Back in ye olde small phone days, I had this little pouch that clipped to my backpack strap and it was so great - my phone and transit card (and mini Maglite, chapstick, earphones etc) were right there! No having to dig them out of my pack! But all joy is fleeting and when I upgraded my phone, it didn't fit. No more convenient pouch.

Except fast forward to now, in possession of both loom and sewing machine, and it hit me that I could just...make one that did fit. So I did!

I wove the cloth on the rigid heddle out of 4ply merino/silk and the bands on the inkle loom out of 8/4 cotton, grabbed some quilting cotton for the lining, and sewed them all up into a little zippered pouch.

A band runs up the back with a clip that clips to the D-ring, and I sewed velcro to the side bands to wrap around the strap and secure it in place. It holds my phone and everything else, right where I need them, and I'm so chuffed!

Hi and welcome to my new series called: Mixing D&D with the Black Clover Universe

In this series I will be taking elements, mechanics, and other random things that I like from D&D and figure out how these things could work/be implemented into the Black Clover world. With that being said please add on your own thoughts and ideas to this topic because I want more stuff to think about. Also do not be afraid to suggest a D&D concept to me because it’s all valid here. With that being said let’s get started!

The topic: Classes - The Bard

“Words and music are not just vibrations of air, but vocalizations with power all their own....They say that the multiverse was spoken into existence, that the words of the gods gave it shape, and that echoes of these primordial Words of Creation still resound throughout the cosmos.” - D&D Players Handbook

Section 1: What is a bard?

Typically, we think of bards as magical musicians, but that’s only a narrow wedge of what a bard can be. Bards are experts, performers, and craftsmen, worldly travelers who can win the day with a smile and a careful selection of words where bladed steel cannot. Their spells lean toward charms and illusions rather than blatantly destructive spells. With a wide-range of knowledge in many subjects and a natural aptitude that lets them do almost anything well, Bards become masters of the talents they set their minds to perfecting, from musical performance to esoteric knowledge.

However, not every minstrel singing in a tavern or jester cavorting in a royal court is a bard. Discovering the magic hidden in music requires hard study and some measure of natural talent that most troubadours and jongleurs lack. It can be hard to spot the difference between these performers and true bards, though. A bard's life is spent wandering across the land gathering lore, telling stories, and living on the gratitude of audiences, much like any other entertainer. But a depth of knowledge, a level of musical skill, and a touch of magic set bards apart from their fellows.

Only rarely do bards settle in one place for long, and their natural desire to travel—to find new tales to tell, new skills to learn, and new discoveries beyond the horizon—makes an adventuring career a natural calling. Every adventure is an opportunity to learn, practice a variety of skills, enter long-forgotten tombs, discover lost works of magic, decipher old tomes, travel to strange places, or encounter exotic creatures. Bards love to accompany heroes to witness their deeds firsthand. A bard who can tell an awe-inspiring story from personal experience earns renown among other bards. Indeed, after telling so many stories about heroes accomplishing mighty deeds, many bards take these themes to heart and assume heroic roles themselves.

Cassiea - OlchaS

The Bard class takes inspiration from the Norse skald, the warrior-poets and historians of Scandinavia; the Celtic bard, honored storytellers who reportedly followed heroes into battle to retell their deeds and also acted as neutral diplomats; and the southern European minstrel, musicians who entertained royalty.

In medieval Ireland, the bard was a highly respected profession of poets, storytellers and historians. Bards trained for many years, and held the important role of learning and retelling history in memorable poetic form, in a time before reading and writing were commonplace. By some reports, the bards held the highest social caste in society, and it was taboo to refuse them any request; one even asked for the king's brooch, who was forced to comply, though the brooch was later returned.

When it comes to Bards in Black Clover I would see them as pretty much the same thing. Historians who have a passion for stories and knowledge. They’re the documenters of all knowledge that isn’t related to spellcasting (think grimoires, making magic items, anything Julius would be interested in, etc.). This means that they are in charge of taking care of documenting things like the history of the kingdom, popular folktales and songs, news articles and basically anything else that one would consider to be a historical resource. They are the lore keepers of the kingdom and as such they often have a large presence all about the Clover Kingdom and can be found in all social class districts.

“Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.” - Oscar Wilde

Section 2: Magic and the Bard’s College

When it comes to black clover and it’s magic system, we all know that the only way to cast spells of significant power is with a grimoire. This will never change and I will not change it within the context of adding classes to the world. However, with that being said I still believe that while we can’t change the core foundation of how a spell is learned and stored, we can change what the caster uses their magic for. When we think about classes in this context all of a sudden we no longer see them as a different way of casting magic but instead we see it more like a school. How we use our magic in this world is dependent upon our education, like fine-tuning a weapon a class takes your sword and sharpens it m into a fine point.

To go along those lines I now must address The issue of bards only being able to cast their magic with music. In the world of black clover instead believe that bards can cast magic in any way they see fit, as long as they are using their magic in an artistic way. This could be painting, cooking, singing, dancing, or any other artistic medium.  when we put the class under these definitions there are actually quite a few characters in the show that could be considered Bards. Some of these characters include but are not limited to:

Kahono

Kiato

Puli Angel

Rill Boismortier

Marx Francois

Charmy Pappitson

Vanessa Enoteca

Kirsche Vermillion

Catherine

Samantha Kravitz

Elvira Aguirre

Damnatio Kira

David Swallow

Langris Vaude

Dorothy Unsworth

Dominante Code

 these are just a few of the characters that I believe are bards. something interesting to know about this list though is that a lot of the characters on this list or female, more specifically they’re witches. well I cannot give a solid explanation for why this is I can give my own theory on it.

Witches have an innate ability forecasting artistic spells. Based off of what we’ve seen from most of the witches in the show a lot of their magic is based around the idea of Creation or illusion magic. With Elvira and Samantha both having a form of illusion magic that manipulates sound and sight. I like to think of their magic being like the Minor Illusion spell in D&D. Vanessa having threat magic and using it to make dolls and sew clothes is another bard like trait that helps fit this theory.

When it comes to bards in this world and their magic we often find that their magic in it of itself is very showy and performance like. While any magic can be interesting to see some mages are just gifted or taught how to use their magic in a way that is particularly showy or dramatic. For those who are not gifted with artistic magic, and struggle to teach themselves how to use their magic in a creative way there has to be a place where they can go to learn how. This is why we have the Bard’s College.

“What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul” - Joseph Addison

Section 3: The Bard’s College

The way of the bard is a gregarious one. Collecting songs and stories and sharing them with each other in an effort to spread knowledge. It is for this reason that the bards college was made, it is a place for bards to come together and share their finding and store them somewhere they can be taught to future generations. It also serves as a place of learning, teaching its students various mediums of art along with how to properly preserve and document history and record the world around them. While they may not be magical scholars, they certainly are the clover kingdoms finest anthropologists and non-magical historians to date. The college is also home to the biggest Historical Archives in the Clover Kingdom. These archives are treated very much like the Vatican Library and will be explored in the next section.

Now in D&D there are 8 different colleges a bard can attend (including the new Unearthed Arcana college because it’s cool): The College of Creation, The College of Eloquence, The College of Glamour, The College of Lore, The Collage of Spirits (UA), The College of Swords, The College of Valor, and The College of Whispers. Rather than putting all 7 college into the Black Clover Universe I have decided to take these 8 colleges and merge them together to make one college with 8 different “degree plans” one can take. This section will provide you with a generalized overviewed of each of the eight schools. If you wish to look more in depth at either of the colleges from a more mechanical viewpoint rather than a lore point I have provided links to each of the different colleges above.

Bard of Creation

Bards believe the cosmos is a work of art - the creation of the first dragons and gods. That creative work included harmonies that continue to resound through existence today, a power known as the Song of Creation. The Bards of Creation draw on that primeval song through their art as they try to spread the Song of Creation and its meaning to all life on the planet. Usually Bards in this Path either have a love for their art or an already artistic magic such as voice or painting magic. This path is one of the most difficult routes for a non-artistic mage to take on, but it isn’t impossible.

While studying under this practice most mages learn how to take non-magical items and infuse them with Mana to serve as a arcane focus for their spells. Taking their magic and concentrating it into a fine point that is easier to control and direct (think like Noelle and her wand.) along with this the Bards of Creation also put a heavy focus on Creation spells, helping their casters hone and fine tune their spells to perfection. Most Bards of Creation go on to either work in the noble realm as scribes for the nobility or become performers in small towns, collecting villagers stories and immortalizing them through their craft.

Some Characters that I believe are Bards of Craation would be:

Rill Boismortier

Dominante Code

Telian Springbreeze - College of Creation

Bard of Eloquence

Bards of Eloquence master the art of oratory. Persuasion is regarded as a high art, and a well-reasoned, well-spoken argument often proves more persuasive than facts. These bards wield a blend of logic and theatrical wordplay, winning over skeptics and detractors with logical arguments and plucking at heartstrings to appeal to the emotions of audiences.

Bards of the Spoken word most people in this group tend to be Debaters. Always looking to be the winner of an argument these bards are almost unparalleled when it comes to knowing what to say and when. Spending their time studying vocabulary and reading they learn to retain lots of memory and also learn how to regurgitate it properly for any situation. Most bards of this type often go on to become politicians or work for the Magic Parliament as a lawmaker and negotiator. They also end up becoming Royal Advisors in order to help with lawmaking.

Some Characters that I believe are Bards of Eloquence are:

Damnatio Kira

Marx Francois

Valorant Rose - College of Eloquence

Bard of Glamour

The Bards of Glamour are regarded with a mixture of awe and fear. Their performances are the stuff of legend. These bards are so eloquent that a speech or dance that one of them performs can cause captors to release the bard unharmed and can lull a furious dragon into complacency. The same magic that allows them to quell beasts can also bend minds. Bards of this college instead use this power to gladden the downtrodden and undermine oppressors. The can also use their magic to inspire their allies and keep them going through the worst of times.

Often times bards in this school are taught how to use their magic to captivate people and serve as support characters in a battle. Being able to draw on their mana as a source to take their art and use it as a method of passing their spell buffs to their allies these bards often times are found as support roles in their communities. A majority of them finish their training and then apply to join the magic knights, they’re often highly sought after to serve as combat support and occasionally as healers (though this is less common) .

Some Characters that I believe are Bards of Glamour are:

Kirsche Vermillion

Charmy Pappitson

Antigone LaRue - College of Glamour

Bard of Lore

Bards of Lore know something about most things, collecting bits of knowledge from sources as diverse as scholarly tomes and peasant tales. Whether singing folk ballads in taverns or collecting the stories of people at the old folks home, these bards use their gifts to hold audiences spellbound. When the applause dies down, the audience members might find themselves questioning everything they held to be true, from their faith in the priesthood of the local temple to their loyalty to the king.

The loyalty of these bards lies in the pursuit of beauty and truth, not in fealty to a monarch or following the tenets of a deity. The Bards of Lore are the protectors of the archives, serving as it’s curators and guardians. As this is such, a majority of the Bards of Lore prefer to stay with the archives and study rather than leave out for adventure. However some bards do go out and these aren’t the ones that spend their time looking for stories to add to the vast collection of tales in the archive already.

Some characters that I believe to be Bards of Lore are:

Samantha Kravitz

Elvira Aguirre

Bonezo the Undead - College of Lore

Bard of Spirits

Stories of the past are powerful; they hold lessons of history, philosophy, and magic. Bards of Spirits seek the stories of those from beyond the material plane. Using seances and rituals, they reach out to hear their stories, but the bards have no control over what story they find. These bards are closely tied to otherworldly powers often being able to tap into the astral plane (dream dimension) and the threads of fate themselves. Some speak to the dead while others become oracles and masters of fate.

Bards in this school often end up training themselves to use their magic see into the other planes of reality. All bards in this college need to have a gift for the sight in order to join because their magic needs to be tied to the planes. Here they learn how to use their magic safely and correctly so as to avoid any dangers that come from speaking with things outside of the material plane. Most of these bards go on to become oracles or fates. Traveling the countryside easing the pain of lost souls and misguided individuals.

Some characters that I believe to be Bards of Spirits are:

Dorothy Unsworth

Vanessa Enoteca

Tristan - College of Spirits

Bard of Swords

Bards of Swords are called blades, and they entertain through daring feats of weapon prowess. Their talent with weapons inspires many blades to lead double lives. One blade might use a circus troupe as cover for nefarious deeds such as assassination, robbery, and blackmail. Other blades strike at the wicked, bringing justice to bear against the cruel and powerful.

Blades who abandon their lives as entertainers have often run into trouble that makes maintaining their secret activities impossible. A blade caught engaging in vigilante justice is too great a liability for most troupes. With their weapon skills and magic, these blades either take up work as performers or will join the magic knights in order to take their two lives and finally merge them together. Seen as skilled combatants and magic users these bards are not a force to be reckoned with.

Some characters that I believe to be Bards of Swords are:

Kiato

David Swallow

Sierra - College of Swords

Bard of Valor

Bards of Valor are daring skalds whose tales keep alive the memory of the great heroes of the past, and thereby inspire a new generation of heroes. These bards gather in mead halls or around great bonfires to sing the deeds of the mighty, both past and present. They travel the land to witness great events firsthand and to ensure that the memory of those events doesn't pass from the world. With their songs, they inspire others to reach the same heights of accomplishment as the heroes of old.

These bards are taught the stories of dead heroes and in turn a lot of them end up going on to write music about them or use their stories as inspiration for their magic. Often using their knowledge to help inspire their friends in combat and bring hope in bleak battlefields. A majority of the Bards of Valor go on to join the magic knights in hopes of finding their own hero to write and tell stories about. Seeing this as their shot at becoming Chaucer or Geoffrey of the world (Chaucer wrote A Knights Tale and Geoffrey wrote the stories of King Arthur)

Some characters that I believe to be Bards of Valor are:

Kahono

Puli Angel

Hype - College of Valor

Bard of Whispers

Most folk are happy to welcome a bard into their midst. Bards of Whispers use this to their advantage. They appear to be like any other bard, sharing news, singing songs, and telling tales to the audiences they gather. In truth, the College of Whispers teaches its students that they are wolves among sheep. These bards use their knowledge and magic to uncover secrets and turn them against others through extortion and threats in order to seek out justice.

Many other bards hate the Bards of Whispers, viewing it as a parasite that uses the bards’ reputation to acquire wealth and power. For this reason, these bards rarely reveal their true nature unless they must. They typically claim to follow some other school, or keep their true nature secret in order to better infiltrate and exploit royal courts and other settings of power. However they can also use their powers for good, often times bards of this school can use their power to help bring justice and equality to a flawed system or to bring justice to those the law cannot touch.

