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nagisasstunningpersonality · 4 years

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The Character As A Tool: Why Your Fave Doesn't Get More Screentime

Please refer to this post

REMINDER THAT ALL VIEWS HERE ARE MERELY MY OWN OPINIONS

In truth, one of the most common complaints I see within this fandom is the treatment of side characters. Meaning, in short, a fair amount of the fandom are less connected to what’s going on with our main group of Nagisa, Karma, and Kayano, and instead relate to some of the less obvious choices. Now, there’s no problem with doing this. Hey, if you see something you like in a less important character, then absolutely go for it!

What We Do Know

I discovered for myself, whilst making my About Ass Class series posts, that absolutely some characters’ actual canon information is very dry. Matsui gives everyone a few bits here and there in both the Roll Call book and Graduation Album. If you’re lucky, there’s further points you can pick up just from watching/reading.

Now, and this I want to emphasise I’m stating as an opinion, Matsui actually gives us quite a lot to go from. Even if not every character is highly developed, there’s still a genuinely very solid starting block to go from with your own headcanon. Perhaps it can be argued that it’s not the reader’s job to supply that, but I’d counter that it’s actually kind of fun to not be fed every piece of information. Though more facts and a deeper dive into interpersonal relationships would be admittedly nice, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with us as a fandom coming up with those ideas on our own, using the pointers Matsui does give us as a starting point. Honestly it would take the fun out a little if there was too much information, and we’d have less possibilities to play with.

Why Certain Characters Exist

I’m sorry to tell you, but one of the first things you’re taught in any kind of writing or literature analysis class is that characters are not people, they’re tools. This may feel a little harsh to say, and I’m aware that many people get attached to characters and have genuine feelings towards them. And that is totally valid! Definitely not on the same scale, but I too enjoy when people have real emotions towards my OCs, so I get it.

(rest under cut)

To put it plainly: characters exist within a story as either a plot tool, or a message tool. A plot tool is someone who, as it sounds, exists to move the story along. Characters that need to exist in order for the story to happen as it does. Now, don’t get me wrong, you don’t need to have planned this out. You don’t need to specifically introduce Hara, for example, for the sole reason of her upping the stakes in the first Itona/Shiro arc. Characters existing for filler is still, in a way, a plot tool. It’s like… you set up a chess board. Sure, you might use the knight or the queen piece the most, but the pawns are still an important and useful piece, even if you don’t always utilize it for every move, or they don’t always stand out. Message tools are when a character doesn’t really do anything, but they help to assist in the message you want to send with your art/writing. There’s not so many examples of this in ass class, the best I can think of is either Yuuji or Sakura, who don’t do much at all but are beacons for what Matsui wants to say with them (which if you think about it is just ‘don’t do drugs kids’ and ‘stay in school’ :’)).

So free bit of writing advice for you: your character is your chisel. Once you’ve picked them up and started to work at carving out the story you want, then you can start adding all your fancy upgrades and personality points, which is what ultimately makes your character stronger. You grow attached to them when you’re done? Totally fair. Just… don’t go through this process the opposite way.

Without going too in depth with them right now, Nagisa Shiota is a plot tool. He is a plain easy to follow narrator whose observation skills intentionally mean the reader can see things clearly through his eyes. Where he loses relatability is when he displays his talent, but at that point he’s been so clearly introduced that it doesn’t matter as much, we can hear his voice. Him being more plain makes his talent more effective and shocking as it is. Karma Akabane is a plot tool. He exists so we have those somewhat comedic moments, and so we can have these big bad ass mental/physical fight moments. I actually think him not being the protagonist is something that makes Ass Class hugely stronger (and less cliché) as a series. Kayano Kaede is a plot tool. Admittedly, less so, but she has a lot of function as a back up to Nagisa, and then later is the catalyst for Korosensei’s backstory. The story starts to come to its climax due to her arc alone. As an aside I think a lot of criticism for Matsui isn’t that fair within the fandom, but I will openly say his treatment of her post reveal was not the best at all. He kind of lost control of what to do with her.

So, let’s talk about archetypes. I intend to write a whole meta about why Ass Class is predominantly written as a comedy series, but for now just take that statement as my opinion. Honestly, I do think Ass Class, with a few tweaks, could have worked with a bunch of unnamed characters. I’m instantly going to follow that up with: I’m very glad it didn’t. I love that it feels more like a large ensemble with a variety of characters. So instead of just plain filler, Matsui kind of makes good use of archetypes. You know, such as Takebayashi and Fuwa as otakus, Hazama as the dark occult girl etc. etc. All of this for comedic purpose, more than anything, which we really see in something like Koro Q which is more directly comedy. You might argue this is one dimensional, and I’d agree, but in this situation it’s achieving an effect. It’s genuinely better than having nothing. And honestly, they all do stuff. Some characters are far more effective and entertaining as a background character (i.e. Terasaka) than carrying a bunch of weight themselves.

Matsui Actually Does This Comparatively Well

Honestly, try and name another popular series in a classroom setting, with this many characters who all have individual personalities. Genuinely, the only one I can kind of think of is BNHA, and that’s not a fair comparison given the difference in story length. Comparatively to most series, Ass Class actually has really good side characters. If they were completely uncaringly written, nobody would stan them as hard. For the most part, I’d certainly argue everyone is memorable. Given that we’re juggling at least 30 people here (including teachers, Gakushuu etc.), I’d actually argue that’s kind of impressive.

And the thing is, Matsui does care. He cares enough to give everyone designs, hobbies, and personalities. A good portion of them have an entire chapter to themselves, although relative to the story as a whole they might not do so much (example: Kimura). Matsui could have been lazy with it, but he was not. I don’t want to invalidate anyone’s feelings with this, but I do argue here that those who think the opposite might be a little wrapped up in the character they stan. And I can totally understand that rightfully, you want the character you love to have more screen time. However, just because you happened to fall in love with them (figuratively I mean), doesn’t change the purpose they were originally created to fulfil.

It’s an unfair criticism that not giving every single person a huge arc makes Matsui a poor writer. Honestly, if everyone was equal without a few main characters getting a greater amount of the attention, the entire series would be a hot mess. It might be fun to reimagine the series that way, and go ahead in your own time, but as a series from start to finish, as a first time consumer, it would be genuinely very hard to follow. Not without changing the entire structure and many many plot points.

I do intend to write more about this too at a later point (because I will admittedly need to do more research), but in my opinion the biggest issue with Ass Class, and the cause behind the problems I have with it, is the genuine lack of time. It’s a relatively short story, compared to a lot of manga, and thus there isn’t the space to contain everyone’s story in deep way. I’m absolutely certain, had there been 50/100 chapters more, every character would have had a stand out chapter to themselves.

So thus I bring up the fun and stimulation that is headcanon.

The Issue with headcanons

(this point will go much quicker, I promise)

Ass class ended a looong time ago, let’s be fair. Whether you’re newer or older to the fandom, there’s still been quite a while since any kind of new content (Korotan D being the last official piece, Koro Q manga being the last anything, though I could be slightly wrong with that). That means, especially if you’ve cared about this series for a while, that we’ve considered the series to death.

Playing with headcanons is great! It’s fun! But, I do fear that especially when it comes to perhaps the more popular of the minor characters, a lot of us are getting wrapped up. It needs to be kept in mind that whilst these headcanons may have been around for a while, they are not directly correct to the source material. As a quick note, since I have seen people within the fandom getting kind of bothered over opposing opinions to the things they assume as canon. That’s not really anybody’s fault, but it does warrant saying, I think.

A Conclusion

Basically, loving a main character is great. Loving a more background character is great. You’re not a better or worse, more intelligent or more basic person for whoever your fave is. The point is, you see something you like in a character and you relate to them, or else just enjoy them. But as fun as that is, characters are tools. They exist for a specific purpose. Sometimes, that purpose doesn’t warrant them having a huge stand out character arc.

But hey, that’s totally okay because we’re fortunate enough to have such a community (arguably, I’d say a genuinely active one too) where we can dream that up ourselves. We can pretty much endlessly explore these possibilities. So, perhaps instead of negativity complaining about certain narrative issues we find (just putting this here: it’s fair to do this, but I don’t think it should be the FOCUS of conversation), we focus on driving that energy into creation. And there’s a lot to play with and create. And honestly, seeing HC posts and all sorts staring these more minor characters is great, and I’m pretty sure the majority would agree with me on that. I fully realise and accept that I have a platform here, and going forward I personally want to be a part of that. In a constructive way, rather than ‘deconstructing’ (yes, there’s a pretty big different as I see it).

(I realise that this last part comes off a bit call out post like, and I want to ensure that it is not intended to be that. I just have a general sense of some attitudes towards things floating around in a very generalised way right now)

#ass class meta #assassination classroom #ass class #ansatsu kyoushitsu

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cruddyborderlandstheories · 4 years

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this DLC has me FUCKED UP and i keep screaming

spoilers for Bounty of Blood under the cut, keep reading at ur own peril. Also some Guardian Takedown spoilers for anyone who hasn’t beat it yet

tl;dr: a comparison between something taken from BL2 and a thing taken from Bounty of Blood. more spoilery tl;dr below the cut.

also the siren thing is not spoilers so i’ll share it here for anyone curious, it’s just this: siren tattoos are blue but when lily absorbs eridium in 2, they turn pinkish/purple. just like how vaults do from bl1 to bl2. they’re white/blue in bl1, then purple-pink in bl2 (and tps), y’know, after Eridium begins erupting from the ground. just a neat little detail i noticed that im not entirely sure was intentional but im gonna believe it is.

tl;dr: Gythian Blood = Core and the Ruiner is of Eridian Origin even tho everyone in the DLC likes to say it was created with Jakobs’ bioengineering. disclaimer: idk if I’ve found every hidden ECHO so I may be missing a few things but I have done every side quest and took ample screenshots of all important dialogue in the DLC : )

“man i just sat here for like 15 minutes staring at my keyboard mentally comparing core and eridium like the dumb bitch i am.

it's not like we can do an actual comparison because we have no idea what the natural fauna of gehenna was like before jakobs came and mutated everything with core unlike pandora where we know what skags and rakk and shit were like BEFORE the eridium crust erupted.

altho!!! there's a neat comparison between joey ultraviolet and rose. like obviously he wasn't getting tattoos and was just doing lines of crushed up eridium but the point stands they both have glowy eyes and unique powers so i don't necessarily think this means rose is a siren just because she has magic powers especially when we know she got the whistling passed down to her from her grandmother.

especially because we've never seen a siren interact with core before. altho that leaves the question we have seen core tattoos now what are eridium tattoos like? actually rose's tattoos were on her right arm obviously she isn't a siren as we know them right now (I saw a post on reddit where people thought rose was a siren)

of course that brings up the point perhaps siren tattoos ARE eridium tattoos. but then we hear the general's log about how the devil riders were tattooing a man with core and blood so obviously they're not ‘naturally’ occurring unlike siren tattoos. so odds are they're probably not equivalents but something interesting i thought of while thinking about this is how well siren tattoos compare to the Vaults from borderlands 1 and borderlands 2″

anyway. this is all ive been thinking about. yes yes i know guardian takedown post but! >:( im still salty even tho this update has been lovely (outside of Blane not getting his correct damage scaling ‘till today......). so i’ll do that at my own damn pace. now let me elaborate so i can sleep at night lmao

Eridium

refinement produces slag, which weakens people and can mutate things

has mutating properties, mostly with imbuing elements into shit- possibly causes insanity

seems to be connected to another dimension, likely the one the Eridians are from

Core

has a secondary form of Infused Core

has mutating properties, mostly regarding a thing’s body and mind

apparently radioactive

there are some things i wanna note

1) People throughout the DLC say the Ruiner was created by the Jakobs corp (the company) thru bio-engineering but I’m 99% sure that’s not true. The paperwork seems to me like they found the egg somewhere on Gehenna and decided to roll and experiment with it like all corporations do when they find weird alien shit. so maybe they experimented with whatever was inside the egg, but I don’t think they actually created it entirely

“Excavated from [REDACTED] ... Local legends speaks of a [REDACTED]. This theory is not endorsed by our research personnel.

2) The Ruiner’s design reminds me a lot of the Warrior.

3) Core immediately reminded me of Gythian Blood from Guns Love and Tentacles and I don’t think that’s coincidence to have 2 back-to-back DLCs where the big bad is focused on green death juice. I think Gythian Blood and Core are of the same stuffs.

4) Therefore, I think the Ruiner is (mostly) of Eridian origin (if you haven’t already guessed).

This gives us an amazing look into how the Eridians actually create their beasts!!! And I’m so happy they showed us this.

(side note, Interitus Regina (the long name for Ruiner) literally means Destruction Queen and I think that’s beautiful <3)

i mean the idea that they plunge them from orbit to create an explosion similar to a nuke is fucking horrifying (but holy shit I love it so much ahhh it’s so cool!!!!)

the one side line from Oletta about how the company couldn’t control the Ruiner deffo makes me double down on this theory. I’m not entirely sure how Rose’s grandma knew about the whistling (I don’t think I’ve found every echo log in that area YET), but I would bet it was part of the testing given how many fuckin’ tape players they have throughout the facility. The Warrior was controlled by verbal commands via Jack, so it’s possible that the Ruiner was intended to be controlled similarly, but Jakobs intervention (or something like the way Rose hatched it) fucked it up.

now we know the Warrior was created to protect the Vault of the Destroyer (hmm.) so what the heck was the Ruiner created for? Ruiner is a name given to it by Jakobs/the people of Gehenna so we can’t really assume, but then again the monster names are pretty apt in this series even tho they probably technically shouldn’t be.

it was only an egg, so maybe it was another test of Core? A Vault Monster incubating until it was ready to protecc and attacc but was never hatched because the Eridians ‘sacrificed’ themselves before it could? (I’m still not convinced the Eridians are the good guys. Listen. LISTEN. The guardian takedown is something to think about, BUT it doesn’t disprove that theory and I’ll stand by it because I 100% trust the Overseer more than bitchpants mcgee over here who thinks he’s soooo special for no reason fuck you and your dumb ‘I did what the Watcher could not’ bull you haven’t done shit.) ok sorry im done he just angers me. stupid guardian man. your whip is stupid and you should feel bad. oh also I totally called us actually being Guardians thru Guardian Rank before the game came out aha yeah.

I definitely think Gythian was a test/use of Core from the Eridians. We see in Bounty of Blood that core seems to mutate more the physical (and occasionally mental) parts of people, like with the crew challenges u do for Juno with all the weird hybrid people and whatnot. Gythian had the whole ‘the heart still beats’ thing going on (which is definitely a physical mutation if i’ve ever seen one), plus the whole, you know, mind control and shit. Which is p similar to what the menta gnats can do when charged with Infused Core. And keep in mind in BLaT we see DAHL notes on what happens to test subjects when injected with Gythian Blood. They mutated physically and went insane.

What im saying is Sirens and Eridium and Elements are connected, so what does Core equal? body/mind sure but are there unique creatures for core (yes holy shit I’m not talking about h2o au for once and FINALLY they gave us a canon name for the green stuff!!!). If not, I’d love to see a Siren interact with Core to see what it does to them. seriously why hasn’t tannis interrupted us yet. horrible excuse for a science lover (kidding kidding, I love her). I’d also really love a fuller rundown on what the hell Rose’s powers were. Because the whistling thing seemed to just be her grandma’s thingie passed down to her from her mom

but the core stuff

her gun seems to be infused with it. So did her sword thing. I didn’t really get a good look at it i was too busy trying to see thru my blurry tears of LOVE for this DLC.

Strangely while her tattoos are (mostly) green I actually don’t know if they’re core infused bc look at this

n look back at hers. hers aren’t very lime.

anyway

her eyes

I’d love to know if the core gives her immediate future sight or just increased perception or reaction times. there’s a huge difference but she seemed to be able to shoot the gun outta the sheriff’s hand near immediately and it seems kinda implied its because of the core (or at least because her eyes are glowing green)

there’s a possibility she has some unique core powers/possibly implants because of her relations to the project in the first place, or as leader of the devil riders after looting the facility. it’s really hard to say without more info and like i said im not sure if i missed an ECHO or two or not regarding her backstory :(

Her hair is also green which I just noticed. Maybe she has core powers bc her grandmother got suuuuuuuuper irradiated/influenced working on project horizons and it passed down thru her n Rose’s mom, to Rose. Tannis does have a line about Sirens having unique hair colors and, if Sirens are linked to Eridium, perhaps those linked to Core also have unique hair color. Could also explain why only Rose seems to have those whistling powers. That said we don’t really see anyone else trying that whistling thing out afaik and idk if it was, like, a special ability or a certain tone/ditty or w h a t.

i know being vague with everything gives them more creative freedom to create amazing characters and scenarios, but dammit I want A N S W E R S.

