#my current one is whether i should do english extension 2

[the-irrelevant-trumpeter]

ugh i hate being in year 12 and having to think about what subjects to drop or pick up and what i want to do at uni

[rigelmejo]

chinese reading notes:

my reading skill is funny (to me) because like. if reading sort of focusing on individual words, like when i read knowing i’m going to look words up (so reading intensively), it feels like i don’t know as much as compared with

when i’m reading extensively, particularly when i play audio (so i can’t stop or pause), when i comprehend things JUST FINE that if i read slower with word lookup i’d be ‘stumbling’.

i think part of this odd contradiction with reading skill, is when i read extensively like i must when audio is playing, i just take the context+hanzi i know+unknown-hanzi-radicals and then make a guess of any unknowns which is usually perfectly close to the real meaning. i have to make the guess instantly so i just rely on what i recognize. Like when i heard “effervescent” or “macabre” something in an english audiobook, i STILL as an adult am not sure on the exact definition, but based on how i heard it in the audiobook or when reading i can guess what it means good enough. 

So like. When I’m reading chinese extensively, which listening alongside audio requires of me, i do the same process in my brain. i see the equivalent of “luminescent” and like with english i just guess based on what i’ve got instantly and move on. Which is a good skill frankly to be able to also do in chinese as in my other reading languages. But, when I slow myself down and MAKE myself look up words, i suddenly am no longer seeing sentences as a ‘whole’ and start using word lookup for lots of individual words i could have figured out from context. On the upside, this word lookup is likely helping increase my mental information of said words. On the downside, it slows me down a lot, and perhaps i should go back to my old rule of “only 5-10 word lookups per chapter” so i don’t pause so much unless its a word i actually could use direct full definition help for.

I’ve been reading dmbj 1, and of course intensively reading it with Readibu (like most things this month). And for the first 3 chapters i’d say that was useful, as dmbj has some genre-specific unknown words (miners lamp, shovels, tomb, bury, engraving, scroll, mummy etc) that were useful to know the Specific Definition for and then repeatedly look up and drill initially so I’d know them quickly. But now that I’m at chapter 11? I noticed that when I extensively read it with the audio playing, i got through the chapter faster and had no problem following the plot. Whereas I know when I extensively read chapter 10 i stopped a bunch to look up words, and now i know i was probably mostly looking up words i’m now familiar enough to grasp in context i was just leaning on word-lookup as a crutch. 

Will i keep leaning on the crutch? Not sure. Like srs flashcards, or Listening Reading Method (when doing both steps 2 and 3), i think repeatedly looking up unknown and ‘foggy’ words as i read does do the repetitive-definition exposure that tends to get words learned quickly. So while repeated-word-lookup of words i’d learn eventually anyway through context slows down reading speed, it does probably allow me to pick up these words Faster than picking the words up only through extensive reading. (On the flipside though, if you’re also doing a lot of reading, a decent amount of extensive reading really really HELPS ones ability to comprehend full sentences whether u know what’s in them or not, so some extensive reading is always good).

I am trying to do a balance right now of extensive to intensive, so that I’m at least Sometimes picking up words the same way i did in english reading. I’m currently extensively reading 梦幻小公主 1, which is perfect for this. It feels a LOT like reading in middle school in english felt for me - lots of words i know, and lots of new fantasy/description words i don’t know but can guess really easily. I also needed to add some fantasy reading anyway - eventually i need to grasp horror (i already have a good vocab for this), crime (decent vocab but i need more police/legal vocab), supernatural (i already have good vocab), fantasy/xianxia (i know basic terms but need more), wuxia (i know basic but need more), and business (need a lot more) genre vocabulary. I’m also extensively reading 镇魂 while listening to the audiobook (who knows how long i’ll stick to it/if i’ll finish ToT), which is a good ‘harder’ novel for me to do other extensive reading in. 

completely unrelated:

nothing like seeing japanese again to remind me how utterly grateful i am for how hanzi work. i learned during studying chinese that i’m actually quite an auditory learner. as in, i tend to remember sounds well and sounds help me remember things, audio learning materials seem to work well for me etc. So with hanzi, usually hanzi only have 1 pronunciation (or a couple in some particular cases which at least for the de/di have to do with grammar function), and that pronunciation usually is tied to a radical in the hanzi. Now that I’ve learned the basic hanzi and gotten farther, i realize how i learn a VAST majority of new hanzi is “oh those radicals! its pronounced X! now i’ll listen to the audio real quick, remember X=this word meaning, and the water radical hints its moisture cool got it!” I remember 搂， 握， 提，抬， 拉 this way - hand radical so it has to do with hand-related verb movements, the other half is the pinyin so i just remember oh lou=X meaning if i see it with a hand radical. Idk if i’m explaining well, but basically sound is a huge way i remember hanzi and their meaning. I see new hanzi and for me the radical/portion related to sound IS the sound ‘spelling’ to me. So its kind of like how i recognize english words but a bit different? like i see “lumi” in english and know that spelling means “light”. Well for hanzi i see the pronunciation portion and know okay i remember that spelling+hand radical = X word. So for me hanzi start looking like word-pieces, which are just as easy to start recognizing as they were in english.

Meanwhile, with japanese, the kanji are truly my weakest point to remember. Remembering the meanings is NOT hard, because so many meanings vaguely transfer from hanzi to kanji or are close enough i can relate the new japanese meaning to the kanji fairly easily. What is hard, is the pronunciation. So many kanji have several pronunciations, and i am used to relating a portion of pronunciation to the radical/portion of the character. with kanji i can’t do that, i might see the same ‘sound’ radical in 3 kanji but they aren’t pronounced the same! And of course i’ll see a SINGLE kanji, and on it’s own it will have a few pronunciations. i never realized my hurdle back when i started japanese years ago wasn’t actually kanji meaning remembering. My hurdle was actually “brain likes to associate ONE sound to one symbol” and kanji do not do that. 

In my brain hanzi are a bit like english in that a portion of it (the sound portion) just is ‘spelling/pronunciation’ in my mind, and then the other portion is a hint of wtf the sound means (which in a way is nicer than english which does not always hint wtf the word means within the word). Kanji don’t seem to have any inherent “this is the pronunciation obviously” component, and i think for me that confuses the hell out of me. Which is even further complicated by the fact kanji change pronunciation representation depending on both words, and conjugations attached at the end. 

Anyway, as a result of my brain getting hung up on kanji pronunciation: my japanese reading-only skills are evolving fairly well (thanks hanzi-near-cognate transfer ToT), and my listening-only skills improve fairly expectedly (yay). But the combination of being able to know the pronunciation of what i read? Is VERY limited to only words i know well through listening. Because i need to know the word SO well that i remember the pronunciation and just match it up to the “symbol kanji-conjugated hiragana” reading chunk. Hence my study has been heavily leaning toward listening to japanese for the past year. Because the stronger my listening foundation, the better my kanji pronunciation. But without the listening foundation in a word, the kanji words keep fucking confusing me - their meaning is easy enough to remember, but their pronunciation (and therefore the specific word they represent) is so hard for me to figure out.  

[scriptstructure]

All of those are possible questions. Also I can't ask questions if I don't know what the problem is, what do you see is the issue? Is the way I'm writing a problem? How do I know what should be important to the story I'm telling or whether it's something that suits myself? Anyway it seems all awkward in a story when writing for an audience even if we do the same kind of thing in real life when retelling/quoting what someone said. Perhaps just my writing style is bad? So what is a good style?

The kind of question that I can answer is formed from two elements:

1: The current state of the thing that you're trying to do "I'm writing a story in mostly English with characters that speak many languages, switching even in the same sentence..." (you have this part)

2: The goal that you are trying to reach with the project: what are you trying to do or achieve (you do not so far have this bit)

As an example I might have a question like:

I'm writing a bit fantasy story with lots of classic fantasy races and creatures, but I want to avoid some of the racist depictions that seem to be baked into a lot of older fantasy that uses the same sorts of creatures and races

(1) big fantasy story using lots of 'classic' fantasy tropes

(2) avoid perpetuating racist stereotypes in fantasy

For your issue, anon, you've said that you're writing a story where lots of characters are multi-lingual, and are switching freely back and forth between languages

You've said that it 'appears I'm trying too hard to be exact in what language is spoken but it seems a bit of a mess' and you've said that 'I think I got a bit overboard as I imagine stories as film so in my head I'm hearing (or imagining if I don't speak it) the different languages'

But from this, I cannot give you a helpful suggestion because I do not know what it is that you want to achieve.

Do you want to write a story which emulates the chaotic, confusing experience of being in a multi-lingual space, where the onus is on the reader to look up what languages are being used, and what the words and phrases mean?

Or do you want to have something which reads clearly, with everything being translated & explained 'on page' but conveys the fast-paced, chatty energy of a complex multi-lingual conversation?

Or do you want to do something else entirely?

The suggestions I might give for those and for many other goals are very different. I could write an extensive reply about the approaches that I would use, on the assumptions that I would make about what I would be trying to do with such a story, and they would probably be useless to you, because I'm not the one writing the story. You are.

If you don't know what you're trying to achieve with your story, I can't tell you what your goals are. That's the part you have to figure out for yourself.

The one thing that I can help you with is here:

it seems all awkward in a story when writing for an audience even if we do the same kind of thing in real life when retelling/quoting what someone said.

While it seems counter-intuitive, writing stuff down the exact way that people say it in real life doesn't quite work in writing. It lacks the tone of voice and the context of that experience of being there and listening to a person which gives real life speech its oomph.

In writing, to get a 'naturalistic' feeling speech, it is better to develop the specific speech patterns and quirks of each individual character, and to work out how they might communicate a particular idea or sentiment in a way which is specific to their personal speech patterns and personality.

I have several posts about dialogue and characterisation:

[LINK] How to give characters distinct voices

[LINK] What are the technical 'parts' of writing dialogue

[LINK] How do I write witty dialogue and banter

[LINK] How do I write someone speaking with an accent

Perhaps just my writing style is bad? So what is a good style?

A good writing style is one which enables the story to do what the writer wants it to do. It depends entirely on what the purpose of the writing is.

I hope that this makes things a bit more clear.

[lucemferto]

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT TECHNOBLADE (or A Narrative Analysis of the Dream SMP Doomsday Event) - Script

Heyo! Per request I am posting the script to my video of the same name here on tumblr. I must warn you that just reading the script will probably not give you the full experience, so I would encourage you to watch the video (linked above).

There might also still be a lot of grammatical errors in the text, because I don’t proofread.

Okay, so! I don’t want this to turn into a reaction channel OR a Dream SMP channel for that matter! I am planning on doing a big dumb, way too long analysis video on the Dream SMP which will – at my current pace – come out in five years. I am already way too late on this one.

Spoiler Alert for the Doomsday Event that took place on the 6th of January in the Dream SMP. Surely the worst thing to take place on the 6th of January 2021 … I’m sorry, what’s this about the Capitol?

In case you don’t watch the SMP and need context: The Dream SMP is a Minecraft Multiplayer Server, that, throughout the last year, has transformed from a normal Let’s Play to an ongoing new-media series streamed by multiple high-profile streamers such as Dream, TommyInnit or Technoblade. It comes complete with script – by which I mean loose bullet points – and story events. It has attracted a large fanbase specifically invested in the story and less so in the actual gameplay content. Like I said before, I will probably do a big video on the Dream SMP at some point in the future.

The storyline is long and complicated and trying to explain it all would take up the majority of the video and there are other channels who have already done a much better job than I could ever hope to do, so give them a watch. I’ll try to summarize all that is pertinent to what I will talk about in this video.

Okay, let’s speedrun this summary. Cue the music!

Major Players here are TommyInnit, a founder of the independent nation of L’Manburg, Technoblade, an anarchist who was deep in conflict with L’Manburg, Tubbo, Tommy’s best friend and current president of L’Manburg, and Dream, the ruler of the Kingdom of the Dream SMP (even though he is not the king, but we’re not going to get into that right now). Tommy had in the past been exiled by Tubbo for endangering L’Manburg’s shaky peace with the Dream SMP. Tommy had then teamed up with Technoblade, who was hellbent on destroying L’Manberg after some prior altercations – more on that later.

Tommy and Tubbo came into conflict during a festival set-up to celebrate the friendship between L’Manburg and the Dream SMP. After punching out their feelings, Tommy came to the realization that his friendship with Tubbo was more important than his vendetta against Dream and those who exiled him. Techno took that change of heart badly and teamed up with Dream to destroy L’Manburg … and that’s exactly what happened.

Techno and Dream, with little to no opposition, obliterated L’Manburg with no hope for recovery leaving its inhabitants stranded hopeless and alone.

… And that’s what you missed on Dream SMP!

Okay. So, usually I just put whatever thought slime drips out of my mouth hole into your subscription box. But then I asked myself: “Am I not taking this a largely improvised nonsense story from a bunch of 16–24-year-olds a little too seriously?”. And then I remembered. I’m a pretentious bitch. I made an 18-minute video explaining why the popular commentary YouTuber memeulous is secretly the time travelling Anti-Christ, REASON HAS NO SWAY OVER ME!

So, like the English Major drop-out that I am, I will present you with two theses, which I will then combine into one … supratheses! That word doesn’t exist, I just coined it, it’s mine! I am very smart!

[I know words, I have the best words!]

 Thesis #1: The Fandom focuses too much on Character Analysis in Favour of Narrative Analysis

The Dream SMP is truly something special. It is uniquely singular in how it tells a story of this scope through its chosen medium. While there is an overarching script that lays out the plot points of the future, each of the 30+ streamers on the SMP are their own cameraman, director, writer and actor. You cannot watch “the Dream SMP” – if you attempted that, you would be 80 by the time you caught up to the Doomsday Event. You have to choose whom to watch. You have to choose your focal point character.

Because by the way the story is told and consumed – aka in such a compartmentalized fashion; you watch one streamer and get one character’s perspective – it has sort-of unintentionally conditioned fans to look at the SMP and its characters less as one coherent story with messages and themes and more as sports teams they can root for. You’re Team Techno or Team Tubbo or Team Tommy or Team JackManifoldTV (formerly known as Thunder1408) and every other side is in the wrong! It’s like Twilight for a decade old children’s game about virtual Lego!

Okay, I’m exaggerating, but the amount of discourse perpetuated by and revolving around so-called “apologists” – a terrible term that unfortunately has caught on – is really not something that I think is good for how we interact with the story of the Dream SMP.

The Dream SMP is discussed a lot on character-based level, which is, like I said before, hugely advantaged by the way the story is consumed by its audience. With traditional, visual media such as film for example, the audience can be made more aware of what messages the narrative might try to communicate on a narrative level without the need for an explicit narrator to tell you the moral.

As an example, in a movie you could have a smash-cut from the Butcher Army’s discussions about neutralizing the danger Technoblade poses to Techno being nice around villagers or taking care of animals. This would communicate on an extradiegetic level, that the Butcher Army is in the wrong with their assumptions. Alternatively, you could contrast Techno’s declarations that power corrupts and that Tubbo’s administration is cruel with Tubbo choosing not to punish Ranboo for his association with Techno – thus the narrative would communicate that Techno’s view of Tubbo and by extension the government is one-sided and not true to reality.

Stuff like that helps the viewer understanding a story holistically and manages to communicate stuff like themes and morals without having to solely rely on in-character logic and argumentation, which, as Ghostbur put it so eloquently, is comprised of a bunch of unreliable narrators.

Character analysis is great if we want dive deep, if we really want to give a character flavour and understand their motivations. It helps make the universe feel like it is alive, like it’s real. But – and this might be a shocker for you – it’s not real. It’s written. It is construction – and as such, in its construction, it has messages and themes and morals, intentionally or unintentionally.

By being so focused on specific characters and their individual journeys, viewpoints and motivation we really run the risk of not looking at the bigger picture and fail to see what the overarching narrative is actually communicating. And we may also fail to understand how characters might or might not fit into the overarching narrative.

Speaking of which …

 Thesis #2: Technoblade experiences very little Meaningfultm Thematic Conflict

Okay, let’s talk about Technoblade. I’m sure I’m not going to get any hate for this one.

I want to preface by saying that I don’t watch Technoblade’s streams; I catch up though clip channels and summaries. I’m mainly watching Tommy, Tubbo and Quackity – which is honestly already more than I can handle – but I want to be clear that while I’ll try to be as even-handed as possible – like I explained previously – the way I consumed the storylines will undoubtedly leave me with some bias.

Also, needless to say, I’m talking about the character Technoblade, not the actual content creator, unless I specifically say so. That should be obvious.

Now, I’m not doing a Technoblade character analysis, because that would be hypocritical of me – seeing how I just bitched about the overwhelming amounts of character analyses in the fandom – but I’ll try my best to summarize what is necessary.

Technoblade’s interesting in that he is a very static character – at least inwardly – he doesn’t change much. He is very steadfast in his beliefs and ideals and has very little introspection. He doesn’t question himself; he doesn’t waver, he is never in a bind about whether what he’s doing is right or wrong. He is very much a parallel to early TommyInnit – who, of course, famously said “I’m always in the right”.

And I want to emphasize that I mean this in no way as a critique of Techno’s character. A static character provides a nice contrast to more dynamic characters and can balance them out. It can also be utilised by the writing as a character flaw – which is what I hope content creator Techno is going for.

Like Techno doesn’t have a lot of empathy in the sense that he is particularly skilled at or interested in trying to see the viewpoints of others. There is never an attempt to reconcile, for example, the goal of the Pogtopians to reclaim L’Manberg and install another administration with his desire for an anarchist society. This is also compounded with his overreliance on violence as the only tactic for conflict resolution – Techno has a whole thesis statement about violence being the only universal language. I’m sure you’ve heard the quote.

And lastly, what really drives this all over the edge, is his all-or-nothing approach when dealing with the enemy – he is not so much eye for an eye as he is – to use another biblical example – you make fun of me for being bald and I’ll sic two bears on you that maul and kill you and 41 other children.

There’s also the open and completely unacknowledged hypocrisy of a self-described anarchist working together with a man that installs and dethrones Kings with his every whim – someone who – and I cannot stress this enough – hits about every box when it comes to the definition of tyrant.

So, what I’m saying is that Technoblade is the Dream SMP equivalent of Dick Chenney. C’mon you know it’s true! He will bomb that freedom into your country whether you want him to or not. That’s some cogent political commentary in the year 2021.

Okay, so now that I’ve outlined his character, what kind of conflicts does Technoblade face. Well, it’s mostly physical or external. He fights a lot whether it’s against Quackity or Sapnap or bodying Karl Jacobs five times in a row. And – with the exception of maybe Sapnap – none of it is challenging. Technoblade is the best PvP-Player on the server – there really isn’t much tension to be had from a purely physical fight.

So, how are these fights supplemented emotionally. Well, internally there is not a lot going on. As I said before, Technoblade isn’t really an introspective character. Even during his shouting match with Tommy there’s not a sense that Technoblade is wavering or unsure of himself in the way that Tommy is. He exposits that one of the reasons, he acts like he does is that he feels dehumanized; that people only use him like a weapon and then discard or even try to neutralize him once he’s no longer useful.