Some characters that I believe to be Bards of Whisper are:

Catherine

Langris Vaude

Ichiro - College of Whispers

“Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.” - Sue Monk Kidd

Section 4: The Archives

Miles upon Miles of shelves full of nothing but books and thousands of feet dedicated to this one library located deep below the college. Centuries worth of national history folklore legends no one‘s heard hundreds of years live buried beneath the dirt and cobwebs of this dank and mystic labyrinth of books. These are in the royal Archives. most people don’t even know this place exist however, the bards and nobles of the kingdom are very aware of its existence... and of it’s secrecy.

Now you may be thinking “Hey this sounds just like the Vatican library“ but unlike the Vatican library, the archives are open to anyone wishing to seek knowledge. The only reason a lot of people don’t know about it is because no one really cares to ask. If we’re being real here, a majority of the books in that archive are really just diaries written by old people that are really hard to read because they’re either in a different language or they just have poor spelling because people back then were illiterate. However some of the stuff within the walls of the archive it’s rather interesting. Ancient maps leading to long-lost treasures, legends that have faded and been forgotten with time, stories of war love and loss.

It is within these walls that we find that only the country‘s history but it’s very soul. We find the story of our people hidden deep within these tombs of books. Well it is very rare for somebody that isn’t a barred to visit the archives if one is really out seeking knowledge the archive is open to them. I would like to believe that Gauche and Gordon have both visited the library at least once right after the seabed temple arc. 

The grounds of the archives are guarded heavily by the bards of the college. Not only are they guarded but they are also highly protective of the knowledge there. One of the worst things that could possibly happen is the destruction of the archives. It would be on the same level as the burning of the library of Alexandria. It is for this reason that anyone wishing to enter the archives must first pass a test of character. If you are perceived as a threat you will be turned away from the archives but not banned, nobody should ever be denied access to knowledge.

“A society that has no respect, no regard for its bards, its historians, its storytellers, is a society in steep decline, a society that has lost its very soul and my never find its way.” - Laurence Overmire

Section 5: Conclusion

I’ll keep this section short and sweet because it’s been a long read and I just wanna give my thoughts. Honestly I thought that Rill and Kahono had such a unique style of magic that it almost felt like a crime to give us a taste of bard magic without making it something that was common. Plus I felt the clover kingdom needed historians to archive their history so I felt that this was a fun thing to put together to solve both problems!! I hope you enjoyed it! Please feel free to add your own thoughts and contributions to this post because I really wanna hear them!

S4 Ep 39: Pharaoh Can Fly (Selectively)

Guys, they’re back

Best storyboarder is back, and the visual difference between last episode and this episode is like when your art teacher picks up your charcoal and just fixes everything wrong with your gesture drawings. It’s like...I mean look at this:

I just really love and appreciate how illustrative this storyboarder is. And I say just storyboarder because this had about the same budget as the last episode--there wasn’t that much actual animation as per usual. But, all of the scenes were drawn so well, like panels out of a good manga. They just...they always nail it when they’re at the helm and I don’t know why they’re on Yugioh, but bless this storyboarder.

Plot wise, everyone got pulled into the dragon by gooey tentacles that came out of it’s stomach, don’t think about it.

Meanwhile, all of the minibosses could communicate with them and beg for help, yes, even the same miniboss who may have dressed up like Pegasus and catfished Seto Kaiba.

(keep reading under the cut)

The whole process of getting absorbed into the Orichalcos demon was a whole lot of symbolism and it was...kinda gross. Also kinda sketch. Also, for Kaiba it is a neat little nod to S1 when he had a vision that his brother was absorbed into a dragon mass.

I don’t think that the makers of the show remember S1, but either they just really like goopy dragons, or it’s a coincidence or I dunno, on purpose? Probably a coincidence.

And like I made this joke and realized...what if they actually meant to make that parallel though? This is the America crossover season, and they have referenced America’s love of trickster rabbits before with Pegasus but do they know about Br’er rabbit in Japan? Do they know? It’s a pretty Americana Deep-cut, and I have no idea how common this folktale is outside of the states.

I see anime busting out absorbing goopy masses all the time so I’m gonna assume that there might be a Japanese folklore I don’t know about which uses a similar structure (although I’m also assuming it has an extremely different history and association ((which I won’t be going into because I don’t feel like putting a trigger warning on this recap)).)

And looking at Wikipedia, there’s people that think the original reference to moist, absorbing creatures could have even come from as far as India. Which is...fascinating to how it also developed in Africa, and then the Cherokee also made the same story independently and then it fused together here in the States to make it what was eventually made into a Disney movie that will never be released again--this is just a really old ass story, all in all, possibly like over a thousand years old.

And a FASCINATING google deep dive I won’t go into for obvious reasons but knock yourself out.

Also, lets get distracted for a sec and see how well this storyboarder drew a fitted jacket at that angle. Dear Lord, did they get reference for that or did their brain just already know that those folds would be there? You can even tell that Pharaoh has just a little bit of padding at his shoulders. Ugh. Guys this storyboarder is so freakin good at these little fitted jackets.

So, once Yugi and his friends are absorbed into the mass, where they should have died...and maybe some of them did, but I don’t know if I should add that to the Death Count because like...they could have held their breath in the amount of time they were stuck in there...maybe...Anyway, they are saved by being tossed into the figurative briar patch--by the souls all hanging out in the Leviathan’s stomach--which again makes me wonder...did they pull a folklore on us? Again, I have no idea.

Like a lot of the people in this dragon have been thorns in their side this entire season, they’ve all tried to kill them at one point--all the minibosses, Mai, Pegasus--but now they have decided to team up with Pharaoh (along with the rest of the human race) and offer whatever they can to free them from the grip of the gross dragon mass.

And like, the ending of the folk tale is that the thorny ass briar patch is also where the rabbit lives usually. It hurts everyone else, but the rabbit--the rabbit can deal with it. And likewise, Pharaoh is freakin dead. He’s at home here. He’s surrounded by spirit power, his friends and their friendship power, this is like his zone, and now he’s crazy powerful for it and will be for the rest of the episode.

And like Yami is a very trickster God (especially Season Zero Yami) so like...it does make sense that he would mirror a folk tale based on trickster Gods, even if it is by complete accident.

So Pharaoh imagines everyone’s tears as individual drops in a glass or something--it’s not a literal glass or anything--it’s just there because the only thing actually happening on screen was his hand hanging out of this dragon’s weird puss skin.

And he’s now a fully charged Sonic the Hedgehog and no longer needs Kaiba or Joey at all. Just gonna grab his God card demons and take charge of everything else from here on out.

By first exploding his buddies right the hell out of this lizard and across hundreds of feet of open ocean.

Joey decides to remind Kaiba that he lost the Battle City tournament.

Seto’s roast was actually in the show, PS. He is not super excited to be reminded that Yugi owns every card that he spent 2 seasons failing to get.

And then Pharaoh did something really, really...

...just really really wild.

OH OK.

YEAH JUST TAKE OFF.

GO AHEAD THERE’S NO REASON THIS WOULD BOTHER ME.

I mean he IS super powered right now but like...

Like...WTF?

4 SEASONS. 4 SEASONS I thought this guy was glued to Yugi like Peter Pan’s Shadow and apparently--he can bounce.

Can Pharaoh do this every time Yugi asks Tea out on a date and tries to instead make the ghost in his head do all the work now? Can Pharaoh just be like “NOPE” and then phase out of the house, leaving Yugi to actually do the hard stuff?

It really adds a level of complexity to their relationship if Yugi can get a room.

(If not a room for romance, but at the very least a room to poop in.)

OR has he been able to allow Yugi to wicked poop in peace this whole time, but the show just never felt like telling us because they felt like it wasn’t important (although it is crazy important)?

Either way I am just...floored at this character development.

Yami just let Yugi out of his sight for like...I want to say 8 full minutes. Just incredible amount of trust on Yami’s part. Incredible. Knowing Yugi’s track record, he should have died in those 8 minutes but...he was being babysat by both Kaiba and Joey.

So Yami summons the Gods and they shoot lasers--you kinda expect this sort of thing.

And this is...probably...the real reason why Dartz didn’t bother trying to attack Pharaoh 5,000 years ago.

I can still think it’s because of Bakura but like...this is probably the real reason. It felt pretty chump to just shoot a laser at the bastard. Pharaoh just had to be reminded that this is a thing he can just do. If he felt like it.

Which he never feels like doing, because he’s too busy watching Yugi’s every move, and getting distracted by High School shenanigans.

After this happens, the giant snake falls to the ocean, splitting into just sooooooo many ghosts.

Over 7.8 billion ghosts, if we’re to assume that this is most of the population on Earth.

(thinking the weird-o in the hat is probably a Duel Monsters card? The duel monsters were throwing themselves into the Leviathan at one point so this is probably like a dark magician boy or something...I just don’t get very attached to the monster cards so it was like...whatever. The cards die like constantly so who cares?)

It is a pretty set dressing. Like Christmas lights but...dead people.

We also find out that the lost family of our minibosses Alister and Raphael, have indeed spent the last many years inside the Leviathan stomach, which is pretty tragic. We get a bitter sweet conclusion to Alister and Raphael’s story--although it’s not a full on ending for either character. Their life still hella sucks, they are in therapy for basically forever.

Where is Gurimo?

I don’t know what sort of job or life these two are qualified to have now, but youknow...Marik’s boat probably has jobs available.

Hold up. Can we talk about the windows?

I know absolutely none of you care about this, but I do, not to be picky or condescending to an overworked art team, but because I just want to know what they were trying to aim for.

There’s an iron stained glass style windowpane thing going on and that’s what’s really getting me. Like...I know these guys were technologically advanced, but why did you use this WW2 background? What happened to Ancient Greece that you were doing before?

Like doing a super past with future tech is so cool to me--I love that sort of concept art. That’s going into like Black Panther stuff where you’re referencing the earliest stuff in Africa and then blending it with stuff beyond our science. But Atlantis is a real big shrug and a “listen we ran out of time and had to press print,” and it’s such a shame. It feels less cohesive than even when this show does Egypt.

And yo this show and how it draws ancient Egypt--I feel like I’ve already talked about that. I have a feeling I’m going to talk a lot more about it next season. I’ll get to it when we get to it. I’m hoping that they have more time and budget to actually DO Egypt for once. (I say knowing they won’t)

Like it’s one of those things where this isn’t a history show, like at all, and it’s very much a fantasy. I’m not going to be like those sewing people on youtube that get annoyed because their TV show doesn’t have handsewn stitching in their Victorian bodices they rented from the costume department from an LA discount warehouse. Because, yo, it’s TV, and I can stretch my own imagination because it’s acting. (although I confess, I watch every single one of those videos).

But...the potential, y’all...the potential.

Anyway, Dartz isn’t dead. He was just taking his toot sweet time getting down the steps of his Gazebo.

This is where things get very anime. I get this problem a lot with anime, I really do--and maybe it’s just me. But like...sometimes it feels like anime changes the rules during the boss fight.

That happens a lot, right? Where suddenly the final boss reveals something that like...should have been addressed way earlier? And he’s alive but you don’t get why?

Anyway, Pharaoh reacts by getting maybe way too attached to his newfound independence.

Which like...I can understand Tea forgetting that Yugi is one people that is two people all the time, but the writers as well?

And what’s kind of great about this scene is that Dartz does see Yugi as two people here. He doesn’t look at Yugi, he looks at both. When Pharaoh is like “Leave me, Yugi!” Dartz heard all of that.

Just kind of a neat thing that we finally have a dude that can just...see Pharaoh for what he is, but it probably won’t matter because there’s like only one more episode left of this season.

Anyway, Pharaoh and Dartz have a chat about where evil comes from...and like...it’s some Yugioh lore, all right.

So before the show decides to give us the Genesis on Yugioh and reveal where the evil of the Orichalcos comes from, or if all evil was created by Orichalcos itself (which is IMPLYING stuff about Orichalcos) the snake shuts him the hell up.

As it should. Leave that Pandora’s box freakin closed. That’s going into extended universe of Star Wars books territory (RIP.)

As an aside--pretty sure that Yugi is standing outside that tornado. Maybe it was just the editing of the episode but like...

Yo I’m pretty sure Yugi is just standing there. For the first time, it’s not his nuts getting roasted. Wow. Tables have turned so much since he was dead.

Anyway, here’s the link for new people so you can read these in order

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

There’s only one left! We can do it! We can finish this season in 2020! And actually get back to recapping Full Metal Alchemist! ~~Woooo~~

Oh man that movie better still be on Netflix or I’ll have to buy it lolol.

How To Make A Build-A-Bear Dye Without Killing It:

Me: If this is Paddington, why is he white?

Build-A-Bear: Oh my god Rowan, you can’t just ask why Paddington’s white!

Paddington is currently one of Build-A-Bear’s cutest and plushiest options. However he’s also significantly lighter-furred than either the recent movie, the classic television show, or even the original illustrations made him. My sponsor being a fan of the Paddington TV show, I was asked to experiment to see if I could correct this by dying him, in a long-lasting, no rub-off way, whilst maintaining the gorgeous fluffy texture of the fur.

And shockingly...yes. Yes, you actually can.

(Instructions and more adorable pictures under the cut)

Now as far as I can tell, if you can do it with this plushy baby, you should be able to do this with any Build-A-Bear. Probably any bear full-stop, but I’m not responsible if you re-dye that toy tiger you’ve had since you were a baby and it crozzles into a little plastic ball. Be smart, be responsible, be sure you can buy another one of whatever you’re dying in case you screw up. Remember even if it all works, you might still not get the colour you want. Dying’s a lottery.

Disclaimers over, you will need,

A Bear.

Rit DyeMore Synthetic in the colour of your choice. (Cocoa Brown if you’re doing this Paddington).

A big metal pot than can go on the stove. Bigger than the one you’re thinking of right now.

A cooking thermometer is highly encouraged - look you’re buying the dye, you might as well spring for this too, you’ll find uses for it.

Nice smelling washing-up liquid.

Rubber gloves if you’re not an idiot.

A big wooden spoon that can reach the bottom of your pot.

Basic sewing supplies (don’t panic, nothing arduous)

Ideally an extra person in case of emergencies (these include: when it turns out you can’t stir a pot continuously for over thirty minutes, when you splash yourself with scalding-hot dye and need someone to stir while you hold your hand under cold water, when you apparently don’t have the coordination to stir, check temperature, and keep track of time all at once, etc.)

And before you begin, offer a prayer and thanks to @tokozdragon whose own experimentations allowed me to stand on the shoulders of a giant. Theirs was one of the most helpful bits of information I came across in my research, and is how you’re gonna hopefully keep that fluff nice and gorgeous.

So. Build-A-Bears are seemingly synthetic top to bottom. Certainly this one is. I couldn’t find any tags saying anything other than 100% polyester, man-made fibres. Now this is a bad thing when it comes to dying, because the dyes can’t penetrate and hold in the same way. You wash it, everything’ll immediately rinse out. But Rit Synthetic Dye, does work. The only catch is, you’re gonna have to get it to just below boiling point. And if you’ve ever left a cuddly toy against a radiator before, you might know that these things do not like heat.