All THAT said man I’m so glad magic is real in the borderlands universe. oh, sorry, “magic”. It’s magic. Science it, tannis, I dare you. either way, I win. Either it’s magic and H2O AU is canon, or it’s science and I finally get my goddamn answers. Hey gearbox can you make a book just explaining all the science and eridian stuff. please. I’d love you forever. please. pleaheheheheaaasseee it’s all i’ve ever wanted.

oh also can i just say, suuuper disappointed we didn’t learn anything about anshin. Really wish non-fan favorite corporations would get the spotlight/lore for once. Like, I like Jakobs as much as the next guy, and I get WHY they did it (can’t have a corporation looking too good!!!) but they now have 3 DLCs (Jakobs Cove, GLaT, and Bounty of Blood) and also a hefty chunk of the main game. Like... we all know Jakobs fuckin sucks, look at what they did on Pandora. I really just want info on a medical corporation 😭 I have to do everything my damn s e l f. but SERIOUSLY IMAGINE the possibilities that could come from a medical corp getting its hands on eridian tech. like, yeah obviously the weapons corps are gonna use it for weaponry and stuff BUT WOULDN’T THE MEDICAL CORPS MUTATING PEOPLE MAKE MORE SENSE??? ldfhgldfshg I have to do everything my damn self...

anyway all that aside, this is definitely by favorite borderlands dlc by a LONG shot. Nothing comes close. Ahhh the lore, the nuclear aspect, the a e s t h e t i c (seriously, have I mentioned how much I adore Trigun???), the art, the music, the cryoslinger, the fact I can bust out going beeEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAans like Ray Chase at any time and it will MAKE SENSE. I love all of it.

oh, also, Rose is totally not dead. C’mon, they couldn’t find her body. She pulled a Lilith. “Are you sure she didn’t just suffer a wound that LOOKS fatal, only for her to come back in a blockbuster sequel...?” is a line from mr Jones himself (the movie guy)

I just hope when she comes back she gets to meet Captain Scarlett. I’d love to watch their interactions plus pirates and or ninjas. That’s 2 DLC villains now that have vanished without a trace. And I like Captain Scarlett way more than Rose (seriously I spent the entire beginning of the DLC complaining about how her voice bothered me- I was so happy she was a villain, I was hoping that was the case).

oh yeah, reminder, the people of vestige were living next to highly radioactive egg for likely years. i feel really bad for them :(

also!!!

this made me smile

#im tired #good night #bl3 #borderlands #borderlands spoilers #spoilers #bl3 spoilers #borderlands 3 spoilers #bounty of blood #bounty of blood spoilers #dlc3 #dlc3 spoilers #dlc 3 #dlc 3 spoilers #i don't want to spoil anybody please lemme know if there's any tags i missed!!!!

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killmebutneverinsultme2 · 4 years

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Rules for mobile (Pinned Post)

The Code

Success. I’ve sufficiently pestered the wench to make me a blog, much to the cost of a certain behorned mischief god whose presence I must share. Follow the rules below, and there’ll be smooth sailin’, savvy?

This be an exceptionally selective blog. I was me mun’s first ever muse yonks back and I’ve pestered her into writing me again, BUT, she’s horribly pressed for time. Partners will likely be very few, else ones doubling up with Loki’s. Anyone is welcome to approach and enquire, but she and I will be leaning toward those either from me own universe or crossovers with which she’s highly familiar and characters in whom she’s especially interested. Ye have been warned.

Replies are like to be slow, up to a few weeks at most.

Partners must be 18+. Various themes of an adult nature may be found here. Sexual things will be tagged ‘#filthy pirate’ with whatever level/variety of sin I deem them. More details below.

Behave. There shall be no rudeness, no passive aggression, no hate, no censorship or generally being a twit. Do I make meself clear?

The Code - Extended (below the cut)

Hi, guys. I’m Pirate (oddly known as this long before I made Jack a tumblr). Here are my more detailed rules and guidelines for writing with me on this blog, though the absolute basics are at the top as, honestly, it’s never easy to remember everyone’s requirements.

Jack is a sideblog. If you’re being followed by a benevolentgodloki that means I’m following you back. I don’t need us to be mutuals (both following each other) for us to write together, but there is a greater chance of us having a partnership if we’re letting each other know we’re interested.

How I Roll

I note myself as ‘highly selective’. This isn’t to be an elitist bugger, it’s because we all only have a limited amount of time we can put in. I want to write what I enjoy with people I enjoy. I am married with two attention-seeking cats, two jobs, a slow-brewing intended writing career and a video game addiction.

Asks/Memes - I will usually answer these no matter who they are from but I may or may not turn them into a thread I intend to keep. Some memes are very much designed to be something that continues so context can be key. If you would like to know in advance whether I intend to answer and/or keep something, please do pop me a message and I will be kind and honest.

My Threads - While Jack’s blog is still exciting and new, I’m being a bit all over the place with who and what I reply to depending on which way Jack’s.. compass.. is pointing. I do have a rolling turn order that I adhere to (to the point that I can genuinely tell you who is next at any given moment) but it’s all piled in with Loki’s threads, meaning I can take a few weeks to get round everything. Every partner gets one of their threads answered within that ‘round’ and then I go round again. However, when I’m really into something/finding something easy to pop back, I treat myself to spamming certain threads or partners at my whim. I use rpthreadtracker.com to maintain what I have.

I will remind partners of threads that have not been replied to for more than three months. If I do not do this, I have either forgotten/lost it myself, I’m not too fussed about keeping it at that stage, or you were absent for a long period of time.

My Style - I will write in both past or present tense depending on partner preference. My default is past but I like either. Please kick me if I screw up and write the wrong one. I prefer using regular size font but I will make mine small on replies to people who use the smaller so that it looks neat. I will often match partners’ lengths and some formatting details e.g. bolding dialogue, but I struggle with doing novella-length posts for reasons below.

I have a bugbear to admit about role-play. What we call splicing. A good half of my partners write this way so I’m not about to tell everyone to stop but if you’re someone who does this, you will occasionally run into some frustrations when writing with me. ‘Splicing’ is when you retrospectively write dialogue or actions as having previously happened during your partner’s last post. These things are fine when they’re passive i.e. your character muttered them, thought them or you were writing what your character was doing at the time because that’s pretty much essential. The trouble comes usually when my characters talk a lot/ask rhetorical questions and partners choose to answer every single one despite the fact my character carried on talking. I know it’s an ass that I have talkative muses and you really want to respond to every point/get a word in, but putting words and actions into the past effectively godmods my muse into accepting they happened. If you feel your muse would have full-on interjected midway through their ramble, please ask me to edit my post/stop it at that point. Otherwise if you do prefer to splice, my muse will only respond to whatever it is your character did or said last in their post. This is one of the reasons I can’t write novella, because often there is only so much you can write before you’re stepping into the territory of changing what went before and not allowing your partner to do anything about it.

TL;DR don’t ever worry about your post being too short for me. If it’s one sentence long but it’s because something fast-paced is happening, I won’t be miffed.

Shipping! - no not that kind of ship, Jack. I love shipping. Ships all around. Let’s face it, romance can be one of the most exciting reasons we bother writing. I am open to a lot of ships for Jack, practically all of them. Yes, even that one. I will do downright nasty, toxic, horrible stuff, savvy? It’s fiction and Jack is a great indulgence for bad things happening to him as much as good. That said, of course don’t force something on him without prior agreement between us. Well, I mean, your muse can try and accost him and see what he does, just don’t expect him to definitely reciprocate. Jack and I are bi/pansexual. We’re open to everything. I will admit a heavy lean toward m/m but, that said, Jack is extremely fond of the ladies, more so than Loki. I am very into Sparrington especially.

Not Safe For Ye Olde Work

Sliding down from the above topic, I enjoy the occasional smutting. It is not a requirement from my partners. In fact, I’m warming very much to fading to black depending on the context/mood/if things feel a bit repetitive. I do feel a touch more comfortable with partners who don’t need that boundary but as I’ve recently figured ‘if it needs a cut, then it’s smut’ I know when to skip on.

Saucy material will go under cuts/Read More’s and be tagged as mentioned above with ‘filthy pirate’. Additional tags will be based on the citrus scale: ‘lime’ for general grabbing, ‘lemon’ for full on sexual content and ‘grapefruit’ if things get extra kinky. I will tag things such as ‘rape tw’ or ‘noncon tw’ or ‘dubcon tw’ where necessary. Please blacklist any or all of these at your leisure, or search them if you fancy :U I do NOT tag these as ‘ns.fw’ because tumblr just completely hides them from being searchable which is useless for my partners.

OC’s - Due to my time constraints I am extremely picky when it comes to OC’s. This is a good fandom for well-thought-out muses and I know firsthand how hard it is to make headway as an OC in the RP world. However, I also understand that for people like me, I want to dip in on this site to mostly play with the characters and worlds I’m really absorbed in and ship my weaselly black guts out. Some people have more time than others to really give your OCs the time and love they deserve. Unless I’ve played with you a long time and I really like the cut of your and your muse’s jib, it’s very unlikely I’ll bite. Apologies! The same goes for crossover muses from fandoms I’m unfamiliar with, but I will let you know if that’s the case.

Limits

Threads - I don’t have a strict limit on how many to have per person but please bear in mind that the more of these you have with me the longer it will take me to get to a particular one (unless I’m spamming it back and forth). This is more a mun/muse context how many I accept.

Exclusives/mains - I don’t do these although I may consider having a maximum of 3 or 4 of one muse depending on activity levels and to ensure plots don’t get mixed up or attention feel unfairly balanced.

Triggers/squicks - I don’t like body horror e.g. graphic detail of squishy bits having bad things happen to them. I’m writing a pirate so there’s absolutely allowed to be elements of torture/violence, just don’t stab him in the eye or chop bits off him. One torture-related thing sends me into a complete freakout which I’ll discuss with partners if we’re doing a thread of that ilk as needed. Kink-wise I’m not into mpreg, A/B/O or infantilism or toilet things. Just ask me/Jack if you’re after something XD

Who I Am/What I Need From You

Being yourself is the most important thing and I promise I am not a scary person (usually). We’re only human and it’s natural that we’ll get along better with some rather than others. This is more to give you a gist of the sort of person I am and who I gel with best.

So I’m a shy hermit at the best of times. I’m trying to be better at engaging and enthusing with partners over our threads because I realise more than ever this does keep things alive and make for a more enjoyable experience. I’m not always great at it. I work best with people who are patient and don’t worry too much on what I think of them and their writing, with people who are happy to keep threads going for the longhaul rather than keep dropping everything before I’ve had the time to get to the next post, and most especially people who accept that fiction =/= reality. I do need a certain level of quality, which doesn’t always mean perfect grammar, but it must be coherent, fun and creative. I like a relaxed approach, sharing mutual enjoyment in silly fantasy world sandboxes as escapism from (and exploration of) this complicated world we live in.

If you managed to read all of this, have a drink (even if it’s water). You’re a diamond.

Pirate xxx

#rules #pinned post

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writer-and-artist27 · 5 years

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Don’t Leave Me

Note: Lang. I blame you for getting me on the Shinsō train. Because Shell Game 57 hurts. It really really hurts.

Fluff, ONWARDS. With the one song I never thought I’d be using again, since it was originally Kei and Tomoko’s song in my head. But, well, might as well let someone else into Tomoko’s darker side. :p And the lyrics for the other song piece mentioned here come from this site.

The connector and final nail in the “Another AU” pitfall Vy has fallen into! Everyone in UA and happy! Chronologically takes place after all my other Shinsō content.

Mentioning @langwrites, @wingbladeweaver1357, and @hylianhick here since your OCs are mentioned, and @chiefladylightyay since you enjoyed the first Shinsō stories. Also @fangoverdang since you liked the short stories that started all this and I’m glad we met up again. :) Oh, and @lovingempress? Here’s more fluff with Tomo for you~

Enjoy.

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

Before meeting Gekkō in UA, Shinsō thought he could go without friends. The path to becoming a Hero wasn’t easy, after all, and friends were just a bother back in General Studies. But these days, with a year in UA under his belt, he could never say that now.

Today too, was no different. He could’ve gone home early, but it was the first sign that stopped him.

Said first sign of anything interesting was the echo of music ringing through his ears. It took a second for him to realize it wasn’t coming from the school’s loudspeakers littered throughout the hallway ceilings. It sounded like it was a piano solo, but it wasn’t a song he recognized. Whether out of curiosity or boredom, Shinsō didn’t know, but he followed the sound of the music along, craning his neck a bit more in the hopes of finding the source.

Thankfully, it didn’t take too long. The sign hanging above the door designated the upcoming room as the “Music Room”, and considering the piano was louder…

Shinso put his hand on the door and quietly pulled it open.

He was not expecting to see Hoshino at a grand piano of all things.

With her eyes closed, she could’ve been a professional pianist with how her fingers flew across the keys. Her legs occasionally moved to press the pedals at the foot of the piano, and with the sound vibrating in the air, it created a scene he never really thought he’d see from her. Sure, Hoshino sang for him and Leonhart, and who knows how much else for Gekkō and Davy, but not play piano of all things while at school. There was no one else with her in the room, merely confirming his suspicion that the concert-level song was all her.

Just listening closer made the song stand out more. Like it was a declaration of war on something or someone. Or it was a declaration of protection and love towards one person.

Shinsō mentally decided he liked the second idea better. It was more fitting of Hoshino anyways.

Once the last key faded, Hoshino took a heaving breath. Her eyes opened too, although slow, and she blinked them. “Okay,” she muttered, and if not for Shinsō being in the same room as her, he knew he wouldn’t have heard her otherwise. “The song’s good. Now for the actual singing…”

Now was probably a better time than any to let her know he was there. Shinsō gently cleared his throat.

As expected, Hoshino jumped. The noise out of her mouth was something akin to an anime character, his best approximation of it being nothing but a loud “FWAH!” that made his eardrums curl in on themselves. Ow. If not for the volume, Shinsō probably would have agreed with Davy’s earlier declarations on how it was cute.

…Wait a second.

What?

Hoshino then swiveled her head around for some kind of answer before rounding on him, and her blue eyes widened. Pink proceeded to color her cheeks. “S-Shinsō-san! Um,” her gaze focused in on him, her voice lowering, “s-sorry about the voice. I-I wasn’t expecting you here.”

“I wasn’t expecting you here either, Hoshino,” he said coolly, hiding his previous thought by taking a look at the piano bench. Hoshino, petite as always, was only taking up half of the thing. Shinsō raised a finger to point at the empty space. “Think I could sit next to you?”

“Um,” Hoshino blinked, still blushing. “Sure? If you don’t mind me fidgeting.”

“It’s you, Hoshino. I never minded.” And he meant it. Hoshino merely blushed brighter. Shinsō shrugged but went with it anyway, swinging his legs under the piano keyboard while still facing her. “Besides. What were you doing here?”

Hoshino’s blush died down to a lighter pink as a realization of sorts shined in her blue eyes. “Oh, that?” She giggles, a bit embarrassed, before ducking her head and muttering the response. Shinsō already knew that if not for him sitting right next to her, he probably wouldn’t have heard it. “I was practicing a song for Kei.”

“For—” Shinsō couldn’t help but feel surprised. “For Gekkō?” Then again, it made sense. Gekkō and Hoshino were extremely close, more so than Hoshino was with Leonhart (in spite of Hoshino happily calling Leonhart “Hika-chan” of all things). Weren’t Gekkō and Hoshino childhood friends or something…? “What’s the occasion?”

Hoshino fidgeted with her fingers. “N-Nothing much, really. I just felt like it.” She rocked back and forth in her seat a bit, a fond smile on her lips. “Kei sometimes…” Hoshino paused, her gaze flickering between Shinsō’s hands and her lap. “She sometimes goes through things I’m not sure about,” Hoshino settled for quietly, reaching upwards to rub a bit of hair ribbon between her fingers. “We’ve known each other since we were little, but there are still times I know she doesn’t tell me everything. It’s just how she is. And I still can’t help but worry if she’s holding things back because it’s too dark and…” Hoshino paused. Her hand playing with her hair ribbon stopped too.

Shinsō inclined his head. “Hoshino?”

Hoshino jolted a bit in her seat before raising her head to give him a smile. Shinsō would be a fool if he didn’t see that it was obviously forced. “I-I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to ramble at you, Shinsō-san! I-I can stop, if you want.” She waves her hands in the air helplessly, and Shinsō aptly ducks his head so that she doesn’t actually hit him. “I… I just want to sing and tell her that she’s not alone. If that makes sense?”