But that is not something that Technoblade has to grapple with – it’s not conflict for him, it’s more conflict for Tommy. Technoblade is self-assured in that he’s a person and not a weapon – it’s almost like there was a character arc there, where Technoblade self-actualizes and breaks away from the people that want to use him. But we didn’t see any of it. Technoblade unleashes the withers; then he goes into retirement because he wants to be, I suppose, and then he returns to violence as a reaction to the Butcher Army. There is a story of vengeance here, but not any conflict about being used. There is never a point where we see Technoblade come to this realization or comes to assert himself.

In season 1 there’s never a push from Pogtopia where the narrative frames them as exploiting Technoblade. He fights with them of his own volition, he gives them weapons and armour of his own volition. Nobody pressured Techno into procuring their inventory for the fight. And in Season 2, he’s the one to approach Tommy about their potential partnership – he is in the position of power here, explicitly not Tommy.

Like, I’m sorry, if this ruffles some feathers, but I really don’t see this arc where Technoblade is being used. There’s a story of misunderstanding and maybe co-dependency – but not of dehumanization. This entire line of thought seems to solely reference that moment, where Tommy says to Sapnap “I have the blade” during one of their wars – which, to base an entire emotional arc around that without any further set-up, is, and I’m sorry to say that, incredibly flimsy.

Okay, so we covered physical and emotional conflict? But what about conflict on the narrative level? Well, that leads me to my suprathesis …

 Suprathesis: The Narrative is Unclear on how it treats Technoblade … and that’s Not Good.

Here’s a Hot Take: The narrative of Season 1 treats Technoblade way less sympathetically than that of season 2.

Let me explain. The narrative of Season 1 revolves mostly around Wilbur and Tommy. The emotional fulcrum of the overall narrative is Wilbur’s rise and fall from Grace – and Tommy succeeding him as symbol of L’Manberg’s “special”-ness. Now I will talk about all that more in detail, when I talk about Season 1 of the Dream SMP. So, you’ll just have to go with me on this one for now.

Technoblade, by contrast, doesn’t really have much going on thematically in Season 1. He mostly exists as a sort-of utilitarian character – he is an accessory to make story beats happen. Like him executing Tubbo doesn’t open up any sort of thematic conflict involving him – on a character level it sets up antipathy between him and Tommy and it grants us some insight into how he operates with his violence speech – but on a larger-scale narrative level it really just shows how far Wilbur and Tommy have drifted apart in how they react to the event.

His biggest contribution is during the Season 1 finale, but even there he plays second fiddle to Wilbur. Not just because Wilbur does way more destruction with his explosion than Techno does with his Withers, but also because Wilbur had an emotional and thematic climax to his arc and by extension the entire storyline. Like Techno’s is a cool moment and very epic visual but in terms of thematic relevance, his Theseus-speech is really more set-up for Season 2.

And Season 1 is very unambiguous about L’Manberg being good and Tommy’s ideals ultimately being morally justified – I mean, they have a whole speech about it in the end and it was built-up throughout the entire Season – Techno is cast in a … less than sympathetic light. He is, if not a villain, then definitely an antagonist.

But with Season 2 the narrative is either uninterested in or not very clear on exploring Technoblade’s flaws.

Like ask yourselves: is Technoblade’s character ever consciously challenged by the narrative? Are his actions ultimately shown to not be in the right? Are his beliefs about government and power ever called into question? Are the negative consequences that his actions cause ever shown to be larger than the “good” he does?

I think what exemplifies this the most is how the Butcher Army event played out on December 16th. Now, during that event, the Butcher Army, which was comprised of Tubbo, Quackity, Fundy and Ranboo, managed to apprehend Technoblade, who at that point was living the quiet retirement life, and tried to have him publicly executed – without trial.

Now, smarter people than me have pointed out that the Butcher Army had a bevy of in-character reasons that can justify or explain their actions. And that’s definitely interesting, but as I said before, I want to get away from that and look into how the Butcher Army is treated on a narrative level. Because this is one of the few instances where the otherwise grey-loving Season 2 has some very clear narrative intent when it comes to morality.

The Butcher Army is very deliberately framed as almost cartoonishly corrupt and violent. They very forcefully investigate Philza, mock him and then put him under house arrest – and there’s just no remorse in the script even from normally sympathetic characters like Tubbo.

Compare and contrast with the Tommy-exile scene, which is also an act of moral ambiguity and is treated as such. And things get even worse once the Army arrives at Technoblade’s abode and attack him after he softly tells them that he has left that live behind him. They then proceed to take his horse hostage, mock him and execute him without fair trial – and I haven’t seen it but from live commentary I gathered that Techno really played up the whole softie-schtick before the Butcher Army arrived. I mean, before the big Technoblade vs Quackity fight, Quackity had whole villain monologue for Christ’s sake.

And even afterwards, the Butcher Army really plays up the corrupt angle with Tubbo proposing a festival as a guise to publicly execute someone. And again, I know that on an intradiegetic there’s nuances and it’s not really comparable to the Red Festival, but in combination with what the audience has seen up until that point and with how much it feeds into the already established themes of history repeating itself and becoming like your predecessors, it really does not paint a pretty picture of the Tubbo administration.

You can feel the heavy hand of the script on your shoulder, which is a feat seeing how – as discussed before – that’s not something that can be easily accomplished in this medium.

And that is what I mean when I say that Technoblade is not really challenged by the script and is in this case even emboldened by it. Because after this whole ordeal the thought of Technoblade taking revenge by destroying L’Manberg doesn’t seem like such an extreme response to the viewer – even though in my opinion, it is.

As of right now it is too early to say how the narrative will judge Technoblade’s actions in the future. Will they be framed as extreme but ultimately justified or perpetuating a cycle of ever-escalating vengeance? Will we ever see a government that’s not just at best misguided and at worst completely awful?

Ultimately, I believe and hope that Technoblade will be challenged by the narrative, mostly because a character that cannot, believably, be physically challenged, who doesn’t have any meaningful internal conflict about what he’s doing; and who does come out on the other side having everything he always believed in be proven completely in the right by the narrative, would be incredibly boring. Not just to watch but also to play as.

As it stands now, if the destruction Techno, Phil and Dream inflicted upon L’Manburg is framed as ultimately in the right, I would find it personally a distasteful message to send. I would ultimately say that the “correct” way to counter corruption in government is to completely obliterate the entire country. Like we’re not talking simply disbanding the government – that’s not what Doomsday was – we’re talking complete and utter annihilation. And that would be cynical and depressing. Like, call me a big softie, but even bothsidesing this argument would be bad.

Like, I’m not calling for Technoblade to be transformed into or treated a monster like Dream. But I personally feel like the narrative needs to acknowledge that the Doomsday was something that was taken way too far and that it ultimately brought more harm than good. And Technoblade needs to held accountable by someone who is not a cartoonishly corrupt government-official or who is in conflict with him anyway, like Tommy.

I thought Philza or Ranboo could do that but seeing how their storylines are progressing I don’t believe that will be the case. But who knows, maybe Captain Puffy will come through for us. We stan a Queen.

 Conclusion

So, yeah, I made this entire video just to air out my grievances with how one-sided the mode of analysis is in the fandom, because no person actually involved with the production of Dream SMP will ever see this.

But after everything I am cautiously optimistic, that content creator Technoblade knows what he’s doing. He has talked in the past about how his character is a bad guy and he loves his Greek myths. After all what’s more Greek myth than hybris being rewarded with punishment? [Technoblade never dies] That bodes well for him.

Also, this isn’t the video I promised at the end of the last one!

[cheri-translates]

[Analysis] S2 Gavin and MC

🍒 Warning: This post contains detailed spoilers for Season 2 content, which has not been released in English servers!🍒

I’ve received some worried Asks regarding the relationship between S2 Gavin and MC, so I’m here to try to alleviate your concerns 💙

Knowledge of S2 Gavin content is highly recommended before looking under the cut: Prologue // Throbbing Date //  Main storyline // R&S // Stray Date // The Guardian Plan

Note: This post contains my own analysis AND an analysis from a Weibo user (who has given me permission to translate it). I have marked out which part belongs to her :) These are just our personal thoughts, so you’re free to agree or disagree! I’d love to hear about what you think about their relationship, whether via PM, a comment or an Anon Ask <3

-

What do we know about S2 Gavin?

1. He’s selfless

In [Prologue], Gavin is in terrible shape - he’s in agonising pain and is so weak that even opening his eyes is a struggle. Yet, when the red light on the bed starts blinking and he knows MC could get into trouble, he summons his strength to tell her to leave, in a voice louder than when he asked her to stay :’)

He also manages to cover the back of MC’s hand to assure her that he’d be fine. Remember - this is the first time Gavin is meeting MC. He’s mustering all the strength in his frail, tiny body to comfort a complete stranger.

In [Throbbing Date], Gavin does things without expecting expressions of gratitude. For instance, he gives MC his jacket in the rain and runs off even though there’s a chance he’d never get it back. He also leaves strawberry milk for her on the piano bench without a note mentioning who it’s from.

-

2. He’s righteous

In [Throbbing Date], Gavin engages in a 1 v 10 fight to save Minor from ruffians, even though they aren’t close. And it’s hinted that Gavin has saved him multiple times.

In [Main storyline], Gavin makes things difficult for MC by trying to catch her in a lie, but stops once she tells him the truth about what she’s doing in STF:

He doesn’t speak, but quietly gives me one last chance. Faced with such a Gavin, my heart sighs silently. 

MC: I’m here because of a matter involving an Evolver artiste working under me

.…perhaps it’s my misperception, but his expression is no longer as cold as it was before.

Something similar happens in [Stray Date], where Gavin tries to drive MC to a corner by sending her hovering above the ocean with his Evol. MC even trembles for a while. However, she soon realises that Gavin is controlling the air currents around her very well to ensure she wouldn't fall.

While S2 Gavin may seem merciless and cold (e.g. he’s described as a sharp sword multiple times in [The Guardian Plan], his actions both stem from, and are capped by a strong sense of righteousness.

-

3. He has a soft spot for MC

It’s clear in [Throbbing Date] that teenager Gavin has a soft spot for MC, so I won’t dive into that.

In the [Stray Date] phone call, Gavin’s concern for MC’s well-being is obvious, and reminiscent of a very early S1 Gavin:

Gavin: …I heard them saying that a girl stood in front of everyone back then. It was you, wasn’t it.

MC: Uhm, I… was afraid they’d get hurt.

Gavin: This isn’t a reason to shoulder more risks.

MC: Actually, I did it without realising…

Gavin: …I won’t always arrive in time. If I’m not around next time, don’t use such methods.

A similar idea is brought up in the [Main storyline] call:

Gavin: …no need. As of now, our leads aren’t comprehensive, so we can’t confirm who is the person behind these transactions. Your company’s security measures are inadequate. It’s best to improve them.

MC: All right…got it.

In the [Throbbing Date] call, Gavin basically invites MC to return to Loveland High together at the request of Mr Keller, and she accepts. This wouldn’t happen if they were antagonistic towards each other. 

Interestingly, them being on opposite sides seems to become an inside joke for them.

Example 1 - [Reunited Yesterday R&S]:

MC: I think given our positions, it isn’t appropriate to eat at the same table. Don’t you think so? 

Gavin lifts his hand and casually taps the side of the bowl in front of him.

He arches his brows and looks at me, the temperature of sunlight in his pupils. 

Gavin: As someone who always orders my favourite noodles, your words aren’t persuasive. 

Example 2 - [The Guardian Plan]:

MC: I think I know what this documentary should express to the audience. Even with sword-like authority, the STF will always have justice as its supreme guide.

A sudden night breeze courses past, lingering around my wrist. 

Gavin looks at me, his eyes deep.

But the corners of his lips suddenly curl upwards.

Gavin: Given your position, you shouldn’t be talking to me about justice.

I smile as well, extending a hand towards him.

MC: Gavin, it has been a pleasant collaboration.

On a professional front, Gavin and MC are on different sides.

Personally speaking, however, they aren’t antagonistic towards each other. While MC is intimidated by Gavin in [Main Storyline], she warms up to him fairly quickly. Gavin also warms up to her, albeit a little slower.

In [Stray Date], Mr Solitary Wolf™ flat out rejects MC’s offer to work together. However, in [The Guardian Plan], he trusts MC and agrees to go along with her plan without even needing to hear it. 

Finally, I’ll let this scene from [The Guardian Plan] speak for itself:

Holding onto the letter, I turn around and enter the house. Gavin has his arms crossed over his chest, standing in front of a map of Loveland City, pursing his lips.

A young officer pulls me to a corner and speaks softly.

Young officer: The suspect isn’t here, but we found tools to create explosives. The situation has become more serious. No one dares to disturb Captain Gavin when he’s thinking about cases, so just ask me if you have any questions.

Without saying anything, I walk towards Gavin.

Gavin frowns and turns his head, the light flashing in his eyes akin to a cold, sharp blade.

When he sees that it’s me, his frown relaxes, and he speaks lightly.

-

[Translated Analysis from 今天鱼子酱也不愿产粮 on Weibo]

Gavin is unexpectedly cold to MC in his first S2 Moment, and it’s easy for players to feel shocked and uncomfortable:

Gavin’s Post: Revisiting the old haunt.

MC: I haven’t been there in a long time either. 

Gavin: There’s no special need to go.

-

What makes this Moment interesting?

This Moment occurs after the Reunited Yesterday R&S

In the Reunited Yesterday R&S, the boss of Lynn’s Kitchen reveals that MC has a long-time habit (even till now), of eating there alone - sitting at the same seat and eating a bowl of beef noodles with extra chilli

So when Gavin posted the Moment, he already knew that MC visits “the old haunt” often

This means MC is lying in her response + Gavin knows and doesn’t call her out on it

From Ch 1 of the main storyline and the R&S, it’s not difficult to see that MC holds complex emotions towards Gavin - there’s a sense of alienation yet longing, a sense of reservation yet reluctance to part, a sense of pride and stubbornness. It’s as though something happened in their shared past that they are keeping secret.

As such, MC’s response could be her concealing how she feels towards this “old haunt”, which by extension symbolises their shared past in high school. 

S2 Gavin is difficult to ruffle. So instead of simply calling her out, he mirrors MC’s indifference. If read this way, there’s actually an element of teasing in his response - not coldness.

-

What about the alternative Moment where he sounds cold too?

Gavin’s Post: Revisiting the old haunt.

MC: Is Officer Gavin on a mission?

Gavin: Just passing by.

In S2, Gavin and MC’s positions are diametrically opposed. MC enquiring about Gavin’s work i.e. the operations of the STF, would immediately set Gavin on his guard. His indifference is in line with his role as the captain of the STF.

[End of analysis by 今天鱼子酱也不愿产粮 on Weibo]

Fun fact: MC makes reference to the above Moment in the [Throbbing Date] call:

MC: …come to think of it, Mr Keller seems to miss you a lot.  

Gavin: Mm. He invited the both of us to participate in a school activity.

MC: There’s no special need to go.

Gavin: …

MC: I’m kidding. If you’re the one inviting me, I’ll definitely be there.

-

🌪 IN SUMMARY 🌪

It remains to be seen how Gavin would react if/when MC does go against STF. We should find out in the next CN update, since Ch 1 of the main storyline ended on a cliff-hanger with the STF surrounding MC’s office :’D

Instead of feeling worried about it, I’m actually quite excited to see how things will progress :> Their relationship has so many more layers for us to discover - a shared past in Loveland High, how they navigate their clashing positions, how they work together as the power couple they are, etc.

[asianartsblog]

LEK BORJA RENEWS FILIPINO HISTORY THROUGH ART

BY PRECIOUS RINGOR

Asian Pasifika Arts Collective New Outlooks Blog

April 2, 2021

http://ow.ly/fEby50FlQWZ

Editor’s Note: Precious Ringor brings us a second artist profile, this time of Filipino American interdisciplinary artist and poet Lek Borja, whose work is an attempt to track the continuous colonization across time, first within the Philippines from Spain and the United States, through present day America and trying to give voice to Filipino life against a white hegemony. Precious displays how Lek crosses borders of cultural stereotypes, seeking to expand the visions placed on Filipinos by other oppressive powers, and inserting her culture in art spaces where they are new and unfamiliar, but for the community, reminders of home.

Header Image: “Heritage at the Threshold” by Timothy Singratsomboune | Digital photography collage, 5400 x 4050 px, 2021.

Getting to know someone virtually is one of the sad realities we’ve had to face because of COVID-19 regulations. It’s both a blessing and a curse—we’ve become a global village, but at the same time we’ve all had more eye and back problems from sitting around and zooming this past year. 

A zoom call and an hour was all I had to get to know Lek Vercauteren Borja, a Filipino American interdisciplinary artist and poet widely known for her thought-provoking work into the Asian diaspora. Chatting with Lek didn’t feel like a job though; time flies fast when you’re having fun.

One of the things I noted was Lek’s warm and friendly nature. Most of the time, it’s uncommon for an interviewee to ask questions about the interviewer. Lek unabashedly admitted that she did a bit of ‘stalking’ before we hopped on Zoom, “I like to know about the person I’m talking with, even before the interview starts.” 

Lek started in poetry. Armed with a love for Shakespeare, she pursued a dual concentration in Art and Creative Writing at Antioch University. It was there that she first fell in love with art history and sculpture. During that time, her first chapbook, Android, was published by Plan B Press. She took this as a sign to continue pursuing a career in arts. 

As an artist, she admits that’s where she gets inspiration from, “I want to talk about the history of Filipinos, the invisible stories. Growing up in the Philippines and studying there, I realized there was a lot missing in our history books. It seemed as if it were written from a western perspective.” She reminded me so much of the Philippines, of home. Because of our similar upbringing, I immediately understood her search for truth.

The themes of home and longing, of memory and the present, and of giving Filipino lives new voices, carry across her work, and no more palpably than her piece Evolution of the Aswang Myth, what she calls “seed and the origin” to all her current works. Lek says “Without it, I wouldn’t be thinking about art, the way I’m making now.” This 8 x 8 feet painting explores the origins of the aswang or manananggal, a Filipino mythical creature typically depicted as a woman feared for its penchant for eating infants and unborn fetuses during the night. Interestingly, the aswang was also a word ascribed to the Filipina women who went against the forced religious conversion by Spanish friars during their colonization of the Philippines. 

March 2021 marked 500 years since Spanish ships first arrived on the shores of the Philippines. 

Since then, our country fought hard for liberation, first from Spain and then from the United States of America. In retrospect, it hasn’t been long since the Philippines became an independent nation. Today, we are striving to find our voice amidst the imperialistic erasure we’ve endured.

As Lek puts it, “What propelled me to tell these stories is the feeling that I had no voice. For one, I didn’t speak English well so I couldn’t really talk about what I was going through or how I felt. That’s why a lot of my work now focuses on bringing my experiences of living in the Philippines at the forefront and seeing how that’s connected to bigger conversations and narratives around us.” 

