#things were significantly better a pretty short chunk of time ago

[novadreii]

this is a such first-class whine from a lower-middle-class citizen, but hear me out. the covid era has been dogshit (precursor, not the point lol). it killed, (further) divided and frightened us. the final kick in the nuts is that we really don’t benefit from any of the Panaceas for Shit Life anymore. the puppet masters have tightened the purse strings and made everything unaffordable. and what IS left that is affordable is just...crap. shite, even. have y’all noticed how mediocre stuff like cheap junk food/takeout is now? most forms of media? the stuff meant to distract and soothe us average jobhavers from going bonkers in the hamster wheel.

6+ years ago, we all at least all knew a few cheap, bomb and reliable places to eat out once in a while. a treat. you could eat takeout on a friday night while picking a reasonably well produced and thought-provoking movie from the one major, well organized streaming service (that cut your tv bill to $7/month, wahoo!). you might even partake in some say, drugs/alcohol to get a little silly with it. maybe you were more of a dine-out person, and made a night of it with friends. you had a good time and didn’t have to forgo groceries that week to make up for it.

now, the food and tv is boldly served, expensive ass. you can’t afford drugs, a book is $50. hobbies take up precious time and energy. ANY service you need is slow and unresponsive. people are tired. like, this is not the depression talking! things are worse, more expensive sure, but why couldn’t they have at least remained the same QUALITEA? why skimp on materials and production?

and then it occurred to me. is it our fault? are the price skyrockets and decrease in the quality of goods separate issues, in fact? one a consequence of opportunistic greed, and the other simply that market forces have determined that we are willing to pay those increased prices for less? the corporation is always experimenting to see what it can get away with. cheaper materials, less concern for our safety, well being, entertainment and enrichment. if we buy them at a certain prices in certain numbers that fit their optimized projections, they sell it. simple as that. are we just accepting the capitalism we think we deserve? or did they just financially ream us so badly that we had no choice to settle for worse product?

[saintobio]

Okay but… that perfectly timed text from Toji about YN taking a pregnancy test is such a *chef’s kiss* reflection of how Sera installed her ovulation tracker on Satoru’s phone

I know we all hated Satoru for what he did to YN, but I honestly really feel for someone in his mental state with no real recollection of the events that have affected his life this far. His mind is literally glass-fragile and while we know why YN and everyone else act the way they do with him, it’s really heartbreaking to see him be caught in moments of discomfort and scrutinization due to everyone having these preconceived versions of him in their heads as opposed to who he really is at the moment: someone who’s had the past three years of his life stolen from him.

I guess I really sympathize with Gojou because about a year and a half ago I was also in a really bad car accident that left my memory of the past five years very spotty, to the point where I recognized my best friend’s face but couldn’t remember her name or how close we were, but more significantly, I still had positive memories with my ex whom I had a very messy breakup with. My mind had erased the breakup and part of me thought we were still a thing, considering he literally flew from Brazil to the US to see me in the hospital after being told what had happened. He had a girlfriend in Brazil, too, whom he broke up with in order to move back to the US so that I wouldn’t be hit with information overload if he were to reveal everything that happened between us. I did recover some of my memories, and not all, but it is a slow and gradual process, and yes, some things were super overwhelming and confusing, because not only has everyone else around you changed within that time frame of your memory that’s gone, but so do you. There were parts of myself that I didn’t remember. Like my hair was short and to my shoulders, when all my life I’d had long hair down to my waist and I couldn’t remember cutting it, or my annoyance when I found my apartment stocked with decaf coffee when I had always preferred fully caffeinated coffee. Or how my ex, who became my boyfriend then again, told me I slept on the left side of the bed when I was pretty sure I preferred the right side. It was trivial things like that that would screw with me, so I can only imagine just how tumultuous these larger changes in Satoru’s life are.

This update was truly spectacular, Saint. Can’t wait for next week♥️✨

oh my, you don’t know how much i appreciate that you shared your experience with us !! 🥺 it’s rly nice to hear from someone who was nearly in the same position as yn and gojo in sy. this gave me new insights to just how emotionally and psychologically taxing it must be to know that you lost a chunk of your past memories, and everything and everyone around you just feels oddly different. it’s like you’re out of touch with reality, like you’re out of place, like you know that there are gaps in your memories, and yet you don’t know how to fill those empty spaces (basically gojo rn).

i’m so sorry you had to go through that, but thanks again for allowing us a glimpse of what this situation truly is like irl 🥺 <33 i hope you’re doing much much better now!!

[crqstalite]

💖⭐🌀 for any of your characters for the ask game :)

Doing this one for Daniel Shepard :)

💖 Has your OC ever been in love, be it romantic or platonic or otherwise? Who with and did they ever express their feelings or keep it private? How long did these feelings persist / do they still feel this way?

Danny is significantly better at the idea of love rather than the actual act of it. More in love with the idea of it, not so much loving executing it. He struggles with showing it conventionally, and that pushes people away. That said, he had plenty of platonic relationships before Torfan, not so many afterwards. Before the events of any of the games, he’d never been in any romantic-coded relationships. He’d never really had time for them. Nor was he always the most emotionally available person in the world, and if they weren’t put off by his stilted nature, then they definitely were once it clicked that they were speaking to Shepard, as in the Butcher of Torfan, Shepard. 

He keeps to himself quite a bit until Kaidan comes around. Then that’s a whole other ballpark, which is fine. Would’ve been better if he ever learned how to play baseball though.

⭐ What is your OC afraid of? Any crippling phobias or some such? How do they act when scared and what helps them calm down? Does anyone ever find your OC scary? Why?

Danny’s most afraid of losing people again. He lost almost everyone he cared about on Mindoir, and then lost a good chunk more after news about Torfan came out. Given, there’s nothing he can really do about the public’s opinion of him -- people will always believe what the want to -- but it does really hurt when the first expression someone makes when they meet you is one of fear.

He doesn’t have any crippling phobias, but when he is scared, he sort of shuts down. He doesn’t want to talk to anyone, he doesn’t want to interact with the thing that scared him, he just wants to get away from it. Later he can usually soothe himself, but talking through it or distracting him are some of the quicker ways to settle him out of a more jittery state. He might be all over the place and tinkering on something unrecognizable, but it’s better than having him freaked out.

🌀 Where is your OC from? Where were they born? Do they still live there, if not why did they move? If they still live in the area how has it changed since their childhood? How many places has your OC lived in and where has been their favourite?

Daniel is from Mindoir, part of the first generation born and raised on the planet. He and his sister Raina come back ever year, mostly to reminisce about what they’ve lost. It isn’t the same, it won’t ever be. New prefabs, hell there’s even quite a few towns on the planet compared to sixteen years ago, but it’s still his home. After that, he and Raina lived here and there (and there, and here, and there too), but ended up on the Citadel a few years after that permanently. His favorite was probably living on Earth for a pretty short period of time in the American midwest. It reminded him of home. He hasn’t been back since though.

thank you for asking!

[master-sass-blast]

Children of the Gods -Part Two.

Why do I keep writing super long fics that take even longer to format?

Summary: When Allison Ricci surfaces again, you and the adult members of the X-Force jump on the opportunity to track her down and capture her, once and for all. However, it becomes apparent that the thirteen year-old has gained a mysterious mentor --one that's been helping her amass dangerous weapons and stalk Karen Page. Will you and your team be able to stop Allison before it's too late?

Pairing(s): Piotr Rasputin x Reader, Nathan Summers x Wade Wilson, and Frank Castle x Karen Page.

Rating: M for gun violence, death of a child, blood and injury, and overall angst.

Set after “Children of the Gods -Part One.”

Taglist: @marvel-is-perfection, @chromecutie, @super-darkcloudstudent, @girl-obsessed-with-things, @nebulous-leo, @dandyqueen

You adjust your hood, shield yourself from the early –but somehow still bitter—New York autumn winds before stepping out of the car. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. I know that you don’t… like stuff like this.”

Your husband, Piotr –who’s currently seated in the driver’s seat—shakes his head. “I made commitment to protect and support you. That means not leaving you to handle difficult aspects of job alone just because they make me uncomfortable.” He reaches over and gently squeezes your hand, then opens his car door and hops out. “Hang on. I will get door.”

You tug on your hood again, trying to make sure it covers your face.

You’re on a covert mission with Neena, Nathan, Wade, and your husband to check out an underground fighting ring known for letting mutants fight in it. There’s a chance of being seen by various criminals the X-Men have been looking for –or, worse, recognized, hence the hood—but, more importantly, there’s a chance of finding Allison Ricci.

Reports of the vengeance seeking teen have been scarce in the past few months. Wherever she disappeared to after the showdown at Spring Heights Memorial Park, she made sure to stay out of sight.

That was, until a week ago, when reports of a mutant fighter with a power set similar to Allison’s surfaced in the fighting rings.

Piotr opens your door, ushering you out into the lot behind one of Wade and Nate’s safehouses (they’d deemed it safer for you two to park there and ride with them, rather than possibly having the car connected with the X-Men). “Things will be fine, myshka. I will be fine. Konechno?”

“Okay.” You lean against him for a moment, letting your head rest against his chest. “I love you.”

“Ya lyublyu tebya,” Piotr murmurs. He kisses the top of your head, then pats your back gently. “Alright, moya serdste. Let’s go.”

***

  There isn’t much of a plan. The sole goal is to slip into the “base of operations” –which is just a defunct, concrete building that used to be a factory for producing car parts—without being noticed, and keep an eye out for Allison.

Because for reasons you don’t understand, your dad’s put an official kibosh on tailing Allison back to wherever she’s been hiding out. It seems counterintuitive to you –but then, you’re not the master strategist.

Piotr keeps a protective arm around you as you make your way into the throngs of various criminal and mob scum. Even though you’re not posing as a married couple, there isn’t much that can turn off his protective instincts.

(Nate, Wade, and Neena are already inside, scoping out different areas. The goal is to not look conspicuous, meaning you can’t all gaggle together like a bunch of ducklings.)

You screw your mouth to the side –and ignore a handful of dudes making some crass remarks about you, which gets them some angry Russian grumbling from your husband—and stare at the board with the various rings and betting buy-ins listed across it. “Got any ideas for which one to pick?”

(Granted, Neena’s probably already picked the right one, but the idea is to cover enough area that at least one of you is likely to spot Allison.)

Before Piotr can say anything, a woman at your right speaks up. “Rumor has it ring five’s going to be good.”

Out of the corner of your eye, you see Christina sidle up next to you. You know from your uncle that she’s been working a case at the fighting clubs, so it’s not necessarily surprising to see her here.

And, hell, if she knows where Allison might be, it’s worth following her suggestion.

You don’t visibly acknowledge her, but you do say, “Ring five?”

“Thousand dollar buy in to watch –but, if you’re good for it, you’re likely to find what you’re looking for.”

And, given Allison’s… unique fighting style, it makes sense that whoever’s running this shitshow would put her match behind a fat paywall.

Plus, as fortune would have it, you’d thought to bring some cash with you in case a scenario like this arose.

You step up to the counter where people are buying passes to watch matches and placing bets –with Piotr close in tow, like your protective, super-sized shadow—and shell out two thousand dollars from an envelope you’ve kept tucked in your pocket until now.

The money-handler behind the window hands you and Piotr each a pass, then points to the right, towards a stairwell guarded by a large man wearing a black blazer and black sunglasses. “Match starts in twenty minutes. Best to get seats now.”

Piotr’s hand lands on your shoulder as the two of you step away from the counter. “Stay close, myshka.”

“Believe me,” you murmur, “I’m not going anywhere.”

 ***

  The room in question is what looks an old storage room that’s had gymnasium-style bleachers shoved against the wall and a “ring” that’s just a stained concrete floor cordoned off with what Nate had described as “electro-magnetic force shields too expensive for their own good.”

The people in the room are markedly better dressed, but no less dangerous looking. The crisp blazers, shiny leather shoes, and dark sunglasses all indicate a clear desire for anonymity –no doubt mobsters and corrupt officials looking to make bank on a fight.

If anything, you and Piotr look out of place in your hoodies and jeans.

Piotr grits his teeth and hisses under his teeth when a few of the well-polished patrons swivel their heads to look at the two of you. His grip on your shoulder tightens, and he tugs you all the closer against his body. “Stay close.”

“I will, baby,” you promise quietly as he leads you past the ring and up into the bleachers. “I will.”

The two of you choose seats relatively out of the way, tucked into one of the dark corners of the room. Piotr can still easily see the ring, and you can hide behind his bulk to text the others without being noticed.

You: At ring five. $$$ crowd here. Cover might be blown bc clothes.

Dad: Do what you have to.

You pocket your phone, then nestle yourself against Piotr’s side. “Fifteen minutes until the match starts.”

“Hopefully we will make it that long,” he mutters, still keeping an eye on the cash-loaded crowd with hawk-like scrutiny.

You grab his hand, sliding your fingers between his and squeezing reassuringly. “We’ll be fine. Just keep a small profile.”

Your husband chuckles when you grin at your own pun, then kisses the top of your head. “Very funny, myshka.”

 ***

 The two of you manage to avoid being picked out as interlopers until the match starts.

The fight is between a lumbering, hulking that can morph his body into whatever material he touches and a significantly shorter, slimmer, black-clad, masked opponent with the ability to shoot bolts of blue energy from their hands.

“They’re short enough –and the power set’s close.”

“I am not certain,” Piotr mutters as he watches the two fighters clash. “Their control is too good. Allison was sloppier.”

“Well, let’s keep watching. She was already pretty strong; she could’ve been practicing.” You crane your neck to the side as the masked fighter hits their opponent in the chest with a blast of energy –then do a doubletake when you notice someone sitting on the side of the ring where the masked fighter entered.

The person’s wearing a baggy, black hoodie that obscures most of their body and face –but it’s still easy to tell that they’re shouting pointers at the masked fighter throughout the match.

“Piotr!” You elbow your husband in the ribs, then surreptitiously point down at the masked fighter’s coach. “Look! That’s how she got better. She found a trainer!”

Piotr eyes the coach, then quirks his mouth to the side. “We still do not know—”

And then the masked fighter sinks into the ground to avoid a truck tire thrown by their opposition.

“You were saying?”

A small smile tugs at your husband’s lips. He tucks an arm around your shoulders, but still keeps his focus on the ring. “So, we found her. Now what?”

“I’ll text Dad. He’ll have a plan.”

Halfway through forming your text, Piotr –and a sizable chunk of the audience, too—gasps. “Bozhe ty moi.”

You look up in time to see a cloud of ash dispersing over the ring’s floor. “What? What happened?”

The larger man in the ring grits his teeth, then lets out a bellow as he picks up another truck tire and chucks at Allison—

Who merely holds up her hand, which faintly glows blue around the edges.

The tire collapses in on itself, turning into a cloud of ash.

You gape. “What the fuck?”

“Could she do that last time?” Piotr asks.

“Not that I remember.” You finish your first text to your dad, then tack on another one.

You: She can turn things into ash.

You: She literally just turned a tire into ash by holding her hand towards it.

You: Piotr and I both saw it happen.

Nate: Shit.

You keep your eyes glued on the screen, waiting for your dad’s advice on what to do –then jump when a gasp ripples through the crowd and Piotr’s hand tightens on your shoulder. “What? What happened?”

In the center of the ring, the hulking male opponent drops to his knees, then collapses face first onto the ring. A fist-sized, slightly smoking hole has been bored through his chest.

And, a few feet away from him, Allison lowers her still glowing hand.

You suck in a breath, then text your dad again.

You: She just killed her opponent.

Nate: Get out of there. Do NOT engage.

Piotr reads the message over your shoulder, then stands and quickly ushers you towards the door before you can do anything impulsive. “Let’s go, dorogoy.”

“Wasn’t like there was anywhere else I wanted to be,” you mutter.

 ***

 “Remind me, again, why we didn’t follow them? Allison and her trainer left right away! It would’ve been easy to tail them.”

“Because the last thing we needed was the two of you breaking your cover to chase Allison down,” Nathan says as he steers the SUV along a pothole riddled street. “If we’re going to engage with her, we need to do it somewhere we have more control over the environment.”

“But—” You grit your teeth when the car rolls over a pothole, sending a jolt straight up your spine. “What about figuring out where she’s been hiding? If we could’ve found their vehicle, gotten a snapshot of the license plate—”

“We already have a lead for that. Tonight was about making sure she was still in town, that the lead was still fresh enough.”

You grip your armrest, then peer up at an old, crumbly brick façade of an apartment building. “I take it we’re not here for shits and giggles, then?”

“Depends on who you ask.”

He parks at the same time Dopinder’s cab does, cutting the engine and hopping out to corral Wade before the latter can get up to anything too crazy.

Piotr unfolds himself from the front passenger seat, then opens your door for you and ushers you out onto the cracked sidewalk. He places one arm around your shoulders, warily eyeing a group of twenty-something guys that seem to be arguing at the end of the block. “Keep sharp, lyublyu. Could be dangerous.”

“Not everyone’s a threat, baby.”

“Not everyone,” he agrees, grip tightening when one of the guys shoves another. “But not all are wise, too.”

“Chop, chop, compadres,” Wade hollers, feigning obliviousness to his environment (which you know better than to believe, given his status as a deadly mercenary). He grins maniacally, hefting grocery and takeout bags. “We’ve got a delivery to make.”

***

 The lot of you head up to the fourth floor of the building. The inside isn’t much better than the outside, with yellowing walls, peeling paint, buzzing lights, and faded, patching carpets.

It’s clean, though. Warm enough. Many of the doors boast colorful welcome signs, pictures drawn by resident children, silk flower wreaths, and signs “warning” of friendly pets.

Wade beats everyone else to one of the doors towards the end of the hall. He starts knocking excitedly, rapping his knuckles against the door until it swings open. “Hi, we’re part of a DoorDash alternative company—”

Nathan catches the door before it can slam shut in his partner’s face. He plants his metal hand against the wooden surface, bracing it open. “We need to speak with Miguel Herrera.”

The resident of the apartment –a hulking, doe-eyed, tan skinned guy who barely looks a day older than nineteen—glances at the rest of you before shaking his head. “He ain’t here. Have a nice day.” He tries to shove the door shut –hard enough that he makes Nathan’s boots slide across the threadbare carpet—

And then a hand catches it from the inside. “It’s alright.” The door swings open, revealing Christina, clad in the same clothes she was wearing at the fighting rings. “I know them. They’re…” She stops for a moment as she makes eye contact with Wade, and the burning rage between them is all too evident. “They’re decent people,” she finishes, quickly glancing away. “It’s okay to let them in.”

The kid shoots a wary look at all of you, gaze lingering on Nathan, Wade, and Piotr the longest, then edges the door open. “Alright. Come on in.”

You all file into an already cramped, relatively small apartment. There’s a gaggle of much younger kids squished onto a worn plaid couch stationed in front of a TV –the oldest one doesn’t look like she’s hit middle school yet—that all peer at you with the same mistrustfulness that the eldest boy did at the door.

The guy that answered the door crosses his arms over his chest, then nods at the bag. “What’s that?”

“Groceries and dinner!” Wade answers cheerfully. “Courtesy of Walmart and Five Guys!”

Those seem to be the magic words for the younger children. They rocket off the couch, swarming Wade as they try to see what’s in the bags.

“Hey, hey, hey!” The guy –who you’re figuring is the kids’ older brother, there’s no way he’s their dad—speaks to the cluster of children in Spanish, then waves them away from Wade. “Manners. Go wash your hands; Maria, help Aaron, por favor.”

The eldest girl –who looks to be about ten, tops—nods, then shoos her siblings towards a miniscule bathroom.

“I’m Miguel,” the guy finally introduces himself. He steps over to the kitchen –which is little more than a counter that has a cook top on it, a sink, a fridge, a microwave, and some cabinets. He starts pulling out plates, silverware, and cups. “Look, I appreciate the gesture—” he jerks his chin at the bags in Wade’s hand “—but we don’t need handouts. I can take care of my siblings just fine.”

“I asked them to bring a few things,” Christina speaks up. “I figured if they were going to bug you, you could at least get something out of it.”