Yep. It’s still the same selfless and sweet Hoshino. “Sure,” he says. “It’s fine if you don’t want to talk about it.” Shinsō leans back on the bench, looking up towards the ceiling in the hopes of giving Hoshino some room. “Gekkō’s weird like that. Being silent. So I get it.”

Without turning to her, Shinsō already knew Hoshino was giving him a doe-eyed, wide look. Like she wasn’t expecting him to understand her. “…Really?” she said quietly.

Shinsō reaches over, and without thinking, lightly taps the top of Hoshino’s head with the back of his hand. “Really,” he finishes, just in time with her newest squeak of “Ah!” The smirk was hard to hide on his face when she rounded on him with a pout. At this point, he couldn’t help it and Hoshino was leaving herself too open for teasing. “You have weird choices in friends, Hoshino. And Gekkō’s the worst at it.”

“Muuuuuu,” she goes, clearly very unhappy while still puffing her cheeks. Hoshino crosses her arms and rocks herself hard enough in her seat on the bench to bump shoulders with him. “Kei’s fine, I’ve lived with her for more than a decade, and last I checked, I’m friends with you, aren’t I?”

Shinsō laughs. “You’re nuts, but you’re fine too. Being friends with a guy who’s villainized for his Quirk.”

Hoshino blinks, then goes quiet again. “…Oh,” she says finally, then proceeded to lean on his shoulder.

That was not expected. Shinsō does his best to not recoil, staring into her hair. “Hoshino?”

The reply is just as quiet as the words that started everything. “You’re a Hero to me, Shinsō-san.” Hoshino is twiddling her thumbs now and even if Shinsō can’t see her face, he can see the tips of her ears and they’re pink. “It doesn’t matter what people said about your Quirk before. They don’t know you. You’re in the Hero Department now and, last I checked, you proved them wrong by every single scale. Plus,” Hoshino waves a pointer finger in the air while lightly rocking against him, “you could’ve brainwashed me in the entire time we’ve talked, and you haven’t done that now, have you?”

“N-No,” he says, and it surprises him on how easy it is to talk honestly to Hoshino now. Like a veil was lifted off them both, and he can breathe. It’s hard to care about his face burning because hearing those words is just nice in general. Hell, he can smell rosemary, and it takes a second for Shinsō to realize it’s Hoshino’s hair. Her shampoo? “I never intend to Brainwash unless I want to.”

“And there we go.” Hoshino huffs in a way that seems final before raising her head to meet his eyes in eye contact, and she’s pouting again. “So, please, don’t say depressing things like that again. You sound like Kei.”

“Sorry,” is all he can say in response. “Reflex.”

Hoshino still puffs her cheeks, opting to hit her head against Shinsō’s shoulder. As much as it stings, well, technically a little since Aizawa-sensei punches harder, Shinsō waits for her to speak. “You dork,” Hoshino says finally after a moment, scooting over to fully lean on his side. “You’re my friend, so no more self-deprecation.” She paused, and then Shinsō hears her mutter, “And this is why my friends need more music. No one believes in themselves, and it’s depressing.” There’s another pause, and then she mutters, “I know I do it too, but I don’t like hearing it from other people, especially people I care about. Muuuuu.”

Shinsō scoffed and taps Hoshino’s head again. This girl was ridiculous. “You’re mumbling, Hoshino.”

This time, his underclassman doesn’t even flinch, merely giving him a dirty eye through her black hair before focusing back on the piano. “Don’t care,” she adds childishly. Shinsō doesn’t miss how her fingers linger over the black and white keys again. “I’m tempted to play something for you now.”

…Okay, out of all the things Hoshino could’ve said, Shinsō definitely was not expecting to hear that. Then again, this was Hoshino, the girl who made more homemade chocolate than her family could even provide for Valentine’s Day in their cafe when not swamped with work. He shouldn’t have been surprised. “I thought you were practicing for Gekkō,” he finds himself saying instead.

“That doesn’t mean my other friends miss out!” Hoshino’s voice goes up by about a level or two in pitch. “And you’re important to me too, Shinsō-san! You deserve something nice!” She pauses before pressing a key and adds, a bit miffed too this time, “You already heard me play something for Kei. So I might as well give you a preview of your birthday present.”

Shinsō can’t deny the fact that he’s blushing. Goddamn feelings. He turns his head away to break off their shared eye contact, but doesn’t push her away either. “I-I didn’t think you were looking that far ahead, Hoshino.”

Another bump into his shoulder. Along with an extra hard thunk of a head against the crook between his neck and shoulder, Shinsō blinks before glancing in that direction. Hoshino — Hoshino was actually snuggled up to him. What the—? “You’re someone I keep close to my heart, Shinsō-san,” was the whisper. “There’s no way I wouldn’t.” Before Shinsō could respond, she raises her head and he gets an eyeful of bright blue eyes. “And hey. You helped Kei and Jack-nii and Hika-chan a lot by being you. And,” Hoshino reaches up to lightly poke his forehead with a soft smile, “You helped me too. So you deserve something in return, don’t you think?”

Shinsō, for the first time in a long while, finds himself speechless. He stares at Hoshino for a second, then two, then for more until she fidgets and breaks off the eye contact. “U-Unless,” she stutters, “you want me to sing instead? I-I could do that! Or make cake, or, or…” Hoshino trails off, sitting back up and scooting away an inch.

“I-It’s fine,” he says finally, turning his head mechanically just to force himself to look at her. And, yep. Hoshino is blushing, even when not meeting his eyes. “A song preview is fine, Hoshino. Whatever you feel is right.”

Hoshino blinks, then sparkles. Too bright. Argh. “Piano and singing for you then!” she cheers, her voice high-pitched from the joy. “I hope you’ll like it, Shinsō-san!”

Ugh.

How was she this happy?

Lub-dub, lub-dub.

Better question.

His heart is beating hard. Is this how Davy felt when looking at Hoshino? Because this was new and Shinsō didn’t know if he liked it or not. The last time he felt like this, it was with Leonhart, and it was Leonhart. She wasn’t looking for relationships. So, why was his heart starting up again with freakin’ Hoshino?

If this is turning out to be what he thought it was becoming, Davy was going to murder him. Little sisters were off-limits, last he checked.

Double ugh.

Before Hoshino can turn back to the keys, Shinsō pulls her back to his side with an arm around her shoulders. She squeaks, he says, “You can use ‘-kun,’ Hoshino.”

“F-Fweh?” she squeaks again, more confused.

Shinsō sighs and taps Hoshino’s head with his other, not-hugging hand. “If you’re going to be putting on a concert for me after school, then you could at least call me by my name and not by some stiff honorific. Especially if I’m so ‘close’ to your heart as you say I am.” He doesn’t even know why his voice comes out irritated. Then again, he still doesn’t know what to make of Hoshino either. How does she say things the way she does and not die of diabetes?

Oh, right.

Her Quirk is literally making chocolate with a touch.

There’s no way she’d be dying of diabetes when she makes diabetes.

And Hoshino’s looking at him again. “Then… Shinsō-kun?”

“Yeah?”

“Just trying it,” she says, then leans into him a bit more. The next try has his ribs creak. “Hitoshi… kun?”

He tries not to jolt. “…Why are you going with my first name?”

“A-Again, just wanted to try!” Hoshino squirms in his hold, but doesn’t pull away, instead resting her fingertips atop the piano keys. Their closeness lets Shinsō feel her exhale. “A-Are you okay with that?”

Shinsō takes a breath too. “…Just play the song,” he settles for finally, bonking her head with his cheek. “And do what you want.”

“Th-Then,” Hoshino turns to look at him, blushing too. “Call me ‘Tomoko’ too, H-Hitoshi-kun. ‘Hoshino, Hoshino’ just makes things feel more formal.”

Sure, she stumbled in delivery, but she still said his first name.

Shinsō sighs and closes his eyes. If he looked into those blue eyes, he knew he might die. From embarrassment or something, and he had to stay cool. Somehow. “Alright then, Tomoko,” he says, even if he’s close to stumbling himself from how strange it sounds. “Hoshino” had stuck for far too long. First names, on the other hand, were going to be a new obstacle to overcome. “You win. Go play what you want now.”

He doesn’t need to see to know that Ho — Tomoko is sparkling. “Aye aye!” she says with what sounds like an extra salute, and he slumps as soon as her voice turns away from him. “One concert for a bestie, coming up!”

The piano echoes in his ears first in a new melody before he hears Tomoko start to sing, and by then, Shinsō’s tempted to fall asleep.

“Kimi o tsurete kakedasu yo (I brought you to run off with me)

Dare mo oitsukenai basho e; (To a place where nobody can reach;)

Ima koso kanaeyou yo ano hi no yakusoku. (Now it's time to grant the promise we made that day.)

Katasumi no shiawase no tsubomi, (The flower bud of happiness staying at the corner,)

Giniro ni kagayaita, (Shining with a silver color,)

Saitara misete ageyou! (I will show it to you when it blooms!)

Mikaeshita arubamu no naka de. (I looked back to the album.)

Sono koro mo ima mo sou, (Whether past or present,)

Issho ni waratteru. (We laughed together.)

Minami no hou kara somatteiku kisetsu. (The season arrives from the south.)

Tadaima to itte ne, (Saying "I'm back,")

Kitto sugu ni mukae ni iku. (I'll immediately welcome you.)

Kimi o tsurete kakedasu yo (I brought you to run off with me)

Dare mo oitsukenai basho e; (To a place where nobody can reach;)

Ima koso kanaeyou yo ano hi no yakusoku. (Now it’s time to grant the promise we made that day.)

Nee, zutto matteta yo kimi no koto o. (Hey, I’m always waiting for you.)

Okaeri, watashi o mou nidoto oitekanaide. (Welcome home, please don’t leave me again.)

Harukaze hana ga odoru, (Flowers dancing in the spring breeze,)

Yuudachi kasa o narasu, (Rain striking the umbrella in a shower,)

Gairoju aka ni somaru, (Roadside trees dyed red,)

Watayuki sukuiageta. (Scooping up fluffy snow.)

Kimi o tsurete kakedasu yo (I brought you to run off with me)

Dare mo oitsukenai basho e; (To a place where nobody can reach;)

Ima koso kanaeyou yo ano hi no yakusoku. (Now it's time to grant the promise we made that day.)

Kimi o tsurete kakedashita (I brought you to run off with me)

Soshite egao o dakishimeta, (And embracing your smile,)

Mousugu kanaunda ne ano hi no yakusoku. (It will be granted soon, the promise we made that day.)

Mata koushite tonari doushi arukeru koto. (We are still comrades, advancing together.)

Nandaka tottemo ureshikute hashaide shimau. (I don't know why, but I feel happy and in high spirits.)”

Maybe later, Shinsō could work up the courage to ask Tomoko to record her songs. That way, Aizawa-sensei wouldn’t be pissed when he eventually comes by to their daily training session.

For now, he’d enjoy this. It wasn’t everyday he could nap peacefully against a friend.

By the time the song was long finished, Shinsō could’ve sworn he saw Tomoko smile. “Sleep well, Hitoshi-kun. You deserve it, you beloved friend of mine.”

It was a good day.

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

“Where have you been?”

“…Around.”

“Shinsō.”

“Don’t worry about it, Sensei.”

“It’s not because you became buddy-buddy with someone outside your class, is it?”

“…”

“Do not tell me it’s Hoshino. We went through this with Leonhart and Gekkō already.”

“I have her songs recorded for you if the cats like it…?”

“Goddammit, Shinsō.”

#shinsō hitoshi #hoshino tomoko #writing #long post #alternate universe #my hero academia #Seaside Sibling Train #davy jack #leonhart hikari #keisuke gekko #oneshot #aizawa shouta #chocolate seashell

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zer0pm · 5 years

Text

No Name (6/?)

A/N: Thanks again to everyone that has been sticking with this story so far. I know the build is slow, but I’m hoping that it’ll be all worth it once more intimate scenes with V come into play ;) Right now, we’re covering the scenes from the game so hope everyone that has already played likes revisiting the poison tree.

Pairing: V x Fem!Reader

The reader along with V and the rest of Dante’s crew approach the Qliphoth, a demon tree that grows in the underworld and has sprouted directly in the middle of Red Grave City.

In all of my years, I’ve never seen anything like this.

A gargantuan tree- No. Even that word didn’t feel like it was enough to paint the sheer size of this massive phenomenon. You were straining your neck just trying to look out for the top of it as its girth pierces through the clouds above. From what you can tell, this wasn’t even all of it as it appears its roots dig far below the city.

V: “And it grew both day and night, ‘til it bore an apple bright.”

V, who was beside you the entire way, was reading from his book. You gather that he is a man who prefers poetry over the spectacle that has the passerby around you both look over the tree in awe and anxious anticipation.

You: “What is this thing?”

V: “The Qliphoth. It is a tree that grows in the underworld.”

The underworld... It is true that demons have found ways to steal themselves into the world of mortals, but to have some of this scale come from that same place, it sent a terrible feeling across your spine.

You: “And how did it spread to here?”

Dante: “Doesn’t matter.”

The both of you turn around to see Dante with two ladies who were following him in tow, the three of them with very large weapons on their backs.

Dante: “We go in. Kill the bastard behind this, get out, tree is gone. Then Imma reward myself with an extra large pizza, end of story.”

You roll your eyes. There he goes again. Ever since V revealed the name of the target, Dante has been especially dismissive, hardly speaking a word and even then, it was curt and rude. The man chased you out of the office to speak with V. He was showing the not-so-attractive side of him that you recognized when he meant serious business, but there was something in the way that he acted towards this particular mission that made you wonder about the whole thing. Who is Vergil? And what is his connection to Dante? What is his connection to V? It seems that neither men are pressed to answer that for you, so for now you have set your questions aside. You greet the two women beside Dante. The petite brunette smiles at you while the statuesque blonde nods in acknowledgement.

Dante: “Alright, Mr. Poetry. My backup. As you requested. Meet Trish.”

His thumb points towards the blonde who had her hand on her hip and acknowledged you and V with a curt nod.

Dante: “And Lady. You two have something in common. She has a fake name too.”

The brunette throws a murderous glare at Dante immediately. The look she wore was almost hilarious.

Dante: “And you already know Neff.”

V: “Neff?”

You: “It’s uh...a nickname. From back in my devil hunting days.”

Lady: “She was pretty good at her job. Probably better than Dante.”

Dante: “I heard that.”

The smaller woman giggles, strutting past the group to approach the tree. Trish follows, her arms crossed. As she passes, she turns her head slightly.

Trish: “You look better.”

You: “I feel better.”

Trish: “Good. I hope then that this job will not take us long.”

Without waiting for your answer, Trish continues onward. Dante lingers in front of you and V for a moment, his eyes on you entirely. There is a thin line on his lips in place of where his trademark smirk would usually be, his eyes wincing a tad to a slight glare.

Dante: “You really were good at your job.”

You: “...I know.”

Memories of your time as part of his crew comes back to you and it took every ounce of your willpower to shove it back to the recesses of your mind. What happened back then has long past now and had no bearing to the present. Dante looked like he wanted to say more, his mouth hung open indicating this before shutting it completely. With a grunt, he joins Lady and Trish towards the entrance of the Qliphoth. Now it was just you and V.

V: “I have the impression that there is some unfinished business between you and Dante.”

You: “Nope, business absolutely finished. We just went our separate ways after my last job, is all.”

V: “Separated on good terms?”

You: “It ended in a way where, if needed, I can do what needs to be done and he can do what needs to be done and no one would question the integrity of our work.”

Your tone came off a little more harshly than intended, as V was visibly taken aback. He seems to ponder over your words carefully just as well as you tactfully stringed them together. You hoped that it was enough to hint that you didn’t want to talk about it and was grateful that he changed the topic, disarming you with a familiar smile.

V: “It was unexpected, you know, seeing you. I had wished to visit you once more before reaching the tree.”

You: “You said that in your note this morning. I didn’t know if you meant it at the time or was just being polite.”

V: “A bit of both.”

You both share a light laugh between you. It brought you back to yesterday, the night when you two talked for a bit and shared dinner together.

V: “I also didn’t expect you to not only be a devil hunter, but an acqaintance of the devil hunter I was looking to recruit for this arduous task.”

You shrugged.

You: “You didn’t ask. Honestly, didn’t expect to see you so soon too, and employing Dante of all people.”

V: “Yes, suppose the expression “small world” would apply here.”