Currently, Lek’s work called Anak (My Child) is being featured in the gallery at Towson University’s Asian Arts & Culture Center. 

View Anak (My Child) Exhibit: https://towson.edu/anak

Besides online exhibitions and virtual galleries, Lek is also conducting several workshops in Baltimore’s upcoming Asia North Festival. These workshops are a good model for Lek’s philosophy in making art out of personal histories. Whether it’s experiences of displacement or change, she points out that everyone’s story matters and there will always be a community of people who can empathize with that.   

“I think it’s really important for our stories to be brought to light in the larger narrative. They think by calling us model minority, our problems can easily be brushed aside” I lamented the steady rise of xenophobic crimes these past few months.  

“I agree, it’s a really complex issue” Lek adds, “Why are we so silent? Why do we stand in the shadows? I’ll probably look for an answer my entire life. It’s hard to talk about our struggles and it’s not easy to have conversations about the past. There’s a culture of silence that’s been normalized and it’s perpetuated even in our own homes. But that’s part of the work I do, bringing everything from the past into the forefront so we can have deeper conversations about it.” 

Speaking of the past, Lek’s introduction to the arts started in Tarlac, a city located north of the Philippines. Besides being known as the most multicultural province, the city is home to numerous sugar and rice plantations. “The population of our barrio was probably less than 1,000. Our family had a farm as well as a sugar-cane and rice field plantation. My inang [grandmother] also worked in the market as a butcher. It was a pretty simple country lifestyle but my childhood was amazing.” 

Life in the country has been instrumental to Lek’s artistry. “The memory of the landscape and of the community is an extension of my art,” Lek explains. As a young girl, her biggest inspiration comes from her grandfather who, like herself, was also an artist. Lek would copy his drawings and eventually create drawings of her own. Recently, Lek has started to incorporate banana leaves into her work. Banana leaves are incredibly important to Filipino culture as it is used for cooking and traditional homebuilding. 

“Sounds like you had to find your own path, coming here at such a young age and experiencing culture shock. America is very different from the Philippines!” I quipped.

“It was snowing where I first came here!” she exclaimed, thinking back to her initial introduction of America. “It was November when we landed in New York, it was freezing. I remember our families bundling us in huge warm winter coats before wecould even say hello. It was definitely a huge shock.”

I laugh, thinking back to when I first arrived in California ten years ago. Silly to think I was already freezing in sunny temperatures when she had to endure piles of snow. “Do you think you’ve had to change yourself in order to adjust to that culture shock?” 

“For a long time I really didn’t know who I was,” Lek admits. “When I was younger, the school I went to was predominantly white. What I thought about how I should present myself came from that image. I dyed my hair blond and put on blue colored contacts to fit in. It was a lot of assimilation and cultural erasure. I started talking less Tagalog and less Ilocano. But art has really helped me find myself. It made me think more deeply about who I really was and what was important to me on an authentic level.” 

Halfway through our conversation, we slowly realized just how similar we were. From migrating at the age of ten to living twenty miles apart in the same city. It was also in chatting that Lek found out I spoke Tagalog fluently, one thing she regrets losing unexpectedly. As it is my first language, Lek asked me to speak it instead. Once again, her warm nature bled through the Zoom interview; I found it refreshing since hardly anyone thinks about the interviewer’s comfort. 

Unsurprisingly, community building is important to Lek. Before working, she likes to ask herself the following questions, ‘How is what I’m doing connected to my family and everyone in the Filipino community? How can I better serve my community?’ One of the main reasons she moved to L.A. is to network with other Filipino artists. 

“A few years ago, I showed my art alongside a group of all Filipino artists at Avenue 50 Studio gallery for an exhibition that Nica Aquino and Anna Calubayan organized (also both Filipinas). It’s crazy because I’ve lived in and out [of L.A.] for over 10 years now and it was only in 2019 that I started to be part of that community. It’s probably the most fun I've had at an art show, I really felt at home.” 

“I’d love to visit the studio’s galleries once it’s safer to go outside” 

“Definitely! I’ll keep you updated on any gatherings” Lek pitched excitedly.

“And I'll bring you guys homemade ube cakes and puto pao!” I teasingly replied back.

As our call came to a close I couldn’t help but ask Lek if she had any advice to give to budding AAPI artists. 

“I’ll echo what people who have supported me have said in the past: trust yourself and trust that you can make a difference. It’s hard to figure out who you want to be when [the world] has expectations and demands from you. We’re lucky to live in a time where there’s so many possibilities. Figure out what you want to do authentically and genuinely, and go for it.” 

Lek continues on, “Personally, it took me a long time to find my voice. When I was in grad school, I had a lot of doubt in myself because most visiting artists and curators couldn’t understand my work. What made it all worth it were the moments that people got [my voice] right away.”  

Getting to know Lek and learning about her commitment to showcasing invisible stories has been awe-inspiring; it made me proud to be a Filipino American artist. And in the wake of our hurting AAPI community, I believe it’s incredibly important, now more than ever, to highlight and support works of people like Lek. People who have had to fight for their voice in this world, who our youth could look up to and be inspired to become. 

About the Author:

Precious Ringor is a Filipino-American singer/actress/writer residing in Los Angeles, CA. Ringor graduated from Cal State University, Fullerton with a degree in Human Communication Studies where her research is geared towards Asian American socio-cultural communication norms. Besides performing in various theatre shows and indie film sets, Ringor also works as a content contributor to Film Fest Magazine and Outspoken

[otomehonyaku]

DIABOLIK LOVERS CHAOS LINEAGE | RUKI 8 (ENGLISH)

♥ MASTERPOST (CLICK FOR OTHER CHAPTERS) ♥

Sorry for the wait! I’ve been out of town on and off but I’m simultaneously trying to do some writing while working on translating this route so please look forward to more things coming soon (＾▽＾)ノ❤ 

In terms of the gameplay: The black choices lead up to a bad ending, the white choices lead up to a good ending.

DO NOT REPOST MY TRANSLATIONS ON TUMBLR OR OTHER PLATFORMS, TRANSLATE MY TRANSLATIONS TO ANOTHER LANGUAGE, OR USE MY TRANSLATIONS IN ANY FORM ELSEWHERE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION. IF YOU ARE CONSIDERING DOING ANY OF THESE THINGS, PLEASE ASK FOR MY PERMISSION FIRST.

-LOCATION: ORANGE MANSION RUKI’S BEDROOM-

Yui: Mm... Ruki...

Ruki: What is it? Did you see me in your dreams, too?

Yui: (Ah, huh...? What was I doing...)

Ruki: It seems you’re still drowsy. That’s a defenceless face you’re making.

Yui: (He’s stroking my face... It feels nice. I want to go back to sleep like this...) A-Ah!? What time is it!? Am I late!? I have to go to school...!

Ruki: You really are still half asleep. It would be best not to pay attention to the school timetable, at the least.  Seeing as we’re trapped in this mysterious place, we can’t go to Kaminashi, let alone to school, you know. 

Yui: Ruki? Ah... (That’s right, I... I woke up in this strange place, and got tangled up in this so-called battle for the Crown...) I might be a little drowsy because I was so fast asleep...

Ruki: It’s okay to take a breather. You’ve been holding yourself in for a while until now, haven’t you?

Yui: Yeah, thank you... but Ruki, how are you feeling?

Ruki: Ah, well, my dizziness disappeared overnight. It seems like the dizziness was the aftermath of me regaining my memories...  Because I was able to sleep deeply, my head became much clearer. There’s no need to worry. 

Yui: I see, I’m glad...! (The feeling that he seemed to be suffering like he did before does seem to have disappeared... Could he possibly...)

Ruki: Hm? ...Heh. Stay still for a second.

Yui: Huh? Huh? What is it?

Ruki: What position were you even sleeping in for your hair to end up messy like this?

Yui: No way... Is it sticking out? Wait, I’ll fix it right away!

Ruki: I thought I told you to stay still. Come on, don’t move. 

Yui: O-okay... (The feeling of having Ruki straighten my hair is so nice...) (Still, it’s embarrassing that he saw my hair all messy... 

Ruki: This is fine. Now then, when you go and wash your face, it’ll already be fixed. 

Yui: Yeah, thank you. Somehow, it really feels like such a long time since I woke up so peacefully. 

Ruki: Same for me. It seems like everything that happened until the brutalities yesterday weren’t real.  However, there’s no way the situation has settled down. As expected, our false memories led us to think that a confrontation was unavoidable. 

Yui: Yeah...

Ruki: Just for now, there doesn’t seem to be anybody around. I want to put the current situation into perspective. Will you accompany me?

Yui: Of course. I don’t know anything, though, because I’ve barely even left the mansion...

Ruki: That doesn’t matter. Please tell me what happened after you came to this place. 

Yui: O-okay. The church was where I woke up at the very beginning... though I think you know that already.  The false memory of me being the legendary Eve might have already been planted in my brain back then... That’s why I think that the time when you first fed on me provided an incentive  for my memories to start coming back. 

Ruki: So it was when I fed on you then...

Yui: What about you?

Ruki: It was about the same for me. Before I knew it, I was in this mansion. I’ll acquire Eve, and become the King. That thought was strongly etched into my memory. 

Yui: And you forgot everything about the Mukami family, and your memories became messed up...

Ruki: Yeah. And we all know what happened after that.

Yui: Yeah, so, you and I both felt the same [and realised what was going on].  I wonder if the others might also notice that their memories have become messed up. 

Ruki: That may be so, but don’t you think it’s strange? Every single memory of ours becoming distorted—I can’t think of such a thing happening. However, this unfamiliar world. The mansions and weapons that were prepared for us... I feel like this is the work of a certain someone.

Yui: Ah! You mean... 

Ruki: Our memories were altered by someone else’s hands...

Yui: By someone else’s hands...

Ruki: I don’t see what their goal would be. Still, we were purposely brought together here, and forced to fight.  I have a hunch that there’s someone on the other side orchestrating all this.

Yui: That’s... (Someone’s there. Someone who’s making everyone so something so horrible as fight to kill one another.) (Why would they do such a thing? It’s... frightening.)

Ruki: However, it’s too soon to draw that conclusion. If it’s a man-made situation, there should be clues to solve the mystery.  We will get out of here without a doubt. Me, you, Kou, and the others all together, of course.

Yui: ...Yes! (Until yesterday, I was alone in this fight, but it’s all different now.) (Ruki is here for me. There’s nothing as reassuring as that.)

Ruki: At any rate, I want more information. If possible, there’s a place where I’d like to meet with Kou and the others directly. 

Yui: I know. But still, everyone should be in their own mansions, and in order to meet them—

Shin: Brother, are you up?

Yui: (...! Shin!)

Ruki: Come to think of it, we went to sleep yesterday without explaining that had happened, didn’t we? Come in, Shin.

Shin: It seems you’re finally up and running. 

Ruki: Sorry for making you worry. 

Shin: Well, I was surprised that you were already asleep in your room when I came home.  You’ve got a healthy colour on your face, so that’s reassuring. 

Ruki: Yeah, that’s how it is. 

Yui: (W-wow, Ruki. Even though your memories have returned, you’re making it seem as if you’ve never even changed.)

Ruki: By the way, Shin. I wanted to talk to you about something.  I finally found a clue to becoming the King.

Yui: Eh...

Shin: Wow, you did it! Does that mean you’ll be rising to the Throne soon after all?

Ruki: Well, it’s too early for congratulations. We shouldn’t let our guard down before we ascertain whether it’s a reliable clue.  I’ll take Eve with me to verify the authenticity of some things. 

Yui: W-with me?

Shin: Hold on, that’s dangerous. If you want to do that, you should take me with you too. 

Ruki: No, I want this to stay between us. We obviously don’t want the other houses to know, but even if Ayato and Kanato know about this, we’ll be in trouble. To ensure that, I want you to stay behind in the mansion. This is something I can only entrust to you. 

Yui: (Ah, I get it! He’s planning on getting just the two of us out of the mansion!)

Shin: Hmpf. Well, if that’s what you tell me to do, I have no choice, do I? Leave the house-sitting to me, then. 

Ruki: Yeah, I’m counting on you. 

-LOCATION: FOREST-

Yui: We really managed to escape from the mansion easily, didn’t we? To think it would go so smoothly...

Ruki: Tsukinami Shin has a tendency to take pride in following up to the orders of those he admires. To the point that I could take advantage of it. 

Yui: You were able to figure him out in such a short period of time?

Ruki: It’s not that difficult, is it?

Yui: (I think only someone like Ruki could think it’s not that difficult...) So, where are we heading now?

Ruki: To the Violet Mansion. I figured we should get in touch with Azusa first.  He came to realise things on his own. He should be the easiest person to talk to right now. 

Yui: That’s true... 

Ruki: Besides, Kou is there too. If all goes well, we might be able to meet the both of them directly. 

Yui: Ah, I see...  (It’s only been one night since Ruki’s memories returned, and he’s already able to think this far...)

— SELECTION —

    1. 心配になる　Be worried (black)

Yui: I’m sorry I had you come up with such an extensive plan even though you were in bad shape not too long ago...

Ruki: I told you I feel good, didn’t I? It’s nothing for you to worry about. More importantly, pay attention to your surroundings.

Yui: O-okay!

    2. すごいと思う　Think it’s amazing (white)

Yui: You’re really admirable, Ruki. For thinking that far ahead, and all.

Ruki: It’s nothing to be praised for. Besides, my job is to think ahead... At least at this point in time.

Yui: At this point?

Ruki: Imagine what would happen if I left you to do the thinking when we’re making strides like this, then.

Yui: I would get into a lot of trouble...

Ruki: Exactly. So, at least let me figure out our strategy to meet up with Kou and the others. ...Or, well... would it be the same as last time?

Yui: (...He’s right.)

— END OF SELECTION DIALOGUE —

Yui: Still, though, how should we meet up with Azusa when we’ve come close to the mansion?

Ruki: It will be difficult to lure out Tsukinami Carla. We have no other choice than to wait until Azusa comes out to patrol on his own. However, I can’t imagine that our timing is right for that to happen. Waiting patiently might be a solution too, but— ...! Wait, there’s someone near us. 

Yui: (Ah...!?) (They’re coming closer to us—!)

Azusa: Oh...

Yui: Azusa!?

Azusa: Ah? What...? Why are you two here?

Ruki: ...So the timing can be right after all. 

Yui: Azusa! We were just looking for you.

Azusa: For me...?

Yui: Uh, where should I start? It’s—

Ruki: Wait. Azusa had his memories distorted as well. Talking carelessly could have an adverse effect.

Yui: Ah... that’s true. 

Ruki: Azusa. Are you patrolling alone? You really are the type to do careless things. 

Azusa: I’m... well... I’m not patrolling today... I thought I’d try and talk to Eve one more time... That’s why I secretly snuck out of the mansion...

Yui: You tried to come and meet me again?

Azusa: Yeah... Because I thought that if I could talk to you properly once more... we could join forces.

Ruki: Join forces...?

Yui: Ah, right... Hey, Ruki? Yesterday, Azusa came to tell me that he wanted to stop fighting as well. 

Ruki: You mean that time you were talking in front of the mansion? But why? Aside from your memories being messed up, I think that everyone is becoming desperate to take you away. 

Yui: That’s... Uh... because Azusa is a kind person?

Ruki: ...Do you think I can agree with such a reason?

Yui: (I already thought he’d say that.)

Azusa: U-uh... Ruki, you might not believe me. However, I am serious... Because I’m afraid that someone might get hurt... I don’t want to... fight you.

Yui: Azusa...

Ruki: I see... It seems like Azusa isn’t any different from the usual.  Azusa. Can you prove that you’re sincere?

Azusa: What...

Ruki: I’m asking you if Carla has an ulterior motive by having you change sides and join me. 

Azusa: Carla...

Yui: Changing sides!? 

Ruki: You shouldn’t have anything to be surprised about. By following me, you deserted the Orange House.  Changing sides and tagging along with us without any ulterior motive will put us all in danger.

Yui: T-that’s true, but... (Giving Azusa that verdict even though he’s just thinking of his brothers is awful...)

Azusa: ...I understand.

Yui: Huh?

Azusa: I’m... distancing myself from Carla.

Yui: Ah!? A-are you sure?

Ruki: Do you really understand? Not only will you not be able to return to the Violet House, but they will become your enemy. 

Azusa: Yeah... Even though that may be the case, in order for you all to not get hurt— I want to be by you and Eve’s side. 

Yui: Azusa...

Ruki: ...I see. I’m certain of your intentions now.  If that’s the case, follow me. I’ll get you out of here.

Azusa: Get me out of here...? What are you trying to do, Ruki?

Ruki: ...Right now, you’re only bringing chaos upon yourself. However, I will say it to you fair and square. I will get you out of here. That’s our goal.

Azusa: Ah...

Ruki: If you’re going to come along, the Violet House will take it as they may. It’s nothing to be surprised about. 

Azusa: Y-yeah... I understand. 

Yui: (Azusa is coming with us...!) (If Azusa stands with us even though his memories have not returned yet, we might stand somewhat of a chance.) I’m so relieved, Ruki!

Ruki: Yeah, it’s a step in the right direction. However— ...You’re there, aren’t you?

Yui: Huh?

*rustling sounds*

Kou: [gasps]

Yui: Ah, Kou...!?

Azusa: Kou...!

Ruki: Eavesdropping isn’t very polite.

Kou: That aside, what were you talking about just now...?

Azusa: Kou, we were just...

Kou: Even though I told you not to, you went out on your own again and made me worry. Why are you talking so casually with the enemy...

Azusa: These two are not the enemy... There’s no need to fight anymore.

Kou: You’re being tricked, Azusa! That’s the Orange House’s Ruki. He someone to be pulling the strings behind the scenes, and use anyone for his own good.  And you are betraying us? You’ve chosen him over Carla and the others?

Yui: Kou, that’s not true. Please, let him talk!

Kou: Shut up! Azusa, come back with me. Please... hurry!

Azusa: ...I’m sorry. I can’t turn back now...

Kou: ...Why... Ugh...

*Kou runs off*

Azusa: Wait!

Ruki: We’re going after him. If we lose sight of him now, we’ll be in trouble.

Yui: O-okay!

***

MONOLOGUE

In order to flee from a situation he didn’t want to be put into, Kou ran off into the forest. I called out to him countless times as I saw his back desperately drawing further away from us.  But still, Azusa’s voice, my voice... even Ruki’s voice wasn’t enough to get a hold on him—

[lee-jinkis-ponytail]

Meet the Players of Haunts & Hellhounds: Tatiana Davis

“Tat” - 18 - Party Role: Rogue

Tatiana truly believes in the Dungeon Crawlers’ Union chances of survival, if only they’d all refuse to give into the warlock Grimm Morreaux’s stupid, bigoted rules and play to their own strengths, rather than letting him divide and conquer. If nothing else, the DCU streamers share a love of tabletop RPGs. Certainly they can all band together to survive a real one. Right?

