mio down. Their teacher, Takashi Shirogane according to the flyer, was a very good looking man. Not just better than average, but super model class good looking. Tall, handsome, symmetrical features, and probably very well built under that thick winter coat—oh, and oh, plus that kind smile he was wearing now.

Suddenly that fifteen minutes of braving snow storm in the peak of winter seemed worth it.

“Hi, sorry for the wait and thank you for coming to the ‘Fundamentals of Muscle Drawing’ class. My name is Takashi Shirogane and you call me Shiro. I didn’t think there will be a class since many cancelled today, but still, I’m glad you two came.”

“Lance McClaine. It was no problem at all,” Lance blurted out before he could stop himself. Why did he introduce himself?? Shiro didn’t ask him too!

Thankfully, his eternal rival made the same mistake.

“Keith Kogane. We are on time pressure,” Keith logically added, voice muffled, and holy brush pens, was that a blush he was trying to hide behind his palms?

Shiro nodded. “Understandable. Now, before we start, let’s move to a warmer room. The model sketching class is cancelled, so we can use that one.”

They moved to a room filled with chairs arranged in circular motion around a bed for models. The new room was much warmer, drawing content sighs from the three. Lance and Keith took a seat that faced the horizontal part of the bed and whiteboard. Both started to take off their coats, but paused halfway when they saw their teacher doing the same.

It wasn’t a strip tease. There was nothing sensual about it at all. But once their eyes landed, they couldn’t look away. It was like pulling off a silk sheet to reveal a brand new sexy Rolls Royce. Shiro wore skin tight black turtleneck, which showed, no, enhanced his ripe muscles. They teetered dangerously between well-built and overly-built. It was simply the perfect balance from head to toe. Like the 3D models Hunk had on his computer for reference.

Lance started to see why Allura chose this class for them.

Keith unconsciously knocking his chair back brought them back to reality. They quickly took their jackets off and sat down, avoiding to look into each other’s eyes or Shiro.

“Alright, here’s what we are going to do over the next twelve weeks…”

Shiro started to explain what they were going to learn, his method of teaching, and what he wouldn’t teach. Lance struggled to listen to him but in the end gave up when he saw Keith taking notes on auto-pilot. He’d just swallow his pride later and enjoy staring at Shiro now.

“With that said, I’m going to name all muscles human have and explain the functions. You don’t need to take notes, because I’m going to give you the handouts later. For now just try understanding as much as you can, because you’re going to have to remember this later.”

Lance nodded before his mind could finish processing the words completely. Shiro nodded in satisfaction and continued.

“Very well. Let us start from the neck. This one here—“ Shiro bared his neck, looked to the side, and started to trace the diagonal muscle that stretched from underneath his ear to the top of his collarbone. “—is called sternocleidomastoid. It’s a mouthful, and other muscles will be as long-named, but if you break the words down, it will be pretty easy to remember.”

Shiro started to explain where the word came from, but Lance was not listening. He was busy fending off his dirty mind which was relentlessly supplying imaginations of him burying his face to that neck and trace that sterno-whatever muscle with his tongue. It was probably a little difficult since Shiro’s slight man-boobs would get in the way.

Not far to his left, Keith swallowed his own spit.

Lance missed the name of the shoulder muscle and its explanation as he gathered himself together. Imagining Allura’s spartan punishment seemed to do the trick and he was back to reality.

Only to be kicked back to fantasy land viciously.

“Here’s deltoid the muscle where most people make mistake when drawing. You see it’s shaped like a reversed triangle, and the edge is located at the side—“ Shiro made a pinching motion to trace that very visible ‘v’ line on his upper arm’s top, “—but most people draw it at the front to show it. Even if you forget everything I am going to teach you, please remember this one fact. It’s my personal pet-peeve to drop works with this mistake.”

Lance and Keith glanced at each other and nodded. Even if they had to work overtime and sacrifice their holiday and sleep to fix all six episodes, they’d do it. They wordlessly and solemnly swore.

“Now these are the pectoral muscles.” Shiro’s hand was over his left breast. Lance almost died. Keith wore an expression similar to a cat ready to jump a mouse. Needless to say, Klance team was mesmerized and no longer thought about learning. They were reduced to starving lions, devouring Shiro’s muscles with their eyes and hungry for the next meat.

It was when Shiro was explaining about inguinal crease[1] that Keith voiced his first question.

“Can you repeat that?” Wha— “I want to know the exact location where it starts. It’s hard to see with the pants getting in the way.”

Holy shit Keith. That was straight up sexual harassment!

Lance wanted to scream, but Shiro innocently nodded and did as requested. This time he lowered his belted pants a bit to show those enticing v-line beneath the abs.

Dear mighty lions, Lance wanted to howl. He never felt so thankful to Keith that he wouldn’t mind kissing his boots—or lips.

Alright. He really needed Jesus now. Or Buddha. Or Muhammad. Or whatever that can make him think straight again. His logic and moral level must be critically low if he could think kissing Keith counted as okay.

There was a knock on the door.

Lance held back a groan while Keith glared at the door. Who dared interrupting them?

A tiny boy (or girl?) thrusted their head inside and spoke.

“Dad just called. He said we had to close the school and go home now or risk spending a night here.”