You: “You can say that again.”

V: “Suppose the expression-”

You: “V!”

You didn’t mean to, but him teasing you caused you to lightly smack him on the arm, earning from him a mischievously chuckle whose sound spread to your own lips.

You: “V... It’s so weird calling you that. Where did it even come from?”

The book in his hand closed and he offers it for you to look. On the cover of the hard bound poetry collection he carried was a giant gold “V” in the middle of delicate gold designs.

V: “Gather you can surmise the inspiration.”

You: “Aha, must be a really good read. This design is beautiful.”

A thought came to your mind.

You: “You didn’t mug a guy for this one, did you?”

A light-hearted laugh fills the air around you and it stirred you pleasantly inside knowing that the sound belonged to none other than V.

V: “If you must know, I came across this book legitimately. It belongs to me, I was merely retrieving it.”

You: “That’s what you were doing this morning?”

V: “Among other things.”

You noted how V was lost in his reading in the way to the Qliphoth, speaking only when spoken to. With the way he kept the book on his person and worked the length of each page with those green eyes intently, you knew that the man not only had an affinity for poetry, but the book itself held sentimental value to him.

You: “You should read a few lines to me. Slaying demons isn’t the prettiest of jobs, but...maybe some classical influence might add a little finesse to it. What do you say?”

The man smiles at your suggestion, watching you admire his book with genuine interest in your eyes, catching how you were skimming across every detail in tandem with your fingertips. He was tempted to read another passage aloud to you as requested, to gauge your reaction and, with a sliver of hopeful expectations, to see if you genuinely enjoyed the written arts as well. It would please him greatly if it were so. V dashed the fantasy when he remembered where he was standing and why.

V: “Another time, perhaps. We have a more pressing engagement.”

This made you frown, you looked away from the book to engage V directly. Your expression returns to that of a professional.

You: “Right.”

He turns to face you completely, looking down at you with those green eyes of his. Despite his youthful features, the way V speaks, his movements, his eyes- all depict that of an old soul. It made you want to learn more about him. You made a silent vow to ask him if he would concede to this after the job despite what he just said, suggesting that perhaps you two can form some sort of bond when all was said and done. For now, however, he was right. You had a job to do. Looking back towards the demon tree, you already gauge that scaling the thing was going to be a long evening.

You: “Let’s go kill some demons.”

He hums in agreement and follows behind you as you both walked to rejoin Dante, Lady, and Trish. You did not know what awaited you within but was determined to meet it. As everyone said before, you were damn good at your job. Devil hunting is in your blood, afterall.

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altsalvationhq · 5 years

Photo

It’s been an hour since the last child fell.

Some tried returning, others are grieving or lost, but the whole of the emotions to the newcomers is despair and anger. And while the paramedics are still looking for the injured to help and our heroes are trying to gather information from the children to know how best to assist them the sound of what can only be described as an Earth-shattering rumble is both felt and heard.

Everyone stops and stares at the hole in the sky. A wave of bright crackling fire envelopes the mirrored city above them and swallows it whole. Like an ocean wave, it covers everything and splashes around the rims of the opening. Whatever is stopping people from re-entering through the hole, is also preventing the destruction from that world from getting out. The world continues to burn until the hole and the world eventually fizzle and fade out.

What probably took months or a year to transpire for the kids and their family seems to be done in a few long moments. The flames pass, there is nothing but quiet and a large black abyss. What was there is gone and the blackest of skies a universe can have is shown as the portal slowly closes.

All of New York witnessed the end of a world. And the children witnessed the loss of their home and lives as they knew them once to be.

AFTERMATH

Most of New York was hit by the freak lightning strikes and has suffered some major structural damage. Some roads have been blocked by rubble and people have been trapped in their homes. Police are coordinating with rescue personnel to help clear paths and make sure people can get to and from safety as quickly as possible. Some schools are currently being used as shelters for the moment, hospitals are filling up, the military has been called in for support.

A lot of government officials are questioning what is going and want to know what the world hoppers have to say for themselves however where our heroes have learned and stopped treating the children as hostiles the soldier have not and will not see them that way. They are under orders to arrest and interrogate those they catch. S.H.I.E.L.D has gotten word about this and sent a message to our heroes. On top of that, news outlets are beginning to report on the situation worldwide, though not much has been said aside from what was seen at the event.

Children who have fallen and are injured are being seen too but with what information has been gathered by our heroes they have decided to herd all the children they can together and get them somewhere safe where they can learn more information. Currently, there are two places of shelter for the children have been provided by Tony Stark and Charles Xavier.

HOUSING

Avengers Mansion is an enormous mansion, a city block wide-scale mansion in Manhattan with three floors, to basements, as well as many other amendments that you might see at the Avengers compound. Tony Stark has bought and set up this facility with his AI JOCASTA running the ins and outs of it when he’s not around. Children are invited to stay here especially those of the Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D members. There is a floor each dedicated for boys dorms and girls dorms and upon moving in, everyone will be randomly assigned roommates.

As an alternative to the Mansion, Charles Xavier has opened the doors of his School for Gifted Youngsters, but due to having less space compared to the Mansion, the school is only open to mutants. Like the situation Avengers Mansion, the School will be doing dorms as well, randomly assigning roommates to those who choose to stay there.

While it isn’t mandatory that children choose to stay at either shelter, it’s highly recommended, at least until they manage to get on their feet. A big concern is making sure everyone is off the streets -- it’s February, so even though spring may be here soon, it’s still cold.

NOTABLE AREAS

The Avengers Mansion has three floors, a basement and a sub-basement. Part of the third floor is designated for quinjets, computerized navigation aids, radar and communication systems. The other part of it has been changed to the boy’s dorm. The second floor houses the girl’s dorms, as well as any other private quarters for members of the Avengers who have requested it. The main floor and grounds contains the kitchen and dining facilities and a library. The backyard has a garden and patio as well as enough foliage to ensure privacy and security. There is a security system on the property, as well as a fence, intended to keep intruders out. The basement contains recreational, training and medical facilities -- a gym, a pool, game room and combat simulation room. The sub-basement is primarily used as a lab, but also contains a meeting room and the Avengers’ computer system.

Located outside of Salem Center in Westchester County, Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. The grounds have large, open fields with a surrounding wooded area and a lake. The school itself contains two floors, a basement and two sub-basements. The ground floor contains the kitchen, dining area, living room, library, classrooms and Professor X’s office. The second floor is dedicated to the dormitories. The basement is primarly used for storage, laundry and various power systems. The first sub-basement is used by the staff of the school with their own dormitories and also houses the medical facilities, a gym, a pool and a lab. The second sub-basement is used for the X-Men, containing the Danger Room and Cerebro, as well as various meeting rooms. The X-Men sub-basement is non-accessible to anyone who isn’t an X-Man, though access to the Danger Room may be allowed if you’re accompanied by one of them.

OOC NOTES

You are more than welcome to continue past threads, but please refrain from starting new event-related ones!

Please message us to let us know whether or not your characters will be taking up residence at the mansion or the school !! Keep in mind that, due to the smaller scale of the school, that’s specifically for mutants. Your muses don’t have to stay here, but it is heavily encouraged!

#alts.event #alts.important

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lizzybeth1986 · 6 years

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Quick Thoughts on TRR Book 3 Chapter 19

• It's our WEDDING DAY. But it looks like Anton wants to make it our Deathday first.

• For the kind of wait most of the stans have been keeping since this book has begun, seeing our MCs finally married to our favourite LIs is quite...satisfying. Well. For most of us at least.

• Title: You Are Cordially Invited. To see me get married or to see me die?

• Mara goes outside, vowing that to get through to us they'd have to get through to her first.

• Madeleine and Bertrand barricade the door with a couch and Bertrand warns everyone to have something in hand (Olivia is one step ahead, obviously, with her sharp-as-fuck stilettos).

• That girl is ready and prepared to commit maritricide, y'all! XD

• Hana picks a vase, Madeleine keeps her clipboard, Penelope is panicking at the back with Merlin and Morgana (this was the shit I was trying to avoid with court, Mom! I can almost hear her thinking), but if you really want to see a legend minus the legend points...I should point you all to Kiara:

I repeat. A legend I stan.

This is someone having a trigger attack, and steeling herself despite the trauma of two previous experiences before plunging herself into a possible third one. That takes serious guts.

• Madeleine isn't exactly prepared to fight (clearly being Queen never seemed to involve fighting assassins before for her, strangely enough), but Olivia sure is. She says "do you want to keep bleating like a defenseless lamb or do you want to get ready to fight?"

• Honestly though Olivia delivers some of my favourite lines this chapter.

• Ana is staying out if this - (in public) because she "does not have the equipment for this" and (in private) because she wants to capture the scoop of the century!

• THANK YOU MAXWELL for gifting me that sword!

•

(All the screenshots, except for the Maxwell one from the HIMEME channel, are mine)

I have better bodyguards inside this boutique than I do outside. Look at all of these people. Picking up clipboards, stilletoes, vases, mannequins, scissors, THEIR OWN BARE HANDS, and defeating these dudes. Like...like...they may have been incredibly sheltered and protected by their families but all of them know how to make the best of a situation where their lives are under threat. And mind you, at least two of those women openly struggle with issues related to their mental health and still manage to emerge from this doing what they can.

• I loved the sword scene! It was a nice look back at TCaTF (esp Book 3) and a nice way to celebrate the Choices anniversary. In TCaTF books 1 and 2, you had different point systems for Kenna and Dom: prestige for her and power for him, to show the rise of Kenna as a formidable leader and the gaining of Dom's fire powers. Because he possesses enough power to transform into a dragon by the end of Book 2, the focus then shifts to them gearing up for their biggest battle yet - the one with Empress Azura of Ducitora (though part of this book is spent with Dom trapped inside an airship fighting a particularly frightening form of mind control from Hex). The implication is that Kenna becoming a legend consolidates her position as the uniter of the Five Kingdoms, which is what she becomes by the end of the story. It's therefore fitting that the legend points feature here, just before the MC's wedding - for like Kenna, she has just returned from reuniting the nobility (or not) into supporting Liam's right to the throne through her wedding, and like Kenna she needs to fight a Nevrakis, while possibly having the support of other Nevrakises...well, just one in the case of TRR.

• If you're marrying Hana, she features nowhere in this scene, and Olivia stabs the assassin who attacks Madeleine with knives. If you're not, she is part of your entourage, and particularly is shown taking action when Madeleine's life is under threat. If they hadn't already been hinting at Madeleine's "feelings" for Hana, and the latter's convenient amnesia regarding the events of the engagement tour...I wouldn't have minded. But I do. Very much.

• Maxwell only features in this scene if you choose him as a bridesmaid, but I would highly recommend choosing him as one at least once (if he's not your LI that is) because he and Bertrand do so amazing fighting together here.

• Ana's motto will be "my life may leave me but never my desire to catch proof of a burning-hot scoop".

• Gee, Bastien, you took a while to get here. Like...8 chapters or something.

• Mara comes back with an injury and an attempt to say our code name, which...sure thanks Mara but you still suck at your job. If guarding us is really your job at all.

• Bastien and whoever is with him have managed to capture the remaining assassins but Anton managed to escape. If that doesn't come back to bite us in the ass later...

• Why is Madeleine so involved when it comes to MY dress? Her hand is literally trembling. Please don't tell me this design was intended for her wedding. That'll be a waste of 25 whole diamonds.

• Or perhaps she's just shook coz THERE IS FYDELIA LACE INVOLVED YOU PEASANTS.

• "I need to have security remove any guests wearing white," says the press sec who tried to sneak in a white dress to wear for my wedding.

(Yes. I plead guilty. I just needed an excuse to cram in a Brian May gif there. I can't help that this man is the Meme King of Queen).

• OF COURSE I'M WEARING DRAKE'S POCKET WATCH AND HANA'S SHOES.

• We've finally reached the cathedral! After threatening to either drive the carriage through the premises, cry or sue Cordonia if we don't get there soon enough.

• I see the Applewood people! You get loads of options to greet the crowd. And of course I was going to try getting Esther to say " 'sup" once lol. I think depending on how you wave to them, the press will either see you as graceful or playful.

•

(Screenshots: Hana's is mine, Maxwell's from the HIMEME YouTube channel, Penelope's from @sgt-peppers-coffee-club , Olivia's from @i-dream-so-i-write , and Kiara's from @callmetippytumbles )

Here's all our Maids (plus one Man) of Honour! All of them speak about this day being a long time coming, but also reflect with the MC on what it took for them all to get to this point. I think Olivia (by virtue of being the Fighter of the lot) and Kiara (because of what she's faced at least thrice now) get some particularly meaty lines for their MOH scene.

• You get to choose whether Bertrand should accompany you down the aisle, since it's tradition to be done so by a member of your House, and the Beaumonts have been her sponsor from the beginning. Cue an emotional moment with Bertrand, who regards you as family now and is immensely proud of you. The Maxwell stans got a similar conversation in the vows diamond scene, but in more detail because it's his kid brother you're marrying, but now we get it as an honorary Beaumont as well. He gets super super emotional if you ask him to walk you down the aisle.

• Oooh pretty! And so many stained glass windows! Why was Leo complaining so much about this cathedral in RoE Book 3? I would have given an arm and a leg to get married there.

• NEW MUSIC!!! Lots of lovely flowery piano notes and trumpets. Very regal and very much a wedding march tune.

• So technically I'm guessing this is where we get to see the results of our tour, because in my playthrough everyone is here.

• If you're marrying Drake, you get to see his mother Bianca, and she speaks to you after the ceremony. I can kiiinda see where Savannah gets her "I only met you ten seconds ago but OMG WE'RE GOING TO BE BFFS" vibe comes from.

• WTF none of these people changed clothes it seems 😂 Everyone's else is wearing what they usually wear. Guys, this wedding is going to be freaking TELEVISED and these nobles are wearing their usual dusty outfits 😂😂

• The Best Men/Women, are depicted positively - whether they have feelings for the MC or not. Drake is said to be showing a "rare, unabashed grin", and Liam is "smiling proudly". Kiara is "smiling excitedly".

• So as you all know, you can choose between Liam (if you're marrying Hana or Maxwell), Leo or Regina for officiating your wedding. The speech is largely the same - they all mention the seed and apple tree analogy, the traditions of Cordonia and how important love is - but the opening lines vary.

(Regina's is from mine, Leo's is from the Bizzy's Choices channel, and Liam's is from @kennaxval )

Regina's is distant and formal, which suits her and suits the scale of the occasion. Leo's is humorous, and Liam's is flowery and poetic. This suits both of the men as we know them. Leo is known to not take himself very seriously, and Liam's language is very ornate by default.

• The vows (I'm talking about the LIs' ones here, since the MC's is customizable) are all beautiful. Every single one delves into their history with her and how their relationship with her grew from strength to strength. You can see why they decided to go off-script for their vows. Their story with her has always been personal and these vows are about acknowledging the long, hard journey that got them to this altar.

•

Liam's is about how the MC taught him to believe in possibility, to believe that he needn't be stuck in the rut of royal stoicism to be the king his people need. Hana's is about the freedom the MC gave her from a future carefully charted out for her, into a better, brighter one. Maxwell's is about how he has found a woman whose very presence represents adventure for him, someone who will raise him up rather than tie him down. Drake's is about embracing change, accepting the love the MC has for him and the love he tried to deny having for the MC. I love them all.

• In my mind this is the improved version of the wedding scene in TCaTF, as is the RoE wedding. I recall, way back when Kenna got married, fans (rightly) pointed out that while her LIs' vows sounded heartfelt and acknowledged their relationship with her, the few options given for Kenna's vows made her sound impersonal and not very involved in comparison (for instance, even though Diavolos appeared only by Book 3, Kenna still was made to sound like the relationship had been there for longer). In RoE, they attempted to correct that, by giving us the diamond option to personalize our vows (still using their choices, but we got more options here and went into more detail). In TRR they've gone a step further and have US type what we want with our wishes, because even when you have the same LI - no two people can view one character the same. There's space for shitposting haha, but it's also to ensure that we have enough say in the vows we want our MCs to repeat.

• If you don't choose either your corgi or Bartie, the Cordonian children become your ringbearers. In this case, they are Valerie and Marco, the little ones from Lythikos, which I think is a very interesting choice. Because it does show us that though the Nevrakis clan seem to want to destroy Liam and his line, Lythikos itself - represented by Olivia - is in support of him. If Liam doesn't marry you, it makes even more sense that the children meant to represent Cordonia come from Olivia's estate.

• Lol everyone got the same ring. At least it isn't the cheapass one Madeleine had us pick up for her in Book 2.