But there is a trick to this. You’re gonna diverge from your dye instructions just a little bit, but it’s going to work so long as you’re really on the ball.

First of all, check to see that your bear will fit in your pot - physically put it in there - and check if it could move freely and be covered with water. No? Then you’re gonna do what I did, and frankly what I suggest: You’re going to unstuff your bear. Get a clean box, find a seam (the BAB tag is perfect for this if it’s still got it on) pull until you see threads, have courage, and snip. You can put them back together, I promise. I left the head and arms stuffed for Paddington because it would fit, and they’d be more difficult to restuff. You might want to as well. Keep your heart (and tracking barcode) safe, as well as all that stuffing. Now you may have someone who looks like this:

Next, it’s bath time. No, don’t skip this step. Get a little of your nice washing-up liquid, just a small drizzle, and some warm water. Nothing hot, not close to hot - baby bath temperature. Give your bear a gentle wash, to remove any coatings or oils or dirt, and rinse them out well under more warm water. Make sure to squeeze it through any remaining stuffed bits too. You don’t need to go overboard though, a bit of soap left over is gonna be fine.

While you’re doing that, you’re going to heat up your dye to just below teddy bath temperature.

This is where we start to deviate from instructions.

You’re gonna put that dye in right away, while it’s still cool. I needed about 5 litres of water for my pot, and used about a quarter of a bottle of dye (somewhere between 6-8 tablespoons). You can see how Cocoa Brown turned out here. Obviously if you want a weaker colour, use a few spoons less. If you don’t get it perfect straight away, don’t worry about it, you can add more later if you have to, but again remember your ideal colour is not guaranteed.

Then add a small trickle of washing-up liquid to the dye. Less than a teaspoon, but it’s going to help the dye catch.

When your dye is just about bear-temperature, still really low, you are going to immerse your bear, while the temperature’s still going up. That’s right, we’re doing it now. What we’re trying to do is not shock the fur by giving it a sudden temperature change - plunging it into 90°C dye like you’d usually do. Instead we’re gonna boil it like a frog in a pot.

You are gonna stir this baby continuously, and treat it like a video game level you can’t afford to fail. Bits that float, squeeze em and squish em back down. Nothing stays still. You stop stirring? You’ve failed. And never, ever, ever, let it touch the bottom of the pot for even a second without you moving it away. Treat this early temperature where you can still put your hand in it as your test, and get a rhythm up. Using your gloved hands (or not, but it’s gonna make your nailbeds look weird for days), squeeze the dye thoroughly through your still-stuffed areas, make sure everything’s evenly covered, because once this dye goes past 50°C you’re going to be using your spoon only.

Then just keep stirring. If your arms get tired, this is why you have your emergency standby buddy. Check the temperature occasionally. When it gets up to about 80°C this is when the dye will actually start activating. Keep the heat going, but check your time. If you can’t easily see a clock and don’t have a buddy, you definitely can’t afford to stop stirring now, so start counting one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, up to about 240-Mississippi. For everyone else, go to about 4-5 minutes, maybe having your buddy check the temperature as you go. If you hit a boil - you’re seeing bubbling - turn the heat off. What we’re aiming to do is give it about 4 minutes in the 85-max 95°C range, so you choose when to shut your heat off - you know your cooker better than I do.

After your heat is off keep stirring as it drops its temperature, remembering it’s just as delicate a procedure as when you were heating it up, it still can’t touch that hot metal for too long. When it gets down to about 60°C, if you or your emergency buddy can easily (and I mean easily, with no difficulties at all) lift that pot to put it in a cold water bath in your sink, you could do that, but if your wrist suddenly gives out or something that is a hell of a lot of hot water that will mess you up. If in doubt, you gotta just keep stirring for as long as it takes for the pot to cool back down to bath temperature. Don’t try and lift the bear out and put it in the sink early, just do it properly.

Once you’re down to relatively cool again, lift the bear and squeeze the dye out. Then transfer them to your sink. Run water at about the same temperature, and rinse them thoroughly.

When the worst of the dye stops coming out, then it’s time for bath time yet again. More of that nice smelling washing-up liquid, soap them up good, and watch that sink get all colourful again.

Then keep rinsing them, replacing the water until it stays clear and free from soap.

And then all you need to do is wait for them to dry!k

(If you don’t have a hairdryer that works on a cool setting, then just squeeze them with paper towels to get the worst of the water out, and fluff em up a little bit every now and again, moving that fur, and making sure it ends up roughly in the direction it should be so it doesn’t dry too oddly.

Then the next day when they’re dry, brush them up a bit, and give them a re-stuff, making sure to give that heart-wish a little booster when you put it back in. (And put that odd little barcode you probably found in there right next to it - that’s one of the ways a lost bear can find its way back to you. You never know). Then to stitch up the hole, use a ladder stitch. Google it to find instructions that work for you, but that’s the clever invisible stitch you’ll need. And if you can’t do that last bit for any reason, I’ve never found a Build-A-Bear shop that won’t help fix up a bear (and they’d probably be interested in your dye test. You could probably even get a scent put in if you’re good at sweet talking).

And voila, one spiffy bear.

Who in this case, had all his stuffing given a rub down with sweet orange essential oil, the perfect scent for any bear who carries an emergency marmalade sandwich.

Of course if you’re going the full Classic Television Paddington, then a bit of work with some black felt and ribbon is still required. The red hat should be enough for you to mirror a pattern. I suggest 2mm or 3mm thick felt (and you’ll need a metre/whatever rather than A4 if you want to do the...sticky-up-bit of the hat all in one go like the red hat). And 1.5-2cm ribbon (but I had 1cm so that’s what I used). The brim is about the size of a dinner plate, and you could cut the circle for the top out of the middle of that if you’re trying to conserve materials.

Bonus cuteness: I think Orlando the Thirteenth Doctor Bear makes a very good movie Paddington.

I love making costumes but I always feel bad about my skill level being far below everyone else’s. Even though I love making costumes they never look good quality. Any advice?

It's easier to answer specific questions about a project vs. a general "how to be good”, but I'm gonna give it my best shot.

First off, go easy on yourself, you're learning! I know I'm still learning. Hell, the seasoned pro of 3 decades is still learning! Every fuck up and mediocrity is a step of improvement. I won't tell you that practice makes perfect, because it doesn't. It will make you better, great even. But it won't make you perfect. No one ever achieves perfection. And that's okay! Literally every single piece I've ever made has multiples elements I would change if i could. Even the ones that look good, like the now-popular moth cape. I will do lots of things differently when i make my next one.

Also, I know from experience how hard it is to avoid comparing yourself to others, especially online. So when we (inevitably) do, I think it's important to remember that there can be a BIG difference between in person and photos. That cool looking cosplay armour? Upon closer inspection it might be held together by hot glue. That pretty formal gown? It might have a real shitty fraying seam down the back. All we see is a carefully curated version of reality.

It's hard offering practical tips without more info to go on, but hopefully some of this will help. I think what makes a good looking costume can be broken down into 4 basic elements, so here’s what I think are the most important things to consider

Design: This is the part that people seem to have the easiest time with, and I can help the least with. Coming up with the idea. And when you’re costuming just for the pure enjoyment of it, there are no bad ideas! Now everyone approaches this differently, whether it's sketches, moodboards, or diagrams. Unless someone else is executing the concept, it doesn't even need to look remotely good! As long as you understand what the design is supposed to be, it works.

I will say to design with practical considerations in mind though. Think about where, how, and why it will be worn. Plan for things like zippers and buttons to get in and out, the weather where it will be worn, how much movement will be required, etc. You don’t want to end up sweaty and stuck in a polyester bodysuit that can only be opened with the help of two assistants in say, an outdoor summer event in LA.

Materials: This can be tricky, because it’s dependant on your resources. Materials are expensive, and quality ones even more so. But researching options and picking the best fit for your project is important. Making a historical piece? Stick to natural fibers. Cosplaying a superhero? You're gonna need spandex.

If you're short on funds, going through second hand stores can be real handy. Bigger ones will sometimes have actual yardage, but you can find sheets, curtains, saris, and all sorts of things to take apart and use. Get familiar with the properties and names of different textiles. You'll eventually develop a skill for spotting the nice stuff.

More specialized tools/materials like say fosshape or sewing machine attachments are harder to stumble across, but there will be online sales. If i find something good for cheap I buy it and hang onto it for later projects. If possible, take advantage of sales and rare finds while you can. You're a dragon and materials are your hoard!

Construction: Obviously you want your costume to be well-made, but this means knowing and mastering different techniques. It's a slow process, but one everyone is capable of undetaking! Firstly, you need to familiarize yourself with technical terms to make finding the actual tutorials easier. One of my go-to resources for this is The Sewing Book, by Reader's Digest. (There’s also a newer version available, I’ll include it below). It covers a wide variety of techniques, materials, etc. and has fantastic diagrams. Can’t recommend it enough

Companies that sell specialized stuff like thermoplastics or casting resin often have tutorials on their websites which can be indispensable to learning to use them properly. As well as very important safety precautions. They will also sometimes list external how-to sources or sell instructional books.

Take a close look at clothes and costumes you own to understand how they are put together. Figure out what techniques are appropriate to use where. A flat fell seam is great for jeans and french seam is perfect for chiffon, but try the reverse and it will be a pain. Take pictures and make sketches of interesting details that catch your eye. You can come back to them for ideas later.

I try and incorporate at least 1 new technique into every project I make, that way I'm always learning. But don't jump straight to trying it out on the final piece! Always make a sample (or several) beforehand. And keep the samples for later reference! I'm trying to amass a big scrapbook-style binder of samples, which is sooo so handy to come back to when it's been a while since you've done something.

Fit: This is the final, and possibly most difficult element of costuming. No matter how cool the design, how fancy the materials, and how good the construction, if something doesn’t fit right it’s going to look and feel wrong. Most of us here are making costumes for ourselves, which means you're going to need help. Measuring and fitting clothes on yourself is a nightmare, so enlist a friend or family member to give you a hand.

The other thing you can do it is to get a dress form/mannequin. These are pricey, and will probably need to be customized with padding and such anyways, so I recommend you DIY it. Again, you will need a helper, because the easiest way to get a custom dress form it to just straight up duct tape yourself into a crappy old shirt, cut it off, then stuff it. There’s tons of tutorials online for this, it’s a tried and true cheap method.

I highly recommend learning some basic pattern drafting, and that’s honestly the hardest part. You can rely on store bought patterns, but they are extremely variable in quality, and unless you’re in the rare minority who are a sample size, it will need some altering to fit you right. They can be a good starting point, but ultimately I think pattern drafting from scratch is much faster and more adaptable, if you're able to learn it. This is where you will need some good books or video instructions. I don’t have one single resource to recommend for this, but I will list some books at the end. If you personally know ANYONE with this skill, try and get them to teach you everything they know, because they are worth their weight on gold.

It’s important to note that some pattern drafting is easier than others, Stretch fabrics are MUCH more forgiving in this area, and that’s how i got started. Because the fabric will accommodate your form, the pattern requires fewer parts and darts, and there’s more leeway for mistakes. The one downside is that stretches can be more difficult to sew. Personally, I feel like they more than make up for it by being simplicity of drafting. The resources I’ve linked are geared toward drafting for non-stretch, but if you’re not following a similar tutorial i recommend stretch.

One last thing in regards to fit. ALWAYS MAKE A MOCKUP. You can work out so many fit issues just by making your costume in crappy material first, taking note of the fit issues, and adjusting them with pins, marking them with a sharpie, etc. Then you can change your pattern accordingly. Whether it’s a breastplate made of cardstock or a dress done in old sheets, you should always make a mockup. Sometimes several! The material doesn’t matter as long as it behaves roughly like the good stuff you plan on using. Don’t use a heavy blanket for if your costume is going to be a gauzy nymph robe, for example. But it doesn’t have to look nice. It just has to be wearable.

Resources:

*These are mostly tailored towards women’s garments. A lot of the same principles apply, but making men’s costumes will have some separate considerations not covered here. Just something to keep in mind if you want to draft for guys. These are all just starting points anyhow. There’s tons more out there

https://www.amazon.ca/Sewing-Book-Alison-Smith-2014-02-03/dp/B01JXQQ9Y2

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-Sewing-Step-Step/dp/1606522086

https://www.handimania.com/diy/your-own-shape-sewing-mannequin.html

https://www.fearlessmakers.com/measurements-for-pattern-making/

https://opensourcestitches.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/pattern-drafting-101-drafting-the-basic-bodice-block/

https://opensourcestitches.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/pattern-drafting-101-the-mens-shirt-block/

http://isntthatsew.org/pattern-making-101/

https://sewing.wonderhowto.com/how-to/draft-basic-pant-pattern-0126850/

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/063206501X/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_image_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Faking, Falling > Part 3

Harrison Osterfield x Reader (Fake dating! Unrequited love switcheroo!)

Word count: ~3.3k words

Warning: Swearing, Angst.

Summary: Positive or negative intentions yet the results do look pleasant but for how long?

<< PART 2 [ MASTERLIST ] PART 4 >>

"I am taking the day off early." You tell Jade, making sure Harrison was nearby and could hear you clearly.

"You seem excited, is there something special?"

You look at Harrison through your peripheral vision, who was just sitting ten feet from you, reading his script. But as much as you know him, you were sure his concentration was not on his script but on you. Completing almost one and a half month here on set you knew if you and he were in the same room, his mind was always wandering around you. Well, you would be more than pleased to get the eyes of the blonde who has the ability to get everyone's eyes on him, only if he wasn't a jerk. You were sure the only reason he had is eyes on you was to search for a perfect opportunity to belittle you or to make fun of you in some way or the other like he does every time.

But this time was different. You wanted to belittle him. Everyone who works on this set very well knew Simon and Harrison never got well. They had arguments every now and then and it would be really cool to show how his enemy was far better than him.

A smirk played on your lips as he stole glances at you thinking you weren't noticing. Idiot. You turned your attention back on Jade as you spoke further, "Simon asked me out! And now we have a date tonight, of course, I am excited."

"Really? But you told me just a week before that you weren't ready to date after-" She paused turning her head to see Harrison in the corner and then back at you, afraid she would speak anything that could hurt you. But you completed her sentence yourself.

"After that arsehole pulled that prank on me? Pfft." You were louder than you should for a bilateral conversation with Jade because it was with someone else. She looked surprised at your confidence level and that you were so comfortable saying Harrison 'arsehole' when he could easily hear.

"Look I thought about it and came to a conclusion. I am sure every fucking person on this planet is better than him and Simon... Simon hates him, I hate him. It's a perfect match!" You sounded as if it was a sure thing. You could feel Harrison's gaze on you, making you almost chuckle but you successfully hid it under a fake cough.

"Okay. I am happy for you." Jade said although you were sure her approval only translated to 'but Y/n that's not a very reliable reason to date someone.'