Lance wouldn’t mind that, but Shiro clearly did. “Got it. Thanks, Pidge.”

The door closed and Shiro turned to address his students.

“Alright, it seems like we have to end our session early today. I will make the next class longer to make up for it.”

Usually Lance would cry at that but today he nodded, a little too enthusiastically.

“Here’s your hand out. Make sure to review what I taught you today and read it before you come to the next class. If you can get it memorized by then, we can start on the back muscles.”

Back side. Right. “Consider it done,” Lance said, finding his confidence back. Shiro smiled at that. It was official: Takashi Shirogane owned them. He had his fingers wrapped around their little hearts and they were happy to give him.

“That is good to hear. Memorizing muscle is important for drawing, and the long names are intimidating. But rest assured, you two will grow to love muscles when you’re done with this class, just like the students before you.”

Yeah. Lance could see why.

“You still have long way to go,” Keith said once Shiro left the classroom to help Pidge closing down.

“Like you are not,” Lance shot back heatedly.

Keith only raised his eyebrow and proceed to dictate all muscles Shiro talked in the class. Lance cross checked with the handout and to his dismay, Keith got all of them right.

“Damned prodigy,” Lance cursed under his breath.

Keith shrugged. “Not really. Unlike you I actually pay attention.”

“How?” Lance blurted out before his brain could filter it.

Keith looked away, but Lance could still see pink on his cheeks. When he finally spoke it was so soft that Lance almost missed it. “I want to memorize it so I can draw it later.”

Lance gaped. Did Keith just implied that his quick memorization came from pure fanboy power? Genius bastard.

Needless to say, their progress to drawing anatomically correct animation skyrockets. Allura was happy and they got praises from their team. Naturally they all wanted to know how Lance and Keith achieved that, but since Allura didn’t want to pay for everyone’s school fee, Lance and Keith were forced to teach them. They were not as good as Shiro, but Lance was surprised that he actually could explain very well. And Keith—well, he wasn’t a bad model. Actually, as good as Shiro, just, different body type. Thanks to that realization, Lance found himself sneaking a peek every time his mind wanders or when he thought Keith was not looking.

And no, Lance wasn’t being stalker-ish at all. Especially compared to Keith who kept asking him to take off his pants to show his “well defined leg muscles” whenever he couldn’t figure out how to draw one. Lance had photographed it with Coran’s help for his own reference (because yes, his leg muscles were very easy to draw despite the lack of bulk), but Keith refused to use it, insisting that it was better to look at the real thing.

Well, Lance thought as he caught himself staring at Keith’s upper arms, he couldn’t argue with that.

Google inguinal crease and your welcome.

Hi there! Thank you for reading “Fundamentals of Muscle Drawing”! I hope you enjoyed it. It was based on my experience at a trial class for anatomy drawing. And Shiro’s last line about growing to love muscles is a quote from that class’ teacher. The rest of animator/studio/art stuff was something I pulled from my limited knowledge, so forgive me if I got facts wrong.

Now for those who read/follow my other story, “Lord Zarkon is Never Ready” on my tumblr, I might not update next week because of season 2. I’m practically rolling around on my bed, waiting in suspense and can’t concentrate because the place I’m watching it on still doesn’t have the rest of the episode (FYI no spoilers in the comment section please). Not that I blame Netflix, because border and territory business is very messy. I hope they will make it available on Asia so I can contribute (or buy the DVD/blu-ray!)

Others by MissRedBean

ORIGINAL - FOR YOU I CALL Summary: After three years of hiding and recovering from a traumatic experience, Argent Cross' life finally starts heading for the better—only to have it turned upside down in one night. He wakes up ten years older, without a clear memory of what happened in between, in a warring country that sees him as their enemy's spawn. Prologue Episode 1: Arachnids Part 1 (Chapter 1 & 2, Chapter 3 & 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7)

FANFIC - FUNDAMENTALS OF MUSCLE DRAWING Summary: Keith and Lance were Altea Studio’s lead animators. However, they have one fatal flaw: the lack of proper anatomy knowledge. So Allura sent the two to learn under the great master, Shirogane Takashi. Keith and Lance went, grumbling and protesting, never knowing what awaited them in the humble looking art school. [Oneshot] (https://missredbean.tumblr.com/post/156193783124/fanfic-fundamentals-of-muscle-drawing)

FANFIC: LORD ZARKON IS NEVER READY Summary: Despite the peace in the universe, Zarkon is famous for his fighting prowess and readiness to face his opponents. But when it comes to Keith, he is never ready. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Holiday Special, Part 6 Part 7

[waynebomberger]

How To Audit Your AV Budget

Do you audit your AV budget? If not you might be overpaying, or not really getting the equipment best suited for your event. While auditing your AV budget sounds overwhelming, you need to do it! This will allow you to make sure you are getting exactly what you need and the most bang for your budget. In this episode of Whiteboard Wednesday, Will Curran will walk you through how to audit your AV budget. He will guide you through the key steps to take to make sure you leave nothing to question. From how to interact with your AV company to critical questions you really need to ask you he has you covered. Let’s jump in!

