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telesthisia · 4 years

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HANDY DANDY RP PLOTTING CHEAT-SHEET FOR PRINCESS ZELDA (A Link to the Past)!

Want new-and-exciting plots for your character? Long to reach out to more of your followers, but don’t know where to start? Fear not! Fill out this form and give your RP partners both present and future all the of juicy jumping off points they need to help you get your characters acquainted.

Be sure to tag the players whose characters YOU want more cues to interact with, and repost, don’t reblog! Feel free to add or remove sections as you see fit. Template here.

mun name: Amber!! ooc contact: My DMs are always open for mutuals and non-mutuals alike (I think at least, if not don’t be afraid to send in asks either I try my best to get to them ;v;)! I do have a personal blog but weeps.... me no longer active on there. And a twitter but weeps once again, it’s an oc twitter despite my yellings of off topic things. MY DISCORD TOO!! Though my activity is very inconsistent somedays I’ll be on others not so much! Don’t be afraid to ask for that uvu

who the heck is my muse anyway?

HOHO!!! For those who never touched The Legend of Zelda in their lives, I’m sure it’s pretty dang confusing to see more than one design of both Zelda and Link, I’ll try my best to explain this! The series follows a very, very convoluted timeline filled with plotholes, as such the Links and Zeldas we see throughout different titles of the game are actually reincarnations who are destined to seal away whatever darkness may threaten the lands known as Hyrule.

The Zelda I play as is the princess of Hyrule during a point in the timeline known as “Downfall Era” where the Hero of Time in OOT lost against Ganondorf in the final battle; Ocarina of Time is the reason for why there’s multiple timelines with each having their unique era depending on the choices in that game. The Downfall Era is known for having games known as A Link to The Past, Oracle of Seasons, Oracle of Time, Link’s Awakening, A Link Between Worlds, Triforce Heroes, The OG Legend of Zelda, Annnnd Adventure of Link! The Zelda I play as comes from A Link to The Past as well as the Oracle series and I guess Link’s Awakening despite having no appearance. The events of A Link to The Past and Oracle Series has deeply affected my Zellie in that she suffers from unspoken traumas as well depression. See, before the events of ALTTP there was a war known as the Imprisoning War, that war ended where the seven sages seal away Ganon. Peace reigned for a while until a series of plagues and droughts struck which affected the kingdom. It wasn’t until the antagonist of the game, a wizard by the name of Agahnim, would put an end to the misfortunate blighting Hyrule with his magic, gaining favor with the king. He was able to worm his way into court and from there act on his plans in breaking the seal to the sacred realm where the triforce and Ganon rest. Doing so, he must capture the seven maidens who are descendants of the seven sages and sacrifice them in order to break the seal and well, guess which princess happens to be one of those seven maidens? Suffice to say, he was successful in breaking the seal with Zelda being the final sacrifice. Here we find out that he’s actual the alter ego of Ganon (don’t question it too hard) and we also find out she’s not dead! Hooray! But she is trapped in a plane known as The Dark World, once the sacred realm corrupted by Ganon’s greed. So as all LOZ stories goes, Link saves the day. Happily ever after, right? Well... no, see unlike in the game where the ending is happy and everyone who died is alive I follow both the 90s comics and Himekawa manga where those who died in the games did not come back to life. This includes Zelda’s father, Link’s uncle and some of the maidens. It’s very bittersweet in that, the day is saved and Ganon is gone forever but at the cost of loved ones no longer coming back.

Well... Ganon comes back! In the oracle series! Two years after ALTTP, Twinrova tries to resurrect him by using the blood and body of Princess Zelda, meaning she can actually die this time around. But Link saves the day once again. Which leads us today, the main verse of the blog which is a year after Oracles and three years after ALTTP! NOTE: That my smash verse more or less follows this timeline I have in place for this blog.

things you should know

I sound like a broken record but. She’s a glass canon of sorts. Where she’s very powerful thanks to blood of the seven sages, the light force, and having hylia’s blood in her veins. As such, she’s very powerful and her magic super potent which is why so many people wanna sacrifice for dark rituals... BUT!! She has super power health issues that affects her magical stamina and body as such she can’t even use half her powerful magic and this upsets her greatly. It’s a small headcanon of mine because in the games and manga, she doesn’t really do much despite being a powerful magical princess. Keep in mind that ALTTP came out before the retcon that is Skyward Sword and before they decided to add more to Zelda’s abilities throughout the course of the series... so my brain went to: she’s powerful but can’t use magic too much due to poor health. It worked!! Before smash came along but I swear I’m not at all salty. To be fair, it was my fault for assuming things but imagine: glass canon Zelda. It sounded super cool at the time!

She represses a lot if only for the sake of her nation and to appear as a good leader for her people. As such, she’s almost always calm and has a gentle smile on her face despite radio static sounds resounding in her thoughts. Give her time, she’ll open up and show you her playful side!

She’s been surrounded by death considering before ALTTP, during ALTTP and kinda with Oracles if you count Twinrova, as well as having a connection with the spirit realm due to freaky PSI powers. So, she doesn’t really have a negative view on death and has actually gained that edgy romanticist view as the result of her life experiences. She’s very much someone who likes to live life to her fullest as the result... and well, it doesn’t help that she’s aware of her short life span thanks to her future vision. Something she won’t reveal to anyone more than likely as to not worry them. She’s more or less accepted her fate... speaking of which

She hates fate/destiny/etc but accepts whatever happens because again clairvoyance has proven that there’s no changing what’s been planned. So, she doesn’t bother fighting against it. But, what impresses her are those who manage to overcome destiny, something that Link does sometimes which is why she looks up to him. He’s that variable that the future can’t keep track of due to how ever changing he is.

She loves exploring creepy places, ruins, caves, and dungeons that are scattered throughout her kingdom, for both history and the spooky aesthetics of it! So if you see her outside the castle she’s more than likely getting ready to explore some spooky place. She’s almost always wearing her cloak but there are rare moments where she’s not either ;v; she’ll always go by the name Elle... worth mention she doesn’t bother hiding the mark of the triforce on her right hand.

Speaking of which, only people from the capital known as Castle Town and even some from Kakariko village as well know of the princess’ appearance. Various small towns throughout the land of Hyrule however, only remember her appearance from ALTTP where her hair was a more golden blonde rather than the platinum color that it’s taken from the various fear and stresses from her life. And also, she’s more freckly due to not wearing coverup when outside the castle. Ok well,,,,, here’s the best side by side comparison I have...

If you ask her what the light arrows are, she’ll look at you funny. She comes from a time where silver arrows are a thing :’) the few things that can defeat Ganon

Closet romantic, as in she loves love and wishes for a romance of her own but when it comes to her own feelings she’s an idiot due to repressing feelings.

what she’s been up to:

main verse: Which is during the events of Skyward Sword, as such she’s no longer in Skyloft nor does she have the full knowledge that she’s Hylia but Zelda is suspecting that there’s a connection there. She does not know how to wield her magic as it comes and goes in spurts. She’s seen throughout the Surface so she can be anywhere! Even in other timelines due to using the Gate of Time, we can just say that something screwed up causing for her to end up in another time period or even verse! LOZ series is pretty flexible in time travel.

where to find her:

Graveyard + Sanctuary: It’s a soothing place to visit and also to pay respects to the fallen in ALTTP.

One of the three provinces (my rendition of Hyrule is a little bigger than the in game map so don’t be afraid to add places that aren’t in ALTTP but in other titles, I know I tend to do): aka anywhere in the fields, she’s a woman plagued with wanderlust and doesn’t like being confined to one place

Kakariko: the villagers who know her true identity are hella nice to pretend that it’s not the princess but Elle! Guards tend to be here after a certain time though, so to avoid them she always avoids going to the village when it’s nearly sundown

Ruins, catacombs, abandon shrines etc: again she likes creepy or historical places or both!

Haunted Grove: Well... it’s haunted! So :’)

Castle: it’s possible to meet her here too! Whether as princess or someone sneaking either out of the castle or back into it.

current plans:

Lead her kingdom to the Golden Age, something her father tried to do before his demise. While wishing to see Link once more.

desired interactions:

I would love the usual adventure threads!!!

FRIENDSHIP!! She needs friends, pls!!

ENEMIES!! It’d be fun to write a more angry Zel who doesn’t get along with someone!

ROMANCE!! I’m a sucker for cuteness ;v; and slow burn ;v;

HORROR AU!! HORROR AU!!!

Creepy gothic threads of Zelda running into a creepy cryptid in a gothic castle on a stormy night.... this is very specific but listen, cries...

Comfort thread ;v;

things that bother me:

People who know she’s the princess right off the bat ticks me off ngl. A-ok if you muse is unaware of her otherwise!

PEOPLE WHO KNOW THAT SHE’S FROM A BLOODLINE OF A GODDESS AND SAGES DHSJAKJADB no one really knows that the royal family actually did descend from gods, unless your muse is an immortal and is aware of the events that goes on they shouldn’t know this fact. The only thing the public is aware of is how the royal family have mystical powers different from the population.

uhhhh that’s about it? Mostly metagaming pft, not too much bothers me now that I think about.

tagged by: i pirated it ;v; from myself!

tagging: whomst ever! i recommend doing this since it’ll help a ton with those who still are unsure with your muse but feel too nervous to ask questions.

#dash games.#ah yes.... where amber spews a bunch of words #i will add to this but eyyyy partners check it out if you wanna know some things #anyway uhhh writings coming out soon uvu

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miss-tc-nova · 4 years

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Confidence Boost - Hermod x Fem!Reader