• Vows exchanged, tears shed, and we can be as thirsty as we want in public without anyone saying a thing (wink at the LI, tell them you wish you both were alone instead of at a cathedral, give them a steamy kiss after your vows are exchanged).

AAAAAAAND WE'RE MARRIED!!!!

(Screenshots: for Drake and Maxwell it's was @sgt-peppers-coffee-club and for Hana it was @kennaxval 😄)

Ngl I was super super emotional when I saw the wedding portrait it took us so LONG and it was so BEAUTIFUL 😭

• Esther wants to call the monarchy the "DuPont dynasty" right now haha. I think there are some playthroughs (for instance Maxwell's I think) where Hana speaks of creating the Lee dynasty which...well...is odd if you're not marrying her, yes. This chapter had a whole bunch of goof ups going on.

•

YES DONNIE KEEP SAYING IT. I'M QUEEN NOW. FINALLY.

• From rats in a dumpster to this...what a journey.

• We now have a reception to go to! There is a teaser about whether this reception will be the one we hoped for (which is shorthand either for "gear up for drama folks" or for "you didn't spend enough diamonds for this, sucks to be you" 😒).

General Thoughts:

• How many of you folks have seen Cold November Rain? That music video from Guns n Roses? In that one, there's a wedding and Slash, the band guitarist (cum best man who seems to be in love with the bride) drops the ring in the bridegroom's hands and then steps out into a...desert for this:

Would have been epic if either Drake or Liam left the ceremony midway to perform an epic guitar solo to the bustling crowd in Cordonia 😂 (you know the writers have friendzoned Hana and Maxwell hard enough that that will never happen for them).

• For the most part this chapter definitely did live up to the hype. This wedding was the culmination of everything we've been through since the book began so of course it was going to be big - and it was. I may have lost a lot of love I used to have for this book, but damn did I feel emotional when I read those vows, saw that wedding screenshot, heard the wedding music, fought alongside my girls.

• I think there may be two chapters left. Next chapter will be dedicated to the reception, and we'll see the following choices we made play out, most of which are certainly diamond-options:

1. The nobles (free, but it largely depends on whether you won them over or not)

2. The main course (from the food festival in Castelserraillian). Liam also showed us a chocolate souffle from there which he was suggesting for the wedding but IDK if that one will feature.

3. The wedding cake (Capitol cake scene) and the surprise dessert for the LI (baklava, cheetah cake, s'mores, hot chocolate).

4. The chocolates/macarons for guests

5. The gifts for the LIs (all of which open up a special scene).

6. The presence of Drake's mother (if you are marrying Drake).

That's a whole lot of stuff to code so get ready for a few goof-ups here and there, fam. As long as it's not as bad as the one they did at Hana's wedding that would be fairly okay.

• Now I know the "husband and wife" thing was a goof-up with the code, as is Liam not wearing the white uniform if you chose it for him and Hana's comment on the Lee dynasty with the MC (which somehow never showed up on my Liam playthrough). And technically, not many would actually be this angry about it if it weren't for the fact that Hana has been treated like crap by her writers before this, and on a smaller scale so has Maxwell. It's bad enough that she is the only option out there. It's even worse that while Drake gets extra development and extra scenes and extra characters (they worked hard enough to do the artwork for his mother for just that one playthrough), Hana is stuck with lazy writing and the person shown having a crush on her was her bully in the previous book. Having Liam announce that Hana and the MC are "husband and wife" even after different options had been given or chosen, would feel like a slap in the face.

Thankfully, PB has recognized how badly this could alienate fans, especially fans of characters like Hana and Maxwell who don't get the attention they deserve, and not only apologized but recognized how hurtful it was and tried to compensate.

I mean, how would you feel if the LI you liked was constantly being treated like they didn't matter? Wouldn't it frustrate you? Wouldn't a "glitch" like this one be the rotten cherry on a huge crapcake?

I'm saying this because I have seen at least a few say "this is a glitch lmao why are you guys complaining so much". This is why. It goes beyond just the glitch. It goes into why "husband" has to be the default here. It goes into chapters and chapters of shitty writing given only for certain LIs. That frustration is bound to boil over at some point.

• We'll also definitely be sneaking out and doing some post-matrimonial banging at some point. And if I don't get lingerie before that happens Ima be very very angry 😡

• I think it would be better to spread this out into two chapters.

• Is there a chance Anton might actually try something at the reception? Possibly.

• Will it be enough to warrant another full-length book? I don't know. I hope not.

• Alright, it's time for Chapter 20 now!

#the royal romance #long post #liam x mc #king liam #hana x mc #hana lee #maxwell x mc #maxwell beaumont #drake x mc #drake walker #bossina cathedral #wedding #olivia nevrakis #countess madeleine #trr penelope #trr kiara #cordonia #trr quick thoughts #quick thoughts

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equalonline · 6 months

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Equal Bluetooth Digital Bathroom Weighing Scale for Body Weight(180Kg)

Since 2001, equal has followed a simple business philosophy: to devote its talent and technology to creating superior products and services that contribute to a better working culture and environment. To achieve this, Equal sets a high value on its people and technologies. we are dedicated to developing products that help you make the most out of every day.

Product details

Material & Color: It's Made with Tempered Glass, Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene in Black Color.

13 Essential Biometrics: Fitness Isn't About Fitting Into One Mold, But It's Often Shown As A Single Result—Your Weight. This Smart Fitness Scale Provides 13 Body Composition Measurements, Including Body Fat Ratio, Muscle Mass, BMI, And More, So You Can Pinpoint Areas Of Improvement And Finetune Your Fitness Goals

Immersive App Experience: Sync Data with Other Fitness Apps Such As FitIndex, Apple Health, Samsung Health, Google Fit, Fitbit, And MyFitnessPal with The Free Desync App, You Can Set Goals And View Progress Graphs. Rest Assured, Desync Will Not Share Your Personal Information with Any Third Parties

1 Scale For The Whole Family: With unlimited User Profiles For Family And Friends, This Scale Is Designed with Everyone In Mind. Please Note This Scale Is Not Intended For Use By Professional Athletes

Assembly Instruction: No Assembly Required. Download A "FitIndex" Application In APP Storeios And Google PlayAndroid Connect with Bluetooth And Check Your Weight.

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supershanzykhan · 4 years

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Event organizers checklist - this creates a successful opportunity

Little Christmas, customer service, birthdays, farewells or any private or corporate event: enough to organize. With these easy rules of the rule of thumb, arranging an event turns from a bun to a fun adventure!

1. Plan, plan, plan

Well-designed is half-done - even for events. Especially at business events, it is important to define for whom the event will be organized and what the event is intended to achieve. In private events, it is worth starting the arrangements by thinking about the scale at which you want to celebrate.

Consider the big guidelines for the event:

· Why is the event organized and what does it want to achieve?

· Who is the event for?

· What size will the event be?

· When will the event take place?

· What kind of theme or atmosphere do you want to create for the event?

2. Assemble the auxiliaries

Don't strain and do everything alone! By assembling an organizing gang to help you, you can divide the contract into parts, and the yarns stay better in the hands of the team. It is good to have your own author for at least these tasks:

· Status: calls for tenders, status reviews, practical agreement on arrangements

· Serving: Catering selection, menu planning, competition, beverage procurement, dishes

· Invitations: invitation list planning, making and sending invitations, guest list maintenance

· Program Master: program planning, event scheduling

· Reception Committee: guest guidance in, welcome words

· You can also find help from, for example, who is looking for a suitable space for your event, which helps you manage event invitations and registrations.

3. Find the perfect event space

The choice of space is one of the most important factors in terms of both the functionality and the atmosphere of the event. The choice of event space is especially influenced by the desired location, the number of people for the event and the budget. The choice of space also sets the mood for the event: casual or formal, bohemian or urban?

Tips for choosing a mode:

· Think about the most important specs first: location, number of people, space style and budget

· Also think about what you need from the farm: is there a need for a kitchen, sauna, yard, sound system or meeting technology?

· Map the selection with several requests for quotations. From Venuu.fi, you send a request for quotation to several farms at once, and finding a vacant dream space becomes easier.

4. Get the food served

It is good to have a filling for the stomach and a moisturizer for the throat at every event. At small parties, you can do the meals yourself, or ask the people to bring a common snack and drink. For larger events, it is best to turn to Catering, as the catering service handles delicious meals, often from transport to dishes and cleaning, efficiently, without extra effort.

Please note these when serving:

· Book catering: you can easily compare and compete catering services for your event.

· Remember drinks: There are party drinks for many departures, but ordering alcohol is on the agenda for many events.

· Non-alcoholic beverages: Not everyone tastes alcohol, which is why you should invest in non-alcoholic beverages. Delicious mock tails and punches are in the darkest of the clouds and are tasted by every guest.

5. Schedule tasks

Many arrangements need to be handled in the right order and at the right time. Enable your calendar and to-do list, set reminders, and note things you care about:

Task scheduling helps:

· Doodle : Agree on common schedules with the group. Share the link with the guest group, everyone is allowed to choose from the suggested times the ones that suit them best.

· Phone memo: Throw here miscellaneous ideas, remarks, and half-accident. found interesting links and things you want to remember later

· To-do lists on paper or electronically: Download the app, make a list in Excel or on graph paper. Scratching the work done only rewards it!

6. Design a program

Keep the target audience and goal of the event in mind when planning the program! Sometimes it’s worth putting your own preferences aside and thinking about what participants in that event get excited about and like.

When choosing a program, consider:

· Whether you want an event activity , a speaker or even a band

· Make sure you have space and equipment for the program: a stage and electricity for the band, a separate corner for the photo booth, etc.

· Be open-minded: old traditions are nice, but by trying new ones, events will stay in your mind for a long time to come.

Event planning as teamwork

The Finnish summer event season is on hand again and a huge number of events are being held to the delight of holidaymakers and active visitors.

Workers made up of professionals and enthusiasts have thrown jobs in a sweat hat already during the winter frosts to enable organizers to provide a successful event experience. The audience only sees a surface scratch on the work done when they arrive at the scene and of course the work continues even after the audience leaves. Event planning is a crucial part of carrying out a successful event project. Here are some perspectives on event planning with Opens.

Opens user numbers have grown nicely and a wide variety of events are planned using Opens. The needs of users vary and the starting points are different. Likewise, event production teams are made up of different people, so it’s good to think about using Opens on an event- and user-specific basis. In event projects, planning is often done by different people depending on the project, so the situation is normal in the implementation of event productions. Here are some tips and perspectives for you to consider in your event at the planning stage:

Opens design software is well suited for different phases of an event project. At the very beginning of the event, it can be used to model implementation options. For example, an area plan is easy to sketch on a scale, even for different venues, before the final site selection. You can get all the necessary information directly from the venues that have Open Venue at their disposal. Or, alternatively, with the Open Event software, you can create the venue and its information as your own venue. At this stage of planning, it is good to pay attention to the amount of work, structures, capacity, logistics and safety required for the event.

Once you have defined the project according to, for example, time, place, type of event and target group, you can start creating a more detailed production plan. For the first steps, I would recommend building a spatial plan, budget, and schedules. These provide frames for more detailed design e.g. technology, personnel and safety.

At this point, it’s also a good idea to consider which Opens features will be enabled and what will be left out. It is often clear to include everything in the beginning and leave out what is not needed. As event planning progresses, you can edit the content of the event settings later as needed. The information is documented as it accumulates and is available for planning new events.

Who makes the plan?

In the early stages of event planning, it’s also good to think about your own team and your own skills. It’s important to think about how you work with each member of your team. The basic idea of Opens is to gather relevant event information in one place and there are several ways to produce the information.

By doing it yourself, you design and produce content for the system yourself. If you want, you can request comments from others by giving the users you want viewing rights.

By working together, you design and produce content for the system together with another person. For example, you can even visit a possible solution with a sound technician while sitting at a table or online if you have given him or her rights to the event.

Ready material to add another person will draw up the plan independently, sending you the information you add to the system.

Delegate design you give another person the right to design independently and delegate design to him. Be sure to ask him or her to update the progress of the job so that you can see directly from the control panel the percentage at which the job is going. You should also monitor what design material has been accumulated and guide the designer if necessary.

Exercising viewing rights in some cases, it also makes sense to give only viewing rights to an event plan. For example, if you have a client to whom you report on the progress of the work then you can give him viewing rights to the plan so that he can follow the progress of the plan in real time.

Utilization of old event data

You can speed up planning by copying ready-made parts of your already completed event into a new event and using them as a basis for planning. Without Opens, many organizers seem to spend quite a bit of time searching for and interpreting old event materials.

Venue information

Venue information refers to a floor plan, electrical outlets, water points and other site-related information. If the venue has created an event for you on Open Venue, all of this information is immediately ready for the event and you can directly start making an event plan. If you have Open Event software, you can request the venue to integrate with their Open Venue software and get the information for yourself from there, or you can create the venue yourself. This custom venue you create is available for all your events and you don't have to redo the information.

Remember that the more carefully an event is planned, the better the conditions are for a successful and safe event. And the information is in the possession of the event organizer in the database, so that, for example, in person exchanges, the information does not disappear with the person. Even if you yourself suddenly have to be left out of the event, another can patch up your work when the information is stored in a standardized structure in the database.

Sun for everyone and a happy summer of events!

Courtesy:Event Planner & Organizer in Lahore

#farmhouse farmhousestyle farmhousedecor farmhousefresh farmhousegoals eventservices eventsmanagement eventsvenue eventsdecor eventsetup

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shirlleycoyle · 4 years

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What Alternate Reality Games Teach Us About the Dangerous Appeal of QAnon

This story was originally published on mssv.net by Adrian Hon (@adrianhon)

The far-right QAnon conspiracy theory is so sprawling, it’s hard to know where people join. Last week, it was 5G cell towers, this week it’s Wayfair; who knows what next week will bring? But QAnon’s followers always seem to begin their journey with the same refrain: “I’ve done my research.”

I’d heard that line before. In early 2001, the marketing for Steven Spielberg’s latest movie, A.I., had just begun. YouTube wouldn’t launch for another four years, so you had to be eagle-eyed to spot the unusual credit next to Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, and Frances O’Connor: Jeanine Salla, the movie’s “Sentient Machine Therapist.”

Close-up of the A.I. movie poster

Soon after, Ain’t It Cool News (AICN) posted a tip from a reader:

“Type her name in the Google.com search engine, and see what sites pop up…pretty cool stuff! Keep up the good work, Harry!! –ClaviusBase”

(Yes, in 2001 Google was so new you had to spell out its web address.)

The Google results began with Jeanine Salla’s homepage but led to a whole network of fictional sites. Some were futuristic versions of police websites or lifestyle magazines; others were inscrutable online stores and hacked blogs. A couple were in German and Japanese. In all, over twenty sites and phone numbers were listed.

By the end of the day, the websites racked up 25 million hits, all from a single AICN article suggesting readers ‘do their research’. It later emerged they were part of one of the first-ever alternate reality games (ARG), The Beast, developed by Microsoft to promote Spielberg’s movie.

The way I’ve described it here, The Beast sounds like enormous fun. Who wouldn’t be intrigued by a doorway into 2142 filled with websites and phone numbers and puzzles, with runaway robots who need your help and even live events around the world? But consider how much work it required to understand the story and it begins to sound less like “watching TV” fun and more like “painstaking research” fun. Along with tracking dozens of websites that updated in real time, you had to solve lute tablature puzzles, decode base 64 messages, reconstruct 3D models of island chains that spelt out messages, and gather clues from newspaper and TV adverts across the US.

This purposeful yet bewildering complexity is the complete opposite of what many associate with conventional popular entertainment, where every bump in your road to enjoyment has been smoothed away in the pursuit of instant engagement and maximal profit. But there’s always been another kind of entertainment that appeals to different people at different times, one that rewards active discovery, the drawing of connections between clues, the delicious sensation of a hunch that pays off after hours or days of work. Puzzle books, murder mysteries, adventure games, escape rooms, even scientific research—they all aim for the same spot.

What was new in The Beast and the ARGs that followed it was less the specific puzzles and stories they incorporated, but the sheer scale of the worlds they realised—so vast and fast-moving that no individual could hope to comprehend them. Instead, players were forced to cooperate, sharing discoveries and solutions, exchanging ideas, and creating resources for others to follow. I’d know: I wrote a novel-length walkthrough of The Beast when I was meant to be studying for my degree at Cambridge.

QAnon is not an ARG. It’s a dangerous conspiracy theory, and there are lots of ways of understanding conspiracy theories without ARGs. But QAnon pushes the same buttons that ARGs do, whether by intention or by coincidence. In both cases, “do your research” leads curious onlookers to a cornucopia of brain-tingling information.