      Video Transcription – How to Audit Your AV Budget 

Hey, what ups Endless fans, Will Curran back here again with another Whiteboard Wednesday. Today we are talking about How to Audit Your AV Budget. The word audit it sounds confusing, it sounds like finance, it sounds oh my gosh boring, but guess what we’ve all had to do it at some point. Whether we think we’re spending too much on AV, or we just want to make sure we’re getting exactly what we need, this is for you. This is our chance to get to the nitty-gritty, get into the weeds, and peel our way back from the onion that is event AV. I’m going to show you how with a bunch of tips, rapid fire, and quick succession. Typical Whiteboard Wednesday style, and let’s just jump right on in.

Quantity of Items

Let’s start off with the quantity of items. Far too often do we see it on AV quotes where there’s just too much of something. Whether it’s microphones, cables, projection, whatever it may be this is your chance to dive in, and make sure you have exactly what you need. For example, if you have four people speaking on stage at any given moment, maybe you have one MC as well who’s going to come up on stage, and after the stage, and you want them to have their dedicated microphone. Let’s say you have one question and answer microphone, that’s a total of six microphones. Well, now you can do that counting, and look at your quotes, and say oh my gosh there’s 10 microphones. Ask your AV company to get right of four of them, and bill you down to six.

So, that’s just a simple way that you can save a little bit of money, but sometimes when you do that, especially at Endless we see that when we’re trying to save money with clients is you do that it’s just a little bit at once. If you do it across multiple categories, lighting, sound, video, staging, that’s where you start to see big dollars shaved off. So, focus on the quantity of items.

Google Line Items

When it comes to items also let’s talk about those line items and using a little handy tool I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, it’s called Google. As complicated as AV sounds, it’s all not proprietary equipment. We all buy the same equipment, utilize it, so what happens is on those quotes they should list out the specific models, names, number, everything like that. Copy and paste that, plug it into Google, and what you’ll find is that you’ll find YouTube videos, articles, information on what those line items are, and what they actually do.

This is also a really fantastic way to teach yourself AV if you don’t have someone who’s there to explain what every single line item does. What this also does is you’ll find it will help hold the AV company accountable, because when you Google it if you can’t find the information on it, it allows you to ask that question. What is this? Please explain it to me, and we’ll explain what they mean in just a little bit.

While speaking of someone to explain what everything means let’s talk about requesting a quote walkthrough. I’ve talked about this in previous webinars, and videos, and everything like that, but a quote walk through essentially is where when you’re getting your quote ask your AV company to walk you through everything line, by line, by line, by line, by line, by line. Yeah, this sounds like an extraordinarily excruciatingly painful experience, especially if you have a big event, it can take a long time. What you can find is that that’s the chance for the AV company to explain what everything does, so it allows you to ask the hard questions. Which we’re going to talk about just right next about asking hard questions about what things do, and why do you need it.

Get Critical

Speaking of asking those critical questions, get critical when it comes to your budget. If you’re looking to save money, and do that formal audit process we’re talking about ask the hard questions when you’re doing your quote walkthrough. Or after you’ve gotten your quote say, hey what is this, and do I need it? I promise you every AV company this is going to drive them nuts, because they want to say that every single little piece is absolutely necessary to the execution of their event. Well it might be that it’s just more of a nice to have. It’s going to make their job a little bit easier, but it’s going to cost you a little bit more money to make that happen.

Well, if you ask the critical questions the good ethical AV company should say you know what we can get rid of that, we’ll save a little bit of money, but here’s how it’s going to affect you. Also, I love to say that when you’re asking these critical questions about what something is and do I need it the AV company should always, and I repeat always, be able to explain any line item on their quote in a simple to easy and understand manner. I’m sure when you Google it, it could still be a little confusing, but if they are not able to explain it in a simple easy metaphor, and what it does, it means they likely are trying to confuse you. You don’t want that. You want a company that you can trust, and is going to help you through the entire process.

Ask for A CAD Drawing

Speaking of which, understanding how things are, and what things do, let’s talk about getting things really visual, and understanding what somethings going to look like. That’s where you want to ask for what’s called a computer-assisted design, or what we call a CAD in our terminology I should say. A CAD is essentially where someone takes what you are getting, and renders it in three dimensions. Imagine creating a visual model, and a visual representation of your event in three dimensions. What this means is that you’re going to be able to see exactly what you are getting for your money.

The reason why this is important is a big area that you’re going to find you spend all of your money in is going to come down into lighting and decor. To be honest, as much as we want our stuff to look really cool with cool lights, and we want to have great scenic pieces, and greats designs, when it comes to that décor a lot of times if we have to save money it’s the first to go. The reason why is it’s one of the areas that not a lot of people are going to realize cost a lot of money. So what happens is when you get a 3D render, a computer-assisted design, a CAD design, it’s going to allow you to see what the event looks like.

What you might find is on the quote you just see this alphabet soup, all these crazy line of items of what it is, and all these things like that, but when you get it in three dimensions you go oh wow. Wait, why do we have five screens? Why do we have this scenic piece? Hey, this looks a little excessive for what we’re trying to pull off. Hey what if we do this? It allows you to see what it is and allows you to communicate, and again audit the AV company. Make sure to hold them accountable for what they’re giving you. It doesn’t just come in as a piece of paper saying blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah equipment, instead, you get to see what it’s going to look like. Again, auditing, and keeping them held accountable.