Hermod is sweet and I like him, but he’s a character I don’t write much of so it’s a little difficult for me to get a grasp on him. Oh well. I still had fun and it’s good practice.

~~~~~

Frames nearly slip from my nose. Of course they would start to fall when my arms were full of books requested by the Master.

“Oh come on,” I grumble, tilting my head back, but that turns out to be too awkward and ridiculous to walk. Just a few more steps into my journey, the eyewear leaps from my face.

“Woah!” If the voice hadn’t given it away, the blur of gray and green absolutely does. “Hold on.” Fire shoots across my skin when the glasses slide back into place, clearing everything right up—including that smile. “Need some help?”

At least my voice holds together. “Um thanks.” Lightening the load, the young man accompanies me back to class.

Hermod: model student, well-mannered, kind, and the object of my infatuation. We started our training together with the rest of our classmates, when my bashfulness was leagues worse than it is now. Connecting to the people I’d be spending the next several years of my life with was way over my head, but Hermod made an effort to include me. The wall I protected myself with started to crumble and my classmates became family; I could never get over the kindness shown me though. That grateful seed bloomed into a crush that is spiraling out of my control. It drives me to seek his company in my free time or to instantly zero in on him when enters into mine. It’s a distraction and a hobby and detrimental to my sanity.

Shortly after the books are delivered, class starts. Everything goes by as normal until combat training rolls around. Having gone up against Eraqus in a friendly spar, I’m sweating and plop down beside Bragi. Hermod and Urd are up next and I can’t look away from him.

“Ah, to be a young woman in love.”

Fire erupts beneath my skin. Eyes turn on Smarmy Fluffcoat who wears the smirk of a fox over a cornered mouse—he’s got his claws around my heart. The rattled brain’s feeble attempt at a warning shove only serves to amuse him.

“Be nice, Bragi,” our shortest classmate breaks in. “You can’t pick on her for something everyone knows.” That flame is doused by icy blood.

“Everyone except Hermod,” inputs a passing Xehanort, confirming that everyone does know.

Fluffcoat’s eyes light up. “Oh, you guys know what would be fun?” Uncomfortable is that look he’s giving me. “We should help our little lovebird here.”

“I dunno,” Vor hums before I can object.

The boy in black folds his arms. “Surely Hermod must be close to noticing. Maybe we should just leave them be.”

“Please. Natural selection will take them out before either of them realizes it,” Smarmy scoffs. “All I’m sayin’ is we give this thing a little push.” The two are seriously considering his plan. “It’ll be easy. We just drop her in front of a monster and watch Brother Bear tear it apart.”

My jaw drops open but the other two seem less fazed. “That would work except she could just defend herself.” Vor’s answer confirms they’re actually on board with this nonsense.

Xehanort adds, “She’s right. What if we-”

I have to interject. “Excuse me! I-”

Bragi pats my head. “Not now, honey, the grownups are talking. Go play with Era.” The sheer stupidity of the statement shuts me right up, allowing their conversation to continue. Dumbstruck, I wander to the boy in white on the other bench.

“What happened to you?”

“The grownups are talking…”

His response is a look of ‘what?!’ but I know just as much about what they’re planning as he does.

The knowledge that specifically those three are trying to intervene in something that I was completely fine keeping to myself has me jittery. Just as I start getting back into routine—the second my eyes wander to the model student—I feel predatory gazes and, sure enough, all three are staring at me like a pack of hyenas.

The final bell tolls and I keep my head down while I collect my things. However, my attempt to remain inconspicuous is thwarted when the reason for my heckling approaches.

“Hey, are you okay?”

My heart shudders. “Uh yeah. Why?” You idiot! You know why! Don’t ask him!

“You just seem kind of tense. Is something bothering you?” If it weren’t for the monsters stalking me, I’d probably swoon over those steel-color eyes.

Yes! “N-No. I’m fine. Thank you though.”

His worry dissolves into that little smile I love when we talk. “Do you want to work on the magic assignment together?”

“I’d re-”

“Oh no you don’t!” Undignified is all I can use to describe the yelp that escapes when Vor snatches my arm and begins hauling me away. “You’ll have to find another study buddy today!” My pleading look goes unnoticed by the stunned young man.

The dragging doesn’t stop outside the classroom; instead, Vor and the mischief boys drag me back to my dorm.

“Guys, I think this is going too far,” I complain.

Xehanort is the first to display his neglect of my concerns. “Do you really need these glasses?” All detail drop from the world.

“Yes, I really do.”

“Got any contacts?”

“Yeah, but they’re a hassle.”

“Go put them in.”

“But-”

“Go on.”

Grumbling, I waddle to my bathroom and find said contacts. When I return, Vor pipes up, “Can you see us now?”

“Yeah…?”

“Good! Now your clothes!”

Leaping out the window almost becomes a viable option while my so-called friends critique my entire wardrobe and put me in dozens of combinations before they find one they’re satisfied with. I admit this is an outfit I wouldn’t have considered nor is it bad.

“Alright, she looks great, but she’s not gonna get anywhere if she turns to mush every time she sees him,” Xe points out, ignoring my sigh of complaint.

Bragi aims a finger at him. “What she needs to do is be assertive.”

These three are going to be the death of me.

Next comes “confidence training.” It turns out to be extra entertaining—Bragi’s impression of my crush is way off the mark but hilarious to watch while the others attempt to demonstrate what I should be doing; Xehanort is a much more convincing Hermod when it’s Fluffcoat’s turn. In the end, Smarmy’s examples are a little too smarmy and Vor is actually frightening, so it’s Xehanort that becomes my template for confidence, though his level of brazen is still beyond me. Their insistence that I try out a few lines on them has me beet-red but it gets surprisingly easier each time.

“Alright, I think she’s ready!” announces the other girl.

Bragi smirks. “What are the rules?”

Hesitation. “Uh…Be confident, tell him what I want, and…don’t kiss…him?”

“Bingo!”

“What’s the reason behind that last one again?”

“It’s that psychology of leaving someone wanting more,” Xe explains.

My shoulders droop. “Why is this so hard?!”

Vor pinches at my cheek. “Because you’re so in love!” She’s going to destroy what little backbone I’ve managed to grow if she keeps that up. “Now let’s go find Hermy!”

“Now?!”

The boys shove me out the door, chanting, “Yes, now!”

Anxiety cools the longer we search for the studious boy though I don’t know if that’s from me getting comfortable with the idea or my hopes that we won’t find him. It’s when we wander outside that both of those options are destroyed.

“There he is,” Xehanort announces, pointing down the front steps. Indeed he is, sitting just off the brick path with a book in hand.

“Here’s your chance, girly.” The red-head pushes me closer to the steps.

Molten butterflies swarm in my stomach. “Guys, I don’t think this is gonna work,” I squeak.

Vor slaps my hands from fidgeting with my clothes. “It’ll work. Remember, be confident and you’ll have Hermod melting in your hands.”

One, they’re not going to let me off the hook and two, her promise quickly douses my nerves. With a deep breath, I clear my head. Shoulders drawn, chin up, and steady in my walk, I stride down the steps. My prey, as the trio has drilled into my brain, doesn’t notice my approach which works in my favor. Positive that those fire-butterflies are nesting in my chest, I slide a hand beneath his chin and guide his gaze up while I lean in.

“Hey there, sweetheart,” I coo. Taking over his face is a red shade that shows off the blue-slate of his wide eyes. It takes everything I have to keep my own flustering under wraps as I tilt even closer, feeling his hot breath brush across my face. “You’re going to take me to go get ice cream.” Lips just barely graze his. A huge sense of pride swells in me when I feel his anticipation. I’d happily give it to him if not for my specific instructions not to. Instead, I follow the plan. “Sound good?”

His answer ghosts into my mouth. “Yes.”

Delight showing in my smile, I retreat. His face—cherry red and full of both disappointment and shock—will forever be burned into my memory. Perhaps my friends were right about a little courage.

“You coming?” I call back. Hermod scrambles after me and one last look reveals my team of coaches grinning.

It takes significant brain power to maintain my confidence while keeping engaged with the boy. The bravado certainly gets dialed down but we enjoy an impromptu date of ice cream, despite the terrible spies stalking us.

“Then I found that lazy bum asleep under a tree missing a shoe,” I laugh. “So I might’ve dumped my water on him.”

His chuckle stirs the flutters in my chest. “Oh! I remember that! Eraqus came in soaking wet and confused! How did he not catch you?!”

“I have no idea! I biffed it trying to get behind the tree before he found me!”

Sharing in a bit of schadenfreude—enjoyment at the expense of others—we amble along the docks. However, Hermod’s smile slips. “Are you…feeling alright?”

My head tilts to see him. “Yeah. Why?”

“Well, I just…you…you’re acting different.” Hands wave frantically. “Not that it’s a bad thing! I-I was just-”

Is that how I usually act? A giggle escapes me. “You like the confidence, huh?”

He sheepishly replies, “Yeah. It’s nice to know what you’re thinking.”

“You care what I think?”

Ooo, that blush is so adorable. “Probably more than I should.”

“What do you mean?”

Eyes divert. “Um, well…I’ve kind of been trying to work up the courage to ask you out for a while now.”

It clicks in my head suddenly that those bullies knew; the entire damn time they knew they were setting me up with someone who had a crush on me too. “They’re going to pay.”

“What was that?”

“Kiss me.” WHAT?!

“What?!”

My demand surprises me too, and it creates a paradox in the rules: in order to get what I want, there has to be a kiss. There’s also the fact that those brats are using us for their own entertainment tonight. So screw it, I’ll disobey orders. “I want you to kiss me.”

“Uh, hold on! Do you really mean that?!”

Spite can be one hell of a motivator, and while that may have kick-started my ambition, I can’t help remembering that moment I had him under my thumb. A spasm runs through my chest at the thought of our lips brushing while I made my demands. It takes very little effort to push the boy onto the convenient bench behind him. My mouth quirks as I recreate our earlier encounter. “Would you prefer it if I kissed you?”

So I’m not the only victim of overheating but I question whether or not the trembling in my fingers is from me or him.

“Please…” he confides.

That’s all the permission I need and, gods, I was not expecting the pure gratification of kissing him. He patiently cooperates while I collect my bearings but once the avarice kicks in, every move is met with absolute compliance. Surely he has no idea the knots he’s tying in my gut with each little plea for more—little whines, nudges, twitching in his fingers around my arms. He’s lucky my greed is happy to supply. I’m pretty sure there’s a mix of cheers and protests in the distance, but I’m too preoccupied with the boy melting in my hands, just as Vor promised. If only oxygen wasn’t required.

Leaving us both breathless, I break it up. The faintest trace of his ice cream lingers on my lips and I don’t miss his eyes follow my tasting of it. No doubt I’m just as flushed as he is but the attention I’m getting is more inspiring than anything those three could’ve taught me.

Taking his face in my hands once again, I already have Hermod silently begging for another go. Considering his wish, I purr, “Now that’s a confidence boost.”

#hermod #kh hermod #khdr #khdr hermod #hermod x reader #fem!reader

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deltaengineering · 5 years

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Spring Anime 2019 Part 1: git gud

I was trying to wait until something really good came along. This ran into a problem. Yes this is a day behind but not because of... that.

Amazing Stranger

What: Otaku dipshit buys a figurine that turns out to be an alien robot girl from an anime.

❌❌ Otaku dipshit nonsense about perving on a figurine-sized robot girl. It’s bad, yo.

❌ Execution is as questionable as the content. I’ll give it a star for using 3DCG and 2D animation where they respectively make sense.

♎ Only ⅓ runtime so it ended before I could get mad.

Bokutachi wa Benkyou ga Dekinai

What: Overachiever gets conned into tutoring a bunch of girls with specialized talents and general uselessness. The twist is that they don’t look identical.

♎ Basic ass harem setup with little to distinguish itself. And if it’s not a real harem it’s just a lacklaughter comedy.

♎ Characters aren’t terrible but sort of just there. Their talents are also too cartoonish to take seriously but not outlandish enough to be funny.

♎ You guessed it, production is workmanlike/undistinguished as well.

❌ Didn’t I just watch this? In any case, this lacks Quintuplet’s trademark sass so it’s just painfully mediocre.

Fruits Basket

What: Poor but optimistic high school girl gets involved with a harem of supernatural critters.

♎ This seems incredibly derivative and unoriginal. Seems of course, because Fruits Basket is the OG so all the others ripped it off in the first place. Doesn’t change the fact that I’ve sampled and discarded dozens of otome harems exactly like this.

✅ The production is aware that they’re adapting a classic over here, so the production values are high. It looks nice.

✅ It’s directed quite competently as well, especially the comic bits have the right timing.

❌ I don’t like the characters much. Tohru is a little annoying and the boyz are a big nothing. That’s not good for a romantic comedy. Side characters fare much better but hey, side characters in a show like this don’t matter.

♎ I have no attachment to Fruits Basket so this will have to stand on its own. So far it looks watchable, but very middle of the road.

Hitoribocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu

What: Kiraralike about a class of middle school girls that are all named after their personality. The main character (Bocchi Hitori, natch) is lonely and made of social anxiety.

❌ Dealing with #relatable topics is always sketchy, but Bocchi talking to herself for the majority of the episode just gets really old no matter what.

✅ However, once she starts actually talking to other people it gets better. Slightly above average for a show like this, which means inoffensively cute and very mildly comedic.

♎ This is a Kiraralike where all the characters are named after their personality, so I wouldn’t expect any depth. Not that that’s unusual for the genre.

♎ I’ll probably give this 3 episodes because these shows live and die by the cast, which we haven’t seen much of so far. If Bocchi’s character development sticks and we get a few good support characters, it might be fun.

Joshikausei

What: the sound of one thigh slapping

❌ but

✅✅ though

Kimetsu no Yaiba / DEMON SLAYER

What: Edgy shounen about a dude whose family gets KILL BY DEMONS (no, he isn’t the demons (his sister is the demons)).

✅ Actually better than that sounds, it’s pretty serious with its approach to the whole revenge thing. The edginess is also only apparent on the margins, so tonally it’s more or less fine.

✅ The main guy isn’t terrible and his superpower (a superlative sense of smell) is fairly subdued for the genre. You could tell a story with this.

✅✅ This is ufotable and it looks REALLY good. ufotable shows are always very elaborate, but their aesthetics can be questionable. This, however, keeps the postprocessing to a minimum and uses CG only where appropriate. I’d say it rivals Emiya-san for the best looking thing they’ve ever done.

❌ The OP shows a bunch of supercool superdudes fighting like they're in a shounen anime, just in case you’re wondering.

❌❌ Three words: Weekly Shounen Jump. This is an instant death sentence for the long run, since it will be stretched until nobody cares anymore, then get swiftly killed - with some lipservice to closure, if you’re lucky.

❌❌ In case you’re willing to take your chances, WSJ is still a magazine for babies and imbeciles, so get ready for its “distinctive” writing style. Here it isn’t quite as bad as in Promised Neverland, but you’re still getting 100% wall-to-wall voiceover coverage explaining things that you either don’t need to know or are blindingly obvious.

Kono Yo no Hate de Koi wo Utau Shoujo YU-NO

What: 90s eroge protagonist starts hopping dimensions to look for his dad or something.

❌❌ Those 90s eroge protagonists sure were hilarious, what with their lechery etc. Rest of the cast fills the genre template nicely as well, which is to say they suck.

❌ Doesn’t look outright terrible so far, but it already shows signs of slight jankiness that would lead me to suspect this is a candidate for a production collapse in the future.

❌ Story? Surely you jest. All that happens in the first episode is vague exposition and naked girls falling from the sky. I hear the game gets real good 100 hours in, btw.

❌ This isn’t just some 90s eroge, it is the 90s eroge. You know, before KEY came along and made them all respectable (ostensibly). In any case, YU-NO is regarded as some stone cold classic of epic feels. I have experience with those, and they usually are only great for as long as you can’t read them.

Midara na Ao-chan wa Benkyou ga Dekinai

What: High school girls hates men because her father happens to be one. Understandable, since he’s also a tiny dirty old man caricature from the 60s. Can love bloom on the ecchifield?

♎ This is mostly inoffensive...

❌ ...except when it isn’t, of course. Which isn’t that often but still too often.

❌ It would also be appreciated if it could be less offensive in those instances because hot damn.

❌ Even if it removed the main source of irritation it would still be nothing much. Something like Hitoribocchi or Benkyou ga Dekinai has at least some potential, this doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere.

❌❌ My man Kenjiro Tsuda is wasting his time on this goblin’s comedy voice.

Mix - Meisei Story

What: Some kids play baseball, very slowly. You’re supposed to care because you presumably cared about Touch (which Mix is a very far removed sequel to).

❌ I did not in fact care about Touch. Nor about baseball, for that matter.

❌ Seriously, the entire selling point for this is “Sequel. To. Touch.” It cares not for your indifference towards Touch and would rather you go away.

❌❌ The languid pace is a killer. I know baseball is a boring sport but Mix doesn’t even attempt to make it interesting. This could work as an iyashikei-type show but in that case it would need different hooks, such as characters whose personality goes beyond “good at THIS aspect of baseball”. Maybe they’ll get to that but with this pace it’ll take a few seasons.

✅ I think the 80s design with a few contemporary animation frills looks quite nice. They’re probably doing their job right over there.

Nobunaga-sensei no Osanazuma

What: One “Oda Nobunaga” is an otaku and somehow also a teacher. Girls looking for his better known ancestor approach him with marriage plans, and since they’re looking for a Sengoku warlord, they come with era appropriate sensibilities.

❌ Do not care much for anime about 14 year old time travellers falling onto some dork’s dick, sorry. Unless they’re real good. Which this isn’t.

❌ I suppose i should be thankful this isn’t an all-out ecchi show, but unlike the characters, “lmao they can’t fuck” gets old.