In other words, maybe QAnon is… fun?

ARGs never made it big. They came too early and It’s hard to charge for a game that you stumble into through a Google search. But maybe their purposely-fragmented, internet-native, community-based form of storytelling and puzzle-solving was just biding its time…

This blog post expands on the ideas in my Twitter thread about QAnon and ARGs, and incorporates many of the valuable replies. Please note, however, that I’m not a QAnon expert and I’m not a scholar of conspiracy theories. I’m not even the first to compare QAnon to LARPs and ARGs.

But my experience as lead designer of Perplex City, one of the world’s most popular and longest-running ARGs, gives me a special perspective on QAnon’s game-like nature. My background as a neuroscientist and experimental psychologist also gives me insight into what motivates people.

Today, I run Six to Start, best known for Zombies, Run!, an audio-based augmented reality game with half a million active players, and I’m writing a book about the perils and promise of gamification.

It’s Like We Did It On Purpose

Perplex City “Ascendancy Point” Story Arc

When I was designing Perplex City, I loved sketching out new story arcs. I’d create intricate chains of information and clues for players to uncover, colour-coding for different websites and characters. There was a knack to having enough parallel strands of investigation going on so that players didn’t feel railroaded, but not so many that they were overwhelmed. It was a particular pleasure to have seemingly unconnected arcs intersect after weeks or months.

Merely half of the “Q-web“

No-one would mistake the clean lines of my flowcharts for the snarl of links that makes up a QAnon theory, but the principles are similar: one discovery leading to the next. Of course, these two flowcharts are very different beasts. The QAnon one is an imaginary, retrospective description of supposedly-connected data, while mine is a prescriptive network of events I would design.

Except that’s not quite true. In reality, Perplex City players didn’t always solve our puzzles as quickly as we intended them to, or they became convinced their incorrect solution was correct, or embarrassingly, our puzzles were broken and had no solution at all. In those cases we had to rewrite the story on the fly.

When this happens in most media, you just hold up your hands and say you made a mistake. In video games, you can issue an online update and hope no-one’s the wiser. But in ARGs, a public correction would shatter the uniquely-prolonged collective suspension of disbelief in the story. This was thought to be so integral to the appeal of ARGs, it was termed TINAG, or “This is Not a Game.”

So when we messed up in Perplex City, we tried mightily to avoid editing websites, a sure sign this was, in fact, a game. Instead, we’d fix it by adding new storylines and writing through the problem (it helped to have a crack team of writers and designers, including Naomi Alderman, Andrea Phillips, David Varela, Dan Hon, Jey Biddulph, Fi Silk, Eric Harshbarger, and many many others).

We had a saying when these diversions worked out especially well: “It’s like we did it on purpose.”

Every ARG designer can tell a similar war story. Here’s Josh Fialkov, writer for the Lonelygirl15 ARG/show:

“Our fans/viewers would build elaborate (and pretty neat) theories and stories around the stories we’d already put together and then we’d merge them into our narrative, which would then engage them more. The one I think about the most is we were shooting something on location and we’re run and gunning. We fucked up and our local set PA ended up in the background of a long selfie shot. We had no idea. It was 100% a screw up. The fans became convinced the character was in danger. And then later when that character revealed herself as part of the evil conspiracy — that footage was part of the audiences proof that she was working with the bad guys all along — “THATS why he was in the background!” They literally found a mistake – made it a story point. And used it as evidence of their own foresight into the ending — despite it being, again, us totally being exhausted and sloppy. And at the time hundreds of thousands of people were participating and contributing to a fictional universe and creating strands upon strands.”

Conspiracy theories and cults evince the same insouciance when confronted with inconsistencies or falsified predictions; they can always explain away errors with new stories and theories. What’s special about QAnon and ARGs is that these errors can be fixed almost instantly, before doubt or ridicule can set in. And what’s really special about QAnon is how it’s absorbed all other conspiracy theories to become a kind of ur-conspiracy theory such that seems pointless to call out inconsistencies. In any case, who would you even be calling out when so many QAnon theories come from followers rather than “Q”?

Yet the line between creator and player in ARGs has also long been blurry. That tip from “ClaviusBase” to AICN that catapulted The Beast to massive mainstream coverage? The designers more or less admitted it came from them. Indeed, there’s a grand tradition of ARG “puppetmasters” (an actual term used by devotees) sneaking out from “behind the curtain” (ditto) to create “sockpuppet accounts” in community forums to seed clues, provide solutions, and generally chivvy players along the paths they so carefully designed.

As an ARG designer, I used to take a hard line against this kind of cheating but in the years since, I’ve mellowed somewhat, mostly because it can make the game more fun, and ultimately, because everyone expects it these days. That’s not the case with QAnon.

Yes, anyone who uses 4chan and 8chan understands that anonymity is baked into the system such that posters frequently create entire threads where they argue against themselves in the guise of anonymous users who are impossible to distinguish or trace back to a single individual – but do the more casual QAnon followers know that?

Local Fame

A Beautiful Mind

Pop culture’s conspiracy theorist sits in a dark basement stringing together photos and newspaper clippings on their "crazy wall." On the few occasions this leads to useful results, it’s an unenviable pursuit. Anyone choosing such an existence tends to be shunned by society.

But this ignores one gaping fact: piecing together theories is really satisfying. Writing my walkthrough for The Beast was rewarding and meaningful, appreciated by an enthusiastic community in a way that my molecular biology essays most certainly were not. Online communities have long been dismissed as inferior in every way to “real” friendships, an attenuated version that’s better than nothing, but not something that anyone should choose. Yet ARGs and QAnon (and games and fandom and so many other things) demonstrate there’s an immediacy and scale and relevance to online communities that can be more potent and rewarding than a neighbourhood bake sale. This won’t be news to most of you, but I think it’s still news to decision-makers in traditional media and politics.

Good ARGs are deliberately designed with puzzles and challenges that require unusual talents—I designed one puzzle that required a good understanding of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs—with problems so large that they require crowdsourcing to solve, such that all players feel like welcome and valued contributors.

Needless to say, that feeling is missing from many people’s lives:

“ARGs are generally a showcase for special talent that often goes unrecognized elsewhere. I have met so many wildly talented people with weird knowledge through them.”

If you’re first to solve a puzzle or make a connection, you can attain local fame in ARG communities, as Dan Hon, COO at Mind Candy (makers of the Perplex City ARG), notes. The vast online communities for TV shows like Lost and Westworld, with their purposefully convoluted mystery box plots, also reward those who guess twists early, or produce helpful explainer videos. Yes, the reward is “just” internet points in the form of Reddit upvotes, but the feeling of being appreciated is very real. It’s no coincidence that Lost and Westworld both used ARGs to promote their shows.

Wherever you have depth in storytelling or content or mechanics, you’ll find the same kind of online communities. Games like Bloodborne, Minecraft, Stardew Valley, Dwarf Fortress, Animal Crossing, Eve Online, and Elite Dangerous, they all share the same race for discovery. These discoveries eventually become processed into explainer videos and Reddit posts that are more accessible for wider audiences.

The same has happened with modern ARGs, where explainer videos have become so compelling they rack up more views than the ARGs have players (not unlike Twitch). Michael Andersen, owner of the Alternate Reality Gaming Network news site, is a fan of this trend, but wonders about its downside—with reference to conspiracy theorists:

“[W]hen you’re reading (or watching) a summary of an ARG? All of the assumptions and logical leaps have been wrapped up and packaged for you, tied up with a nice little bow. Everything makes sense, and you can see how it all flows together. Living it, though? Sheer chaos. Wild conjectures and theories flying left and right, with circumstantial evidence and speculation ruling the day. Things exist in a fugue state of being simultaneously true-and-not-true, and it’s only the accumulation of evidence that resolves it. And acquiring a “knack” for sifting through theories to surface what’s believable is an extremely valuable skill—both for actively playing ARGs, and for life in general.And sometimes, I worry that when people consume these neatly packaged theories that show all the pieces coming together, they miss out on all those false starts and coincidences that help develop critical thinking skills. …because yes, conspiracy theories try and offer up those same neat packages that attempt to explain the seemingly unexplained. And it’s pretty damn important to learn how groups can be led astray in search of those neatly wrapped packages.”

“SPEC”

I’m a big fan of the SCP Foundation, a creative writing website set within a shared universe not unlike The X-Files. Its top-rated stories rank among the best science fiction and horror I’ve read. A few years ago, I wrote my own (very silly) story, SCP-3993, where New York’s ubiquitous LinkNYC internet kiosks are cover for a mysterious reality-altering invasion.

CITYBRIDGE/NYC

Like the rest of SCP, this was all in good fun, but I recently discovered LinkNYC is tangled up in QAnon conspiracy theories. To be fair, you can say the same thing about pretty much every modern technology, but it’s not surprising their monolith-like presence caught conspiracy theorists’ attention as it did mine.

It’s not unreasonable to be creeped out by LinkNYC. In 2016, the New York Civil Liberties Union wrote to the mayor about “the vast amount of private information retained by the LinkNYC system and the lack of robust language in the privacy policy protecting users against unwarranted government surveillance.” Two years later, kiosks along Third Avenue in Midtown mysteriously blasted out a slowed-down version of the Mister Softee theme song. So there’s at least some cause for speculation. The problem is when speculation hardens into reality.

Not long after the AICN post, The Beast’s players set up a Yahoo Group mailing list called Cloudmakers, named after a boat in the story. As the number of posts rose to dozens and then hundreds per day, it became obvious to list moderators (including me) that some form of organisation was in order. One rule we established was that posts should include a prefix in their subject so members could easily distinguish website updates from puzzle solutions.

My favourite prefix was “SPEC,” a catch-all for any kind of unfounded speculation, most of which was fun nonsense but some of which ended up being true. There were no limits on what or how much you could post, but you always had to use the prefix so people could ignore it. Other moderated communities have similar guidelines, with rationalists using their typically long-winded “epistemic status” metadata.

Absent this kind of moderation, speculation ends up overwhelming communities since it’s far easier and more fun to bullshit than do actual research. And if speculation is repeated enough times, if it’s finessed enough, it can harden into accepted fact, leading to devastating and even fatal consequences.

I’ve personally been the subject of this process thanks to my work in ARGs—not just once, but twice.

The first occasion was fairly innocent. One of our more famous Perplex City puzzles, Billion to One, was a photo of a man. That’s it. The challenge was to find him. Obviously, we were riffing on the whole “six degrees of separation” concept. Some thought it’d be easy, but I was less convinced. Sure enough, fourteen years on, the puzzle is still unsolved, but not for lack of trying. Every so often, the internet rediscovers the puzzle amid a flurry of YouTube videos and podcasts; I can tell whenever this happens because people start DMing me on Twitter and Instagram.

This literally came a few days ago

A clue in the puzzle is the man’s name, Satoshi. It is not a rare name, and it happens to be same as the presumed pseudonymous person or persons who developed bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. So of course people think Perplex City’s Satoshi created bitcoin. Not a lot of people, to be fair, but enough that I get DMs about it every week. But it’s all pretty innocent, like I said.

More concerning is my presumed connection to Cicada 3301, a mysterious group that recruited codebreakers through very difficult online puzzles. Back in 2011, my company developed a pseudo-ARG for the BBC Two factual series, The Code, all about mathematics. This involved planting clues into the show itself, along with online educational games and a treasure hunt.

To illustrate the concept of prime numbers, The Code explored the gestation period of cicadas. We had no hand in the writing of the show; we got the script and developed our ARG around it. But this was enough to create a brand new conspiracy theory, featuring yours truly:

My bit starts around 20 minutes in:

Interviewer: Why [did you make a puzzle about] cicadas?

Me: Cicadas are known for having a gestation period which is linked to prime numbers. Prime numbers are at the heart of nature and the heart of mathematics.

Interviewer: That puzzle comes out in June 2011.

Me: Yeah.

Interviewer: Six months later, Cicada 3301 makes its international debut.

Me: It's a big coincidence.

Interviewer: There are some people who have brought up the fact that whoever's behind Cicada 3301 would have to be a very accomplished game maker.

Me: Sure.

Interviewer: You would be a candidate to be that person.

Me: That's true, I mean, Cicada 3301 has a lot in common with the games we've made. I think that one big difference (chuckles) is that normally when we make alternate reality games, we do it for money. And it's not so clear to understand where the funding for Cicada 3301 is coming from.

Clearly this was all just in fun – I knew it and the interviewer knew it. That’s why I agreed to take part. But does everyone watching this understand that? There’s no “SPEC” tag on the video. At least a few commenters are taking it seriously:

I am the “ARG guy” in question

I’m not worried, but I’d be lying if I wasn’t a touch concerned that Cicada 3301 now lies squarely in the QAnon vortex and in the “Q-web“:

Here’s a good interview with the creator of the “Q-web”

My defence that the cicada puzzle in The Code was “a big coincidence” (albeit delivered with an unfortunate shit-eating grin) didn’t hold water. In the conspiracy theorest mindset, no such thing exists:

“According to Michael Barkun, emeritus professor of political science at Syracuse University, three core principles characterize most conspiracy theories. Firstly, the belief that nothing happens by accident or coincidence. Secondly, that nothing is as it seems: The “appearance of innocence” is to be suspected. Finally, the belief that everything is connected through a hidden pattern.”

These are helpful beliefs when playing an ARG or watching a TV show designed with twists and turns. It’s fun to speculate and to join seemingly disparate ideas, especially when the creators encourage and reward this behaviour. It’s less helpful when conspiracy theorists “yes, and…” each other into shooting up a pizza parlour or burning down 5G cell towers.

Because there is no coherent QAnon community in the same sense as the Cloudmakers, there’s no convention of “SPEC” tags. In their absence, YouTube has added annotated QAnon videos with links to its Wikipedia article, and Twitter has banned 7,000 accounts and restricted 150,000 more, among other actions. Supposedly, Facebook is planning to do the same.

These are useful steps but will not stop QAnon from spreading in social media comments or private chat groups or unmoderated forums. It’s not something we can reasonably hope for, and I don’t think there’s any technological solution (e.g. browser extensions) either. The only way to stop people from mistaking speculation from fact is for them to want to stop.

Cryptic

It’s always nice to have a few mysteries for players to speculate on in an ARG, if only because it helps them pass the time while the poor puppetmasters scramble to sate their insatiable demand for more website updates and puzzles. A good mystery can keep a community guessing for, as Lost did with its numbers or Game of Thrones with Jon Snow’s parentage. But these mysteries always have to be balanced against specifics, lest the whole story dissolve into a puddle of mush; for as much we derided Lost for the underwhelming conclusion to its mysteries, no-one would’ve watched in the first place if the episode-to-episode storytelling wasn’t so strong.

The downside of being too mysterious in Perplex City is that cryptic messages often led players on wild goose chases such that they completely ignored entire story arcs in favour of pursuing their own theories. This was bad for us because we had a pretty strict timetable that we needed our story to play out on, pinned against the release of our physical puzzle cards that funded the entire enterprise. If players took too long to find the $200,000 treasure at the conclusion of the story, we might run out of money.

QAnon can favour cryptic messages because, as far as I know, they don’t have a specific timeline or goal in mind, let alone a production budget or paid staff. Not only is there no harm in followers misinterpreting messages, but it’s a strength: followers can occupy themselves with their own spin-off theories far better than “Q” can. Dan Hon notes:

“For every ARG I’ve been involved in and ones my friends have been involved in, communities always consume/complete/burn through content faster than you can make it, when you’re doing a narrative-based game. This content generation/consumption/playing asymmetry is, I think, just a fact. But QAnon “solved” it by being able to co-opt all content that already exists and … encourages and allows you to create new content that counts and is fair play in-the-game.”

But even QAnon needs some specificity, hence their frequent references to actual people, places, events, and so on.

A brief aside on designing very hard puzzles

It was useful to be cryptic when I needed to control the speed at which players solved especially consequential puzzles, like the one revealing where our $200,000 treasure was buried. For story and marketing purposes, we wanted players to be able to find it as soon as they had access to all 256 puzzle cards, which we released in three waves. We also wanted players to feel like they were making progress before they had all the cards and we didn’t want them to find the location the minute they had the last card.

My answer was to represent the location as the solution to multiple cryptic puzzles. One puzzle referred to the Jurassic strata in the UK, which I split across the background of 14 cards. Another began with a microdot revealing which order to arrange triple letters I’d hidden on a bunch of cards. By performing mod arithmetic on the letter/number values, you would arrive at 1, 2, 3 or 4, corresponding to the four DNA nucleotides. If you understood the triplets as codons for amino acids, they became letters. These letters led you to the phrase “Duke of Burgundy”, the name of a butterfly whose location, when combined with the Jurassic strata, would help you narrow down the location of the treasure.