Miguel grimaces, but doesn’t argue. “Well, thank you.” He sets the dishware on the counter, then pulls a well-loved wooden table out of a corner before going about setting it. “Just set the bags in the kitchen. I’ll deal with them later. Why the—” he glances over at the bathroom, then quickly lowers his voice “—fuck are you here?”

“We’ve got a few questions about the rings you’ve been fighting in,” Nathan speaks up, voice even.

Miguel’s shoulders tense, gaze darting over at Nate. “Look, if you’re here to start shit—”

“Not here to start anything,” Nathan reassures him. “Just to ask questions. And, if we did start something, I’m pretty sure your mentor—” he nods at Christina “—would throw us out the nearest exit.”

“Damn straight,” Christina mutters as she helps Miguel divvy up the orders from Five Guy’s.

“We want to ask you about one of the opponents you fought—"

Miguel shushes your dad before glancing back at the bathroom, then shakes his head. “Not while mis hermanas y hermanos are awake. Later.”

Nathan nods as the younger kids start filing out of the bathroom, then steps towards the kitchen. “I can pour drinks. Who wants what?”

***

 Miguel, as it turns out, isn’t the only mutant in the Herrera family.

You grin as Aaron –the youngest at five—makes several bits of light float around the room in the shape of butterflies. “That’s so cool!”

Miguel smiles fondly and ruffles his brother’s dark, curly hair. “Ese es mi pequeño sol. He started doing that a few months ago.”

“Ochen' khorosho,” Piotr agrees with an equally endeared smile. “Why not bring him to Institute? We can help him hone powers, learn more about them.”

Miguel grimaces, shifting in his seat. “All due respect, Señor Rasputin, but that isn’t as easy an option as you make it seem. And it doesn’t begin to cover the needs my family has.”

“We have financial aid options for those who need it,” Piotr reassures Miguel.

“My parents looked into that for me, in high school, when my mutation presented,” Miguel fires back. “Even with aid, we still couldn’t afford the tuition, let alone the travel to get to the building or the housing fees. I know you guys don’t get government support, and it complicates things, but Xavier’s just isn’t accessible to lower income families… not to mention everything else.”

Piotr frowns. “What is meaning?”

“You don’t have good resources for kids with learning disabilities, for one, even with your therapy staff,” Miguel says after a moment’s hesitation. “There aren’t enough of them that are qualified in areas like ADHD, dyslexia, autism, that kind of stuff. You also don’t have a lot of people trained to handle more difficult cases –which a lot of low income mutant kids are. I’ve read your school’s disciplinary policies. You’d wash out a majority of your ‘tough cases’ in a few months. You don’t offer scholarships, a diverse array of classes, many extracurriculars, and your meal options don’t cover people with allergies all that well, either. Plus, I don’t want to have to separate my siblings. We’re the only family we have right now, and you guys don’t allow non-mutants.” He shifts in his seat, eyes trained on the floor. “I know you’re a small school, and I think what you’re doing for the mutant community is good. I just… it doesn’t help people like us.”

Piotr studies Miguel for a moment, taking him in, then pulls out his phone. “Would you mind if we discuss this more while I take notes? I think you make good points.”

You can’t help but smile to yourself while Miguel and Piotr resume talking about the Institute. That’s my baby.

***

 “I thought one of the bosses had brought their kid to watch the fight when I first saw her. She was so tiny; I didn’t even think I’d be fighting her.”

It’s ten PM. The rest of the Herrera kids are in bed, the dishes have been cleaned and put away, and the groceries are safely stowed in the cabinet and fridge, respectively.

Miguel sits in one of the folding chairs used at the table, arms braced on his thighs and hands clasped loosely. His head droops towards his chest, shoulders sloping low under the weight of his shame. “I almost called off the round, but the bets had already been made. I couldn’t back out.”

“You did what you had to do,” Christina reassures him. She’s sitting in the chair next to him, angled so that she’s set between Miguel and the rest of you. “The organizers wouldn’t have let you back out anyway. It wasn’t your fault.”

“We’re not here to judge your fights,” Nathan adds. He’s standing next to one of the windows that overlook the street, leaning against the wall. “We heard you had information on Allison’s whereabouts. That’s all we need to know.”

Miguel bobs his head, swallowing compulsively before looking up at your dad. “She’s here. In the building. Her and her trainer.”

“What –right now?” Neena asks, leaning forward on the couch.

“No –at least, I don’t think so. I…” Miguel sighs hard, then runs shaking hands over his buzzed hair. “Look, you gotta promise me this isn’t going to come back at me. My mom and my dad –they got deported when all this ICE bullshit started, even though they had legal green cards… I’m all my siblings have right now.”

“We’ll keep you clear of it,” Wade promises. “This kid’s just on an unhinged track right now. We’re trying to stop her before she hurts herself or anyone else.”

Miguel nods once, twice, then continues. “I did a fucking double take when I saw her and her trainer here the first time. It was right after I’d beaten her in a match. They got on the elevator the same time I did; I nearly pissed my pants –I thought they were here to beat me up or hurt my siblings.”

“Did they do anything?” Piotr asks, face creased with concern.

“No.” Miguel shakes his head. “They pushed the button for two floors above me, didn’t say a word to me. I got off that thing as soon as I could and fucking booked it, man.”

“And you’re sure they’re here?” Nathan presses.

“I staked out the sixth floor later, to make sure I hadn’t been hallucinating,” Miguel says, pointing towards the ceiling. “I peeked out from the stairwell, saw both of them carrying groceries into six-twenty-three. Unless they’ve moved house, that’s where they’re at.”

“Should we head up there?” Neena asks, looking over at Nate. “Do a welfare check?”

“I doubt they’re there right now,” Miguel clarifies. “They usually come back a couple days after matches. I don’t know where they go between the fight and those couple days, but like I said, unless they’ve moved house, they’ll be there.”

“We’ll come back tomorrow,” Nathan decides. “Stake out the place, check the apartment if they’re not here, see if we can find any other leads. Thank you for your help, Miguel.”

Miguel wipes his hands on his pants before accepting your dad’s handshake. “I just want to do the right thing.”

“Pretty sure stopping a murder-baby puts you on the proper track,” Wade chirps as he stands and stretches. “I’m feeling snacky. Wanna have Dopinder swing by McDonalds before he drops us off?”

“We have food at home,” Nate says with stern fondness.

“And we have money in the bank. Your point?”

You chuckle under your breath as Nathan ushers Wade from the Herrera’s apartment, then smile to yourself when Piotr approaches Miguel, writing his number on a business card before offering it to the younger man.

“He’s planning something,” Neena murmurs to you as she watches the whole exchange.

“Yes,” you agree, watching as Miguel and your husband exchange phone numbers. “Yes, he is.”

***

 “It makes me sad.”

You look over from where you’re getting into your pajamas to gaze at your husband, who’s sitting on the edge of your shared bed whilst scrolling through the notes he’d taken while talking to Miguel. “What does?”

“We need to be helping so many more mutants. So many more people.” His mouth pulls into a tight grimace, and he lets out a heavy sigh. “But we do not have resources. We cannot get resources.”

“We’ll get it figured out, baby.” You finish pulling on your sleep shirt –which usually comes off at least halfway through the night anyway, but it’s the thought that counts—and stride over to him. You insinuate yourself between his knees, then loop your arms around his neck and press a kiss to the bridge of his nose. “If anyone can do it, it’s you. I know you’ll get things figured out.”

Piotr smiles, then presses a delicate kiss against the swell of your cheek. “Spasibo, myshka, for vote of confidence.”

“Anytime, sweetheart. Anytime.”

 ***

 “This is breaking and entering.”

“Yeah, that’s kind of the point.”

The five of you are back in the old apartment building, waiting –in various states of nervousness—in the hallway while Neena picks the lock on the door of apartment six-twenty-three. It’s the early afternoon, and the building is markedly silent, seeing how everyone’s at work or school.

Your husband shoots Wade an annoyed look. “Is illegal, Wade. We are breaking law.”

“Pretty sure not reporting Allison to the authorities is also illegal, Chrome Dome! Relax. We’ve got Pot‘o’Gold here; nothing bad’s gonna happen.”

“I’d like to point out that Juggernaut still ripped you in half when we tried to rescue Russell from the convoy,” Neena mutters. She twists the doorknob, and the door pops open. “Knock, knock.”

You swivel your head, looking both ways down the hall while everyone else files in, then follow closely after Piotr. “So, what are we –oh fuck.”

The walls in the main room are covered with paper. Clipping from newspapers, online articles, maps with routes marked out in red, blueprints of different buildings, tons and tons of pictures—

Of one Karen Page.

There’s some of Frank scattered in there, too, but the space is a stalker’s shrine to the intrepid reporter. There’s pictures of her arriving at and leaving work, entering and exiting her apartment building, meeting with sources, getting coffee and to-go orders from restaurants…

The articles and newspaper clippings are all hers to. Some of them cover Frank’s trial and Punisher escapades, while others focus on organized crime in the city.

A chill runs down your spine when you realize one of the blueprints has been labeled “K. Page Apartment.” “What the fuck is this?”

“She hasn’t given up on Karen, then,” Neena comments with a grimace. “Looks like she’s been following her for over a month, at least. Probably longer.”

There’s a scraping noise behind you, then a shocked, “Shit.”

You and Neena turn to see Wade, Nathan, and your husband standing in front of a hidden compartment tucked in the wall separating the main room from the bedroom. Stashed in the space is a massive store of guns, ammo, explosives, knives…

“Murder Baby got an upgrade,” Wade remarks. He reaches in, pulls out a mine the size of a dinner plate, and blanches. “Several upgrades. Where the fuck did she get all of this?”

“Black market, most likely. She still has family ties to organized crime, weapons trades, everything she’d need to equip herself,” Nathan reasons.

“Then why did she not have tools before?” Piotr asks as he sets the fake panel aside.

“Maybe her mentor decided to juice her up,” Wade suggests, setting the mine down in favor of toying with a machete. “Dude, this is nice!”

“What do we do with weapons?”

“Good question, Almost Literal Long John Silver! As it stands, Daddy’s weapon cache is in dire need of replenishing—”

“We’re not taking anything,” Nate interjects, gently plucking the machete out of his partner’s hand and placing it back in the compartment. “We can’t risk tipping Allison off that someone’s on to her. Our best odds are to stake this place out and intercept her when she comes back.” He takes a few pictures of the hidden closet and its contents, then motions for Piotr to put the panel back.

“But she could hurt someone with those,” you point out as your dad continues taking pictures of the stalker wall. “Shouldn’t we disarm her?”

“She’ll find more,” Nathan says as he taps at his phone’s screen. “We’ve been trying to track Allison down for weeks. We can’t afford to lose her now.”

Wade nestles himself next to Nate, peering over his boyfriend’s shoulder so he can see the phone screen. “Who you texting?”

“Castle. Someone needs to make sure Miss Page stays safe in all of this.” He pockets his phone, then takes Wade’s hand and strides towards the front door. “Let’s go.”

You all step into the hallway—

Right as Allison and a taller, much older woman with shoulder length, dark brown hair step off the elevator.

Shit.

The older woman whips a gun out from under her jacket.

“Hit the deck!” Neena tackles you to the ground as the sound of gunfire echoes down the hall.

The first two bullets embed themselves in the drywall behind you, but the ones that follow ricochet off your husband’s steel torso with metallic plinking noises.

You scramble your feet, doing your best to get your bearings—

The mentor extends her hand towards you all, sending all of you flying.

You gasp as your husband’s steel back zips towards your face, then use a burst of air to propel yourself towards the ceiling. You cringe when the top of his head misses your nose by a hair’s breadth, then drop back down on the balls of your feet.

Piotr lets out a guttural shout as he crashes through the stairwell door. There’s the sound of concrete cracking, followed by a more panicked scream—

“Piotr!” You send a blast of air down the hall –which sends Allison and her mentor tumbling along the floor—then sprint towards the stairwell.

He’s hanging off a jagged concrete ledge in human form when you find him. The partial remains of the stairs lay on the flight beneath him, blocking his landing space.

You grab your husband’s uniform, then fly towards the ceiling so you can lug him up onto the landing.

Piotr stumbles, regains his balance, then immediately starts checking you over. “Are you safe? Bozhe ty moi, I almost crushed you—”

“I’m okay; it’s okay, baby, I’m alright.”

He hugs you against his chest, hands shaking as he strokes and smooths your hair—

“Hey! Get back here!”

The two of you bolt into the hallway at Nathan’s shout, just in time to see everyone else chasing after Allison and her trainer. You and Piotr sprint after them, catching up with the rest of your group just as Allison renders the stairwell door to a cloud of ashes.

You use a burst of air to propel yourself over the group and into the stairwell –then let out a shriek when you see the stairs and landings beneath you evaporating into dust. You catch yourself in the air, then block off the doorway with your body. “Stop! The ground’s gone!”

Nathan stops a few inches away from the edging, glaring down into the now disintegrated stairwell as he watches Allison and her trainer plummet towards the ground for.

Allison’s trainer lands easily, catching Allison without missing a beat before setting her down and ushering her out the door.

Wade whistles, having shoved his face between your side and the doorframe to watch as well. “Damn. Twenty bucks on super strength. Anyone else want to get in?”

“Fifty on telekinesis,” Neena pipes up.

“What now?” you ask as Piotr helps you get back on the –solid—floor.

“We unfuck this mess,” Nathan growls as he stalks back down the hall, towards the elevator.

“Pass,” Wade declares, following after his partner nonetheless. “I much prefer fucking things.”

 ***

 The five of you wind up dividing into teams –Wade and Piotr stay behind to stake out the building, Neena leaves to go collect extra weapons and tactical gear, and you and Nate head out to stake out The Bulletin office building where Karen works, just in case.

You and your dad set up shop on top of the building opposite Karen’s workplace, equipped with your electronic binoculars and a sniper scope.

“I’ve got her,” Nathan says as he peers through scope. “In her office, talking to a coworker. Looks like she’s fine.”

“And I… I think I’ve got Frank,” you say, adjusting your binoculars as you watch a matte black van park half a block away from Karen’s office. “Yeah, that’s definitely the murder van. It’s either him or some fucking mobsters.”

Nathan frowns at you when you fish your phone out of your pants pocket. “What are you doing?”

“Calling Frank to make sure it’s him.”

“Since when do you have Castle’s number?”

“Since the whole thing with Christina and Essex. He said that if something like that happened again, it’d be better if I wasn’t randomly hanging around Nelson, Murdock, and Page on the off chance he might show up.” You pull up Frank’s contact –filed under his fake identity, just in case—and dial him. “You’re parked outside Karen’s office, half a block away, right? Black murder van, matte black, probable bloodstains on it that no one can see.”

Frank lets out a sharp breath. “Where the fuck are you?”

“Rooftop of the building opposite The Bulletin. Dad and I are staking it out, just in case. I know he texted you about Allison. We ran into her and her trainer when we were leaving from checking out her apartment, and they ducked on us.”

Frank lets out a blue streak that makes the sky look yellow by comparison. “You’re shitting me –where’s your dad? Is he with you right now?”

“Yeah. He wants to talk to you.” You hand your phone off to Nathan, then go back to watching things through your binoculars. Pigeon. Pigeon. Stray cat. Smoker. Guy wearing a rainbow suit. More pigeons—

And then an explosion shakes the whole block.

Smoke billows out of The Bulletin’s doors and windows, gray and thick. Screams pierce the air as people dart away from the building. Sirens echo in the distance, along with the sounds of screeching brakes and horns honking. Broken glass glitters on the sidewalk before being dashed under the feet of panicked passersby.

The murder van lurches, and then Frank practically bursts through the driver’s side door and bolts towards the smoking building.

“Get up. We need to help. I already called Wade.”

You nearly put down your binoculars at your dad’s urging –and almost miss it.

There’s someone else walking towards the building. Not running. Walking. Calmly, and completely out of place in the wake of shrieking and coughing pedestrians. There’s a black, featureless backpack slung over their shoulder, and they’re at least a head shorter than everyone else around them—

“Dad –that’s her! That’s Allison!” You shove your binoculars into his hands, pointing frantically at the street below. “She’s already here!”

Nathan swears when he locks eyes on Allison’s tiny, casually walking form. “Fucking –get down there. Cut her off.”

You jump off the side of the building, hovering briefly as you try to find a landing spot amidst the chaos and carnage. You dive lower, intent on nabbing Allison before she can do anything—

And then you watch her crouch down against the sidewalk, next to a car and out of the flow of foot traffic. She takes the backpack off her shoulder, reaches in, and produces the pieces of a rifle from the bag’s depths.

You freeze. You can’t process what you’re seeing. A wave of dread and nausea wash over you as you watch this tiny, not fully grown human assemble the rifle with more ease than a teenager should ever have with a gun. Your breath catches in your throat as Allison struggles to get a clip into the stock—

And then you see Frank come back out of The Bulletin building with Karen in tow.

You don’t have time to stop Allison or grab Karen and Frank and get them out of the way, so you do the next best thing.

You project your voice as loud as you can and shout the word, “Gun!”

A few windows break, but it gets the job done.

Frank whips his head around, then yanks Karen back into the entry alcove just as Allison gets the clip in and takes aim at them.

A new chorus of screams echo into the air as Allison lets out a round of gunfire that sprays wildly along the facades of buildings and sides of cars. She stumbles, arms jerking as she tries to keep control of the firearm.

You dip away briefly to avoid any wayward bullets, then drop down onto the sidewalk, positioning yourself between Allison and Frank and Karen. You hold your hand up, reaching out to her in a calming gesture. “Allison, put the gun down. This isn’t the way to handle this.”

“The fuck would you know!” Allison shrieks, waving the gun wildly. “He killed my parents, I’m killing him. Stay the fuck out of it!”

“Allison, please—”

There’s the sound of metal scraping against concrete, and then your dad drops down on the other side of the street. He readies his “future gun,” as dubbed by Wade, then sprints over towards you and Allison. He jumps over the hood of a car, then stops on the side of the street, stepping between two parked trucks. “It’s over, Allison. You’re outnumbered, and we’ve got back up on the way. Put the gun down, and let’s talk about this.”

“Go fuck yourself!” Allison snaps, before cocking the rifle and taking aim in your direction.

Frank barrels out from the alcove, keeping Karen tucked behind him. He shoves her towards a gap between two cars, then practically tackles you out of the line of fire and into the same gap.

You gasp when you hit the pavement, gritting your teeth as dull pain flares in your shoulder. “That’s gonna be arthritis someday.” You shove your hair out of your face, then nod at Karen. “Hey. How’s it going?”

“I’ve been better,” Karen grunts. She’s covered in dust and bleeding from a cut on her forehead, but she’s fine otherwise. She paws through her purse, pulling out a .380 and chambering a round before carefully aiming the gun at the pavement. “What now?”

“You two get out of here; get somewhere safe,” you say as the three of you crawl towards the street while Nathan lays down cover fire for you. “We’ll handle Allison, then—”

Before you can say anything else, all the cars within sixty feet of you evaporate into ash.

You look over at Allison, who has her hand extended towards the street. Her eyes glow blue, and her expression is one of grim satisfaction.

You swallow hard. “Shit.”

Everything happens at once. Nathan throws up a telekinetic shield just as Allison opens fire again. A cab skids sideways into a stop at the end of the block, blocking off the rest of potential traffic. Wade dives out of the passenger side, letting out a battle cry before he gets tagged in the hip by Allison and crumples to the ground with an irate “Dammit!” Sirens wail, growing steadily closer.

“We need to get out of here,” Karen gasps, scrambling backwards while Nathan takes care of Wade and Neena rushes Allison.

You cast a glance to your husband –who’s armored up and taking the brunt of Allison’s gunfire so Neena can do her thing—before nodding to Karen. “Go. We’ll take care of things.”

Before her and Frank can make a run for it, a lone figure clad in black and a mask that covers their whole head sprints up the street towards the fracas.

And then a car lifts off the side of the street and sails towards the three of you.

You use an air current to make a shield, gritting your teeth as the car bounces off and crashes against the ground.

Frank growls out a blue streak behind you. “Who the fuck is that?”