❌ Besides the obvious, this fails at pacing, comedy, heartwarming, production, etc. I’m getting tired of spelling it all out again, this season definitely has an overabundance of not-quite-terrible-but-subpar-in-every-way romantic comedies.

Senryuu Shoujo

What: Senryuu is poetry that’s pretty much a haiku, but not hella deep. A quiet weirdo girl and a delinquent type write some of those.

✅ This has low ambitions, but manages to meet them. It’s chill and cute and the characters are likeable.

✅ Half length, which is the correct runtime for something as slight as this.

♎ It’s cheap but not to the degree that it detracts from the experience.

✅ It’s the second coming of Go Go 575 and I’m all about that. Check it out!

ULTRAMAN

What: uLtRaMaN is an ultrasequel to UlTrAmAn in which Ultraman is now Ultradad and has to take care of his Ultrason.

♎ Decent looking by CG TV anime standards, though the amount of action is so low that it raises the question why it isn’t just live action, especially since it’s partially mocapped already. I would have expected more pizzazz, especially with Kenji Kamiyama AND Shinji Aramaki directing.

♎ Old man superhero has some charm, but the show suggests and Wikipedia confirms: He’s about to get his ass kicked and his much more standard progeny takes over. There goes your selling point.

♎ Apart from that, this appears to be a competent but not especially engaging sequel to Ultraman (i.e., it’s most definitely not SSSS.Gridman). I have no special affinity for Ultraman.

#anime #Fruits Basket #Hitoribocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu #Kono Yo no Hate de Koi wo Utau Shoujo YU-NO #Midara na Ao-chan wa Benkyou ga Dekinai #Senryuu Shoujo #Ultraman #Amazing Stranger #Bokutachi wa Benkyou ga Dekinai #Joshikausei #Kimetsu no Yaiba #Mix - Meisei Story #Nobunaga-sensei no Osanazuma #impressions #spring2019

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beingallelite · 5 years

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Independent wrestling's ultimate bad boy Joey Janela didn't close the show at All Elite Wrestling's inaugural pay-per-view, Double or Nothing, this May. He's hoping that will come in time. But he definitely left a heck of an impression in the new promotion's opening match, the Casino Battle Royale.

Not only did he take the craziest fall of the entire night, a reckless crash through a table courtesy of a Luchasaurus chokeslam, but he also had a lit cigarette stapled to his forehead by the dastardly Jimmy Havoc.

You did not read that wrong.

I'll repeat it for emphasis—he had a lit cigarette stapled to his forehead.

Such hijinks are typical of the world that spawned him, the gritty "garbage" matches that often include much wilder stunts and decisions somehow even more questionable. But it was something new for mainstream wrestling, a level of violence not seen since the last time wrestling had a good old-fashioned war: the famed Attitude Era of the late 1990s.

The 30-year-old Janela, it turns out, isn't looking to usher in a new era of ultra-violence, instead preferring to adjust what he does for a wider audience.

Bleacher Report had a chance to sit down with him last week for a wide-ranging discussion, covering everything from his influences to the fact that he still lives at home with his mom.

Jonathan Snowden: How does it feel to be one of those overnight successes who were 10 years in the making? Did you ever think about just walking away from this life and getting a regular job? At some point, it must have been kind of disheartening.

Joey Janela: It's definitely humbled me a bit. The few times I felt like quitting when I was younger. Wrestling really wasn't going anywhere, and I was taking off work and stuff on the weekend to make $25 and putting it all toward gas. It really isn't ideal, but I stuck with it, and sure enough, I've found myself in a position where I can make a living wrestling and make it to the mainstream.

JS: What are some of the ways you used to pay the bills while trying to get to the position every independent wrestler craves: earning your living from wrestling alone? Someone told me you used to deliver pizzas a couple of years ago?

Janela: I don't know when was the last time [I delivered pizzas]. Maybe three years ago? I tried to get a job at a factory. It was going to be a job making those gold credit cards, like Visas. That didn't work out and that wasn't ideal for me. I tried Uber and delivering pizza. I had pretty much done it all or tried to. Most of the time I found myself getting fired. That was basically my run in real-life work.

JS: This must be a pretty nice change. Has your life changed a lot since signing with AEW?

Janela: For sure. There's a lot less to worry about now. I used to throw all my money to wrestling. Now I'm living comfortably. I'm still living at home, but I'm usually not home at all. Usually I'm here like once a week, so it's not a bad deal.

JS: Home, like with your parents?

Janela: I still live with my mom, but I'm never home, really. When TV starts, I'm gonna get my own place and stuff, but right now my mom, she doesn't mind, and I don't mind, either.

JS: You are so closely identified with the indy scene that I wasn't sure I'd ever see you in a mainstream promotion on a channel like TNT. Did you imagine yourself reigning as the king of the underground shows forever? Or was this always your goal, wrestling on a national stage like this?

Janela: Absolutely. If you're not in the business to make a living and get to that point, I don't know what you're doing it for. Some people say they do it for the love, but there's got to be an endgame when you're killing yourself week in and week out.

My body right now is not as bad as you think it would be, but I've been doing this for half my life now—15 years. I feel it. I have to get adjusted, get massages and all that stuff to make sure I'm good to go every week for TV and for the future.

You need to make money and you need to have an endgame to make it to a mainstream, national wrestling company. It's never been closer for a lot of these new people getting into the business.

I remember when I first started it was almost unattainable to get to that point, to get to WWE. Yeah, TNA was still in town but to get to WWE was so hard. Really just the cream-of-the-crop guys made it in: the CM Punks and Bryan Danielsons. It was almost unattainable back then.

Now there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and if you work hard enough and bust your ass, you can not only get to a national wrestling company, now you have your choice of them.

JS: I know you're used to having a lot of creative freedom on the independent scene, especially in the shows for Game Changer Wrestling that you helped create and run. How has your experience in AEW been so far?

Janela: So far, they've given me a lot of creative freedom. The agents, like Jerry Lynn, have been great. At All Out, we had Tommy Dreamer. He just wanted to know where we were going with stuff and that was it. It was no different from calling a match at any company. We really haven't crossed the line yet. And we won't, especially with TV coming.

JS: I wonder where that line is? At Double or Nothing, you had the famous spot where a cigarette was stapled to your head. The match with Jon Moxley was brutal. And the three-way match (against Jimmy Havoc and Darby Allin) at All Out was beyond bonkers. Have they given you any idea yet where the left and right limits are?

Janela: The three way, I think it was good, harmless fun with some craziness in there. We were within the boundaries of a PG-14 environment. And, if we had done it without the staple gun, I think the match could work in a PG environment. For the most part, the craziness was contained.

I'm not really big on people taking chairs to the head. I know how bad concussions can be. When I was younger, I did take chair shots to the head. That's a no-no for me now.

JS: It's been funny for me to watch your ongoing feud with former wrestling manager Jim Cornette on social media. While he's been insulting you as a "mud show" wrestler, I actually think you've had one of the best years of anyone in the sport. What do you make of it all?

Janela: With my knee injury, you have to realize, I haven't even had the full year to work. So, I'm really happy with what I've done. I had two good matches at Joey Janela's Spring Break, with Marko Stunt and Jungle Boy, when I wasn't 100 percent ready to be in the ring again. But I had to get in there and do what I had to do.

For a month or so after that, I was hurting. I did a show in Alaska two weeks later and I could barely walk because of the cold and the way my knee was doing.

It lit a fire under me, and now I'm better than ever in the ring. I think I'm having a great year. Guys like Jim Cornette, of course they're not going to watch the matches that people say are great matches. They're going to watch the matches where the craziness happens and try to pull out things to engage his followers. It is what it is.

I think me and Cornette, we rub each other's back when it comes to getting each other publicity. So I have no problem with it.

JS: Every time he posts something about your belly or wrestling skill, a small army of people follow behind in the mentions. It's almost scary.

Janela: I'd rather deal with Jim Cornette than his followers, that's for sure. It's fine. I don't care if people want to s--t on my physique. I've gotten in better shape in the last year and I am looking to get into even better shape for TV. I'm starting to diet now. But, when you talk about my wrestling, that's where I draw the line. Other than that, have fun.

JS: I've been most impressed with you in the kind of old-school match that you'd think most of your critics would love. You and David Starr went an hour at Beyond Wrestling's Americanrana 19 in July, and it was one of the most incredible bouts of the entire year.

You spent almost the entirety of the first 10 minutes doing really old-school Ole Anderson-style armbars and matwork—and it was amazing. Then it became one of the best hardcore matches of the year. That's what I love about you. You never know what to expect. Are you trying hard not to have a template you follow in every match?

Janela: I don't have a set move set or a formula. A lot of these guys, they get lazy. They develop a formula which they use every match. And it makes their matches lack excitement.

I've always been a good technical wrestler. I'm pretty good at adapting to my opponent. I wrestled a match with Zach Sabre Jr. a couple years ago where we went to a 30-minute time limit draw. Thirty minutes of technical wrestling. That's the kind of match my critics are never going to watch, because they don't want to admit I have that aspect.

Starr is one of the best wrestlers in the world and easy to wrestle. And that's what happens. The crowd was very involved from the beginning of that match, because we'd built a storyline over three years. They showed us the proper respect and were into the story we were telling.

The match was organic. We didn't call it in the back. We just went out there and did it. We talked about the high points, what we were going to hit and the rest was done in the ring organically in the ring. It was one of the finest performances of my wrestling career. Fans were telling me the hour flew by, which is something that's hard to do in a one-hour match. I'm happy with it.

JS: October is coming up fast, and that means TNT and television. That's something, a production on this level at least, you've never really done. Is it daunting to try something new like this?

Janela: It's taken me 15 years to get to this point, and I'm ready to learn other phases of the business. I'm not too nervous about it. Every time I've gone out for a pay-per-view for AEW, I've smoked it. I don't think it will be any different on TV. I think I'm going to excel on TV.

A few years ago, people were doubting my ability, saying I was just a stuntman. I proved a lot of those people wrong, and they became huge fans.

Now I'm dealing with that on a larger, mainstream level. A lot of people who watch the TV show are going to be surprised at how much I grasp every element of professional wrestling. It's going to be fun doing a lot of interviews and stuff I haven't done too much of. And it's also going to be great on my body, giving it a rest and not having a crazy schedule like I've had over the last couple of years.

Outside of TV and outside the ring, I may still have a bit to learn. But, you know, these guys knew what they were getting with me. What you see is what you get. I'm not really a character. Joey Janela is Joey Janela, inside the ring and outside.

You can follow the further exploits of Joey Janela on Twitter and, starting October 2, on AEW television. Tickets are on sale for the promotion's next PPV Full Gear and weekly events across the country.

Hard Times Promo of the Week

Cody Rhodes has become one of wrestling's great heroes, not just because of his excellent body of work inside the wrestling ring, but also because of his galvanizing personality outside it. He's taken us into his life and his battle with the wrestling industry, making that fight our own.

Rhodes feels like a real person. We love his television persona, sure. But it's the real Cody, the one we've grown close to on social media, who truly shines—and that's the Cody Rhodes who was present for a sitdown interview on the latest episode of Road to TNT.

I'm admittedly biased because I saw this filmed in person when I was at Cody's beautiful home in the Atlanta suburbs for a feature profile coming soon to Bleacher Report, but it's typical of what is quickly becoming that series' signature style: just two guys having a conversation about life and sports.

It's as good as wrestling programming gets.

The Illegal Double Team Hot Take

I've seen a lot of criticism online about AEW's decision to book Rhodes into a title match against the promotion's inaugural champion, Chris Jericho, at the next pay-per-view Full Gear.

And, of course, I understand where that criticism is coming from.

Rhodes, along with his running buddies from Being the Elite, have been publicly acknowledged as AEW executive vice presidents. And that's not just in name only. I've seen firsthand just how much responsibility Cody is carrying on his shoulders as they attempt to launch a new brand into a space that has been very unwelcoming in the recent past. In a very real sense, he isn't being chosen to represent AEW at the top of the card—he's chosen himself.

But was there really any other decision to make?

I've been to each of the promotion's first four cards live and, while it's technically true that Rhodes has put himself into the main event, it's also pretty clear he and the rest of the AEW team are just listening to the audience.

He's captured their hearts in a way that doesn't happen every day. To AEW's fans, Cody isn't just another wrestler. He's family.

Rhodes, Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks aren't EVPs who happen to wrestle. They've earned those positions by being some of the top acts in the world. Pretending otherwise, and refusing to promote them as AEW's top stars in the name of fairness, would just be a terrible idea—it would be promotional malpractice.

Jonathan and Kristina Snowden host Illegal Double Team, a weekly podcast about wrestling and life. Available wherever podcasts are found.

#joey ryan #cody rhodes #all elite wrestling #aew #posted on: 9.12.19 #article #bleacher report

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lovehaswonangelnumbers · 5 years

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New Post has been published on https://lovehaswonangelnumbers.org/balancing-of-the-masculine-feminine/

Balancing of the Masculine & Feminine

By Blue Beyond Guide

RAW & REAL PERSONAL UPDATE – HOT OFF THE PRESS, AS IS, SCATTERED NOTES OF SCATTERED ENERGIES BEING BROUGHT BACK TOGETHER AS I WROTE THIS – To read this in itself is a massive healing to do so

PAST INJUSTICES SURFACING

Blue Beyond Guide 3rd September 2019

I’ve just been in an intense 12hr process of both Spirit and Soul

Of past injustices, no matter how big or small, something we haven’t let go of is SURFACING – to be let go of

This took me 12hrs straight of personal processing to push through and work through this – 12 hrs for myself in a very long time in a one single focused feeling process like this – to bring this down, through from Spirit in 12D, through to 7D to 5D in the Human being to share with you all

(New post of ‘It is what it is’ coming soon with more on/about myself in all I AM for those souls who are newly arrived here in this Divine Space that are not aware of my role/purpose and my personal truth of all I AM)

Now, for myself, being who I AM and all the injustices I have personally gone through with the military as a Trailblazer for females for the whole of Australia and other things, this is a LOT – and for you too

As being a Libran born under the scales of justice, I’ve taken things to the highest courts in Australia and so on and have put my life on the line many times for injustice

The head went into non-stop crazy thoughts and feelings and has for 2-3 days now, slowly building up to push through of a crescendo of reaching a place of ‘I cant live like this anymore’

Now for me that is okay due to going through so much as well to bring through what I do from 7D and yet I want to be gentle in sharing this as so many are a bit fragile right now in going through so much

Yet share I will as guided as this may assist you in what you are going through…

I was feeling and processing for ALL around and linked to me in recent times, the last month, to reach a point of surrender and letting go when the big AHA came just now, which is shared further below of what that was

As also, I did not feel my God source connection or to my higher self…I noticed it and had to pursue further as to why that was…read on…

This is a HUGE balancing of the Masculine and Feminine with this btw

Pushing through past old thoughts that were going around and around and with others energies I had been linked to recently as well, as there has been a lot, just as you have a lot of links with other as well…

For me, I knew ‘something’ was going on as I was not clear about a trip I wanted to plan to visit my mother again…I just let it go for a few days as it usually comes…yet it was a few days and no signal or message AT ALL…

THEN last night, I was watching something and a message came through something someone said, LOUD and CLEAR of ‘YOU HAVE GOT TO WANT TO DO IT’

Something slammed me inside of some things I have wanted to do but just somehow they were not happening and one thing I had been working through layers and levels for some weeks now…

Somewhere inside I did not want to go and this was blocking me – yes I was not conscious of this!

Heightened emotions from injustices that we are much better at handling now yet we need to speak up and say something or we need to let it go – one or the other, it just depends

This may seem a small thing but it was SO BIG…I felt this through all layers and levels and BOOM realised a part of me did not want to go to visit my mother…also with another area of wanting to start a new routine of walking…just enough of not wanting to walk due to birds attacking me and past bones being broken, was enough to STOP ME!!

Confusion muddled thoughts of ‘I can’t live like this anymore’ of energies being held in Spirit that were blocked with the thoughts from coming down to link the Spirit to Soul

Mainly past injustices coming up and blocking our link from Spirit to Soul – from past lives

Feel into if you want to do something, really want to or is part of you not wanting to, thats enough to block ourselves and its the not realising that is what we are feeling that we don’t want to do it, as I didn’t!!

A big cycle is starting to shift and turn now as I do this and write this…like a wheel that had stopped around us and is now turning in this realisation resonation for ourselves

A completion cycle of New Beginnings…

Another example:

The injustice of someone’s dad dying was enough to block self help, self healing!! Of holding onto this in Spirit and somewhere in the core of ones soul that is linked to past lifetime of losing someone unfairly or unjustified