Labor Hours

Let’s jump into more areas that you can audit you av budget, and get into the nitty-gritty. That is labor hours. Believe it or not, I’m sure you know this already, labor is one of the most expensive parts of AV. The people that need to execute, build everything, run everything, they come at a pretty price. So, one of the quickest areas that I see all clients try to save money is the labor, but usually, they take a wrong approach. Instead, they usually say, hey can we get rid of this whole person? Or can we reduce the number of this many people? Can we do that? Instead what I recommended is look at the schedule. What you should be able to do is look quickly at their quote, and understand when our guys going to be there. When do they leave? When do they have their breaks? And then compare that to your schedule.

I know a lot of AV quotes look really confusing when it comes to these labor layouts, and say things like day rates, and travel per diem, all these things like that. What you want to do instead is if you can’t understand it talk to your AV company, and have a conversation with them. Ask them to say here’s our schedule, here’s where they are. Count up how many hours that you’re going to need the AV people there. Usually add a one hour break somewhere in there, and then you should be able to see in a day how many hours there’s going to be working.

What you’ll find is a lot of times AV companies do one of two things. They hardly seem like ever get it perfect the first time. They either undercharge for labor, or they overcharge. The obvious thing when it comes to an audit is we want to make sure they’re not overcharging, right? They’re not putting too much labor on there just to pad themselves, and then hey they don’t end up working, and they take that money home at the end of the day. Ewe, no one wants that, right?

Under Quoting Labor

The other option though is that they under do it. I know this doesn’t really relate necessarily to bringing the cost down when it comes to your audit, but this is also an important part because sometimes what they’ll do is they’ll under budget their labor. Then what they do is do the event, and go oh my gosh we didn’t realize we were going to go into over time. Your event went later than expected, this, and this, and that, here’s another bill. Oh my gosh, I’ve seen this so much, and this is a nightmare! No one wants to be billed after the event. So, what I recommend that you do instead is to go over the labor hours and labor schedule in detail, and make sure it’s accurate from the beginning.

You should be able to ask your AV company, and say as long as I don’t change anything is this the exact quote, and exact invoice I’ll have after the event? As long as I don’t change anything? If they can’t confidently say yes, chances are they’re probably under budgeting. You don’t want to have that, so get really nitty gritty with your schedule, and make sure that’s accurate. It’ll help you avoid bills in the end, and it’ll also avoid you being overcharged for labor as well.

Quote Breakdowns

Alright, what else do we got here? Quote breakdowns when it comes to visually representing the quotes. The most common way that I see quotes broken down is at least breaking things down by rooms. God forbid if your AV quote ever says just thousands of lines of lists of equipment, and you have to guess where things are going, and this and that, and trust the AV companies knows. At a minimum, hopefully, they should be putting everything into rooms so you can see a room, and then a list of equipment below it.

What’s great about this is it allows you see a subtotal line item for that room, and how much money you’re spending with it. Which is really great, for example, if you’re to reduce the amount of money you’re spending in break out rooms you can see the total cost of each breakout room, and add it all together. Same with the general session, you can see where the reception money is going, everything like that. What I recommend that you do is break this down even further, at least into categories.

This is where a lot of companies differ in this great debate that comes with selling AV. The two camps are either line everything 100%, and you get to see the price for every single item, every cable, every microphone, everything like that. The other is to see categorized pricing. I kind of go right down the middle, I agree and see both parts of the parties. First thing is the categorized people say, hey I don’t want to show my clients every single line, because then they’re going to nitpick the little pricing. They’re going to ask the critical questions, but usually, they’ll a little bit less informed. Obviously, you’re watching this video, so you are very well informed. The other camp says, no clients should have full control, and they should be able to see every single line item.

Categorize Quote

Again, I see right down the middle. However, what I recommend is to make both companies happy is that you do this categorization in the quote breakdown. Again, when you’re doing a quote walk through it’s going to make this even easier. What I recommend that you do is that you have everything broken down not only by room, for example, general session, but then inside those have categories. Lighting, sound, videos, staging, décor, labor, for just that room. What they should allow you to do is see what major areas, and chunks that you’re spending your money in. For example, if you see that you’re spending a lot of money in light, again if you got a computer-assisted design you’ll be able to say, wow this looks a little excessive. Can we bring lighting down? It’s not as well needed. Or for example, you’re not trying to spend as much money on décor, you’ll see that décor line item.

What’s great about this is that’s going to lead to my hidden line item right here, which is how does this affect the budget? It allows you ask this great critical question, which is when you’re going category by category, and when you need to save money. When you audit your AV budget is to look, and say how does this affect the budget? Going back again to the explaining in easy to understand terms they should be able to say this is how it’s affecting the budget.

Major Categories

Okay, for example, I will tell you right now the major categories that you will always spend a lot of money on is first labor. The people are the most expensive. People are expensive, the best people cost a lot of money, that’s just the simple fact when it comes to it. The second area is video. Video equipment’s really expensive right now, because it’s the newest, greatest thing. Everything has to be in 4K, the greatest quality, the greatest look. Projectors bulbs break down very easily, all these things like that, so you usually find that video is the next biggest area. The second biggest area then is the décor, because décor is usually a little more fragile, can’t last as many events, usually has to be replaced a lot, it tends to be a little bit more expensive. From there usually, everything is relatively equal. Lighting and audio tend to be lots of little things put together make a big budget.