“Long story.” You deflect a few more cars, whipping your head back and forth as you try to process Allison’s powers and angry shrieking –she’s opted off the gun, which is good, except she’s better with her powers than a rifle, which is not—and the steadily encroaching cop cars and the sudden assault from this new assailant (who you’re guessing is Allison’s trainer, but now really isn’t the time for hypotheses).

There’s too much going on right now. You all need to get out of here.

“Dad!” You try to shove the mystery fighter back with a blast of air –which works until they stop themselves with a telekinetic shield—then grab onto Karen and Frank and start running towards the rest of the group. “Dad!”

Nate looks up from deflecting one of Allison’s bolts of energy, takes in the most-likely-Allison’s-trainer and the cop cars blockading the other end of the block, then swears. “We need to get the hell out of here! Get them—” he gestures to Frank and Karen “—out of here!”

“Come on!” You direct Frank and Karen towards the nearest alleyway, hoping to at least get them out of sight before the cops can see anything—

A gunshot, aimed between you and the alley, goes off. The bullet embeds itself in the wall of the building just in front of you.

The masked attacker charges towards the three of you, pistol in hand and pointed in your direction.

Karen quickly aims and fires in the direction of the attacker.

The bullets bounce harmlessly off their telekinetic shield, but the force from the impact knocks them onto the ground.

You push the assailant away with a blast of wind, bouncing them across the pavement and into the side of a car. “Alright, let’s—”

“N.Y.P.D.! Put your hands in the air!”

Your head whips back and forth, looking between the police –who are huddled behind their cars, guns trained on all of you—and everyone else. You can see Allison freeze, staring down the cops in shock and fear, and then watch as her eyes start to glow blue. Shit. We can’t afford to lose her again.

So, you do what seems most natural, in the moment. You dash over, grab Allison around her waist, and float up into the air so she can’t teleport away.

Except everything goes wrong.

You hear the gunshot. You hear one of the cop’s guns go off, and you can hear Piotr scream, and you can feel Allison jerk in your arms, but you can’t really process what’s going on. All you know is that you’re dropping towards the ground, and you can’t figure out why. It’s not like you decided to stop floating.

It isn’t until Frank rolls you onto your back and presses his hand against your side that you realize you were shot. Pain bursts in your ribs, radiating across your torso, and it’s all you can do to breathe.

“Hey, hey, stay with me,” Frank gravels out, shucking out of his jacket and pressing it against your ribcage. “Count down backwards from one hundred.”

“Fuck you,” you wheeze.

Then Piotr’s on his knees next to you, voice panicked and hands shaking. He delicately brushes your hair out of your face –he’s not armored down, which is probably for the best, all things considered—and says something to you, but you can’t really make out the individual words he’s saying.

You’re looking past your husband, a few feet away, where Allison’s lifeless body lays on the street. There’s a hole in her chest that’s blooming blood, and the masked fighter kneels over her, feeling at her neck for a moment before closing her eyes.

Another one down. Another voice lost in society’s endless war against mutantkind.

A sob catches in your throat, equal parts pain and grief.

Piotr’s voice breaks through the cacophony of screams and sirens. “Myshka. Myshka, can you—”

And then the impossible happens.

(Though, anymore, you suppose it’s just improbable, given everything you’ve seen.)

Allison’s eyes snap open, glowing blue so intensely that they’re almost white. She screams, back bowing off the ground. Her body jerks onto its side, and she claws at the ground while she shrieks and rages.

A vortex of blue energy opens underneath her, breaking away at the asphalt and sucking it down into its depth. The ground shakes, and the sky blackens above the city as a beam of energy erupts from the portal, sailing up into the sky and disappearing from view.

And then the beam disappears, and Allison and the mystery fighter with it.

It’s an understood truth that New York city is never truly silent –but in that moment, it’s a near thing.

And then you hear Nathan’s voice say, “Bodyslide by seven.”

***

 The bullet –which passed through Allison first—bounced off one of your ribs. Fractured the bone, but didn’t hit any of your vital organs.

The healers at the Institute mend the fracture, but you’ll still have a bruise, limited mobility for a bit, pain, and some light physical therapy to do before it’s all sudden done.

You’re lucky.

“What kind of cop shoots a kid?” you grumble, wincing as you prop yourself up in one of the medical ward’s hospital beds.

“Happens all too often,” Piotr says quietly, hoarsely. His hand is wrapped around yours, fingers absently spinning your wedding band around your ring finger. He hasn’t left your side since you hit the pavement and Nathan got all of you out of there.

So much could have gone wrong… or worse…

You squeeze his hand gently, focusing on how solid and warm it feels against yours to keep from spiraling. “You okay?”

“I am now that you are,” he says after drawing in and letting out a shaky breath. Your husband’s eyes are rimmed with red, and his cheeks and nose are flushed.

“I’ll have to stay on bed and-slash-or couch rest for a few days.” You offer him a tired smile. “Maybe we can finally decide what color to paint the living room.”

Piotr smiles back, though the stress he’d gone through is still evident on his face. “That would be nice.”

You squeeze his hand again, then let your eyes slide shut as he presses his forehead against yours—

And apparently that’s all the calm the universe is going to allow you right now.

There’s a knock on the door, and you open your eyes to see Ellie standing in the doorway, looking uncharacteristically pensive.

“Castle and Wilson are trying to kill each other.”

 ***

 Your dad had scooped up everyone when he’d teleported back to the mansion. You suspected that, aside from it being a favor to Karen and Frank, there’d been a precautionary element in making sure that the officers couldn’t ask the two of them about how the X-Men were involved in the whole situation or about the whereabouts of Deadpool and Cable.

(You’re confident that neither Karen or Frank would sell any of you out, but the New York police department is famous for “extrapolating” conclusions off any scrap of knowledge that confirms their hunches.)

You hear them before you see them. The two men are shouting each other, voices bouncing off the walls and high ceiling that comprise the mansion’s entryway.

Frank’s hands are clenched at his sides, shaking slightly as he growls and curses at your brother. His eyes are wild, almost unhinged. He’s ignoring Karen’s pleas to calm down and “take a breath,” but he’s still conscious of her proximity to him, never once stepping on her foot or so much as bumping her with an elbow as he gesticulates at Wade.

You brother, on the other hand, is none so controlled. He’s pacing all over the place –still in his Deadpool suit—flailing wildly and occasionally tripping and stumbling over himself. Occasionally, he’ll get almost nose to nose with Frank, only to go back to storming around, as though he can’t contain the maelstrom of energy inside him.

“Look, if the kid wants a piece of me, then let her do what she needs to do!” Frank snaps, scowling. “There’s no need for all of you to get involved in this shit.”

“And what if she kills you?” Neena pipes up from where she’s leaning against the staircase banister, watching the chaos unfold.

“Then she kills me.”

“That’s not an option,” Karen states, voice steely.

“Is that what you’d want for your kids?” Wade’s back in Frank’s face now, the eyes on his suit widening and narrowing with the rise and falls of his ire. “You’d want that for your daughter, for her to go out killing everyone that ever hurt you—”

Frank’s control splinters. He bares his teeth in a snarl, then slugs Wade across the jaw before grabbing him by the collar of his suit.

“Hey, hey! Hey!” Nate shouts, lurching up from the chair he was sitting in as Wade and Frank start taking shots at each other. “Enough!”

Karen yanks on Frank’s arm, doing her best to disentangle him from Wade. “Frank –stop!”

You take a step forward, set on getting between the two men and separating them—

Except your husband brushes past you, squeezing your shoulder gently as he does. He grabs Wade with one hand, Frank with the other, then wrenches them apart with raw strength and sets them down on opposite sides of his massive form. “Enough!” he orders, voice raised to be heard over the last dregs of the fight. “You do this elsewhere. Not where children are present.”

Frank acquiesces with a tight nod, gaze bouncing around the room as he shifts from foot to foot.

Wade starts to argue –but Piotr silences him with the raise of an eyebrow that’s so stern, so severe, that it calls you directly back to his mother and makes you do a double take.

“We are not permitting child to kill anyone,” Piotr continues (ignoring Wade’s mumblings about “he really is a dom switch in this series.”). “Allison deserves chance to do better. All we have to do is show her that chance.”

“Not that simple,” Frank spits out. “Not when she’s going after the people I care about. Not when she’s using guns and bombs and whatever the hell making the cars disappear was –do we even have a profile on this kid, Summers? What other damn powers am I going to have to anticipate if this girl’s hunting me down.”

“I believe, in that regard,” Professor Xavier interjects as he wheels towards the lot of you, “I might be able to shed some light on the situation.”

 ***

 “There’s multiple theories on how mutants came to be. Some scientists think that anomalies in the evolutionary chain of various animals and other species spurned the development of modern mutants. A group of geneticists based in Korea is working on a study that’s based on the premise that the mutant gene developed out of other, milder mutations more commonly present in humans –asthma, heterochromia, and the like.”

“Which is it?” Neena asks, staring at the projector screen in one of the classrooms as the Professor taps away at a laptop.

“Both –and more. There’s several classifications of mutants today, and only select groups apply to specific theories. It’d be fascinating to dive into at a later time, but for now, we’re focused on Miss Ricci –who as fortune would have it, is part of the Hellenistic mutant lineage.”

“Uh-huh,” Wade says, nodding animatedly. “And in normal speak that means…”

“To put it simply, she’s a descendent of the ancient Greek gods –or, rather, the figures that inspired the stories of the deities,” Xavier explains. “Whether they actually existed as divine beings remains to be seen, but their powers, their followers, and their impact on the world are all quite real.”

“How can you be sure?” Neena asks.

“Certain mutation sets that appear more often than others can be traced back to mutant ancestors who bore the same traits.” The Professor taps at the keyboard, making an image of a genealogy key appear. “Death-based magical abilities –like the ones displayed by Miss Ricci—in mutants have been consistently traced back to the mutant that was worshipped as Hecate, Greek goddess of sorcery. Interestingly enough, the same trait is strongly present in the Rasputin lineage, along with several other Russian families.”

“Because we need so much help in that area,” Piotr mutters next to you.

“So what does all this mean with her going after my people?” Frank says, voice measured in such a way that you can tell he’s barely keeping a handle on his agitation. “What can we expect?”

“Well, unless she gets someone that can tutor her magical abilities, not much beyond what we’ve seen,” Xavier decides. “The ability to teleport and create offensive attacks are often innate to mutants like Allison, almost like the gene’s form of giving the person a defense mechanism. She might be able to tap into a few other base level abilities –such as rendering things to ash—but without proper training, her abilities will plateau soon.”

“But she is getting stronger,” Karen speaks up. “Just how strong is she supposed to get?”

“That would depend on the overall presence of the mutant gene in her DNA –which is not information I am privy to.”

“She’s able to self-revive,” Nathan says, crossing his arms over his chest. “Can you make an estimate off that?”

“How recent has this ability presented?”

“One other time.”

Frank frowns. “She’s done it twice? When else has she died? I thought she was laying low after she kidnapped Karen.”

Nate grimaces, but says nothing.

Frank’s face pales after a moment, jaw working convulsively. His trigger finger twitches against his thigh.

Karen interlocks her fingers through Frank’s, expression grim but determined. “What do we do?”

***

 Karen and Frank –at Nathan’s urging—decide to get out of the city for a bit. Allison will likely be down for a bit –regeneration or not, it takes a lot to recover from a bullet wound, let alone death—and disrupting their routine will make it harder for the vengeance obsessed girl to keep tabs on them.

There’s also talk of the two borrowing one of Nathan’s safehouses while they find new apartments. You only get to hear the starts of the conversation before Piotr ushers you out and back to your home.

“You are on prescribed rest,” he says when you protest. “Doctor’s orders. Best to not delay.”

You wind up on the couch, cushioned by an army of pillows, with a blanket over your lap, ice packs against your ribs, snacks and drinks on the coffee table in front of you, your phone hooked up to the charger on the power strip next to the couch, a movie playing on the TV, and Piotr sitting in the chair next to the couch, holding your hand.

(He hadn’t wanted to sit with you for fear of jostling you.)

“There’s going to be a press shitshow over all this,” you comment, partially distracted by the movie.

“I know,” Piotr replies, thumb rubbing against your knuckles.

“You should’ve stayed home,” you murmur. “I’m not a recognizable X-Man. The Institute’s name shouldn’t have been attached to something like this.”

“What should or should have not happened is moot,” Piotr says gently. “What is more important is your are my wife, moya myshka. It is not right for me to leave you to handle things I find… unsavory.”

“It’s okay to find things unsavory, sweetheart.”

“Da. But leaving you in dangerous situation because am not lover of violence is not. Leaving you to handle challenging mission because I do not agree with vigilantes is not. You are my wife. You come first.”

You look over at him, taking in his contemplative expression. “What changed all this? Not that I’m opposed –you can do what you want—but what made you decide to get on board?”

He sighs, grimacing sheepishly. “My father and I… had conversation. When you left with others to find Madeline and Mr. Essex. He thought I was being… most un-husbandly to let you handle ‘rough stuff,’ as he put it. He said that X-Man title was no excuse, that my duties to protect and support you surpassed that.” He gazes down at your wedding and engagement ring. “He was –is—right.”

You aren’t sure how to respond to that –so you don’t. Not directly, at least.

You tug on your husband’s hand until he leans over, then press a kiss against his cheek. “I love you, Piotr Rasputin.”

He smiles, then kisses your cheek in return. “And I love you, Y/N Rasputin.”

[kethsi]

Nature Magic

Islwyn overestimates his abilities. - Islwyn is also an unreliable narrator at the end. Warning for injuries. -

Here’s the thing about trees: Islwyn doesn’t understand them. At all. It’s his own fault, really. Teclyn and Amaethwr tried teaching him about different tree species when he was younger. Let it be known that he was ready and willing to fight anyone who said otherwise. They tried every method there was to teach him how to distinguish age and subspecies, how to spot whether or not it was diseased by examining the bark and the leaves or the needles. They tried teaching him through fun lessons, games and old songs. There were even field trips that were fun until they ended – Teclyn had accidentally spooked a sleeping grenwall once, and got his leg covered in spikes for his effort to calm the grumpy thing down. Shame he wasn’t as good with animals as he was with plantlife. It wasn’t their fault at all – Islwyn wasn’t a good student. He tried to listen, back in the day. He tried to write down notes in a way that made sense to him. It didn’t help much. He made peace with the fact that he wasn’t going to be the best tracker of Lletya long ago. It was alright. It was a childhood dream once, but he was never much of an archer anyway. Surely he’d be good at something else. Luckily for him, while he wasn’t much of an expert on all things leafy, his memory was quite alright. So he remembered how he helped plant a few trees outside his own house some thirty years ago. They were sitting apart, so that their roots won’t tangle with one another, and they were pretty tall to say the least. They provided shade for his house in the summer and caught some of the snow in the winter, valiantly taking pressure off of his roof. The smallest one he planted a bit too close to the house. It was rather careless, yes, but he didn’t have the foresight to tell it’d be obscuring most of his view from his window. By the time he considered replanting it, Amaethwr was adamant that the damage to the roots would be too severe, and no one had the heart to chop it down. Islwyn really should invest in another window.

Making a mental note to ask old lady Ithell for advice later, he sat down against the tree and opened a decorated green book with great care. It was his mother’s, passed down to her by his grandparents. It held detailed maps and descriptions of lands to the east – probably not accurate anymore, not since the war – notes about magic, and potions, and several forms of halberd combat. The magic sections were always most fascinating to him. 

It was a bit of an open secret among the elves that Glarial and Baxtorian were some of the most powerful mages on Gielinor. They could reshape the land itself in any way they desired, be it by creating rivers, raising hills from the flat ground, cloaking an open field with trees… It was amazing. Their empire was magnificent and prosperous, and this was one of the reasons. Their subjects would never go hungry, never experience a drought… He wished he knew this in such detail when he was young. He knows his mother grew up never wanting for anything, in the land of unparalleled plenty, before the war. These thrice-damned Iorwerths changed everything. Sure, Lletya was somewhat stable – the hunters and farmers did everything they could, and Eudav was actually very good at fishing, but pawyas were tricky to catch, the dire wolves were unforgiving, the bears were few and the Teif’s current was swift. The fish? Even swifter. It wasn’t uncommon for them to eat one meal a day. In fact, it was the norm, for most of his life. Islwyn took fishing himself, back in the day. He was better at it than he was at archery, but only because he used magic to help him. He cut his journey there and back by teleportation, fixed broken fishing rods with magic, and would even try to slow down the pikes and the rainbow fish. They didn’t need to zig-zag while swimming, since the river was flowing smoothly, and they’d avoid the rocky parts of the southern shore. The river needed to meander some more, but he didn’t have an army of lunatics with shovels and a death wish at the ready to dig for hours to redirect it. He looked back at the book. He didn’t need an army of lunatics. He had magic. Sure, he wasn’t all that powerful, but coming from a line of mages who reshaped the continent certainly didn’t hurt his chances. He spent the last three decades perfecting his control of nature magic. He should soon be able to use it to benefit them all. He closed the book and turned around. With one hand flat against the tree bark and one pressed to the ground, he whispered a long, familiar incantation. He flinched momentarily when he felt the bark pushing his hand slightly back, but kept going. He only stopped when the amount of light and shadow on the ground visibly changed, and he felt his strength slipping away. He looked up, dizzy, removing his hand from the ground. The tree has grown significantly, he noted. Good. It was only a matter of time.

---

Sitting on his roof at night, watching the stars, was rather lovely. He held a small green shard in his hands. Small fragment of an enchanted crystal, chipped away from a far more magnificent final product he did not possess. It was thrumming with energy, and it was calming. It doesn’t transform with a song, like other crystals do. It’s already enchanted with purpose. He remembered that much. Gwir told him about it, once. It was one of many discarded pieces of crystal Baxtorian had chipped away while trying to create a necklace for Glarial. He wasn’t much of a craftsman, though, and it was a personal gift he refused to ask for help while making, so at some point he just enchanted it in hopes that the crafting process would go smoother. It didn’t. According to Gwir, this crystal was from a stash given for magical adornments during the later years of the second age. Before Seren had to… ah… Leave. He didn’t know what to make of it. Maybe that’s why this shard exists at all. Baxtorian wouldn’t chip away perfectly good pieces of Seren herself, even as a gift. He briefly wondered whether Baxtorian would go to Seren for more crystal, or ask his parents, or sneak around to take more without actual permission.

Glarial got an amulet out of the main chunk of crystal, wherever it was. Gwir was unaware of the exact enchantments woven into it, but the fact that the little discarded pieces kept reappearing around for a while was telling enough. It was probably for teleportation, originally. Well, whatever was the purpose, Islwyn was happy enough with the small shard’s magical signature. It was calming. He got up, pocketed the shard, and leapt towards the tree, using the branches to climb down. The hunters were supposed to return soon, and he promised to help clean whatever they brought. He was still recovering his energy, but he wanted to be helpful around the town as well.

 ---

He teleported north-west at dawn. It was a couple days later, and he felt ready. He’s been thinking about this for a while. Running the idea in his head again and again. Fish were always in short supply these days. He was going to change that. He was sure of it. All he needed to do was push the ground here low enough, and make the ground at the bottom of the Teif rise up slightly. The first of several redirections of the eastern part of the river he had planned to carry out. He looked around him, checking the air for any trace of smoke and the earth for trampled leaves or disturbed animals. Nothing. Good, no Iorwerths to worry about at this moment. He was on the northern shore, a dangerous idea, really, but a sensible one. He needed to stand here for this to succeed. It was a massive undertaking he wasn’t strong enough yet to do remotely. He took a deep breath, momentarily touching the shard in his pocket. It was alright. He’s been training for decades. He planned this. This was fine. Slowly, he knelt down, putting his hands on the ground. He started talking. Pain started rushing over him nearly immediately. Not something he expected, but he shut his eyes and continued. These enchantments were tried and tested. It was okay. He felt his knees sinking – hopefully the ground around him would give way soon – and he could go on south. Truth be told, it was a longer process than he expected. The sun was harsh against his back by the time he felt it. He didn’t dare look around before, but he opened his eyes now that he felt something cold soaking his legs. Thankfully, it was water. Lots of it. He shuddered. The Teif always had a fast current. Soon, he had to get up and move, because the water levels were rising, and he wasn’t done yet. Doing his best to not get washed away, he teleported to the southern shore. He took a few steps. Something was wrong. He felt every pebble as he walked. It was as if he was stepping into jagged rocks. He was up to his ankles in the water when he fell to his knees. He tried to stand back up again, pushing himself up with his arms, but they were firm in the mud and plants at the bottom of this shallow end. He couldn’t move them if he wanted to. Before long he was chanting again. In the back of his mind, he knew that something went wrong. Terribly wrong. He could hardly move, because if he’d try, everything would hurt again. He chanted quicker. Was the water receding? Was the ground rising? …Was anything happening at all? Well, yes. Something was happening alright. Someone was dimming the sun. He blinked several times. It wasn’t the clouds. It was just getting darker. Darker around him. Colder. What was going on? Something bad, surely. He closed his eyes, opened them, and closed them again. But there was no difference. Only the dark.