The nice thing about this convoluted sequence is that we could provide additional online clues to help the players community when they got stuck. The point being, you can’t make an easy puzzle harder, but you can make a hard puzzle easier.

Beyond ARGs

It can feel crass to compare ARGs to a conspiracy theory that’s caused so much harm. But this reveals the crucial difference between them: in QAnon, the stakes so high, any action is justified. If you truly believe an online store or a pizza parlour is engaging in child trafficking and the authorities are complicit, extreme behaviour is justified.

Gabriel Roth, editorial director for audio at Slate, extends this idea:

“What QAnon has that ARGs didn’t have is the claim of factual truth; in that sense it reminds me of the Bullshit Anecdotal Memoir wave of the 90s and early 00s. If you have a story based on real life, but you want to make it more interesting, the correct thing to do is change the names of the people and make it as interesting as you like and call it fiction. The insight of the Bullshit Anecdotal Memoirists (I’m thinking of James Frey and Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris) was that you could call it nonfiction and readers would like it much better because it would have the claim of actual factual truth, wowee!! And it worked! How much more engaging and addictive is an immersive, participatory ARG when it adds that unique frisson you can only get with the claim of factual truth? And bear in mind that ARG-scale stories aren’t about mere personal experiences—they operate on a world-historical scale.”

ARGs’ playfulness with the truth and their sometimes-imperceptible winking of This Is Not A Game (accusations Lonelygirl15 was a hoax) is only the most modern incarnation of epistolary storytelling. In that context, immersive and realistic stories have long elicited extreme reactions, like the panic incited by Orson Welles’ The War of the Worlds (often exaggerated, to be fair).

We don’t have to wonder what happens when an ARG community meets a matter of life and death. Not long after The Beast concluded, the 9/11 attacks happened. A small number of posters in the Cloudmakers mailing list suggested the community use its skills to “solve” the question of who was behind the attack.

The brief but intense discussion that ensued has become a cautionary tale of ARG communities getting carried away and being unable to distinguish fiction from reality. In reality, the community and the moderators quickly shut down the idea as being impractical, insensitive, and very dangerous. “Cloudmakers tried to solve 9/11” is a great story, but it’s completely false.

Unfortunately, the same isn’t true for the poster child for online sleuthing gone wrong, the r/findbostonbombers subreddit. There’s a parallel between the essentially unmoderated, anonymous theorists of r/findbostonbombers and those in QAnon: neither feel any responsibility for spreading unsupported speculation as fact. What they do feel is that anything should be solvable, as Laura Hall, immersive environment and narrative designer, describes:

“There’s a general sense of, ‘This should be solveable/findable/etc’ that you see in lots of reddit communities for unsolved mysteries and so on. The feeling that all information is available online, that reality and truth must be captured/in evidence somewhere”

There’s truth in that feeling. There is a vast amount of information online, and sometimes it is possible to solve “mysteries”, which makes it hard to criticise people for trying, especially when it comes to stopping perceived injustices. But it’s the sheer volume of information online that makes it so easy and so tempting and so fun to draw spurious connections.

That joy of solving and connecting and sharing and communication can do great things, and it can do awful things. As Josh Fialkov, writer for Lonelygirl15, says:

That brain power negatively focused on what [conspiracy theorists] perceive as life and death (but is actually crassly manipulated paranoia) scares the living shit out of me.

What ARGs Can Teach Us

Can we make “good ARGs”? Could ARGs inoculate people against conspiracy theories like QAnon?

The short answer is: No. When it comes to games that are educational and fun, you usually have to pick one, not both—and I say that as someone who thinks he’s done a decent job at making “serious games” over the years. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible, but it’s really hard, and I doubt any such ARG would get played by the right audience anyway.

The long answer: I’m writing a book about the perils and promise of gamification. Come back in a year or two.

For now, here’s a medium-sized answer. No ARG can heal the deep mistrust and fear and economic and spiritual malaise that underlies QAnon and other dangerous conspiracy theories, any more than a book or a movie can solve racism. There are hints at ARG-like things that could work, though—not in directly combatting QAnon’s appeal, but in channeling people’s energy and zeal of community-based problem-solving toward better causes.

Take The COVID Tracking Project, an attempt to compile the most complete data available about COVID-19 in the U.S. Every day, volunteers collect the latest numbers on tests, cases, hospitalizations, and patient outcomes from every state and territory. In the absence of reliable governmental figures, it’s become one of the best sources not just in the U.S., but in the world.

It’s also incredibly transparent. You can drill down into the raw data volunteers have collected on Google Sheets, view every line of code written on Github, and ask them questions on Slack. Errors and ambiguities in the data are quickly disclosed and explained rather than hidden or ignored. There’s something game-like in the daily quest to collect the best-quality data and to continually expand and improve the metrics being tracked. And like in the best ARGs, volunteers of all backgrounds and skills are welcomed. It’s one of the most impressive and well-organising reporting projects I’ve ever seen; “crowdsourcing” doesn’t even come close to describing its scale.

If you applied ARG skills to investigative journalism, you’d get something like Bellingcat, an an open-source intelligence group that discovered how Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) was shot down over Ukraine in 2014. Bellingcat’s volunteers painstakingly pieced together publicly-available information to determine MH17 was downed by a Buk missile launcher originating from the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Rocket Brigade in Kursk, Russia. The Dutch-led international joint investigation team later came to the same conclusion.

Conspiracy theories thrive in the absence of trust. Today, people don’t trust authorities because authorities have repeatedly shown themselves to be unworthy of trust – misreporting or manipulating COVID-19 testing figures, delaying the publication of government investigations, burning records of past atrocities, and deploying unmarked federal forces. Perhaps authorities were just as untrustworthy twenty or fifty or a hundred years ago, but today we rightly expect more.

Mattathias Schwartz, contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, believes it’s that lack of trust that leads people to QAnon:

“Q’s [followers] … are starving for information. Their willingness to chase bread crumbs is a symptom of ignorance and powerlessness. There may be something to their belief that the machinery of the state is inaccessible to the people. It’s hard to blame them for resorting to fantasy and esotericism, after all, when accurate information about the government’s current activities is so easily concealed and so woefully incomplete.”

So the goal cannot be to simply restore trust in existing authorities. Rather, I think it’s to restore faith in truth and knowledge itself. The COVID Tracking Project and Bellingcat help reveal truth by crowdsourcing information. They show their work via hypertext and open data, creating a structure upon which higher-level analysis and journalism can be built. And if they can’t find the truth, they’re willing to say so.

QAnon seems just as open. Everything is online. Every discussion, every idea, every theory is all joined together in a warped edifice where speculation becomes fact and fact leads to action. It’s thrilling to discover, and as you find new terms to Google and new threads to pull upon, you can feel just like a real researcher. And you can never get bored. There’s always new information to make sense of, always a new puzzle to solve, always a new enemy to take down.

QAnon fills the void of information that states have created—not with facts, but with fantasy. If we don’t want QAnon to fill that void, someone else has to. Government institutions can’t be relied upon to do this sustainably, given how underfunded and politicised they’ve become in recent years. Traditional journalism has also struggled against its own challenges of opacity and lack of resources. So maybe that someone is… us.

ARGs teach us that the search for knowledge and truth can be immensely rewarding, not in spite of their deliberately-fractured stories and near-impossible puzzles, but because of them. They teach us that communities can self-organise and self-moderate to take on immense challenges in a responsible way. And they teach us that people are ready and willing to volunteer to work if they’re welcomed, no matter their talent.

It’s hard to create these communities. They rely on software and tools that aren’t always free or easy to use. They need volunteers who have spare time to give and moderators who can be supported, financially and emotionally, through the struggles that always come. These communities already exist. They just need more help.

Despite the growing shadow of QAnon, I’m hopeful for the future. The beauty of ARGs and ARG-like communities isn’t their power to discover truth. It’s how they make the process of discovery so deeply rewarding.

What Alternate Reality Games Teach Us About the Dangerous Appeal of QAnon syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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beatricenius · 7 years

Text

A White-Walled Room

A fic inspired by this thought-provoking post by @red-earth-rising. It turned out kind of meta and it isn’t exactly what I set out to do, but that was at least my source of inspiration.

This fic is also on ao3

The room she was escorted to appeared almost empty at first glance, white-walled and echoing with her solitary steps as she made it past the threshold. It was impossible not to feel out of place in a room like that as a civilian. Something about the stark contrast between the blank nothingness and her vibrant burgundy coat, a color that had felt fairly muted in the world outside the BSHCI. Here, it made her otherness glaringly obvious. She could see it reflected in the thick glass wall separating her from the man she had come to see. Dressed in anonymous beige with his hair cut shorter than in the pictures circulating online, it took her a moment to assemble his features into something she might recognize.

“Good morning, Dr. Lecter.”

“Good morning. Ms. Boudreaux, I presume?”

“That’s right,” She took a step forward. Her hesitance was only apparent in the quivering steel of her eyes. “I was honestly surprised to hear you agreed to the interview.”

“You deliberately told me just enough to spark my curiosity,” There was mild amusement written on his face that did nothing to soothe her frayed nerves. His gaze held no malevolence, but it was the look of someone watching a child in the midst of a silly game. “Consider me informed and consenting. I have no time for formalities. What exactly is the topic of your research?”

“I’m writing a thesis about the evolving nature of your crimes,” She formed her mouth carefully around the words she’d memorized. “More specifically, the alterations to your MO after you joined forces with former special agent Will Graham. Post-fall, as it were.”

He tilted his head. “Much has already been said on the topic of those alterations. What do you intend to contribute to the conversation?”

She exhaled through her nose. “Many hesitate to explore the underlying themes of the murder tableaus you and Mr. Graham created, since those themes are potentially controversial. I don’t. I want to explore the angle of internalized homophobia as it is made evident in your crime scenes, when studied alongside what we know about you and the environments in which you spent your formative years.”

As she spoke, he went very still. She was unsettled by that too; the unnatural stillness that made her realize the extent to which his sparse yet deliberate micro expressions animated him.

“What are these environments you speak of?”

“Do you mind if I record this?” He signaled his approval and she fumbled with her equipment for a moment before hitting the record button. “You asked what environments I was referring to. Europe during the AIDS epidemic. The rural south, blue collar America. All fertile grounds for homophobic rhetoric.”

“I was never part of blue collar America.”

“Will Graham was. Did he ever talk about that?”

“No. Even before his attempted double suicide, Will did not like to linger in the past.”

She had heard him speak Will Graham’s name on countless occasions, but now that the smooth drone of his voice wasn’t a tinny recording filtered through busted speakers, she was struck by the sheer amount of affection he was able to pour into a single syllable. Will Graham’s name was spoken with something akin to homesickness.

“Has your thesis proposal truly been approved, Ms. Boudreaux? This sounds, for all intents and purposes, like an extension of tabloid journalism.”

“Do you object?”

A slight pause. “Not necessarily,” He gestured toward a chair in the middle of the room. “Ask what you came here to ask. I will let you know if I have any objections.”

She sat down, smoothing her hands over her thighs as if she was wearing a skirt. She wasn’t. She was wearing a pair of slacks she didn’t usually wear and worried that the way they rode up to expose her calves made her look somehow foolish. She couldn’t remember whether the color of her socks clashed with her coat. Being in his line of sight made such worries surface automatically.

“People always say that you respond best to politeness. I think that’s an oversimplification. My guess is that you’d prefer it if I was blunt rather than polite.”

“You can be polite while being blunt.”

“I can try,” She took her notes out of her bag. She’d more or less memorized those too, but the weight of them on her lap was calming. “My first question is a given. Was your relationship with Will Graham romantic?”

“Romantic,” The word was held against the roof of his mouth for a moment. “We were never inclined to label or categorize what we shared. It was intimate.”

“Sexual?”

“Intimate.”

“Is there a difference?”

“Your incompetence is flagrant. Obviously there is a difference. Sometimes we touched. Often, we did not. Regardless, it was intimate.”

“What was the nature of this touch? If you would humor me.”

He gave her a long look. “You should know that my memory is not what it once was. My information processing has become a finely woven sieve. Supposedly, I have an early onset of Alzheimer’s. They have been saying that for almost ten years. I usually have the mental presence required to keep myself moored. I don’t forget. I jumble.”

“Give me something jumbled.”

“The beat of his heart against my palm. The snow crust scratch of his voice next to my ear as his legs wrapped around my waist. Blood and semen and tears. All mine. His attraction to me was multifaceted and nothing if not complex. He could never sustain an erection with me. But we would kiss. On rare occasions, we had intercourse. All sorts of physical closeness was important; parts of me in parts of him, and vice versa. Do you understand?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Touch can be affirming. The simplest form of affirmation there is.”

“No. No. Affirmation was never the point. It was a was a blurring of individuality, the act of physically merging. It would close the final distance between us when our minds were already connected. Do you understand?”

“Theoretically. I’ve only ever had casual sex.”

Something shifted behind his eyes. “Sexual intimacy without emotion is a debasement of everyone involved. An act verging on bestial.”

“Not bestial. Casual. Almost polite.”

He smiled faintly. ��People have often likened me to an animal. I always found it amusing. Will reminded me more of an animal than anyone I’ve ever known.”

“How?”

“I could never figure out whether the scale tipped in favor of design or instinct. He would pounce like something starving, with every bit of impersonal fury he could muster. Chest heaving, eyes that were all pupil. I would taste blood between his teeth and there was no telling where it came from. Him, me, someone else. Above all else, he acted on mindless drive. Transparent like an animal in intention.”

“With all due respect, that sounds like wishful thinking on your part, Dr. Lecter.”

“He was animal-like in that as well. The way he would adapt and evolve to suit my preferences. I did the same for him. I often tried to be what he thought I was.”

“But not what he wanted you to be?”

“Will never knew what he wanted. I forgave him for that early on. Eventually, he came to forgive himself as well.”

“For wanting an intimate relationship with you or for not wanting it enough?”

His eyes narrowed. “Will’s struggle with internalized homophobia rendered him unable to fully reciprocate. Is that what you meant to imply? That his desires were thwarted by self-loathing, born from the suffocating press of traditional values?”

She replayed the exchange in her head to pinpoint when and why his voice had sharpened with offense. All too late, she realized her mistake.

“I don’t wish to speak to someone who doesn’t listen to what I have to say, Ms. Boudreaux. You have a fixed idea of our involvement with each other and your questions have been prepared according to your assumptions. A tedious novice mistake.”

“I am listening. I am.”

“No. You aren’t. Your thesis is moronic. I don’t want what we shared to be contextualized. Context is irrelevant. Did you honestly think we were unable to move past such trivial notions after everything that transpired between us?”

For the first time since she walked into the room, she felt certain that she knew what the flicker behind his eyes meant. She recognized it from her reflection in the mirror, the vague yet palpable anger that arose from having been bereft. She didn’t soften her voice deliberately when she spoke, but found that a note of compassion bled into it anyway.

“I would understand it if that was the case. Are you a romantic, Dr. Lecter? You sound like a romantic.”

“I am opposed to searching for an explanation for that which defies explanation. With the right theoretical framework, any tangle of events can be arranged into something linear and logical. Fitting neatly into your little discourse. We do not fit there. Moreover, we do not belong there.”

“Don’t you?”

“No,” He paused. “I will not be pitied for things that never were. We did what we could with what we had, and I would not change a thing. Everything mattered. Every cause and its subsequent effect. He gave me everything he had and I did the same.”

“I understand. I do. May I ask you something else?”

“No. You may not. I don’t wish to speak to you any longer, Ms. Boudreaux. I’m afraid you have overstayed your welcome.”

“I didn’t mean to step out of line. I promise. When did your relationship start to progress into the intimacy you talked about? I want to hear it from you. Please.”

When he didn’t answer, she sucked her lower lip into her mouth and deliberated quickly. Finally, she released a small breath. “Alright. Alright. I’ll leave. Thank you for seeing me, Dr. Lecter. I appreciate it. I’m sorry to have offended you.”

Just as she was putting her things away and slinging her bag over her shoulder to leave, he took as step closer, fixing her with that unnervingly attentive gaze.

“He resonated with me. Like the echo of blood and breath in a seashell. I made the conscious decision to perceive that echo as the sound of the ocean. Do you understand? That intimacy was always there, from the very beginning.”

“Sometimes an echo is just an echo.”