Now this was being held in for over 25yrs!!!

Vit C, double dose, Spirit and Soul am told for a few days at least, until one reaches saturation point = diarrhoea

As we have been in a VOID within ourselves – it started 2-3 weeks ago and amplified in the last few days…wow wow and just wow…

SOLAR PLEXUS HEALING FROM JANUARY THIS YEAR – yes that BIG…here and now, pushing through this of what do I really not want to do with and in my life, that I was not aware of before reading this to dig deeper in a very new energy space to get to the core of us in a way like no other

Persist, persist and persist with yourself…as I have been working on my Solar Plexus, quietly in the background for the whole year so far!!

And now this finally new breakthrough to start embodying further in our Soul, our human body with our Spirit in a New Galactic way or energy…

To not only be Multidimensional in Spirit yet also to be and bring this through more and more into being Multidimensional in the HUman being with BOTH LINKED – both Spirit and Soul and through the human core emotions of the Soul to breakthrough into a new era

Of a new Golden Light Era….

Namaste Anastacia

Just now driving to an appointment I automatically took another path, road…I noticed and just went with it fully feeling this new path…I came to a red light with a green arrow and laughed, significant – pulling out of car spot, lady didn’t move over enough and just squeezed through and laughed, significant…ordered my coffee from local shop on the way, walked in, it was ready just as I walked in and a free one today, significant..pulled out of car park a young man turned around without looking and walked right in my path and I pulled up in time, significant…pull up to the lights, car next to me left a whole car space gap in front of the lights as the first car, significant..

Came here and wrote this, significant

And now got the tap to go away over night…Skype session first. You know when I get the tap BIG things to bring through newly

As always I AM right here with you

We are Masters – We are Ascending – And we are Gathering

Much Unconditional Love, Truth and Honesty

Anastacia Kompos Blue Ray Elder Guide – Multidimensional Master Healer/Teacher/Guide

All Anastacia shares is from experiencing energies herself firstly to the planet, in 7D human embodiment as an Ascension Pioneer/Trailblazer. She feels the energies through her Soul and Spirit to bring through to5 humanity. The layer underneath with the above – a clear vessel of Supreme Divine White Rainbow light.

Of having been in 5D-Zero Point for 13yrs with her mission/role – to assist-guide others to link their Soul to their Spirit/Higher Self through their EMOTIONS – to progressively merge their Spirit/Higher Self into the human into New Earth 5D energies as an Ascended Earth Master in the physical.

As a Multidimensional 5D Ascended Earth Master Anastacia does this in real-time experience – both as a template FOR humanity as a Rainbow Bridge of Spirit to Soul and WITH all of HUmanity

By working on herself to the core of her soul consciously for 24yrs this lifetime and past lives, to the beginning of time – from the Ancient Ones

******

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tnsmeta · 5 years

Text

On Eldon and the concept of masculinity (in honour of 6x17) -Part 1 otherwise it will never get posted

Please bear with me, this is relevant...

The very first moment we meet Eldon, he’s wearing only blue, and judging himself in the mirror (I know this is auditions, but still - we don’t see any other character do this).

We can tell from looking at him that he doesn’t think he measures up to something (were we not still getting used to our surroundings as an audience, and of course ‘auditions' - this will also come up a lot generally). Later on we get the answer to a question we didn’t even know we were meant to be asking: he’s dancing for respect from Emily, who he thinks he likes.

He equates the better he masters a skill, to the better a person he becomes - except he doesn't quite get that last part, and won’t until Thalia comes into the picture.

Jumping back to Emily’s point-of-view of the same events, she is aware of Eldon’s (estimated five-year) crush on her but does not reciprocate, and has to turn him down at least twice a day.

“I come into the studio: ‘Hey Emily, wanna go out?’. I leave the studio: ‘Hey Emily, wanna go out?’”

In the next episode, when he finds out he’s made A-Troupe, as expected he’s overjoyed - but he shows it in quite an unusual way: he has the most aggressive ‘bro-hug’ I’ve ever seen (watch the way he tugs West back and forth). But also here, he says something we don’t quite expect:

“That’s a whole other year with Emily, that’s a whole other year I get to ask her out.”

Pause. Doesn’t he want to date Emily? Doesn’t he want her to say yes? (Not saying this is the right way to go about that, but...duh).

This is the point a lot of GA (one of my family members included at first) thinks 'aww, what a sweet harmless boy, waiting for her to be ready’ *cough*which has it’s own problems*cough*. But what a lot of us were tricked into thinking (initially, myself included) is that this is about his "devotion"/creepy obsession - call it what you want for Emily, as misplaced or wrongly-influenced *cough cough* as it may be.

This has literally nothing to do with Emily. At this point in time, she could turn him down every single time without missing a beat and he’d be happy.

So what changes?

Well, as everyone who has seen season 1 (and still remembers it) knows, the inciting incident for the show, delayed as it may be, is Michelle’s arrival. The synopsis for S1 indicates that she’s the catalyst. She sparks the change in this little underdog studio and it shows... in more ways than one (many, many more ways).

Okay, so our agent for change is Michelle... but he doesn’t gain feelings for her until episode 7, after he’s getting more desperate (I use this word carefully) to get that crucial date with Emily? What?

Let’s return to episode 2 for a moment; A-Troupe is lined up and Emily has (rather prematurely) eagerly called the vote for Dance Captain, she gets shot down, Kate and Chris put the pressure on Michelle and... Eldon sees all of Emily’s intense attention focused on this new person. He may be clueless as to Michelle and Emily’s mutual attraction to one another, but going by episode 7 again, he knows he needs to have Emily’s attention if he’s going to have a chance in hell.

So far, Emily is a tough dance captain but given that Chloe wasn’t in A-Troupe earlier on, James is the only other person she’s given that angry rage-moment(?) to as an individual. You know, the person he clearly looks up to too much?

And Eldon decides that this time things will be different. She will notice him.

“I’m trying to get Emily but it's not working.”

“You need to get her attention.”

“Yeah,”- he voices this in a way that suggests he has already enacted this plan before he voices it out loud to James.

Also worth mentioning here is the offer to spy at Elite - “I should have volunteered sooner, you know, to show Emily that I’m brave and I’m a man.”

If you’re wondering/can’t remember, Emily couldn’t care less - Michelle has already volunteered.

But the point is Eldon equates the offer to spy on Elite with manliness and masculinity (the fact that Michelle has already done so has completely escaped him). But... Emily's acceptance of Michelle’s help is what triggered him to suggest it? On a subconscious level Eldon is equating Emily's acceptance to attraction, and consequently restricting “the Emily in his head” to paraphrase Tiffany, to only be attracted to examples of masculinity - and that’s something he aspires to be. When we first met him looking at himself in the mirror, he was judging himself: because he thinks not having a girlfriend makes him less of a man, and consequently less of a person.

Alright, James has successfully come up with a plan to manipulate Emily into dating Eldon (keep in mind this is the person Eldon looks up to), and so Emily and Eldon go on a lovely date, learn about each other and deepen their relationship through genuine connection-

*SNORTS* Yeah, right!

As said by Emily:

“First, I think he read a book that was based in the 1940s...”

Nice, you think to yourselves, a good comedic portrayal at best, and at worst - they don't mesh (they date later). But again, there's more going on under the surface.

I digress slightly to point out that when asked her favourite line, Victoria Baldesarra also told us that sometimes the creator/director (Frank Van Keeken) would write lines, that were said as they were written *she had to take a few takes to stop laughing, because that's the footage they wanted.

Let's briefly look at what was happening in the- actually, let's look first at the 1930′s for a bit of context:

-The Great Depression in America, (think about Of Mice and Men, post-war, misconceptions had caused a lot of people to lose everything)

-The solution according to Wall Street (mostly to benefit themselves, but capitalism isn't really dealt with at all in TNS) is to create an economy boom, by making the public buy things they don't really need. (The Great Gatsby)

-How?

-By enforcing “traditional” gender norms, shaming women that don't stay at home, to create a ready-made market of consumers

-Thus, from this era, you have these lovely adverts for household items, that have since been banned for being sexist

-And dating etiquette

Back to season 1, we have the template for Eldon’s behaviour, let’s revisit their ‘first date’:

Eldon is nervous and can't decide how to sit (why is this a thing? 1940′s dating etiquette - gentlemen must have a certain posture etc (it's stifling) )

He attempts to ask Emily to get a drink, but even Eldon at this point notices something just isn't right - he appears lost in thought and struggles to understand what he ‘should’ be doing next. There's nothing natural about this date, for either party.

They do interact, via a hug... but it's uncomfortable to watch - Emily is visibly repulsed. That feeling of uncomfortability is only heightened when we hear her thoughts on the evening: "It's going awful, but I have to keep reminding myself: I’m dance captain. This is basically my duty.”

The scene ends and we think ‘thank God it's over’ (unless you ship Eldony).

Then it continues, and Eldon attempts to rate the ‘three-juice’ date, at which point we find out, he hasn't even been paying attention to her.

And then he asks her out again.

Why? No seriously, why?

Obviously Emily, having sense, turns him down immediately. She knows she can turn him down without repercussion(?)

But then Eldon changes the routine.

He asks her why she won't go out with him. He's conflating a toxic ideal of masculinity, and the presumed entitlement that comes with it, with being a good person - essentially he’s hinging his entire self-worth on a girl not remotely attracted to him (who sometimes straight up uses him - they're both jerks atm) saying yes to being in a relationship with him,

There's nothing healthy about this relationship for either of them.

Back to Emily: she tells him that he tries too hard. He doesn't disagree, but argues over why - he thinks she can't see him for who he is. They dance together, and she enjoys it. She informs him that she's still not going to go out with him, he's visibly upset, but she says he can be her duet partner.

Eldon takes this as indication to continue. Probably, because Emily had pointed out just earlier that day: “Why would I want to go out with you if I just said no to being your duet partner?!” So now he's conflating dance partner with romantic relation with self-worth... and this is where Michelle comes in (again).

#tns #thenextstep #tnseldon #thenextstepeldon #tnsandmasculinity #thenextstepandmasculinity

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Star Wars: The Bad Batch Episode 1 Review: Aftermath

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This Star Wars: The Bad Batch review contains spoilers.

The Bad Batch Episode 1

During the opening scene of The Bad Batch, the new animated series set during the rise of the Empire, the The Clone Wars logo burns away. At once blatant marketing and a promise of something new, the logo neatly explains what The Bad Batch is.

As Jennifer Corbett (producer and head writer) and Brad Rau (producer) said during a press junket ahead of the May 4 premiere, this show is a spiritual successor and also a direct sequel to The Clone Wars. The beginning of the new show draws from the epic scale of The Clone Wars‘ series finale (and the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy which it parallels). But while the action and heart are all there on paper, stock characters and a too-straightforward plot drag down the 70-minute premiere.

The five characters of the Bad Batch, lead by elite clone Hunter, never quite fit in. Like many other aspects of technology in Star Wars, cloning isn’t an exact science, and Clone Force 99 are “deviant” or “defective” depending on who’s talking, but they’re very good at their jobs of fighting on behalf of the Republic. But when the Republic transitions to the Empire, they’re immediately asked to start doing messier jobs, such as hunting down human rebels, whereas they’d usually fight droids. As you’d expect, the clones swap sides and, of course, end up having to fight their way out of their home base. A young girl clone named Omega helps them out, and the stage is set for the rest of the season, which will have at least 14 episodes.

Star Wars guru Dave Filoni is joined by Star Wars Resistance writer Jennifer Corbett on the creative side. Her pedigree in delivering stories for the Sequel-era animated show, and her experience in the U.S. Navy, make her an ideal guide for this war story. As military science fiction, The Bad Batch is serviceable, with the creative action and silly one-liners typical of The Clone Wars. The franchise’s approach to animation is always improving, which in this first long episode manifests mostly in impressive snow and a fun depth of field effect. The sharp corners of armor contrast nicely against soft, blurred lights in the out-of-focus backgrounds.

Stream your Star Wars favorites right here!

As far as plot goes, it’s pretty simple, leaving me to want to dig into some of the more weighty sections but not sure whether they’re actually statements. The Bad Batch see the other clones turn on the Jedi during Order 66, but for the same reason their other “defects” make them stronger, the inhibitor chips that should brainwash them according to the Emperor’s wishes don’t work. They choose to let the Jedi in their vicinity live. Future-Grand Moff Tarkin sees their rebelliousness as a good chance to prove the Clone Army is no longer effective. After all, conscripts would apparently be cheaper. But after the Batch uncover Tarkin’s true colors, they defect for good.

It’s cool to see this transition happening. What do clones become after the war? It’s a question hardcore Star Wars fans might leap to answer (they don’t all become stormtroopers, and not all stormtroopers are clones) but we haven’t seen it so directly on screen before. It’ll be nice if The Bad Batch addresses some of the practical questions around that.

Meanwhile, Tarkin’s clearly willing to shed civilian blood in a way the Jedi generals weren’t, replacing the clones bred for war with human volunteers. Like many other Star Wars stories set during the Prequel era, the Batch’s choice presents a moral decision with no right answers. The “good” choice here would be to maintain a status quo in which tens of thousands of people are born solely to fight wars with droids, which, while technically enemy soldiers, are also sapient. And while I can generally get lost in the military camaraderie fantasy here, the fact that other clones don’t like them makes what exactly the Bad Batch is fighting for even more muddled. Maybe this is about giving this squad a new cause they believe in outside of the definitely-bad Empire.

Or maybe the fact that it’s hard to tell the Republic’s policies from the Empire’s is the point. This is how the Republic fell after all: gradually.

The strongest character beats involve the characters learning to trust each other in new ways. Team leader Hunter’s superpowers are “enhanced senses,” although that isn’t really on display much. He begins to distrust team sniper Crosshair when Crosshair becomes over-eager to follow their grim mission by the book. Their arguments were most compelling before the inhibitor chip was introduced: while I know it fits with the lore, it defangs the story a little to have the main antagonist’s motivation be “he was brainwashed,” and I was a little unsure of how much the show was willing to either pin blame on him or absolve him of it. Either way, we haven’t seen the last of Crosshair.

The Bad Batch can’t even trust the Kaminoans, their creators and stewards of their beloved home. The one who shows this the best is team heavy Wrecker. His tendency to scream about blowing stuff up I generally find more annoying than funny, but toward the middle of the extended episode he adds pathos without getting away from this broad characterization. Wrecker isn’t programmed, he insists. He likes what he likes. His determination to hold on to a sense of himself as a person with free will feels like the real stakes of the show. It’s a section of the episode that quickly jumps back into goofy, fun action, but for a moment gets at something more serious and scary. Wrecker’s determination to hold on to his individuality shows exactly what Tarkin hates most about the clones. Ironically, in Tarkin’s estimation, he needs stormtroopers that can be even more tractable.

Unfortunately, the moments most important to this theme are undercut by repeating information the audience already knows. If you’ve watched The Clone Wars, you probably know about Fives’ discovery of the inhibitor chips and how Ahsoka helped Rex remove his. But moments like the one above sell the fact that the clones would be shocked to learn the truth about their new Empire.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The brand new member of the group is Omega, a young teenage clone introduced as both audience surrogate and mystery. (She’s also a particularly noticeable example of how the Empire is whitewashing the clones — those further from the Jango Fett template have lighter skin.) She’s a big fan of the Bad Batch because, like them, she’s an altered clone. It’s implied that she’s never really been able to make friends with other humans before, so it makes sense she’d latch on to the other unique clones in her orbit. Her fondness for them sometimes reads like a script for how much the audience is supposed to be fawning over the headliners, but the show never quite really shows the world from her perspective. Nevertheless, I think it’s overall a less jarring introduction than Ahsoka’s, who became a great character as she got more involved with the rest of the saga. It’s a “wait and see” with Omega as well.

I am a bit wary the series might be hurrying to repeat the sleight-of-hand pulled with Rey, presenting a character as both a point of view and a mystery at the same time. The first two episodes provided for review hint something bigger is going on with Omega, and how grounded that thing might be might determine whether it works. It’s become a bit tiring to use “who is this character?” as a jumping-off point rather than providing an answer in the first place and building from there.

As far as connecting to other Star Wars characters we do have answers for, The Bad Batch instantly announces that this will be a cameo-heavy episode, and…that’s okay? Now that they’re not being as coy about it as Rebels was, it’s a lot of fun to see Saw Gerrera and a young Kanan Jarrus. (Even if the latter cameo does instantly contradict the Kanan backstory comic released by Marvel a few years ago.)