Read on for H&H stats, current status, backstory, and fears.

SPOILER WARNING: If you have not finished the most recent chapter of Haunts & Hellhounds over on Wattpad, and you wish to avoid spoilers (including whether the character has survived thus far), DO NOT read past this break.

The most recent chapter is: Chapter 7. *New chapters every Friday at 4PM EST!* :)

Haunt & Hellhound Level & Trope: LVL3 Recluse

EXP: 500

Student Background: Freshman, Studio Art & Chemistry Double Major, Minor in Women’s Studies

Alignment: Neutral Good

Defense Stat: 16

HP Maximum: 25 Current HP: 25

SP Maximum: 23 Current SP: 23

MP: 25 Current MP: 25 Spell Attack Bonus: +4 Death Saves: -Successes: ( ) ( ) ( ) -Failures: ( ) ( ) ( ) Hit Dice: 2d8 (unarmed) or 2d10 (armed)

Proficiency Bonus: +2

Attributes (* = proficient): (1) Strength: 10 (+0) (2) Dexterity*: 13 (+2) (3) Constitution: 12 (+1) (4) Knowledge*: 12 (+1) (5) Serenity*: 15 (+2) (6) Charisma: 10 (+0)

Skills (* = proficient): (1) Acrobatics (Dex)(+2) (2) Alchemy & Chemistry* (Kno)(+5) (3) Animal Handling (Cha)(+0) (4) Arcana & Witchcraft* (Ser)(+6) (5) Athletics (Str)(+0) (6) Crafting* (Dex)(+5) (7) Deception (Cha)(+0) (8) History & Lore (Kno)(+1) (9) Insight (Kno)(+1) (10) Intimidation & Distraction (Cha)(+0)   (11) Investigation (Kno)(+1) (12) Perception (Ser)(+2) (13) Persuasion (Cha)(+0) (14) Religion & Occultism* (Kno)(+5) (15) Sanity* (Ser)(+5) (16) Sleight of Hand (Dex)(+2) (17) Stealth* (Dex)(+4) (18) Survival (Kno)(+1) (19) Technology (Kno)(+1)

Extra Proficiences: (1) Yoga & Meditation: Tatiana enjoys attending campus yoga classes. As a result, she can roll all sanity checks at an advantage and gains an additional +1 to her Sanity skill on top of her serenity and proficiency bonuses. (2) Chemist: Tatiana majors in Chemistry. As a result, she is proficient in the Alchemy/Chemistry skill and gains +2 points in that skill, on top of her knowledge and proficiency bonuses. (3) English: This character speaks English. (4) Wiccan: Tatiana has found comfort in the Wiccan faith and regularly practices spellcraft. She is proficient in both Arcana/Witchcraft, and Religion/Occultism. She also gains an additional +2 points to both skills on top of the proficiency and attribute bonuses. (5) Artist: As a Studio Art major, Tatiana has a knack for creativity. She is proficient in crafting, and also gains an additional +1 on top of her proficiency and dexterity modifiers. Abilities: (1) Sound Mind: As a Recluse, this character is well-versed in the horror genre and can take whatever it throws her way. She will always roll sanity saving throws at an advantage.  (2) Vanishing Act: This character is stealthy, and can blend into the shadows. Once per battle, she may choose to disengage the enemy without the risk of the enemy making an attack of opportunity.

Inventory: -2 pockets (cell phone, health potion) -Backpack (lucky amethyst, regular sized bag of potato chips, anxiety medication [5 pills left], mana potion, $30, large empty pocket) -1-handed weapon: ceremonial dagger

Appearance: -Brown eyes -Long, curly, dark hair, currently half-up in a braid crown -5′5″ -Short, average build -Septum piercing, several tattoos on arms and collarbone/chest -Wearing 2 layered tank tops, denim shorts, a belt, and ballet flats

Backstory & Personality: A week before graduating high school, Tatiana came out to her then-boyfriend as bisexual. He immediately called her a cheater and dumped her, and the next day he outed her to the entire school and claimed she’d cheated on him. Within a matter of hours, Tatiana went from being one of the most well-liked among her peers to pariah status. The bullying became so bad, she decided not to attend her graduation ceremony. Luckily, Tat’s open-minded parents helped her through the situation, putting her in therapy to help her cope with the trauma and talking candidly with her about their support of her. But not a single one of her high school friends stuck by her side, even when she told them the truth: that, yes, she’s bi, but she’s also monogamous and never once even thought about cheating on her ex. She wants nothing more than to live her life as herself. But ever since graduation, she’s found it hard to open up to anybody about her sexuality. She’s as friendly and sociable as she ever was, but if anyone asks her any questions about herself, she immediately puts up her guard and diverts the conversation to another topic. Instead, she channels her pain through therapy and art, often painting wistful portraits of androgynous couples embracing, dancing, and living their lives freely. Which is why Tatiana finds such solace in tabletop RPGs. In the gaming world she can get a tiny taste of what it’s like to live a life that she believes she can never have. When she approached Laurie Prescott about starting the Dungeon Crawlers’ Union stream, she stressed the importance of building a safe play space for anyone of any background; none of the fantasy worlds they visited should be allowed to have any racism, sexism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, or any discrimination towards marginalized groups. Laurie and the others don’t know why Tat was so insistent on building such a space, and they never asked, but they’ve all been happy to comply. And she will always be grateful to them for that. Thanks to the DCU, Tat can fantasize about being free to love whoever she wants without judgement, always playing puckish rogues and flirtatious bards. She wants desperately to admit to her fellow streamers that her characters are really just an extension of herself--“self-inserts,” so to speak. But the other players aren’t really open about their personal lives. Like Tat, they change the subject abruptly if they’re ever asked about anything other than gaming. Throughout high school, Tat made friends so easily, and she worries that since she was outed without her consent, she’s forgotten how to truly open up and connect with others. She constantly wonders what she’s doing wrong and why she can’t quite break the ice in the group. And that is why she picked the role of the Recluse to play in Haunts & Hellhounds. She feels she never really shed the “pariah” label even after leaving her high school, moving to another state, and starting fresh in college. However, Tatiana believes that all four of the DCU streamers can make it out of the dungeon alive--if only they can be honest with one another and play to their strengths instead of the weaknesses that the warlock Grimm Morreaux seems so determined to impose upon them all. 

Favorite Horror Movie: Nightbreed -- “'If we want to survive, we can’t hide.’ What a line. I love everything Clive Barker does, but Nightbreed is especially close to my heart.” Horror Movie She Will absolutely NEVER Watch Because It Is Just Too Spooky: The Cabin in the Woods -- “You know, I used to love this movie. But now that we’re kind of living it, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to stomach it again. If we survive, that is. Wait--what am I saying? We will. We’re gonna survive.”

[script-a-world]

I hope this isn't a silly question but can beaches be in downtown areas? I personally live in a downtown area full of high rises with the harbour right in front of it. So why can't harbour be replaced with beach. Also some beach pics I find actually have lots of high rises in the backdrop, aren't those downtown areas too? Anyway both my beta and a writing friend are saying that beach in downtown makes no sense.

Synth: Downtown beaches are absolutely a thing that exist, though depending on the level of urbanization, they may not be naturally occurring ones. Last year the city I live in built a permanent beach downtown. Replaced an old docking area with gently sloping concrete slabs and dumped a whole load of sand on them. It has been very popular. IIRC Paris does something similar, trucking in huge amounts of sand to build temporary beaches in a few spots along the Seine during summertime (IDK what happens with all the sand when summer is over). If your city was carefully planned by the original builders, it’s not far-fetched at all to think they would have worked around any already existing natural beaches to preserve them for its citizens’ use.

Tex: I need to orient myself a little bit on this question, so I’m going to pull out a few definitions here.

Downtown:

Downtown is a term primarily used in North America by English-speakers to refer to a city's commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart, and is often synonymous with its central business district(CBD). In British English, the term "city centre" is most often used instead. The two terms are used interchangeably in Colombia.

The Oxford English Dictionary's first citation for "down town" or "downtown" dates to 1770, in reference to the center of Boston.[2] Some have posited that the term "downtown" was coined in New York City, where it was in use by the 1830s to refer to the original town at the southern tip of the island of Manhattan.[3] As the town of New York grew into a city, the only direction it could grow on the island was toward the north, proceeding upriver from the original settlement, the "up" and "down" terminology coming from the customary map design in which up was north and down was south.[3] Thus, anything north of the original town became known as "uptown" (Upper Manhattan), and was generally a residential area, while the original town – which was also New York's only major center of business at the time – became known as "downtown" (Lower Manhattan).[3]

Beach:

A beach is a landform alongside a body of water which consists of loose particles. The particles composing a beach are typically made from rock, such as sand, gravel, shingle, pebbles. The particles can also be biological in origin, such as mollusc shells or coralline algae.

Some beaches have man-made infrastructure, such as lifeguard posts, changing rooms, showers, shacks and bars. They may also have hospitality venues (such as resorts, camps, hotels, and restaurants) nearby. Wild beaches, also known as undeveloped or undiscovered beaches, are not developed in this manner. Wild beaches can be appreciated for their untouched beauty and preserved nature.

Beaches typically occur in areas along the coast where wave or current action deposits and reworks sediments.

Harbour:

A harbor or harbour (see spelling differences; synonyms: wharves, haven) is a sheltered body of water where ships, boats, and barges can be docked. The term harbor is often used interchangeably with port, which is a man-made facility built for loading and unloading vessels and dropping off and picking up passengers. Ports usually include one or more harbors. Alexandria Port in Egypt is an example of a port with two harbors.

Harbors may be natural or artificial. An artificial harbor can have deliberately constructed breakwaters, sea walls, or jettys or they can be constructed by dredging, which requires maintenance by further periodic dredging. An example of an artificial harbor is Long Beach Harbor, California, United States, which was an array of salt marshes and tidal flats too shallow for modern merchant ships before it was first dredged in the early 20th century.[1] In contrast, a natural harbor is surrounded on several sides by prominences of land. Examples of natural harbors include Sydney Harbour, Australia and Trincomalee Harbour in Sri Lanka.

Since “downtown” usually means a highly-developed area, there’s a 50/50 chance that they’ll even be near a body of water - and if they are, the coastal areas are possibly also developed into harbours/wharves because water transportation of goods is economically efficient. Under these constraints, a beach would be a stretch of un- or under-developed coastline that doesn’t generate as much revenue for the taxable area it’s connected to compared to a harbour.

Frequently, beaches generate revenue under the auspices of tourism, which means that the area would be cultivated accordingly - esplanades, or promenades, are a popular choice, and often grow near a harbor as a natural extension of a money-generating area. Seaside resorts are a closely-related cousin of esplanades, and sometimes have the focus of being a retreat.

Many of the beaches I’ve been to that have high-rises in the background are either those of hotels - who might own the beach property adjacent to their building(s) - or those of businesses. Idyllic beachfront properties that have a low overall skyline can be low-populated areas (which usually mean drawing a low-income from tourism), protected areas of varying degrees, unsafe for people to play in, or are owned by people in the immediate residential areas and thus private property.

Artificially-constructed beaches, as Synth mentioned, are possible but often costly because of the amount of effort and material that needs to be brought in. Those who build such things need to consider the possible costs and revenue of a beach compared to a harbor, and whether it would be financially beneficial for the area to convert it.

Highly-developed areas like city centers carry the risk of polluting the nearby environment, as evidenced by the history of:

The Nashua River in the US

The Ganges River of the Indian subcontinent

The Citarum River in Indonesia

The Yellow River in China

The Sarno River in Italy

The Matanza River of Argentina

The Gulf of Mexico “dead zone”

The Kamilo Beach of Hawai’i

Guanabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Bajos de Haina in the Dominican Republic

Hann Bay in Senegal

Your beta and writing friend do, unfortunately, have a point - downtown beaches are rarely a thing, and if they are then they’re not likely to be very well-maintained or aesthetically-pleasing. It is possible to have one, if they follow the model that Synth mentioned, but it’s usually expensive, time-consuming, difficult to keep sufficiently clean, and their existence needs to be balanced against the current revenue-generating area that is probably a harbour.

If the society you’re worldbuilding settles a coastal area with the intent to preserve the coast and develop it into a beach, you have a good shot of putting one into your story, but harbours are disinclined in many ways to be replaced by a beach.

Constablewrites: Our idea of the beach as a pleasant leisure destination seems to have started with the English upper classes in the 1700s, and expanded as the growth of the middle class and advances in travel technology made tourism accessible to a larger population. And the business district of a city is built on commerce, which in our world heavily involves shipping. So if the city was developed before industrialization, its planners were far more likely to look at a beach and think “what a terrible place to unload a ship, we should fix that” than “oh, how pretty, people might come here to relax.” Plus, “downtown” generally refers to an area of only a few square miles at most where real estate is in high demand, so any stretch of open land is unlikely to remain open for long.

Now, because today we do value beaches as pleasant leisure destinations, it’s entirely possible that a city might create an artificial beach along its coast. River beaches are also a thing in several European cities, and many of them are temporary summer installations made with imported sand. And though they’re unlikely to be strictly in the downtown area, you can indeed find beaches in highly urbanized areas like in Miami, Vancouver, and frankly most of Southern California but let’s specifically say Santa Monica. But a city developing organically isn’t going to have a beach unless there’s significant incentive to designate and maintain one instead of using that land for something more lucrative. And unless the city was founded and built specifically around tourism, a beach is always going to be in addition to a city’s harbor, never in place of it. (Hell, even then. Cruise ships were one of the earliest and still an extremely popular method of tourism, and even if your tourists want to see the beach, they’re not getting to it without a harbor.)

Feral: Downtowns may be on waterfronts, but as previously pointed out, downtowns are generally not going to be developed on naturally occurring beaches, here being the sandy, ocean front stretches of land. Tex and Constable bring up great points about economic incentive, but also consider the physical constraints of what can be built on the beach - I think Jesus had something to say about building castles on sand, and as the son of a carpenter, I think he would know. In the States, Chicago and Charleston come to mind as being particularly relevant to your query.

Chicago is on Lake Michigan, which does have a sandy beach that is somewhat removed from downtown by various parks and smaller scale infrastructure. Downtown Charleston is a peninsula formed by the confluence of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers where they join to flow into the ocean, creating a small bay. The beaches associated with Charleston are actually on the nearby islands, not downtown Charleston, which has piers, wharfs, etc, as expected in a city founded by pirates.

A lot of the question of whether you can feasibly “build” a downtown on a beach is how built - literally - up you want it to be. The incredible innovation that went into building Chicago’s downtown, particularly its high rises and skyscrapers, is pretty well known in a general sense but you might want to look into how they were able to accomplish what they have given the very difficult topography. Charleston has no skyscrapers. In addition to the unstable, sandy soil, building in Charleston is made more unstable by being in an earthquake prone area. The big issues with downtowns being on traditional sandy beaches are the quality of the soil and bedrock and the question of erosion, which is a greater issue when dealing with ocean currents and tides.

Basically, it’s not impossible for a downtown area to have a beach, but given the issues that beaches present to building a downtown and the economic influences of why there would or would not be a beach, it’s unlikely without a lot of story behind it. And as you’re writing a story… that might be worthwhile to you. Or it might be a distraction from the story you really want to tell.

[phinnsyreads]

Item #: SCP-049

Object Class: Euclid

Special Containment Procedures: SCP-049 is contained within a Standard Secure Humanoid Containment Cell in Research Sector-02 at Site-19. SCP-049 must be sedated before any attempts to transport it. During transport, SCP-049 must be secured within a Class III Humanoid Restriction Harness (including a locking collar and extension restraints) and monitored by no fewer than two armed guards.

While SCP-049 is generally cooperative with most Foundation personnel, outbursts or sudden changes in behaviour are to be met with elevated force. Under no circumstances should any personnel come into direct contact with SCP-049 during these outbursts. In the event SCP-049 becomes aggressive, the application of lavender (L. multifida) has been shown to produce a calming effect on the entity. Once calmed, SCP-049 generally becomes compliant, and will return to containment with little resistance.

In order to facilitate the ongoing containment of SCP-049, the entity is to be provided with the corpse of a recently deceased animal (typically a bovine or other large mammal) once every two weeks for study. Corpses that become instances of SCP-049-2 are to be removed from SCP-049's containment cell and incinerated. SCP-049 is no longer permitted to interact with human subjects, and requests for human subjects are to be denied.

Temporary Containment Procedure Update: (See Addendum 049.3) Per Containment Committee Order 049.S19.17.1, SCP-049 is no longer permitted to interact directly with any members of Foundation staff, nor is it to be provided with any additional corpses to be used in its surgeries. This order shall persist indefinitely, until such time a consensus regarding the ongoing containment of SCP-049 can be reached.

Description: SCP-049 is a humanoid entity, roughly 1.9 meters in height, which bears the appearance of a medieval plague doctor. While SCP-049 appears to be wearing the thick robes and the ceramic mask indicative of that profession, the garments instead seem to have grown out of SCP-049's body over time. The robes and gloves are identical to a thick hide built up on the skin, while the mask is composed of a kind of chitin growing out of the bones of the face. They are now nearly indistinguishable from whatever form is beneath them. X-rays indicate that despite this, SCP-049 does have a humanoid skeletal structure beneath its outer layer.

SCP-049 is capable of speech in a variety of languages, though tends to prefer English or medieval French. (The entity claims to have originated in 15th century France, though admits that it is "particularly well-traveled".)  While SCP-049 is generally cordial and cooperative with Foundation staff, it can become especially irritated or at times outright aggressive if it feels that it is in the presence of what it calls the "Pestilence". Although the exact nature of this Pestilence is currently unknown to Foundation researchers, it does seem to be an issue of immense concern to SCP-049.

SCP-049 will become hostile with individuals it sees as being affected by the Pestilence, often having to be restrained should it encounter such. If left unchecked, SCP-049 will generally attempt to kill any such individual; SCP-049 is capable of causing all biological functions of an organism to cease through direct skin contact. How this occurs is currently unknown, and autopsies of SCP-049's victims have invariably been inconclusive. SCP-049 has expressed frustration or remorse after these killings, indicating that they have done little to kill "The Pestilence", though will usually seek to then perform a crude surgery on the corpse using the implements contained within a black doctor's bag it carries on its person at all times. The space within this bag is seemingly anomalously large, as SCP-049 has been observed pulling objects larger than the bag itself from within it in order to operate on deceased subjects. While these surgeries are not always "successful", they often result in the creation of instances of SCP-049-2.

SCP-049-2 instances are reanimated corpses that have been operated on by SCP-049. These instances do not seem to retain any of their prior memories or mental functions, having only basic motor skills and response mechanisms. While these instances are generally inactive, moving very little and in a generally ambulatory fashion, they can become extremely aggressive if provoked, or if directed to by SCP-049. SCP-049-2 instances express active biological functions, though these are vastly different from currently understood human physiology. Despite these alterations, SCP-049 often remarks that the subjects have been "cured".