[thewakingcloak]

On Creative Burnout and How to Get Stuff Done Without It

Over the past week or two I’ve had a bunch of conversations with people who were burned out and having a hard time. And this is a bit lengthy, but it goes out to you guys.

I hit some pretty nasty burnout in early 2018. I couldn't create anything for months. Even just *thinking* about making something made me mentally cringe away. I'd not only used up all my fuel, but I was also up against some tough tasks that I didn't know how to tackle. AND I was stressed and frustrated because I didn't think anyone was noticing The Waking Cloak. I felt like I wouldn't be able to make it "good enough" even for what I wanted it to be. I felt guilty because I thought I was letting people down who were following along with the project... and I wasn't delivering.

Sound familiar? Let's talk.

I got past the burnout and am working in a much healthier way now, a year later. But this took a shift in how I thought about working on creative projects. I used to be constantly working on The Waking Cloak because I thought that’s what it was going to take to finish it. I couldn’t afford to stop, because what if I never picked it back up again? Now I see things differently.

Part of this came from the general internet, part of it came from years of experience writing and critiquing (and now, y’know, actually applying it to game development), and part of it came from learning project management at work.

0. Before we start...

You can do this.

You’re not alone.

If you’re burned out, it gets better.

I’m around to talk if you need it.

1. The Creative Cycle AKA PLEASE REST OR YOU'LL HAVE A BAD TIME

This is a principle I learned from @emcheeseman on Twitter with this diagram:

To quote her: “Creators feel pressure to spend every second creating, but CREATIVITY IS A CYCLE between active productivity and dormant recovery.”

So the two sides of creativity: Action and Recovery. Too much Action, you get burnout. Too much Recovery and... you’re not doing anything. These two absolutely have to be kept in balance. If you're burned out, you need to spend more time recovering. If you're procrastinating, you need to spend time building up the momentum and taking action.

(Note: it’s important also learn to recognize the difference between the two versions of procrastination: some can come from burnout, in which case you need to recover, not work more.)

This is a cycle that should take place every day. When you're in balance, you'll be working on something creatively every day, but you'll also be resting. If you neglect either, you'll be thrown off balance and have to take remedial action--especially in the case of burnout.

This is because the creative mind is like a muscle. Muscles gain strength essentially by being torn and reknit together stronger. If you continuously work out the same muscles without giving them a chance to knit back together, you won't get stronger. This is why strength workouts have alternating days between muscle groups.

You know all those articles and studies coming out about how crunch is bad? All those big name game studios that required crunch and burned out all their developers? Guess what, the same principle applies to your personal creative work too. Crunch is bad. Somewhat counter-intuitively, just doing "more work" will actually make you less productive, while taking time to recover every day makes you significantly more productive. So don’t make yourself crunch. Not even if you’re enjoying what you’re working on.

I'll talk about Action later, but how about Recovery? Well, congratulations, I have good news! Having fun is now part of your creative process. Do something passive you enjoy. Play video games. Read a book, watch a TV show or movie. Go outside for a walk. Take things in. Don't feel guilty: this is vital for your creativity. What if you always exhaled without inhaling? Would you feel guilty for breathing in oxygen?

If you are currently burned out, you need to spend a lot of extra time recovering. The more you’re burned out, the more time it’ll take. That’s the part that sucks, but trust me on this. It will get better. You'll be able to tell after time. This can be days or weeks or longer, but you need to take it until both of these conditions are satisfied:

You no longer feel yourself mentally cringing away from creating something.

The idea of not creating something is unbearable

2. Motivation: creating for yourself, not to satisfy others' expectations

It's super important to come at creative projects with the right motivation. Even if you have a pretty decent Action/Recovery balance, if you're trying to please others, if you're often jealous of others, if you're comparing your work often, you will still get burned out. Creating with these as your motivation is a bit like trying to drive on fumes. It’s not sustainable, and you will run out of gas.

This is incredibly important but difficult to put into practice. How do you shift your motivations?

Some principles:

Creating for its own sake is valuable.

Other people are not competition. They are friends.

Other creative projects are not competition either--similar projects can, and should, and do exist in harmony. You can learn from one another.

If you work primarily from a standpoint of pleasing others, you are going to be very easy to disappoint.

Make what you want to make, for yourself, for your tastes particularly if this is your hobby.

The “validation machine” is tricky. At first, you’d be over the moon to have a hundred followers and maybe ten likes. Then a thousand followers and fifty likes. And on and on, all the way up--your expectations of validation will scale up. Don’t expect to keep getting high off those likes and retweets/reblogs. Make an effort to value every one of the people who follows you, even if it’s only five people.

All games are held together by duct tape and prayers. You're not alone!

Some of these are easier said than done. Just keep an eye out for these thoughts/emotions in yourself. If you notice them, take a moment, take a few deep breaths, and remind yourself what it's all about. Do you feel yourself getting jealous? Don't take it out on yourself (or anyone else). Try encouraging that person you're jealous of instead. Tell them what they're doing well, and not in the mopey "I wish I could do this as well as you" way. Instead, the "This [specific thing] is so good! Keep it up!" way. It's hard for jealousy to exist in the same place as encouragement, even if it takes a little bit to ebb.

Another suggestion is to write down the things that excite you about creating, about the specific project you’re working on, etc. This can be broad (“I like bringing my ideas to life”) or specific (“I always love exploring caves in video games and seeing what secrets they hold”). Keep this around and remind yourself of it. For The Waking Cloak, I love working on exploration, lore, and maps!

3. How to actually work and get stuff done

This is going to be the biggest point, but it revolves around a few foundational principles:

Work INCLUDES rest. It's part of the deal. You're not allowed to skip it. (see #1)

Short term goals are more important than long term deadlines (aka Agile "sprints")

Task-tracking and manageable, bite-sized chunks

One Thing a Day/Momentum

Do it fast, THEN do it right

Most of this is stuff I learned from my day job when we got our new head-of-department and jumping onto what's broadly known as DevOps principles. DevOps involves a lot more than I'm going to talk about here, but I bring it up because these aren't things I'm just making up because they sound nice. They're tried and tested, and they work.

So first, let's talk about short term goals.

Years ago (and sadly still too often today), common practice in software development was to plan big projects spanning months at a time, build the entire thing, and then deliver it. Major problems occur with this: requirements change, the world changes, technology changes, the users wanted/needed something different and you didn't know until they got it in their hands, etc.

The core problem is that nobody knows what's going to happen in the future, not with absolute certainty. I'm not joking when I say this: it's best to focus on short term goals and skip out on long term deadlines altogether. This is commonly in the form of two-week "sprints" which are geared towards delivering some complete functionality, not the entire project/software/game/etc. Here's why these work:

You have something achievable now. Two weeks of work is so much nicer than... months? years?

You get quicker feedback and can quickly adapt to these in the next sprint

Sometimes project/features of higher priority get discovered that you couldn’t have planned for

You're consistently finishing some chunk of functionality every two week sprint or every milestone. Progress feels nice!

Two week sprints don't necessarily work for all game projects, but the principle is the same: plan short-term, time-based goals, NOT functionality-based goals. If you're getting close to the deadline, move that functionality to the next "sprint", don't crunch any more than a day.

If you don't have a long-term deadline for your game set by external factors (publisher, need food to eat, etc.), and especially if you're doing this as a hobby, my advice is to not set a final deadline until you're more or less done with the game. Know what your major functionality is and a general order that you’ll work on this functionality in, but long-term deadlines are almost always unsustainable. You don't know what's going to pop up, you don't know how long certain features will take, etc. You can't predict the future. But you can create milestones.

In normal game development, this generally includes pre-alpha, alpha, beta, and so on. But for our purposes, we’ll want to redefine this and break it down even further. An alpha could take many months. I’m more interested in defining sets of features that can conceivably take a few weeks to two months, closer to a sprint.

In The Waking Cloak, these milestones are the ProtoDungeons. Each has a set of functionality (I only know the broad strokes, not the specific functionality each will contain--that only gets planned at the beginning of the specific ProtoDungeon). There will be eight of these, one for each of the player’s items, and they will be a self-contained dungeon. This is to:

Get quick feedback on how the items feel

Get practice building dungeon maps

Build a lot of the “unknown pieces” that you don’t generally think about--doors, triggers, camera transitions, pits, z-coordinate levels, and so forth.

I’ve only completely planned out one ProtoDungeon. It included the item mechanic and all the functionality mentioned in the last bullet point, but it also included more, like enemies and a boss. But then I cut everything that's unnecessary for getting these into the hands of some testers--so that meant a lot of this extraneous stuff got bumped to ProtoDungeon 2. That way, the quicker I get this demo out, the quicker I can improve for the next ProtoDungeon. The result is that working on the game feels very light and extremely productive.

Now that we have milestones and short-term goals, that brings us to tracking tasks.

I don't really care how you do this so much as I care that you do it in the first place! Tracking tasks is extremely important. Without, it can be easy to get lost in where you’re at in development. You have to hold everything in your brain, which is extra wear and tear.

I use Trello, which is free! At work we use Microsoft's Azure DevOps/VSTS and Kanban boards. You can even just use a notepad if that's what you like (though I suggest something where it’s easier to move stuff around, even if that’s Notepad on your computer). Once you have a place to keep track of stuff, I recommend creating some sections (I use Trello columns):

Backlog - tasks you're doing this milestone

Bugs/issues - you'll find these all the time :)

Doing - this is the bug or task you're working on. Only work on 1-2 things at a time. If you're not working on it, it goes back in the backlog

Complete - just a pile of your accomplishments! :D

And then here’s how you create your tasks for your “milestone”:

List out your major functionality

Break those functionalities into chunks

Break them into smaller chunks

Smaller

Still smaller

Are they now tiny? Can you do these tasks in a day or two maximum? No? Still smaller!

Stop when you're basically at the "atomic level" of tasks. They need to be bite-sized (if they’re ridiculously small, you can include them as part of a checklist on a single task)

Take all these tasks and dump them into your backlog!

As I mentioned, plan for the current milestone only. You can have a bucket of general tasks for future milestones and even a general idea of the order you want to accomplish these tasks in, but you're only planning for the current milestone and a bit into the next one.

Prioritize your tasks. You can put a number next to each task (1 being highest, 4 being lowest is what we do at work). Or if you're using Trello like me, you can drag the highest priority tasks up to the tops of the columns to work on next. I occasionally switch these around depending on what I feel like working on next, so don't feel like you have to strictly adhere to a specific set of priorities.

If you're feeling really snazzy, "weigh" your tasks. How long is this going to take? You can do this by hours, days, a generic numbering system, etc. Enough to let you know what's going to fit into a milestone and what needs to be moved to the next one. I don't think this is strictly necessary for a hobbyist project, but it's pretty vital for our day-to-day at work.

Also, you will discover more tasks as you work. "Oops, to do this, I need to add that." That's fine. Add it as a task, prioritize/organize it, and keep going.

Like rest, planning all this stuff out is hugely important but often missed because it doesn't feel like you're getting stuff done. It's deceptive. Taking time to plan and maintain your tasks will actually make you more focused and productive.

If something isn’t necessary for the deliverable, move it to the next milestone and forget about it for now. This doesn’t mean you’re procrastinating or that you’ll never get to it. Your job is to keep things light and manageable for now.

Okay, so now you have a list of tiny, bite-sized tasks, and they're all organized. Time for the next principle: “One Thing a Day.”

I mean, with everything we’ve discussed, this is pretty easy now, right? You have a bunch of bite-sized tasks. Work on at least one thing a day! You don’t have to finish it, though the fact that you’ve got these small tasks means you’re more likely to get tasks done quickly.

Let's say you're me and you have a lunch break. Well, now I can try a task or two, or check off a few of my checkboxes on one of my tasks,  or at the very least get started on something I know I can finish in a few days. Or we just got the baby down to nap and she'll be asleep for an hour and a half (probably)--I can pick up another task and work on it there.

By having small tasks, you have a constant sense of progression, which is important for your morale. And by doing at least one thing a day, you develop momentum, which is extremely pivotal in countering procrastination.

For a while I logged these on the devblog, largely for accountability, but over time I haven’t needed to do that as much.

Also, keeping the creative cycle in balance is still important. Some days I absolutely did not have time, or just felt like it would be “too much.” So I didn’t do one thing that day. Instead I’d take that time to recover.

Finally, the principle of "Do it, THEN do it right."

This has helped me on so many occasions. My procrastination often stems from a feeling of being overwhelmed. I sit there thinking about a task and how long it's going to take, and all the different things I have to make in order for it to work well.

Beat the system. Hack that sucker in there in the cheapest way you can. Hardcode values. Tack code on to an existing object instead of creating a new one. All you have to do is add notes. //TODO is helpful--it doesn’t do anything automatic in GameMaker, but you can still do a project search for it to come back to it later. Then see if it works. See how it feels to play. Only after you've got it working and feeling nice, come back and polish it up a bit. Make it less hard-coded. Put it in a script so it's easier to call from multiple places. Create those objects.

For example, I just added some "Game Over" functionality. First I just whipped up the screen (draw black rectangle, draw text) and then made it show up at the press of a button. Looking good? Nope, the text is off. Let's fix that. Okay, now let's take it off this key binding and add it to the transition manager to trigger when the player dies. Shortcut: add a key that kills the player. Still triggers? Good? Okay, now make it reset the game (well, in my case, reset the room), and test with that kill key. Does that work? Remove the kill key (that would be a nasty surprise for a player if they hit the wrong key), polish (I’m summarizing, there was a lot more of this), and voilà! The important part was taking those shortcuts to blaze the trail before I paved it over (I know that makes no sense, just go with it).

This is the same idea as the rough draft of a story. No (good) book was written the way you pull it off the shelf at your bookstore. It was much rougher when it started and only got good by drafting over and over again. The point is to get your raw materials out there, like a big ol' block of stone if you were building a statue, create the vague shape (chisel off big chunks), then work on finer and finer details.

You cannot judge your work by its first draft. You'll absolutely be disappointed. Instead, come into it with the INTENTION of doing it fast and sloppy so that you have those raw materials to work with as quickly as possible.

4. In summary

It’s going to be okay.

Burnout can be avoided by taking time to rest.

If you’re burned out, it gets better by taking time to rest.

Good motivation helps avoid burnout and procrastination.

Plan generic long-term, specific in short term chunks, and work in bite-sized tasks.

Working in bite-sized tasks helps keep up momentum and morale.

Keep action and recovery balanced every day.

It’s going to be okay. :)

[yesterdanereviews]

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie (1995)

Film review #345

SYNOPSIS: The power rangers, a group of teenagers who defend the city of Angel Grove from alien threats face their biggest challenge yet as a construction work accidentally uncovers a strange device. On their moon base, Rita Repulsa and Lord Zedd recognise the device as the capsule within which Ivan Ooze is sealed; an alien menace that ruled the Earth over 6000 years ago. Lord Zedd frees him and tells him to go kill Zordon, the power rangers mentor. Ivan leaves Zordon close to death and the power rangers without their powers, and so they must travel to a far-off planet to find a great power that can save Zordon’s life and give them back their powers to defeat Ooze once and for all.

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie is a 1995 film that is a continuation of the TV series of the same name. It should be noted that the franchise was absolutely huge in the early-mid 90′s, and so a movie was almost inevitable. The series had lost a bit of steam by the time the movie came out, but it was still fairly popular. The film opens with the team doing a skydive, along with Angel Grove punks Bulk and Skull, the comic relief characters from the TV series. Next, the team go do some roller skating…because that’s what teenagers do I guess? The Power Rangers were always portrayed as “teenagers with attitude”, so doing these sorts of things goes some way to making them look cool and hip or whatever the mid-late 90′s term was (I was never any of those things, so forgive me if I can’t remember). Either way, you’re not really going to watch a Power Rangers film to watch some mediocre roller skating, and the film certainly doesn’t open very strong. Nearby, a construction site unearths a strange capsule from underground. Villains Rita Repulsa and Lord Zedd are watching on from their secret base on the moon, and Zedd remarks that the capsule contains Ivan Ooze, a powerful being that ruled the Earth six thousand years ago, before he was stopped by Zordon and a group of chosen teenagers. Zedd and Rita free Ooze from his containment, telling him to go and destroy his old enemy Zordon, which he happily does (he doesn’t kill Zordon though,for some reason), leaving the Power Rangers without their powers. 

The story revolves around the Power Rangers having to go to a far-off planet to obtain “the great power” that can save Zordon’s life, and give them new powers. The structure of the story feels very much like an episode of the TV series, with a new monster arriving to terrorise Angel Grove, and the rangers fighting them on foot, then fighting them in their Zords, then combining the Zords to defeat them. The film offers nothing new to that structure, or provides any fresh ideas to expand the idea of the Power Rangers. It seriously feels like nobody had any idea what to do with the story outside of their comfort zone so they padded it out with the Rangers losing their powers for a good chunk of the film, and also having this subplot with this random kid and his Dad that really serves no purpose. One essential component of the TV series is that the scenes with the Power Rangers in their suits and the Zords are taken directly from the Japanese TV Super Sentai Zyuranger, while the rest of the episodes are made specially for the Power Rangers series. This film is the first time that there is no footage taken from Super Sentai, and everything is originally written and directed. You may think that this gives the film a chance to try something more ambitious, but as mentioned the film seriously struggles without that original footage to coalesce around, and simply tries to copy it to fill that void. The TV series worked because even though it was basically the same thing every week, it gave kids what they wanted in short bursts, with fight scenes that were delivered with a decent pacing that filled its slot nicely. In this film, the decision seems to have been taken to just stretch out those fight scenes, giving more of what kids want: but this was a very bad move, as the fight scenes seem to go on for far too long, and those short, sharp bursts of action become dragged out and you realise they’re actually pretty empty. The same goes for the one-liners that the Rangers deliver, which work once or twice a scene, but when they’re constantly delivering these multiple times a scene, they cease to have any impact, and draw attention to the lack of variety in the story. At some points the Rangers are on screen just doing constant backflips all over the place and nothing is happening, and the film just feels hopelessly lost.

All of the main characters from the TV series reprise their roles in this film, which at least preserves the continuity. Some of the Power Rangers changed throughout the series, and the cast is correct at the point of the series this film was released. The Power Rangers themselves, despite being described as “teenagers with attitude”, are all equally dull, with no real personality or chemistry between them. Tommy, as the leader of the group, makes himself stand out a little, but that’s about it (maybe because the majority of the overall story arcs in the TV series revolved around his character once he was introduced). In contrast, I find the villains are much more entertaining to watch, and even though they are all rather incompetent, have a good chemistry between them. Bulk and Skull, the punk bullies, are very cartoon-like in their mannerisms and actions, and I’ve always found them to be strong characters, even if they don’t do anything too special. Rita Repulsa and Lord Zedd also have a good chemistry, and manage to flirt the line between being comedic and seriously menacing depending on the scenes. The fact they are played so over the top also makes them enjoyable to watch. It’s a shame that Ivan Ooze imprisons them and locks the out of the majority of the film, as it could have done with more of their energy. Ooze himself is a rather forgettable villain: he has his menacing moments, but this is undermined by some rather cheesy lines (”smells like…teenagers”) really lessen his impact. Rita and Zedd could manage both in tandem, but Ooze just doesn’t have that same appeal.