So, when it comes to your budget the first area to look for again is that labor hours, making sure that’s accurate. Then it’s asking things like hey do I need this? How does this affect the budget? When you have conversations if you find out that a majority of your money is being spent on this high end, expensive projectors you might say to yourself well what can we get away with? Can we get away with a cheaper projector? You can ask again critical questions that allow you see oh my gosh this is how my money is being spent, this is where it’s going, which is the whole point of that audit.

Reality Check

Alright, so we’re onto our last and final item, which is the idea of a reality check. The best way to audit your AV budget … I’m not going today the best say. Another way, I should say, for you to audit AV your budget, and your AV budget, is to do a very simple task. That is to get outside opinions. First, there is two ways to do this, the easy way is for your to find someone who knows AV really well. Whether it’s someone on your staff, or it’s a consultant, it’s someone who used to work at an AV company, or it’s someone who just loves tech, and is obsessed about this. Can go on those four hour-long calls at the AV company, and can find out everything they do, and everything that they love.

Totally okay, but keep in mind there are people out there in events industry. For example, Brent Kruger who was event technology consulting actually sits down, and walks clients through their quotes, and negotiates, and looks at the hard and fast, and the best stuff when it comes to AV. Makes sure you’re getting exactly what you need. They kind of do the negotiation for you, so you want to get someone like that on your team. It’s really quick and easy way if you don’t feel comfortable with technology to have someone help you.

Send Reference Quotes

The other way that you can do it if you don’t have someone like that at your fingertips is to do a really, really simple task, that is to take your existing quote, take the AV companies pricing 100% off … This is extremely controversial by the way. Take all the pricing 100% off, and just have just the list of equipment. Feel free to copy and paste just the list of equipment and labor, send that to another AV company, and say quote me this exact thing. Don’t give me discounts, give me exactly what it is, and compare the pricing apples to apples. That’s why I have a picture of two apples right here, is that far too often when we hear about this stuff.

For example, you’re bidding two companies against each other, or you’re comparing AV quotes, far too often it’s comparing apples to oranges. You say, hey I need a projector in this room, and the companies come back one with a super high-end projector, one with a really low-end projector. You definitely don’t want that, you want exact comparisons. You want to have the exact model to the exact model, and make sure the pricing is right. This will allow you to get a really quick audit on your pricing to see hey am I being cheated out of something? Am I being given a really great deal? What could be going wrong? What’s great about this is a great AV company who you are comparing the quote to should be able to say, well why are they doing it this way? Do you do this? Do you do this? It gets you that basically free consulting that allows you to see are you getting what you need?

Again, I’m a big fan of AV companies being extremely transparent, and extremely helpful today. So again, I’m not talking about just taking a quote, copying the price over, saying oh my gosh this is the cheapest we have to go with them. This, and this, and that, it should be the company that explains things the best, and treats you like a human, and interacts with you one to one. That will be the best way for your to audit your AV budget. To find that partner who will take care of you.

Recap

So, we’re going to recap everything that we’ve talked about. First quantities of items, things like microphones, projectors, screens, make sure that it’s accurate to what you actually need. Next is labor hours, have it match your schedule. Make sure that it’s 100% accurate in that it is really, really close to what you’re looking for, and that the AV company can say without a doubt this will be the exact same thing as the invoice I give you after the event. Ask the critical questions, ties in all this, but do I actually need this? What does this do? Why do I need that?

Getting the quote walkthrough. Kind of a proactive way to get critical questions answered right away. Knowing exactly what’s on your quote. Again, knowing exactly what’s on your quote a 3D CAD design can allow you to visually represent exactly what you’re going to be getting. Next is a reality check, obviously you want to make sure that you compare quotes apples to apples, but allowing another company to come in and compare the pricing allows you to make sure you’re getting what you need.

Next up is asking the hard questions how does it affect my budget? Can we get this lower in any sort of way? Second to last, Googling items. It allows you to educate yourself in what everything does, and get to see some cool videos hopefully along the way. Then last by not least is doing a quote break down. Related to rooms, and then categories, and allows you to see where your money is being spent in different categories.

So, that’s everything related to how to audit your AV budget. If you have any questions feel free to leave them down below, but what I want to know from you, for all of you guys watching this way, what’s your number one tip? How do you guys audit AV your budget? How do you hold your AV companies accountable to make sure that you’re getting the exact pricing and the exact items that you need? Leave that down in the comments below, and while you’re doing that go ahead and smash that subscribe button. Smack that like button if you enjoyed this very much. If you didn’t like it at all give me a thumbs down so I can get that good feedback, and I’d love to know how we can improve down in the comments.

Well, that’s going to conclude us again for another Whiteboard Wednesday. Will Currant from Endless Events here, wishing you an amazing Wednesday, and we will catch you guys all later. Adios!