---

Addendum 049.1: Discovery

SCP-049 was discovered during the investigation of a series of unknown disappearances in the town of Montauban in southern France. During a raid on a local home, investigators found several instances of SCP-049-2, as well as SCP-049. While law enforcement personnel engaged the hostile 049-2 instances, SCP-049 was noted as watching the engagement and taking notes in its journal. After all of the 049-2 instances were dispatched, SCP-049 willingly entered Foundation custody.

The following interview was conducted by Dr. Raymond Hamm during the initial investigation.

Interviewer: Dr. Raymond Hamm, Site-85

Interviewee: SCP-049

------------

[BEGIN LOG]

SCP-049: (In French) So then, how should we begin? An introduction?

Dr. Hamm: (Aside) Is that French? Can we get a translator-

SCP-049: (In English) The King's English! No need for translation, sir, I can speak it well enough.

Dr. Hamm: Good. My name is Dr. Raymond Hamm, and I-

SCP-049: Ah! A doctor! A like-minded individual, no doubt. Wherein is your speciality, sir?

Dr. Hamm: Cryptobiology, why-

SCP-049: (Laughs) A medical man, such as myself. Wonders abound! And here I worried I had been abducted by common street thugs! (Looks around the room) This place, then. This is your laboratory? I had wondered, as clean as it is, and with such little trace of the Pestilence here.

Dr. Hamm: The Pestilence? What do you mean?

SCP-049: The Scourge! The Great Dying. Come now, you know, the, uh… (taps temple furiously) …what is it they call it, the… the… ah, no matter. The Pestilence, yes. It abounds outside these walls, you know. So many have succumbed, and many more will continue to, until such time as a perfect cure can be developed. (Leans back in its chair) Fortunately, I am very close. It is my duty in life to rid the world of it, you see. The Cure To End All Cures!

Dr. Hamm: When you say "The Great Dying", are you talking about the bubonic plague?

SCP-049: (Pauses) I don't know what that is.

Dr. Hamm: I see. Right, well, the entities our agents encountered at that house, they were dead when you encountered them, yes? And you reanimated them?

SCP-049: Hrmm, in a manner of speaking. You see things too simply, doctor! Expand your horizons. Life and death, sickness and health, these are amateur terms for amateur physicians. There is only one ailment that exists in the world of men, and that is the Pestilence. And nothing else! Make no mistake, they were very ill, all of them.

Dr. Hamm: You think you cured those people?

SCP-049: Indeed. My cure is most effective.

Dr. Hamm: The things we recovered were not human.

SCP-049: (Pauses and glares at Dr. Hamm) Yes, well, it is not a perfect cure. But that will come with time. And further experimentation! I have spent a lifetime developing my methods, Dr. Hamm, and will spend a lifetime more, if necessary. Now, we have wasted too much time. There is work to do! I will require a laboratory of my own, one where I can continue my research unimpeded. And assistants, of course, though I can provide those on my own, in time. (Laughs)

Dr. Hamm: I don't think our organization will be willing to-

SCP-049: Nonsense. We are all men of science. Fetch your coat and show me to my quarters, doctor. (Gestures with pointed stick) Our work begins now!

[END LOG]

Interviewer's Note: While SCP-049 is capable of communicating in a very human way, there is a strange sense of unease that one experiences when in its presence. Make no mistake, there is something very uncanny about this entity indeed.

Additionally, we've confiscated that pointed stick that SCP-049 keeps waving around. Part of this was due to standard confiscation protocols for the possessions of anomalies, and part because 049 really is a menace swinging it around like he does. The entity was displeased at first, but after we made some concessions in providing it with "test subjects" (which are, admittedly, more for the benefit of our own research) it warmed up to the idea.

---

Addendum 049.2: Observation Log

While in containment at Site-19, SCP-049 has spent a considerable amount of time studying and performing surgery on the various mammalian corpses it has been provided. SCP-049 will routinely spend several days performing surgery, and then (regardless of whether or not the corpse becomes an instance of SCP-049-2) spend several more days documenting its findings in a thick leather journal stored within its doctor's bag. Notably, SCP-049's journals are not written in any known language, and attempts by linguists and codebreakers to decipher them have been unsuccessful. However, SCP-049 will often seek to verbally share its findings with members of Foundation staff.

The following is a log of several occasions during which SCP-049 was observed operating on a mammalian corpse.

Observational Log 049.OL.1 SUMMARY

Subject: SCP-049

Preface: A test subject (D-85123) was introduced into SCP-049's containment cell. The entity expressed sincere gratitude towards all members of the containment and research staff.

Observation Notes: SCP-049 began by asking D-85123 several standard medical questions, as it began removing tools from its bag. Shortly after finishing its preparations, SCP-049 quickly closed the distance between the two, killing the subject with a touch to its throat. Afterwards, SCP-049 made a number of considerable alterations to the basic structure of the subject's corpse, often introducing fluids from within its bag into the subject by way of a hand powered pump and copper tubing.

The resulting 049-2 instance became animated, flailing and grasping at the walls of the chamber with a number of manufactured limbs while moaning out of an oblong orifice now present in its sternum. During this time, SCP-049 was observed taking notes of the instance in its journal, and remarking to the watching research staff about the efficacy of its cure. Security personnel entered the chamber to move SCP-049 back to containment, and were attacked by the instance. The security team dispatched the 049-2 instance, and SCP-049 returned to containment with no resistance, stating that it was pleased with the results.

Observational Log 049.OL.2 SUMMARY

Subject: SCP-049

Preface: SCP-049 was provided the corpse of a recently deceased goat. SCP-049 expressed gratitude at the provision.

Observation Notes: SCP-049 operated on the goat corpse for several days, eventually resulting in an instance of SCP-049-2. SCP-049 expressed pleasure in this outcome, though admitted "the disease was still in its nascent stage. My veterinarian practice is rudimentary, but the patient responded well to the procedure."

Observational Log 049.OL.3 SUMMARY

Subject: SCP-049

Preface: SCP-049 was provided the corpse of a recently deceased orangutan. SCP-049 expressed noted gratitude at the provision, due to the similarities between the orangutan and common human physiology.

Observation Notes: SCP-049 spent several days operating on the orangutan, reanimating it several times. However, SCP-049 appeared to be discontent with the results it experienced, returning to the creature three times after its initial reanimation for additional work. After it was unable to reanimate the corpse a fifth time, SCP-049 turned the corpse over to Foundation staff for incineration, stating "I have learned so much from this, though I fear my early optimism was misplaced. I hadn’t yet come across such a… a stumbling block on my road to the cure. More subjects like this would do a great deal in advancing my research."

Observational Log 049.OL.7 FULL

Subject: SCP-049

Preface: SCP-049 was provided the corpse of a recently deceased bovine. SCP-049 expressed mild annoyance at the provision, having stated its desire to work on human subjects several times between this occasion and the earlier provision of an orangutan, though accepted it nonetheless.

Observation Notes: SCP-049 spent several days operating on the bovine corpse, breaking only to dine on a requested dinner of thin crackers, salted pork, and hard cheese. It should be noted that SCP-049 has expressed that it does not require sustenance, but enjoys it and feels that the food helps to put it in the right mind to operate. Beginning first by embalming the corpse, SCP-049 was observed producing a number of long syringes from its bag, each containing a different dark, viscous fluid. SCP-049 described these fluids as "essences of the humors", and elaborated by saying "the Pestilence may bring about a systemic imbalance. In such a case, before true healing can begin, one must find the humors in balance or the body will reject the cure. This is, of course, elementary knowledge for the practical physician. I would have thought you would have learned this during your education!"

Over the next few days, SCP-049 spent a considerable amount of time adjusting the organs of the bovine corpse with a number of large metal instruments. After eight days, SCP-049 produced a lightning rod, which Dr. Hamm exchanged for an electric cattle prod attached to an extension cord, and struck the corpse in several locations. This action seemingly had the effect of reanimating the bovine, which once again became ambulatory, despite the inversion of the head and reorientation of its limbs.

Follow Up Interview

[BEGIN LOG]

Dr. Hamm: We've watched you work for several weeks now, and honestly I'm not sure I understand what you're doing. Can you describe your process in detail?

SCP-049: Oh goodness no, the process is most intensive. As I said to your assistant, the best instruction you will find about my methods are here in my journals, as I have kept exhaustive records of my work there.

Dr. Hamm: I see. My concern, doctor, is that we still don't understand what you're seeking to cure, or how it manifests, or how turning these creatures into quasi-living, mindless drones helps in that effort.

SCP-049: You do not understand the Pestilence? Even after all this time? Doctor, it is an unspeakable horror, one that has shown its true face many times before and will again. I find myself blessed with the wisdom and good senses needed to root it out and destroy it, but many like yourself cannot. It is a cruel judgement, I fear, to be at the mercy of a disease you cannot fully comprehend!

Dr. Hamm: That still doesn't answer my question. How is your cure any kind of cure at all?

SCP-049: (Growing suddenly agitated) It is a cure! You may laugh at my efforts if you please, but do not besmirch the good name of scientific progress that has developed this great mercy. What you so shortsightedly see here is a life better than any this creature could have hoped for, stricken as it was with the Pestilence. This creature is now clean, unable to spread the Pestilence and free from the terror it would have experienced otherwise.

Dr. Hamm: This is hardly a creature at all, doctor, it's not even-

SCP-049: (Very agitated) Do not jape with me, sir! You and your colleagues are like so many others, unable to look past minor setbacks to see the salvation taking place before your very eyes. Do you wait to remove rotten timbers until the hall collapses on top of you? No. You find them and you pull them out and replace them with those untouched by rot! And most of all, you do not simply mock the structure because it now looks different to you. It is strong! It is free of disease.

Dr. Hamm: I'm sorry. I didn't mean to agitate you. I'm just trying to understand.

SCP-049: (Deep breath) Yes, well, do mind your words in the future, doctor. I am a professional, but even professionals may feel the bite of pride in dealing with criticism of their masterpiece. I will forgive this as an act of good faith between colleagues.

Dr. Hamm: Is there anything else I can help you with?

SCP-049: (Pauses, looking away from Dr. Hamm) No, that will be all. Another test subject, on the usual schedule. You know my preference of subjects with more human anatomies.

[END LOG]

Attending Researcher's Note: SCP-049 does seem to genuinely want to help other humans, though it has not yet been able to provide a concrete example of what exactly it is trying to save us all from. I have watched it now over several weeks, and while the outcomes do not seem to ever change, SCP-049 continues to claim that it is growing closer to its perfect cure. I think the entity may be more aware of the reality of these outcomes than it would like us to think.

---

Addendum 049.3: 04/16/2017 Incident

Starting shortly after SCP-049's initial containment, Dr. Hamm conducted a number of interviews with the subject regarding its anomalous properties, and over time began to note its displeasure with its subjects and the SCP-049-2 instances. This continued for a period of several months, during which SCP-049 never exhibited any aggressive behaviours.

On April 16th, 2017, as Dr. Hamm was entering SCP-049's test chamber to conduct another routine interview, the entity began to grow anxious and asked Dr. Hamm if he was feeling well. Following protocol, Dr. Hamm reminded SCP-049 that the interview was required, after which the entity became hostile and attacked Dr. Hamm, killing him. Due to a lapse in security protocol, and because Dr. Hamm did not activate the in-chamber emergency system, Dr. Hamm's corpse was not discovered until three hours later, by which point SCP-049 had converted it into an instance of SCP-049-2.

In the aftermath of this incident, SCP-049 was interviewed by Dr. Theron Sherman.

Interviewer: Dr. Theron Sherman, Site-42

Interviewee: SCP-049

------------

[BEGIN LOG]

Dr. Sherman: I need you to explain yourself.

(No response)

Dr. Sherman: SCP-049, you are being directed to explain your actions, and I will remind you that failure to cooperate will result in further restrictions during your containment.

SCP-049: (Pauses) My actions do not need to be explained.

Dr. Sherman: You killed Raymond Hamm and then butchered him until he-

SCP-049: (Interrupting, angrily) Not dead! No! Not… not dead. He is… he is cured.

Dr. Sherman: Cured? Cured of what?

SCP-049: The Pestilence, sir! I had thought you, at least, would realize what luck it is I detected it before-

Dr. Sherman: (Interrupting) What pestilence? You keep going on and on about this pestilence but you have not once been able to properly identify this "disease". What could you have possibly seen in him today that you had not seen so many times before? That it would be worth his life?

SCP-049: He… (pauses) The Pestilence presents and progresses in unforeseeable fashions, and has a queer way of- of creeping into the unprepared, and… (breathing becomes heavier) call it what you want, doctor. It was a mercy I did to him. He is cured.

Dr. Sherman: He is a vegetable!

SCP-049: (Pauses) I… I would not expect you to understand. You and your… your ilk have proven time and time again to be not men of science, but men of- of emotion. You cannot appreciate the horrors I have seen, those many millions who have succumbed to the Pestilence and been changed, who-

Dr. Sherman: Your cure cost Ray his life!

SCP-049: No good SIR I have saved it! You would allow this world to slip back into the, the- the despair of disease and death, ignoring that I have created a miracle and-

Dr. Sherman: (Talking over SCP-049) What disease? What pestilence? He was a healthy man! He was a good doctor!

SCP-049: -am offering it freely to the afflicted! You are not worth this argument, sir. You are shortsighted and foolish. Dr. Hamm was sick, and I… (breath catches) I cured him. I am the only one who can do this. My work must continue, there is so much still to learn, so much to-

Dr. Sherman: I've had enough of this. Consider your allowances revoked. Welcome to containment, oh-four-nine. (Away from mic) We're done here.

SCP-049: -do, and others can be saved! Even you, though you do not deserve it, might be saved! I can save them all! I can cast down this plague, once and for all. I can do this! Only me! I… I… (labored breathing) I saved… I saved him… Dr. Hamm, I… I cured him… he was sick, I know he was sick, I know he was, and I… you are all sick, but I… I can save you. I can save all of you, because I… I am the cure.

[END LOG]

---

Addendum 049.4: Post-Incident Report Interview

The following interview is an excerpt from the 4/16/17 049 Incident Report. The interview was conducted by Dr. Elijah Itkin, and took place three weeks after the start of the initial investigation.

Date: 5/7/17

Interviewer: Dr. Elijah Itkin

Interviewee: SCP-049

------------

[BEGIN LOG]

Dr. Itkin: SCP-049, we are conducting this interview to close out our investigation of your actions taken on April 16th that resulted in the death of a staff member. Do you have any comments to make?

SCP-049: Only that I look forward to the day when you will allow me to resume my work! I have spent the last few weeks compiling my notes and constructing a new theory for how the Pestilence was able to infect someone in such an insidious manner that I nearly couldn't detect it.

Dr. Itkin: Have you experienced any remorse for your actions? For the death of Dr. Hamm?

SCP-049: (Waves his hand) Ah, yes. Well, the death of a colleague is always regrettable, but in the face of the Pestilence we must be swift, doctor, and act without hesitation.

Dr. Itkin: Dr. Sherman noted in his report that you seemed to be mournful during your initial interview.

SCP-049: Mourn- (Pauses) Perhaps. I had not thought that… It is lamentable that a fellow doctor became infected, but the work continues. Regrettable as… as it was, Dr. Hamm's death provided important insight. Living human subjects are the only way to proceed forward, I am decided. My cure is of little use on dead flesh, and I have gleaned all I can from your generous supply of corpses. My desires turn towards tending to those still living who suffer from the disease.

Dr. Itkin: I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed.

SCP-049: (Laughs) Oh doctor, I wouldn't be so sure.

[END LOG]

===

[The voice of SCP-049 was provided by @phinnsy.] [The voice of Dr. Hamm was provided by Breck Wilhite.] [The voice of Dr. Sherman was provided by @navox-the-weary.] [The voice of Dr. Itkin was provided by @iridethedirt.]

===

[Enjoy the podcast? Consider supporting us on Patreon! Patrons get access to bonus Joke episodes, outtakes, and can even request episodes on specific SCP objects.]

[rigelmejo]

Study Plans May 2021

bold - priority

italic - less important

Chinese - short term (listening/reading):

Continue Listening Reading Method Guardian

Continue reading chinese - ideally some extensive and some intensive (currently reading in Pleco is intensive, Guardian is partly extensive when I do L R Method step 2 or read the print version)

Continue listening to Spoonfed Chinse Audio (I’m getting there!)

Continue adding background chinese listening to my day (lets get to 1,500 hours! Which I suspect is not as far as I think, considering all that cdrama watching probably counted, and I can generally parse some words I ‘know’ when listening and also parse some unknown words enough to look them up - and I can parse more words each time when I re-listen to things).

*priority here is L R Method, in general just strengthening reading and listening skills.

long term (listening/reading, with more shadowing and *hanzi solidifying):

L R Method more, and read in general more - so what I’ve been doing, but hopefully get to more books.

Shadowing with L R Method more.

SHADOWING more - both in general and using my pronunciation apps on my phone (general putonghua app and Chinese Pronunciation Trainer - both of which allow recording so I can compare my own pronunciation)

Experiment with the Re-listening technique (7 steps, a lot of shadowing, compatible with l r method)

Experiment with step 5 of L R Method - translating pieces to and from english/chinese.

Read through Alan Hoenig’s Chinese Characters and READ the mnemonics! write down mnemonics for sound/tone, and practice writing the hanzi (just write it in the book I’m begging you just DO THIS - it should take 1 month or 2 if you can just be dedicated). Basically focus on hanzi solidifying (specifically recognizing radicals, remembering pronunciation).

*idea is to start incorporating more production activities (shadowing, writing, translating)

longer term (grammar solidifying, production of grammar/vocab, *hanzi solidifying):

Start one of my physical Chinese grammar books - probably Chinese Basic Sentence Patterns (or my Textbook, just start one). Prioritize reading through. If reading is accomplished, do journal entries where I practice the sentence patterns/words - and/or do the textbook exercises. (Basically prioritize grammar solidifying, production skills/active vocabulary). *Ideally use a physical book I have so I don’t get distracted (only use a digital HSK book IF you’re studying FOR that test please ;-; )

FINISH Alan Hoenig’s Chinese Character’s book (at MINIMUM read through it i’m begging).

Likely still reading, and L R Method (if I like any audiobooks which lol I can think of a lot) - for these months it would take background to grammar-book work.

priority: solidifying grammar/hanzi, improving written production skills

---

Japanese - short term (vocab/grammar primarily from Nukemarine LLJ):

Continue Nukemarine LLJ courses (make an effort to use mnemonics to remember more kanji/pronunciations, shadow sentences)

READ Tae Kim’s grammar guide (I know I took it off but I GENUINELY need to read a grammar guide it helps how my brain thinks stuff... I can put this step off but if I FEEL like grammar, please go do this over any video or new grammar resource!)

AS DESIRED, check out lets plays, Game Gengo (specifically his grammar vids), game scripts, cure dolly (*LIMIT this one as not priority), playing games. Basically no need to make immersion a priority (as I think 2000 base vocab is what will make immersion more Productive), but doing it to maintain interest and do something when I don’t feel like studying is nice.