One of the major detriments of the film is that it uses CGI to render the Zords, instead of the models or physical costumes used in the TV series, and it has not aged well at all. Since the TV series used previously made footage, the show didn’t have to produce new footage for the Zord fights at all, and so for the film, which as mentioned used no previous footage, this is the first time these scenes would have had to be built from scratch, and the fight scenes scripted and directed by the writes and producers themselves. Models and physical costumes age significantly better than CGI, and I wonder if the effects used to render the Zords were already out of date when the film came out. The fight scene in the city with the Zords is also rather dark, which obscures a lot of the Zord’s detail so you can’t really get a good idea of what they look like: this might have deliberate because the CGI might have looked even worse in a brighter setting. Overall, the film doesn’t really feel like much more than a cash-grab or an excuse to sell toys. I think what was more appealing about the physical costumes/models as well is that they look more like action figures, and would definitely spark children's imaginations more than CGI creations (and would probably sell more toys). The film feels like an extended episode of the TV series, but seems to have no idea how to fill in the longer runtime, and so just pads out what they already do, which waters down its impact. The film doesn’t add anything to the franchise, nor does it benefit from a bigger budget or production. Maybe kids at the time would have enjoyed some more Power Rangers action (It is one of the few films I went to see at the cinema as a kid, and I remember having a lukewarm response to it), but a kid nowadays would not be able to get past that awful CGI. The soundtrack is full of mediocre songs that are plucked right from the mainstream of the time, but the worst part is they don't use the TV theme song, which is one of the most recognisable themes and is really quite good and full of energy. They only use a snippet of it in a fight scene early on, and I think that was a huge mistake not taking advantage of one of the series most iconic aspects. If you were into the Power Rangers hype it kept that hype going, but outside of that it really is not a good film, and I think does some damage to the franchise by undermining the best parts of it, such as making the fight scenes too long, sidelining the iconic villains, ditching the iconic physical models/costumes etc. If you were a kid that was caught up in the original Power Rangers hype, then I would suggest watching the TV series instead of the film: it offers very little as part of the franchise or as a film in it’s own right.

[mcbride58conner-blog]

If Steph Will Undoubtedly Be Suspended For Recreation 7 many People Are Questioning,

Yahoo released factory reset safeguard (FRP) in Android 5.1 to make it impossible to employ a compromised product. But if the SE appears similar to the 5S, then there is no motivation for me to buy the SE over the cheaper 5S. I really don't sport thus functionality doesn't issue, both 8mp camera OS model, equally fingerprint scanner, etc. We appreciated every Story of Heroes” recreation produced sofar, and I feel such as the figures were a bit more distinctive, while the PSP activities all acquired slower startup moments. Also you can not delay and when you have an system that may upgrade to Nougat, go right ahead and install it. The rollout seems need certainly to removed and there have not been any technique- parasites that are breaking, or problems of one. A properly tuned portable front-end to a current Web-based commerce engine may not be significantly more than insufficient to support people requires. 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Character Musician Xavier Coelho-Kostolny attracted a comparability between the movie's figure types and people of the overall game. The design and appearance of cellphones offers come a considerable ways since the mid-1980s when cell phones were not as small as a people brain. Your Android is worked on by bad and it can be actually controlled by you. But the one catch is the fact that when you you future want to play the overall game you should have to go through some shenanigans again.

[feralknights]

Palablog: OB56+OB57

Hoo nelly, fellas.  OB56 + OB57 were absolute doozies for me, and I mean that in the best way possible.  I'm sorry I haven't responded to asks or been updating much lately, things just got busy and then I was running a lot of hardware upgrades so I missed a chunk of the OB56 patch cycle, and ... yeah.

I'll get the Skye gushing for OB56/OB57 out of the way now:  These two patches have been significant quality of life improvements for me as a Skye main and all across the board.  I think the art team knocked it out of the park with both the Samurai Ash skin (I didn't call it Ronin for a reason, will explain!) and Kunoichi Skye.  We saw the entrance of the Skye Mastery skins, too.  OB56 brought us the 1800->2000 HP boost as well as Retribution finally getting the nerfs it's needed since Lex was released, and OB57 gave us the reworks to Debilitate and Surprise Attack.

In a weird way, Skye having that extra 200 HP made something of a negative impact on me early on.  I was so used to the audio cues for low HP at 1800 that I'd overplay my hand and spent the first day or two fumbling around getting my butt handed to me.  I've gotten used to it over time; the tweaks to her damage dealing and range made my life a whole lot easier and has enabled me to (in some cases) actually work around people that actually buy Illuminate.

I still haven't tried Surprise Attack, but I'm actually somewhat curious to now.  At first I thought, "just slapping more damage onto it will not fix the fact that it is an objectively terrible legendary," but I gave it more thought and gave Raynday's video on SA a watch.  Now, he did amazing with it, but he also had a team comp and players on his side that allowed him to have some of that pressure aleviated from him.  Similarly, our test sample for his praise was one match-- I want to give it more hands-on time, but this means I'm probably going to have to build a deck that balances some of Skye's mandatory cards with cooldown cards and find what works right for me.

Is it weird I'm actually kind of looking forward to trying Surprise Attack at all?

Admittedly, I'm going to miss the innate cauterize effect of Poison Bolts, but if you think about it, the reworks to Decrepify allow it to actually be even more punishing, even more dangerous than it ever was before.  Decrepify is a card that rarely leaves my Debilitate decks with Skye, and now it's more than likely going to be a cornerstone for the Twilight Assassin.

With Strix's introduction, it did highlight issues that Skye still has with cards, but I can understand if the team wants to pump the brakes on further Skye adjustments for the time being:  Healing Vapors is still essentially a useless card at 1-2, mediocre at best at 3, and just not worth the value at 4.  Comperable cards on different champions grant way more value at almost any level, from Androxus' Abyss Walker healing a burst of 40/80/120/160 to Lex's Fortitude healing 25/50/75/100 damage across 1.5s, and then they have access to healing items such as Life Rip-- and Life Rip is essentially the only form of feasable long-term self-sustain that Skye has available to her.

I'm still trying really hard to Devil's Advocate myself on how to justify Slip Away still existing in the form it does.  Ninja and Dissipate both serve the purpose for stealth speed boosts, and I personally feel Victory Rush is one of the best cards in the game.  Again, personally, I'd rather it be "gain damage reduction while in stealth" at the same values it has right now.  Of course, it was easier to justify conditional up-to 20% DR when Skye was at 1800 HP.

OB56 brought a lot of exciting changes in general:  Ash was given an additional ult charge on Rally Here, arguably her weakest legendary.  Admittedly, if I know a team is going to try to maintain point presence and stay with me, I will play the hell out of Rally Here; the damage boost makes ally Ruckus players or even a good Fernando or Ying turn into crazy point-dominating monsters.  Buck's Bulk Up was given an extra boost-- and I'll be honest, I'm glad.  I sometimes feel bad for the guy, because I rarely ever see him played anymore.

Cassie's Exaction was given a light bop on the nose in OB56 though the thing I hear complained about the most is that her dodge roll is almost always up as long as you can land one shot-- and that's honestly not too hard given how much faster her projectiles move these days.  Jenos' HP reduction was warranted and welcome; I love the guy and I play him pretty hard as a support, but he was just too hard to kill.  I barely felt the adjustments to Stellar Wind or Astral Mark, I run a CD reduction build on him and just keep churning heals.

Jenos does present an interesting situation that I hope gets looked at:  Though negative status effects are cleared from her when she goes into her ice block, Astral Mark will persist.  Essentially, if Evie is running the Reprieve Legendary card, she will get all of that healing as well as the healing from Jenos, and all of that healing will just keep going right when she comes flying out of it.  In essence, this allows even a mediocre-at-best Evie to be an absolute immortal monster.

Retribution got nerfed hard in OB56, and I could not be happier.  I'm actually a bit surprised, if only because I was hoping for some QOL tweaks, or one or two touches, I didn't expect such a drastic swat on the ability.  OB57 brought some interesting changes to Lex, and slowly he's coming to the point where I feel like he could potentially be fun to play as as much as against.

The semi-auto was a good change, I feel, but after a few days I started to see the problems with Lex's new Magnums:  The ammo count is too high, the accuracy drop from rapid firing is too low, and it does nothing to address the problem of Lex having In Pursuit, still arguably one of the most devastating abilities in the game.

"Feral, you're mad.  You just hate Lex.  1050 damage over 1.5s is nothing!"

I mean yeah I do dislike Lex's kit, but you can't argue with the fact that as he is right now, Lex can pop In Pursuit for unerring auto-aim accuracy for 1.5s at long range while Combat Sliding in at a target I dare say farther and faster than even Cassie's roll, then hammering 10 shots out for long-range *and* burst potential that comes dangerously close to Point Blank Skye.

In essence, I just hope that In Pursuit's functionality is given a second glance now that he's got these devastating new Magnums.  I also would like to see if it's possible to get the rapid fire inaccuracy increased a bit, because gosh.  dang.

Lian is an interesting case; I make claim about how much I hate auto-aim on Lex but I mind it slightly less on Lian.  I really wish I could better explain it, but something just feels "off" about her kit-- maybe it realy does have something to do with her being able to have two auto-aims?  I'll have to ruminate on it more.

and the grover puns man wtf arrghghhggh

Skipping ahead a little, the Ying changes are great.  Back as recently as 3 patches ago, I was on the train that Ying needed to have Lifelike boosted by 5-10% to help address her throughput, but Illusory Rift is absolutely great and the changes to her in-hand attack are almost terrifying to play against-- but in a good way, of course.

A'right, now that we've gotten this far:  It's time for Strix.

I love Strix.  Dude is insane.  His rifle feels great, offers a lot of feedback when you're firing, and it feels responsive.  His pistol does a lot to offer him some close-range gameplay, and I like that he's so polarizing (long or short range) compared to Kinessa (long or mid-range).  Flare is incredibly powerful, and I would argue almost *too* powerful-- I don't mean that this needs to be slapped hard, but definitely monitored.  They say "large radius" in his skill description, but from some light testing it looks like it's a near-100 unit radius.  I run Flare XL 3 (increases the reveal range significantly) and Overburn 3 (increases flare duration by 3s), so I'm covering a pretty massive swath of a map for about 6 seconds-- that's basically Cassie's ult without the CC/speed boost with a pretty short downtime.

I thought I'd be a little more leery of toggle stealth, but it actually works great.  I've compared Strix a lot to some Warframe friends as being like a MOBA version of Ivara, and when I say this, I mean it in the most complimentary fashion that I can possibly achieve.  Ivara is one of my favorite Warframes as her gameplay pushes for a methodical, strategy-driven focus, stealthing at opportune times, and playing to enemy awareness.

As I said earlier in regards to Skye and her sustain cards, Strix has a card, Escape Plan.  If you aren't familiar with it, if Strix is at 65% or lower health, Escape Plan will heal Strix for 100/200/300/400.  As a burst heal sustain, this is great, and arguably as good as a maxed out Abyss Walker and close to the potential of other non-legendary sustain cards for Flanks.  I really hope the team considers giving HV a rework to be closer to this; the current state of Healing Vapors makes it take too long for too little effect.  But, again, balance, and changing too much in too short of time, etc., etc. -- I can still hope, though!

And in case you didn't know, there's another one on the horizon:  PALADINS STRIKE!  A 5v5 actual MOBA-style Paladins game for Android/iOS.  The game has me excited, and I've signed up for the alpha.  I have some concerns and criticisms about the decisions the team has made for the game, however, and I'll highlight that in my next post.

edit: Made a few tweaks for clarity, going through and highlighting/emphasizing certain words.  Also forgot:

Why did I say "Samurai Ash" instead of "Ronin Ash?"  Because ... really, there's nothing about this incarnation of Ash that makes her a ronin.  She's wearing full armor and helmet, discussing honor very heavily, and carrying a flag that would signify she's actually serving a feudal lord/house, rather than being honorless.  I was kind of bummed that the only Ash/Skye interaction we got was a one-way "poison bad!!" thing from Ash that is just basically the same thing as her default voice pack.

[rigelmejo]

last night i started watching anti-theft league solely because avenuex recommended it, and her tastes tend to coincide with what i like in a show (if previous shows mean anything)

and i looked up english subs but since i was on my phone, or who knows why, there were no eng subs. and i watched 17 minutes with just chinese subs before i had to go to sleep cause it was late, i had work the next day.

anyway. im still gonna look up actual english subs later, because AHHH especially in DETECTIVE/CASE TYPE PLOTS it’s kind of IMPERATIVE you catch the details. 

but i am happy to say i did watch for 17 minutes, and i did comprehend the gist of whats going on. im sure part of that is because when it’s film like in a drama, there’s all the context of the peoples movements and actions and expressions and acting to guess whats going on even when you don’t understand the words. because - word wise, in the subtitles i mostly only understood action phrases and words i already knew. and the subtitles went by so fast, i didn’t have much time to look at and contemplate new words. 

(although, i think if i watched the lost tomb on viki on learn mode, i could probably pick up a LOT of new words with the subtitles since you can click on them and get a definition). also, with my zhongwen chrome add on, i should see if on viki if i use chinese subtitles, if the add-on will give me definitions of those too even if i’m not using ‘learn mode’ (since on ‘learn mode’ i noticed both the website AND my zhongwen add-on were giving definitions).

to summarize: i’m pretty excited. i watched 17 minutes of a drama i’d never seen before, a drama i have no prior knowledge of the plot of, and i managed to follow the storyline. i managed to do that. 4 months of study, going from understanding nothing except ‘me/you,’ to this. when i started watching guardian i did not expect i would be able to watch a show and follow the plot without english subtitles this year.

(i would love to watch guardian again, once i’ve got more language skills).

anyway, since the whole ultimate goal is reading, i still have a long way to go. but i am making decent chunks of progress, and its making me really really happy.  

---

as a side note: i am still SO floored my chinese progress has gone this speed, in comparison to my japanese progress. japanese took me 1.5 YEARS to get to the reading level i have in chinese NOW, in 4 months. in fact, my chinese is probably significantly farther along - i can skim a novel in chinese to find a part of it, i can follow along somewhat with a drama without english subs. in japanese, after 1.5 years, i could read simple tweets, follow short comics, and i can pick out a few words in japanese subtitles (so what my chinese was at last month-ish, or the month before, months 2-3).

i don’t know WHY my chinese is progressing much faster. it could boil down to me having a much better idea of how i study efficiently now, it could be that all the chinese dramas actually help, it could be that chinese being an easier language for an english speaker to learn is genuinely significant. i think, personally, a significant reason is that i am just challenging myself. diving into native material is incredibly brain-hurting, and difficult, and it feels like a struggle to wade through anything. but i think genuinely, for me, i make the most progress when i force myself to do it. because my brain likes to learn by solving puzzles - and it does it without me thinking conciously about it (it just concentrates really hard and feels like its being WORKED HARD). so when i do make myself watch chinese youtube videos totally in chinese - my brain fights to figure out whats going on, and learns from it. when i keep forcing myself to wade through chinese novels, each time trying to understand more - its slowly figuring out HOW to understand more. its making progress. it is a... harsh way to learn though. my instincts would prefer me to read over things i have already read, and look at word lists over and over, until i feel comfortable and it feels easy.

but i know myself, and i know my brain CAN learn way faster than that. it also DOES learn faster, if it just gets a little exposure to something new, then dives in and struggles and sees those slightly-familiar words/concepts as support. then it remembers them, finally, because those words are helping it and necessary. they aren’t a good thing to learn ‘in theory’, but instead they become something vital to make my brain’s job easier.

a month ago i tried to read MDZS in pleco, and every time i hit a grammar point i struggled - even though i’d just read thru a grammar book. but all the grammar points were new to me, so it wasn’t until i was struggling that my brain started actually trying to properly remember them. also, in MDZS i kept running into ‘time’ words like ‘back then/the story/its said/later on’ and literary words like ‘however/but/in comparison/also’ and i could not figure them out cause they were all ABSTRACT words i kept running into, that were definitely tied into grammar.

this month, those words are a lot easier for me to understand when i come across them. ive just been doing reading, and now over time they’ve become more recognizable. also, the grammar points that prevented my understanding AT ALL of MDZS are becoming more familiar to me. so reading has been getting easier in literary novel type texts. 

i KNOW i wouldn’t have improved at all in these areas, unless i’d challenged myself and forced myself to struggle through a couple of pages of MDZS (then a couple of pages of guardian, then a couple of dao mu bi ji, then struggle through some subtitles, then the butterfly lovers, then silent reading, then guardian chapters again). 

i am still no where close to where i want to be. but the improvement so far is really exciting. i am just so floored, and so esctatic, that i’ve gotten farther in chinese than i did in japanese. in japanese, its a joke for me to try and read non-slice of life comics, and i want to read full on novels in chinese. so i’m glad im doing something right.

[rayxnkh3]

Final final thoughts

Wow, okay, so it has been a while since I have posted anything on this blog. Reasons being I beat the game a while ago and I kept forgetting or getting distracted from finishing this final post. I wanted to do a lot of smaller posts detailing every little event from the end of my last post until the end of the game, it is no longer looking like that is going to happen so I am going to quickly wrap up the last components of the game and swiftly get into my final final thoughts.

The Final World - Creepy, interesting, but overall sorta bland and rather dull. Due to its aesthetic and simple mechanics I got very bored with it rather quickly. I like the idea of a world being basically limbo or death (It’s a KH story so there isn’t a straight forward answer) but this one just seems sorta... meh..

The Cutscenes in between game play - Ranged from holy shit amazing (the massive keyblade attack) to ridiculous (donald laser). Overall every cutscene was gorgeous and filled with artistic wonder. Some of the characters did not hold up to their potential, examples being Axel being a terrible fighter and Kairi dying (Remember that rage? Yeah, it’s about this). Other times the characters had tons of heart and felt like either badasses or emotional powerhouses (i cried four times by the end of the game)

The Labyrinth - So having to go and fight every single new member of organization 13 seemed like a daunting task while it was being built up towards the end of the game and I was curious how they were going to pace them out over time. NOPE! Just throw them all together and have fun! While I understand why they did this, it was a rather large let down that such colorful characters get their 5 seconds in the death spotlight and then are gone.

Xehanort Fight(s) - Long, sometimes very repetitive, and overall pretty good. They could’ve cut out some chunks of it as the constant change in scenes got repetitive (they wouldn’t have if the mechanics significantly changed, but they didn’t) Overall not my favorite fight in the game, and certainly not my favorite final boss fight of any KH game.

Final Final Final Thoughts (I swear, I am going to ramble a lot and then I am done) - Soooooo KH3. I had a ton of fun playing this game. I have been a huge KH fan since the first trailers for KH1 were being released. My gamer tag is my nobody name and I have spent hundreds of hours discussing every minute detail about every game with some of my closest friends. So it’s pretty obvious I love KH.

That being said, this is my least favorite of the three main KH games. While it is clearly the most artistic and the most innovative when it comes to mechanics and levels, it falls short on one of the most important things about a KH (or Squeenix) game, the story.

Each individual level’s story was fun and engaging in some sort of way, but the overarcing story made little to no sense, went almost nowhere given the amount of time they spent on it, and had a very predicatable and unsatisfactory ending. The overarcing story feels very rushed and slapped together for the purposes of just ending Xehanort and Sora’s involvement within the world.

If they had spent more time either in between worlds, took large breaks between worlds, or spent a few more worlds worth of time on the story of Xehanort and Sora than I feel like they could’ve done such a better job. Most other KH stories gave their main story so much more time and effort and it really shows how little they put into it for this game.

For being the third main installment of this series I was really expecting the story to have some sort of massive final struggle and conclusion, but in the end it was the same rehash of the last game’s story with the exception of a different head (which we already knew was there). KH2 built up an entire organization of colorful people, a plan for what they were doing, and how we systematically brought down inch by inch their organization and plan. What did we do in KH3? Uhhh, took down these people in about one world’s worth to stop them from...Unleashing Kingdom Hearts? Again? I barely can even remember why Xehanort wanted to do any of the crap he did and that says a lot about how much time we were given understanding the antagonists motivation and plan.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! RAGE INCOMING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you have been reading my previous post you are probably ready for some rage. Well, here you go. THEY FUCKING DID NOTHING WITH KAIRI!!!! They spent so much time on attempting to make her a badass, they gave her a keyblade, they spent most of the game training her, she constantly babbled on about wanting to save Sora for once. Well, SHE DIDNT! All she did was show up, show her keyblade to the players, AND FUCKING DIE!!!!! Words can’t even express how much this angered me when I saw it happen. Technically I was upset and shocked when it first happened, but it was very quickly followed up with blood curdling rage about how they did NOTHING with her. I love having strong female characters in my stories, they don’t have to be physically strong, but they have to be more than just one dimensional - girl. Kairi’s only purpose was to motivate Sora to go do a thing, that is such a horrible waste of a character.