"Yeah, anything except that arsehole makes me happy." You smirked turning giving him a look and walking back to your designing room.

"Mate, I think she was referring to you." Harrison's co-star Greg whispered in his ear.

"Fuck off!" He mumbled and slammed his script on the front table, getting up and walking to your room.

"Seems like we aren't on good terms, specky."

You heard his voice behind you as you continue to sew your costume.

Without looking at him you clearly stated, "Next time make sure to knock before entering."

"Excuse me, what?"

"Looks like you need to get your hearing checked." You said finally looking at him. His jaws dropped yet again. You could see him struggling to take in your changed behaviour, which simply means - your faking game was working fine.

"You have changed," He said quietly.

"Guess it's a change for good."

For like minutes he just stared at your eyes as if he was trying to read them. It felt like he was searching for the part of you that you no matter how much you acted to be confident yet get flustered at his sight or snarky comments. You didn't give in, maintaining firm eye contact. He licked his lips and you could see the clear movements in his Adam's apple.

Harrison Osterfield was nervous and you were the reason behind it.

"Did it really hurt you that bad?" His voice was barely a whisper but still, you could clearly make out his words.

"Like you care, Osterfield."

He exhaled deeply.

"Yeah, you are right. I don't care."

"Good for you. Looks like the hatred is mutual."

"Never said it was hatred---"

"Action speaks louder than words..." A third voice interrupted before Harrison could complete himself. You and he both turned to see Simon standing by the door, holding a bunch of costumes. He was also you assistant after all.

"I am sorry if that sounded cliché but Y/n surely isn't enjoying your company." He said entering inside, keeping the costumes on the table and faced Harrison.

"You are no one to speak for her," Harrison spoke with gritted teeth.

"Well for your kind information, we are going on a date to---"

"That still doesn't make you speak for her. You aren't her boyfriend."

"At least she doesn't hate me," Simon said, standing just two inches from Harrison. The scene that played in front of your eyes seemed a lot more serious than you expected, making you quietly stand there and listen.

"Well, she will definitely hate you if I tell what you really do." The corners of Harrison's lips tugged into a light smirk.

"Ensure you have enough proofs before opening your mouth, Osterfield. We both know whom Y/n will trust otherwise."

Harrison smile fell and now Simon was the one confidently grinning. Harrison shifted his gaze towards you and then back at him. He exhaled again and walked from the side, saying nothing, leaving you and Simon alone in the room. Simon turned to look at you, giving a bright smile but it didn't do anything to the sinking, dark feeling in your abdomen. Their conversation was so shady that it made you sick.

"Aww come on Y/n, don't listen to him. Just two more hours of work and we are free!" He cheered to which you smiled (fake, obviously) but still you believed in him more than Harrison which let you sigh and calm yourself.

* * *

Two hours went by really slow but they did anyway. Simon asked you to leave together but you told him to leave first as you had to do finish the last tid-bits of your designs.

"I will be at Regan's Diner at 7. Can't wait to see you there!" And then he left when you concentrated back at your costume. You sighed, stretching your arms, relaxing. You glanced at your phone.

"Shit!" You jolted up from your seat, it was already 6:25 pm, you were late by 20 mins. You needed time to go back home, get dressed and then reach the restaurant. You cursed under your breath, assembling your stuff and shoving it into your handbag. Accidentally your phone slipped landing on the soft carpet beneath your table. You zipped up your bag, oblivious to your missing phone and rushed outside. You almost bumped into that blue eyes notorious blonde but stabilised yourself before you could collide. He gave you a blank look and you ignored him, walking out and driving to your home.

* * *

It was just five-minute past and Harrison couldn't find any interest in rehearsing his role. The conversation between him and you played over and over again in his head. If your date with Simon goes well, he would no more be able to follow you around or see your flattered or maybe annoyed expression. The thought of completely distancing himself from you made his stomach churn. But he doesn't care, right?

But you weren't wrong... He did feel guilty of what he did now.

No. No... He doesn't care about you or anyone... He isn't guilty.

It was your life, your date, whatever it was it had nothing to do with him. Maybe it was good for both of you. If he could survive without Tom and his company then he was sure he could definitely survive without interacting with you. You, who was basically nothing for him... He shook his head at all these annoying self debates going in his mind and he decided to take a break too. He finally called it a day off. He was about to walk out of the building when Greg called him.

"George asked you to keep all your costumes arranged as Simon & Y/n both have already left."

"Yeah yeah, no need to explain..." He rolled his eyes, dramatically.

Thank you Greg for making the day hundred percent better! He placed his costume in the wardrobe stand and then heard the sound of a chime. He checked his phone, but there was nothing. He again heard the sound and this time his gaze landed on the phone lying beneath the table. He picked it up, realising it was your phone. He would have not cared even a little bit if the 'two new messages' notification didn't show the name, Simon.

Don't open the message. Don't open the message...

And then he did... You didn't put a lock-screen password and Harrison felt calm blaming it on you.

Simon [6:35 pm]: Hey Y/n. I m really sorry but I got stuck in some important work. Can we plz meet at 9:30 instead of 7?

Simon [6:35 pm]: Tell me if this works for you. And I m really sorry for changing the plans on last minute.

Harrison read through the messages, rolling his eyes as if it was the most stupid message of all time. The phone chimed again.

Simon [6:36 pm]: Waiting for your reply <3

"Look how fucking excited this bastard is!" Harrison mumbled.

Maybe he does deserve a reply...

Harrison's fingers danced on the phone screen without thinking twice.

You would have put in a password if you were too bothered.

Y/n [6:38 pm]: No problem. See you at 9:30 then.

And the phone chimed again.

Fucking desperate!

Simon [6:38 pm]: Great. Can't wait to see you ;)

"Haha... Like she'll wait for you till nine-thirty!" Harrison finally felt a bit relieved from today's incident. A proud smile formed on his lips. He debated whether to keep the phone with him or leave it here... But first he should delete this conversation and he did.

Wait... What if he hands you back this phone himself? And enjoy your and Simon's date... Sounds like a plan to him.

He slipped the phone in his jacket and eagerly drove to your house, smiling proudly. He parked the car in the driveway and didn't waste a single minute ringing your door-bell.The door opened a minute later.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"Thank you for being so polite. I really appreciate," Harrison chuckled at your annoyed voice. His eyes travelled from your head to toe, taking in your complete look. There were a hairbrush and a lipstick in your hands. Your hairs were half combed. You were wearing a blue knee-length dress, and the ribbons on your sleeves were still untied. You looked like you were rushing.

Yeah, rushing... For your date.

"Tell me what's your work I literally am getting really late and can't even find my fucking phone!" You growled looking at the wall clock showing 6:59 pm already.

"Well maybe this is yours," Harrison said taking out your phone. You looked at his hand and instantly snatched the device out.

"Oh God! Where do you get this?"

"Really Y/n. Your guest serving etiquette is kinda fucked up." He said leaning at your door frame as you checked your phone.

* * *

You were absolutely confused to see Harrison at your doorstep but because you were already late for your date, you didn't want to waste any more time thinking about any possibilities. But now he was here, safely handing you your phone. It's true you haven't forgiven Harrison for what he did and neither ever he asked for any apologies making you want to continue this hating game. You won't be lying if you say - you were actually enjoying it. It was easy to hate him than to deal with any other feeling. Maybe this crush was dying slowly, slowly. Everything you ever wanted...

But right now, he came to return you his phone and maybe he was right. It deserved a thank you.

"Oh sorry. Thank you but really where did you get it?"

"Beneath your table."

"God! I am such an idiot... " You laughed and damn, something in his heart stopped working. He glanced at your face, how your eyes squinted forming little creases along the corners and how your lips parted ever so slightly. He has always been the sole reason for your sadness & anger. But seeing you smile and laugh because of him automatically made his own lips tug into a small smile, his eyes still concentrated on your face.

Your laugh died down as a nervous chuckle in the end when you noticed his intense gaze on you.

"I-uh... I am getting late. You make yourself at home till I get ready." You tucked a hair strand behind your ear looking at your feet. You heard Harrison lightly cough, maybe to lighten the thickening air between you both.

"Yeah."

After five minutes you showed up again cursing about already being super late.

"I should call Simon. Maybe he thinks I am flaking out!" And before you could search for his contact, your phone was snatched from your hand. Your eyes shot up only to meet Harrison's icy blue ones.

"What are doing? It's just six-ten. You don't need to call him." He told.

"But I have to reach Regan's Diner too---"

"It's just five minutes from here. I'll drive you there. You don't wanna look like an idiot apologizing for just 15 minutes..." He handed you the phone back.

"You-you will drop me?" You asked in disbelief.

"Yeah, why not. Now hurry up, you don't wanna waste any time, right?" He already opened your main door signalling you to move out.

Was it right for you to go with Harrison when you already knew how much Simon hated him?

"Y/n, we are getting late!" He yelled standing near his car, giving you no time to think too much. You would have straight away denied if you weren't so punctual and being already late wasn't making you feel guilty.

The drive was silent and you couldn't thank less. You were panicking for your date but he was panicking about something else.

What if you come to know about those messages he sent and then deleted?

"Hey hey stop, we came ahead!" You said and Harrison instantly pulled the breaks.

"Ah, sorry, I was thinking about something."

When did Harrison Osterfield start saying sorry?

"Thanks for dropping me by the way," You smiled genuinely to which he nodded. You rushed inside the restaurant asking for your reserved seat. The waiter gave you the seat and you came to know Simon didn't arrive yet.

Good, you didn't call him.

7:40 pm and Simon didn't show up yet. You rubbed the skin of your arms in concern and embarrassment or maybe shame. You tried to divert your attention by scrolling through Instagram on your phone when you heard the noise of a chair pulling in front of you. Your head shot up only to see Harrison...

"Harrison? You didn't go?---"

"Saw you waiting and well... Guess my doubts were real!"

"What guess?"

He took a seat continuing, "Simon isn't going to come. He is a jerk, he likes flaking out---"

"At least, he isn't doing anything you did at Rick's party!" You spoke straight.

"Oh, come' on. Can we just forget it." He groaned stretching his back into the chair.

"You didn't even say sorry or anything regarding it. I have the right to carry whatever feeling I have for that incident and you." You said, one hand resting on your chin while the other mindlessly making invisible patterns on the table cloth. Harrison sighed and rubbed his palms over his eyes lightly.

"Okay okay... I get it. Sorry. I am really sorry. Now can we just forget it?"

The corners of your lips tugged upwards, a small smile forming.

"Will think about it..." You said slowly.

"Hello, sir and ma'am would you like to order something?" The waitress asked coming to your table, a big smile on her face.

"Umm... Actually, someone still didn't arrive---"

"Yeah, we can start with some starters... Cheese rolls, soup. Are you good with that?" Harrison interrupted you. He looked at you and you didn't understand what to answer so nodded.

"Thank you, just give us five minutes and hope you both are enjoying your date..."

"We--no..." You tried to clarify but the waitress had already walked away. You hated it but your cheeks felt warm making you look down at the table. An uncomfortable silence enveloping the two of you.

Harrison fake coughed to get you attention, "Umm, so for how long are you been here, in London?"

You looked up at him, a bit astonished to see him actually starting a good conversation.

"Well, two years. I came here to learn from some big fashion designers basically thought of getting an internship at Joshua Kane but guess they didn't need interns." You gasped.

"So, you came here to get a job at JK?" He leaned towards the table.

"No. For learning. I actually would love ṭo start my own brand. Basically, it's my dream, goal. There's just too much competition. Seems like everyone is better than me." You pursed your lips, looking at the glass of water blankly.

"Your work is personally my favourite. I mean it doesn't look like you are any less than professionals."

No. No... That feeling you hated it. Those butterflies... Harrison Osterfield... Not a good combination.

"You're just bluffing." You say, smiling shyly.

"Don't believe me but my fortune cookie did tell me that." He lightly chuckled.

"So, you believe in those?"

"Come on Y/n. I am saying the truth..."

"Thank you..."

"Your order." The waitress served your starters.

...

"Well, then see you tomorrow..."He dropped you back home.

"Yeah..." As he left you raced inside your house almost squealing in excitement. Changing your clothes you got into your bed. You replayed your time with Harrison this evening. Your phone rang and you absolutely blocked Simon's number the exact minute he called. He flaked out in your eyes after all. But then your phone chimed.

A new message.

Jade [10:45 pm]: How was your date?

You smiled at the message and wrote without thinking twice.

Y/n [10:45 pm]: Fucking awesome!

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

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As a former farm child I laughingly flip the bird at the idea that running a small communal farm with all my friends is only the realm of the ignorant and naive, BUT, I think my daydreams for the small-communal-farm idea are a bit standard from the usual run.

So on MY small communal farm with all of my friends. Or, okay, this is not the “half a dozen people” version. This is the “I want to accommodate DOZENS of people, like, all my friends and all their families” version.

The word you actually want is “village”. Multiple houses, community infrastructure, everyone gets independence? It’s a village. Know what’s even easier than building a bunch of tiny houses on a plot of land with no electrical or sanitation grid?

Go find a dying hamlet in the middle of nowhere. The kind of place that used to be a farm town, but since the ag economy changed ~30 years ago, it’s had a steady population decline. The kind of place where the houses are cheap because nobody’s buying them when their old owners die off. Buy houses and live in them.

Bring a business to it. Farming is a wonderful way of life, but a shitty way to earn a living. You’re not going to be able to compete with Big Agribusiness for any of the easy-to-grow crops, and it’ll take a few years for you to get anything more profitable in place. You need a strong economic backbone other than farming.

More than that, you need a strong economic backbone over and above the individual wages earned by the adult members of your group. You don’t just need enough money for your wage-earners; you need enough money for children, disabled people, and elderly people. This means owning a business, soup to nuts; being the shareholders who receive the profits of it.

Owning a business means you also get to come up with your own employee benefits, which is basically a way to get all your friends decent health insurance.

So you need a profitable business, one that’s not intensely dependent on location. Usually this means having specialized skills and providing it to high-volume buyers--a software company that provides tech support remotely; a manufacturing company that sells goods to dealers; a business of tradespeople providing a useful service. Left to decide for myself, I’d focus on small motor repairs--sewing machines, chainsaws, lawnmowers, industrial equipment. Things that are just a bit too bulky to want to ship overseas for outsourced repair. Ideally, things that are found not infrequently within a day’s drive of my town, that have to be repaired on-site, but not so often that most places keep in-house professionals in it on staff.

The benefit to having that business? You also have people with USEFUL SKILLS

Seriously, the biggest hurdle for most communes is basic infrastructure and adhering to the fire code. There’s a REASON that building your own house has gone out of fashion. Your community benefits enormously from skilled tradespeople who know how to build and maintain shit. 

Speaking of public infrastructure, you want a say in municipal and county government, so show up to those meetings. Care about things like taxes and visioning plans and the sewer grid. Join the Rotary Club. Send someone to Chamber of Commerce events. Integrate into the community!