  Resources

The Best Questions to Ask Your AV Company for An Amazing Event 

Major AV Terms You Need to Know 

How to Make Your AV Foolproof 

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  from Endless Events https://ift.tt/2PbSvYF

[dorothydelgadillo]

I Was Hesitant to Take Coding Courses Online—Here’s What Changed My Mind

If you’ve spent any time on the Skillcrush site, you know that founder Adda Birnir talks a lot about reaching women—and that’s a refreshing change in the tech world. But as a guy trying to learn to code, I wasn’t sure I’d be particularly welcome. I didn’t want to intrude on the dynamic I felt the company was trying to have with its students, because of my gender.

Let’s back up a bit.

I went to school for industrial design. My education was based on designing physical products like washers, dryers, and shoes—”real” products you can hold in your hand. I had a solid background in the fundamentals of design and my own aesthetic, and I was putting it to use in my school projects.

One day during my senior year, I saw a poster on campus asking for someone to design an app. It piqued my interest, even though I had no idea how to design an app. I reached out to the person who made the poster and we did the project together, muddling my way through my first app design. Looking back, I actually feel so proud of that very first try—even if I was stumbling blindly through it. It was my first design work for a digital product, and even though it wasn’t paid work, it lit a spark in me. I loved it. I realized I wanted to be a web designer and build apps instead of cars or furniture. I didn’t know much about it—even that phone and browser apps are different animals—I just thought it all sounded fun.

Later that year, I was walking through a job fair at my school with a tiny portfolio of my app design work. There wasn’t much going on, but as I was leaving, I walked by a table for a technology company in Birmingham. I really connected with the woman there, and she loved my portfolio. She ended up asking me to work with her on a side project, and the next week I signed a contract to design and develop a website for her startup.

Now to be clear, when I said yes, I still didn’t know what I was doing. I’d never designed or developed a webpage before. But I said yes anyway and learned the skills I needed along the way.

At the same time, I was working at my first job out of college modeling 3D utility trucks. It’s dull, repetitive work. You never make anything new. It’s like building the same thing out of Legos over and over and over again. When I got bored, I would open up code from websites to try to familiarize and teach myself to code so I could complete that website project. I didn’t have money to do a bootcamp and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do a full blown career change, so I kept trying to learn on my own.

The problem was that free coding sites didn’t really work for me. Sites would tell me what HTML was or define CSS, but they wouldn’t tell me how to put everything together. It never really clicked. This brings me to Skillcrush.

I found Skillcrush’s blog because it had answers to so many of my questions. But I noticed the site had a definite feminine bent, so I wasn’t sure if I’d be the right fit as a student. I even looked into the classes and was super intrigued by the curriculum, but I still stayed away. I watched a Skillcrush webinar and really wanted to apply, but I was still worried that I would be disrupting Skillcrush’s mission to serve women.

I wish I hadn’t been so hung up on this, because it was a problem with an easy solution. Just as I reached my wit’s end with the free resources I was using, I went back and reread Skillcrush’s website where I saw this phrase; Our mission is women, but our curriculum is for everyone no matter your gender!” I felt like that little phrase gave me permission to apply as a student. Skillcrush is aimed at women because so much of tech leaves them out, but that doesn’t mean Skillcrush is only for women. I enrolled in a blueprint that day.

It was a total game changer. Everything came together for me after that—the classes were story-based and logical, and had casual, colloquial language that made it accessible. I had breadcrumbs of knowledge from all of my research, but Skillcrush connected the dots.

I started doing websites regularly as a freelancer, and when a teaching assistant job opened up at Skillcrush, I applied. It was a great feeling that they remembered me from when I was a student!

I completely fell in love with development and now I’m a front-end developer at Skillcrush with zero plans to go anywhere else for a long, long time. Going from the mindless monotony of designing model trucks to this thrilling development community completely changed my life, and I love Skillcrush’s mission: Gender shouldn’t hold anyone back from learning tech. It’s all about the learning, for everyone.

from Web Developers World https://skillcrush.com/2018/09/28/which-online-coding-courses-changed-my-life/

[swipestream]

Tabletop Gaming and the Visually Impaired

I have so many fond memories, in my 35+ years of tabletop role-playing, of sitting around the table with my gaming buddies . . . tossing dice, laughing when a “1” was rolled and cheering when a natural “20” saved the day. I remember coloring in my first set of dice, frantically flipping through the Player’s Handbook for the perfect spell before my turn came around . . . and debates that started with, “It says right here in the book that . . .”. I also remember trying to figure out what the red bull-shaped creature, with bat wings, was on the cover of the Monster Manual, being blown away by the artwork of Erol Otus, Jeff Dee, Larry Elmore, and so many other great artists . . . the image of the rust monster still cracks me up . . . so silly looking, yet one of the most terrifying creature’s my fighter every encountered!

[Image Description: This image depicts 3D renderings of split, braille dice 3D printer models. On the left is an orange d4 split horizontally, on the right is a blue d10 split vertically.]

These wonderful memories involved comradery, imagination, gaming icons that brought fantasy gaming to life, and one very important factor that I took for granted all these years . . . sight. It never occurred to me that all the gaming materials I came to love were designed for sighted players and that an entire community was completely overlooked. Then I met my buddy “D”.