When the Bad Batch were introduced in The Clone Wars I found them boring, their action figure-ready powers not any more compelling than the clones and Jedi we already had. They still seem a strange choice for headliners when characters like Ahsoka are operating at the same time. More so than The Clone Wars, The Bad Batch feels like a deep cut, a completionist tale that may struggle to hold fans. While comparisons between the avuncular Batch and Omega’s relationships with Din Djarin and Grogu are inevitable, this is no The Mandalorian in terms of either content or accessibility.

The post Star Wars: The Bad Batch Episode 1 Review: Aftermath appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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whenemmafalls · 11 months

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this was requested by a few people so, without further ado, below the cut i’ll explain how to make an edit of the eras tour poster like the ones that can be found here. i’ve seen different versions of these floating around twitter/tiktok/etc for a while but let’s be honest..the picsart ones don’t look as cute. i use photoshop 2020, but older versions should work just fine since this edit doesn’t involve anything too fancy!

now, i started with the original poster and carefully removed all of the images to create a base template that i’ve used for all the posters since. i don’t really feel like explaining how to do that because it feels kinda unnecessary when i can just link it to you. so go ahead and start by downloading my base template, which you can find here.

once you have that open, you’ll want to gather your images. you’ll need nine images that should be at least 300x300px in dimension and one much larger image to serve as the center png. how big this needs to be depends how large the subject of the photo is, but it should probably be around 2000px. keep in mind that the subject shouldn’t be too wide either, or else it will block the surrounding photos when you try to position it. for example, the below image wouldn’t be a good option because her arm would cover at least one of the other eras.

once you have your photos picked out, you’re gonna want to drag the nine smaller ones into the document and crop/scale/position them so that there’s one in each square. remember that the template layer should be above the photo layers so that they’re contained within the frame. once you’ve done that, it should look something like this:

now it’s outlining time. first, make a new transparent layer and place that between the photo layers and the template layer. it’s really REALLY important that you remember to always paint on this transparent layer and NOT directly on the photos, as we want to be able to edit the photos later without also editing the borders. i used a website like this to find the color codes of the backgrounds on the original poster, so i’ll just put them here for you:

debut: #bcd5b8 fearless: #f4cb8a speak now: #cfb6d4 red: #a45865 1989: #c0e6f9 rep: #5f5c57 lover: #f8bad3 folklore: #d3d0c9 evermore: #ceb69c

you’re gonna want to select the paintbrush tool and set it to 20px and choose the “soft round” setting in the general brushes folder (this will make sure that you don’t have any harsh edges). then, change the color of the brush to whichever era you’re starting with, using the hex codes above. now you’re ready to go in and start painting! on your transparent layer, outline the edges of the subject of your first photo. you don’t have to be super precise with this because the soft edges allow for more error!

once you’ve done that, go ahead and change the brush setting back to hard round in order to fill in the surrounding edges, like so:

and voilà! pretty easy, right? now you just have to do that eight more times for each era, using the corresponding hex code for your brush color. and again, ALWAYS REMEMBER TO PAINT EVERYTHING ON THAT TRANSPARENT LAYER!!! pro tip: you can use the rectangular marquee tool to contain the square of the era that you’re working with so you don’t have to worry about staying inside the lines. once you’ve done that, it should look something like this (just ignore that the reputation background is too light, i used the wrong color and didn’t notice until later):

ok now you’re gonna want to download this lovely psd pack in order to color the photos (you could also color them yourself, but i’m bad at coloring so i took the easy way out). open that up, and drag the first one over for whichever era you’re starting with. position it so that it’s directly above the corresponding era’s photo and then right-click the psd and select “ungroup layers” (you wanna do this because you won’t be able to create a clipping mask from grouped layers). then, with all the layers of the psd selected, you’re gonna wanna right-click and select “create clipping mask.” this should make it so that the filter is only visible on that era’s photo. now just repeat that process for each era! once you’ve done that, you should have eras-colored filters over each image, like so:

now it’s png time! i’m not gonna explain how to make a png here because it would take too long and i’m such a perfectionist that the way i make pngs would probably get me locked up. however, here’s a really useful, in-depth tutorial on the subject if you’ve never made one before. go ahead and make your png and drag it into the document once you’re done. scale/resize/crop the png so that it fits nicely in the center of the document (and remember that this should be the topmost layer at this point, right above the template layer, so that it’s visible). it should look something like this now:

now you’re gonna do the same thing for the center psd that you did for all the other eras, by creating a clipping mask from the “midnights” era filter:

now all that’s left is the text! you have a few options for this part depending on what kind of edit you’re making. for the eras edit series, i made a png of each album title and positioned that in the center, like this:

i’ve also seen a lot of people making edits of these for their pets/grandparents/themselves, in which case you probably want to put a name of some sort in there. i made a sample of this to show you. first, you’re gonna want to download this font. it’s not the exact font from the poster because that one costs money, but this one looks almost exactly the same once you stretch it vertically. once you’ve installed the font, make a new text layer and write whatever word you want. change the font size until it roughly matches that of the surrounding words (remembering that it won’t be as tall). then, right click the text layer and select “convert to smart object” so that you can stretch it and then select edit > transform > warp. a number of dots should appear around the text, which will allow you to pull the top and bottom edges of the word so that it looks as tall as the original font. once it roughly matches the poster font, press enter to exit out of warp mode. the text will also look blacker than what's on the poster, so just right click on the text layer/smart object, select “blending options,” and reduce the opacity until it matches. this is what i got:

now you could stop there, but i like to mess with it a little (bc perfectionist) and go back and tinker with the paintbrush/clean up the edges and alter the brightness/contrast so that the images match each other a little better. after doing all that (and fixing the rep background color), this is what i ultimately ended up with (i also changed some of the images cause i didn’t like them):

and that’s pretty much all there is to it! i’ve never made a tutorial before so idk if i explained too much or didn’t explain enough but please please feel free to message me if you have any questions/require further clarification on anything!!! ok thanks bye!:)

#tutorial #*#idk if anyone actually wanted this but hopefully it helps someone!

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wineanddinosaur · 4 years

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Best Practices: When Making an Aviation, Play With Proportions

The Aviation is included among the cocktails on the International Bartenders Association’s list of “Unforgettables” — 33 classic recipes well-versed barkeeps should be able to pull from their back pockets. In truth, at no point during its 100-odd-year history has the Aviation flown so high as other drinks on that list, or approached the altitude of the Manhattan or Martini. But that’s not to say this cocktail is somehow bland or unremarkable like a long haul flight. In fact, the Aviation is quite the opposite.

Invented in 1916 by Hugo Ensslin, a German bartender working in New York, the Aviation combines gin, lemon juice, Maraschino liqueur, and crème de violette. Of those, the final ingredient — which gives this cocktail its signature sky-blue hue — proves most polarizing. Add with too much gusto, and the violet-infused liqueur can transform the drink into a potpourri of floral candy and soapy lavender notes. Add too little, and it misses the point.

For many years during the 20th century, bartenders even omitted crème de violette from their Aviation builds, in part because famed 1920s-era bartender Harry Craddock (intentionally or otherwise) did not include it in his version of the recipe in his renowned “Savoy Cocktail Book.” Even if they’d cared to include it, the ingredient was unavailable to American bartenders for most of the second half of the century.

Crème de violette was finally returned when Eric Seed, founder of the influential spirits importer Haus Alpenz, reintroduced the intensely colored liqueur to American palates in 2007.

The Aviation enjoyed a brief moment in the limelight. It was a notable component of America’s cocktail renaissance. But nowadays, discerning palates disagree over whether the Aviation should actually be ranked among the good or the bad of the cocktails resuscitated by that movement. (All, at least, would agree that this drink most certainly is not ugly, thanks to the vivid hue imparted by crème de violette.)

Love it or hate it, the Aviation is one drink that all cocktail enthusiasts should know how to make. Perfecting the drink provides worthy lessons in balance, the subjectivity of flavors, and the downside of following recipes with religious obedience.

Ready for liftoff? Here are five timeless tips for perfecting the Aviation cocktail.

What to Do When Making the Aviation

Build the cocktail around crème de violette (and your tolerance for the ingredient).

While gin is the main constituent of the Aviation, crème de violette defines the drink. Given the liqueur’s strong, sometimes polarizing flavor, it’s often included by the bar-spoonful, rather than in fractions of ounces. But before you even pick up the shaker, some bartenders recommend first analyzing the version of the liqueur you have on hand, as different brands have varying flavor profiles.

“Build the cocktail around the violette you’re using,” says Brock Schulte, beverage director of Kansas City’s acclaimed cocktail bar The Monarch. Some examples, like Rothman & Winter, are bold and floral with a strong backbone, Schulte says. Others, such as Tempus Fugit’s Liqueur de Violettes, are lighter in style. By first tasting the liqueur, you can determine how much you want to include in your Aviation, and how much acidity (lemon juice) and sweetness (Maraschino liqueur) you will then want to add for balance.

For those looking to go full throttle with the crème de violette — up to ½ or ¾ ounce — introducing simple syrup also helps. “I’ve found that even Rothman & Winter crème de violette is not as complex as I want it to be,” says Boston-based bar consultant Ezra Star. “So I tend to up the quantity of the violette and add a bar spoon of simple syrup just to round it out really well.”

For those on the opposite end of the spectrum, Las Vegas-based beverage hospitality consultant Francesco Lafranconi recommends adding micro doses using an atomizer. “Add a couple of mists over your glass, strain in the shaken drink [minus the crème de violette], and spray two more mists before you serve,” he says.

While it requires some extra gadgetry, this (non-traditional) technique adds the bright, floral aromas with no risk of the liqueur hijacking the palate.

Decide on a style of gin, and adjust the recipe accordingly.

At this point, preparing a well-balanced Aviation may seem a bit like spinning plates, but there’s still one more considerable variable to add to the equation.

“The gin choice makes a big difference,” says David Yee, assistant manager at Columbus, Ohio’s Oddfellows Liquor Bar. From juniper-heavy London Dry to light and floral New Western, all styles are welcome in this drink, but the amount being added should be adjusted accordingly.

“If you’re going London Dry, I would use 1 ½ ounces. But if you’re using a more modern gin that has a lot of citrus peel, I would use 2 ounces,” says Yee. “You really want the gin to drive the drink.”

Serve in a Nick and Nora glass.

The Aviation is typically served inside a coupe or Martini glass, both of which provide visually striking presentation and shareability. When selecting glassware, though, there’s more to consider than how the drink looks.

According to Star, if the Aviation is instead poured into a chilled Nick and Nora glass, the glass’s slimmer profile helps promote the drink’s aromatic qualities.

“When you smell it [inside a Nick and Nora], it’s more concentrated and you get more of the florals,” Star says. “With glasses that are a little wider, I don’t think you can smell the violette as much.”

What to Avoid When Making the Aviation

Don’t be afraid to play with proportions.

Some cocktails, such as the Negroni, have recipes that are so well established they might as well be etched in stone. The Aviation is not one such drink.

Bartenders agree the four-ingredient recipe should be taken as a guideline rather than scripture. This is, admittedly, daunting for inexperienced home bartenders — and a tried and tested template is, of course, a great place to start. But don’t be afraid to tinker, bartenders say.

“At the end of the day, it should be about what you like,” says Lafranconi. “Some people like their Aviation sweeter, some like it more sour, others more aromatic — it’s all about experimenting.”

Lafranconi is also not afraid to riff on the drink by including non-traditional ingredients. A bar spoon of St. Germain Elderflower liqueur can up the floral complexity, he says, while a splash of Prosecco creates a more approachable version — a sort of Aviation-French 75 hybrid.

Never “float” the crème de violette.

Those seeking the perfect Instagram snap may be tempted to “float” the crème de violette on top of the cocktail rather than including it in the shaker with the other ingredients. The separation of the different colored solutions is, admittedly, visually stunning. But if you plan on drinking your cocktail, sink this idea.

“Never float the violette. That’s like, the worst way to serve this drink,” says Yee. He adds that crème de violette “is not a liqueur you want to serve warm.”

After all, you’ll want your Aviation to do more than float; you’ll want it to soar.

The article Best Practices: When Making an Aviation, Play With Proportions appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/dos-donts-aviation-recipe/

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isaiahrippinus · 4 years

Text

Best Practices: When Making an Aviation, Play With Proportions

Crème de violette was finally returned when Eric Seed, founder of the influential spirits importer Haus Alpenz, reintroduced the intensely colored liqueur to American palates in 2007.

Ready for liftoff? Here are five timeless tips for perfecting the Aviation cocktail.

What to Do When Making the Aviation

Build the cocktail around crème de violette (and your tolerance for the ingredient).

While it requires some extra gadgetry, this (non-traditional) technique adds the bright, floral aromas with no risk of the liqueur hijacking the palate.

Decide on a style of gin, and adjust the recipe accordingly.

At this point, preparing a well-balanced Aviation may seem a bit like spinning plates, but there’s still one more considerable variable to add to the equation.

Serve in a Nick and Nora glass.

According to Star, if the Aviation is instead poured into a chilled Nick and Nora glass, the glass’s slimmer profile helps promote the drink’s aromatic qualities.

What to Avoid When Making the Aviation

Don’t be afraid to play with proportions.

Some cocktails, such as the Negroni, have recipes that are so well established they might as well be etched in stone. The Aviation is not one such drink.

Never “float” the crème de violette.

“Never float the violette. That’s like, the worst way to serve this drink,” says Yee. He adds that crème de violette “is not a liqueur you want to serve warm.”

After all, you’ll want your Aviation to do more than float; you’ll want it to soar.

The article Best Practices: When Making an Aviation, Play With Proportions appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/dos-donts-aviation-recipe/ source https://vinology1.tumblr.com/post/623805462841835520

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johnboothus · 4 years

Text

Best Practices: When Making an Aviation Play With Proportions

Crème de violette was finally returned when Eric Seed, founder of the influential spirits importer Haus Alpenz, reintroduced the intensely colored liqueur to American palates in 2007.

Ready for liftoff? Here are five timeless tips for perfecting the Aviation cocktail.

What to Do When Making the Aviation

Build the cocktail around crème de violette (and your tolerance for the ingredient).

While it requires some extra gadgetry, this (non-traditional) technique adds the bright, floral aromas with no risk of the liqueur hijacking the palate.

Decide on a style of gin, and adjust the recipe accordingly.

At this point, preparing a well-balanced Aviation may seem a bit like spinning plates, but there’s still one more considerable variable to add to the equation.

Serve in a Nick and Nora glass.

According to Star, if the Aviation is instead poured into a chilled Nick and Nora glass, the glass’s slimmer profile helps promote the drink’s aromatic qualities.

What to Avoid When Making the Aviation

Don’t be afraid to play with proportions.

Some cocktails, such as the Negroni, have recipes that are so well established they might as well be etched in stone. The Aviation is not one such drink.

Never “float” the crème de violette.

“Never float the violette. That’s like, the worst way to serve this drink,” says Yee. He adds that crème de violette “is not a liqueur you want to serve warm.”

After all, you’ll want your Aviation to do more than float; you’ll want it to soar.

The article Best Practices: When Making an Aviation, Play With Proportions appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/dos-donts-aviation-recipe/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/best-practices-when-making-an-aviation-play-with-proportions

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ninnetta153gaming · 4 years

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What should i look for in a gaming monitor

Taking into consideration Moving To Pc Gaming?

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crystalracing · 7 years

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Under the skin of the enigmatic Raikkonen

KIMI RAIKKONEN IS ONE OF THOSE BLOKES WHO polarises opinion, that people seem to either love or hate. Ironic really, considering he is the epitome of getting on with doing his own thing, not manipulating anything, staying clear of boring politics and not worrying about things he has no control over. As a private man who can be diﬃcult to read – not to mention one who a proportion of Formula 1 followers think has passed his best –he is, as our cover suggests, F1’s enigma. Which is why Ben Anderson’sin-depth 14-page feature, beginning on page 14, is probably the best and most-balanced thing you’ll ever read about him. Based on interviews with Raikkonen himself and those around him, it properly assesses his role on the F1 grid, and in the paddock. Ferrari announced a one-year contract extension for Raikkonen on Tuesday – after the last page of our feature had gone to press – but one thing for sure is that he is closer to the end of his F1 career than the beginning, and this week’s Autosport also provides a study of a talent at the opposite end of the spectrum. There hasn’t been a buzz this big about a young British prospect since Lewis Hamilton was rising the ranks, and Kevin Turner’s chat with Lando Norris (p28)tells us all about his cracking recent F1 test with McLaren. It was good timing that the interview coincides with two more wins in the Formula 3 European Championship at Zandvoort (p40). Funny to think that Norris hadn’t even been born when Raikkonen made his Formula Renault UK debut in 1999, and was only a toddler when Kimi ﬁrst raced a Formula 1 car…