YES, join the local arts scene! Go to things! Be good neighbours! Give the very isolated local kids a good look at people who went “We don’t like ordinary life, we’re doing something better”

This means the local people will already know and like you when you file a deeply unusual development permit for your little village on the farm (since you will need local government approval for a lot of it)

SO WHAT ABOUT THE FARM, you ask me?

Farms take time! Farms take work! Farms also require economies of scale--like, it is more efficient for one farm to make 200 bushels of something, than for two farms to each make 100 bushels each. Sure everyone can get their own garden plot, but not everybody needs their own complete set of tools and equipment. So you want as much as possible to be communal--to share tractors and shovels and pasturage and storage facilities etc etc etc.

It also helps to have lots of skilled tradespeople around so you can do things like construct geothermal greenhouses and solar arrays and all that good stuff.

I advise buying homes in town and building on the farm, eventually perhaps moving out to it, because trying to live in a tent while building something as fast as possible is a MISERABLE experience, y’all

And hey WHY NOT get the municipality to allow you to put a corral on some empty land on town so you can just ride your horse out to the farm on nice days if you want, look it’s my pastoral fantasy and it’ll have ponies if I want to

If local farms have lots of temporary seasonal labour, you could also look into charming the municipality into adding a rural bus route to its public transit, to get all your communal farm people into/out of town at the beginning/end of the day, and also give people who feel stuck at the farm they work at greater mobility and freedom

Another benefit to lots of people around your farm? Dairy animals cannot go unmilked. If you have any animal that produces milk, you HAVE to milk them on a strict regular schedule, or else they’re full of milk they can’t get out and it’s very painful and leads to medical problems. This makes it VERY hard for dairy farmers to take vacations, because they have to trade off doing double shifts with other dairy farmers--for one week, Farm A milks their animals and then goes over to Farm B and does all THEIR milking, twice a day, because later on, Farm B will do the same for them so they can go on their own vacation. UNLESS! You have a surplus of people capable of doing your milking, so you can be away from those goats you make cheese from for more than six hours. (Seriously, this is why, unless I know I won’t have to be nice to those assholes down the road, I refuse to contemplate dairy animals)

Also, over and above all of this--observe legal niceties. Ideals are great, but when your core couples have an acrimonious divorce, you want to make sure they can’t pull the rug out from under you. Incorporate as a legal entity. Use lawyers to make sure your concepts of who owns what, and who gets what money, and how people buy out if they want to leave, are very very certain. You will have some people who are all in on everything, some people who are only hanging around because their friend/family member/spouse is into it, and some who just stop by your parties and thinks you’re all cool. Prepare for these different levels of engagement.

AND THEN IT WILL BE BEAUTIFUL

what do you think the sides big special interests are??? i really like theoretical geometry!!!

I figured I could answer this first before I get to any other autistic side stuff since I already talked about it some in my most recent autistic sides post about the movie night, so this is expanding on that!!! And though the others are a little ambiguous, this one is definitely a human au cause it makes it way easier, haha.

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I love the idea of deceptively intelligent Patton. He doesn’t see it as a big thing that he knows so much about biology, he just likes learning about animals! They’re so interesting! But the others are all lowkey shocked when they find out just how much Patton actually knows.

Patton’s special interest began purely because he had some questions (can cats cry? do dogs know that I love them??) and he didn’t want to bother Logan cause he was busy, so instead he just googled it. And after reading about 3 or 4 articles, Patton only had more questions, so he watches a documentary. And then the first documentary was so pretty and had so many great animals and facts so he watches another one. And another one and another one the next day, and he’s going through resources he found online, and reading books, etc. etc.

There’s just so much to learn! He found information on the body language of cats and the reasons birds migrate and about different animal relationships and tons of other cool things. He brought up a fact he’d learnt casually one day around Logan and it turned into a full-on discussion and for once Patton felt like he and Logan were on equal footing.

Patton engages in his special interest in as many different settings as he possibly can. He started volunteering at the animal shelter whenever he gets the chance, he audits the biology courses at the local university (attends the lectures, does the non-graded work, no credit, paid) and there’s even a little club down at the community centre that he goes to sometimes. And every time he comes back from one of those he has a little smile on his face and though he may be incredibly distracted for the rest of the day, the others know he’s happy.

————————-

Roman’s big special interest I think is definitely Disney (I mean, obvious choice but also we all saw him when Thomas was in a Disney channel episode). He has the entire Disney anthology memorised and they’re always his go-to songs to sing to calm himself down, and on top of that, he has so much of the movies memorised too since he watches them so often. It’s been his special interest for basically as long as he can even remember.

On the occasions where they go to Disneyland Roman is absolutely ecstatic–bouncing around and twirling and jumping and flapping. He points out every little thing like it’s the first time he’s ever been (even though it’s definitely not) and he talks and talks and talks and talks. He knows a little bit about the history of Disney as a studio and all that but generally, his focus is mostly on the actual creating and the content.

However, occasionally Logan or Virgil will say something offhand about Disney–Logan usually a fact he’s learnt and Virgil usually something related to a Disney conspiracy theory video he watched on youtube at 3 in the morning–and neither of them can ever get used to how overwhelming it is to be the centre of Roman’s attention so immediately.

Any mention of Disney is an invitation for Roman to show up and talk to them about it for as long as he possibly can. The others usually don’t mind, but sometimes it’s overwhelming or they have other things they have to be doing, but Roman has low levels of cognitive empathy, so he doesn’t really notice when the person he’s talking to is over the conversation. So they’ll have to occasionally grab one of the other sides for Roman to talk to so they can duck out (quack). Roman doesn’t mind since he knows when it’s Disney he’s running on 200%, plus he still gets to infodump, so that’s good enough for him.

————————-

I really love the idea of Virgil’s big special interest being fashion (cause special interest aren’t predictable and sometimes you end up with things you weren’t necessarily expecting), specifically the history and culture surrounding it. Virge had a passing interest in fashion beforehand—like it was cool in an abstract way, but he didn’t necessarily know that much about it—but one day he fell down a youtube rabbit hole of makeup, beauty and style videos and suddenly it was morning and he had to know the history of 1950s fashion. Those types of videos were all he watched for basically the next couple of days straight.

He found it particularly fascinating because fashion is always a reflection of society at the time, and that wasn’t something he’d really been aware of before, so there was an interesting tie between the most popular styles and the political climate, as well as the traditional male and female roles. Every piece of clothing and fashion subculture had a story behind it and there was just so much more to simple clothing than he’d initially believed. Plus, fashion is all about self-expression, and he did appreciate that aspect of it, even if he was too anxious to ever wear anything more than skinny jeans and a hoodie.

Actually, Virgil did start updating his closet as a result of his special interest. He’d see all of these amazing clothes out in public and he knew he’d never wear them outside of his room, but he’d buy them anyway. So his closet is filled with vintage items and grunge style clothing and a million other things and he’d mix and match outfits by himself but never wear them out. He even actually sewed his hoodie; he’d grabbed a pattern from online and worked on it for ages. It wasn’t perfect by any means, considering it was his first project, but he’d never been more proud of anything he’d made in his life.

Once the others find out about Virge’s special interest and don’t react super negatively, he does get the courage to wear things a little more outside of the expected realm (even if he still hasn’t worked himself up to wearing skirts and dresses, which he really enjoys cause he likes the way the fabrics swish around). And then any compliment on Virgil’s outfit is a gateway to him explaining the purpose of every item of clothing in relation to the way society is/was at the time of its popularity. He’d usually feel a little bad after infodumping on someone, despite the fact that they assured him it was alright, and anyway, they’d do the same.

————————-

Logan’s big special interest is astronomy, which makes him uncharacteristically excited. Logan’s stims are normally very subtle (as I’ve mentioned) tending to be more like things anyone might do, but when he’s talking about the stars you can see his eyes light up and he gets increasingly fidgety, waving his hands around and rubbing back and forth against his skin.

Logan can’t remember exactly how his special interest started, but he knows he’s always been captivated by the sky. Even when he was a kid, he used to sneak out of his room through the window and onto the roof, watching the sun set and the stars appear. He’d gotten some astronomy books from the school library too, wanting to know more about what stars were and hoping to find some constellations if he looked hard enough.

For Logan’s birthday one year they paid about a hundred dollars each to take him up a mountain for a stargazing tour. They were given big fluffy coats to fight the wind chill as they were led up away from the city lights. Logan answered every question the guide asked the group, bouncing up and down a little bit in his seat, and when he was allowed to look through an actual expensive telescope to see Saturn and the moon and all these amazing stars he was actually speechless—just flapping and making happy noises.

Afterwards, they went back to the warmth of the building and the guide provided hot chocolate and Logan genuinely cried, not able to express anything other than, “thank you” over and over again. It was the best gift he’d ever been given and the most magical experience of his life.

Today was a much better day. Emotionally I waa much happier. And that lead to a much better day.

I still wasnt thrilled to wake up. But I felt cute. And James made me a sandwich and packed me a muffin. Made me feel loved. But I didn't want to go anywhere. I wanted to be home. But Marcus messaged me that he was staying home. So I could not. I needed to go. It would be good for me to be there with the kids.

I got the bus after a nice bike ride. And got to work on time. I spent the morning doing a little painting for our mural. And then down to see the kids.

Emotionally I could feel myself being better today. So when i had the kids sitting down for yoga, both little kids and big kids, I explained to them my feelings, and how I may have been harsh yesterday. And so i apologized. Because they should hear that adults can own up to mistakes and ackowlege bad days. And we had a good yoga time. The big kids enjoyed ballet. At least most of them. It was still nice.

Art time was fun. I walked around with Bob the lizard on my shoulder. Which freaked all the adults out and made the kids laugh. And we painted and me and Tiffany worked on cleaning the room. The kids who were done helped organize. We sorted paper by color for next weeks project. The youth workers washed containers and fixed up our water color pallets. It was a productive morning.

We had some good times in reading. Lunch was good. At recess poor Bre'Asia rolled over her foot on the skateboard and there were a lot of tears. But I talked her down. I felt bad that she got hurt but I felt proud that she calmed down and we got some ice and worked on some breathing. She was limping a little but she'll be okay.

First time with the big kids I decide we were finally actually going to do some math. Mostly because one of the boys had have jokingly complained that we had only done science Technology and Engineering. Fair. I'm not very good at math. But what I am good at is budgeting. So that's what we did.

I reduce the concept of Economics to the kids. What is an economy. And then we figure it out how someone survives everyday. I asked the kids if any of them ever had a job. I had someone who said that they had mowed lawns or shovel snow. So they were landscapers. We had people who were babysitters. We had someone who had sold something at a bake sale so they were Baker now. We also had trash collectors. Because that's something that I have discovered is a thing in Baltimore. People who pay kids in the neighborhood to clean up. And that's really nice. So I made up prices. Or salaries. We went by the hour first. But before they found out what the pay was they all had to pick a job. They got an index card and they had to write down one of those for jobs on their next car. I didn't want them to pick the job that pay the most. So my landscapers made the most. And my babysitter's made the least. Trash collectors were up there as well and Bakers had two different pay scales. You were either an owner or you work at the bakery. It was only a $5 difference.

Once they had all chosen that we had to figure out what our daily pay was. They took their hourly rate and they times 2 by 8. And then once they have that we had a big r weekly. So they times that by 5. And then we got to figure it out monthly. So we did it by 4. Lot of math.

Then we talked about once and needs. What is a want and what doesn't eat. I basically gave my speech that I give at The Company Store at the BMI. And then I signed prices two things. You spend $200 a month on food. You can spend $50 to $100 a month on clothing. And then you got to choose if you live in a house or apartment or mansion. You chose if you rented or owned. And then I told you how much you paid.

At the end are trash collectors had a good amount of money left over if they own to their house and only spent $50 a month on clothing. No one who had a mansion have any left over money. Most of them were negative $2,000. Whatever babysitters have $50 left over and one had five. It was really interesting to see how they would choose to spend to their needs budget and what they would have left over for a want. I think it kind of opened up their eyes a little bit and that was cool. But we didn't talk about taxes in our math. So we talked about what is attacks why do they take 35 to 45% of our paychecks. Talked about how it pays for public school and the roads and the fire department and homeless shelters and services. How taxes are not a bad thing even though they can feel annoying. Let me talk about minimum wage. I had all of the people that we're getting paid on our board at base level Maryland minimum wage and then it only went up from there. But then we talked about what federal minimum wages. How it hasn't changed since I had my first job in 2009. How even though they're talkin about raising it to $15 an hour it's going to have the same spending power as $7.25. And why that sucks.

People always complain that I never learned how to do a budget or pay taxes in school. Never really learned all taxes were. And I think that's fair. So it was good to be able to talk to my kids today even though they're only between the ages of 10 and 13. I think it was good for them to start thinking about it.

I went took my break after that. Mackenzie was very upset about something so she came inside with me. We both just laid on the couch has listen to her headphones. The day was over. I finished up with little kids. Handed out snacks. Cleaned the room. And then I took everyone downstairs to go home.

James texted me that the landlady for the apartment that we want finally got back to her. The holdup has been that his apartment is not answering her phone calls. She's trying to get some background information and get some contacts on him and they're just not answering. I'm not shocked because they don't seem to answer for anything. The hole-in-the-wall, leaking shower. Annoying but I think she is going to try one more time and if she doesn't hear anything back she's probably just going to go off of my stuff and jobs and things like that. And it's not definite but I think we have the apartment. I told James I'm not going to believe we have it until the keys are in my hand. And if we don't get it I'll be sad but that just means somewhere better is out there.

I took the bus home. I stopped for Chipotle. I got it without sour cream so that I could more easily packet for tomorrow on our field trip. I got back here and I ate my tacos. And packed away the food. I did some sewing. The quilt is almost finished. There's a couple places I'm going to have to hand sew because of where the beads are. But most of it's complete. I only cut myself on sewing needles four times today. I worked until my back hurt. And then I hung out for a bit.

James is at a dinner with all of his boyfriends. I hope he's having a good time. I had a panic because sweet peas mouth is still very swollen so I tried to give him a Benadryl and he started foaming at the mouth and crying and I thought he was choking it was really upsetting. But he's okay. I gave him some milk to get the taste out of his mouth. And I took a bath and tried to calm down. And now I'm going to work on my backpack for the field trip tomorrow. We are going to a ropes course. We're driving almost all the way to Virginia. I think. I'm not entirely sure where we're going. But I'm very excited. And it seems like only about half of our kids are actually coming so it maybe it'll just be like a nice chill day. Love a chill day.

So wish me luck. I am terribly afraid of heights so a Ropes Course in the trees is terrifying. But it'll be a good time. I love being in nature. But I love being with my kids. So it should be good. I hope you all have a great night. Sleep well. Be safe. Send Good Vibes.