*priority here is pretty obvious - get through as much of Nukemarine’s LLC memrise courses as I can asap. In general I think my life will get easier once I do more of it...

long term (I should have 9-10 of nukemarine’s LLJ courses completed before these):

FINISH Nukemarine’s LLJ courses.

Listen to more Japanese - core japanese audio files, japaneseaudiolessons (pick one to start with, listen to it once I’m done with Chinese Spoonfed Audio) - the point is to use this to reinforce vocab/learn vocab, practice listening hours more.

Start playing video games in japanese more regularly, reading things I want to read more regularly. Lets plays more regularly, etc. So more everyday immersion. 

Transcribe rest of Japanese in 30 Hours (not priority, but fun)

*Read through my Japanese Sentence Patterns (I honestly might understand this better than any grammar guide).

*Read my learn to read japanese books (note - if I start this I should consistently read and finish it, hence best to start this after Nukemarine’s LLJ is completed/near complete).

* = activities I may save for MUCH longer term. I think whether I do them sooner or later depends on ease of immersion. If after Nukemarine, immersion is still painfully difficult, then I should probably read one (or both) of these books asap. 

[irelise]

the yew tree 2.6-7/?

Erik has worked with Sebastian Shaw, mutant revolutionary, ever since Shaw rescued him from human experimentation when he was a boy. He is reluctantly enlisted to assist in Shaw’s newest scheme: seducing the wealthy and enigmatic Lord Xavier and claiming his vast fortune. With Shaw posing as Xavier’s doctor, Erik goes undercover as Xavier’s personal manservant to convince him to fall in love with Shaw.

But Xavier has secrets of his own, and it isn’t long before Erik starts having second thoughts about the whole thing…

(the handmaiden inspired au - no canon knowledge required

part one now on ao3!

and click here for the beginning of part 2!)

Warnings for this part: suicide ideation, sexual exploitation, depression, referenced human experimentation, dubious medical ethics, referenced suicide Rating: M Word count: 4379

6. Time passes. Days, months, years, all blurring into each other, an endless grey haze.

Sometimes Charles wakes with his heart in his throat, a suffocating pressure crushing down on his ribcage. He needs to do something – this can’t be the rest of his life, it can’t–

He doesn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified when the panic always, inevitably, fades away, replaced by a familiar numbness and tired resignation. Waiting to die, he thinks cynically, staring at the worn golden tassels of the rug. Maybe today will be the day one of Uncle’s machines shorts out his brain.

Time passes.

 7. Charles first meets Sebastian Shaw during a particularly lurid reading of The Misfortunes of Virtue.

Such readings are entirely routine by now.  Eyes on the page, look up every few words. Meet the eyes of a specific man in the audience, smile at him like the reading is all for him. Back to the book. Rinse and repeat. He floats somewhere above his own body, telepathy spreading loose and uncontrolled through the hall like a cloud of spilled ink. Lust, predictably, is the dominant emotion, colouring the room in a humid and stifling haze. Charles lets it wash over him. Through him. It’s been a long time since it had any effect on him.

But something is different tonight. There’s someone – someone’s mind – a sort of unnameable brightness, an otherness…

A man in the second row. He lounges in his seat, perfectly at ease, as if the performance is nothing more remarkable than a night at the cinema. Charles meets his eyes. The man had introduced himself to Uncle as Dr. Klaus Schmidt, but inside his head he thinks of himself as Sebastian Shaw – or perhaps that’s another alias internalised for so long and so often that it had become the truth.

Sebastian Shaw smiles at him. It is an inviting thing, a lingering look of appreciation, a touch of flirtation. Power and confidence radiate from him.

But he has Uncle’s eyes, cold and calculating.

Charles smiles back at him, serene, and continues his reading.

***

The second time he meets Sebastian Shaw is in his bedroom.

Charles had been in his study paging through the newest volume of Human Genetics when he felt the approach of two minds. Uncle’s he automatically walls off, but the presence next to him – Shaw, Schmidt, whatever he calls himself – is like a beacon. Intrigued, Charles gets to his feet and returns to his bedroom, ready to play the role of the gracious host.

The door swings open and Uncle steps in, eyes sweeping dismissively around the room. Usually Uncle would summon him down to the lab for this sort of business, but sometimes he enjoys invading Charles’ rooms, an unsubtle reminder that Charles has no right to privacy.

Charles is long past the point of minding. He gives Uncle a cordial smile, impeccably polite. “Good evening, sir. And who might your guest be?”

Uncle grunts. “It’s your new doctor. Wants to give you a check-up tonight. No need to play stupid, he knows all about your mind tricks.”

“Ah.” Charles’ smile doesn’t flicker as he inclines his head at Shaw. “In that case, how do you do, Dr. Schmidt? Charles Xavier, at your service, but I think you knew that already.”

“Pleasure,” Shaw says, and the interest that lights up his mind is real. “I’ve read all of your work, Lord Xavier. You have some fascinating ideas that I would love to take further.”

His work – currently, a collection of review papers summarising the state of knowledge in genetics and related disciplines, with suggestions for future experiments carefully crafted to nudge the field in directions that are less inhumane. Charles supposes he should be grateful that Uncle permits him to publish under his own name and keep up correspondence with other scholars. The reception to his work has been positive, but Charles hadn’t expected Shaw, of all people, to mention it out of the blue. Although momentarily thrown by Shaw’s compliment, Charles recovers easily. “That’s very kind of you to say so. My position limits the type of work I can engage in, but I try to make the best of the resources available to me.”

Shaw makes an approving noise. “Someone must keep up with the vast body of knowledge at our disposal, separate the wheat from the chaff. You do good work.”

Behind Shaw, Uncle clears his throat impatiently. “You two done?”

“Yes, we should get on with things, hmm?” Shaw motions him closer, so Charles goes. Already, he’s starting to drift from his body again. In the kitchens, one of the cooks is gritting her teeth against the pain as she runs cold water over the angry red burn that covers her arm. Someone is out working late on the grounds, cursing the moonless sky. And further down the road, closer to the town–

“Strip,” Shaw says, so Charles does.

“Stand there,” Shaw says, so Charles moves where he directs, and Shaw takes measurements for his height and weight, for the circumference of his waist. Distantly, he can hear the rustle of sheets as Uncle settles down on his bed, watching his naked body with undisguised greed.

“Stay still,” Shaw says, so Charles stands there, arms straight and palms resting against his thighs. Shaw circles him, inspecting every inch of his skin: first with his eyes, then with his gloved hands, feeling at every minor blemish, every mole and freckle. For some moments Shaw lingers over the scars etched on his back from the time Uncle decided a live demonstration of The Whippingham Papers was necessary – You should feel right at home, what with that charming English public school upbringing of yours, Uncle had said, and the audience had laughed.

Charles closes his eyes. His head is empty and quiet.

“Open your mouth,” Shaw says, so Charles does, and Shaw checks his teeth and gums like he’s an animal for purchase. Not even ten minutes ago, this very same man had spoken to him like an equal. It seems so far away now.

“Spread your legs.”

It’s all you’re good for.

Impossible to tell where the thought had come from. Perhaps it’s from himself. Charles allows his telepathy to carry him further away.

Hands, gloved by impersonal latex, squeeze his testicles, checking for lumps and abnormalities. Charles allows the sensations to wash over him. Through him. He is not affected.

His body is not his own.

He does not care what happens to it.

A slick noise penetrates the air as Shaw lubricates his fingers. Uncle’s interest in the proceedings batter down on him in a red tide. Charles’ eyes fix on the window, the yew tree a constant reminder in the distance.

“Bend,” Shaw says, so Charles does, bending at the waist. Shaw braces one hand against his hip. One lubricated finger presses gently past his sphincter, calm and professional, and since Charles’ body doesn’t fight it the finger pushes deeper into his rectum. Shaw palpates the delicate internal tissues, feeling out the prostate gland from apex to base. It’s all over within a few minutes, and after that Charles silently dresses himself as Shaw and Uncle talk.

“I’ll run more tests later, for blood pressure and the like, but at this point in time it doesn’t seem like there’s anything physically wrong with him – aside from the migraines, he’s perfectly healthy. It’s going to be hard to find out what exactly is causing the migraines, since we can’t very well cut his head open and take a look inside… Could be the telepathy, could be something else, we’re starting to see some proof that some people just get migraines for no real reason…”

Charles is vaguely curious about their discussion, but it’s hard to focus when he’s so far away, curled up in the mind of one of the townswomen as she gives her husband a perfunctory kiss goodnight.

“…his extensive medical records, I’ll try him out on a new medication regime,” Shaw is saying. Charles struggles to pull himself back to the present, knowing it’s important, but he’s drifting off again when he hears–

Lord Xavier. Charles.

Charles blinks. That voice – it’s Shaw, a telepathic communication shining with the same brightness that glows in Shaw’s mind. It’s not the first time someone has communicated with him telepathically – it’s a regular part of Uncle’s tests – but never before had he heard a mental voice this clear.

He does not reply. It’s one of his self-imposed rules.

Shaw and Uncle continue their conversation, but Shaw’s voice continues to twine around his mind, intimate as a lover. Come meet me tonight, Charles. We have so much to discuss. Surely, you’ve noticed by now that my mind is different.

Superior.

I’m like you.

Tonight, Charles. By that tree at the edge of your property. Meet me there.

***

He does not trust Shaw.

He is fascinated by Shaw.

These are not mutually exclusive things.

Left to his own devices once more, Charles retreats to the study. Without hesitation, he reaches out, creeping on silent cat’s feet into Shaw’s mind.

Shaw is – complex. Mutant, as he had implied, and old, far older than he looks, a veritable treasure trove of experience, his mind humming with that beautiful energy that had drawn Charles to him in the first place. He shines bright with a fire and passion Charles had long ago lost.

But for all Shaw’s disdain of humans, the deeper layers of his mind are remarkably similar to Uncle’s. They have the same greed, the same drive to take things – people ­– apart in the name of scientific inquiry, the same potential for petty cruelties…

Charles would like nothing better than to never enter Shaw’s mind again, but he blocks out his discomfort, focusing on the task at hand. He needs more information.

It’s rare that he digs through memories, a light-fingered thief snatching at precious moments he has no right to. Most of the time, Charles is content to be a silent observer, drifting aimlessly in the present. But too often he loses himself entirely and reaches deeper than he means to.

He does it on purpose now, sinking into Shaw’s mind until he is Shaw, squinting through the darkness of the grounds as he walks to the yew tree for their rendezvous. His mind is a buzz of plans and low-grade irritation – Marko has ruined the Xavier boy what a waste of power waste of potential I should kill him for it – and Charles carefully wills Shaw’s thoughts to dwell on the subject of Uncle, spinning out into a web of associations and memories.

Years and years of partnership, he and Marko and Trask; after all, the humans are useful pawns and scapegoats and of course neither of them know he is a mutant and what he has planned for them eventually…

He is not a traitor to his own kind. He is never the one to hunt down and capture fellow mutants. But once they’ve fallen into human hands – well, he’s really no different from a parent who allows his children to stumble and fall, to make their own mistakes and grow. Besides, he always rescues them in the end, after they’ve had a chance to learn their lessons. So what if it takes a few years?

Anger, hate, fear – they are the best teachers. They are the source of power.

Charles shudders at that familiar philosophy, heard so many times before from Uncle’s mouth, from his books. The urge to flee almost overpowers him, but Charles stays put and continues to eavesdrop on Shaw’s growing ire – where is that damn boy, gonna be late for my meeting with Azazel, fucking nobles, he’s worse than Emma, Christ I need to make some time to go through things with Emma, we need to figure out how to deal with little Erik Lehnsherr…

Vitriol. Disappointment. Fatherly pride. Murderous intent, blood-red. Whoever Erik Lehnsherr is, he inspires a tangled web of emotion so deep and powerful that it sends Charles reeling.

Before Charles can stop himself, his power threads carefully through Shaw’s mind, plucking out more memories:

A tall, lean figure pacing in front of a small crowd of mutants, his movements as economical and graceful – deadly – as a shark on the hunt. “My brothers and sisters…” Erik says, and the memory is both blurred and vibrant, a multitude of similar scenes overlayed on top of each other. Shaw’s paternal fondness is an undercurrent through it all. My little firebrand, he thinks, proud. Possessive. Erik is his. His finest creation.

Shaw’s mind flicks to memories of Erik as he was, a sweet little boy. Not even three years spent under the scalpels of human scientists had fully snuffed out the innate sweetness and honesty in Erik’s nature. The first few months after his rescue Erik had been a persistent shadow, wary as a kicked dog and just as starved for attention. Oh, little Erik tried to put up a strong front, bristling and snapping at everything, but the slightest bit of praise had Erik hanging onto his every word. Shaw loves them the most at this age; young minds are so malleable, so easy to mould in the proper way. It’s no difficult task to feed Erik’s fear and hatred, shaping him into a weapon against the humans as easily as Erik shapes his metal.

His only regret is that he hadn’t taken a firmer hand with Erik. “Brothers and sisters,” Erik says once again, in another time, in another memory. Shaw had written the speech for Erik, but Erik’s next words come as a shock of cold water: “Today, we free our captive brothers and sisters! We’ll bring down the complex around the humans, we’ll unleash a devastation they’ll never forget!”

“That wasn’t what we had agreed on!” Shaw snarls, an indeterminable amount of time later, and this memory is blazing red with fury. How dare he; he had raised Erik like a son, he had made him into everything he is now, he had given him everything. “This was supposed to be a reconnaissance mission only!”

“We know they have mutants held captive there, how much more reconnaissance do we need?” Erik snarls back, and by God, Shaw’s hand itches. He wants to slap Erik. He wants to choke him, to hear the splintering of bone and the bloody rip of torn flesh.

“No,” Erik continues. The air around him hums, crackling with magnetic energy. “I won’t let the humans experiment on them one second longer.” His eyes narrow. “And I can’t believe you’re even thinking about leaving them there. What the fuck, Sebastian?”

If only he knew.

Shaw’s memories jump again, and these are worn with time and distance. A rumour, heard from a friend of a friend, about a child patient who brings horrendously bad luck. Needles bend and dull around him. Instruments, always the metal ones, suddenly warp. Pipes leak, wiring falls apart.

Shaw is not a traitor to his own kind. He would never hunt fellow mutants. But this is more like – like sending someone to be trained. A few words in the right ears, and little Erik Lehnsherr is suddenly an orphan, another missing child for human authorities to forget about. It’s all very laughably easy. The humans all think Shaw – the clever, ever-reliable Dr. Schmidt – is one of them, and Shaw reads all the reports they send him on little Erik Lehnsherr, charting the jumps in Erik’s power until he’s grown enough to be useful. Then it’s a simple matter of rescuing him, Erik’s own personal knight in shining armour. He kills little Erik’s tormentors right before the boy’s wide, terrified eyes, relishing the fear and betrayal on the faces of the human scientists even as he gathers Erik into his arms, shushing and soothing him. Mine.

Mine.

Unsettled, Charles pulls back from Shaw’s mind, but not far enough. All those memories of Erik he had roused had awakened something dark in Shaw; Shaw’s mind whirls round and round in furious circles – need to deal with him he’s too popular with the young recruits, how dare he how dare he, he’s going to ruin all my plans, he’s mine, he’s taking what’s mine…

Charles is no stranger to thoughts of violence, but Shaw’s fevered imaginings are more visceral than most. He’s murdered before. Erik Lehnsherr will only be another name in a long, long list.

God. Charles pulls back completely. He’s done it again, gone where he had no right to and fucked everything up in the process. Would Shaw be so homicidally angry if Charles hadn’t pulled up all those memories?

He needs to fix this. The thought of meeting Shaw, alone, fills Charles with apprehension, but he gets to his feet anyway. Shaw is no threat to him, Charles reminds himself. He’s already been dismissed as a weakling, and while Shaw’s mind may be a shifting mess of hypocrisy and double standards, Charles has the impression that Shaw is genuine in his desire to avoid harming other mutants – except, of course, when his power is threatened.

The grounds are chilly, and it’s colder still under the shadow of the yew tree. Shaw’s smile is a knife in the dark. “I was starting to think you wouldn’t come,” he drawls.

Charles smiles in return, perfectly serene, perfectly bland. “Did you need something from me?”

“I’m here to make you an offer.”

“Oh?”

For all his outward calm, inside, Charles is scrabbling for the right thing to say. Uncle’s friends are easy, but Shaw – Shaw is a fellow mutant. Kin. The textures of his mind are rich and vibrant, with an extra depth to his perception of the world that no human can hope to match.

And yet.

He’s seen into Shaw’s mind. He’s felt the clinical touch of his hands. The man in front of him is not – will never be – someone worthy of his trust.

“Let’s hear it,” Charles adds, covering his uncertainties with a layer of cultured calm.

Shaw’s eyes sweep over him, an examination Charles is intimately familiar with. “You know, Charles, when I first heard of you, I thought you’d be an empty-headed little boy. You’ve been alone all this time, haven’t you?” He crowds closer, into Charles’ space, reaching out to grasp his chin, but Charles firmly pushes his hand away. Shaw smiles. “See? I thought I knew your type. I thought you’d latched onto the first mutant you see. The first person to give you a kind word. The first person to treat you like…an adult.”

There’s no mistaking the heat in Shaw’s gaze, the desire sparking in his mind, and Charles feel his throat close and his chest go tight. He forcibly pushes it all back and meets Shaw’s eyes evenly. “Clearly you thought wrong.”

“Clearly I did. Marko’s already ruined you for everyone else. So!” Shaw rubs his hands together. “Like I said, I’ll cut you a deal instead. Do you know why I’m here?”

Charles could look, but he doesn’t have to. Shaw is all but shoving the answer at him. “You want many things, but primarily, you’re after my fortune.”

“That’s right. We both have something the other wants. You have your money, and I… Well. I have a key.”

“A key,” Charles echoes, sceptical.

“You want to get out of here, don’t you? Be with your own kind?” Shaw’s hand rests heavily on his shoulder, and this time, Charles doesn’t push it away. The night is still and silent save for the rustle of the yew’s branches. He’s so very tired. “Of course you do. I know all about you, you know. I know how Marko has been controlling you. Leashing you.” Fingers tap at Charles’ temple. “Let me set you free.”

Charles shakes his head minutely. “Uncle didn’t…” It was nothing Charles didn’t consent to. A mutual promise. A deal, just like the one Shaw is trying to make with him.

Shaw tuts. “He has you brainwashed. You sure you’re the telepath here?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Well, think about it. I could help you be so much more. I lead a whole group of our kind, you’re more than welcome there. I’ve got a telepath with me. You want training? She’ll help you unlock your potential. You’re never going to get anywhere with a human like your uncle.” Shaw spits the last word like a curse, lips curling into a sneer.

Charles should want those things. He thinks he does want those things, in some deep and buried part of him, but it’s an abstract desire, a yearning for something impossible. Even now, the mansion looms on the periphery of his vision like an unavoidable shadow, and the branches of the yew overhead blot out the light of the moon.