I went to my first gaming convention in Richmond, VA about 8 years ago . . . and honestly, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I poured over the game signup sheets and saw one that captured my attention . . . Changeling. So, when the time slot came around, I sat down at the table and met “D”, our game master for the session. I had never played a World of Darkness game before and was a little daunted at the details I saw on the character sheet, but D was awesome, and so well-versed in teaching new players that he walked me through the character creation process in no time . . . handed me books and walked me through the spells and abilities. We then proceeded on an incredible adventure, one of the most creative and vivid adventures I’ve ever played in. OK, I know, this sounds like a normal convention gaming session . . . but what you don’t know is that “D” is totally blind.

Over the years, “D” and I became good friends, always looking forward to the con so we could hang out, toss dice and laugh at how my dice repeatedly tried to murder me. Then a few months ago it hit me, “How was “D” so well versed in the gaming material and how did he run such fluid games?”. I reach out to “D” and asked him if I could head to Richmond and chat with him about this. My first question inquired as to how he “read” the game books . . . were there audio books, PDFs run through a screen reader, etc.? You see, there are no braille books and most game PDFs are designed for sighted players and don’t meet all the accessibility criteria to be easily read with screen readers. Now, there are some wonderful pieces of equipment out there, braille readers that work in conjunction with a computer or SD card to translate text into braille and then the braille “pops” up, line by line, on the braille reader . . . basically a living translation machine.

[Image Description: This is a picture of myself and my buddy D, the man that got me started on this project. To the left is an old guy with white hair, blue glasses, and sporting a pride t-shirt with rainbow dice. To the right is D, a handsome person of color wearing a grey t-shirt].

But here’s the problem . . . equipment like this is exceedingly expensive and a lot of visually impaired readers can’t afford to purchase items like this. D’s answer really hit me like a ton of bricks, “Jack, I have a fantastic group of players that I trust. They read the books to me and I remember what they say. I rely on them because there aren’t any braille gaming books for me to refer to.” So, my next question was, “Do you ever have other visually impaired friends ask about getting into RPGs?” . . . and this was the answer that broke my heart and spurred me into action. “Jack, I’ve had several blind friends ask me. Sadly, I had to tell them that they needed a sighted player to take them in because there are no accessible RPG products that enable blind players to independently jump into the hobby.”

Now, if you’re like me, you might know one or two people, or have seen someone in public who is blind . . . and never really considered the expanse of the scope of visually impaired people—it’s quite large. Additionally, there are many forms of visual impairment, not just blindness. The following is taken directly from an article entitled “Statistical Facts about Blindness in the United States”, by the National Federation of the Blind:

There are several ways to define blindness.

Many people regard blindness as the inability to see at all or, at best, to discern light from darkness.

The National Federation of the Blind takes a much broader view. We encourage people to consider themselves as blind if their sight is bad enough—even with corrective lenses—that they must use alternative methods to engage in any activity that persons with normal vision would do using their eyes.

The United States Bureau of the Census question about “significant vision loss” encompasses both total or near-total blindness and “trouble seeing, even when wearing glasses or contact lenses.”

The statutory definition of “legally blind” is that central visual acuity must be 20/200 or less in the better eye with the best possible correction or that the visual field must be 20 degrees or less.

There are no generally accepted definitions for “visually impaired,” “low vision,” or “vision loss.”

As gamers, we like numbers . . . so let’s delve a little deeper to provide a little more perspective: Prevalence of Visual Disability

The number of non-institutionalized, male or female, ages 16 through 75+, all races, regardless of ethnicity, with all education levels in the United States reported to have a visual disability in 2015.

Total (all ages): 7,297,100 (2.3%)

Total (16 to 75+): 6,833,000 (2.7%)

Women: 3,738,400 (2.87%)

Men: 3,094,600 (2.53%)

Age 16 to 64: 3,847,100 (1.9%)

Age 65 and older: 2,985,900 (6.4%)

(Source: Erickson, W., Lee, C., von Schrader, S. (2017). Disability Statistics from the American Community Survey (ACS). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Yang-Tan Institute (YTI). Retrieved from Cornell University Disability Statistics website: http://ift.tt/1n3BM65)

I don’t know about you, but for me (personally), I find these numbers staggering . . . 2.3% of our entire population is visually impaired, and over 3.8 million of these people are 16 years old and up. That’s no mere drop in the bucket.

Now that we have some stats to consider, let’s look at how this comes into play since the advent of fantasy role-playing games. Most of us are familiar with D&D™ (1974), Empire of the Petal Throne™ (1974), and Tunnels & Trolls™ (1975) as the fore fathers of all tabletop RPGs . . . the games that set the stage for all modern tabletop RPGs. Since that time, and this is purely a guess, hundreds and hundreds of tabletop RPGs have been created; from home brew games, the indie press, and the big mass market companies. Yet . . . for all the games created, nothing has been created with the needs of the visually impaired considered. Now, there could be a few braille game books out there . . . I just couldn’t find any references to them and none of the visually impaired gamers I’ve spoken with know of any. So, please understand that I’m simply writing this based on my research and don’t claim to be “all knowing”.

Regardless of 100% historical accuracy, however, what I do know is that in the gaming community, the needs of the visually impaired are not being met . . . and I find that very saddening. Now, I do want to flip the coin and look at things from a designer’s point of view. First, if you were like me, I honestly didn’t realize that the need was there. Secondly, there is the simple matter of cost versus demand.