“IF YOU STRUGGLE, PEOPLE SLAG YOU OFF, BUT IT DOESN’T BOTHER ME”

It is very rare that a driver comes along who challenges preconceived notions of what it takes to be a Formula 1 driver. But when a true prodigy breaks through into grand prix racing through sheer force of talent, they often create a sort of butterﬂy eﬀect.The world we thought we knew before is suddenly changed, and will never be the same again. Kimi Raikkonen should go down in F1 history as one such driver. It has taken Max Verstappen’s remarkable recent ascension to motorsport’s pinnacle to further redeﬁne the boundaries of possibility – so successful in one season of junior single-seater racing that he simply must be in F1 immediately. Since 2015, Verstappen has been thrilling fans, threatening reputations, and rewriting rules with his fearless and superlative brand of racing. Fourteen years earlier, Raikkonen laid the template –arriving with Peter Sauber’s eponymous team after a brief but highly successful stint in Formula Renault. Raikkonen had competed in fewer than 25 car races; surely he couldn’t be ready for such a monumental leap.Yet there he was – 13th on the grid for his debut in Australia, within four tenths of a second of sophomore team-mate Nick Heidfeld, scoring a point in his ﬁrst GP, ﬁnishing not much more than 12 seconds behind his team-mate. Raikkonen looked immediately like he belonged – a driver so naturally gifted he could bypass F3 and F3000 completely, turn convention on its head, yet be immediately and properly competitive in F1. Truly astounding. The question with all prodigies, in any sport, is what next? Will they fully harness that ability, show the necessary will and dedication to ally proper craft to their genius, and transform themselves into a truly unstoppable force? It is this unique blend that tends to deﬁne the ultimate greatness of an athlete – whether they burn out early and fade away in the Wayne Rooney style, or evolve into an era-deﬁning machine in the mould of Cristiano Ronaldo. Raikkonen’s stats suggest he’s something of an underachiever. This weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix will mark his 263rd grand prix start; only four drivers – Rubens Barrichello, Michael Schumacher, Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso – have started more. For a driver of Raikkonen’s ability and longevity to have scored ‘only’ 20 wins and 17 pole positions, plus a single world championship achieved in fortuitous circumstances in 2007, seems out of kilter. Damon Hill would not consider himself to be the most naturally gifted driver ever to grace F1. Raikkonen could make that claim, yet Hill achieved more wins and poles than Raikkonen has, in much less than half the number of starts. And yet Raikkonen is still good enough that he is still racing for Ferrari – F1’s grandest team – at the ripe old age of 37, and Tuesday’s announcement that he will remain for 2018 means he will continue doing so for another season at least. That shows Raikkonen still has something serious to oﬀer in the eyes of those who make the biggest decisions in Maranello. Sport is always about much more than pure numbers. Personality and style also count for as much sometimes. Raikkonen commands a strong and loyal fan base, energised by his ‘Iceman’ reputation, one he says he’s done nothing conscious to cultivate. Publicly, Raikkonen comes oﬀ as a cool, aloof, anti-hero character – a no-nonsense antidote to the clean-cut corporate image of modern racing. His ‘wild-child’ early years curry him huge favour with those followers of F1 who pine for the era of James Hunt, when drivers partied away the nights and drove by the seat of their pants in the day. But even lovable rogues like Hunt and Raikkonen are driven by a ﬁerce competitive instinct that belies their devil-may-care reputations.We are left with a confusing picture. How to reconcile the incredible natural ability that once redrew boundaries at Sauber and McLaren, and claimed a historic post-Schumacher world championship for Ferrari, with the later seasons of struggle: bettered by Felipe Massa, outpaced by Romain Grosjean, destroyed by Alonso, now playing second ﬁddle to Sebastian Vettel? Herein lies the enigma of Kimi Raikkonen.

BLAZING A TRAIL AT SAUBER

Raikkonen’s first season in F1 was very strong by conventional standards for a rookie, but when you consider his fundamental lack of experience in car racing it was truly exceptional. His results were very good – four points finishes in total, twice finishing fourth (in Austria and Canada) and placing inside the top 10 in the world championship. Raikkonen made a vital contribution to what then constituted Sauber’s best F1 season, but it was his raw speed that caught the eye. Third time out, Raikkonen qualified only a tenth behind Heidfeld in Brazil, and thereafter matched his more experienced team-mate 7-7 on Saturdays. Not only that, Raikkonen performed with a calm assuredness that belied his lack of experience. “Kimi was very young [21] and not experienced at all – it was very risky,” says Sauber driver trainer Josef Leberer, who worked with Ayrton Senna at McLaren and recalls his season alongside Raikkonen with fondness. “A lot of people said, ‘I don’t understand why Sauber were doing this’. But it worked. “He’s not the kind of guy who sits days and hours on the computer. Such an intuitive driver, his instinct is incredible. This way I would say he’s one of the best. It comes naturally. No bullshit. Just wanna be fast, no excuses. “He was not spoiled, so you could talk with him and be straightforward, and he was an incredible, cool guy. Doing the massage in the morning we had to wake him up and he said, ‘Let me get an extra five minutes of sleep before the race’. I’d never seen this – the second race in Malaysia and he wanted to sleep an extra few minutes! Can you imagine being like this in your second race? “He made such an impact. We had a feeling and he was fast immediately. You could see he had the requirements to be a top driver.” Raikkonen’s extraordinary ability to drive an F1 car quickly without the educational foundation enjoyed by his peers left a lasting impression on the paddock. Renowned motor racing journalist and author David Tremayne was Sauber’s press release writer during Raikkonen’s rookie campaign. He recalls a driver aloof and reserved in public, but completely different when hidden from the glare of a camera lens. “He was very quiet, like he is now,” explains Tremayne. “You thought, ‘What is this kid like, is he going to be another Mika [Hakkinen]?’ But he clearly wasn’t in terms of the way he conducted himself – he wasn’t forthcoming. Kimi didn’t want to do any of the other bollocks. He wanted to get in the car and get on with it. “[But] at Monza I heard all this raucous laughter on top of the media bus at Sauber. I went downstairs and it was Kimi, Peter Collins, and a guy who turned out to be Kimi’s kart mechanic – and it was Kimi doing all the laughing. “It was the only time I ever saw what you might call ‘the real Kimi’– with mates, completely relaxed, no need to be protective of anything.

I think he has the ability to compartmentalise. There was a lot of fire in him but you didn’t get to see it. He’s very self-reliant. I don’t think he needs an entourage. “As a driver, he was wonderful to watch. Felipe came in the following year and he was quick but always on a different line. Kimi was just cool and calm with it – not pushing the car or wrestling with it.”So many drivers dream of being world champion, work hard to achieve that dream, but never even make it onto the grid. Others carve out opportunity but become overwhelmed by expectation or consumed by pressure. It seems Raikkonen benefited not only from exceptional natural ability behind the wheel – after all there are many drivers who share that sort of skill – but also a mental resilience and confidence that helped strip away the extra burdens that might have destroyed someone of a different character. Raikkonen never dreamed big or got carried away by the prospect of fame and fortune. It seems it was this aloof attitude, bordering on indifference, that made him so perfectly suited to thrive in F1. “It was a good team to be in; nice people – I still have lunch there,” Raikkonen tells Autosport, relaxing into his seat as we discuss the first stage of his long career in F1. “For me, it was very easy in someways because I didn’t really expect anything.“I didn’t know anything about F1. I never went to see a race. The first time I saw it live was when I was in a test myself. So for me it was like if you just go to Formula Renault [for the first time]. I had nothing to worry about – what’s the point? It either goes well or it goes bad. What can you do?” Ultimately, it went very well indeed for Raikkonen, who made such an impression that he was poached by Ron Dennis to replace retiring double world champion Hakkinen at McLaren for 2002. Even a wunderkind like Verstappen had to wait four races into his second season before earning promotion to one of F1’s biggest teams…

McLAREN: WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

Some paddock insiders consider Raikkonen’s five-year stint at McLaren to be his absolute peak. His first grand prix victory at Malaysia in 2003 briefly made him F1’s youngest winner since team founder Bruce McLaren. Raikkonen won eight more times for McLaren in those five seasons, as well as taking 11 pole positions and 36 podiums from 87 starts. He quickly established himself as one of grand prix racing’s most exciting stars, but a world championship title eluded him. He was second to Alonso in 2005, but came closest to breaking through two years earlier, when Raikkonen lost out to Schumacher by just two points. “Back in those days he was massively quick,” recalls Pat Fry, McLaren’s chief engineer during Raikkonen’s stint with the team. “It’s a shame car reliability and engine reliability didn’t work for him really. If you look at him through the early 2000s, he was right up there with the best, wasn’t he? He was absolutely outstanding driving the McLaren through 2003, 2005. He should’ve won the championship in 2005.” Raikkonen was unfortunate in that his time at McLaren coincided with Schumacher’s most dominant seasons at Ferrari and latterly the brief but potent rise of Alonso at Renault. Only once during that period, in ’05, could McLaren be considered to have produced the absolute quickest car on the grid, and senior personnel admit it was too unreliable to ultimately get the job done. In this context, Raikkonen achieved much of his success against the odds. Apart from his first year with the team in 2002 – when he was paired alongside stalwart David Coulthard – Raikkonen was never beaten by his McLaren team-mate across a season. He won many admirers inside the squad for his fearless style of racing. “He was blindingly quick – sometimes the circuit wasn’t big enough to contain him in those early days, but he was pushing to the max and everyone liked it,” remembers McLaren’s chief operating oﬀicer Jonathan Neale. “He used to scare me. He scared me because he was so completely fearless. You just knew there was no way he was going to give anything less than 110%, and I don’t mean that lightly. He was just a force of nature.” Out of the car, McLaren found a “completely uncompromising” driver, whose “maverick” style didn’t always sit well with the team’s clean-cut corporate image. “We struggled to find out who he was as he didn’t say very much,” adds Neale. “[But] everybody underestimates him at their peril. He did have a fantastic sense of humour. If there were two drivers going on stage, to do a presentation or a question-and-answer session, he’d be sitting in the back and he’d do an amazing mimic. He had the voices and the phrases, all of that, so he was a sharp observer. “There was never a dull moment, but he was a great racer –somebody who is still spoken of highly in the team for what did with us, for us, and the style in which he did it, which was uncompromising. It was uncompromising in the car, it was uncompromising in the set-up, he was uncompromising on whether he wanted to be with a sponsor. It’s not always easy, but isn’t it refreshing when you find somebody who is brave enough to be candid and frank and not prepared to cower to conformity?

“He wouldn’t suﬀer fools. Everyone was taken at face value, no airs, no graces, nobody standing on ceremony, what you see is what get, very grounded, but enormous following with the mechanics and engineers – real loyalty. “Because that fire burns very intensely, it was kind of polarising –either you got it or you didn’t. It is quite diﬀicult getting engineers close to him – to be able to have that rapport and reach him without being too much, too little, not a fool. “Any whiﬀ of bullshit and you were toast! But [race engineer] Mark Slade was very good with Kimi and they had an understanding. Mark knew when to leave him alone, and when to push him and there were occasions when Mark was quite assertive with him, but because he built up that trust he could be. It is easy to be intimidated by somebody of that temperament.” Slade has worked with Raikkonen twice through the Finn’s F1 career – first at McLaren and later at Lotus. Slade responded well to Raikkonen’s no-nonsense attitude and fussiness for precision. He says the Raikkonen that drove for McLaren arrived at Woking “well-rounded” and was “massively impressive”. “He knew how to manage tyres, he knew how to set up the car – it was like working with someone who’d done it for five years,” Slade recalls. “He knew exactly what he wanted. It was not like working with a new driver. “The only aspect that was a little bit ragged early on was in qualifying, when we had to put the fuel in the car for the race, so 2003. He had a little bit of a tendency to want to be on pole regardless of the amount of fuel in the car. And there were a couple of races where he went oﬀ trying to achieve too much. “We basically banned him from watching the other drivers’qualifying laps. We just told him, ‘Go out and drive the car as quickly as it will go’. We did that for the rest of this season and he didn’t do any more mistakes.” Raikkonen is often portrayed as a lazy driver – someone who simply relies on his natural feel for the car but isn’t particularly interested in doing anything other than driving. Slade argues that’s a misunderstanding of Raikkonen’s approach. It’s not that he is uninterested, rather that he sees clear delineation in responsibilities within teams, and wants to trust those around him to do their jobs properly without interference. Slade admits this approach can compromise Raikkonen when internal politics arise.

“There were times at McLaren when things didn’t go the way they should have for Kimi and if he had been just a little bit more involved, that could have swapped things around a bit,” Slade says. “In the middle of 2005 there were certain things happening with the design direction of the car that didn’t suit Kimi and there was a lot of tension and pressure. I was having to fight Kimi’s corner, because he wasn’t really doing much himself. That was quite stressful. “He didn’t like hanging around in the oﬀice for very long. His debriefs were very short, but he gave us the important points and that was almost perfect for me, because it meant we didn’t spend lots of time talking about what was not relevant. He won’t rant about it. It’s just, ‘That’s what we need to fix’. Simple as that. “If people try to push him in a diﬀerent direction, it’s not going to work because you need him on board. You need to be on board with him and he needs to be on board with you. For me, it was enjoyable to work with him, because it was logical and straightforward. “One of the biggest diﬀiculties with drivers who are less consistent with their approach is trying to filter out this inconsistency. It becomes very diﬀicult very quickly. If he came in saying there’s something wrong with the car, the chances are there’s something wrong with the car – even if you can’t see that on data. Ninety-nine percent of the time he’s right. “When we were doing Michelin tyre testing, they desperately wanted him to do the testing. They told us at one point that he was the best test driver that they worked with. They used to give a little array of tick boxes for diﬀerent characteristics of the tyre – what the tyres were doing, what the characteristics of the diﬀerent compounds were. They said there were some drivers who got most of the points correct, but he always got them all correct. “And his consistency of lap time when we tested eight diﬀerent compounds – his baselines would be within one tenth, and that meant that they could properly analyse the lap time data as well as the driver’s comments.” Slade says he’s never seen anything else like Raikkonen’s “extraordinary level of sensitivity” to the car, to the point where Raikkonen could detect problems with McLaren’s traction control so aware the engineers couldn’t see in their trackside data. The chase for a ‘perfect car’ can be a real curse when too many things aren’t working correctly, but this degree of feel made Raikkonen a formidable weapon during F1’s tyre war between Bridgestone and Michelin. “That played a big part of how it went,” says Raikkonen. “I was very happy to do the tyre tests. We could test 20 diﬀerent sets of tyres and choose exactly what you wanted, whatever you feel is best for you. It was one extra thing that you could use.” Raikkonen does not agree with those, such as Williams technical chief Paddy Lowe, who would say his McLaren years represent Raikkonen at his peak. But he was certainly unfortunate not to win at least one world title with McLaren, and Slade recalls some truly stunning drives by Raikkonen during that period. “No doubt Michael, Fernando and Kimi were the three guys,” argues Slade, who feels Raikkonen could have won “15 straight races” in 2005 with better reliability. “Then, just slightly behind, DC, [Juan Pablo] Montoya and a few others. When it came to the driving and his racecraft, Kimi was right up there.“In the middle part of the [2005] season the car was phenomenal and he was driving phenomenally well. At Monza, he qualified fastest with the full tank of fuel [before a grid penalty]; at Silverstone, he was half a second per lap quicker than Montoya, who won the race; in France he started 13th and finished second. Japan was awesome because he came from the back and won. “One of the best races he ever did was Indianapolis in 2003, when we were on the Michelin wets and the Michelin wets were rubbish. He finished second. It was fantastic. He just drove his heart out. He didn’t win the race, but it was an absolutely phenomenal drive. “Nurburgring 2006 – the engine was terrible that year and he finished fourth. I remember him coming to the bus afterwards, sweat pouring oﬀ him, and he said, ‘I just drove 60 qualifying laps’, and you could see he had. We knew he had to drive phenomenally well to achieve that with the car we had then.” By now Raikkonen had grown increasingly frustrated with life at McLaren and reputedly made an agreement with Ferrari as early as late-2005 to join the Scuderia for 2007. “He signed with Ferrari two years before he moved to Ferrari,” confirms his then-Ferrari team-mate Massa. “I remember when I signed for Ferrari, Kimi already has his contract; the only way I stay in Ferrari is if Michael stops.” Schumacher announced his first retirement from F1 after winning the 2006 Italian GP at Monza. Thus, the way was clear for Raikkonen and Massa to usher in a new era at Maranello.

MARK SLADE RAIKKONEN’S ENGINEER AT McLAREN AND LOTUS