SO ANOTHER THING! Yes, they brought Kairi back at the end of the game, but they fucking KILLED SORA!?! SO, this is supposed to be a happy feelsy sort of game, right? It’s made by fucking DISNEY! If you give me two cute little kids who grow up together, hang out together, and clearly really really like each other, WHY DON’T THEY GET TO LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER!!!!! *chucks computer*

*deep breaths* Okay, I am done. *mumbles under breath* Fucking ridiculous....

Let’s on a positive note!

KH3 had some of the best combat, mechanics, and graphics that the series has ever seen. Most, if not all, the worlds were immensely enjoyable in one way or another. If you read all of my previous posts it becomes painfully obvious I am a big fan of this game, and I would recommend anyone who has played the previous KH games to play this one as well. Though, don’t get your hopes up too much for it and know that it feels significantly shorter than any of the other KH games. Nitpicks aside, I had fun, and at the end of the day that is the most important part of any game, having fun. Having a positive experience in some way and walking away feeling better for having played the game.

Level of Enjoyment: Still a massive KH fan and can’t wait to see what they come up with next.

*Side Note* If you got all of the way to this note and read all of my previous posts I just wanted to give you a massive thank you!!! Thank you for reading all of my dumb or nerdy rants about this game.

I am trying my hardest to become a game designer myself and hope that one day, you will be playing and enjoying my game. Feel free to critique it as intensely as I just critiqued KH3. Have a great life!!

[thrashermaxey]

21 Fantasy Hockey Rambles

Every Sunday, we'll share 21 Fantasy Rambles — formerly 20 Fantasy Thoughts — from our writers at DobberHockey. These thoughts are curated from the past week's ‘Daily Ramblings’.

Writers: Michael Clifford, Ian Gooding, Cam Robinson, and Dobber

  1. As you probably already know, perceptions of John Tavares to Islanders’ fans completely changed when he decided to fulfill his childhood dream and play for the Maple Leafs. Even though the jersey that Tavares wears has changed, his fantasy value hasn’t changed much.

For example, if you adjust the scoring inflation that many skaters are experiencing, Tavares’ place in the scoring race (in the top 25) is comparable to his place last season (in the top 20). JT is on pace for more goals and shots and better plus/minus, so the gains to his fantasy value are there. However, his power-play point total is down, which may be the result of a power-play unit that has struggled at times. Tavares has been a PPTOI leader for both the Islanders and Leafs, but he has averaged about 30 fewer seconds of power-play time this season. (mar1)

  2. As consistent a goal scorer as Mike Hoffman has been, this campaign is the first time he has reached 30 goals in spite of scoring at least 20 in his previous four seasons. I’m sure glad I didn’t trade him in my keeper league when the you-know-what hit the fan in Ottawa last season. I don’t make a habit out of trading players for pennies on the dollar, though. Even when my fellow owners like to tease me with those kinds of offers. (mar1)

  3. It’s pretty amazing Alex DeBrincat fell to the second round in his Draft year — he’s now up to 36 goals on the year. The shooting percentage is high (just under 20 percent) but he’s landing nearly three shots per game and looks every bit the productive forward he was expected to be. Maybe teams will stop drafting based on size. (feb28)

  4. At the risk of being overly simplistic, much of Mikael Granlund’s improvements in the fantasy game over the last three seasons can be attributed to three things: shooting more, power-play production, and playing with Mikko Koivu.

It’s easy to forget that just a few years ago, Granlund was the guy who wasn’t living up to expectations. He had just 31 goals through his first 240 career games, playing at a 45-point/82-game pace from 2013-2016, through his age-23 season. Following that season, he saw a move from center to the wing and his production has since grown significantly: 62 goals and 185 points in 221 games. He doubled his goal output in fewer games while raising his 82-game point pace to 69. It has been a huge turnaround for the top-10 pick from 2010. (feb28)

  5. Ryan Donato’s fantasy value has immediately improved with a move to Minnesota. Donato now has at least a point in all five games he has played for the Wild, with seven points over that span. Donato had averaged just 12:30 of ice time this season in Boston, which is a number that has jumped to over 15 minutes with the Wild.

To compare, Charlie Coyle, who was traded in exchange for Donato, has been held without a point in his four games as a Bruin. Dating back to his time with the Wild, Coyle has now been held without a point in his last 11 games. (mar3)

  6. Kevin Hayes isn’t really a goal scorer. It’s not to say he can’t score, but he’s never averaged 2.5 shots per game, has cracked 20 goals once, and he may not get there this year. Winnipeg doesn’t need him to score, though. They have a plethora of goal scorers. They need players who can generate conditions conducive to scoring, and players to find their goal scorers. Hayes can do exactly that. (feb26)

  7. So, Erik Gustafsson appears to be the real deal, eh? The 26-year-old has 17 points in his last 14 games and has been cruising at an unbelievable pace since late-November. His 39 points in 39 games stretching back to November 24th are the third most by a blueliner in the league. He trails only Brent Burns (47), and Mark Giordano (40).

Incredibly, his metrics aren’t that far off. Sure, it’s unlikely that he’ll be able to convert on 11 percent of his shots as he has this season – certainly not the 15.4 percent he’s clicked on during the last three months, but his IPP and even-strength shooting percentage are right where they should be.

He’s feasting on the power play with Hart candidate, Patty Kane, soon-to-be 40-goal man, Alex DeBrincat, Dylan Strome and Jonathan Toews. There aren’t too many better spots for an offensive defenseman to make hay. Additionally, the 26-year-old has been accruing his points in a manner that predicts continued success. Of his 45 points, 32 have been primary.

That leaves two questions: How do we value him moving forward, and what does this mean for the high-end blueline prospects that Chicago boasts in the pipeline? Follow the link for more … (feb27)

  8. In his Flyers’ debut on Friday, Cam Talbot stopped 30 of 33 shots he faced in earning a 6-3 win. That’s eight goalies that the Flyers have used this season, which is now an NHL record. Talbot was also playing his first game since February 9. Since his acquisition, it’s been a steady diet of Carter Hart and Brian Elliott. Talbot isn’t an ideal own, as Hart is expected to return shortly from day-to-day ankle injury. (mar2)

  9. Damon Severson is on pace for his first 40-point season. That 40-point season would come in the magical ‘fifth’ year, so there’s a bit of post-hype sleeper here. One note, if you’re in a league that counts plus-minus: Severson has never been a plus player, and his career total is minus-78 over those five seasons. (mar2)

  10. With two goals on Thursday, Travis Sanheim now has nine points over his last nine games. He’s also skating on the team’s top blue line pair with Ivan Provorov.

Scott Gordon is clearly showing confidence in the second-year D-man. Under Dave Hakstol, Sanheim averaged just over 16 minutes per game but he is up to an average of more than 21:00 per game since Gordon took over as head coach. Sanheim is owned in just 8 percent of Yahoo leagues, in case you’re wondering. Don’t assume that Sanheim will supplant Shayne Gostisbehere on the first-unit power play, yet Sanheim seems to be arriving as a bonafide NHL defenseman. (mar1)

  If you're still catching up on this past week's NHL Trade Deadline deals and their fantasy hockey implications, be sure to visit our tracker for a clear and comprehensive breakdown of each — links to the trades themselves, to player profiles, as well as to our discussion forums.

  11. Since arriving for his second tour of duty in Edmonton, Sam Gagner has scored three goals in eight games, with these three goals all within his last six games. If you’re Edmonton, what have you got to lose by sticking him on the first-unit power play, similar to the way he was used in Columbus two seasons ago?

  12. Canucks’ fans were happy to get something back – anything at all, even a bag of pucks – for Erik Gudbranson. So maybe it was a bonus that Tanner Pearson scored his first goal as a Canuck on Thursday, or at least it was one of the few bright spots for the Canucks. Pearson is getting his chance to play on the top line with Pettersson, so you could add him in a deeper league in the hopes that a new team will provide a short-term spark. I have to at least say that he’s looked okay so far. You can also check out the Pearson trade fantasy impact. (mar1)

  13. As is currently the case with Jake Gardiner (back), one injury to one of the Leafs’ Big Four of Gardiner/Morgan Rielly / Jake Muzzin / Travis Dermott on the blue line leads to the Leafs trotting out Ron Hainsey/ Nikita Zaitsev / Igor Ozhiganov on the right side of their defense. It shows the fragility of the blue line. If a center gets hurt, they can move William Nylander to the middle. If a winger gets hurt, they’re so deep they had Andreas Johnsson on the fourth line for big chunks of the year. If one of their left-shooting defensemen get hurt, well, you see the result. (feb28)

  14. Sami Vatanen was activated off IR and back in the lineup this week, though I’m not sure how much fantasy value there will be. Given that he’s a guy without high levels of peripheral stats, he’s reliant on point production. I don’t think there’ll be much of that for the next little while as the Devils struggle with numerous injuries. (feb28)

  15. Jimmy Vesey has six points in his last four games since joining the top line following Mats Zuccarello’s trade. I thought it would be Pavel Buchnevich being given the chance but it’s been Vesey on the top line, averaging over 20 minutes a night. I worry about lineups being shuffled eventually but Vesey is pretty close to a must-own right now. (feb28)

  16. Jeff Carter recorded two assists on Saturday. This isn’t usually big news, but Carter had been held without a point in his previous nine games and is still without a goal in his previous 12 games.

I was hoping that Carter would have been traded out of LA at the deadline to a better situation but rumor was that he was threatening to retire if he was traded. It’s still possible that Carter could rebound to some degree next season, but there are a ton of other better options at center if you are pushing to win this season.

When I talk about “a better situation”, I mean that only the Ducks have a lower goals-for total than the Kings this season. Also, the Kings’ win on Saturday was their first win in 11 games, so these are lean times in LA. (mar3)

  17. Since James Reimer is out of the lineup due to injury, Sam Montembeault made his NHL debut on Saturday. The rookie made 22 saves in an eventual 4-3 overtime loss to the Hurricanes. His AHL numbers (3.16 GAA, .901 SV%) aren’t serving as proof that he’s NHL ready yet, so keeper leaguers should exercise patience.

If the Panthers shop for another starting goalie in the offseason, then Montembeault will be in the AHL another season or two anyway. Having said that, I wouldn’t be surprised if the worn-down Roberto Luongo ‘retires’ on LTIR before his contract expires. (mar3)

  8. When David Pastrnak went down with the injury two weeks ago, many fantasy owners were concerned about Brad Marchand and Patrice Bergeron continuing their torrid paces. Marchand has 11 points in the nine games without his opposite winger. Bergeron has just eight. (feb27)

  19. Sasha Barkov is clicking right along this season at an 86-point pace and creates magic on a nightly basis. He’s another player who has started to shake the moniker of being injury prone. He’s hasn’t missed a game this year and only sat out three games last season. (no jinx). (feb27)

  20. There was a lot of hubbub on social media following the trade of Brandon Montour from Anaheim to Buffalo. The hubbub was largely around whether Montour’s poor 2018-19 season is a reflection of him, his team, his coach, or some combination of the three.

To be sure, Anaheim’s injuries have negatively affected almost everyone on that roster. All the same, Randy Carlyle was the coach for Montour’s entire NHL career to date. Laying this year at Carlyle’s feet while disregarding the previous two seasons is disingenuous at best.

Though he’ll have time to develop his defensive game, at this point, Montour is a much better offensive defenseman than a defensive one. His blue line defense has been subpar for his career and he doesn’t do a good job limiting shots from the dangerous areas

There’s a very real possibility that Montour performs similarly to new teammate Rasmus Ristolainen: passable offensively but poor defensively, and the offense doesn’t make up for the lack of defense. It’s a question, then, of whether Montour can flourish under a new coach on a new team. (feb26)

The gamble for Buffalo was sending prospect defenseman Brendan Guhle and the first-rounder for Montour. I’ve always liked Guhle’s ability at both ends and was seemingly coming into his own in the AHL the last year or so. He’ll get an immediate shot in the NHL with Anaheim, though that’s obviously a very poor situation. (feb26)

  21. Gustav Nyquist ’s fantasy fortunes hinge on his placement, and as far as the move to San Jose goes, this is likely a downgrade for him.

There are only two right-handed shots currently in the team’s top two lines, Joe Pavelski and Joonas Donskoi. It’s possible they go with three lefties on the second line, pushing Donskoi to the third line, but I think it makes more sense for Nyquist to replace Marcus Sorensen on Thornton’s line. We’ll see how that shakes out. Nyquist has moved to a better team but it’s not necessarily a better situation fantasy-wise. (feb26)

  Have a good week, folks!!

from All About Sports https://dobberhockey.com/hockey-home/21-fantasy-hockey-rambles/21-fantasy-hockey-rambles-7/

[careergrowthblog]

How not to misfire.. exploring the learning process with Henry VIII

Having written about lessons that mis-fire, I was asked to suggest what people should do instead. That’s a mighty big task because, what you might do depends on what exactly you want students to know and, in any specific example, there are countless possibilities.   However, given that a lot of my mis-fire examples are about gathering and processing declarative knowledge of various kinds, I am going to attempt to explore what might work in a particular knowledge context:  The Six Wives of Henry VIII.

Why this?  I’ve chosen a topic that I am not an expert in because, in thinking about how to teach about it, I wanted to explore what it would take for me to learn it myself.  It also happens to be the subject of one of the worst mis-fire lessons I’ve ever seen, many years ago.  In that lesson, students did a lot of moving around, treasure-hunt style, writing down factoids from ‘easy speak’ cards about each wife; the poverty of ambition was evidenced by the final task: share one fact you’ve learned about one of the wives. Some students couldn’t even do that without their notes after a whole hour.

I’ve known about Henry VIII’s Six Wives since I was at primary school.  I’ve heard my mum sharing the ‘Divorced, Beheaded, Died; Divorced, Beheaded,  Survived’ mantra a few times and that has stuck with me.  However I’ve never really studied this part of history or committed the effort and time needed to properly learn who the wives were, the circumstances of each marriage beginning and ending and the implications for English history.  On a recent family trip to Sudeley Castle in the Cotswolds, we saw where Catherine Parr, Henry’s last wife, is entombed and were looking at various paintings of Henry and family.  It struck me that, even though I’ve seen similar artefacts (“sources”) on visits to Hampton Court and the Tower of London,  I still didn’t really understand them. Who was who? What was the significance of all the religious references?  How did Elizabeth I, Edward and Mary all fit.  I used to teach at King Edward VI Grammar School, founded in 1551 but I didn’t really know how Edward fitted into the Henry/Elizabeth story.  Despite my exposure to all this history, I had still failed to form a coherent schema that I could recall and use.

By fluke, I found a short booklet by Angela Royston at home  – which gave me the idea to study ‘the Wives’ properly to see what it takes.  I’m now brimful with ‘Wives’ knowledge!

On first reading of the book, the challenge of reading as a non-expert was evident.  There are lots of layers of detail and I found it difficult to take in all in one go.   I found I needed to chunk it up, focusing on one wife at a time, checking back and forth continually to cross-reference dates and sequences of events .  Which details matter?  You can learn that Jane Seymour was the fifth child of Sir John Seymour but is that worth remembering?   So, the first step was to decide which knowledge I needed:

Names: Obvious but actually useful because of the potential confusion:  Three Catherines, two Annes, one Jane: Catherine, Anne, Jane, Anne, Catherine, Catherine. Catherine of Aragon, Catherine Howard, Catherine Parr with Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves after the first Catherine.

Dates:  Dates provide the framework, the schema for the story to hang from.  The short length of the marriages is striking.

Where they came from: this seems important if we want to explore political issues

How and why the marriages ended:   this is a core part of the story but we need a bit more than  ‘Divorced, Beheaded, Died; Divorced, Beheaded,  Survived’

Specific Details about each wife that give them an identity beyond their name and manner of death.  They are individuals with a life history and a character. It helps to understand and remember the story if the characters have an identity beyond names and dates. The booklet provides some characterisations that help to do this.

Once I had decided the key elements to focus on I re-read the book and tried to consciously assimilate all of those facts, engaging in some mental rehearsal.  Then I made some timeline diagrams from memory:

This is a generative process:  without looking at my notes, I was exploring my newly formed schema to check its accuracy and, in so-doing, I was strengthening my memory of facts and connections.  Crucially, after my first draft, I had the book to check against, to make sure I was getting it right.  I had some gaps and errors but I could evaluate my knowledge as part of the retrieval process and correct it, ensuring future recall is more complete and accurate.

There are lots of organising schema at hand here:

The big picture time line: When did Henry VIII live?

Where did Henry live in relation to Elizabeth and the 15th – 17thCentury?

The order of the wives and how long each one was his wife.

The Church-State relationship with wider political issues around England, Germany and Spain.

So, the factual recall has also helped me to explore deeper themes and details of sub-plots in the overall narrative.  I’ve had to explore my understanding of some key concepts:

Monarchy: Kings; heirs; succession; the court.

Marriage and Divorce; annulment

Church and State.

Catholic Church:  The Pope; Rome; Spain

Protestant Church:  Origins. Geography.

After the timelines, I assembled the table of information below from memory as far as possible, collating the information I had sought out from the book. It’s clearly a subset of the information but it captures the main things I feel I need to remember to have a handle on the events and narratives.

I now have a reasonably secure schema to test myself on and from time to time in recent days I have been undertaking some mental elaborative-interrogative questioning. Who was who? In which order? How did they die? Why did this happen? Where did the heirs Mary, Elizabeth and Edward fit into the story: Who were their mothers? When did they reign? It’s depressing how quickly details slip and need to be bolstered – but the key schema are now pretty secure.

Finally, I can turn to my self-set source analysis question… Now I have some knowledge, I can look at this painting and talk about who is who and why they are portrayed the way they are:

Mary (Catholic, bringing war), Edward (son and heir), Elizabeth (bringing ‘peace and plenty’). Painted by a protestant; a representation of their perspective. 

Implications for Teaching and Learning:

My observations about my learning process with implications for teaching are as follows:

I valued the illustrated text.  It was readable and contained more information than I needed.  However this richness gave the information context.  The summary table I produced makes sense because I know about what lies beyond it; I know there’s more to know.

I don’t think I could have assembled the basic information as effectively by being told it all, making notes, because I needed to go back and forth in my own way to make connections myself.

At the same time, a teacher’s explanation would have been useful to help me select the important knowledge.  Basically I have guessed; I’m sure I’ve made novice errors.  There are still lots of things I don’t feel sure of and a teacher’s expert exposition of the narrative supported by the text would have helped to build confidence in some knowledge and make the assimilation quicker and more robust. I’ve wasted a lot of time feeling my way.

Having made the timelines and table, I’ve needed multiple rounds of generative recall to make sure I’ve learned it.  Making the table was the beginning not the end.  I’m 53 with a tendency to have sieve-like memory for names but I don’t think students can be assumed to be that much better.  I’ve used a lot of  self-quizzing and elaborative interrogation; I’ve made mental lists; I’ve rehearsed explanations. Significantly I have had the resources and knowledge of the learning tools needed to check my own knowledge.  I have not been relying on scrappy notes in an exercise book.

For sure, as I’ve felt more secure in some facts, I’ve been more ready to go further into the wider reaches of the narrative.  I get who Anne Boleyn is; I understand why Henry divorced Catherine of Aragon and had Catherine Howard beheaded.  I’m never going to confuse Catherine Howard and Parr again; I know them as different people now; I don’t need to remember that the Catherines came in alphabetical order.  I get how Edward, then Mary, then Elizabeth come to the throne and how Mary’s upbringing as a Catholic, loyal to her mother Catherine, wanted to return England to Catholicism whilst Edward and Elizabeth were aligned to Protestantism.  It makes sense now.