He thinks about a rope of silk. A memory of desperation; choking.

He cannot go on like this.

“What do you want in exchange?” Charles finally asks. “Money?”

“Not even all your fortune,” Shaw says, indulgent. Triumph radiates from his mind. “I’m a fair man; we’ll split it. Run away with me, Charles. When the time is right. Do we have a deal?”

Uncle had said those same words to him a lifetime ago. Charles is no braver now than he is back then, but he likes to think he’s grown wiser. For all his seductive promises, Shaw is no true ally – just look at what he plans to do to that man, Erik Lehnsherr, his own faithful right hand.

“Yes,” Charles says quietly. His mind is racing with the beginnings of a plan. “But you must realize running away isn’t enough. Uncle will never stop hunting me.” His heartbeat pounds painfully against his chest. Charles licks his suddenly dry lips. “We need to…”

He falters, breaking off. The choking pressure against his ribcage is growing too much to bear. Get a hold of yourself – he doesn’t understand it, it makes no sense that the mere mention of Uncle should send him dizzy and shaking with fear and adrenaline…

Shaw watches him, pity in his eyes, sneering disgust in his mind. “You’re that afraid of Kurt Marko? He won’t get his hands on you, I promise.”

“You can’t,” Charles stops, swallows, tries again. “You can’t stop him.”

“Oh, I won’t be the one stopping him,” Shaw says. Smugness lights his mind again, and Charles picks up the image of a glittering vial. “I’d be a poor spouse if I don’t get you a wedding present, hmm? So, here’s my promise to you. I have in my possession a vial of opium, highly concentrated. Drink it all and you’ll go to sleep and never wake up again. Put it in your drink, put it in his, I don’t care. Either way, you’ll never end up in his hands again.”

Charles can tell from the tenor of his thoughts that this is all a game to Shaw. Shaw isn’t in the business of killing a fellow mutant unless he’s defied, but he’s not above games of petty manipulations. All along, he’s been expecting Charles to take the opium. To take the painless, peaceful way out, leaving Shaw with the entire fortune.

The worst part is – it’s tempting. It’s what he had wanted for all these years.

He still wants it.

No. Focus. He has a plan. He has a responsibility. Erik. He won’t let Shaw kill him. “Let’s hope it won’t come to that, shall we. I’d much rather never see Uncle again.”

“You’re the one who said he’ll never stop hunting you.”

“He won’t.” Again, his throat closes up, but this time Charles presses on grimly. “Unless he thinks I’m dead.”

That gets Shaw’s attention. “Oh?”

“After…” And it feels so strange to think of the future, to know that something may break up the grey haze of his days, “After the wedding, after you have a claim to the fortune, I want to fake my death. I need a body for that.”

It takes no prompting at all for Shaw’s thoughts to immediately flick to Erik Lehsnherr. “I can arrange that.”

Charles nods. “Find me a manservant,” he says. He needs some way to get close to Erik somehow, to warn him. “My current servants all report to my uncle. Find me someone honest. Someone straightforward. We’ll use him as my body double after the marriage. There’s no need to have more people involved than needed.”

It’s not the most solid plan. Already, Shaw has his doubts – he’s loathe to let Erik anywhere near Charles – but Charles wants this to work so badly that he’s reaching out before he can stop himself, bending his self-imposed rules. Let Erik stay here a few weeks, a few months, out of the way, he whispers into Shaw’s mind, using Shaw’s own voice. He picks out the threads of suspicion in Shaw’s psyche, smoothing them away into calm, nothing to worry about, the Xavier boy is too cowardly to do anything, Erik will never listen to someone he thinks is a weak, sickly human…

It’s been many years since Charles has allowed himself to want something so badly. He can’t do it in good conscience, not when he knows his thoughts are poison, a miasma seeping into the skulls of good, innocent people and altering them to suit his whims.

But Charles lets go now. Accept it. Accept it. Accept the plan.

After a second, an eternity, Shaw nods.

“You know,” Shaw says, “when I saw you in your room earlier, I thought Marko crushed the spirit out of you already. You were so cold, like a perfect little doll.”

“Is there a point to this?”

“Oh, just that you’re even colder than I expected.” Shaw chuckles. “Didn’t think you had it in you to plan a murder in cold blood. But I like it. I’ll be seeing you, Charles.”

Shaw walks away, leaving him alone. Charles looks at the mansion, then at the height and breadth of the yew tree, and he rests his hands against the bark. It’s cold and rough against his skin; dead. His chest feels unaccountably tight again.

He’s only ever wanted to do the right thing.

He just wishes he knows what the right thing is.

(next part)

[potteresque-ire]

My Hottest Literary Take is… (Or, Reading as a Caring Observer)

My hottest literary take is…

Long-form investigative journalism now needs / deserves a place in a well-balanced literature diet.

Yes, by that I mean, I think in-depth journalistic reporting—the kind that creates detailed, pages-long articles on specific issues, articles that are well-written and reasoned and balanced with impeccably portrayed personalities—should be collected and published, and found themselves on  the library shelves for “literature” nation (world) wide. They should be on summer reading lists, be the tools of torture in English classes. I think its exclusion for being non-fictional and “news”, together with the drastic change in our reading habits over the last decade, is at least partly responsible for the ongoing debate on what makes “problematic” media content (and whether censoring is the proper treatment for them).

First of all, here’s the definition of “literature”:

Merriam Webster:

1a(1): writings in prose or verse

especially: writings having excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest

Oxford (Lexico):

Written works, especially those considered of superior or lasting artistic merit.

These definitions suggest that literature doesn’t need to be fictional. It just has to be writing. Social issues, which investigative journalism dives into, are definitely of permanent and universal interest. Artistic merit is relative, judged against our day-to-day reading material…

Which, these days, it’s social media. We also ingest news briefings online, most of which are indeed brief if they’ve got words at all. The common characteristics of the two is that both encourages quantity over quality; companies have little incentive to encourage their users to stop and digest each article / post / tweet before moving to the next as clicks equate profit. Social media also makes autobiographical writing much more prevalent, in which the poster isn’t expected to maintain an emotional distance to what they are saying. They’re not expected to step away, judge the experience from a distance, find voices contrary to their own.

What this signifies to me is … we rarely come to contact with material written from the perspective of a “caring observer” anymore. I use the term “caring observer” rather than “passerby”, because the latter, to me at least, has much less (if any) emotional investment in the matter being observed. A caring observer is not directly affected by the investigated subject, but they want to know more; and they will know more, they’ll take away something from the experience, but they can still maintain sufficient distance from the subject matter, present the merits and fallacies of the arguments and counterarguments and the people behind them, and invite the readers to make their own conclusions without asserting their own views upon them.

It’s a very unique, precise thing to hold, this Distance — I shall put this word in capital letters — between the investigative journalist and their subject. Stand too far, the investigative power of the work suffers. Stand too close, the balance of the piece may be gone, the scope narrows and loses its universal appeal.

The investigative journalist is a caring observer.

The caring observer can also describe aptly, I think, the relationship between readers of a fictional work and the fictional work itself. And so I believe, too, that an optimal Distance exists between readers of the classically-defined (fictional, aesthetically outstanding) literature and literature itself. It’s the distance that allows us to immerse in the content without drowning in the world—something young children often lack the skills to do; it’s the distance that allows us to walk in the same shoes as the characters while we read and switch back to our own trainers afterward, the distance that allows us to shed tears for the characters and then to say, “even though I’d never be in that situation in the first place” or “even though I disagree with everything that they did”. As I review my beloved media content, my thoughts are, in many ways, much like an investigative news article: that was the situation, the conflict, the people involved, the dilemma they had, why each side failed or succeeded in getting what they wanted. Why it took them so long, why it was such a difficult journey despite this and that…

Oh dear, my heart.

(Do people get emotional over investigative reporting? I do.)

On “problematic” literature. My knee-jerk reaction too, is that no fiction can be problematic enough to justify censorship. The argument is this: characters in fictional world cannot be hurt, and we, as readers, exit the world when we close the book.  But when I think harder, some parts of this argument does feel a little shaky. We keep on reading a story because we care. We say we exit the fictional world when we put down the book….but at the same time, many of us read because certain elements of its world stay with us.  

And we *want* those elements of its world to stay with us.

This is particularly true for fandomers, who have a tendency, a … passion to keep a shorter distance between us as consumers of a piece of media and the media itself. For better or for worse, we aren’t very good at this Distance thing, at least in the eyes of convention. This also means that as a group, we are perhaps, indeed, more prone to the influence of literature because we tend to invite more of the fictional world into our own. And if we are more prone, then subtle lessons of misogyny, racism, etc would have more potential to invade our RL perspectives. After I considered this, I’ve come to some understanding as to why the “problematic” debate has appeared to be most heated in fandoms, when my intuition had told me otherwise—why would media lovers want to censor media? Or prevent someone else from enjoying whatever media they want to enjoy?

And I’ve started to wonder if the debate these days, on problematic media content and their deserved treatment, really stems from the two sides perceiving very different Distances between themselves and the media they consume, and this Distance is so abstract that neither side can relay it in words. This divide as I’ve observed is somewhat generational, but only because, I’d postulate here, that the older generations may be much more accustomed to reading as a caring observer. This isn’t a question of intelligence, or that one side “can’t read” or the other side “are all pedophiles”.  These allegations are tearing fandom apart, taking the joy out of it. It saddens me to see that.

I think, the progress of our world and our experience in it has simply shaped the two sides differently. I’m definitely from an older generation, and “caring-observer” style writing used to be all around me. As a child, I was already in touch with investigative reporting every day from the stacks of newspapers delivered to my home. The internet was around by the time I was in uni, but laptops were still too expensive to own and being an ultimate introvert who enjoyed reading far more than people, I used to collect the newspapers strewn about in the cafeteria (the school always leave one free copy of the prominent ones out there) and read them over meals. I got used to reading long articles from writers who described an initial stranger, an initial strange thing that’d been in no way connected to themselves before, in increasingly vivid, if painful details while withholding judgment—the judgment would be the work I’d have to put in myself.  And there was no answer key; there was no one, no social media to assure me if my conclusion was valid or call me out if it was stupid or prejudiced. I made my many questionable conclusions over as many questionable salads; often I turned out to be very wrong. They never hurt me though. I moved on. I got better.

I didn’t know then, but I was learning to read as a caring observer, from something an expert caring observer had written and published.

Turn the clock years later, and our current reading material, including (and perhaps especially) our news, is no longer fertile ground for nurturing caring observers both in reading and writing.  As I mentioned before, it emphasizes on almost the opposite: quantity, efficiency, and self-expression. My hypothesis is also this, then: that the internet-era generations are reading in a more “self-realizing” than a "caring-observer” manner, which also renders them more aware of representation issues and moralistic concerns, has not happened by preference, but because that reading material available to them is different. They’re used to reading in first person; they’re used to viewing the written word as an extension of self and writing, in general, as a tool for self-portrayal rather than prying into someone or something that isn’t previously understood.

In other words: for one side, reading and writing is about diving into the unknown; for the other side, it’s about expanding and consolidating the knowledge on what is known, including righting the wrongs of the previously assumed (and there are so many wrongs). If the former is about creating a new language, then the latter is about creating a dictionary for a spoken tongue. Both are valid; both can be equally valuable. The question is: how to get the two sides to not trample on what the other side desires.

This is, however, where my bias lies: I still think learning to be a caring observer is a good thing, especially when it comes to appreciating and enjoying literature. Reasons: 1) this has been said many times before and better—horrible things and people do run this world, and often with a carefully constructed facade; literature not only allows us to engage in these terrors in the safety of our world but also helps us build immunity against these facades; 2) very importantly, it builds confidence. Every time I made a correct call on the true colours of a character, it helps me feel more confident when an actual, suspicious RL person comes along and I have to make a quick character judgment. A major perk of being a caring observer is this: I feel I can care enough to learn about a person, then decide that they’re, after all, not worth knowing. I feel I can walk away without outside validation; I don’t need people to agree with me (which I think is the heart of censoring efforts) because my confidence comes from practice and not the approval of others. This comes partly with age, but more because, I think, I’m not only used to making calls, I’m also used to making mistakes. And I’ve realised that it’s all right. Changing one’s mind when one knows better doesn’t break people. It is far less embarrassing than not changing one’s mind just for the sake of consistency.

Being a caring observer is quite freeing, really.

So what are good learning tools for caring observers in training? Literary works (as classically defined) are candidates, but I feel they’re not always efficient—good  learning tools must, first of all, be engaging, otherwise that distance issue is a non-issue to begin with; the reader simply doesn’t care, or they don’t care enough to try to override a pre-formed bias. Many books taught in school are ineffective that way. On the other hand, the material cannot be too engaging because … learning shouldn’t be torture (yes, contrary to what I said before); people should feel free to throw all Distance out the proverbial window for certain Loves of Life.

The reason I propose investigative reporting as “practice material” for readers who’d like to find their Distance, the reason I propose investigative reporting to be included in literary discussions inside and outside classrooms, is because I think they’re particularly suited for this age. I also wish there’ll be some concerted efforts by educators to make them more freely and readily available, since quality ones tend to be behind a paywall (for good reasons) and they tend to be dispersed among different media outlets. These reading material can fill a certain void that the age of fast news and social media has created. The younger generations are much more aware of and engaged in social issues; I think they’ll find passion in these writings. They’re also brilliant at finding information that they need, and so no difficult topic is out of their reach as long as they care. Neither of these can (sadly) be said for my generation. The writing in long investigative reports also tends to be logically clear and precisely worded, which are things often lacking in social media writing as well. More importantly, in contrast to fiction, journalism is about real people, often real people with problematic behaviour. It would help bridge feelings towards these real, problematic people and fictional, problematic people, sort out the feelings for the latter. Can one learn about problematic personalities—real or fictional— while keeping the Distance? Can one draw an intimate portrait of who they are without endorsing their behaviour? Can one enter their psyche and emerge unscathed, and with just a little more knowledge of the complicated nature of human beings? I think the answer is yes.

So here’s my hottest literature take: include investigative journalism in literary discussions.  And finally, this may be a good time to confess this: I have neither a literature nor a journalism background, so my hottest take can only be considered lukewarm at best. 😛  My need to write something aside—I’ve neglected writing for too long—I just think… maybe, just maybe, I can offer just a little something for people to think about...

[deltaengineering]

Winter Anime 2019 Part 4: That’s all, folks.

Over already? This is a pretty thin season with not a lot of shows, so it’s not that surprising that there’s not many good ones either. Still, a weak showing. Oh well, let’s get it over with. There were a few decent ones in the last batch.

Circlet Princess

What: Dimwitted schoolgirl is good at some vaguely defined virtual fighting sport, changes school based on it, finds out relevant club has been abolished. Forecast says: 5 member plot incoming.

❌ I think it’s already clear this show isn’t very ambitious, and not very well written either. A game adaptation at its laziest.

❌❌ Man, this girl is STUPID. What the hell.

❌ The rest of the cast are less stupid (which isn’t hard), but that just means they’re so forgettable they might as well not exist.

❌❌ It looks cheap, and by that I mean really really cheap. The character design is ISO standard anime and it’s mostly on model, but that’s as good as it gets. The animation just sucks. That’s a death sentence for an action/sports show with terrible characters.

Bermuda Triangle - Colorful Pastrale

What: Japanese Spongebob, as in cute mermaids. Doing things optional.

❌ To make this quick, this is almost exactly Pastel Memories, only every problem is just a little less extreme. It has fewer characters, it’s looking slightly better, there’s a tiny bit more going on, the setting is mildly more interesting. That still means it is:

❌❌ 1. A boring mess in which a handful of samey girls do nothing of much interest in a location that should be unique, but isn’t.

❌❌ 2. Conspicuously cheap. It even has the same sightline problems.

❌❌ 3. Featuring a character model sheet that is “off” even under the best circumstances. This time due to the very offputting decision to give everyone blobby triangular irises.

❌❌ Unlike Pastel Memories (which was an ad for a mobile game) this is an anime original, so it really has no excuse being this lame.

♎ I find it amusing that Pastel Palettes are providing the OP for an anime, and it’s not the one currently airing that they’re actually characters in.

Endro~!

What: Kiraralike comedy thing in a generic JRPG setting.

♎ Namori character designs, so it’s like Spyce in that it just seems like the Yuru Yuri cast cosplaying a genre. But hey, Namori character designs do look good.

❌ I’m not as done with generic JRPG settings as with generic isekai settings, but it’s still a real problem since the former is now a subset of the latter. Mildly making fun of it does not improve things much either.

✅ The tone is cutesy and pleasant. I find this much preferable to something like Mahoujin Guru Guru, which is pretty much the same thing but with abrasive, high-intensity slapstick instead.

✅ It’s backing that up with generally high-quality, agreeable pastel looks.

❌ Not being annoying is a start, but beyond that this seems very middle of the road and predictable. I don’t get much out of the genre “parody” and simply being cute is still not an unique selling point in anime.

Grimms Notes The Animation

What: Did someone say JRPG? This is a mobile one, vaguely based on fairy tales as the title implies.

✅ This universe runs on the idea that every NPC’s fate is controlled by a preset story they’re aware of. You could make a good story about that if you took it seriously. It even does that somewhat, but only to the degree that you’d expect from a throwaway sidequest in a moderately well-written JRPG.

❌ And the reason for that is that it has to make room for being a JRPG, of course. Read: It’s irritatingly mechanics- and combat-focused. Stuff like the characters changing form when in fights just seems overly complicated and adds nothing.

❌ Said combat looks competent, but not good enough to make up for detracting from what could have been an interesting setting. Merc Storia did this aspect far better (by usually not doing it at all).

❌ So it ends up being better than expected, but then that only amounts to a disappointment.

Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai / Kaguya-sama: Love Is War

What: Kaguya and Miyuki are in the student council of a prestigious school and HATE HATE HATE each other. Specifically, they hate the part where the other one won’t just finally admit their love.

✅ The joke here is that it’s operating on full intensity at all times, over the most simple matters. It’s pretty much Kaiji, only about dating - complete with hammy narrator. This is another one of those shows where I can’t say with certainty that it’s solid, but I had a blast during the first episode.

✅ Regarding Quintuplets, I made it clear that I love me some sparks in my romantic comedies. It doesn’t get much more explosive than this.

✅ The characters are comparable to Quints too: Smart scheming upstart vs. rich scheming ojou, with a simpleminded girl in the middle that ends up winning more often than not simply by not overdoing it.

✅ The visuals are just as over the top as the proceedings depicted. Occasionally a filter massacre, but mostly cool.

♎ The long-term viability of this show depend entirely on whether they can consistently come up with scenarios that work, which isn’t a given. Also, this is so intense it might become tiresome - I already felt some fatigue towards the end of the first episode. We’ll see, I guess.

Kakegurui ××

What: Some weirdos think they can crash the party at Hyakkaou with an intent to scare the daylights out of Yumeko and Midari, of all people. Let’s just say they were not as prepared as they thought.