“But love is dependent on elevation of the prosaic,” He stepped back again. “I can no longer stand it. The sound of the ocean. When he was alive, it was my favorite sound. It is where we were born and where we could have died. I regret that the ocean did not take him. I should have drowned him there. I should have laid myself to rest beside him. Did they tell you what happened to the nurse that played the sound of the ocean on a white noise generator?”

“They told me. Should I get someone, Dr. Lecter?”

“I admit that was rather bestial of me. Though I was never what Will was. Don’t get anyone, it would not be to my benefit.”

“Then I won’t,” She decided to go out on a limb. “It’s been nearly five years since Will Graham’s execution. Right? It’s understandable that the upcoming anniversary of his death makes you miss him. That’s why you agreed to see me. You want to talk to someone about it.”

“Are you a romantic, Ms. Boudreaux? You sound like a romantic.”

“Takes one to know one,” She ventured a hesitant smile. It wasn’t mirrored in the even lines of his face, but his eyes softened ever so slightly. “Thank you for your time. I mean that. May I visit again? I won’t bring my notes, just my ambition. And my company. An arrangement like that could benefit the both of us, I think.”

“Thank you for your blunt politeness,” He looked just past her head, as if his gaze was drawn by something behind her. “Let me know in advance when you want to visit. My memory is not what it once was. I need to separate to refine. Sieving is time-consuming work.”

“I will. Thank you.”

As she walked down the long corridor, she thought about the look in his eyes as his gaze fixed on that spot beside her, just above her head. It reminded her of flourish of violets in his voice as that single, delicate syllable rolled off his tongue. Absentmindedly, she considered the fact that Will Graham would have been almost exactly a head taller than her, if the information she had come across was correct.

#hannibal #hannigram #will graham #hannibal lecter #murder husbands #fic #mention of attempted suicide #in reference to twotl #referenced major character death

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pilgrimbenham · 5 years

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What is Worship? (part 2)

Generally, the last thing on most people’s minds when they walk into a crowd is to break into corporate singing. And yet, every week, around the globe, millions gather together and break into unison to proclaim the goodness of God through simple melodies.

The gathering of God’s people together to study, sing, and embody God’s glory is a normative and anticipated aspect of every Christ-follower’s week. But what should churches be singing? Who should be leading them in song? What does organized congregational “worship” look like in the Bible?

This is post two of a 3-part blog series titled, “What is Worship?”In the first post, we looked at the broader picture of what it means to give God glory and praise, defining worship as much more than music (read here).

In the third and final post, we will look at false worship and some examples of idolatry and blasphemy and how to turn from that to the one true God in praise and adoration.

But in this second post, we will look at a picture of organized congregational “worship”, and what place singing should have in the life of the church, including who is qualified to lead worship and what we should be singing.

Let’s start in 1 Chronicles 16:1-43. Now to give you a little context, David has been anointed as king. Saul has died, and now David sits on the throne. The Philistines have been defeated, and the ark of God has been recovered. There is not yet a temple built (because David's son Solomon would be the one who eventually builds the temple), but David has taken the time to organize people from the tribe of Levi to be musicians and singers and ministers to lead the people in corporate worship. When you read through this chapter, you notice that David left Asaph and his worship team assigned to gates, and to sacrifices, and even to play specific instruments!

Who should lead worship?

In short, corporate worship should be organized, assembled, and led by skilled musicians who live a life of integrity.

Psalm 78:72 says, “With upright heart he shepherded them and guided them with his skillful hand.”

If we neglect either one of those, we fall into problems. A skilled musician who isn't living with an upright heart is hardly a worship leader or a lead worshiper. He or she is merely a performer.

But, you can have the most upright heart in the world but that doesn't mean you are skilled to lead a group of people in song. You have to understand how to read music or notes, you must understand timing, cadence, feel, and generally have the ability to play an instrument or know if you are on pitch.

There is no idea in the text in 1 Chronicles here that David just had everyone singing on their own. Those who were qualified were chosen and expressly named. Some of them played different instruments. Some of them were directing different areas of singing. But there was order and skill, along with integrity.

How should worship songs be written and sung?

Colossians 3:16-17 gives us a great picture of congregational worship in the New Testament:

16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Both here and in Ephesians 5, Paul mentions: “Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual songs”.

When Paul says "psalms", in the New Testament that word would have referred to our 150 psalms.

But then he mentions "hymns". This meant something different in Paul's day than ours, however. In the Greek and Roman empires leading up to the time of the New Testament, hymns were sung in praise of heroes and gods. People would celebrate the military victories of great generals and exalt the false gods of mythology and their songs were known as hymns. But as the gospel swept across the known world, the church transformed the hymn into a song in praise to the one true God. In 112 when a governor in Bythinia wrote to the Emperor asking for advise on how to handle the rising number of Christians in the empire, he mentioned that the Christians were observed singing “a hymn to Christ as to a god.” You don't sing songs for someone who was crucified on a cross but for champions and heroes!

Paul encouraged the church to claim the music of the culture and sing it to God’s glory. That doesn't mean singing the exact lyrics of the culture, but certainly the tunes, the style, the genre of music for God's glory. We take "CAESAR IS LORD" and we change the lyrics to "JESUS IS LORD"!

Then there are spiritual songs. This is a generic Greek word meaning all different kinds of songs.

Not all music is composed for worship or should be used for worship. We are to sing music that is the result of the Spirit of God working in hearts and cultures and peoples—music that is sanctified for (set apart for and intended for) God’s glory in corporate praise—music that helps us speak truth to one another, teaching, exhorting and encouraging one another.

Now don't overthink these categories. The takeaway I think Paul was getting at is the creative variety in which we can express the truth of God from the heart. It may be through hymns, or it may be through spiritual songs. Be creative as you express worship!

Corporate worship includes singing the Word of God and the truth about God expressed in creative ways from the heart. We need these three like the sides of a triangle: God’s truth, creatively expressed, from the heart. Don't remove one!

Don't remove truth and just keep the creative heart-felt worship--because now we are singing something false--it may be poetic, beautiful, and from the heart--but it's heretical. How many modern worship songs are attempting to communicate something "new" about God but they bend truth or the definition of words to try and express something but it simply isn't true?!

But also, don't remove the reality of singing with gratitude in our hearts--we aren't mouthing words on a page or screen like actors reciting our lines. Jesus said “these people honor Me with their lips but their hearts are far from Me”. May it never be said that our lungs are warm but our hearts are cold! This is lip-service worship.

And we can't remove the creative aspect from our worship or else it becomes bland. In the Psalms, God is likened to a Shepherd, King, Warrior, Father, Teacher, Judge, and more. We hide in the shelter of His wings. As a deer pants for the water so our soul longs for Him! God is a Creator--He is infinitely creative and He designed color. He designed the notes of the musical scale. There is variety and we should creatively express His nature and the Gospel in ways that bring Him glory and honor. Let's not let our worship become bland. If the world can sing thousands of songs about relationships how much more should the people of God find creative ways to Biblically express who God is!

How is worship possible?

It is so important to understand that corporate worship is only possible through the person of Jesus.

Though David was directing Israel to worship Yahweh, their truest expression of worship was not fully realized until the Incarnation, and ultimately the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. The writer of Hebrews tells us:

Hebrews 13:15-16 15 Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name.16 Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

"Through Him, let us." Jesus is the door. It is impossible to rightly come together corporately to offer our worship to God apart from entering through Jesus. He has made the way possible. The only access to the Father is through Jesus. If you don't know Jesus, you can invoke His name all you want, but you are not a true worshipper of God if you do not enter through the door.

Jesus said, "I AM the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me" in John 14:6. That means the path to God or heaven is not a multiple-access path with all roads leading there. The way is narrow, the entrance is isolated to one door, and Jesus is that door. Enter through Him.

In our last post we will look at false worship and how many people have turned from worshiping God in spirit and truth and are in grave error.

Here’s where I want to hear from you:

What worship songs have a great blend of the truth of God, sung creatively from the heart? What are some mistakes we can make when we take creativity too far? How does ‘lip-service’ worship dishonor God?

Follow @pilgrimbenham on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and listen to sermons at thisisshoreline.com/sermons. For more content, visit pilgrimbenham.com.

#worship #sing #singing #song #Jesus #praise #music #church #congregation #creativity #lyrics

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esamastation · 7 years

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Battered but brilliant

There's podium in the front with microphones, there's screen in the back for presentations – and there is something else about the room too. Something about the dozens of dark little knobs in the walls, half spheres that gleam and seem to watch them all. Like dozens of eyes, all staring down on them – but Christine doubts very much that they're eyes. They're something else. Something new.

After jotting down the dimensions of the room, the amphitheatre-like design and how all eyes were drawn to the still empty podium, Christine taps her pen against the pad and looks around. The room is packed with every reporter she knows – and lot she doesn't. It had been an open invite – but some people had been more invited than others – there'd been assigned seats for main news outlets – and not just American ones either.

It's the first news conference by any official participant of the Battle of New York. And of course Tony Stark would invite the whole world to it.

Lot of these reporters have already chosen their stance – some of them have even written their first pieces. There's lot of praise and condemnation for the Heroes of New York, lot of speculation, lot of doomsday scenarios about what was to follow the sudden appearance of multiple Iron Man-level individuals. Some of it's understandable – especially in light how little is actually known. But again, in that light…

Christine looks down on her list of prepared questions, in case she'll get to ask any of them in this horde of reporters. Stark is good with press but that just means that if he wants to be, he can be very bad with press. The guy toes the line of cooperative and a completely shut down like an acrobat at times, and he always has the right words prepared.

The most important question she has is on the top – but it's one she can't really ask. What does this all mean for humanity?

There were multiple super heroes now, and some of them looked stronger than Iron Man. There were invasions in New York. There were portals and god damn sky beams and aliens.

The question is too open and she doubts Stark would have any sort of coherent answer for it, any more than anyone else does. Instead, if she got the chance, she'd ask this: You flew into the alien portal; what did you see?

There's a clatter of chairs and storm of flashes and Christine looks up to see Stark entering the room with number of body guards and what looks like a press advisor. He waves a hand and flashes a grin at all the flash photography going on, and all but hops up to the podium.

Christine turns on her recorder and glances to the right where Dany is ready with her camera, already snapping pictures.

"Hi," Stark says to the microphones on the podium, and his voice is amplified by unseen speakers. "Been wild couple of few days, huh?"

Christine looks him over and jots down few notes. Sunglasses in doors, bruise and cut on his face, looks tired, probably no sleep, drinking? He's in brand new suit, and it's all black – black tie, black dress shirt, black everything. Mourning colours? she jots down

"Alright, settle down, kids," Stark says and waves them back to their seats. "First – let's just take a moment here, to acknowledge the losses of the Battle of New York."

Christine halts her pen. There's few flashes, people taking pictures of stark with his head bowed down solemnly, or as solemnly as Stark ever can be.

Tens of thousands of people died in the battle. They're still pulling out the bodies – though according to the New York Police Department and Fire Department they had, with the aid of Iron Man, gotten everyone still living rescued from the ruins. Some tech Stark had that could read life signs – which hadn't yet been released to the public.

"Right, okay, so," Stark says after moment and claps his hands together. "First, I am under so many NDAs right now that there's lot of things I can't tell you guys, as much as I'd like. The identities of the other Avengers… NDA'd. The source of the Aliens…. NDA'd. The source of the nuke? Yeah, NDA'd there too. My hands are pretty much tied there. Actually when I get down to it, I can't strictly speaking tell you anything."

There's a moment of quiet, where the reporters exchange looks and frowns and Christine pauses jots down Agency capable of gagging Stark?!

Then Stark grins at them. "What they don't know I have, though, they can't classify," he says. "Please turn off all your flashes – what I'm about to show you isn't very flash photography friendly. Now, prepare to freak the fuck out."

Strong language, Christine writes down with a slight frown – and then the room goes black.

Moment later, they're in space – and above them, there is an alien army.

Christine drops her pen.

"This," Stark's voice comes from nowhere because everyone in the room has vanished. "Is the footage I captured from inside the wormhole. I was there for about thirty seconds and passed out at fifteen second mark, mind you – I didn't really see all of this until I had the chance to go over the suit data later on, but… yeah. Feast your eyes, ladies and gentleman, because you're the first humans aside from me to see this."

It's… beyond words. Part of Christine tries to put it into words – something to write down on an article. How it seems like they're suddenly floating in space, how big everything around them is – the sheer vastness of the visage above them. The alien space station, shaped vaguely like an X, the fleets of aliens all around them, the big Leviathans as the news has came to call them…

There were thousands of them

Thousands and thousands.

"It wasn't an attack force," she whispers, soundless, in sea of murmurs and gasps. "It was an occupation force."

"How do we know it's not fake?!" Someone shouts.

"I don't know," Stark says and then the horrifying, glorious vista above them starts to move. "How about like this?"

It plays out like scene from a movie. A distant speck, growing smaller each second, races towards the x-shaped space station, and then hits it. The impact is silent, as is the explosion as it engulf the station, devouring it in ever expanding circle. The visage tilts and shifts and then starts to – move.

Christine looks down – and there, hundreds of feet below them, is the other end of the portal, like a hole in space, with glimpse of New York inside it. And they're falling towards it.

It's so real that someone cries out when the portal swallows them up, it's edges burning red and white – and then they're falling in New York instead. Just like Iron Man had done, when the portal had been closed.

Stark freezes the – hologram? – there and then rewinds it back and then they're in space again, looking up at an alien space station, with alien invasion army all around them. This time people have the presence to start taking pictures – sans flashes. Can you take photographs of holograms with flashes at all? Probably not.

"Now, Iron Man's cameras aren't the best, and the image isn't as detailed as I'd really like it to be at this point… but we can make some educated guesses on numbers here. Assumed that these groups," Stark says and outlines appear to mark the alien forces. "Are similar to the ones seen closer up, then we can assume there's roughly forty thousand foot soldiers – and at least two thousand Leviathans, as far as we can see. I'd say more, lot more."

Another outline appears, this time highlighting the station – and then, dragging it closer until it fills the space above them. "The alien space station," Stark says. "Because I can't even tell the name of these guys to you – and yeah, I know it and it's been classified, go figure – anyway. The Station is about two miles in length wise, or there about. It's hard to estimate it – it was pretty far away, but… two miles is a good estimate, judging by the explosion."

The hologram begins to move again and the said explosion plays out in slow motion – a expanding orb of light that swallows the space station hole.

"That," Stark says, his voice flat. "Was by my rough estimate a thirty megaton nuclear explosion. In space with no air and no oxygen to fuel a flame and no drag to hold the concussive force back… yeah, I'd say the station is about two miles across."

"Thirty," Christine mouths. Thirty megaton nuke – someone had fired a thirty megaton nuke at New York.

"Who fired the nuke?!" someone shouts in the darkness.

"Classified," Stark says, with obvious distaste. "Would that I could, I'd tell you in a heart beat. But then they'd have to kill me. And I got too much damn work to do, to be assassinated right now."

Implications, Christine thinks and fumbles for another pen. Its hard, writing in the darkness when she can't even see her own body properly, but she manages it. With the recorder capturing Stark's words, and Dany doing what she can for pictures – or so Christine hopes anyway – she concentrates on trying to capture the air, the atmosphere.

The mind-shattering scale of it all.

"So, I could turn the hologram off," Stark says and there's instant noises of objection. "But yeah, I figure you want bit more time with it all, so, let's just leave it on. Still, this makes everything a bit hard for questions so, I'm just going to – Christine, I think I saw your glorious golden locks in there somewhere. Would you like to come up here?"

There's a moment of silence before Christine catches on that he's actually talking to her. "How?" she then demands incredulously. "I can't see anything."

There's few chuckles and Stark laughs, somewhere in space. "I'm offering you chance to run an on stage interview here; I'm sure you'll figure it out."

Well, when he puts it like that.

It takes some blind waving and few missteps but she manages to get past the other reporters to the centre of the amphitheatre where she's met with Stark's hand, coming to help her up to the stage. "Chair," he says and then puts her hand on something she can't actually see and with some relief she sits down, listening him do the same.

"When ever you're ready, Ms. Everhart," Stark says, invisible in the hologram, same as everyone else. It's weird how intimate it makes everything.

For a moment Christine can't recall her questions – and in the light of the gag orders Stark seems to be under, he probably can't even answer them all. There is that one question, though.

"Mr. Stark," she starts, distantly aware that this is probably being televised, that she is probably being listened to by hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people. "What does this all mean for humanity?"

- - - -

Remember that alien invasion idea i had?

#fanfiction #mcu #au #post-avengers #tony stark #christine everhart

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