       What's SEO In 2020. (Best Tips)Techmekraj  → Are you confused about what to focus on when it comes to search engine optimization? Do you want to have the perfect SEO strategy when it goes into 2020? Hi, everybody. I'm Niraj JH, my website is www.techmekraj.com, www.techmekraj.blog,www.recepiezz.blogspot.com some of the sites in the internet world. And today, I'm going to give you the most important items to focus on for search engine optimization in 2020. → Content but not just content at scale, how can you create an amazing piece of content and then build an expert team around it so that you can scale that content initiative and get even more traffic for every single page that you create?     →  Link building but professional link building outreach where you're promoting one or two amazing pieces of content each month to the people who really, really care about it in your industry. By doing that, you can be getting 10s of millions every single month to the content that really matters.   →Refreshing pages, you shouldn't have any old pages on your website, every single page should be up to date, and should have the latest and greatest. So make sure that every single page on your website has been refreshed every six months.   →Schema.org just got so important with the Google Assistant schema.org now feeds data directly from your website into the Google Assistant. So you need to have a strategy to mark up all the most important pieces of your website with the schema. So that goes straight to the assistant. And when somebody does a voice search, the information that you want comes directly back. →Google actions are the way that you can build an app for the Google Assistant which is in everybody's phone out there. So you need to take the time to claim your Google action in the Google actions directory and create your own Google action. really not that hard to do. I was able to make one in about 20 minutes. So you can create your own Google action, of course, harder ones are going to be more sophisticated and take more time.   →Page Speed, super important, it is a ranking factor. And when you don't have a fast website, you lose visitors, you need to make sure that your mobile page speed is over 70 and your desktop PHP is over 80. And if it's not a keep working until you get there, number seven technical, you should be crawling your website every single month, have a list of all the technical errors and be working through those to fix those sequentially. Websites nowadays really shouldn't have technical issues, but they still do. It's pretty amazing how many issues come up all the time, the really the bigger the site, the more technical issues you need to consistently be working to improve those. And accelerated mobile pages are now more important than ever for mobile and also for the Google Assistant as they can feed directly into the google assistant and then also snippets can be created through schema.org in a specific way. So now you  →Have a page. And you need to make sure you're marking up specific pieces of your content with schema so that it goes into Google. And basically, by marking it up with schema, you're telling Google, you can use this, you can use this within Google and you can use it within the Google Assistant. So it's going to be really important for everybody to develop a policy around the types of things that they want to allow the search engine to have, which is having a major impact in Europe. And in some places, you can't actually even do this type of markup like in France, number nine brand building, you can't just do SEO anymore. You need to have a brand you need to be focusing on creating awareness. I love doing Facebook ads, YouTube videos, press releases, creating industry studies, all of these things, build the brand doing events, you know, using social media, there's so much at our fingertips now so that we can get a lot of exposure. If you're not building a brand, you're not going to be successful in SEO, the two go hand in hand.   →EA t expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. You need to have an expert behind the content on your website, if you do, you're going to rank better. If you don't, and you're in the financial or the medical space, there's a very, very good chance that you're going to not be able to get your content ranked and you're going to get hit hard by an algorithm update or when it manual review person from the Google manual review team looks at that content, they're going to dig in so that you don't rank as well. Pro tip I just did a webinar and him on YouTube, you can go check it out.   →International SEO and multilingual SEO, you can translate your website into a different language and you can rank in that language version in Google, you can push your website into another country in English for a different language gives you a whole new market that you can reach out to so international SEO, perhaps the best time ever to be getting involved in this as it's less competitive, and just a really easy win for a lot of businesses who can make it happens.   →SEO on other websites besides your own? What do I mean by that? Well, if I'm a writer for a big website, or if I can, you know, get a column on another website or I just you know, sign not for another website like medium, for example, I can write a post and I can optimize it for a topic, say I wanted to rank for SEO reporting or something like that I wanted to rank for, you know, best holiday shopping guide, I can create a post on another website and get ranked. Now, what's happened? Well, I've had the opportunity to not only get my own website rank but also another post gives me real estate for two different pages in Google. So SEO around the web, a great thing to do.   →Voice Search, there's a whole bunch of stuff that goes around voice search is really, really important. And now the way that you structure your content with FA cues and with responses, and then marking it up with schema is super, supercritical. Over 50% of searches in 2020 are supposed to be done by voice And now for the first time, I've got a guide of every single thing that creates a featured snippet and then every single type of featured snippet that creates a voice response. How cool is that? So building out a framework around →And then applying it to your business goals is going to be really, really important for everybody else. Okay, with the new Google Home hub with Google discovers with smartphones in general, so connected, especially if they're on Android to YouTube. YouTube feeds directly into Google to discover YouTube feeds directly into the Google Home hub. YouTube is critical. And if you don't have video, as part of your strategy, you're really, really missing out not just for SEO, but for this idea of if you create a video, you can post that to YouTube and into your own website, but then also to LinkedIn to Esty, to Instagram stories to the Instagram feed, you know, you can have that go out all around the web, there's a whole bunch of other places I didn't take. So video core component of every single strategy pro tip, if you want to learn more about video distribution and my exact formula for doing it, check out the video I made on the YouTube channel. Okay, my last one today   →Security is going to be so important. Google just came out and if you're not on HTTPS, that important, but also, if there's anything in the code of your website that's not HTTPS, that will block your entire website for sewing showing up in the search engine. So being secure, more important than ever as the web level. Okay, so those are my top things for search engine optimization going into 2020. Certainly, there's a lot more. But if you focus on really quality content, the link building strategy that I talked about, you know, you start getting involved in voice and you jump on the schema and the Google actions and all that stuff quicker than your competition, thinking about international how all these things play together. And then of course, if you're doing local SEO, still an amazing thing to do with optimizing on this state city, zip code, even down to the profile level, all of that still very, very relevant. It's the most exciting time for search engine optimization and still incredibly powerful for businesses. So hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, like, comment, subscribe. If you have questions about SEO, make sure to ask and I'll get back to you on my website on www.techmekraj.com,www.techmekraj.bloginHindi,Gujarati& Marathi and www.recepirzz.blogspot.com and Youtube channel Techmekraj NJH Niraj JH. If you have any questions, leave a comment below and I'll answer and help you out. Make sure you like this post, subscribe to my website telling people about it. Thank you for clicking on it.  Thanks.

http://www.techmekraj.com/2019/12/whats-seo-in-2020best-tipsby-techmekraj.html

I'm feeling slightly better than I was yesterday.

I bought stuff for Spot with the last of my money to cheer myself up, as I'm getting paid in two days.

One of the Spots I ordered arrived and I gave them a bath.

Got chicken strips and potato wedges.

I'm still extremely upset about the news from yesterday. I'm trying not to take it personally but saying "I hated doing commissions" and me being his primary commissioner, getting one almost every month, has made that hard.

I guess this means I shouldn't obsess over one friend and their art and should try being closer to multiple people and being a supporter of multiple artists.

Every time I get too attached I always end up getting hurt because I'm too clingy.

But as I said, finding that sweet spot when it comes to artists is very very difficult. All the good artists who aren't creeps are so popular that getting a commission slot is impossible.

This year has just been "the year of distance" and it sucks. Everyone being distant in real life due to the virus I think is normalizing reclusion even online.

I tried to shower like a non disabled person today and guess what? I bruised my horrible little nasty sternum by falling. It feels kinda weird now and hurts. It makes me think more about whether I have wires around it or not. The bone would have grown around the wires right? Hopefully it's just bruising and it's not like, extra delicate because it was at one point in two halves, so it broke. Baby bones are basically cartilage so it would have grown properly right?

I know nothing of medicine.

So I'm sticking to baths unless I want to get a shower chair. Only issue is there's no space for one.

Our slumlord house owner was going to raise our rent but can't because of the virus. That's some good news. Hope it stays that way. We're already paying way too much for what we get here.

I had a pretty bad breakdown last night but tonight I'm not feeling that. Still really sad about recent events though.

Actually befriending artists is really hard and a big issue I have with finding artists online to commission is I prefer them being my friends as there's a level of comradery and understanding so ehhhhhh. I had several people do art fight attacks for me this year out of the blue so maybe I'd be able to network and become friends with other artists but that's so hard for me. My friendships pretty much are lightning in a bottle rare events that brought us together. I don't actually know how to intentionally make friends.

I wish Fishy had more free time and Shynox and Lili and Arti came back. Oh well.

I found out that the camera I wanted to get for when I finally get my service dog doesn't save photos digitally. It sucks because I really wanted to have a modern instant camera that also had an SD card for the photos as backup but nope. The new Polaroid doesn't do that. It's just a regular old style instant camera. No digital features. I'd dig that if the saga of the Spot photos and the ongoing search for a place that still develops negatives didn't force me to get with the times and acknowledge for once in my life that "digital is the answer"

So instead I'm helping my friend buy his camera and he'll be taking photos for me. I'm sad because after my first digital camera broke I wanted to get a new one but finding out that the one I wanted didn't do what I needed it to do sorta just made me give up.

The pet store where I got stuff for Spot had things on clearance. Everything I got was clearance. I also saw a glow in the dark collar but I just thought that Spot wouldn't like the material and that it would be something my future service dog would like and that made me feel sad so I left.

The quest for a very large stuffed dog that looks like Spot continues. I found a pattern that someone could make one, but do you know how to sew things? I thought not. Neither do I.

I'm excited for the OC release of Paper Beast even though I won't be able to play it. Gotta build my new PC but that means dealing with modern PC parts which is something I've been fearing. I know how to assemble modern PCs, but I'm so behind with the technical aspect it's hard. I don't want to just buy a prebuilt, that's a waste of money, but due to the virus, going to a local shop is out of the question too.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that I'm getting by, but that I'm not happy. I'm just sorta riding the waves wherever they move and hoping for the best.

I'm hoping my friend's new camera will be good for photos of cuddle clone Spot and also my HoD collection.

I've got some ideas for commissions though. Just don't know who to commission lol

I've got one in the works now though. First one from an artist I thought was cool and is nice to follow. Seemed excited to work on my idea.

My friend made me this and it makes me feel happy.

Hopefully I'll have an easier time sleeping tonight than I did last night.

Maybe I'll try writing instead. But since my mood is awful we know it's going to take a dark turn.

I might try searching around for artists some more, especially once I get paid.

It's not the end of the world. I'm just hurt lol

Anyways, update done. Talk to you guys later.

just wanted to write out a bunch of My Hero thoughts/opinions because idk anybody else who watches it (or who would want to), but i don't really want to get into deep enough into the fandom to see the #drama

so, a bunch of random shit in no particular order:

- this is more about my relationship with anime in general but.... i always feel like i need to put a disclaimer on My Anime Opinions because of the perviness and fanservice and sexualization. it’s frustrating because the “shounen” genre (and yeah i know it’s not exactly a genre. whatever) caters to my interests in so many other ways!!! big, flashy battles, cool powers and magic systems, huge emphasis on The Power of Friendship, cheesy humor, great animation, everything is all kinds of HYPE and EXCITEMENT and FUN....but since shows like this are targeted towards teenage boys and often made by horny men, there’s also Boobs and token pervert characters that serve as an excuse to show More Boobs or Fantasize About Boobs. and the women’s powers are either “look i’m a girl!!!” (there were a couple of women early on in hunter x hunter whose powers were....sewing and vacuuming?? seriously??? and then another one later on who was an older woman who chose to make herself look like a little girl as her superpower??) or “what’s a power-related excuse to make these costumes As Skimpy As Possible” (cough cough Momo and Hagakure cough cough) or even having NO excuse (what the fuck, Bubble Girl, i know it was a fan design contest thing but that never should have been accepted it makes no sense i--) and that’s. really damn tiring and annoying. mha hasn’t quite crossed the line for me yet overall -- meaning my disgust with grape trash and other gross tropes hasn’t outweighed my enjoyment of every other aspect of the story and characters, and i hope that never becomes the case. (i tried to watch 7 deadly sins on netflix and??? the main character gropes an unconscious woman in literally the first episode with no consequences???? no fucking thank you!!!!! i’m OUT)

- anyway if anybody reads this and has any show recs that hit that Good Shounen Hype vibe with good animation, fantasy/sci-fi/superpower elements, but minimal (or nonexistent??) Creep Vibes, please send them my way. i know there are a bunch of good slice-of-life or comedy or drama shows that have queer themes and sensitive storytelling but man.....if there’s no magic or dragons what’s even the POINT

- on a related note, god fucking bless every “AU - M!neta M!norou Doesn’t Exist” fic on ao3, and everyone who makes every member of class 1-a queer in some way or another, so i can get my cool powers and great characters and dramatic plots without the threat of disgust and frustration

- also i just read the School Briefs series and while there were entirely too many chapters/sections that focused on grape trash, it WAS mentioned that Tiger of the Wild Wild Pussycats is canonically a trans man (who hasn’t been killed off!), and Shinso Hitoshi became the only man at UA I respect with one line: “He’s gotta be expelled for sexual harassment one of these days, right?”

- seriously, if shinso’s transfer gets approved i would literally rather have grape trash expelled than whoever ends up being the traitor (if it’s a hero course student. i honestly don’t really care about traitor speculation/theories).

- and yes “only man i respect” includes aizawa and every other 1-a boy who just!! lets shit happen with barely a comment!!! again, bless every fic where grape trash gets expelled early on or at the training camp because Hey, What He Does Is Fucked Up Actually and maybe someone who consistently disrespects and violates his peers’ boundaries and privacy shouldn’t be accepted as a HERO without getting some behavioral therapy first???? same kinda goes for bakugo too though, they really need to address his anger issues and beef with mido beyond “let’s force them to team up in high-stress situations even though this boy basically tried to obliterate the other one on, like, the second day of class. they’ll probably work it out!!”