I recently translated David Black’s The Black Hack RPG into braille, so I understand the process that goes into it. First, I had to teach myself braille, which ended up being one of the most incredible experiences ever! Braille is not a language, it’s a code . . . a beautiful and amazing code. There are two levels of braille, Grade 1 deals with straight, letter-for-letter translation and basic punctuation. Grade 2 braille is much more advanced and delves into contractions and single braille cell representation of complete words (I’m just now starting this journey!). So back to The Black Hack . . . the printed game booklet weighs in around 35+ pages or so and it took me about two hours, as a complete novice, to copy the text to Word, format it, then run it through an open source translation application called Braille Blaster . In this application, I had to go through, line by line, to make sure that the translation was accurate and that the page layouts would make sense to the reader. Setting aside the time it took to learn braille, it only took me a couple of hours to create a braille version of the game. Not bad . . . but then I ran into a new challenge. The 35+ page, 6” by 9” booklet, once translated into braille, turned into an 80 page 8” by 11” book. That’s a lot of pages . . . but not impossible to overcome.

Seeing as that I’m just one person, I decided to send the game PDF to a non-profit agency that specializes in doing exactly what I did . . . just to see if outsourcing the process would be a viable option for game designers. The price quote I received back blew my mind.

Translation fee (6 hours at $90 per hour) = $540

Printing Fee for 1 Copy = $45

Shipping = $10

Total Cost . . . roughly $600 for a 35+ page booklet using much better software and equipment than I had.

Here’s a short video showing how I got started in the translation process.

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*** Please share to help spread the word to open the doors of roleplaying games for the visually impaired! ***Project 1: The DOT Hack adaption of The Black Hack RPG by David BlackI created a short video to show what the braille to text game translation process is like and also talk a little bit about the DOTS a Stylus & Slate RPG Project. Let's blow open the doors of roleplaying games for the visually impaired community!

Posted by Jack Berberette on Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Now, my point in sharing this is not to say the company is price gouging—after all, they have utilities, rent, and employees to pay for. The issue is that, depending on the page count of the game book, outlaying hundreds to even thousands of dollars for an unknown ROI is not generally in reach for most companies, especially indie designers.

The question now becomes, “How can game designers also incorporate the needs of the visually impaired into the design process?” It’s a fair question, but one that with some ingenuity we’ll eventually figure out.

This article is not about the project I started, but I do want to share what I’ve done so far, which has since gained momentum that is hard to keep up with.  You see, most game designers, once they realize the need, genuinely want to help . . . mainly because gamers are, in general, awesome people who love the hobby and want to share it with everyone they can.

So here’s what I’ve done:

I reached out to several visually impaired gamers to get their feedback on things such as braille books, existing technology, and what specific things they struggle with the most.

I taught myself braille—it’s surprisingly easy to pick up on and I promise you that once you start learning, you’ll be fascinated and as obsessed with it as I am!

I realized that getting print houses with the proper printers to print the translations was out of the question. So I raised money and purchased a braille embossing printer, and now that same $40 print of the Black Hat (mentioned above) costs me about $1.75 to print. Now I can print things at cost and get them into the hands of visually impaired players.

I reached out to several blind gamers, proficient in braille, and asked them if they would be my proof readers/editors for the braille translation process.

I designed braille dice in photoshop, then hired a Shapeways designer to create 3D models that can be purchased on Shapeways (at cost) or downloaded for free for people with access to 3D printers.

I network, network, network, then do a little more networking to find like-minded people who embrace the quest. I have made some amazing friends in the gaming industry just by reaching out and each one is fully on board with getting their games translated into braille and having fully accessible, screen-reader ready, PDF files that can be made available to visually impaired gamers.

I also just found some new fonts that are designed to help make reading easier for readers who deal with Dyslexia. So basically, with a few extra clicks, I can create PDFs that help Dyslexic gamers on top of blind readers (we’re in the process of testing these fonts currently to see if they work well).

Lastly, I research (constantly) the different digital technologies available to see how many of these can be leveraged in a way that will help empower independent game play for visually impaired players. As an aside, I’ve spoken with several blind players and simply using audio files at the game table can be a real challenge. So, I’m looking at ways we can work with designers who are experts at designing mobile apps for the visually impaired.

Here’s what it looks like when a veteran, visually impaired gamer get’s his hands on accessible gaming books, dice, and character sheets for the very first time!

So, where do we go from here? How can you, the reader, get involved? First, help spread the word that there is a real need for the visually impaired and if the gaming industry embraces that need, it could literally open worlds for many people! Next, take some time to learn braille . . . trust me, it’s freaking cool, and once you start, you’ll never want to stop learning. If you are presented with the opportunity, get to know someone who is visually impaired . . . learn about their lives and if they are interested, take them under your wing and share the magic of tabletop gaming with them. Lastly, and this is very important, don’t talk to or treat a visually impaired person any differently than you would a sighted friend. They did the same things we do, they just experience it through touch, sound, and most importantly . . . trust.

I hope you enjoyed this article and found it interesting and inspiring!

~ Jack Berberette – DOTS RPG Project

  Tabletop Gaming and the Visually Impaired published first on http://ift.tt/2zdiasi