✅ As you might have guessed by me watching the sequel, I liked Kakegurui. It has its problems, but if you’re down for some crazypants madness, this show delivers.

✅ This is one of the better episodes of it too, because it gets right into it and the game they play is dead simple. Kakegurui was never about smart moves or strong characters, so not having anything detract from our girls deriving the entirely wrong sort of pleasure from danger is a plus.

♎ Sadly, the OP is a step down (though still great) and the ED is simply an inferior, overcomplicated version of the magnificent original one. They seem to know this too, because they play the OP cut of Deal with the Devil in its entirety for a montage. The rest of the production is on par with the original though, so it’s fiiiine. Oh well.

❌ It got Netflix’d again and the subs situation is dire. Since this is one I actually like, I might have to wait for the official release.

Kouya no Kotobuki Hikoutai / The Magnificent Kotobuki

What: Piston-engined fighter plane pornography.

✅ This delivers where Girly Air Force failed: Close to zero exposition, the majority of the episode is just planes dogfighting with barely any talking either. And that part is executed really well. I think the plane startup sequence alone is as long as the total of Girly’s airtime.

✅ Guess what, it’s Tsutomu Mizushima, previously known for unbridled panzer (und girls) pornography, and boy can you tell. However, this cuts out a lot of GuP’s bullshit: A plane doesn’t have the cast of K-ON in it, it’s not over-the-top zany, and whatever this universe is, it can’t be as insipid as GuP’s. The classy milwank exists you guys, we found it.

✅✅ The music really helps here, sky pirates vs zeppelins just wouldn’t work without some classic swashbuckling orchestra background. Fat sound mixing on the dakka too. It’s great.

♎ Can’t really say much about the narrative because we kinda skipped that in this episode aside from the obvious, but Mizushima’s Shirobako collaborator Michiko Yokote is writing it, and that’s a good sign.

❌ Now we’re getting to the elephant in the room though: There’s no way the planes wouldn’t be CG in 2019, but the characters are CG too, and their animation is mediocre. Also, they did the KADO thing where they 2D-animated the side characters that aren’t important enough to model. This has the funny side effect that you can tell who’s going to die real soon by them looking better. It’s far from great, but probably a worthy tradeoff if the mechanical side is this extensive and also delivers.

✅ This is definitely not for everyone, since you have to have more than a casual appreciation for those magnificent girls in their flying machines. I do, though.

revisions

What: A chunk of Shibuya gets teleported to the dystopian future, local doomsday prepper gets handed a large robot because he’s special.

❌ A Goro Taniguchi joint being a poorly conceived scifi mess? Say it ain’t so! I especially dig the tryhard English jargon (mecha: “String Puppet”, monsters faction: “Revisions”, particular monster, I think?: “Civilian”, tacticool operetah: “Balancer”).

❌ Works very hard to characterize the main character, to the detriment of everyone else. A for effort, but you made an unlikeable asshole though.

❌ This is another full CG show, with the quality of the animation being curiously variable. Sometimes it’s well above average and sometimes it’s painful. There doesn’t seem to be much method to it.

✅ Tries to establish stakes by being mondo edgy and graphically murderizing some poor bystanders. It’s adorable.

❌ If you’re really jonesing for some mecha, you can watch all of this on Netflix right now. It’s not like you have any alte- wait, Egao no Daika has mecha too. Well there you go then. That’s a better show.

[kisaragizan]

Aqua Force [V-EB08]

I’mma keep this really simple and quick because although set is nearly completed, things are subject to change due to a few more cards unreleased and official play testing, especially against the current meta (This isn’t to say I didn’t play test these, I’m saying I only tested them in a vacuum rather than how good they are vs [x] deck). I’ll re-post this in a more extensive format similarly to how I usually do my things (so don’t expect any fancy stuff, at most I’ll link things). And lastly, this will be going over V-Standard due to how minimal this booster affects the Premium deck.

I believe this booster did a pretty decent job at supporting the clan. Could be better, minor nitpicks here and there, but overall things that can help keep us afloat until the next support wave.

I feel what it did right, aside from giving us a power house finisher grade three (which I’ll briefly touch upon when I talk about the decks themselves), and better grade ones since our current ones, aside from Penguin, were “ok” some of the times or had conflicted with attack patterns which is a no-no. We only got one grade 2 which is an instant inclusion to the deck.

https://cardfight.fandom.com/wiki/Coral_Assault_(V_Series)

Coral’s good because hitting 24k by himself with no Accel Circle and being able to fuel soul and draw for playing the clan is nice. You won’t use that skill all the time unless you know he’s gonna get retired.

Lastly, we get to the main grade 3 of the deck.

https://cardfight.fandom.com/wiki/Blue_Storm_Supreme_Dragon,_Glory_Maelstrom_(V_Series)

As I said before, he’s the power house finisher as he can force your opponent into guarding scenarios where they must perfect guard an attack or take it due to the restriction. Regardless of whether Aqua Force wanted a skill like that from Glory or not, the point is that we got it, so we have to make do with what we have until the next time.

So while the deck will definitely be built around Glory Maelstrom (and to some extent OG Maelstrom if you’re happen to be stuck on him), I feel that there are multiple ways you can go about it due to our upgraded grade one line up that more or less influences our grade two line up. Again, I’ll go over new grade ones in their respective featured decks. These decks are to be seen as a base concept: while I do think it’s preferred to stick to the same cards of each deck (which will be explained why), card copies can be played around with to get a desired result. Triggers I’ll go over at the very end since I feel those are personal preference.

This deck is meant to have a strong grade one to grade two transition, by either riding the Wheel Assault or Storm Rider, Nikoloz (I have the original card of Wheel for proxy purposes, don’t chew me out). Nikoloz especially giving you the ability to tutor out your Algos from the deck is really good since any form of tutoring in an aggressive deck is always welcomed. While it does make the deck even more of a high-roll, you have two good on-rides and you can always use Nikoloz throughout the game. Calm Assault is really strong to pump your attacks by an extra stage while on Glory (preferably to either force a heal trigger to guard or to become a “perfect guard or take”, which will be known as “the unguardable threshold” for the remainder of this post) and increases the pressure of the rear-guards who can trigger the original Maelstrom’s re-stand. Basil is here because given the nature of Glory, you want to have units that can hit that unguardable threshold, and since Basil goes above Force and hits a 14k magic number (for decks like Blaster and Brandt), he’s much preferred than any of the others for the time being. Resource wise, this deck is pretty balanced, not eating up too much of a specific resource. Riptide is a really strong card that continues to push in Standard for this clan. The only issue is that this build trades flexibility for the high-roll (borderline gimmicky), since every card here is important: you can’t afford to take out a card without running into some drawbacks.

This second build prioritizes flexibility and stability. While every card here is important, you’re able to swap out cards should the format call for it. Since you don’t have Algos tutoring, Tidal takes his place since the later doesn’t use up counter blast that can be saved for Glory, Maelstrom, and Basil. However, the deck leans heavily on it’s soul blasts (Tidal and Calm Assault who can be used twice a turn), so you’ll have to consider playing Battle Siren, Viviana to fuel soul, who also happens to go really well with Glory since attacks will be too large to guard, thus guaranteeing the on hit draw and +3k to another unit. I don’t think there’s much of a draw back to this deck except maybe running out of soul too quickly.

This last build is more of a “Power oriented” deck, focused solely on getting to those unguardable threshold. Lazarus by himself is a magic number to Protect/Accel decks with no cost, similar to Riptide only without the additional 20k. Like the previous deck, it’s completely flexible if the meta demands you to run a specific card. The only draw backs I feel is that, for now, your grade two alternatives don’t offer much that isn’t Tidal or Algos. There is a grade 2 promo via Tear Knight, Halpalos but it isn’t not available in English. Additionally, the nature of this deck values power over the multi-attacking via small pokes that Aqua Force is known for, without your enablers like Tidal/Algos, you have to commit a bit more than you would normally to achieve the same number of attacks, which does require hand. This also affects how much you have to commit to have a decent turn should you ride regular Maelstrom.

Triggers: Criticals or Fronts?

Honestly, doesn’t matter. Fronts push your numbers higher and can over power the value of any damage triggers your opponent should check. Critical triggers give your vanguard pressure, and can push for damage even before you ride to Glory, meaning the chances of damage triggers are lower the higher their damage is. Personally, I value critical triggers as you can see from the lists because I’m trying to push my opponent as quickly as possible, regardless of my match up and/or my resources (if I bricked, kept getting rear-guard hated, so on and so forth). I also feel criticals are better with original Maelstrom because they have to pick and choose whether to take the criticals now on the vanguard swing, or take it later with a possibility of re-standing my vanguard.

Closing Notes

I believe that one of these three builds will see play depending on what is valued more: whether it’s the highroll, flexibility, or pure power. Something I didn’t touch on before was that there is also a possibility of not having to play the original Maelstrom and going 4 Glory, 3-4 Riptide, and some other grade 3 like Diamantes/Bleb Bomber Dragon/Navalgazer Dragon, considering you just need to ride Glory twice for the full effect. While I have tested it, I feel it’s better to just ride any Maelstrom than having to ride a non-Maelstrom into 2 Glory’s thus slowing down the process. That’s all for today, I know it’s been a long time since I posted something on here. I’m usually on twitter or discord (which leads into Google Docs) with my discussions/rants unless it’s big enough to warrant people seeing. Again, I’ll probably make a second post with a more definitive deck that will reference back to this post. So look forward to that.

[financiallymint]

Students: I Challenge You to Earn an Extra $1000/Year

Very excited to be sharing this guest post by Tom from This Online World on side hustles and earning extra income. A fellow student all the way in Canada who’s passionate about online marketing, passive income and even crypto! He has a great hustle mindset and his website has a lot of good info on money hacking and earning a bit more $$ – you gotta check him out.

The article is written in dollar signs $$, but simply change the currency and it works just as well. What’s important is the idea!

Starting your own side hustle is one of the coolest ways to increase your income: it’s basically growing your own little money baby.

However, when it comes to the actual work, it can be difficult to know when or how to start. From finding extra time to securing side hustle opportunities, getting the ball rolling on your extra income generation journey requires time and some thought.

For students, it can be especially difficult to find the time or correct side hustle opportunity. Assignments and exams can occupy most of your day, and the nature of student life often equates to a less than stable financial situation.

I am currently in my last year college, and I’ve certainly had my share of cheap beer, instant Ramen, and a lonely bank balance.

However, whether you are in school or employed, wealthy or just making ends meet, skilled in a craft or a complete novice, it is possible to start a successful side hustle that makes you an extra $1,000 a year.

Don’t believe me?

Well, here’s the mindset I want you to approach this side hustle challenge with:

You have 12 months in a year to make an extra $1,000.

That means you only have to make about $85/month of additional income with your side hustles.

When you think about making an extra $1,000 a year as only having to earn an extra $85 a month, it doesn’t seem so daunting.

Personally, I take 1-2 days out of every month to dedicate towards my various side hustles.

It doesn’t matter if you take on a variety of side hustles or stick to a single job. As long as you take an active approach to making more money and stick to a plan, you can succeed.

Let’s take a look at 12 possible side hustle ideas that you can do once a month to make an extra $1,000 a year.

Idea 1: Content Writing Gigs

I’m a staunch supporter of working online to earn extra money, and content writing is always my first recommendation (especially for students).

Content writing can expand your skill set and open the doors for future employment or freelance opportunities (looks great on a CV!). Additionally, content writing jobs are often remote and have incredibly flexible working hours.

I’ve written content throughout my college years, and there are a number of ways to approach securing a content writing side hustle:

Look on job posting websites for companies that are seeking freelance writers (Indeed.com, LinkedIn, Monster.ca are some great ones).

Post your own advertisement on your local job boards or online marketplaces. Offer your content writing services to local businesses in your area!

Create gigs on online websites like Fiverr. There are many freelance writers who use Fiverr to generate income, and most price their content at $5-$10 for every 500 words of content.

Most content writing jobs won’t require you to be an English major or have an extensive portfolio. As long as you are a decent writer, you should be able to find work that pays between $10-$15/hour without a problem!

Idea 2: Get Busy with TaskRabbit

Let’s face it: no one really enjoys chores. However, every job someone doesn’t feel like doing is another side hustle opportunity that can make you some quick side income!

TaskRabbit was started to provide a secure task-based marketplace. By becoming a Tasker on TaskRabbit, you can set your own hours and choose to complete various tasks people are requesting for payment.

Common tasks on TaskRabbit include:

Yardwork.

Moving and packing services.

Furniture assembly.

Home improvement.

General handyman services.

The work you complete on TaskRabbit won’t be glamorous, but it typically pays well (and you are able to set your pay range). Chances are, you could spend a few hours helping someone move or do some yard work and easily walk away with $100+.

Idea 3: Food Delivery

Whether you work for Just Eat, Skip the Dishes, Grub Hub, Uber Eats, Deliveroo or some other delivery service, making money by delivering food is a simple but effective method for making some extra cash.

If your car isn’t too old, simply register to be a part-time delivery driver for a popular delivery service in your town.

You can set your own hours, and it will only take you a few deliveries to make your monthly target of $85. Depending on your town, people might tip slightly more or less, but a single night of work should help you reach that $1,000 a year goal.

Idea 4: Help your Landlord

3 college buddies and I moved into the most grungy, decrepit old student house around town when we started school.

However, part of me is really glad we did. Besides the fact that student living can be hilariously awful, I was also able to find some odd jobs and make a few extra hundred dollars simply by asking my landlord if he needed help.

Hiring professional painters, repairmen, garbage removers, or cleaning services is expensive.Hiring desperate students is not.

Trust me when I say landlords always have projects on the go. Whether you are currently renting or not, finding occasional work for fixer-upper projects is not difficult. Reach out to landlords or look online, and spend a day painting, tearing up carpet, fixing holes in the wall, or cleaning a place.

You can earn an easy $100-$150 for a day of work, and you’ll probably walk away with a newfound appreciation for your own home.

Idea 5: Busk

If you play an instrument or can sing fairly well, busking might be the right side hustle for you!

My housemate and I spent several weekends playing guitar on the street corner of our local downtown scene. We’re ok players, so busking provides us with a great way to bond, practice our songs, and also earn a simple $20-$30/each for a few hours of enjoyable music.

You don’t have to be an incredible musician to busk. However, you will need the ability to get over stage fright. Personally, I prefer busking with my friend since I don’t really want to go alone. But I still find busking to be an enjoyable way to make extra money for something that I would do for free anyway.

Just make sure your town or city doesn’t require a permit to busk (or obtain a permit if you need to).

Idea 6: Tutor

Have you ever looked back at high school/elementary homework and realized just how easy it is (shout out to our developed, adult brains).

Well, if your town or city has a few high schools nearby, chances are you can find some part time work tutoring students in math, science, or languages. In my school, tutors were regularly paid $15-$25/hour by parents, especially in more advanced subjects like calculus or chemistry.

If you have a knack for school and enjoy helping others, tutoring might be the right side hustle for you! Plus, most tutoring sessions only last 1-3 hours, so you can make some quick and easy side income without spending too much time!

Idea 7: Babysit

If you like babies and kids, babysitting is an excellent way to make extra money every month. Half the time the kid will be sleeping, so you’re pretty much getting paid to do nothing. Sounds like a dream!

Popular websites like SitterCity have made working as a babysitter (in the U.S.) incredibly easy. However, if you aren’t a U.S. resident, you can always post your own advertisements on local job boards or just ask around town.

Many of my college friends have been babysitters throughout their life, and it’s a great way to make additional income. Even if you only work for 1 family, you can probably make $85 a month from babysitting once or twice (depending on the length of the job).

Idea 8: Drive with Uber or Lyft

This is a similarly straightforward idea to delivering food (except you’re delivering people). If you have a car that meets Uber or Lyft’s requirements, you can just drive one day of every month and make extra money.

Uber or Lyft might not be a great long term solution due to variability in available rides and the hidden cost of every kilometer you drive (repairs, oil changes, wear and tear), but it isn’t a bad side hustle to do once in a while.

Ideally schedule your driving session around a busy time where you can benefit from surcharges!

Idea 9: AirBnB

I have two friends who have been dating for a couple of years and live in an apartment together. Their place has 2 bedrooms, so once in a while they rent out one of the rooms on AirBnB for the weekend to make some extra cash.

They don’t particularly enjoy having company over, so they usually schedule their AirBnB weekends around times they won’t be home often or there’s an event in town that their visitor will most likely be attending. In any case, it’s an incredibly straightforward way to make $200+ for a weekend of hosting.

If you live in a major city, using AirBnB to make some extra money every month should be even easier. All you need is a decent space, price level, and advertisement on AirBnB.

Idea 10: Reddit ForHire

Reddit is an incredible community, and also presents budding entrepreneurs and side-hustlers with money making opportunities.

r/forhire is one of my favorite subreddits, and it’s exactly what it sounds like: a job marketplace. Users can either post ‘hiring’ or ‘for hire’ posts that outline specific work and skills that are being sought after or offered.

Some of the most popular jobs on Reddit For Hire are:

Graphic design.

Programming.

Content writing.

Video editing.

Tutoring (especially in languages).

Advertising/marketing consulting.

If you have experience in any of these field or have another service to offer, definitely check out Reddit!

Idea 11: Dog Walking

It’s funny how many people buy an adorable companion only to realize they don’t ever want to actually walk it.

Dog walking, like babysitting, is a great way to make extra income just by taking care of a living thing. If you are good with dogs and enjoy the outdoors, consider walking dogs once or twice a month!

Popular dog walking apps include:

WagWalking.

Swifto (New York City only).

Rover.

Care.

coolest side hustle IMO

Idea 12: Slogan Slinger

While this isn’t a concrete side hustle, I couldn’t resist including something fun in this list.

Slogan Slingers is a website where companies request ideas for their next great slogan and have users deliver them the answer to earn money. For example, a plumbing company might post a contest for $250 that explains what kind of slogan they’re looking for, and users can submit up to 3 entries to try to win.

If you win, you get the money. If you lose, nothing happens! The website isn’t incredibly popular, but there is usually a new contest available every other day. 1,000-2,000 people usually enter a contest, but if you have a knack for marketing, it could be a fun website to visit.

I’ve only been slogan slinging for 1 month and haven’t won anything yet, but I plan to keep at it!

Okay, What’s an Extra $1,000?

You might be wondering what’s the point of working side jobs to earn an extra $1,000 a year, but you’d be surprised at how much you can accomplish with an extra $1,000 in your bank account.

Thinking of investing, but never had enough saved up to take the first steps? Use your thousand dollars.

Want to help ease the sting of utility bills and rent? Use your extra thousand dollars.

Or, want to start your own business but need a bit of extra cash to start out? Well, you now have an extra thousand dollars.

I hope you have found this side hustle challenge to be inspiring and provide some effective job opportunities to get started! As long as you take active, baby steps towards generating additional income, you can easily reach a goal of an additional $1,000/ear or surpass it completely.

Best of luck in your side hustle journey!

Read more like this over at Financially Mint