Now I know more, I’ve got a ton of questions.  I’m more curious than ever. I want to know more about Thomas Cromwell, about the transition to the Church of England, about what was going on in Spain, about ‘childbed fever’ and what this actually was.  I also now have questions about the bias in the original text. When the author describes Catherine of Aragon as ‘pious’ and Catherine Howard as ‘flirtatious’, I wonder what the basis for that is – and I’m getting into a different arena of historical analysis, evaluating sources for bias and veracity,  because my knowledge base will allow me to.

A set of lessons and study tasks that allowed me to reach this point might have included:

Reading the text in class, guided by teacher input and explanatory guidance and probing questioning to check for understanding all couched within a good question about the importance of the wives in the history of Tudor England and beyond.

A timeline task, preferably on a pre-made grid of some kind.  (To be honest, when making the timelines above, it was a massive distraction faffing about with the text box and table formatting).  This would be done by writing down a rough version based on what I know then checking back to fill in gaps and then doing it again better, more neatly.

A paired Q and A task.  With a partner it would have been good to do some peer-assessed elaborative interrogative questioning.  Person A, armed with the book, would ask questions to Person B:  Who was….? Why did….? What was the reason for……?  They would be consolidating their own knowledge whilst asking the questions, using the book to verify the answers. Then they’d swap.  Then write it all down. Then check back against the table of key facts.

A week or so later, a pre-planned task to repeat the table or timeline or to write an explanatory paragraph about each wife, without notes, would have made me learn it, rehearse it.

Then a set of source evaluation questions, using the knowledge secured to explore various paintings or letters from the time.

Perhaps the requirement to present an essay outline to the class explaining the key narrative prior to actually writing the essay.

I don’t think these things would have been effective or time-efficient:  role-play, experts and envoys, treasure-hunts, straight lecture, reading and re-reading only, making a snakes and ladders game with the wives as the pieces, turning the wives into Little Miss characters, making a poster or cartoon storyboard focusing on drawing the people or cutting out images from a worksheet, writing an empathetic account imagining being Anne Boleyn writing to Henry.

However, I do think some students could easily teach themselves this material in the way I have and that, in some circumstances, that could be harnessed to push further and deeper at a greater rate than exclusive teacher-led teaching can achieve, provided that the resources are good and readily available and the study skills are secure.

Apologies to History teachers if I’ve committed some disciplinary atrocities here.. but let me know your thoughts!

Thanks to Angela Royston for your excellent booklet in the Pitkin Biographical Series.

How not to misfire.. exploring the learning process with Henry VIII published first on https://medium.com/@KDUUniversityCollege

[flauntpage]

Sixers Draft Prospects: Michael Porter Jr., Lonnie Walker, Grayson Allen

I know you’re dying for Bryan Colangelo news, or more Eagles vs. Donald Trump content, but let’s take a quick break to look at a few more Sixers draft prospects.

This is part three of a series that I’ll keep doing until I no longer feel like it. We’re going three players at a time, and started on Monday with Mikal Bridges, Miles Bridges, and Jevon Carter. Tuesday I touched on Wendell Carter Jr., Trae Young, and Collin Sexton.

Today we’re gonna take a look at Michael Porter Jr., Lonnie Walker, and Grayson Allen, and that’s the bottom line, because Stone Cold said so. 

Michael Porter, Jr. (Mizzou)

There’s always some guy who enters the draft with injury concerns, and this year it’s the 6’10”, 210 pound Missouri combo forward.

Porter played just 3 games during a freshman season that was almost entirely wiped out due to spinal surgery. In fancy medical terms, he needed a “microdiscectomy of the the L3-L4 spinal discs.” In layman’s terms, he was suffering from herniated discs in his back, went under the knife, and missed the majority of the year.

Drafting a guy with injury history might be a non-starter for Sixer fans who are weary from the Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons situations, but look at how those guys turned out after getting healthy. There’s an element of risk involved, certainly, but the upside is there, and Porter was seen as a potential lottery pick coming out of high school.

For starters, he’s just got a wonderful athletic profile, a tall and fluid player who strides in transition and just makes a lot of things look really smooth. We obviously didn’t get much film from his short stint at Mizzou, but he looked like a future pro at the 2016 FIBA Americas U18 championship, where he played alongside Markelle Fultz, Mo Bamba, Jarrett Allen, and others:

That was two years ago.

And the competition wasn’t amazing, but you see some Kevin Durant in him, don’t you? He’s got smooth mechanics (maybe a bit slow and deliberate) and a high release that should let him shoot over pretty much anything at the next level. He glides around the court and I could easily see him getting a bunch of transition opportunities running the floor with Simmons and others.The first minute of that video is basically all transition offense before he starts knocking down three pointers.

Similar to Durant, one knock seems to be his overall strength. Defensively, I don’t know how he’d match up in the post against a bigger power forward with more meat on the bones. He’s got a monstrous wing span and sort of engulfs smaller players, but he doesn’t slide his feet at an elite level and sometimes is a bit slow to rotate or recognize what’s going on in that half of the court. That said, there’s plenty of room to grow, and he should be able to guard most NBA twos and threes relatively well.

Because of the injury, Porter lands all over the place on mock drafts. I’ve seen him listed as high as four or five in some mocks, while Adrian Wojnarowski thinks he’ll fall out of the top-10 entirely:

Woj said he doesn’t think Michael Porter Jr will be a top 10 Pick. You may roll your eyes but think about how well connected Woj is. He said he expected Fizdale to be a strong candidate for the Knicks the day after Hornacek was fired.

— Daniel (@DanielM2k2020) June 4, 2018

For what it’s worth, Porter told media at the combine that he felt like he was the best player in the draft. There’s no shortage of confidence there, and if he was fully healthy throughout the year you’d probably see him in the conversation at #2 along with Luka Doncic and Marvin Bagley, assuming Deandre Ayton is a lock to go to the Suns with the first pick.

There obviously isn’t a lot of college game film to look at, but he came back towards the end of the year to play in the SEC and NCAA tournaments. He didn’t shoot the ball particularly well in the losses to FSU and Georgia, but you see the occasional flashes of brilliance:

If he falls to #10, it’s going to be hard to pass him up.

Lonnie Walker IV (Miami)

Lonnie hails from the ALMIGHTY Berks County and is a Reading High School product. Reading is a good school, but not as good as Boyertown, in my opinion.

The 6’4″ shooting guard will reportedly work out for the Sixers on Monday:

Former Miami guard Lonnie Walker (@lonniewalker_4) will participate in a group workout with the Philadelphia 76ers on Monday, June 11, league sources told The Athletic.

— Michael Scotto (@MikeAScotto) June 6, 2018

Scotto says Miles Bridges will also take part in that workout.

Walker is seen as a guy who likes to have the ball in his hands, an excellent spot-up shooter who can also explode to the basket and finish through contact. He’s got good body control, not dissimilar to the way that Alabama’s Collin Sexton attacks the rim. He’s also got a quick release, not at a Trae Young level, but he’ll get the ball up and out with relatively ease and smoothness.

In these clips, you’ll see him curl off screens, square up, and fire:

He’s a 2-guard but did play a bit of point at Miami, so you can put him in the pick and roll and work off of that. That’s not something the Sixers did a lot of with two non-shooting point guards last season, preferring to run JJ Redick in dribble hand-off and off-ball designs instead.

Defensively, Walker does have the tools to defend different positions, hitting the scale just below 200 pounds and featuring a 6’10” wingspan. In the video above, you see the segment where he sometimes would leave his feet early or lose that first step and not be super competitive trying to body an opponent on a drive.

One of the other negatives with Walker is his offensive consistency.

He’d score in the single digits for a pair of games, then fluctuate into double digits and sometimes crest 20 points, but there were definitely some poor shooting nights during his Miami season, a year in which the Hurricanes went 22-10 and 11-7 in a competitive ACC.

You see the ups and downs in this chunk of his game log I clipped, where the parameters from left to right are minutes played, field goals, three pointers, and finally his total points on the far right:

Definitely some hot and cold there – 5 points, 16, 19, 12, 25, 23, 16. He had some clunky shooting games and needed a ton of shots to get his points against the better ACC teams. Look at those losses against Clemson and Duke in there, where he shot 12-33 overall. He wasn’t a guy who was always able to impose his will on the game.

I’ve seen some mocks sending Walker to Charlotte at 11. Others have him in the bottom end of the lottery, maybe 13 to the Clippers. If the Sixers have one of Mikal or Miles Bridges available at 10, or Michael Porter somehow continues to fall, I don’t think Walker will be in the equation, but they could do worse than a guy who can score the basketball at a high level when he’s on his game.

Grayson Allen (Duke)

He was in Philadelphia for a workout Wednesday, according to Keith Pompey.

You probably know about the disciplinary issues he had, the accusations of tripping opponents and the petulance he showed on the bench. He was a controversial player and a classic villain, so teams are gonna have to dive into the interview and determine where his head’s at.

But no one ever really talks about his skill as a basketball player, so let’s reroute in that direction.

Allen was a four-year player at Duke, a 6’4″ shooting guard who put up these numbers:

He had his best year as a sophomore, scoring 21.6 points per game on the strength of 46.6% shooting and a 41.7% mark from three. Those numbers dipped significantly as a junior, but came back up slightly during his senior year. He finished with 14.1 PPG on 43% shooting after four years in Durham.

And that’s really the first takeaway here; you’re getting a guy with experience. 99% of the guys projected to go in the top-ten are one-and-done players with a ton of upside but also plenty of question marks due to their small overall body of work. Allen won a national title as a freshman and played alongside the likes of Jayson Tatum and Brandon Ingram and against guys like Dennis Smith Jr. and Justin Jackson and Donovan Mitchell. There really isn’t going to be much of a curve for him; what you see is what you’re going to get. The floor and ceiling are pretty much known quantities.

The question is whether that’s good enough. Allen is a nice shooter and is sneaky athletic, but not elite in that department. He doesn’t look like he has the first step to beat NBA defenders and I don’t see him finishing consistently at the rim at the next level. You’d probably need to spring him with screens and off-ball movement to find open looks for him, and the Sixers already have enough guys on this squad who can’t really create their own shot. Robert Covington, Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot, Jerryd Bayless, and Justin Anderson all had that covered last year.

One of the things he does really well is stay consistent with his mechanics. He gets his feet set, squares up, and shows good balance as a perimeter shooter, which you see a lot of here:

Beyond that, he was pretty aggressive driving in the half court and also transition and drew a good chunk of fouls in the process.

Defensively, he’s capable, but not going to light the world on fire. Experts seem to think he can make up for his lack of tools on this end with effort, and he can definitely be a high-energy pest on a second unit. Problem is, he seemed to turn off completely at times, especially when put in the pick and roll, which is NBA bread and butter.

Some people wonder if Allen has already plateaued because of the ceiling he hit as a junior, but he had a strong combine and tested very well. He worked out for the Jazz, who pick at #21 overall and could use a second unit scorer. And that’s probably going to be his NBA role, an energy guy off the bench who isn’t going to blow the doors off, but he’ll knock down some open shots and hustle and become one of those guys who you love if he’s on your team, but you hate if he’s on the other team. Most mocks have Allen going late in the first round or in the top half of the second round, so while I think it would be premature to use the 26th overall pick on him, the Sixers could take a chance with #38 or #39.

For what it’s worth, Duke Vitale says this:

I agree. 6th or 7th guy. Valuable rotation guy that can play multiple spots. Steve he has a keen passion & a chip on his shoulder to prove that the naysayers r wrong / someone taking him around 20 in the @NBADraft will be rewarded .

— Dick Vitale (@DickieV) June 5, 2018

And listen, I hated JJ Redick in college. Most people did. And yet here he is, more than a decade later, playing well for the Sixers as one of the more respected guys around the league. If Allen evolves his maturity issues into that cliche of “Philly tough” behavior, he could certainly become a T.J. McConnell-esque fan-favorite. Say the right things, dive into the stands for a loose ball, ya know, that kind of stuff. It doesn’t take much.

I posed the question to Twitter to gauge the temperature of the fan base:

As a huge Duke fan not sure how he fits in today's NBA. Although athletic can he guard guys who he needs to? Can he get his shot off?Luke Kennard had a combine just like him last year and he hasn't impressed me in the NBA.

— Jawn Connors (@Joe_Connors81) June 7, 2018

He can shoot which is needed to eventually replace jj (if jj resigns)… read reports saying he is better at defense… depending on when they draft him wouldn’t hate it. If BC stays though doubt they draft him. They use late picks at draft and stash. Kinda his MO

— rob manoff (@manoffrm) June 7, 2018

Love. Will be a Marcus Smart type player. Good Defense. Hit some shots.

— alex armstrong (@ArmstrongAlex) June 7, 2018

Ted Cruz lookin headass. Don’t want him.

— Nick Carraway (@_Silence_Dogood) June 7, 2018

And, of course:

he’s not an NBA player, the stuff he did at Duke won’t work against elite athletes

— Philip Keidel (@PhilKeidel) June 7, 2018

  The post Sixers Draft Prospects: Michael Porter Jr., Lonnie Walker, Grayson Allen appeared first on Crossing Broad.

Sixers Draft Prospects: Michael Porter Jr., Lonnie Walker, Grayson Allen published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

[nightcorekingdom-blog]

Persona 4: The Animation

Persona 4's story is one of the most iconic narratives to have come out of the past decade or so of JRPGs. Aside from its storytelling quality, much of the game's popularity can be attributed to just how hard

Atlus

pushed the damn thing. The game has received several manga adaptations, spinoff games, an expanded re-release, stage plays, manga adaptations of the spinoff games, and of course anime. Persona 4: The Animation is one of the first of these to have come out and serves as the cornerstone to a lot of this “Persona 4 spinoff expanded universe” stuff. So six years and several dozen newer Persona stories later, does this early effort hold up? Or has it been upstaged by all those other attempts to extract more content out of the same story?

For anyone not in the know, Persona 4's story starts with MC-kun (given the chuuni-tastic official name of Yu Narukami for this version of events) moving to the rural town of Inaba. When a series of grisly murders start happening, Yu takes it upon himself to solve them. These events are definitely supernatural in nature—our heroes discover that an alternate dimension exists within their televisions and is probably being used to kill people. They also gain Personas, summonable Stand-like beings that represent their inner selves and aid them in combat. The adventures to follow will teach them about the value of human connection, as well as the importance of being honest about their own desires.

Right away, this anime runs into a few adaptive difficulties. The biggest is that the original game was structured like a visual novel, where you picked your activities every day over the course of about a year or so. You could max out around 20 characters' routes like that, meaning that there's potentially a lot of material to stuff into this 25-episode show. Worse, characters' stories weren't delivered all at once in episodic chunks, but intermixed with one another over the course of months of gameplay. Can you imagine a version of this anime where you got an early-route scene with one character, then another scene with someone else, then again with a third one, over and over again until all their stories culminated at once in episode 20? That's what playing the game is like, but it would have been intolerable as an anime series.

This adaptation comes up with a decent solution for this by placing most of its structural emphasis on the game's linear main story and working most of the minor social links into this material somehow. Afterwards, any remaining holes were patched up by original material, and some of it was actually pretty good! To me, this anime worked best when it was being comedically self-referential about the game and its mechanics. I was most engaged during the “summer break” episodes, where the production team had to figure out what to do with a month-long period of mostly unstructured free time for the player. They knocked out quite a few social links in quick succession by inventing an original framing story about the crazy min-maxing shenanigans that the player has to pull off in order to complete every route in the game. This is the tone that would eventually be adopted more fully in Persona 4 the Golden Animation, a later anime series that adapts the bonus material from the game's expanded re-release.

Otherwise, as an adaptation of Persona 4's main story, this anime was fairly dull. Neither the animation nor the direction are particularly impressive, and they don't even bother to adapt the big climatic fight scenes to not be obvious turn-based JRPG battles with the interactivity stripped away. The story parts are mostly just scenes from the game recreated in animation with middling production values. There are even a few moments when this show's version of events is noticeably inferior to the game's. For example, they insert a bunch of extra gay panic reactions into a part of the story that was originally a fairly serous account of someone questioning their sexuality. While some of these were present in the game, they arguably had a purpose (they were mostly limited to one character who may have had his own stuff going on), but in this version everyone partakes in this disgust, including the MC. It was to the game's credit that it didn't dictate the player's reactions much, and this is a deviation where doing so actually hurts the story significantly.

The only way I can see someone getting really into this version of the story is if they don't have access to the original game somehow. Considering how long ago Persona 4 (and it's re-release, Persona 4 The Golden) came out, there can't be many people interested in playing the game who haven't already given it a shot at this point. The game is the definitive version of events, while this anime amounts to a fairly basic cashgrab expansion into another medium. On that fairly basic level at least, Persona 4: The Animation isn't bad or even entirely lazy. Lots of people are still super invested in this story, which seems to have created enough demand for this show to get released again and again. It was fun to see the cast engaged in some new hijinks, even if I'm beyond done with sitting through that first week of introductory cutscenes for the umpteenth time. Watching it was also a nice reminder of why Persona 4 is so beloved – it's a relatable story about isolated teens confronting their problems, forming bonds with one another, and using their newfound confidence to make the world a better place. You get friends, cool clothes, and a personal combat demon! What could be better than that?

In terms of extras, this release is fairly comprehensive. It features the director's cut of the first episode, a series of shorts that were included with the final Japanese blu-ray volume, an informative legend on the mythology behind Izanami and Izanagi, and all of the Japanese episode commentaries. It includes both the sub and the dub, the latter of which is largely consistent with the game's English vocal track. The main difference is that the character Naoto (whose original voice goes uncredited) has been recast as Mary Elizabeth McGlynn. Otherwise, there's little difference.

[thesleepstudies]

Aerobed Twin, Full, Queen & King – Top Aerobed Picks Compared to Best Products Overall

Over the last few years, we reviewed over 110 air mattresses and about the dozen of them come from Aerobed.

We are aware that the brand has such of a long tradition that many people make have the misconception that Aerobed is a synonym for an air mattress, so let’s and clear that one up.

Aerobed is just one of the many brands of air mattresses - that’s why the analysis below will not only show you top picks from the brand but also compare them to the currently top-rated products of similar type & price range.

What you’ll see below are ratings in five quality categories, from air retention and comfort to value for money.

Aerobed Queen and Twin Classic high-rise air mattress

This Aerobed is the most popular among high-rises from the brand.

That’s probably the most versatile model in their portfolio. It’s fair to say that this is the staple product of the brand, so let’s compare it’s ratings to the top-rated air mattress overall - The SoundAsleep Dream Series.

Fact sheets of the two

Aerobed Queen

dimensions - 78 x 60 x 18 inches

max capacity - 450 LBS for one person and 600 for two

weight - 22.6 lbs

pump - electric

warranty - 1 year

SoundAsleep Dream Series

78 x 68 x 19 inches

max capacity - 600 LBS

weight - 19.4 lbs

pump - electric

warranty - 1 year

https://thesleepstudies.com/soundasleep-dream-series-air-mattress-review/

Ratings comparison

The carry bag and packing size

The carry bag included with this Aerobed features a drawstring and it’s made of nylon.

The deflation is manual but the mega valve does a pretty good job of letting all the air out and allowing you to pack the bed neatly.

According to our measurements, the dimensions of the packed Aerobed Queen Classic are approximately 16 x 12 x 12 inches.

Coiled construction

The construction of the chambers is so important for an air mattress that we would go as far as to say that it can make or break a product.

We emphasize that many times before in our reviews - inflatables that feature coils tend to outperform simple horizontal or vertical beams in terms of distributing weight.

This goes beyond comfort

It’s common sense… a stable, sturdy bed that doesn’t have a rickety, bouncy quality to it will give you a better night’s sleep.

But the importance of weight distribution goes beyond that.

A wobbly air mattress will not only be less comfortable but is more likely to develop leaks because both the inner and outer seams will take more toil and are more likely to give in to wear and tear.

The importance of coil number

Think about a classic mattress - you know that the higher number of coils, the better.