Does Kimi have particular traits in his driving? He’s very, very smooth, very gentle, very precise – minimal inputs into the car. He wants the car to do the work. Most drivers tend to be a bit more aggressive with inputs, which can have beneﬁts when the tyres are hard and difficult to get into the working window. The other thing is power steering. He came to us and complained about power steering. We spent a lot of time ﬁxing it. Then he went to Ferrari and apparently complained about power steering there. Then he came back to Lotus and complained about power steering. So the feel of the steering is very, very important. He doesn’t want any friction in it. He doesn’t want any play on the brake pedal. Also, Mark [Arnall] always carried a special cloth to clean the windscreen, because if there was a slightest ﬁnger print or scratch, we had to change it.

He says he hates understeer and you often hear him complain about the front… Even at McLaren there were occasions where we did have issues. Canada was a good one in 2005. We were slower on new tyres than on used tyres because he couldn’t get the new tyre temperature to work. The start of the lap can be a real problem if he just hasn’t got the front grip that he needs to get the car into corners. I would say that’s probably the only real weakness. There were times also that was an advantage, because he was a lot more gentle on tyres. When we won the race with Lotus in 2013 in Melbourne, he just walked away with it because he could do one stop. Those tyres were absolutely perfect for him, then Pirelli changed the tyres and that disadvantaged him unfortunately.

Why does he often seem to make mistakes in qualifying? He takes a high-risk approach to qualifying. It’s all about corner entry speed. And if you get the corner wrong you tend to drop a lot of time. Other drivers probably prioritise the exit a little bit more. He’s trying to carry speed through; that is high risk.

WORLD CHAMPION THEN DITCHED BY FERRARI

Raikkonen’s Ferrari career got off to a dream start – pole position and victory in his first race in Melbourne, and of course he went on to claim the championship as Ferrari backed his bid to overhaul the McLarens of Alonso and rookie sensation Lewis Hamilton. Raikkonen succeeded in this mission by a solitary point when team-mate Massa moved aside for him to win the season finale in Brazil.“For me it counts much more than any others – if I had won with McLaren or with somebody else,” Raikkonen says. “Ferrari is Ferrari.I got close a few times in the McLaren. I mean yes in some people’s eyes I [could] have won three championships. I didn’t deserve it.In the end, whoever gets the most points deserves it. “Would I be happier with three championships? It makes no diﬀerence. I am happy with what I have achieved.” It felt as though F1 almost owed Raikkonen that championship– regardless of the peculiar circumstances – as payback for the disappointment and near-misses at McLaren. But although he finally conquered the world in his first season as a Ferrari driver, Raikkonen never fully established himself as the team’s number one. Raikkonen says his biggest concern before coming to Ferrari was having to adjust to Bridgestone tyres after years spent honing his car on Michelin rubber, but according to Rob Smedley – Massa’s race engineer throughout Raikkonen’s first stint at Ferrari – the tyres were “never the limiting factor” for Raikkonen during this period.“In terms of raw talent he definitely was one of the best drivers on the grid when he came to us,” Smedley says. “[But] he very much needs a particular set-up. He needs the front to work for him very positively. He turns the car in very early, a little bit like Michael, like Fernando, like Valtteri [Bottas]. They turn very early in the corner, and due to that he’s very demanding on the front-end in that phase of the corner.“He needs to start sending the car into the apex almost immediately when he starts thinking about the corner, especially in medium-speed corners. When he first came to us, it took us a longtime to understand what he wanted. “He’s the driver who, probably the most I’ve ever seen of anyone, is absolutely and entirely unfazed by rear locking at the start of heavy braking. To be able to deal with that and not to be fazed by that is something quite incredible. “We spent a lot of our time in that winter of 2007 attempting to understand how on earth he was putting the brake balance so far rearward. He was running probably 8% more rearward than Felipe and the other drivers – that’s another planet. “We were quite surprised by that, but actually what he was trying to do, in his own way, was to make the car turn as soon as he asked for it.As soon as he asked for response out of the steering, he wanted the car to turn. He had a particular way of driving the car and I think it took us a little bit of time to understand that. Once we did, we got performance from him.” But not consistently. Raikkonen was closely matched with Massa through most of 2007, but would likely have been asked to support his team-mate’s own bid for the championship had Massa not suffered a damper failure while running ahead of Raikkonen in that year’s Italian GP – and narrowly leading Raikkonen in the standings. Massa, who describes Raikkonen as “for sure one of the strangest people I’ve met”, was a fan of the Finn’s honesty as a team-mate, but rates Schumacher and Alonso higher: “Definitely Michael and Fernando were stronger – not quicker, but more complete.” The following year Raikkonen was cast into the supporting role, as his title defence fell apart amid a run of four consecutive non-scoring races in the second half of the season. Massa was unlucky not to become world champion in ’08 and was Ferrari’s leading driver through the first part of a difficult 2009 campaign too, before he suffered a terrible head injury during qualifying for the Hungarian GP. “We never were really comfortable – like if you drive and you have to try and do things that are not normal,” says Raikkonen of his first stint at Ferrari. “We never really found it and put things together. We changed the cars a little bit, but we just struggled compared to what we did in the first bit.” Raikkonen showed flashes of form in a very difficult 2009 Ferrari, which was not a strong answer to the regulatory upheaval of the previous winter. He qualified on the front row and finished third at Monaco, but he wasn’t proving so relentlessly impressive as he had done in his McLaren years– against a team-mate not rated as one of the absolute best on the grid.

“In ’08 Felipe was still in the stage of rapid improvement and overall Felipe was pretty much quicker than him, definitely in qualifying,” adds Smedley, who reckons Raikkonen’s “pure natural talent” made him better than Massa at looking after the rear tyres in races.“That was one of the things that really surprised me, because I expected him to come in and be blisteringly quick but not really manage things in such a mechanically sympathetic way, and in fact the opposite was true. One of the strengths he’s always got is that he can take the tyres further than anybody else and, wherever he goes, the team tries to exploit that.“It’s never a matter of application with Kimi – you just plug him in and he just does it. You often wonder [what would happen] if he had the level of application of others with his level of natural skill and tenacity, [but] one thing you can say about him is that he doesn’t bring any politics. The guy is absolutely apolitical.“I think that comes a little bit from not being interested in this world. The thing that is really important to him is going racing on a Sunday afternoon, qualifying, trying to be better than anybody else. And all the other periphery bits do not interest him. “And that’s kind of where he probably differs to 99.9% of the rest of us in F1. You wake up thinking about it, you go to sleep thinking about it – much to the annoyance of my wife! But that’s how we are– constantly striving to do better and be the best. I don’t think Kimi has that. I mean, he likes it here, he comes and drives his car, then he goes home, and doesn’t think about it a great deal after that.” The feeling inside Ferrari was that Massa was establishing himself as the quicker driver, and that messed with Raikkonen’s head. Raikkonen’s form certainly picked up following Massa’s accident. Kimi was on the podium at Budapest, Valencia and Monza, and beat Giancarlo Fisichella’s Force India to victory at Spa. His performances were made to look all the more remarkable by how badly Massa’s stand-ins Luca Badoer (who qualified slowest of all at Valencia and Spa) and Fisichella (who took over after Spa) struggled. But it wasn’t enough for Ferrari, which elected to pay Raikkonen out of the final two years of his contract to bring Alonso on board for 2010. Raikkonen is still guarded about the events that unfolded behind closed doors at Maranello, but says he was keen to get out of F1 in any case. “I have nothing to hide really,” says Raikkonen, who originally never planned for a long career in F1. “That’s how it played out and I was happy at that point to say, ‘OK, that’s fine and I’ll go’. Honestly, somethings happen in life and I didn’t feel bad about it. Obviously, I had a contract, but that got dealt with. They obviously wanted something else at that point, and for me that’s how it goes sometimes. I wanted to do something else anyhow.”

RETURN FROM THE WILDERNESS

Raikkonen was temporarily done with F1, but F1 wasn’t done with him. Throughout his two-year stint experimenting in the World Rally Championship, proposals were made for his return. Eventually, Raikkonen realised he missed the joy of wheel-to-wheel competition so began thinking seriously about a comeback. He held talks with Williams – “I had a meeting with Toto [Wolﬀ]; he came to my home” – and Lotus, before opting to make his comeback with the Enstone outfit.“The year before I got people asking me if I wanted to come back– there was a lot of talk but I felt if I want to come back I needed to have a current team that people will at least try to put the money into,” Raikkonen explains. “I didn’t need the money, but I wanted a car and a team that actually had some chances to do something good, rather than just being there.”Raikkonen enjoyed a superb first season with Lotus. He finished every one of the 20 races held in 2012, was on the podium seven times, and claimed a victory in Abu Dhabi – the infamous GP where he told the team to “leave me alone I know what I’m doing” over the radio while preparing for a safety car restart.Then-Lotus team principal Eric Boullier recalls a driver who was“a bit rusty over one lap” at first, but “brilliant” in the races, despite spending two seasons out of the game.“His capability and racecraft was amazing,” recalls Boullier.“The good thing for him [was] he had Grosjean near to him, and he [Grosjean] was very fast on one lap but not as good [overall].The most amazing thing about Kimi is he has a great understanding.He has a GPS in his head. He’s doing his own strategy, it’s amazing. ”Boullier recalls the 2012 Hungarian GP as the perfect example of Raikkonen’s craft, where the Finn came from the third row of the grid to beat Grosjean (who qualified on the front row) to second by saving his tyres and running longer in each stint. “You just have to guess sometimes what he wants, because he’snot the best communicator in the world,” Boullier adds. “Kimi gets quite stressed sometimes; he needs people who understand him and can handle him.“He is charismatic – actually, his charisma is strong enough to make people fans of him. What would be better would be to have more motivation to push people around him. He’s not as complete as maybe a Vettel, but he is a great driver. Some drivers need support. He’s one of the guys who can do it on his own. He’s incredibly talented.“He’s quite easy [to work with] to be honest – as long as you give him space to breathe and you’re not on his back all the time.

That was key – to let him live his life. ”Reuniting Raikkonen with Slade (who came across from Mercedes to work with Kimi again) also proved crucial in helping Raikkonen get the most from his comeback, and Lotus get the best out of Raikkonen. “When he first came back, he was really enthusiastic,” remembers Slade. “Unfortunately, he got messed around a bit on the salary side of things. That was an annoyance, but in terms of the driving, I felt he was still exactly the same. I don’t think it’s any secret that he’snot a big fan of the F1 paddock scene and the stuﬀ that goes with it.”It seemed those two seasons of F1, racing on the most extremely fragile rubber of the Pirelli control tyre era, also suited Raikkonen’s particular skillset. Often he would score a big result by making fewer pitstops than his rivals, but Raikkonen himself reckons the design of that generation of Lotus – conceived by James Allison’s team around the Renault V8 engine and exhaust-blown downforce – made more of a difference, giving him the “pure front-end” grip he needs to drive well. Whatever, the combination gelled superbly. Raikkonen added eight more podiums to his tally in 2013, winning the first race of the season in Melbourne and finishing second six times. An unfortunate retirement at Spa that year (thanks to a visor tear-off blocking a brake duct) broke an incredible run of 27 consecutive points finishes stretching back to the Bahrain GP of 2012. “He’s relentless,” says Slade. “I’d say Fernando is the closest in terms of achieving consistent results.” But into the latter part of 2013, Grosjean began to establish himself as the stronger and generally faster of the two Lotus drivers,even though he was twice defeated by Raikkonen overall in the championship. Grosjean describes Raikkonen as “the perfect benchmark” and says he learned a lot from racing alongside the Finn. “As team-mates we didn’t talk much – maybe three times in two years!” Grosjean says. “Everybody thinks he doesn’t give a shit; he actually does. He works. Same as Fernando – the only thing he thinks on Sunday is 2pm, how to get the car to where he wants it to go.“Once I had a rear soft spring for a race and Kimi tried it and liked it. He was pushing to get the springs. He was trying even though you think he doesn’t [care]. It was interesting that everybody thinks he [just] comes and drives the car and goes. He actually works. ”Their head-to-head record as team-mates is also skewed slightly by the fact Raikkonen skipped the final two races of 2013 – quitting the team over a financial dispute and electing to have surgery on a long-standing back injury, legacy of a testing accident during his first season in F1 at Sauber. “Unfortunately the whole thing [was] destroyed by people that, in my mind, were just stupid to be honest,” Raikkonen says. “They had a great thing on their hands. “It’s not my business, but I left there purely because I didn’t get paid. Without it, who knows? But then obviously I got the oﬀer from Ferrari. I never had a bad feeling with them when I left, despite people thinking that. You know how people always think it will end in a mess, but they oﬀered me a new deal and I went back.”

WHY RAIKKONEN OWES HIS SECOND F1 CAREER TO RALLYING AND NASCAR

Kimi Raikkonen’s two-year sabbatical from F1 in 2010-2011 led him to try his hand at other forms of motorsport he’d long wished to dabble in but never had the time to do so while fully absorbed into grand prix racing’s goldﬁsh bowl. Having sampled Rally Finland in the summer of 2009, Raikkonen contested most of the 2010 World Rally Championship as part of the Citroen Junior Team, and nine rounds of the 2011 championship with a DS 3 run under his own ‘Ice 1 Racing’ banner. There were many incidents, but also many top 10s. “I always wanted to try the rally stuff, because it looks so difficult,”says Raikkonen. “I wanted to see how it would go and I was happy to have the help from Red Bull to do it. I still think it’s a great sport, it’s so difficult. The problem is that it needs time – experience counts a lot more in rallying than in circuit racing.“In rallying you have to put the same effort in driving, but you [also] have to listen to your co-driver. The most difficult thing is that you have to think about what he says and then react. That takes too much time. When that starts to happen automatically then you can go faster, then it gets easier.I was close to getting to that point,then things happened and I ended up back in F1. ”Raikkonen also travelled Stateside in 2011, to try his hand at NASCAR. He contested the lower-tier Nationwide and Truck series races at Charlotte, qualifying mid-pack for his Nationwide outing.It was this experience that reﬁred Raikkonen’s enthusiasm for circuit racing and accelerated his F1 return. “Without that happening then I would deﬁnitely not be here today,”he says. “I would never have lasted this long if I hadn’t had a few years doing something else, trying things.

MARANELLO COMEBACK

It was during Raikkonen’s financial dispute with Lotus that he agreed a two-year deal to return to Maranello. Initially, it looked as though signing Raikkonen was the perfect insurance policy for Ferrari,which seemed in danger of losing Alonso after failing to carry the fight to Vettel and Red Bull in 2013. But despite publicly criticising the team and being admonished by company president Luca di Montezemolo, Alonso stayed put (for the moment) and he and Raikkonen became team-mates for 2014, as Massa departed for a fresh start at Williams. Raikkonen’s first season back at the Scuderia was a real struggle.The first year of F1’s current V6 hybrid turbo era was Ferrari’s least competitive since 1993. The car was bad, Raikkonen couldn’t adapt it to his driving style, and was demolished in the championship by Alonso, 161 points to 55. Jonathan Neale recalls how McLaren found its suspension development pulled “in two different directions” owing to Raikkonen’s demand for instant steering response from its cars, and Pat Fry, who was Ferrari’s chief engineer when Raikkonen returned in 2014, found his team coming up against an age-old problem – one exacerbated by stiff and hard Pirelli tyres that Raikkonen often struggled to get working for a single flying lap in qualifying. “He has a very smooth driving style – you’ve got to get rid of the understeer in the car,” says Fry. “You can obviously play around with suspension geometries and stuff like that to try and give him the feel,and sort out power-steering and all that stuff. ”The process was made trickier by Alonso’s long-standing presence as Ferrari’s number one driver, which inevitably led the team in a development direction that suited Alonso, before he departed for the ill-fated McLaren-Honda project.“In all the years I’ve worked with Kimi, the year I saw him struggle the most was that first year back at Ferrari,” says his long-time trainer Mark Arnall. “Coming from Lotus, where he had a good front-end on the car and had podium after podium after podium, it’s not like he suddenly forgot how to drive – he just couldn’t get a balance with that 2014 car.” But Raikkonen commanded the faith of technical director James Allison, with whom he worked at Lotus previously, and knew that he would have to play the long game at Ferrari to get back to where he needed to be.“I knew what I was getting into,” Raikkonen says. “With the engineers, I wouldn’t say they were bad – maybe the fit wasn’t what I wanted. It just didn’t work, I suppose, and our car was not very good.