- and on the subject of bakugo! i really fucking can’t ship him romantically with mido as their history and relationship stands in canon. (this is not meant to shame anybody for shipping it, i just want to articulate why it’s a notp for me personally. expressing my opinions is the point of this list.) i can see the foundations -- mido obsessed with baku, baku constantly frustrated by yet aware of mido, both of them being drawn to each other and tangled up in each other’s ideas of what it means to be a hero. but. baku made mido’s entire childhood hell. rejected and abused him for something he couldn’t control, ostracized him from all of his peers, mocked his passions, crushed his dreams, told him to jump off a roof. of course mido still clung to him--baku’s strong and smart and talented, and he was the only friend mido ever had, the only friend he had left, the “hero” he could see in his own life.

but at UA he has other friends, other heroes, people who support him and believe in him. it’s his chance to step outside of baku’s shadow and see his own self worth. and it’s baku’s chance to see how wrong he was, and outgrow his anger and prejudice!! see others as his equals instead of his inferiors! but it’s gonna take years for that to happen for both of them, and while i can see them becoming partners and friends who can finally talk to each other on the same level, and work together better than anyone because they know each other so damn well after everything they went through....i think they need to do that healing and growth separately, for the most part.

and like...okay, disclaimer, i am fully asexual and aromantic, so while i love reading shippy fics, there are some things i just cannot fucking understand or relate to. the whole “sexual tension between people who hate each other but can’t stop thinking about each other” or “arguments turn into make-out sessions” thing is just beyond me. if i hate a person i Do Not Want to be around them! at all!! so the idea that baku treats mido like that BECAUSE he’s attracted to him?? incomprehensible.

and on mido’s end, no matter how much he respects or admires baku, or even if he was endlessly infatuated with/attracted to him when they were younger, why the FUCK would he want to stay with someone who made him feel like dirt for so long, when he’s finally surrounded by people who love him fully and unapologetically? i want him to have more self-respect than that. i honestly, truly want to see baku grow and develop to the extent that he and mido can stand on the same level as equals. i want to see mido unashamed and unafraid, i want baku to apologize and mean it, i want mido to forgive him, i want baku to become the kind of hero mido always believed he could be.

but to me, that depth and complexity of relationship (while very very very good!!) is NOT the same thing as a romance, and turning it into one feels wrong when the foundations of it are just....baku tormenting mido, while mido had nothing and no one else to turn to. (his mom is great, but a parent is not the same as a friend, and she was literally the only person in his life who cared about him while baku and his cronies were beating him up and ridiculing him in front of teachers who turned a blind eye.) if they had been equal rivals from the beginning, with mido able to hold his own physically, socially, and/or emotionally instead of being left bruised and battered in the dirt every time, then sure! rivals to lovers, have at it. but for me, there’s gotta be that give-and-take.

i haven’t read shippy fic for those two and i’m sure there’s a lot of great stuff!! i’ve read platonic bk//dk-centric fic by writers who DO ship them and write mostly shippy stuff, and their take on that relationship is great and engaging and everything. but i feel like, to me, even when the growth and development of their canon-based relationship is handled really well, it’d feel wrong to me as soon as it turned romantic.

- .....which is one of the reasons why todo//mido is my JAM. bonding over shared loneliness and trauma, respecting each other as rivals right from the beginning, the contrast of chatty and sunny mido with quiet and calm todo, hurt/comfort on both sides, navigating their relationships with the people who have hurt them so much in the past, the capacity to be gentle and tender with each other while remaining passionate and dedicated rivals, growing and healing together, that good good Pining because neither one of them believes that they deserve the other, all of it!!! now THAT i can relate to and understand and see as the basis for romance. mido changed todo’s whole damn worldview in ONE FIGHT after todo spilled his whole tragic backstory to mido in their second conversation.

even so (and again, this might be ace/aro me not relating) i kinda roll my eyes whenever a fic emphasizes how attractive they find each other right away (especially on todo’s end, when mido is consistently described as plain or unremarkable). worst offenders are when they ~just so happen~ to be EXACTLY each other’s “type.” like, alright, sure, i gUESS.

it’s just so much more interesting to me if attraction follows affection instead of the other way around? especially in the context of canon events. but whatever, love at first sight’s just not my thing. never has been. and i like the idea that even though the start of their friendship is so chaotic and rushed in some ways, it still takes them time to get to know each other and come to terms with their own feelings. (slow burn slow burn SLOW BURN)

- okay those are all my more sincere/serious opinions

- i know canon is like “stop being such a crybaby :/” but mido crying all the time is one of my favorite things about him and i hope it never goes away, at least not completely

- some fics have mido getting growth spurts and getting really tall, and it’s an anime trope that getting taller parallels character growth/maturity (like Ed growing up in FMA after being short and mad about it was one of his defining characteristics for so long) but again......i just want him to stay short....please let my boy stay a small overemotional nerd.... hori please i’m begging you

-  it’s hilarious to me that the “dabi is a todoroki” theory is present in almost every single damn fic where that character makes an appearance. personally i have no stake in the theory (wouldn’t be surprised if it’s true, wouldn’t be disappointed if it isn’t) but i feel like it’s never gonna die even after his identity is truly revealed

- apparently shinso/kami is a decently popular ship and i.....have no idea if those two have ever interacted at all?? did they talk to each other in the show or in the manga or some side story and i missed it? are they popular JUST because they parallel eraser//mic to some extent??? or is it purely a case of “those personalities would be fun together--SHIP TIME”?? idk i don’t get it but it’s funny

- back to School Briefs, there’s a neat Kendo-centric chapter during the school festival that ends up being an introspective on kendo’s relationship with her own gender and the idea of performing femininity for the beauty pageant and it kind of rules??

- there’s also an entire chapter from the pov of koda’s bunny during their first couple days in the dorms. apparently koda can’t understand animals, he can just control them by talking to them!

- in shinso’s chapter he overhears the dance squad talking about the sports festival and he hears mido talk about how useful and great shinso’s quirk will be for hero work and shinso’s like “!!! thank you???? finally???” and then resolves to get stronger and make it into the hero course before they meet again

- during the school festival when mido ran off to make eri’s candy apples, iida and todo were like “is he running into trouble again?? can he PLEASE tell us where he’s going? we would track his phone but he never brings it with him anyways!!! what are we supposed to do about him!!!!” and then they found out what he was doing and went “oh ;u;”

- School Briefs in general (minus grape trash sections) were exactly the kind of “slice of life but there are superpowers” fluffy nonsense i always crave, would recommend

- also hilarious: baby mido in fic (especially de-aging fic) is often either a) the Most Precious Sunshine Child in Existence, even villains can’t help but adore him, or b) the most obnoxious, borderline-creepy, whiny little brat in existence, No Wonder Baku Couldn’t Stand Him. i imagine the “reality” would fall somewhere in the middle and it’s always a little jarring when authors so solidly fall on one extreme or the other lmfao

- just bnha fanfic things: “is this an intentional use of All for One vs One for All or was it a typo/mistake on the author’s part??”

- that’s all i’ve got for now yall i love these characters

On The Road, Again.

Oh my, it’s been some time, hasn't it? There ain’t a lot of words I can think of to express the change and the loss and the perspective that has come into play since the last time I took to writing my days down on these pages. Perhaps in due time we’ll get around to telling all of the stories, if I can manage to get them out -a few of the tales bring water to my eyes, so maybe it’s good that the medium I work in here is just words, consumed long after they are brought to bear.

Whoa, that got dramatic…

Get this- we’re on tour. I’m in a plane, way up over Saskatchewan. Currently, My parents are in Virginia, my brothers are in their homes, Esme is in Rock Island & BJ is up there in the upper Mississippi valley, Joy & Tom are just above Greenlake, Jack is in Bellevue, Lucien is in Kirkland playing guitar, Ethan is in Nashville, Julian is mixing your next favorite record, and Aimee, Sherri & Michael are a few rows behind me in this huge metal tube up in the sky.

But it wasn’t supposed to be this way - all of us on a direct flight in the same plane, that is. I bought a ticket that sent me through Salt Lake City, entirely on the basis of economy. That was a couple months ago. A whole lot has transpired since then, on the road to me sitting in 23B, and pecking out this story.

This trip has been in the works for some time. Back when we were young & idealistic & slightly more foolish than I am right now.(I am aware that I changed our pronoun in mid sentence there, but it seems more correct that way.) I only jest a little about my altered level of foolishness. I know it’s a bit of a cliche, but sometimes there are events that open your eyes to how things really are, the people who glue your world together, and the people we hold esteem for without any real reason except for the ideas in our own heads. I’ve spent a lot of my life making space for, and forgiving the acts of one particular person. I wish it wasn’t so, but sometimes it takes a full-on tragedy to open the eyes of a fool such as I. I’m not gonna get into that right now, but I’m in a space where there is no grey area. I am heavy on regrets & light on shame or burdens.

I ain’t taken a band on the road for a couple years now. I have walked a many hundreds of miles in Spain in my last couple visits, but haven’t played a proper gig on the european continent since the (pre-election) 2016 tour. And my travel writing has dropped off too. Last spring, I thought I was in bad shape. I was nursing a broken heart, for sure. Since then I have lost my most noble role model, my strongest mentor, and the Dog who straight-up saved my life when I couldn’t find my identity or purpose. So yeah, a few things have changed. Anybody who knew Manolo, Steve or Faron would readily understand how the world is different without them in it. I’ve learned a lot from the choices they made, and the self-righteous acts of those who would take their choices away from them. I wish there was a way I could have learned the lesson without all the grief, but we all know that real lessons don’t come cheap.

As always, I digress. -

I think it was around February this year, I was talking to Alwin about bringing Silverhands back to Germany. We were talking about a gig in Erkelenz. I’d been rethinking what my band meant. Trying to get the songs to return to their essence, so to speak. Along the way, if I could step up my guitar playing that’d be pretty cool too… so Silverhands is a 3-piece band now. Just Aimee on the drums & Sherri on the bass, and most dramatically different- just me on guitar. We work really hard on letting the songs breathe and just exist. Many times in the past I have felt the joy of being pulled along by the songs and the people playing them. It’s a beautiful thing to hear a little sonic progeny of your very own sitting up and telling you how the ride is gonna go. Showing you that it has a voice of its own & there ain’t nothing you can do about it. Kinda how I imagine it’s like to have grown children. But songs ain’t children, and they are never too old for me to put over my knee & change their attitude when I see fit.

This stage in the life of my band is where I chill the hell out & try to assess where the songs are, and to potentially cull anything that doesn’t stand up on it’s own. I’ve been blessed with some inspired lead players -folks who can slip deeper melodic passages between the & and the 1 than I often manage to fortify an entire verse with. The beauty of this is that I can show up to any gig, hack out three chords and an occasional minor VI, and somebody is gonna turn it into music. Right now I’m trying to make sure I’m holding up my end of the bargain, and hoping to inform any future songwriting with a deeper level of independence from flourish. Clapton did a good job with JJ Cale songs, but they were all better when they were just JJ Cale songs.

I play with a few bands. Silverhands doesn’t even get the bulk of my time. I am lucky enough to play gigs with lots of varied folks playing all kinds of stuff, but I’m only IN just a couple of bands -I still get to play drums for the Joy Mills band, I play prog-funk & straight-up hardcore bluegrass on the bass fiddle with Supernatal & Darlin’ Do, respectively, and I rock the shit out of the electric Bass with Del Vox (if I might say so myself).

All y’all know that Del Vox is Sherri Jerome. And Sherri Jerome is Del Vox. I loooove these songs. There’s a lot of challenge in them, and consequently, there is much reward in playing with this batch of people.

It so happened that Sherri & I were both considering tour booking around the same time. Our bands’ unique personnel situations allowed us an opportunity to benefit from the usually mundane and costly logistics of travel. We booked each band on its own short run of dates, in mostly the same circuit of venues, back-to-back from the middle of September to the middle of October. Both bands are hitting some familiar haunts & some fresh new cities. (I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been to Temse) (I actually have very few retrievable memories of belgium in general, but I’m pretty sure it’s always a good time)

As the tours started coming together, we began the long process of planning, preparing, refining our concepts, & ultimately packing our bags. I spent a lot of time deferring the literal act of packing, as well as much of the intangible act of “planning”, due to a hyper-busy summer into autumn -I have been playing a lot of bass gigs, stretching out on some country chops that I apparently grew up knowing, but never had the sense to use before now. I love learning new music & playing with new bands, but it takes up a big part of my brain, and ultimately all the clerical duties of being in a band tend to suffer for the sake of The Gig. I recognize that gigs are dependent on me being able to plan/book them, but when that big boulder gets rolling, sometimes you just do your best to stay in front of it.

So I bought a plane ticket awhile back, but really hadn’t put any thought into “planning” anything until Monday, and hadn’t considered “packing” until Tuesday morning. On Monday I realized that I had basically one pair of pants. And I was about to share a van with 3 people for a month. On Tuesday, newly outfitted, I realized I had no luggage that would fit all of the things I need to carry for this venture. Enter the Goodwill on 145th…

A giant, yet slim, tweed trunk, like the kind you'd expect to see on top of a stagecoach, goes home with me on Tuesday. I took the neck of my ’72 Geddy Lee Jazz bass & toss it in with about 20 plain black t-shirts and some socks. I am set.

I still had a gig to play on Tuesday night, so Jack loaned me his slick new blonde Jazz bass, which plays like 80 degree butter, and I went down to Conor’s to sew some pockets with Kelly Van Camp in Fredd’s new Tuesday-night project. My plan was to drink one beer & head home straight after the gig, but the North Star beckoned, and I was out till roughly 2:30, in bed by 3. It was a good night.

My eyes open around 9 AM on Wednesday. All I know is that I need to pick up the drummer at 1, and I need to get my second pair of pants in the laundry. I take a moment to consider falling back asleep, just playing guitar all morning, or any number of things more lovely than washing clothes & lugging suitcases. But we’ve got a job to do, and it starts with some cabbage & eggs. Just like every morning.

When I consider intangibles like “time” and “distance”, it always seems feasible that you could do all you need to do, clean up the dishes, take a nap, a walk in the park, entertain guests, and get a shine on your shoes all before 1pm. As it was, it was all I could do to meet up with the coffee crew up at the Herkimer before the headache started setting in. It was good to get a breather in what was going to be a very long day. Jackie & Aimee & I sat in the sun and moderated our respective awarenesses with warm beverages, warm sun and oxygen. Joy met us up at Graycie’s house, where we all piled in the van with our cases & bags and the remainder of an old flask that Aimee found in the back seat of my car. Let’s get this show on the road.

It was all we could do to find a table at the airport bar, another story altogether in getting any beverages brought to us. So after one round, I had to split to head to my gate & get on my two-part flight, while the rest of the band gets on the direct flight an hour later (remember, this was the story I was telling) but at my gate, there was no airplane. I expressed my concerns at the help desk in missing my connection, and the dear woman immediately rebooked me on the direct Seattle-Amsterdam flight. With the rest of my band.

A short train ride over to the international terminal, and now here I am. Or here we are, as it were.

Now that I’ve had my airline bottle of Dewar’s & a tiny chicken salad and fruit cup, we’re all up to speed -the only real variable being, will my old tweed trunk and the precious bass inside of it get to Amsterdam with me? But this is ultimately a question for the next episode, which starts roughly when the sun rises over Holland on Thursday morning.

-

At this point in the blog, we’ll find ourselves at the beginning of one story, chronologically, but also at the end, as things go on the page. Feel free to continue reading about my previous adventures, walking in Spain, and past tours way back to some bygone days.

Thanks for coming along for the ride.

How did you learn how to work leather? How did you become interested in it?

O hay! Strap in, friends, it’s a long story.

So I’m almost entirely self-taught – I started out just going into Tandy Leather (it’s an international chain, look ‘em up online to find your closest one) and asking a lot of very stupid questions until I learned how to ask the right questions. It helped that there was a hottie working at my local store, and coming in with a list of questions every time gave me a ready-made excuse to talk to him. (My biggest initial confusion was not realizing that you can’t make armor out of chrome-tan, which seems obvious in retrospect but it’s a *very* common newbie misunderstanding, and why I lead with the veg-tan/chrome-tan distinction when I teach armor-making.)