The Aerobed Classic features one of the highest numbers of oval air coils in the industry (32 for the Twin-size and 48 in the Queen). This is what allows it to perform well in terms of weight distribution and motion isolation.

Two-story design

Another important feature of this Aerobed is the design that practically consists of two separate inflatables mounted on top of each other.

Why is this important?

Because the bottom layer, let’s call it “the foundation” will do most of the heavy lifting and the upper story will take less “abuse.”

The physics of it

When placed on the floor, the air inside “reacts” to the temperature of the surface until they even out.

So if you have a one-story inflatable, you will feel those changes as they happen. They will manifest as short blitzes of temperature change.

With this Aerobed, most of these changes happen in the aforementioned foundation and the upper layer will see less temperature fluctuation.

Aerobed Queen and twin Classic low-rise air mattress

Judging by the number of reviews shared online, this Aerobed is their most popular low-rise air mattress.

Before we move on to the more detailed analysis, let’s do a side-by-side comparison of this Aerobed and the highest-rated air mattress in its type and price range.

Aerobed Classic versus SoundAsleep Camping Series

Aerobed twin Classic

size - 74 x 39 x 9 “

weight - 8.8 pounds

Aerobed Queen Classic

size - 78 x 6 x 6 “

weight 12.2 pounds

SoundAsleep Twin

size - 75 x 42 x 9 “

weight – 9 lbs

SoundAsleep Queen

78 x 60 x 9 “

14 lbs

Ratings comparison

A more detailed look at the Aerobed Classic

This model used to be among the top 10 rated products when we initially started reviewing air beds all those years ago. But since then, the landscape of the market has changed significantly and, for the consumer, that’s a good thing.

The new arrivals from companies like SoundAsleep shook things up in terms of technology and materials - the market is not dormant anymore.

We have to admit that we’re a bit of nostalgic nerds and we like the classic brands like Aerobed. They did make some changes some of their new your models in a place to see that, but the gap in ratings is currently substantial – we’re excited to see what the future holds.

Oval coils construction

If you’re just stumbled upon our website and you are s new reader, let us iterate the advantages of coiled construction.

When we compared the statistics from a pool of data that is used for our statistical rating model, the conclusion was pretty straightforward. We compared products off the same brands and made of similar material.

Air coils were the better performing option than beams in terms of structural stability in about 80% of cases. That’s probably the strongest suit of this Aerobed.

The Classic features one of the highest numbers of air coils in the industry - 28 for the Twin size and 42 in for the Queen.

Less sinking, less swaying

The oval coils do a much better job at distributing weight which makes for a much more comfortable sleeping surface.

To describe it simpler, models like this have less of a wobbly feeling, since the air coils act as stabilizers and minimize side movement and swaying.

With products like this, you also see much less sinking, and that’s a frequent issue in air beds of lower quality.

With these, the chambers will make a cocoon-like nest in the middle of the bed. For heavy sleepers, it can even cause the sides to elevate from the ground.

In Queen size it’s even more of a problem because an unstable top surface will have two sleepers rolling towards the middle of the bed and ending up using just about 60% of the surface and pushing against each other.

If you’re using the bed for camping in the cold, this has its pros and cons – it is less comfortable but the two sleepers will probably be warmer.

On the other hand, if the night is warm, you’re in for one sweaty and hot snooze.

You’re not likely to see those issues with the Aerobed Classic.

Bottom line - out of all the products from the established brands (that you could call veterans) the Classic was one of the beds that stood its ground in terms of comfort.

The most likely reason for that is the high number of coils paired with solid vinyl and well-crafted connections, seams and stitching.

The legacy of the mega “ air release” valve

Aerobed has been one of the most dominant names in the air bed arena for over two decades now.

Back in the day, the valve and the pump of the Aerobed were nothing short of groundbreaking - the fact that the design remains relevant to date speaks volumes.

To be specific - the main change that the “air release” valve introduced was the unparalleled speed of inflation and deflation.

That’s true even today and this Aerobed can take on pretty much any product out there in terms of the pump efficiency. We would give it full 5/5 stars in that quality aspect.

Value for money

if we are talking about the bank for your buck, the Classic belongs to the top 5% of camping air mattresses out of 45 we reviewed so far - you can see the full list of top 10 best camping your mattresses here - https://thesleepstudies.com/best-camping-air-mattress/

Motion and temperature isolation

The motion isolation quality aspect goes back to what we talked about above - the vertical and horizontal stability and the Classic performs pretty well here.

The temperature isolation and the other hand is a bit more intricate issue

Since this is a low-rise and there are barriers between the chambers the air inside moves more freely, which is sub-optimal for temperature isolation.

Here’s why

The beds that perform better in resisting temperature change usually have some type of system in place to minimize air movement. The reason for that are micro-currents of air that swirl around inside the inflatable.

Let us try to put to the science behind it in simple terms

Any closed environment (like the inside of your airbed) will distribute energy to “achieve” equilibrium.

What does “equilibrium mean exactly?

It simply means s that the cold and warm air will move around until the temperatures even out. Speaking in those terms, the inside of an inflatable is not just one chunk of air but it consists of many clusters of cold and warm air.

Up and down

The cold air has higher density and, on initial inflation, it will be closer to the bottom surface. Once you get on the bed, your body will dissipate heat making the air that’s closer to the top surface warmer. Soon, these micro-currents will start to move up and down to re-distribute the energy.

Real life

What this means in “real life” is that you might feel warm at one moment and suddenly feel a rush of cold air.

That’s the bottom line – these cold rushes are not about the quality of the material but the inner design separation of the chambers/beams.

The downsides of the pump system

The two main downsides of the otherwise well-thought-out pump are the absence of the auto shut-off safety system and the manual deflation.

The first one means that you inflate the bed to your desired firmness and then just shut the pump off. With some of the modern air beds, this is simplified by including presets which allow you to choose your firmness and just leave the pump do its job.

The second one means that the pump is not a two-way and if you want to deflate the bed, you just open the valve and squeeze the air out.

This is a more significant issue with smaller valves and not really a red light with this Aerobed since it features the mega valve that releases air in mere moments.

Volatility of the vinyl

According to our statistics, the Aerobed Classic has a somewhat higher percentile of people who report initial rubbery smell (compared to some of the higher-rated products in its price range).

One & two person sleep

The capacity of the Aerobed Classic will depend on whether you’re sleeping alone or with a partner. The maximum weight on Aerobed Twin Classic can take on is 300 pounds.

On the other hand, the weight limit of the Queen can be either 450 or 600 lbs, the former is for one sleeper and the letter is for two people (300 pounds per person).

FAQs about Aerobed the Classic low-rise

Is it the good option to use it with a platform base?

Although the low rises are more shape-adjustable, it would be hard to effectively use it on a platform. It will likely slip and move much more than a regular mattress would.

The confusion surrounding the capacity

With most air beds the fact sheet precisely lists the recommended weight.

For this Aerobed, however, it’s a bit trickier and we have received a few questions about it.

Most of those were about the capacity of the Queen-size since two numbers appear - 450 and 600 lbs.

Let’s clarify that

The two numbers listed as recommendations of the company are for one and two-person sleep.

One sleeper will exert more pressure onto a smaller area, which is why the recommended limit in this scenario is 450 lbs.

If two people are sleeping this Aerobed in Queen size, the weight will be more evenly distributed

Hence, the 2nd listed capacity is 600 pounds.

The risk of over-inflating

We did mention that there is no auto shutoff safety. But if you do leave the pump running it will only inflate the bed to certain firmness and then cease adding air.

Alternative inflation

In case you want to take this Aerobed camping, you might be wondering if there is an alternative way to inflate it.

To the best of our knowledge a leg or manual pump can work, as long does it comes without latches and includes nozzles that would be a good fit for a round opening of the valve.

Pairing it with a car outlet

The Aerobed pump used here is meant for power outlets and if you want to use it with the car outlet, you would need a converter/adapter.

That also goes for power outlets of voltage that’s not 110 V.

Side surfaces and cord storage

The pump is built-in and the only parts that stick out are the controls. The cord neatly packs into a dedicated space on the side of the bed.

This is a nice touch since it gets the cord out of the way. You would think that that’s all always the case but we’ve seen too many beds that don’t include a dedicated space for cord storage.

Aerobed Queen Comfort Anywhere

Among air mattresses that include a headboard, the Aerobed Opti Comfort (https://thesleepstudies.com/aerobed-opti-comfort-queen-air-mattress-with-headboard/) is our top pick, with the runner-up being the Serta Perfect Sleeper.

Fact sheets of the Aerobed and Serta Perfect Sleeper

Aerobed Comfort Anywhere

size - 78 x 60 x 18 inches

weight - 25.2 lbs

packed dimensions 22.1 x 9.4 x 14.6 inches

Serta Perfect Sleeper

size-90 x 18 x 58 inches (measured from the further most points)

actual sleeping surface - queen-size

weight - 24.2 lbs

The margin in ratings between the two is slight and the choice will come down to how much you want to spend.

The Aerobed has slightly higher ratings in comfort but it’s about 20% more expensive.

With the two beds being of similar quality, Serta Perfect Sleeper is the higher rated bed in “value for money.”

Another notable difference between the two are the dimensions

The Serta is longer but 2 inches narrower. It’s also 3.6 inches higher compared to the Aerobed.

The razor-thin margin means that choosing between the two airbeds will come down to your taste and preference.

Two-tier design

This one is pretty important because people who get an air mattress of this type are getting it for frequent use and expect long-term comfort.

Two-tier means that there are actually two separate inflatable parts; one goes on top of the other.

Why is this important?

If you read the humdrum about weight and temperature distribution, you probably found it to be too monotonous, boring even.

But this is where it comes in handy.

The two-tier structure makes for a more comfortable sleep because the bottom inflatable takes on the job of energy and heat distribution and the top layer is much better isolated.

The bottom tier does most of the “heavy lifting,” which makes the top tier less prone to temperature changes.

Sheet grip

A common concern among airbed owners is that the sheets they choose might not be good enough to tightly hold on to the site indentations (ribs).

Two-tier design with the deep side indentations found in this Aerobed makes this a non-issue.

The part that separates the two layers is deep enough to form a firm grip, especially if you’re using fitted sheets.

One thing to look out for - the height of the upper tier will make deep-pocketed sheets too loose and you’ll want to go with the lower sheet profile (shallow).

Aerobed King

Apart from the Luxury Collection, there is only Aerobed King model that we know of - it’s the stylish Elevated 14-inch.

It includes all the nifty add-ons seen in other products from the brand but has a bit more pizzazz to it.

It’s one of the best-looking air beds we know and we can only compare this Aerobed King to one product – the Best Choice with the bamboo topper and side skirt.

Below are the details and ratings of the Aerobed King and the Best Choice Bamboo.

Aerobed King

height - 14 inches

weight - 27.2 lbs

pump - electric, built-in, 120 V

Best Choice Bamboo

height - 19 inches

weight - 23.6 lbs

pump - built-in electric

Aerobed King Vs. Best Choice Bamboo - ratings comparison

Aerobed Full air mattress with quilted foam topper

The two Aerobed models we talked about above are not really your classic home air bed, so let’s take a look at one that does belong to the group.

This Aerobed in Full-size includes some nifty add-ons that 98% of inflatables do not.

First of all, it comes with an attached foam topper. Our statistics tell us that about 40% of new air mattress owners choose to get an extra topper to make their bed more comfortable - https://thesleepstudies.com/how-make-air-mattress-more-comfortable/.

With this Full-size Aerobed, there’s no need for that because it comes with a topper of its own.

The second thing that you only see in high-end air mattresses is the remote control.

We’ve seen these features other products, but it’s usually one or the other.

Air mattress that’s the closest match to this Aerobed is Lazery sleep - https://thesleepstudies.com/lazery-sleep-air-mattress/

Aerobed Full memory top

size - 74 x 54 x 20 inches

weight - 15 lbs

max capacity - not listed by the seller

Lazery sleep

sizes - comes in Twin (74 x 13 9 x 19 inches, weighs 14.8 LBS) and Queen (78 x 58 x 19 inches, weighs 19.8 LBS)

max capacity - 300 for the Twin and 600 LBS for the Queen size

You can see the ratings of the two compared below

Aerobed Twin One-Touch comfort

Aerobed tends to make air mattresses that stand out from the crowd, whether it’s the design or the way the pump works.

The One-Touch Comfort is probably the closest to a classic air mattress look.

That’s why we’ll compare it to the most popular airbed out there - the Dream Series.

Aerobed Twin One-Touch

sizing & weight-74 x 39 x 17 inches/16 LBS

pump - type-built-in, electric

Dream Series Twin

73 x 38 x 18 inches

weighs 13.8 LBS

Ratings comparison

Aerobed for kids

Aerobed also makes inflatable mattresses for kids. One of them belongs to the top 3 kid-size air mattresses.

It’s been locking horns with the Shrunks Tuckaire travel bed which you can see here - https://thesleepstudies.com/shrunks-tuckaire-toddler-travel-bed/

The Original Aerobed Queen

The Original Aerobed comes with a headboard and it’s an eye candy.

The headboard is flocked with the felt -like material

As far as appearance goes, it’s close to the look of a regular bed, especially the headboard with the bonded patterns.

The Woosh valve

The original Aerobed also includes the mega Whoosh valve that makes the deflation faster and easier.

Sheets for the Original Aerobed

As per the company, The Original Aerobed is a good fit for the standard queen-sized sheets. The two-story design is better at tightly holding the sheets in place. In that quality aspect, we place The Original Aerobed the top 4% of air mattresses.

Puncture and leak resistance

We have to admit that were not huge fans of seeing claims like “100% leak-proof.” We tested too many inflatable beds to take a claim like that at face value

We would say there is no such thing as 100% leak-resistance. No matter how good an air bed is, it can still be punctured or develop a leak.

That’s true for even the toughest and most durable and mattresses out there - you can see our top picks in the category of most durable, heavy-duty air mattresses here - https://thesleepstudies.com/heavy-duty-air-mattress-most-durable/

Aerobed Luxury Collection

The Aerobed Luxury Collection includes a range of products starting from single-size all the way up to an Aerobed King.

What’s different about the Luxury Collection are the innovative antimicrobial materials.

Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that it’s not the materials themselves but the antimicrobial treatment designed to protect the surface.

The technology used here is limited only to the Aerobed Luxury Collection and features a control wand and a built-in pump with 3 firmness pre-sets.

Deluxe Aerobed

One more high-end product coming from the brand is the Deluxe Aerobed.

The most notable difference of the Aerobed Deluxe is the surface. It’s 100% percent cotton (natural).

While the finish of the Deluxe Aerobed is cotton, the construction is heavy-duty PVC and the controls are based on their one-touch technology. The Deluxe series comes with all the neat stuff we already talked about - from the Whoosh valve to the carry bag.

Aerobed replacement pump

The Aerobed pump is unique in a few ways and we come to make specific recommendations about any other generic pumps that can work with an Aerobed.

The best we can do here is give you the information that Aerobed replacement pumps- http://www.coleman.com/aerobed-partsandaccessories/ are available on their website in the parts and accessories section.

Other Aerobed air mattresses - honorary mentions

In the table below, we’ll list a few products from Aerobed the didn’t make the least top choices in, along with their details

Aerobed warranty

The official Aerobed warranty is one year limited, starting from the date of purchase. The warranty covers any flaws in workmanship and materials and to claim it you would need the sales receipt or other form of proof.

If you’re getting your bed online, your purchase history with the retailer should be proof enough.

The good part about the Aerobed warranty is that drop-shippers, retail stores and dealers can’t change the original terms.

Claiming the warranty - authorization & returns

To claim your warranty, you’ll need a return authorization. To get it, contact the Coleman Company directly.

How it usually goes

You will be advised to include a pack with your information and the short description of why you’re returning the product along with the proof purchase. You then send the packages via FedEx Ground, Parcel Post or UPS. The package should be insured and sent to the Coleman return department in Wichita.

You will get the exact address from their customer service.

Where to buy an Aerobed air mattress?

Aerobed is widely available both for online and in-store purchase in chains like Costco and Walmart.

Availability of Aerobed at Costco, Walmart, Bed Bath & Beyond & Target

Both Costco and Walmart carry pretty much all Aerobed products that we’ve listed above and even some we haven’t. What we saw in our research is that some of the Aerobed air mattresses that are not available with other retailers can be found at Walmart.

A good example of that is one of the more popular Aerobed for camping - the All-Terrain Sports.

Aerobed at Bed Bath & Beyond

We can’t paint with a broad brush and the make general claims about the availability of Aerobed at Bed Bath and Beyond.

What we can share here is that at the time of the last update to this guide, models of Aerobed at Bed Bath and Beyond were somewhat scarce - more so than the range available at Costco and Walmart.

Aerobed history

The story of the original Aerobed brand dates back to 1992 when they patented a groundbreaking way for quicker inflation/deflation of air mattresses. Back then, it was hard to imagine a deflation takes only 15 seconds.

Aerobed since 2000

Following the release of the original Aerobed, the company improved on it by introducing the raised version in 2001. The goal was to get as close as possible to the feel of a regular bed. In 2002, Aerobed released what they described as an “improved model.”

The pump of this one was even faster (30%) and made their beds 20%, firmer.

In 2010, the company’s merged with Coleman and remains one of the leading brands to date.

Repairing an Aerobed

Reparation of an Aerobed is similar to that of an air mattress, but let’s reiterate here by going through the process of patching step-by-step.

1. Locate the leak

If the leak is substantial, locating it can be as simple as isolating yourself in a quiet room and simply listening for a hissing sound.

However, it won’t be at is easy is that most cases simply extend to be small and hard to find.

If the listening test doesn’t do the trick, make a solution of water and soap feel a spray bottle. If you already have a suspected area in mind spray dissolution over it and bubbles will appear at the leak.

2. Most common leak spots

In most cases, the source of the leak will be in the area surrounding the pump or at the seams.

A cautionary note

You might stumble upon some tips that advise extreme measures like submerging the whole Aerobed into water to locate a leak.If you do this, you’ll definitely pinpoint the source of air-loss but it you will probably ruin your mattress.

In other words - this might solve the problem but can cause a bigger one.

Here’s why

The inside of the bed will remain moist and probably turn into a breeding ground for mold and mildew. There is no reliable way that we know of to completely dry out an air mattress that’s been fully submerged in water.

Moving on…

3. Dry it

The next step will be to completely dry the moist area around the leak. The fastest way to do it is by using a blow dryer (the kind you would use on your hair).

4. Deflate and flatten

Completely deflate the bed and place it on a flat surface with the leak source in the middle. From that point on you have the options to use different types of sealants for the patching (glue, tape, patch fabric or combination of the three).

Sealants that are based on glue will be your safest bet for flocked surfaces, while tape and fabric will be the go-to solution for the vinyl parts.

5. If it doesn’t work

Patching vinyl is tricky and it’s hard to decide what kind of leak is more difficult to repair.

The issue of vinyl oils

If the leak is on the vinyl parts, the problem is the thin layer of oil the coats the vinyl.

It’s the only surface that gives it the shiny look.

If you use regular or even super-glue, these oils will react with the chemicals in the bond and the leak will probably re-occur.

That’s why specialized kits usually include a chemical that prevents the reaction and keep the bond stable.

Repairing the Aerobed valve

If the source of the leak is the valve, it gets even trickier.

In our opinion, it might not be worth it in the long run. You’re probably better off getting a new mattress.

Summary and a note about future updates

We’re constantly gathering new information and doing your best to stay on top of and quality changes that might happen with the air beds. Typically, we update the guides quarterly to make sure that the information presented is up-to-date and relevant.

We might deviate from the schedule if we notice and your “red lights.” These usually come in the form of a significant change in the user satisfaction ratings.

When this happens, it triggers an unscheduled update for one product only. Over the years, our database has grown to a mammoth-like size and continues to grow. With that growth, the reliability and accuracy get better.

The purpose of it all is to do the research so you don’t have to and minimize the guesswork involved in choosing an air mattress.

Our team currently has 6 members and the website is our full-time work, so if you have any questions or dilemmas feel free to share them in the comment section below.

You can expect us to respond within one day.

Stay smart,

The Sleep Studies Team

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