“The front end has to be right there. If it’s not right, it’s not right,unfortunately. When it’s right things are very easy. Even when you have a good year, it’s a little percentage that’s perfect. There’s always something. There’s so many things that you have no control over.“Some days everything goes perfectly fine, and some days whatever you do it seems to be against you, but I’ve been long enough in the sport to know it. People look at you in one race and if you struggle they slag you off, but I’m used to it so it doesn’t bother me too much.“I want myself to do well and I know what I can do. That’s more important for me. Obviously, it’s not nice when you are in a team like Ferrari and the results are not coming, [but] I had no issues with them and I knew that things would turn out to be just fine with time. It just took some patience.” Raikkonen’s form has gradually improved since that annus horribilis, during which time the Ferrari senior management has changed, the technical structure has changed, the identity of his team-mate has changed, and so has his engineering group. Drafting in Dave Greenwood as his race engineer at the end of 2014 has made a massive difference for Raikkonen. “The car has been getting better and better every year, and a big part for me has been the people,” Raikkonen explains. “Dave is for sure one of the greatest guys that I have ever worked with. I would compare him with Slade – I very highly rate them. “For me it’s important that when we do something, everything has to be exactly like it should be. A very easy example: the ride height,if it’s [supposed] to be 20mm, it has to be 20mm; it can’t be 21mm or 19mm.“When everything is ‘close enough’, and you have five or six things like that, we all know in F1 how much difference small things make,then suddenly the lap time is not so perfect anymore.”Vettel has generally outperformed Raikkonen since arriving at Maranello in 2015, but their similar set-up demands and harmonious working relationship is helping drive Ferrari’s development in a single direction, and the Scuderia is now finally carrying the fight to Mercedes in the world championship – though it is Vettel leading the charge rather than Raikkonen. “Of all F1 drivers, he is probably closer to him [Vettel] than any of the others,” says Arnall, who arranged for Vettel to travel with Raikkonen on a private jet when Vettel was first in F1, and recalls Vettel’s rapid progression playing badminton against Raikkonen. “Kimi always liked Seb and I think Seb always liked Kimi. They are good friends – as much as you can be in this sort of environment. “The thing about Kimi is that he is not political at all, so I think to be a team-mate of, he is actually very easy as he doesn’t stir up any shit in the background – he is very transparent. Harmony in the team is something that is massively underrated. It makes a huge difference.”Paired alongside Vettel, Raikkonen’s own performances have steadily improved too, to the point where he has earned three contract extensions, which will keep him in F1 until after his 39th birthday.Questions about his ultimate speed and consistency remain, though, stoked further by occasional criticism from Ferrari president Sergio Marchionne, who has described Raikkonen as an occasional “laggard” in races. But Raikkonen’s pole position in Monaco proves he can still be faster than anyone when things are right, and his pernickety obsession with car set-up and tyre behaviour, plus the deep levels of valuable experience from F1’s tyre war era he can bring to bear in an age of severely limited testing, make him a valuable commodity, even if the price is the odd lacklustre performance.“I think Kimi is one of those guys that if he thought, ‘I just can’t drive one of these cars as quick as I used to’, he would stop,” reckons Arnall. “Kimi brings a shit load of experience,he’s very good with the development of the car, very non-political, an easy team-mate for people to have, so I think as an overall package,he is [still] very good.“I think his belief is that he can still compete near the top. He is very honest with himself – if he didn’t think that was the case, he’d stop.”Many would argue that he should have stopped a while ago, that his continuing presence on the grid, in such a coveted seat, is baﬀling when you consider he hasn’t been definitively quicker than any of his last four team-mates in F1. But what does Raikkonen himself think – does he believe he is as good a driver now as he ever was? “That’s so hard to say,” he replies. “I feel that I can drive as well as 2007 and 2001, or whatever people think has been my best ever [year]. For me, if I didn’t feel that I can drive well, or couldn’t win races or championships, I wouldn’t be here, because I don’t have interest to waste my own time and everyone else’s time. “I value my own time too much to use it on something that I wouldn’t be happy with, or that I wouldn’t think that I can actually do well. Plus, all the other people who would waste their time and money or on something that I just want to be part of. It’s not the most friendly place to be if you don’t really want to be…” That Ferrari continues to place its faith in Raikkonen suggests it feels, beyond the headline results and numbers, that he is still fundamentally among the very best drivers in the world, and that it recognises those deeper layers of style, character, substance and ability that make Raikkonen something more than the sum of his parts. He is enigmatic and mercurial, hasn’t been world champion for a decade, but clearly possesses extra qualities that F1’s biggest team finds are still worth investing in. He may lack the single-minded dedication of some of his peers,he may not be the out-and-out fastest driver on the grid anymore, he may well be too Button-esque in his over-reliance on particular car characteristics to drive quickly. He may not be as adaptable as some of his rivals, and F1 may only be a job to him, rather than an all-consuming obsession – but what’s wrong with being naturally gifted enough at your job that you don’t feel the need to take your work home with you every day?His critics will argue that’s not good enough, that Raikkonen has long outstayed his welcome. If Ferrari hands him another contract extension, they will no doubt be outraged if this enigma is given yet another lease of life. But one thing is for sure, Raikkonen will not care what they think. “I can live my life very happy,” Raikkonen says. “Obviously, my aim is to win races and I’m not happy when I’m not doing well. My biggest issue when I’m getting older is that I care too much. In the past, I didn’t care much. Now, when I have a bad weekend it’s more painful because I care more. Before it was still painful, but I got over it very quickly. “I never tried to be anything else than myself. If people like it, that’s good; if people don’t like it, that’s fine. As long as I’m happy what I’m doing, that’s my only interest. I’m not trying to please people because then I don’t live my life as I should. I live my life for myself. “I always said I have a life and that F1 is just a part of that. It’s not like F1 is all your life and then you have nothing. In my mind, I have the opposite. I mean F1, yes I love it and I enjoy doing it, but it’s not my life. My life is outside of it, and that’s how it should be.”

MARK ARNALL- RAIKKONEN’S LONG-TIME PERSONAL TRAINER

How does the Kimi of now compare to the Kimi you ﬁrst knew back in 2001?

He didn’t really care too much about the PR stuff, he wasn’t interested in that glamour side of it, being famous, I think he would much rather be anonymous! Every time he got in the car all he wanted to do was drive the crap out of it. When I started working with him, I could never imagine him being a father. Now seeing him with two kids is a phenomenal transformation. He is fantastic dad. I think all drivers, everyone learns, go through life and grow; experience teaches a lot. If you look at Kimi, the PR stuff he does now and what the sponsors say, everyone is super happy with him, and he’s got a global following of fans.

He doesn’t give much away in public; is he a shy character?

I think that mysterious side to him is intriguing for people. I don’t think he is particularly shy – the whole fan side of things,he obviously understands Formula 1, knows he is a popular driver, but it is not something he deliberately tries to play to, he just tries to get on with the job and what comes with it comes with it. One area he is very good is with kids. There was a guy who come up to me in Spa once, with this charity, to say this girl has cancer and she’d just love a picture with him or to say ‘hi’, and he spent 25 minutes sitting down and talking to her.

Is he quite a diﬃcult character to work with? He polarises opinion – some people get him and say he is brilliant,others say he is completely closed oﬀ, diﬃcult to work with…

The nicest thing I’d say about Kimi is what you see is what you get. Zero bullshit, zero politics. Kimi’s always been his own character and will always make his own decisions. He’s got a very strong head on those shoulders, so if he doesn’t want to do something, it is really difficult to get him to do it.

It sounds like he is not too demanding, quite independent and knows his own mind.

That is quite an accurate description of what he is like. I think he is probably the opposite to what most people think. If I was to describe Kimi, it would be ‘Mr 110%’. Goes into the gym and goes 110%. If he is lying on his sofa, he’ll go 110% horizontal! When he drives anything, it would be 110%, if he goes out it is 110%. I think that is just the way he lives his life.

The public persona is the ‘Iceman’: cool, disinterested, closed-off. Is he really like that?

In most situations, he is like that, but Kimi is actually a very warm, big-hearted character, and he has got a phenomenal sense of humour, but that is not really something people see. He needs to like people as well. If he doesn’t particularly like being with someone, he doesn’t do anything other than just ignore them.There is no bullshit, if he doesn’t like someone, he is quite straight about it. I think I’ve seen all the different versions of him, but I wouldn’t carry on working with him if I thought he was an arse. I actually really like him. I think he is super genuine, superkind. That is something people don’t really see so much.

#Kimi Raikkonen #raikkonen #f1 humor #F1 News #F1 #Formula One #Formula 1 #sauber #mclaren #Scuderia Ferrari #ferrari #mark arnall #mark slade

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lovehaswonangelnumbers · 4 years

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New Post has been published on https://lovehaswonangelnumbers.org/magic-has-just-intensified/

Magic Has Just Intensified

By A Gift From Gaia

EDIT 9.16am – Solar winds are now at KP4 we are going higher

So much to report within this energy entering, as you will see it began some hours ago whilst I was sleeping.

I was awoken from my dream state where I was picking up codes, I was sailing (on land and sea) in a massive seagoing boat, like a trawler or perhaps a modern Ark 🙈 and the weather, the rain, the wind, barely able to see what was in front until we crashed straight through, hence why I was sailing the boat on land, although it was barely land anymore, building tips poking out the water like rocks and the sounds of the hull smashing and breaking up what was below, now submerged.

My biggest complaint was being screamed “where’s the F888ING lighthouses”

Symbolic? Always!

“Oooooh there’s never been a night like it”

Feeling the solar energies pulsating through I check for the confirmation and stats, the wind is low, KP3, no field cracks, and we have a new solar cycle sun spot fizzing at a B Class, all super mild BUT and here is the BIG BUT look at what our Sun is being loaded with from beyond.

Aligned with Mercury, Saturn, Pluto and Ceres, with Jupiter and the South Node’s frequencies just being pulled into the magnetic alignment.

Punchy to say the least, pure manifestation energy, MAGIC has just intensified.

Remember, unconscious reacts and moves in slow motions, this appears like chaos Conscious is responsive, super quick and highly expansive, fast light speed magic.

The energies from Solar activations are Masculine, therefore trigger the wounding if held, the old Piscean ways will tell you these are symptoms, and the unconscious beliefs around this is to accept it as a result of the energy. The Aquarian way reads the symbols and realises the restriction or resistance, and acts from the guidance coded in the perceived pain, reconnecting the feminine and the masculine within. Listen and act upon request.

It’s all about data

You will now really begin to see the difference in the navigators and how they guide, reactive or responsive, avoid or engage which will give a wonderful example to the contradiction and make it easier to see how the New Aquarian World works and show the ways to operate.

Feel into the energies, the Piscean guides will hold a high emotional frequency, highly empathetic and a help us vibration Whereas the Aquarian guides will be highly compassionate, encompassing the Divine Plan and sharing the light on responsibility and respect, being the example and surfing through with ease.

Again we are here to assist with what you now know to be restriction and symbolic, the language of the body takes time to relearn, and apply, and it takes time to completely act from this space, it’s a language long forgotten in the Piscean era as we collectively chose to experience the depths of the sine wave we surfed to explore the frequencies of this Earth which meant we separated from our light Source.

But we are returning, and we are remastering the vital language that reconnects us to the endless possibilities we are able to create, provide and experience here.

The Aquarian Age gives freedom and teaches us the very first step of our evolution, how to heal, which ultimately breaks us from the chains of the karmic wheel. We learn to share again, through The Firsts mastering the remembering and filling the collective with the keys for when the locks are finally Seen, and with this, we evolve and this is where the unity begins, like a drip into a trickle and before we know it we have the flood.

Again, unity is a reflection, Charleen was asking some questions yesterday, so I’ll share some gems here. So many talk of Oneness but Oneness cannot be Seen until it’s experienced within So many talk of unity but until the unification has begun within, the Masculine and the Feminine we continue, collectively, in a state of separation.

The more people talk of unity and Oneness the more they are now shown the lack that stands in the way, hence why so many in the spiritual arena are now beginning to spin like tops.

When we declare we then hold a responsibility to BE.

Of course, this is a dream come true, it’s begun, as we all unknowingly in the beginning claimed to walk the path, storing the coordinates in the know bank of what we learned, what it all means, for the withdrawal and the transition into the being that has now arrived with this air of Divine Responsibility that we find ourselves now experiencing.

Charleens page just flashed up…Walk Talk and Breathe Light

Says it all….

Healing the masculine wounding so it will respond firstly to the feminine guidance from within… BEing who we truly are That is the unification and that is the path that truly places you in the space of Oneness a space where there can be no separation from Fear, there is no judgement, no blame, no lack, just pure perfection in the moment, riding the wave of transformation as the patterns and programs are viewed as they are, with no requirement to make it all personal.

We have a job to do here, none of this is personal and if it is, then let go, it’s an attachment …simple as that.

The feelings and emotions will be your guide, the goal if there was one is to neutralise all unconscious perceived heart bleeding vibrations by realising the roots embedded in this and all other lifetimes. Divine Detachment, do not misunderstand this, it doesn’t mean you do not care, in fact you care MORE because you SEE MORE, collectively, meaning the focus isn’t on the individual presentation, it’s on the energy that creates this collectively and how this is being emitted into the collective field. Divine Detachment removes from the personal aspects, and encompasses each in high responsibility, to recognise the discord from within, adjusting, neutralising, stabilising from within, FULLY trusting through already experiencing that this way creates a new wave emitted into the field which pulsates higher frequencies for the ALL to experience.

Working on a mass scale rather than a singular presentation.

Getting caught up in the details simply highlights the suffering for it to be neutralised, remember this as you move and learn to choose consciously, immediately, without the wait/weight, which again causes the perceived pain especially as we are now moving so incredibly quickly WHICH now speeds up tenfold again.

Uranus tomorrow stations direct, no planets in retrograde and we are electrified by Uranus in transition, this shift for me is like the invention of the electric car, as for the last few days I have been recieving the instructions to begin the ancient ritual of Gifting to the Gods but in the new, modern, Aquarian Way. As I mentioned yesterday I am now bringing it through into my reality and BEcoming it, to learn and feel into what it provides and so far I can confirm, joy, laughter, connection, space, love, communication and therefore expansion. I plan to share the beginning of this with the SoulAr group this evening and see how we unite through the new way and then it will be rolled out here, a United Love Wave around our globe, we are going to take action, we are going to DO something to make a solid difference and its so simple, we will align our hearts, minds and actions which is what an alignment is, that is how prayer works in the Aquarian Age, it’s called showing up.

#toolateforprayer is the hashtag for World Responsibility if you choose to share light too

Uranus going direct is going to be like an electrical shockwave to the foundations of the collective. We are already seeing it unfold, the way things have been done, traditions, establishments, the old order, all of it now ready for change.

In fairness the planetary energy explanations can simply be explained with a short sentence

Age of Aquarius is now entering and it’s being noticed, faintly, as the cloud formation showed yesterday.

But we will continue to look at specifics whilst the energy is so incredibly detailed and fast.

Lunar Eclipse tomorrow in tropical Cancer. Whilst opposite the Capricorn Council. Do I need explain the power of this?

Release the beliefs, release the unconscious everything, a data dump in lightening speed because the support is here. Move as though this is a Gift to your Soul, an offering of Peace to instantly remove the old templates, or for some the loud physical reality distortions now, going against the pulling emotions and simply be prepared to view the screaming banshee as you banish it’s toxic frequency and toss it over the cliff.

What is the point.

Each of us will be showing up to the Capricorn Council, to be given our direction, do you want to stare these guys in the face drowning in unconsious data? Or give the offering of a purified water in the Aquarian Cup?

This is all so symbolic angels

Energetically our planet is showing conflict and a need to balance and purify, it is a mirror, trust the pattern, move with the pattern, merge with the new by deleting the old and watch how things in your entire field shift, with more ease than the last time you attempted alignment.

We are cosmic seconds away from the Ceres, Saturn, Pluto, Sun and Mercury exact alignment.

Portal complete, coordinates chosen for the next part of the journey, but are you repeating or are you expanding and creating in a completely new field? Those holding the unconscious tones increase the volume of chaos for all to experience, those holding conscious tones shine upon those darkened spots, and we continue to escalate until all is Seen. Some used to call this the battle of light and dark.

Resistance is futile.

These gentle winds, these next few days are going to be whipping up a storm that sees us sailing land and sea, breaking down and through the old, paving the way for new light structures to be built.

Opportunities to jump ship, onto the big boats are here, some may feel completely whacky, against the grain, but watch how it shifts for those brave to move over.

Please bear with me on responding to emails, I’ve a stack to get through whilst so much is moving in my own field too, which of course must be the priority, as your is too

Sending so much love to All 💙💙💙

******

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