Instructional books on leatherworking tend to be pretty useless for costuming, besides teaching you very basic skills like “this is how you make a buckle strap” or “this is how to do a saddle stitch,” because they all assume that what you want to make with your leatherworking skillz are the most godawful-hideous bags, belts, and notebook covers in creation. (Even Tandy seems to think that their clientele still consists of nothing but cowboys and cowboy-wannabes, and I’m like, mate, hate to break it to you, but it’s cosplayers and kinky people these days.) Al Stohlman is a name you’ll come across a lot if you’re looking for instructional books on leather – and rightly so, the man was a prolific writer and definitely knew his stuff… even if his taste SERIOUSLY left something to be desired. o_o

If you’re just starting out, there are tons of youtube videos that demonstrate different projects and techniques, though I myself didn’t realize that until I was well past the level of most youtube tutorials. It can still be useful to watch someone do a project from start to finish, even a project you already know how to do, because one unavoidable side effect of being self-taught (as most costume leatherworkers are) is that we’re all reinventing the wheel; we develop our own methods to do what we need to do, but they’re not necessarily the fastest or most reliable method, and we don’t have a sensei to show us a better way. (Or to break us of the bad habits we develop.) Multiple times I’ve been watching a youtube tutorial and seen the presenter use a technique slightly different from mine and gone HOLY SHIT THAT IS BRILLIANT AND SO SIMPLE, I’M GOING TO START DOING IT THAT WAY IMMEDIATELY. Granted, it often means sitting through a 45 minute video to learn one cool trick. -_-

Leatherworker.net is a valuable resource if you have a specific question – it’s a forum full of people who do every kind of leatherworking under the sun, and there are always people who are willing to answer newbie questions. That said, I have mixed feelings about the people who hang out on lw.net – it would appear that leatherworking, as a hobby, tends to attract an extremely conservative crowd, both politically and in their willingness to accept new ideas in the craft. A lot of the old-timers are very “my way or the highway” and not particularly helpful when you want to deviate from exactly what they prescribe. (A conversation might go like: you: “What can I do to make cheap/spongy leather tool better?” them: “don’t use cheap leather. you shouldn’t be cheaping out on that.” you: “…not what I asked, thanks.”) Or even when there are multiple solutions to a question, they’re convinced that their way is RIGHT and anything else is WRONG. I think this is also a result of being self-taught – for lack of official certifications to hang on the wall, a lot of people seem to feel that the only way to prove their street cred is by undermining and one-upping other leatherworkers. So, y'know, fuck them. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Recently I joined the SCA, which offers many opportunities for learning new crafting hobbies, and even though I’m pretty much the highest-level leatherworker in the area (I mean – I’d like to sound more modest, but it is what it is), there are still gaps in my knowledge (again – the result of being self-taught) that they’re helping me bridge. Namely, taking my armor from purely decorative to something that could actually function in combat – my history in cosplay means that job 1 is looking pretty, while being able to “move” and “sit down” is just a pleasant bonus. From the SCA guys, I’m learning how to pattern armor that allows for a better range of motion and how to do the wax-hardening that makes it nearly as durable as metal.

Mostly though, it’s a lot of just doing it – trial and error… and error… and steadily making fewer errors, and getting a little bit better with every project. (When I say “don’t do X” in my tutorials, there is usually a reason for it, a reason that I learned the hard way.) Pay attention to detail (keep your holes straight and ffs, FINISH YOUR EDGES), compare your work to that of people better than you to see where you can improve. Leatherworker.net has a subforum where you can post pictures of your work for critique, and the responses are generally honest without being cruel (though also without being particularly tactful). Don’t be satisfied with “good enough,” figure out what you need to improve and then learn how to do it.

But it also helps that I just *took* to leather – it’s my medium, the one I clicked with in a way that nothing else has quite been able to match, not sewing or plastic-casting, not sculpture or woodworking or foam fabrication. It’s my wheelhouse, it’s my happy place, it’s where I’m going to stay and keep learning and keep growing. :)

Sunset of the Great Ape

Looking back at history how did humans live some 2000 or 5000 years ago?

They lived in joint families of closely or loosely related by blood as the inner core. A few such cores formed a village or kabila. The men did all the outside work - farming, hunting, blacksmithy, pottery, protection; the women did all the inside work - child rearing, keeping the house, cooking, washing, building social networks, collectively looking after a pool of infants and kids. 

People rarely moved 100 miles outside of their birthplace in their lives unless forced by famine or war.

Life expectancy was around 50 years probably, but there was always a pipeline of younger boys and girls growing up to take the slack as adults aged out and died after brief illnesses. Men had total control over womens activities and bodies, but the collective pool of women including grandmas did give her a place to shelter and seek support if the husband treated her badly. These grandmas who were the mothers of these men exerted some influence on the clan as leaders and social bridges.

The next phase was development of technology which made all the tough physical outside work a bit easier from around1500AD onwards and more and more wars and migrations, which meant a lot of men died or were away for years but someone still had to cover the outside work.

Technology like machines for production and agriculture (stuff like power looms, power tools) meant more and more women could come out and work if there was a need (like in WW2 a lot of american women joined work in factories), or if  if the husband abandoned her or died.

The gender roles became a bit diffuse and much became part of a set of common tasks that anyone could do like running a printing press or sewing a bag. Women were still stereotyped into “womanly” jobs like secretary, sewing, midwife, maids, food industry and the “deep thinking/command and control” jobs like professors, tool makers, generals, politicians were nearly 100% men.

As water continues to erode rocks the diffusion of power and control continued. Monogamy got religious sanction and started to get enforced, thrashing the wife was no longer seen as a cool thing to do by the clergy which kept a section of men in line, while others continued to run wild and also philander. Education became the norm for women upto some basic level as countries continued to grow richer and richer…albeit education was mostly not in STEM but in “home science” type things to make a good wife out of her in her designated role -the designation matrix being entirely in the hands of men. 

New tools of social control of women were devised - religious texts, historical norms, lack of strength, lack of brains, lack of 100% attention to kids/husband if working being a thoughtcrime, media projecting a certain image of what made a woman happy, laying a guilt trip on her …. times changed , tools and levers of control also changed from physical thrashings and social ostracism to more subtle formats aimed at “shaping” and “funneling” her tastes into the right funnels. why do we need to fight someone if you can control their educational and career choices by more subtle means? winning without a war is the best victory…

Moving to the late 20th century, there are almost no physically demanding jobs left in the rich countries, everything being highly mechanised. Of those that are left, womens nutrition is now enough they are no longer stunted and can handle such jobs easily. the fraction of jobs barred to women is reducing all over the world including the developing countries. Last barriers like active military service have fallen. in all of the highest paying jobs like law, finance, judiciary, medicine, design, electronics, software, automotive, academics …. there is little need for any physical strength or great mobility. any of sound mind can work these and indeed physically challenged people also do.

in parallel the rich nations diverged two ways

The Nanny State - a cradle to grave support system. the northern european model of high taxation but high social benefits including a guaranteed old age pension, child bearing tax benefits and aid, unemployment aid, subsidized housing, subsidized higher education . reduce the rich poor living std gap to extent possible and take care of the bottom 20% by taxing the top 20% heavily. This is built on the accumulated wealth of 500 years of colonial resource grab from other countries and 800 years of relative peace in europe permitting universities and knowledge to be sustainably built. It is perhaps not sustainable over next few decades with a declining population, hostility to immigration and losing the technology lead to other parts of the world.

The “Anglo” Model - trade off social benefits and economic regulations in favour of higher growth, higher take home income and let the “market” and “competition decide” what happens. This has corralled the bottom 20% in a circular loop of no economic mobility across generations and poor benefits, with the kind of jobs they could have done exported to the “third” world esp china and central america. the top 20% make good money and compete to send their kids to the best universities for their perpetual occupation of the commanding heights in the most lucrative sectors. pious homilies are spun about “opportunity” and “affirmative action” for the underpriviledged and every politician wants to “fix the schools” and “let none be left behind”. the anglo block of usa, canada, nz, aus, and partially uk seem to follow this model.

The poorer nations including India are in two buckets

those that are living in the middle ages wrt to opportunity for women relative to the leading edge - almost the entire 58 or such countries of the islamic block, most of africa, most of central & south america and rural pockets of many nations incl india and eastern europe

urban pockets all over which generally follow a hybrid anglo model - less money than anglos, and less taxes than nanny states, as nobody has a pile of looted colonial era money or the political capital to have a northern europe nanny state - population is too high in the tropics. increases in cost of living has forced women to work from high to low - whether a maid supporting her security guard husband, or a IT managers wife doing a job to increase savings and pay down huge EMIs, all are on the treadmill now. and the treadmill never stops. 

if we consider it as a rope, the head of the rope is northern europe, middle is america and tail is the developing world.

And what do we see in northern europe/america?

young people have abandoned organized religion enmasse. 

young people have no real interest in slogging decades through marriage and raising kids , separation rates are at record highs

more and more are willingly childless or are stopping at below replacement fertility rate(1.3 children/woman) - an example is japan , italy 

there is rejection of intermarriage with the growing number of african and muslim migrants due to religious and racial fault lines

the nanny state continues to look after people , whether single, separated, widowed does not matter…

In developing nations?

many conservative societies continue to be a pressure cooker about women’s freedom of opportunity and free speech, desperately trying to exist like a oil droplet and survive by the cosy old mores of male control.But the steam is periodically now coming out as the triple talaq issue shows, or the change in ways of such women once they move out of the male dominated milieu into the wider world despite the strong early childhood indoctrination

in less conservative societies, only the lack of a nanny state and money is holding back millions and millions of women from walking out of rather unhappy marriages - people may wax eloquent about sanskriti and sanskari naari but give people the guaranteed support of a nanny state and see the effect.

its very hard to find a young educated woman these days who definitely wants 2+ kids on her own unless the husband has a fetish for 2+. even in the generation now in late 30s and 40s, many many stopped at 1, driven by economic reality -wife has to work to generate savings, lack of grandparents support for childcare and career aspirations meaning most people now move to other places to work.

Some arguments can be made

Everyone by biological nature tries to maximise their advantages - if the male dominated order held the leash earlier, the emergent women’s networks have found ways to destroy and discredit the dominant gorilla male chimps even if belatedly but with lethal network effects like the #metoo revelations. None are in jail yet, but their position in public life and the income streams attached to that have become untenable and these men will only be able to retire into quiet anonymity at best - a crushing blow to the ego of public figures used to the heady drug of being in limelight and popular

Freedom once attained is rarely if ever voluntarily relinquished

The nature of work is almost totally going to be unisex 

Life is become safer both from physical violence and microbial infections - urban middleclass+ women no longer need a “protector” type man hovering around to lead their day to day life unless they inhabit a lawless region. conveniences are increasing, the app based delivery model being a recent one.

Women are generally happier in networks of other women,than trying to fit into some male “bro” culture like golfing, fishing, tall tales and old school buddies meeting over old monk rum and debating over school crushes  … their topics of life interest are vastly different. No woman in india probably has any interest in what are the political dynamics of the syrian civil war or the finding of a new species of tortoise in patagonia under a rock. Some men could debate for hours on it . Every village has a troop of old men who sit under a tree reading every newspaper, talking and giving comments to everyone passing by … nobody will notice a troop of old women doing that.

The “desire” for sex as men think of it (conventional penetrative sex) likely bores to death some 95% of women as they never reach a climax through it unless the man lends a hand to it (pun intended) after the act, rather than roll over and snore loudly, though 95% of men think its ok, and access to sex is a core need and a entire huge industry (porn industry) is built around that thoughtsphere. For women its probably as important as say a mildly interesting monthly project like cleaning the chest of drawers or getting a visit to a new salon. So if men think their ability to provide sex on demand (mostly to mens benefit) is going to “glue” the cracked pottery together, I think they are much mistaken. Women in general can get by very well pleasuring themselves or entering into mildly LGBT type relationships for that 5% slice of the round pie chart that defines all of a persons “needs in life”. Men might want sex every day if they can, a single good session can last women a long time.

The fabric of the organized monogamic nuclear family with religious sanction is fraying and the rips are growing larger.

Where does the rabbit hole lead to? 

I think it leads to groups of women, who might be siblings, relatives or friends rearing a pool of children and working together as in the old clan days but with no or very few men around permanently. Some variant a matriarchal system, or whatever you may call it, but 4 generations of women could be living under a mutually supportive network with the men being ghar jamai for limited time to donate their seed and then pack it off back to lone tusker mode until let back in to get another bowl of the cream on some occasions. 

The fact that women cope with old age and maintaining social relations much better is well known. A old widow will manage and retain social contacts, a old widower will soon be a shambles and fall apart. Groups of women living and growing old together is very much probable, whether men are totally out of scene or a limited presence. in any rich country, women always have greater average lifespans and much less prone to the self abusive and indisciplined patterns of behaviour that cut men’s lives short by years and sometimes decades. 

Men become cranky with age and revert to being children, women continue to gain wisdom and stature and become matriarchs.

It is also inevitable that genetic engineering will soon find ways to make the “seed” (mens last remaining trump card) artificially in the laboratory. rubber -a natural product, was synthesized in the lab by germany to meet wartime shortage and british control of malaya and so will this precious “seed/beej” and that will be the last glacing blow sending men into a kind of irrelevance. The world needs lot of rubber but maybe only a few large vats of seed per annum to keep things um ticking over. And things can be manipulated at genetic level far better in the lab through splicing and editing to edit out the “bad” and usher in the “good” traits of the day - like a potential high earning biochemistry Phd who also runs 100m in 10.5 seconds, does not smoke and is a great cook - all programmed at birth.

Nature is wise and many ancient animals live in this mode, the most promiment being the large mammals who live decades like whales, elephants - some arctic species have lifespans much longer than humans - under wise matriarchs while the huge and violent males are let inside the door only when babies are needed and then “managed out” on some performance improvement plan. 

One difference from 1:1 monogamy (almost everyone gets a chance to mate) is that probably the top10% of the males get 90% of the “opportunity” in the non-human world and have a disproportionate genetic footprint vs their “weaker” male rivals. The “weak” ones slink around trying to find a gap in the fence + avoid being killed if intercepted, or plot and collude to depose the incumbent king. And find it hard hunting or gathering food alone, which matriarch led herds of juveniles and mature females do far more safely and efficiently.

The age of the male ape having first right to all resources including women is over. The sun has set on it on parts of the world and the shadows are creeping into our longitudes too. Just as our kids will all drive EV cars not fossil fuel cars, I am no longer sure of many things…

I am not saying its “fair” or even the best thing to happen, but I am saying thats where the ball is rolling.